The most painful part of this article to me is this one quote:
"The Justice Department did not return a call for comment."
Our own government is, once again, not holding itself accountable to the people or the fourth estate. Is it any wonder then that organizations like WikiLeaks exist that perform the function that the fourth estate is failing in?
(EDIT: Yes, I realize that WikiLeaks mission is somewhat different from the fourth estate but even so.)
[0] He heard about this in 2005 (when the government was run by a different administration) but couldn't find anything. Eventually he filed a FOIA request. Silence, until spring of last year, when he was told there was some some information but it was redacted. So he filed an appeal, and it was granted. I suspect the lack of DoJ comment is because they're still trying to find out whether it was a fully formed program or just junior official's bid for career visibility - I suspect the latter, given the extremely basic level of information on these slides and lack of other documentation.
It's unclear whether the question left with the DoJ was about this 'hotwatch' project or about administrative subpoenas in general. An AS is a request for infor information issued by a government agency under statutory authority (ie Congress passed a law specifically saying an agency may issue one in an investigation and it must be complied with). About 300 government agencies are empowered to issue them altogether, although usually within a narrowly defined scope. The obvious constitutional problems with administrative subpoenas have been known for some time [1]. Misuse of such procedures has resulted in disciplinary proceedings at the FBI, among other agencies [2].
The basic thing to remember is that legally speaking warrants are not required for this kind of information gathering because it does not constitute a search [3] - as a legal term, this may not always mean what you think it means. for example, your phone conversations are generally private and require a warrant to listen to, but the numbers you call are not, and subpoena-ing that information from your phone service provider is not a search - at least, so said the Supreme Court in 1979 and neither it nor Congress have seen fit to decide otherwise since then [4]. This manner of gathering information is not actually new at all, as subpoena powers go back a lot farther than 1979 - that's just the last time their legality was debated in this context.
Some people think the options available to law enforcement should be much stronger, of course [5]. But in the meantime, relax - the sky is not in fact falling and things have not taken a sudden drastic turn for the worse.
However, per [3], a subpoena is required which, unless I'm mistaken, does require a judge (and therefore due process).
Also, it would at least be a common courtesy for the government to acknowledge receipt of the request and that they intend to follow through. Instead, the DoJ did not respond, per Wired.
While I do greatly appreciate the detailed insight, I stand by my original point.
Perhaps I was unclear. When I say an agency can issue a subpoena, I mean exactly that: rather than requesting one from a court, an agency can issue one under its own administrative authority - within the limited scope authorized by statute. The IRS can subpoena your bank statements, say, or the EPA could subpoena a suspected polluter's freight delivery data. Many agencies have limited powers to investigate and then prosecute or impose financial penalties, otherwise the court system would need to be considerably expanded. After going through any dispute/appeal process of the agency, then a matter can be heard in state or federal court as appropriate. It's good to get proper legal advice and do everything in writing from the beginning, or you can waste several years fighting the inevitable!
The 'preferred method' mentioned in the Hotwatch briefing does involve going to a judge too, but that's for the separate purpose of getting a secrecy order to avoid tipping off the suspect. The government did get a lot of new powers to investigate things under the PATRIOT act. Though some expired or were amended later, civil liberties were a low priority in October 2001 when people were still feeling panicked about terrorism.
I agree that the DoJ should call back and say 'we're looking into that, give us a few days' - but you know, people would find a reason to be paranoid about that too. Newspapers used to say 'had not called back by press time,' but with blogs that might mean anything, such as waiting only an hour (I consider Wired a responsible news source in this respect, but I still don't know how long they actually waited, and would sort of like to). Remember this Hotwatch powerpoint is 5 years old, and agencies are being told to tighten their budgets a great deal lately; press & public relations departments are often the first to see cuts because they're considered 'fluff' expenses compared to the core mission of a department.
Having worked for a bank, I'm shocked that they managed to build a product that offers no business value but requires actual technical expertise to implement.
Now that I think about it... it's probably an Excel spreadsheet...
I upgraded a Visa Level 1 merchant's credit card system a few years ago. It was an unholy mess of C++ servers, Java servers, large amounts of semi-comprehensible PL/SQL, and Korn shell scripts. Real time authorization was handled by one system, and end-of-day settlement was handled by a very different system, under a different director.
