9 posts tagged “congress”
“Anyone who trades liberty for security deserves neither liberty nor security”
Benjamin Franklin
“Those who desire to give up freedom in order to gain security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one.”
Benjamin Franklin
(video is from yesterday Tuesday, July 08, 2008)
Congress votes to immunize lawbreaking telecoms, legalize warrantless eavesdropping
This video is dedicated to the First and Fourth Amendments to the United States Constitution and a special shout out to the United States Bill of Rights.
The FISA Amendments Passed.
1. The law retroactively legalizes a massive electronic operation to spy on the personal communications of millions of Americans - within the United States
2. The law allows physical searches of Americans’ homes and places of work without a search warrant or any other proof that anyone being spied upon is suspected of any crime at all
3. The law allows the same kind of unaccountable spying online and by telephone
4. Under the FISA Amendments Act, the only person with the ability to stop the spying is the same person who actually orders the spying to take place: The Attorney General of the United States.
First Amendment the Constitution of the United States and part of the United States Bill of Rights.
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
Fourth Amendment the Constitution of the United States and part of the United States Bill of Rights
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
From Judgment and Jesse Helms - Washington Post
...In 2002, just before he retired from the Senate, Helms agreed to meet with the rock star Bono, one of the world's leading advocates for fighting the AIDS epidemic in Africa.
Helms, who had spent many years slashing foreign aid budgets, had rendered his judgment on AIDS loudly and clearly. In 1995, for example, he told The New York Times that the government should spend less money on people with AIDS because they got sick as a result of "deliberate, disgusting, revolting conduct."
But after talking to Bono, Helms apologized and said he was ashamed. "I have been too lax too long in doing something really significant about AIDS," Helms said.
What did Bono tell him?
"Christ only speaks about judgment once and it's not about sex but about how we deal with the poor, and I quoted Matthew, 'I was naked and you clothed me, I was hungry and you fed me.' Jesse got very emotional, and the next day he brought in the reporters and publicly repented about Aids. I explained to him that AIDS was like the leprosy of the New Testament"...
Most of the headlines are focusing on President Bush signing the new war funding bill and the cost of the war. Rightly so, that is where the focus should be. However, the President did make some compromises by signing the bill.
The package approved by Congress includes a doubling of GI Bill college benefits for troops and veterans. It also provides a 13-week extension of unemployment benefits, $2.7 billion in emergency flood relief for the Midwest, and tens of billions of dollars for food aid, anti-drug enforcement, Louisiana levee repairs and many other items.
The war is going to be funded... no matter what. That is an undeniable truth. President Bush knows that. So give credit where credit is due. The President did compromise and we got unemployment extended, flood relief, food aid, etc.
I still think we are funding the wrong war. (I do believe we are in a war but it's not conventional) I would prefer the larger sum went towards fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan and for social program that will help the communities in the Middle-East. You know... help the people like you and me that just want to live life.
Senator Kit Bond of Missouri is now floating legislation that he calls a "compromise" on warrantless wiretapping. Unfortunately, the bill would be a disaster for our civil rights and the rule of law. It gives the President everything he's demanded, including retroactive immunity for telecom companies that spied on us without the warrants required by the current FISA law.
I just signed a petition calling on my representative to reject Senator Bond's legislation when it gets to the House. I hope you will too.
Please have a look and take action.
http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/no_fisa_capitulation/?r_by=366-1598409-TPVclR&rc=paste
For over 30 years, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) has dictated necessary and appropriate ways for the U.S. government to collect intelligence on its own citizens for the sake of national security. Two key provisions of this law are that:
* The government must obtain a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) before spying on a citizen.
* Citizens have the right to sue if they believe they were spied upon illegally.
FISA provided broad leeway for every President from Carter to Clinton to conduct extensive intelligence-gathering operations. However, President Bush has decided that he is above warrants and judicial review, and major newspapers have reported that he has been using big telecoms like AT&T to spy on Americans without warrants for years.
Now, there are over 40 lawsuits against this arguably unconstitutional practice, and rather than taking his chances in court, President Bush is looking to his allies in Congress for a legislative back door solution. In February, the House of Representatives stood up to President Bush and protected the Constitution, but now the Senate is getting ready to cave in again. Senator Kit Bond is proposing a complete overhaul of FISA -- he calls it a "compromise," but we call it a catastrophe.
