Tag Archives: government

Another Overt Harassment

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This is just starting to come out, even though it occurred in early April.  The Examiner is reporting that Tom Francois got a visit from President Barack Obama’s Secret Service.  Francois had been a cabinet maker of some duration and skill until the Panic of 2008 did his business in.  Since, he’s been an active critic of the Obama administration via various social media.

From his critiques, the Secret Service paid him a visit, followed by a visit to his daughter and to his ex-wife.  They also demanded to see his weapons and threatened to confiscate them if he “stepped over the line.”

Had he crossed that line yet?  No, according to the agents.  Then why are you visiting me?  [mumble]

The agents justified their…visit…on the basis of the Twitter following Francois has accumulated, and “the things I said could be acted upon by some nut case out there.”  Sure.

The agents also pulled out an image of Air Force One and asked Francois whether he had posted that image.  Francois wanted to know where the rest of the image was along with his copyright mark, since he always signs his work and asserts his copyright when he posts it.  The agents had no answer.

Here’s the offending image, below the added post-visit caption:

Keep in mind that this April visit occurred before the IRS and DoJ had been caught harassing large numbers of Americans and American groups who disagree with Obama and his administration.

Hmm….

Progressive Government Run Amok

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In no particular order, we’ve had in just the last few months the following:

1.  The State Department leaving Benghazi consulate personnel to die, with too little security and no effort to help real-time; a President who absented himself from the situation in favor of a political campaign; and subsequent lies and cover-ups by both about events surrounding that.

2.  The Department of Justice targeting our free press and individual members of it in order to suppress reporting of the secret doings of our government.

3.  The Internal Revenue Service targeting American conservatives.  The low-level IRS staffers now are testifying before the House that they weren’t just ordered to target those who disagreed with the present administration, they were given the specific subjects and questions to be used and to forward specific cases to their bosses for further “treatment.”

And there’s this little IRS gem:

On May 23, Michigan Senator Carl Levin (D, MI) dropped the bombshell that his subcommittee has been in constant contact with the overseers of the IRS political-targeting scandal since it started, and even discussed the applications of “certain” specific groups.

4.  The secret metadata collection program, consisting of the gathering up of the phone calling records of millions of Americans who use Verizon (and presumably of the other American phone companies, also; we don’t know yet because the whole thing is…secret).

5.  The reading of all of our emails, text messages, video down/uploads, and so on via the Internet through another secret program, this one called PRISM.

6.  The government justifying the spying on Americans by claiming it to be a

critical tool in protecting the nation from terror threats.

And

The information “allows counterterrorism personnel to discover whether known or suspected terrorists have been in contact with other persons who may be engaged in terrorist activities, particularly people located inside the United States,” a senior Obama administration official said Thursday.

This in light of the fact that DHS has already labelled (deliberately and overtly, early on) American military veterans and those who oppose the Obama administration as extremists and threats.  Thus, it’s important to note that the information, as broadly swept up as it is, also allows a Progressive government to surveill known or suspected persons who disagree with the government’s policies and to hinder their activities.

Some Thoughts on the PRISM “Fact Sheet”

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DNI James Clapper, over the weekend, declassified and released a Fact Sheet on the just revealed PRISM project.  PRISM is represented as an internal government IT program whose purpose is to gather

foreign intelligence information from electronic communication service providers under court supervision, as authorized by Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act….

under which

All such information is obtained with FISA Court approval and with the knowledge of the provider based upon a written directive from the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence.  In short, Section 702 facilitates the targeted acquisition of foreign intelligence information concerning foreign targets located outside the United States under court oversight.

As some might expect, I have some thoughts on the program as described in the Sheet.

The Fact Sheet first addressed in general terms the collections themselves.

The “provider” (Yahoo!, Facebook, et al.) is required to provide the data, but the source of the requirement is confusing to me.  FISA Court approval (I’ll elide how we know, given the secrecy of the Court and associated proceedings, that the Court approved, or under what parameters), but direction of the AG and the DNI, is my point of confusion here: is the requirement a Court order requested by the AG/DNI, or is it an order by the AG/DNI that is merely sanctioned by the Court?  In the open world of police work and prosecuting attorneys, neither the police nor the prosecutor can direct a man to submit to a search that has been sanctioned by a court.  The search has to be pursuant to a warrant explicitly issued by the court, albeit in response to request for one by the police/prosecutor—and supported by a showing of probable cause.

Next, must the AG and the DNI jointly request/order delivery of the information, or can either do this?

On the matter of targeting (there’s that term…) individuals:

The Government cannot target anyone under the court-approved procedures…unless there is an appropriate, and documented, foreign intelligence purpose for the acquisition (such as for the prevention of terrorism, hostile cyber activities, or nuclear proliferation) and the foreign target is reasonably believed to be outside the United States.

What level of proof must be offered the FISA Court to support an allegation of a foreign intelligence purpose?  Just the bald claim?  Probable cause (which must underlie that other search warrant)?  Some other standard?

Next, what is the definition of “reasonably believed?”

