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US lawmakers pass wiretaps bill Telephone companies were facing as many as 40 lawsuits US lawmakers have passed a bill to shield telephone companies who helped in the White House's controversial warrantless wiretaps programme. The bill also grants the US government the power to continue with its warrantless surveillance scheme. The Bush administration faced criticism when details emerged of its programme to monitor the phone calls of foreign targets in the US without warrants. President Bush said the scheme was needed to prevent attacks on the US. Telephone companies were facing as many as 40 lawsuits for their involvement...

Congress will pass long-delayed FISA reform legislation as early as tomorrow after key members of the House reached a compromise on a series of issues. The compromise has the backing of House leadership, the White House, and the telecommunications companies fearful of an endless series of lawsuits from their earlier cooperation with the NSA. This bill will permanently update FISA legislation to encompass what became known as the Terrorist Surveillance Program, as well as modernize it to eliminate the archaic language that required warrants for international communications: After more than a year of partisan acrimony over government surveillance powers, Democratic...

“We knew that there had been a call from someplace that was known to be a safe house in Afghanistan and we knew that it came to the United States. We didn’t know precisely where it went. We’ve got 3,000 people who went to work that day, and didn’t come home, to show for that.” — Attorney General Michael Mukasey, speaking last week “in Nancy Pelosi’s hometown.” AG Michael Mukasey revealed new, stunning information: he now knows precisely to whom that call was made. As 13 of the 15 muscle hijackers came late and knew little, that call undoubtedly was...

Accused Saddam Agent Says He Met With Hillary at White House By IRA STOLL, STAFF REPORTER OF THE SUN | March 27, 2008 A Michigan man facing federal criminal charges of illegally working for Saddam Hussein's Iraqi Intelligence Service says he met with Hillary Clinton at the White House in May 1996. In a 1997 interview with this reporter, Muthanna Hanooti said that at the meeting, Mrs. Clinton was "very receptive" to his request for an easing of the American sanctions on Iraq that were in place at the time. He said Mrs. Clinton "passed a message to the State...

The appearance of nuclear weapons materials on the black market is a growing global concern, and it is crucial that the United States reinforce its team of nuclear forensics experts and modernize its forensics tools to prepare for or respond to a possible nuclear terrorist attack. Large quantities of nuclear materials are inadequately secured in several countries, including Russia and Pakistan. Since 1993, there have been more than 1,300 incidents of illicit trafficking of nuclear materials, including plutonium and highly enriched uranium, both of which can be used to develop an atomic bomb. And these are only the incidents we...

The National Security Agency has released a new version of Security Enhanced Linux (SElinux), NSA program manager Stephen Smalley announced on the software's mailing list last week. This new version, build R080305, is the first update of the software since last September.New features in the update include improved error reporting, reduced memory usage, some new policy capabilities and additions to the library. SELinux is a patch for the Linux operating system kernel that provides mandatory access control, one that uses NSA's Flask MAC architecture. MAC confines each process executed on the machine according to predefined security policies set by the...

<p>Five years ago, Congress killed an experimental Pentagon antiterrorism program meant to vacuum up electronic data about people in the U.S. to search for suspicious patterns. Opponents called it too broad an intrusion on Americans' privacy, even after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.</p>

President Bush will veto the recently passed intelligence authorization bill over restrictions on CIA interrogation techniques.  He will explain the veto in his weekly radio address, claiming that it takes vital tools away from counterterrorism agents during a conflict when such tools are most needed.  The conflict sets up a showdown with Congress, in the presidential election, and with a media apparently determined to misreport it: President Bush today will veto legislation meant to ban the CIA from using waterboarding and other harsh interrogation tactics and will argue that the agency needs to use tougher methods than the U.S. military...

Over the weekend, we noted that the Left needed to prepare itself for yet another capitulation by House leadership, this time on FISA. House Intel chair Silvestre Reyes all but confirmed it on CNN, saying that a vote should occur within the next week. He also indicated that his past opposition to telecom immunity may have changed as well: The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee hinted Sunday that a battle over an expired eavesdropping law might be moving toward a conclusion that gave phone companies the retroactive legal protections long sought by President Bush.The chairman, Representative Silvestre Reyes, Democrat...

Poor lefties. They ride into Congress in 2006 with the glee of having vanquished the big bad ole’ Republicans. They rub their hands in anticipation that two of the bestest lefties they have, now leading their respective Houses, will run from Iraq, roll back all the legislation intended to secure this country, and “drain the swamp.” Remember….their slim majority was suddenly a “mandate.”But what happened? The Patriot Act is still around and working well. We still have troops in Iraq, and hell, we sent even more in for The Surge. And now the Protect America enhancements to FISA are about...