Here are some features of Senator Bond's attack on civil liberties:
* Unlimited warrantless wiretapping for this President and every President for the next six years.
* Retroactive immunity for all the telecoms that helped President Bush wiretap illegally during the past 8 years -- this time dressed up as a "trial" in the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court where a note from the President amounts to a get out of jail free card.
* No future judicial review for the President, either: the Attorney General gets to decide whether the President's warrantless wiretapping is legal or not.
In order to avoid this disastrous legislation, all the House has to do is stand strong on their February vote, and stick with the current version of FISA. Send a message to your representative today, and him or her to vote for the Constitution by voting against Senator Bond's catastrophic FISA "compromise" when it comes to the House.
Please sign the petition and urge your Representative to stick with the current version of FISA
http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/no_fisa_capitulation/?r_by=366-1598409-TPVclR&rc=paste
From Rob Kall at OpEd News:
I rarely send out emails to our entire member list but I thought this exciting interview was worth the intrusion into your bandwidth.
I'll be interviewing Congressman Dennis Kucinich tonight, at 9:00 PM EST, Wednesday, June 11. We'll be talking about his articles of impeachment of George W. Bush.
In the second half of the show, I'll be interviewing Luke Ryland, an investigative journalist calling in from Australia, who's been doing a series of articles on whistleblower Sibel Edmonds. He'll be talking about new disclosures on former House Speaker, Denny Hastert's Turkish connection.
Listen to the show at WNJC AM 1360 in South Jersey and Philly, or, if you are out of range, listen on-line here:
We won't be doing call-ins while Congressman Kucinich is on the air, but afterwards, and when Luke Ryland is on, we will.
If you have questions for Kucinich, post them to the headlined diary announcing the show:
Rob Kall Radio Show Tonight With Dennis Kucinich & Luke Ryland
I will be checking for the comments on the diary. And you can start posting your questions before the show. Let's make this interview a "We" event.
When we switch over to taking phone calls, check the diary for the phone number to call. I'd include it, but we're using a new system and don't have the number yet.
Best,
Rob Kall
When Congress had a chance, food safety wasn't its choice
By Michael Doyle | McClatchy Newspapers
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
WASHINGTON — Tainted tomatoes highlight how Congress forfeited some food-safety opportunities in the new farm bill.
A nationwide salmonella outbreak attributed to tomatoes comes just as Congress and President Bush are finishing their farm bill tug-of-war. The bill about to become law omits some of the highest-profile food-safety proposals that lawmakers once offered.
"Food safety is never a key issue for any farm bill," Chris Waldrop, the food policy director for the Consumer Federation of America...
...at least 167 people in 17 states have fallen ill from salmonella poisoning since mid-April. The Food and Drug Administration is urging consumers to avoid raw Roma, plum or red round tomatoes. Restaurants including McDonald's have removed them from their menus temporarily...
...The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 300,000 Americans are hospitalized each year, and 5,000 die, because of food-borne illnesses. The farm bill nonetheless remains silent on many food-safety issues.
The Senate, for instance, originally wanted a new 15-member food-safety commission to conduct a wide-ranging study and issue recommendations. The proposed commission ran into opposition in the House of Representatives, and negotiators killed it.
Similarly, Rep. Dennis Cardoza, D-Calif., wanted to move border plant and animal inspectors back to the Agriculture Department...
...Politically, the House and Senate agriculture committee members who write the farm bill tend to be protective of agribusiness...
...responsibility for food safety is scattered among some 15 federal agencies. The farm bill focuses on the Agriculture Department, which handles meat and poultry. Produce and seafood are handled by the Food and Drug Administration. The standalone phrase "Food and Drug Administration" doesn't appear anywhere in the 673-page farm bill conference report, and the FDA is largely outside the bill's coverage...
...On Thursday, a House Energy and Commerce Committee panel will hold a hearing on the FDA's food-safety work, with some House members pressing to give the federal agency mandatory-recall authority over tainted food...
...farm bill authors retreated from measures that some feared would undermine food safety...
Western fruit and vegetable growers, for instance, hoped that the farm bill would authorize self-regulation through industry-run marketing orders. Handlers of California leafy greens imposed such a plan after a 2006 outbreak of sickness traced to Salinas-area spinach tainted by E. coli bacteria. Environmentalists successfully opposed the idea of giving industry more power to regulate itself.
