Privacy/Surveillance/Transparency

Ottawa’s spin doctor payroll rivals that of the Commons http://t.co/Ie6Dmvehmr via @torontostar
— Crim Library UTL (@CrimLib) August 8, 2014

CSEC Won't Say How Long It Keeps Canadians' Private Data
Agency says there are 'firm' time limits on how long it can retain intercepted private communications, but will not disclose detail.

B.C. Government Raises Alarm By Going After Address Of Medicinal Marijuana Growers
Provincial law enforcement agencies appear to be pushing Health Canada to hand over the personal information of more than 16,500 British Columbians licensed to produce medicinal marijuana, a top pot advocate has warned.

The Fourth Branch: The Rise To Power Of The National Security State
...for the Fourth Branch, this remains the age of impunity. Hidden in a veil of secrecy, bolstered by secret law and secret courts, surrounded by its chosen corporations and politicians, its power to define policy and act as it sees fit in the name of American safety is visibly on the rise.

No Matter What They Tell Us, USA Freedom Act Does Not Rein In The Spies 
Some of its supporters are overselling this bill and with it, anyone’s ability to rein in the intelligence community....[T]his bill...tacitly endorses the notion that FBI can conduct warrantless searches on US person communications without even having real basis for an investigation.

See report:  With Liberty to Monitor All

Obama Officials, Senate Intelligence Panel Spar Over Deletions From Torture Report
The Obama administration and the Senate Intelligence Committee are sparring over the administration’s deletions of fake names from the public version of a long-awaited report on the CIA’s use of harsh interrogation methods on suspected terrorists, McClatchy has learned.

Visit The Wrong Website, And The FBI Could End Up In Your Computer
Security experts call it a “drive-by download”: a hacker infiltrates a high-traffic website and then subverts it to deliver malware to every single visitor....Now the technique is being adopted by a different kind of a hacker—the kind with a badge. For the last two years, the FBI has been quietly experimenting with drive-by hacks as a solution to one of law enforcement’s knottiest Internet problems: how to identify and prosecute users of criminal websites hiding behind the powerful Tor anonymity system.


Wikipedia Link To Be Hidden In Google Under "Right To Be Forgotten" Law
Google is set to restrict search terms to a link to a Wikipedia article, in the first request under Europe's controversial new "right to be forgotten" legislation to affect the 110m-page encyclopaedia.

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/08/04/235402/obama-officials-senate-intelligence.html#storylink=cpy

The FBI’s Trojan Horse?

Over the past few decades, a paradigm shift has occurred within policing. Known generally as community policing, the basic idea is that state and local law enforcement officers should integrate themselves into the communities they serve.

The idea seems simple and, in theory, uncontroversial: the better the relationship police have with the public, the easier it will be to solve problems, such as crime, that affect everyone's quality of life. But in practice, if police are not properly trained, if programs aren't closely monitored for compliance with American communities' constitutional rights, community policing can open the door to biased policing and other rights violations.

That's what happened after 9/11, when the FBI initiated a mosque outreach program in Northern California.

Californian Muslim community members may have thought that the FBI was building relationships of trust by coming to mosques to discuss problems the community might face, such as hate crimes. That's what the FBI did in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. But what appeared initially to be a laudatory program dedicated to protecting the civil rights of American Muslims developed into something very different.

Read on....

Shhhh – What The FBI Doesn’t Want You to Know About its Racial Profiling Program

The FBI is using a racial and ethnic mapping program to collect intelligence on American communities – and it doesn’t want you to know which ones it’s spying on, or how it’s using census data to do so. The ACLU and the ACLU of Michigan filed a brief in federal court on Friday to challenge the FBI’s secrecy over its profiling practices.

FBI documents we already secured show that the Bureau is profiling some communities for intelligence collection based on false stereotypes that ascribe certain types of crimes to entire minority communities. Targeted groups include Muslims and Arab-Americans in Michigan, African-Americans in Georgia, Chinese and Russian-Americans in California, and broad swaths of Latino-American communities in multiple states.

Read on...

D.C. homicides: When is a murder case ‘solved’?

I look closely at investigative stories written by The Post. Investigation is a key competency of The Post and should remain so, not just because of the Watergate legacy but because this is one of the prime functions of newspapers — holding government and institutions accountable. I hear this from readers all the time; they want fact-based, hard-hitting investigations that keep people honest.

One recent investigative story was Cheryl W. Thompson’s front-page article on Feb. 19, “The trick to D.C.’s homicide closure rate.” It had no factual inaccuracies — all the statistics in it are true — but in its language and tone, it seemed to tell a story more of gotcha than of scandal. I don’t think D.C. Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier used trickery in her reporting of statistics to mislead the public about the solving of homicide cases.