February 21, 2008, 0:00 a.m. Courting Danger By the Editors The Supreme Court has refused to hear an appeal from the American Civil Liberties Union, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, and other like-minded activists, letting stand a federal appeals-court’s earlier ruling that these groups lack legal standing to challenge the Bush administration’s vital post-9/11 surveillance program. The case is a victory for national security and highlights the extremism of House Democrats’ stubborn refusal to pass a bipartisan Senate bill that would allow U.S. intelligence agencies to continue to intercept communications among foreigners operating outside the United States. That Nancy...

SDI: A destroyed satellite attests to the prowess of U.S. technology and our ability to defend ourselves. Democrats said it wouldn't work. Adversaries say it's provocative. Somewhere Ronald Reagan must be smilingRarely is military technology put to so public a test with so much riding on its success or failure. With the whole world watching, a modified Standard Missile-3 was launched Wednesday night from a Navy cruiser in the North Pacific, its target a spy satellite in a decaying orbit headed to Earth full of hazardous hydrazine fuel. Deputy National Security Adviser James Jeffrey discounted any comparison with an anti-satellite...

WASHINGTON — A White House plan to broaden the National Security Agency’s wiretapping powers won a key procedural victory in the Senate on Thursday, as backers defeated a more restrictive plan by Senate Democrats that would have imposed more court oversight on government spying. The vote moves the Bush administration a step closer toward the twin goals it has pursued for months: strengthening the N.S.A.’s ability to eavesdrop without court approval, while securing legal immunity for the phone companies that have helped the agency in its wiretapping operations. At the same time, the White House agreed Thursday after months of...

China's intelligence service gained access to a secret National Security Agency listening post in Hawaii through a Chinese-language translation service, according to U.S. intelligence officials. The spy penetration was discovered several years ago as part of a major counterintelligence probe by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) that revealed an extensive program by China's spy service to steal codes and other electronic intelligence secrets, and to recruit military and civilian personnel with access to them. According to officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity, China's Ministry of State Security, the main civilian spy service, carried out the operations by...

Random numbers are critical for cryptography: for encryption keys, random authentication challenges, initialization vectors, nonces, key-agreement schemes, generating prime numbers and so on. Break the random-number generator, and most of the time you break the entire security system. Which is why you should worry about a new random-number standard that includes an algorithm that is slow, badly designed and just might contain a backdoor for the National Security Agency. Generating random numbers isn't easy, and researchers have discovered lots of problems and attacks over the years. A recent paper found a flaw in the Windows 2000 random-number generator. Another paper...

WASHINGTON -- The Senate appears poised to hand the White House another victory with a measure that would make permanent an expansion of government spy powers and shield phone companies from liability for assisting government eavesdropping. With floor consideration scheduled to start today, Democrats are split on how to cut back on the administration's surveillance powers. The only option that appears to have sufficient backing is a bipartisan measure the White House has blessed. Opponents of the White House-backed bill are increasingly predicting a White House win. If the White House prevails this week, it will be the latest example...

"Tony McDonald, a member of the University of Texas Young Conservatives, sets up a protest anti- American Civil Liberties Union nativity scene, dubbed a 'solstice barn,' on the university's campus in Austin December 4, 2006. The display features a 'Nancy Pelosi' angel, a 'suicide bomber' shepherd, and Marx, Lenin and Stalin as the Three Wise Men." "Josh Perry, a member of the University of Texas Young Conservatives, spreads hay as he sets up a protest anti-American Civil Liberties Union nativity scene, dubbed a 'solstice barn,' on the university's campus in Austin, Texas December 4, 2006. The display features a...

EFF’s case includes undisputed evidence that AT&T installed a fiberoptic splitter at its facility at 611 Folsom Street in San Francisco that made copies of all emails, web browsing and other internet traffic to and from AT&T customers, and provided those copies to the NSA. This copying includes both domestic and international Internet activities of AT&T Worldnet customers. EFF is suing to stop this illegal conduct and hold AT&T responsible for violating the law and the fundamental freedoms of the American public.

Verizon Communications, the nation's second-largest telecom company, told congressional investigators that it has provided customers' telephone records to federal authorities in emergency cases without court orders hundreds of times since 2005. The company said it does not determine the requests' legality or necessity because to do so would slow efforts to save lives in criminal investigations. In an Oct. 12 letter replying to Democratic lawmakers, Verizon offered a rare glimpse into the way telecommunications companies cooperate with government requests for information on U.S. citizens. Verizon also disclosed that the FBI, using administrative subpoenas, sought information identifying not just a person...