The sprawling farm bill includes 15 titles, or subject areas, ranging from commodities to energy. Food safety doesn't merit its own title...
Here is a link to an online up-to-date database of congressional contact information.
Old gas pumps can't handle ever-rising prices
Monday May 12, 2008
By John K. Wiley
AP Writer Dale Wetzel in Bismarck, N.D., contributed to this report.
(I hope you will decide to contact your congressperson after reading this AP report. Small business owners are taking the brunt of this economic downturn. We need to help these small business owners out, if they fail, we all fail. A phone call, email, or personal letter could make a big difference.)
REARDAN, Wash. (AP) — Mom-and-pop service stations are running into a problem as gasoline marches toward $4 a gallon: Thousands of old-fashioned pumps can't register more than $3.99 on their spinning mechanical dials.
The pumps, throwbacks to a bygone era on the American road, are difficult and expensive to upgrade, and replacing them is often out of the question for station owners who are still just scraping by.
Many of the same pumps can only count up to $99.99 for the total sale, preventing owners of some SUVs, vans, trucks and tractor-trailers to fill their tanks all the way.
As many as 8,500 of the nation's 170,000 service stations have old-style meters that need to be fixed — about 17,000 individual pumps...
...many station owners — who, because of relatively small profit margin on gas, aren't raking in money even though gas prices are marching higher — replacing the pumps altogether with electronic ones is just not an option...
..."In small towns, where you don't have the volume, there's no way you can afford to pay for the replacements for these old pumps," Colville said. "It's just not economically feasible."
The problem is worse in extremely rural areas, where "this might be the only pump in town that people can access,"...
...Mechanical meters can be retrofitted with higher numbers when pump prices climb another dollar. The last time that happened was in late 2005, when gas went over $3 a gallon, and owners of the older pumps installed kits that went to $3.999.
This time around, owners of the old pumps will need to install another kit that can handle prices up to $4.999, and possibly higher. Industry experts say those changes could cost as much as $650 per pump.
It costs less to change the meter to raise the maximum price from $2.99 to $3.99 a gallon, but that option raises the risk of a breakdown...
"The computer that they're upgrading was not designed to go any more than what it's going now, and if you do it, they don't last long enough," Turner said. "They run so fast that the gears are wearing out."
To deal with the problem, some state regulators are allowing half-pricing — displaying the price for a half-gallon of gas, then doubling the price shown on the meter.
"If gas is the profit driver and you are one of those guys with the old pumps, you're either evolving or getting out," said Jeff Lenard, spokesman for the National Association of Convenience Stores, a trade group that represents about 115,000 stores that sell gasoline.
2008 The Associated Press
That comment from Jeff Lenard in the last paragraph... makes me shake my head. "Evolving or getting out?" Spoken like a true lobbyist.
Make a call to your congressperson and keep America evolving.
Contact the Congress
FBI's Net surveillance proposal raises privacy, legal concerns
April 25, 2008
by Declan McCullagh
The FBI director and a Republican congressman sketched out a far-reaching plan this week for warrantless surveillance of the Internet.
During a House of Representatives Judiciary Committee hearing, the FBI's Robert Mueller and Rep. Darrell Issa of California talked about what amounts to a two-step approach. Step 1 involves asking Internet service providers to open their networks to the FBI voluntarily; step 2 would be a federal law forcing companies to do just that.
Both have their problems, legal and practical, but let's look at step 1 first. Issa suggested that Internet providers could get "consent from every single person who signed up to operate under their auspices" for federal police to monitor network traffic for attempts to steal personal information and national secrets. Mueller said "legislation has to be developed" for "some omnibus search capability, utilizing filters that would identify the illegal activity as it comes through and give us the ability to pre-empt" it.
These are remarkable statements. The clearest reading of them points to deep packet inspection of network traffic--akin to the measures Comcast took against BitTorrent and to what Phorm in the United Kingdom has done, in terms of advertising--plus additional processing to detect and thwart any "illegal activity."
"That's very troubling," said Greg Nojeim, director of the project on freedom, security, and technology at the Center for Democracy and Technology. "It could be an effort to achieve, through unknowing consent, permission to monitor communications in a way that would otherwise be prohibited by law."