I wouldn't be at all surprised that the "real time" data the feds get is very nearly worthless. It's probably patchy and intermittent, and varies greatly in timeliness. The document says that "open ended" systems (Visa and MasterCard) depend on issuing banks, which is certainly true, but the merchants can also contribute greatly to delays in getting data in. The Level 1 merchant did something called "Assumed Approval" when it lost contact with the payment provider. Since about 96% of all authorization requests got approved, it would just assume that all auth requests got approvals when network problems prevented actually getting approvals. The feds wouldn't find out about those transactions until end-of-day settlement.
"For credit cards, agents can get real-time information on a person’s purchases by writing their own subpoena, followed up by a order from a judge that the surveillance not be disclosed."
The information was in a Power Point presentation Chris Soghoian FOIA'ed. Good reporting once again by Ryan Singel.
It would seem that this makes it significantly easier to stay under the radar -- simply set up your credit cards to suggest a very normal life and then use cash for any illicit activities.
And, if a group of people (such as a terrorist cell) wanted to, it would be easy to deliberately create a paper trail to mislead authorities.
You get promoted based on how many cases you solve, not how many difficult cases you solve. If you are smarter than the average criminal, you probably stand a less-than-average chance of being caught.
because the authorities have no control over the supply of cash, would never try to outlaw cash, or never require banks to report the withdrawal or deposit of cash.
You know, you can walk into a bank and withdraw a wad of cash without a fee.
I went for a couple of years at an employer, walking my paycheck to the credit union each payday and simply cashing it. I'd deposit enough for writing checks for bills, but I otherwise started every other week with $2k in my pocket. Then they mandated direct-deposit, so I got lazy and my large cash withdraws became less and less frequent.
Or pick a bank with conveniently located ATMs. I don't understand how ATM fees are an issue at all; I use cash way more than the average person and have never paid any.
No, it's a onepercent tax to use any old ATM out there. Use your bank's or credit union's and you done have to pay a thing (outside the normal fees incured by using any finacial institution).
Its also probably worth noting that most will reimburse you for a numer of ATM fees a month...
However, most shitty ATMs coalesce the charge and the amount withdrawn into one amount (e.g. you get a charge for $41.75 or something). In that instance, you have to file a claim with the bank. Waste of time.
What really upsets me about ALL these things is that it seems highly unlikely any of these privacy violations would have caught any known terrorists, foreign or domestic.
It's just lazy law enforcement covering itself so it has an after-the-fact method to hunt people down easily, just like all the security cameras in the UK are not to actively prevent crime, but just to have a trail afterwards.
It seems like we are waking up to a bad dream that the US government is increasing the Skynet in the Terminator movies..
They track you, bug you, infiltrate , and than order drones to bomb the heck out of you..
The sad thing is its not the Government's fault. We as voters let this happen in not opposing the interests of the Military-Industrial-Financial complex with real votes on the issues..
It's not the voters fault; it's a systemic fault. Once you accept that violence can be used to force people to take certain actions; and that its proper place is not only as last resort for self defense you accept a system that will continually gain more power and use force more and more. People need to realize that the use of force, and living at the expense of another is not sustainable and will eventually collapse.
This was all laid out in Zbigniew Brzezinski's book "The Technetronic Era" back in the early 70s. They've been hard at work on all of this ever since. It's part of a clear detailed long-term vision and they've just been putting the finishing touches on it and everyone acts like it just happened all by itself.
>"The technetronic era involves the gradual appearance of a more controlled society. Such a society would be dominated by an elite, unrestrained by traditional values. Soon it will be possible to assert almost continuous surveillance over every citizen and maintain up-to-date complete files containing even the most personal information about the citizen. These files will be subject to instantaneous retrieval by the authorities." (This was an excellent prediction although it is slightly worse now.)
>'In the technotronic society the trend would seem to be towards the aggregation of the individual support of millions of uncoordinated citizens, easily within the reach of magnetic and attractive personalities effectively exploiting the latest communications techniques to manipulate emotions and control reason." (Fox CNN and facebook?)
>"Today we are again witnessing the emergence of transnational elites ... [Whose] ties cut across national boundaries ...It is likely that before long the social elites of most of the more advanced countries will be highly internationalist or globalist in spirit and outlook ... The nation-state is gradually yielding its sovereignty... Further progress will require greater American sacrifices. More intensive efforts to shape a new world monetary structure will have to be undertaken, with some consequent risk to the present relatively favorable American position."
I'm not being naive at all, I question the very premises that you take for granted. I don't believe that any group can legitimately claim a monopoly on force, especially when consent is not granted. The justification of a Rousseauian social contract is an example of sloppy thinking, that has been used by the opportunistic to seize power.