VLADIVOSTOK, Russia — At the height of the Cold War, the U.S. routinely dispatched spy planes along Soviet shores and borders in a perilous, covert campaign to scrutinize the Kremlin's air defense prowess. Some of the planes slipped out of Soviet airspace unscathed; some were shot down. Washington told families of the missing airmen that the missions were training runs or weather reconnaissance flights — anything but the truth. Today, those families know the truth about those missions. What they lack is an ending, the peace of mind that comes with laying to rest the remains of a son, husband...

President Bush, demanding "flexibility" in the pursuit of suspected terrorists, insisted Wednesday he would not sign a new domestic spying bill if it unduly limits the administration's authority to eavesdrop without warrants. The president is demanding corporate immunity from lawsuits against telecommunications companies that have aided the National Security Agency in a controversial warrantless wiretapping program, as well as authority to secretly monitor suspect communications that pass through the United States. But congressional leaders, insisting on court oversight of the administration's surveillance, are not willing to give the president the latitude he is seeking. And they are reluctant to release...

Der Spiegel has interesting information about the terror bust in Germany; as usual, however, you have to read between the lines: Three suspected Islamist militants who were planning to attack U.S. installations in Germany had orders to act by Sept. 15....According to surveillance details published in Der Spiegel magazine, the men had been given a two-week deadline for their planned strikes in a late August call from northern Pakistan that was monitored by German police. So al Qaeda's top leaders were anxious to precipitate an attack on Americans by September 15. Why? That's the date on which General Petraeus will...

It appears that the very methods of phone call monitoring the Democrats have made their life's mission to impede have once again saved the day. A plot to destroy American targets in Germany by a terror cell linked to the Islamic Jihad Group was foiled on Tuesday and opponents of the NSA's Terrorist Surveillance Program would do well to bear in mind just how this untold carnage was avoided. Unfortunately, there's no reason to believe that Democrat leaders the likes of Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Pat Leahy will be any less likely to rebuke the use of "secret" (is there...

Not long ago, Bob Barr was considered Public Enemy Number One among Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee. After all, the former Georgia Republican congressman was the first to call for the impeachment of former President Bill Clinton. Flash forward nine years. Same committee and many of the same Democratic lawmakers. Yet this time, lawmakers nearly fell out of their chairs to praise Barr as a "patriot." Why? Barr appeared today before the House Judiciary Committee to testify about ways to fix new legislation sought by the White House that temporarily grants spy agencies expanded eavesdropping powers in America. (Congress...

The liberal Center for American Progress organized a panel discussion to criticize a newly-passed bill that expands the Bush administration’s wiretapping program under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act on Wednesday. “I don’t think the case has been made that this broad authority is necessary or even potentially useful to our national security,� said Kate Martin, director of the Center National Security Studies. CAP, largely staffed by former Clinton administration aides, hosted the event to draw the battle lines over the upcoming fight to reauthorize a FISA modernization bill. Originally passed in 1978, FISA regulates how the government may collect intelligence...

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration has confirmed for the first time that American telecommunications companies played a crucial role in the National Security Agency's domestic eavesdropping program after asserting for more than a year that any role played by the companies was a state secret. The acknowledgement was made in an unusual interview that Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, conducted with The El Paso Times last week in which he disclosed details on classified intelligence issues that the administration has long insisted would harm national security if discussed publicly. He made the remarks, an apparent effort to bolster...

The Bush administration acknowledged for the first time that telecommunications companies assisted the government's warrantless surveillance program and were being sued as a result, an admission some legal experts say could complicate the government's bid to halt numerous lawsuits challenging the program's legality. "[U]nder the president's program, the terrorist surveillance program, the private sector had assisted us," Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell said in an interview with the El Paso Times published Wednesday. His statement could help plaintiffs in dozens of lawsuits against the telecom companies, which allege that the companies participated in a wiretapping program that violated Americans'...

Vice President Dick Cheney’s office on Monday responded separately from the White House to a Senate subpoena for documents on warrantless wiretapping and resurrected the controversial contention that Cheney is not part of the executive branch. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) set Monday’s subpoena deadline after granting an extension request by the White House. Presidential counsel Fred Fielding, as expected, told Leahy in a letter that a second delay, until after Labor Day, would help Congress and the administration “expeditiously seek a means of accommodation that will negate the need for an assertion of executive privilege.” But the...