Unfortunately, neither Issa nor Mueller recognized that such a plan is probably illegal. California law, for instance, says anyone who "intentionally and without the consent of all parties to a confidential communication" conducts electronic surveillance shall be imprisoned for one year. (I say "probably illegal" because their exchange didn't offer much in the way of details.)
"I think there's a substantial problem with what Mueller's proposing," said Al Gidari, a partner at the Perkins Coie law firm who represents telecommunications providers. "He forgets the states have the power to pass more restrictive rules, and 12 of them have. He also forgets that we live in a global world, and the rest of the world doesn't quite see eye to eye on this issue. That consent would be of dubious validity in Europe, for instance, where many of our customers reside."
For its part, the FBI isn't talking. After we made repeated attempts to get the bureau to explain what Mueller was talking about, FBI spokesman Paul Bresson responded by saying, "At this point, I'm going to let the director's comments, in the context of the exchange with Rep. Issa, speak for themselves."
What step 1 appears to involve is persuading Internet providers to amend their terms of service and insert an FBI-can-monitor-everything clause. Informed consent is one thing. But does anyone actually read the fine print on their contracts with their broadband or wireless provider? If not, is that fine print good enough?
Informed consent is important because of the wording of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, or ECPA, which says providers may share the contents of customers' communications only "with the lawful consent" of the user. Otherwise, providers are breaking the law and can be sued for damages. And without consent, the FBI would bump up against the Fourth Amendment's prohibition on unreasonable searches.
Originally, Congress seemed to take a liberal view of what constituted "lawful consent." When ECPA was enacted in 1986, a House committee report said "consent may be inferred from a course of dealing," and if "those rules are available to users," consent can be implied.
But that was written way back in the early, pre-Internet days of Compuserve and bulletin board systems. More recently, courts have interpreted ECPA more strictly.
The 2003 In Re Pharmatrak decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit offers one useful measuring stick. The court ruled in a case involving Web tracking "that it makes more sense to place the burden of showing consent on the party seeking the benefit of the exception." The judges approvingly cited a second case, which said "consent can only be implied when the surrounding circumstances convincingly show that the party knew about and consented to the interception."
The Federal Trade Commission, too, has taken a relatively strict view of informed consent. In its lawsuit filed against Odysseus Marketing, the FTC argued that it was unlawful for a company not "to adequately disclose" to customers that it was sharing information with third parties. The case ended in a settlement.
Translation: Obtaining "lawful consent" for FBI monitoring means making sure that your customers actually know what's going on and agree. Hiding it in the terms of service doesn't qualify.
But assume that the FBI can persuade Internet providers to include a prominent notice in every monthly bill, or some other mechanism that would be legally sufficient. Another problem is that even if the person who pays the bills consents to monitoring, other people may use the connection--think homes with open wireless connections. ECPA's legal protections follow individual people, not customer accounts.
Rewriting U.S. surveillance laws
Because the FBI would run into serious problems doing wide-scale Internet surveillance under existing state and federal law, step 2 may be necessary. That means rewriting U.S. surveillance law.
Issa said he wants to "craft" legislation that would give the FBI the power to look "for those illegal activities, and then act on those, both defensively and, either yourselves or certainly other agencies, offensively in order to shut down a crime in process." He worried about "national-security secrets and just the common information of private individuals" being at risk. In his response, Mueller said he wants Congress to "give us the ability to pre-empt that illegal activity."
"Looking for" a crime in process on the Internet can take multiple paths. If it's a denial-of-service attack against eBay or Amazon.com originating from Russian servers, it can be detected by measuring the amount of traffic without inspecting the contents each packet. But to detect fraud and "national-security secrets," as well as personal information being transferred, deep packet inspection would be necessary--roughly on a scale of the Great Firewall of China.
Needless to say, detecting "illegal activity" would soon be extended to copyright infringement and peer-to-peer networks. Under the No Electronic Theft Act, swapping music or video files is a federal crime, if the total value of the files exceeds $1,000. If the value tops $2,500, the penalties jump up to not more than five years in prison. And as Jammie Thomas found out last year, allegedly sharing 24 files can lead to $222,000 in civil penalties.
"I think you bump squarely into the Fourth Amendment when you get into the required waiver of constitutional protections to use a service," said Gidari, the attorney at Perkins Coie. "Why don't we extend it to include not criticizing the government? Which right is next? 'You may use our service, as long as you don't disparage Verizon?' Why not that one?...You've still got to have, at the end of the day, a constitutionally supportable legal process to get access to anyone's communications. This cannot be an end run around that."