In our winner-take-all electoral system, the voters are only given two viable choices, neither of which represents their own views. So our leaders are basically determined by who spends the most money in DC, with two options so life is simple for lobbyists and each party has competition. The system, quite accidentally, is designed for those who milk government, not those who pay the bills.
This system can be replaced, but given our Constitution, change is unlikely to happen to begin in DC. I think some sort of competing decision making system that is more trusted and uses proportional representation will have to be implemented that can then press for change.
Such a system would have no legal authority, but if highly trusted and transparent, it could have the moral authority to demand changes to the real electoral system. Especially if most people see the system consistently produce better decisions than Congress. That part's easy.
The trick is getting people to use such a system. Perhaps starting on the local or state level.
Well, consider the '3 strikes' law in California - commit three felony offenses, go to jail for life. Several other states have similar laws (Texas was the first in 1974) but California's was enacted via a ballot initiative, so the voters had a direct say on the matter.
It passed with a good majority: lots of politicians thought it would be a good idea, the police and prison officers unions supported it (surprise - more work for them, and they are very powerful lobbying groups in CA politics), and it seems like a nice neat solution to a complicated problem...but in practice it doesn't work very well. Now our prisons are so overcrowded that we have to ship people out of state and the conditions have been ruled unconstitutional, plus keeping all these people imprisoned costs us a fortune and our courts are so backlogged that people sometimes go free because we can't get them into court within the time required for a 'speedy trial'. Nor has the three strikes law had much effect on crime or recidivism that we can tell.
Voters have watered it down a little bit, allowing some people to go into drug treatment programs if their crimes are not violent. In the recent election, the Republican candidate for Attorney General ran on a platform of repealing the law, because it just doesn't work very well. He lost.
So it's not just congress or state representatives. This kind of thing will always be a problem. I was going to say '...until people are more aware civics and the law,' but somehow I don't think that's going to change much. We could spend more money on education and suchlike but most people vote with their hearts instead of their heads.
You know, referendums sound great on paper, but there is so much subterfuge, you almost need a professional to figure out what many of them actually mean.
If only you could hire someone that agreed with your values and made it his career to effectively pursue your interests as you define them. Some sort of "representative"
Well, that was the whole point behind representative government. Except that in the US and many other places, the system works as if geography is the only thing that matters.
In a system using proportional representation that is not the case. You don't have to settle for someone who best pretends they agree with everyone in your area.
You can hire an expert to handle your legal matters, your health, your mechanical needs and hundreds of other things. And they do what you tell them to do. Why can't you have your chosen expert represent you in government?
Consider the power of this. If we had PR in the US Congress from the very beginning, African Americans could have had representatives in Congress the instant they got the vote, even if half their votes were never counted.
I want to agree. But my home country (Ireland) has PR, and where I live (in the bay area) local elections are run with PR, and I've lived in 2 other countries that use different forms of it (NL and Spain). I think it's a good thing, but it's no silver bullet. You can still have corruption and bad policy, unfortunately.
Leaving as many things as possible with the individual or at the local level is a good remedy for corruption.
Especially when people can actually leave a city or state for a different one or start their own. They have this is Switzerland, as well as the requirement that many actions of the legislature be approved of by referendum.
So it takes several things to prevent corruption.
Oh, I'm Irish too. My mom is from Clare. Got my passport too.
> Well, consider the '3 strikes' law in California - commit three felony offenses, go to jail for life.
Three strikes is one of the most misunderstood laws on the books. The first two offenses have to be deemed "serious" offenses - which, if memory serves, only includes a violent felony or child molesting.
If someone commits two violent crimes and then commits a third felony, they're probably not someone who was going to wise up. A guy who commits third degree murder once, gets out of jail seven years later, commits aggravated assault, gets out of jail five years later, and then commits a third felony just doesn't get it, and is obviously going to keep committing crimes.
There was a famous case people were outraged about where a guy got three-strikes life in jail for stealing a stereo system. What the newspapers didn't report enough was that he'd already mugged someone with a knife and stuck up a convenience store at gunpoint. I think there's a pretty reasonable case that that guy was going to keep doing stupid violent stuff until you locked him up forever...
(I did a little research into this - I was really against three strikes at first, until I actually learned more about it. It actually seems pretty sensible. The overcrowding problem at prisons is largely unrelated to three strikes, and has more to do with prison sentences on some offenses that you could probably just issue a fine and move on)
However, it's quite a bit more complex than you suggest here. Someone with two non-serious felony convictions who is then convicted of a serious felony, for example, can also get the full effect. Those servicing a second sentence can have their time doubled. And not everything that qualifies as a serious felony is the sort of violent crime most people imagine.