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 15 — Three federal appeals court judges hearing challenges to the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs appeared skeptical of and sometimes hostile to the Bush administration’s central argument Wednesday: that national security concerns require that the lawsuits be dismissed. The three judges, members of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, were hearing arguments in two lawsuits challenging the highly classified surveillance programs, which the administration says are essential in fighting international terrorism. The appeals were the first to reach the court after dozens of suits against the government and telecommunications companies over N.S.A....

Ashland, Ore. - It's hard – often impossible – to prove that secret government wiretapping in the name of national security is violating one's privacy rights. The evidence itself usually is top secret. But one rather obscure case could pull back the veil on a surveillance program that's at the heart of the US fight against terror. In the federal appeals court in San Francisco Wednesday, lawyers for a Saudi charity accused of helping Al Qaeda will argue that their clients, including two American attorneys, were illegally spied on without the required court warrant. How do they know? Treasury Department...

Like many in this country who were angered when Congress rushed to rubber-stamp a bill giving President Bush even more power to spy on Americans, we took some hope from the vow by Congressional Democrats to rewrite the new law after summer vacation. The chance of undoing the damage is slim, unless the White House stops stonewalling and gives lawmakers and the public the information they need to understand this vital issue.

WASHINGTON, (AP) -- Though Congress is on vacation, majority Democrats are keeping alive various fights with the White House with one common thread: Congress' access to administration documents and testimony to which President Bush has claimed executive privilege. Smack in the middle of the August break, the White House faces a new deadline for producing subpoenaed information about the legal justification for the president's secretive eavesdropping program. And aides in both chambers are considering a selection of ways to deal with Bush's refusal to let current and former advisers testify publicly about their roles in the firings of federal prosecutors....

The right thing it is not, but the Democratic Congress has done a barely adequate thing, albeit kicking and screaming: This weekend, it temporarily acknowledged the executive branch’s authority to monitor international communications for the purpose of gathering foreign intelligence. This should not have been controversial. The single most important task of any president is to protect the United States from external threats. If the executive branch did only one thing, this would be it. To this purpose, presidents have for decades deployed the U.S. intelligence services — in particular, the CIA and the NSA — to intercept international communications....

WASHINGTON - President Bush said Friday that Congress must stay in session until it approves legislation modernizing a U.S. law governing eavesdropping on foreigners. "So far the Democrats in Congress have not drafted a bill I can sign," Bush said at FBI headquarters, where he was meeting with counterterror and homeland security officials. "We've worked hard and in good faith with the Democrats to find a solution, but we are not going to put our national security at risk. Time is short." The president, who has the power under the Constitution to keep Congress in session, said lawmakers cannot leave...

Homeland Security: Congressional Republicans say they won't leave for the August break until gaps in surveillance law are filled. Democrats will probably vote for a rewrite, but not for the right reason. Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell is pushing the administration's position that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act needs to be amended. Saying that national security cannot be postponed, the White House and its GOP supporters want Congress to change the law so that warrants would not be needed before monitoring the communications of suspected terrorists who are outside the U.S. They believe there are dangerous holes in the...

(CNSNews.com) - House Republican leaders Tuesday criticized what they called an "11th hour decision" by Democrats to put off a hearing on updating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) until after Congress' August recess, warning that "national security can't be postponed." "Democrats have ignored, downplayed, and done everything possible to sidestep addressing the FISA problem," said House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) in a news release. "Now, they have canceled a hearing with the director of national intelligence (DNI) rather than have him address the issue directly on Capitol Hill." DNI Mike McConnell was scheduled to appear before the House...

US President George W. Bush on Saturday called for Congress to revise a US security law in order to ease restrictions on the government's secret communications surveillance of terror suspects. Amid furor over Attorney General Alberto Gonzales's handling of the government's secret warrantless wiretap program, Bush urged legislators to pass the update of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) proposed in April. The changes would ease intelligence collection aimed at people plotting attacks on the United States, Bush said in his weekly radio address. "Today we face sophisticated terrorists who use disposable cell phones and the Internet to communicate...

Democrats are playing political games with national security and mongering phony scandal. It amounts to a program of harassment of the Bush Administration's efforts to defend us against attack by uncovering terror plots using intelligence agencies

The Real Wiretapping Scandal Last Tuesday's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing--at which Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was insulted by senators and ridiculed by spectators--was Washington political theater at its lowest. But some significant information did manage to get through the senatorial venom directed at Mr. Gonzales. It now appears certain that the terrorist surveillance program (TSP) authorized by President Bush after 9/11 was even broader than the TSP that the New York Times first revealed in December 2005. It is also clear that Mr. Gonzales, along with former White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, tried to preserve that original program...