Rather than suggesting that Lanier was fudging numbers, I think the story would have worked far better as a straightforward explanation of how the Metropolitan Police Department, other major police departments and the FBI keep homicide statistics — and of some of the pitfalls in that method.

Read on...

The FBI's War against Dr. King Revisited

Over the course of two decades, the FBI went to war against Dr. Martin Luther King, even though the civil rights leader never knew he was under attack.

As Dr. King’s political power, stature and influence grew, the FBI, under the direction of J. Edgar Hoover, grew increasingly obsessed with King. In turn, they used various tactics in the ‘50s and ‘60s to try and discredit him, such as mounting a full-court press to portray him as a Communist provocateur, attempting to disrupt tributes after Dr. King won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 and repeatedly bugging his hotel rooms.

The FBI so viewed Dr. King as a threat that they even tried to covertly besmirch his reputation after his assassination, when Congress in 1969 first considered making his birthday a national holiday.

Read on...

Racial Profiling on an “Industrial Scale”: FBI Using Census Data to Map and Police Communities By Race

The ACLU uncovers an FBI program that pairs Census data with "crude stereotypes" to map ethnic communities.

New documents obtained by the ACLU show that the FBI has for years been using Census data to “map” ethnic and religious groups suspected of being likely to commit certain types of crimes.

Much is still not known about the apparent large-scale effort in racial profiling, partly because the documents the ACLU obtained through public records requests are heavily redacted.

The FBI maintains that the mapping program is designed to “better understand the communities that are potential victims of the threats,” but the ACLU says it is plainly unconstitutional.

Read on...

How Half of Terror Cases Investigated By the FBI ... Were Also Hatched by the FBI

Here is an important question: What single organization is responsible for more terror plots in the USA than any other?

Possible answers: Al Qaida. That would no doubt be the popular answer but it would be wrong. The KKK. Way past their prime, so that is not it. The Jewish Defense League. Good guess, but still not it. So what is the correct answer?

It is the Federal Bureau of Investigation, AKA the FBI. Don’t believe me? Well, just read Trevor Aaronson’s expose entitled “The Informants” published in the September/October 2011 issue of Mother Jones.

Read on...

The FBI Has Been Violating Your Liberties in Ways That May Shock You

As Congress seeks to renew the Patriot Act, new information exposes egregious FBI violations.

Last week, Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-VT, introduced legislation to extend the Patriot Act past its February 28 expiration date to December 2013. Though the extension once again saves some of the most nefarious, First-Amendment trampling provisions of the act -- roving wiretaps, secret access to third-party records, the hunting of targets unafilliated with foreign powers -- Leahy released a statement assuring us that the new extension will increase citizen protections

“It will promote transparency and expand privacy and civil liberties safeguards in current law,” he said in a statement. “It increases judicial oversight of government surveillance powers that capture information on Americans. This is a package of reforms that all Americans should support.” The expanded bill would require the Department of Justice to issue public reports and generally expand oversight.

But will token rights-preserving provisions matter if the FBI refuses to comply?

Read on...

Watchdog Faults FBI for 'Factually Weak' Basis for Investigating Activists

A new report finds that activists--including a Quaker peace activist and a Catholic religious community--were placed on terrorism watchlists by the FBI.

The FBI in recent years opened investigations into some U.S. activists with little basis, unjustifiably extended the duration of the probes, improperly retained information about activist groups in its files, and classified its investigations of “nonviolent civil disobedience” as investigations into “acts of terrorism,” according to a report released today (PDF) by the Justice Department’s Inspector General.

The FBI in recent years opened investigations into some U.S. activists with little basis, unjustifiably extended the duration of the probes, improperly retained information about activist groups in its files, and classified its investigations of “nonviolent civil disobedience” as investigations into “acts of terrorism,” according to a report released today (PDF) by the Justice Department’s Inspector General.

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FBI Blows It: Supposed Terror Plot Against NY Synagogues Is Bogus

By Robert Dreyfuss, The Nation. Posted May 23, 2009.

Turns out it is really the handiwork of a creepy FBI informant. The story strengthens the narrative that the "homeland" is under attack. It's not.

By the now, it's maddeningly familiar. A scary terrorist plot is announced. Then it's revealed that the suspects are a hapless bunch of ne'er-do-wells or run-of-the-mill thugs without the slightest connection to any terrorists at all, never mind to Al Qaeda. Finally, the last piece of the puzzle: the entire plot is revealed to have been cooked up by a scummy government agent-provocateur.

I've seen this movie before.

Read on...