On the matter of oversight:

[T]he notion that…activities are not subject to internal and external oversight is similarly incorrect. Collection of intelligence information…is subject to an extensive oversight regime, incorporating reviews by the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches.

How do we know the degree or efficacy of the oversight?  It’s secret.  Note, though, that the dishonesty of the present administration only emphasizes this concern.  It’s government secrecy here that raises the question, not Obama “transparency.”

The Fact Sheet then moved on to the FISA Courts.

All FISA collection…is overseen and monitored by the F ISA Court, a specially established Federal court comprised of 11 Federal judges appointed by the Chief Justice of the United States.

It’s a Federal court whose judges are not vetted and approved by the Senate, as Constitutionally provided.  They seem, then, not to be Article III judges.  How, then can they be Federal judges?

No risks here.

On “targeting” approvals:

The FISC [FISA Court] must approve targeting and minimization procedures…prior to the acquisition of any surveillance information.

How do we know the limits are being honored?  It’s a secret process.

On those minimization procedures:

Minimization procedures [require that] the dissemination of information about US persons is expressly prohibited unless it is necessary to understand foreign intelligence or assess its importance, is evidence of a crime, or indicates a threat of death or serious bodily harm.

Whose judgment of necessity?  Is the FISA Court involved in this subsequent determination, or are these judgments left to the Intelligence community?

The Fact Sheet then moved to the other government branches’ involvement.

On Congress’ involvement:

The DNI and AG provide exhaustive semiannual reports assessing compliance with the targeting and minimization procedures.

How do we know the reports are truthful?  The underlying data are classified.  Moreover, given the blatant stonewalling of this administration concerning the provision of data and testimony concerning the IRS, Fast and Furious, the free press attacks, the Benghazi disaster, and so on, on what basis do we conclude the underlying data would be available to a classified Congressional hearing in a timely manner?  Note that the stonewalling of the present administration only emphasizes this concern.  It’s government secrecy here that raises the question, not Obama “transparency.”

On the Executive Branch leadership involvement:

The Executive Branch, including through its independent Inspectors General, carries out extensive oversight…which includes regular on-site reviews of how…authorities are being implemented.

We’ve seen the…effectiveness…of two of the Executive Branch’s Inspectors General: State’s vis-à-vis Benghazi and Treasury’s vis-à-vis the IRS.  Moreover, on what basis do we believe that IG reports on a classified operation or series of operations will be readily available, even to a classified Congressional hearing?

The Fact Sheet concluded with a short series of claimed successes under PRISM (without providing any substantiation for the claims).  Suppose, though, the claims are true.  See this for some thoughts on surveillance vs freedom.

In the end, though, it comes down to trust, since some activities must be carried out at the expense of individual liberty—those search warrants, for instance—and some activities must be done in secret in order to avoid tipping off the enemy.

Trust is a terrible thing to have wasted.

The Wall Street Journal’s Embarrassing…Naiveté

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In a Friday op-ed, the editors of the WSJ had this to say, among other things, about the government’s invasion of American privacy in the name of “security.”

The effectiveness of data-mining is proportional to the size of the sample, so the NSA must sweep broadly to learn what is normal and refine the deviations.  A nongovernment analogue might be the credit card flags that freeze payment when, say, a New Yorker goes on a shopping spree in Phoenix.

This is beyond naïve, it’s disingenuous.  The “analogue” has nothing to do with what the government is doing.  The credit card company that does such flagging—data mining—is a private enterprise away from which any and all customers easily can walk should they disagree with the data mining.  Americans can’t walk away from our government without emigrating.  And waiting for the next election lets the government’s damaging invasion continue apace in the interim.

Moreover, that credit card company is data mining a single customer, albeit it’s likely doing this for each of its customers.  It’s not routinely aggregating, by…credit card number…those data with every other customer’s data.  But wait—the government, in its Verizon data mining isn’t collecting personally identifiable data—only phone numbers called and called from.  Please.  The point of the government’s data mining is to find out who and to whom—phone numbers aren’t the terrorists.  It’s breathtakingly easy to attach a name to a phone number.

Then they write this:

The Washington Post also revealed Thursday that NSA has a parallel metadata program for Internet address packets called Blarney.

If the NSA’s version of a computer science department operates like the rest of FISA, the government is cautious to ensure that its searches are narrowly tailored and specific protocols are reviewed by FISA judges.

On what basis does the WSJ make their assumption of that monumental “if?”  Do they really think a government (not just Obama’s administration) that has the present IRS, the present DoJ, the present HHS, the present EPA, etc can be trusted to honor secret limits?

Further, the Washington Post led their article with this:

The National Security Agency and the FBI are tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies, extracting audio and video chats, photographs, e-mails, documents, and connection logs….

That’s content, not just address packets (the Internet’s analogue to phone numbers).

Given all of this, and the associated secrecy, I have to wonder who else is being investigated.  Conservative Americans, perhaps?  Americans who disagree with this government’s policies?

Finally, and this can’t be emphasized enough: we have no security without our individual liberties.  Ben Franklin understood this; it’s unfortunate that this conservative newspaper has made this mistake.