> We as voters let this happen in not opposing the interests of the Military-Industrial-Financial complex with real votes on the issues..
It's not that simple - one thing people to fail to realize is that when you authorize extraordinary powers for your own favorite causes, they'll inevitably be used for other worse causes as well.
It's not military/industrial/financial - even things as simple as letting the government take a driver's license for not paying child support means that there's now a precedent for denying someone's right to mobility for punitive reasons unrelated to actually operating a car. People support this when it's to get those no-good child support dodgers, but then they're shocked when this is broadly expanded to other civil offenses where they wouldn't support it.
People are naive. They think, "Oh, the Democrats will reverse the Republican's terrible policies when they get in." No they won't. They'll co-opt the power for their causes, and vice-versa. It's not clear which party is responsible for starting the reckless deficit spending, but now they both do it. They both give employment and money to sectors that support them. (Republicans in military, Democrats in social causes)
But don't be fooled for a minute that the excessive powers the Republicans authorize for the first time won't be taken up by the Democrats. And the excessive powers the Democrats take up will be used by Republicans.
It's not any one sector. Excessive government powers anywhere leads to excessive government power everywhere.
(And note - the Democrats are the banner-leaders in censoring and spying on the internet - I don't think that's because the Democrats are worse, but rather because I don't think the Republicans understand the internet. So it's not exactly military/financial/industrial that's doing this one)
Oh, geez. Give me a break. One party is responsible for deficit spending, it's the party that supported Reagan and Bush. Look at a chart. (in between, Clinton balanced the budget by cutting the military and raising taxes)
And ditto for military/industrial/financial. Every time those industries come up, conservatives are all rah rah go america and the liberals are derided as hippies.
If you feel a certain way, fine, I'm not even motivated to argue, really. Just don't give us the false equivalency stuff.. there's a pretty recent and pretty obvious historical record here.
There's truth to that, but don't forget that NAFTA and "house for every family" also came from Clinton. Obama has done a few things differently than Bush to be sure, but not as much I think most would have suspected given a majority in the House and Senate.
The last time the U.S. had no deficit was 1845. The largest rampup of government spending and deficit spending was under FDR.
The most responsible presidents post-WWII seem to be Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Clinton. I've got LBJ pegged as the least responsible, with no one else coming even close. Carter didn't run much of a deficit, but caused a lot of problems with price controls.
I'm much less of an admirer of Reagan than most people. He did some important consolidation and his tax cuts seemed to fuel a lot of the money that then went into the tech boom in the 1990's, but I agree his domestic policies were so-so. The first Bush seems like he was a decent president. Clinton had a good run. G.W. Bush had a mix of good and bad policies. The book's still open on his foreign policy, and will be for 10-20 years. If Iraq and Afghanistan become allies of the USA the way West Germany, Taiwan, and Japan became following WWII, and South Korea became following the Korean War, then we might look much for favorably upon him later. (Remember, Truman was despised following his leaving office, about as much as Bush. Now he's generally regarded favorably)
Obama's presidency seems like a mess to me, but I think McCain's would've been a mess too.
I think it's fair to say that Republicans tend to make larger short term deficit expenditures for war, but create less permanent structural spending. Even that's not entirely true though, since Eisenhower went isolationist, and LBJ greatly ramped up America's military involvement following Kennedy's assassination.
This is before even getting in Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, etc. Jackson was a Democrat, but I think you'd consider him an ancestor of the modern Republican Party. Theodore Roosevelt was a Republican, then a Progressive, but I think it'd be fair to say he was an ancestor of the modern Democrats.
Anyways, it's complicated. I'm not in love with either of the parties. I was originally happy with Obama winning, but I hope he's defeated next run by a government that focuses on consolidation, investing, cutting/paying off bad debts, and a non-interventionist foreign policy, along with no moral/social controls or social engineering.
I'm not sure how likely that is to happen, but one can hope.
No matter who you vote for, the lobbyists and military/intel institutions run things from behind the scenes. Until the public at large realizes this, they'll retain false hopes.
"The Justice Department did not return a call for comment."
Our own government is, once again, not holding itself accountable to the people or the fourth estate. Is it any wonder then that organizations like WikiLeaks exist that perform the function that the fourth estate is failing in?
(EDIT: Yes, I realize that WikiLeaks mission is somewhat different from the fourth estate but even so.)