The problem of how to "shut down a crime in process" and "pre-empt that illegal activity" is more difficult and, perhaps, more worrisome.
Here's what Kurt Opsahl, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco, had to say when I asked him to read the transcript of Wednesday's hearing:
It certainly is Mueller's responsibility to explain what it is that he's looking for. But it seems that he's saying, essentially, that the surveillance society is the best society. A society in which the government has complete information about illegal activities and is able to enforce that. Throughout our country's existence, we've lived in a society where the government doesn't have perfect information.
Is (Mueller) suggesting that there's a search capability using filters that would identify an infringing work and fail to deliver a message containing that work? Is that the choke point? If that is the case, how can that be done well? How about fair uses? How will the government tell whether a copyrighted work is sent pursuant to a license? Will it have a centralized database of licenses? How does he propose to have this work, so it only identifies illegal activities and doesn't overly choke?
The FBI has some obligation to explain: what is it going to focus on here? Once you have the technology in place, will it then be used for more and more?
If you thought the tussles over Net neutrality were heated before, imagine a broadband provider throttling certain applications--and being able to blame that throttling capability on law enforcement. At the very least, it would be a wonderful excuse.
Which is why it's a shame, and somewhat troubling, that the FBI has chosen not to say what its director is proposing (and apparently will be working with Congress to write into law).
Odds of FBI-filtering legislation: Zero?
One possible germ for this Internet-monitoring idea lies in Homeland Security's so-called Einstein program, which is designed to monitor Internet mischief and network disruptions aimed at federal agencies. Not much about Einstein is public, but a privacy impact assessment offers some details.
Homeland Security Spokeswoman Laura Keehner said in a telephone interview that the primary focus of Einstein at the moment is protecting federal-government networks. "Obviously, the FBI could clarify or elaborate on what they said," Keehner said. "I do know that (from Homeland Security's perspective) we now first need to get our .gov in order. We need to concentrate on our federal networks...We're also bringing in the private sector to open those lines of discussion and figure out ways that the private sector can better equip themselves to stop any cyberincursions."
Another possibly related effort is the Bush administration's so-called Cyber Initiative. In January, President Bush signed a pair of secret orders--National Security Presidential Directive 54/Homeland Security Presidential Directive 23--that apparently deal with detecting and preventing Internet disruptions. Issa is a member of the House Intelligence Committee, which held a closed-door hearing on Thursday devoted to the Cyber Initiative--and, during the exchange with Mueller a day earlier, he said his monitoring idea was related.
The House Intelligence committee didn't want to talk. But a representative of the House Homeland Security committee chaired by Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) sent us three bullet points in an e-mail message:
1. Chance of a legislative initiative that would allow FBI to place filters to identify illegal activity at choke points on the .com space: 0
2. We still have concerns and questions about the initiative, and we continue to do oversight.
3. Legislation is not being considered for any of the new proposals, outside of the budget requests made by the administration.
Point No. 3 seems to relate to the administration's 2009 budget request, which asks Congress for $293.5 million to expand Einstein to the entire federal government.
The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which is headed by Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, also held a classified hearing last month on the administration's Cyber Initiative.
But a committee aide told us, "The idea of filtering for criminal activity has never been discussed with us. Nor has any new statutory authority been discussed. In fact, the administration explicitly said it didn't need any legislation. Furthermore, the idea of monitoring nongovernment domains has never been proposed in briefings the committee has received."
It's true that, at least in the current political climate, legislation of the sort Issa wants to draft isn't likely to slide through Congress unopposed.
Still, it's worth keeping in mind that the FBI has a recent, and not very flattering, history of trying to expand the scope of surveillance methods. Bureau agents used so-called exigent letters to obtain records from telephone companies, claiming that an emergency situation existed.
In reality, there was often no emergency at all. The Justice Department's inspector general found similar abuses of national-security letters. The FBI also tried to bypass the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court when it denied requests to obtain records.
Perhaps Mueller can provide a convincing argument for why laws giving the FBI "omnibus search capability utilizing filters that would identify the illegal activity" would be wise. Perhaps not. But when politicians weigh the idea of trusting the FBI with such broad and unprecedented authority, they should consider the abuses that have already taken place with far less powerful tools.