WASHINGTON, July 28 — A 2004 dispute over the National Security Agency’s secret surveillance program that led top Justice Department officials to threaten resignation involved computer searches through massive electronic databases, according to current and former officials briefed on the program. It is not known precisely why searching the databases, or data mining, raised such a furious legal debate. But such databases contain records of the phone calls and e-mail messages of millions of Americans, and their examination by the government would raise privacy issues. The N.S.A.’s data mining has previously been reported. But the disclosure that concerns about it...

BI Director Robert S. Mueller said Thursday the government's terrorist surveillance program was the topic of a 2004 hospital room dispute between top Bush administration officials, contradicting Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' sworn Senate testimony. Mueller was not in the hospital room at the time of the dramatic March 10, 2004, confrontation between then-Attorney General John Ashcroft and presidential advisers Andy Card and Gonzales, who was then serving as White House counsel. Mueller told the House Judiciary Committee he arrived shortly after they left, and spoke with the ailing Ashcroft. THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further...

A federal appeals court panel in Cincinnati yesterday dismissed a lawsuit challenging President Bush's domestic terrorist surveillance program, ruling that those who brought the suit — led by the American Civil Liberties Union — did not have the legal authority to do so. In a 2-1 decision, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit panel did not rule on the legality of the surveillance program but vacated a 2006 order by a lower court in Detroit that found the post-September 11 program to be unconstitutional, violating rights to privacy and free speech and the separation of powers....

A divided federal appeals court yesterday dismissed a case challenging the National Security Agency’s program to wiretap without warrants the international communications of some Americans, reversing a trial judge’s order that the program be shut down. The majority in a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, in Cincinnati, ruled on a narrow ground, saying the plaintiffs, including lawyers and journalists, could not show injury direct and concrete enough to allow them to have standing to sue. Because it may be impossible for any plaintiff to demonstrate injury from the highly classified wiretapping program,...

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger was sentenced Thursday to community service and probation and fined $50,000 for illegally removing highly classified documents from the National Archives and intentionally destroying some of them. Berger must perform 100 hours of community service and pay the fine as well as $6,905 for the administrative costs of his two-year probation, a district court judge ruled.>p> "I deeply regret the actions that I took at the National Archives two years ago, and I accept the judgment of the court," Berger said outside the courthouse after his sentencing.

http://www.nsa.gov/liberty/ U.S.S. Liberty What’s new? On 08 June 2007, the National Security Agency (NSA) finalized the review of all material relative to the 08 June 1967 attack on the USS Liberty. This additional release adds to the collection of documents and audio recordings and transcripts previously posted to the site on 02 July 2003. The attack on the USS Liberty, like others in our nation's history, has become the center of considerable controversy and debate. It is not NSA's intention to prove or disprove any one set of conclusions, many of which can be drawn from a thorough review of...

Democrats and former Deputy Attorney General James Comey put on quite a Senate show Tuesday over the National Security Agency's wiretapping program. With New York's Chuck Schumer directing, the players staged a full length docudrama to create the impression that the Bush Administration broke the law in reauthorizing the program to eavesdrop on al Qaeda. ..... News stories have suggested a pattern of White House misdeeds to accomplish an ultimately illegal end. The transcript tells a different story. First let's review the background. On March 10, 2004, then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales and White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card...

Verizon is one of the phone companies currently being sued over its alleged disclosure of customer phone records to the NSA. In a response to the court last week, the company asked for the entire consolidated case against it to be thrown out—on free speech grounds. The response also alleges that the case should be thrown out because even looking into the issue could violate state secrets, of course, but a much longer section of the response tries to make the case that Verizon has a First Amendment right to "petition" the government. "Based on plaintiffs' own allegations, defendants' right...

Having Won a Pulitzer for Exposing Data Mining, Times Now Eager to Do Its Own Data Mining by Keach Hagey May 1st, 2007 Barely a year after their reporters won a Pulitzer prize for exposing data mining of ordinary citizens by a government spy agency, New York Times officials had some exciting news for stockholders last week: The Times company plans to do its own data mining of ordinary citizens, in the name of online profits. The news didn't make everyone all googly-eyed. In fact, some people at the paper's annual stockholders meeting in the New Amsterdam Theatre exchanged confused...

C-SPAN, Q&AWashington, District of Columbia (United States) ID: 197533 - 04/09/2007 - 0:58 - $19.95 Hayden, Michael V. Director, Central Intelligence Agency General Michael Hayden discussed how he runs the Central Intelligence Agency, how decisions are made, and his previous work in other areas of intelligence.

Request denied to unseal AT&T records in spy case February 21, 2007 Media companies lost a bid to unseal documents in a lawsuit accusing AT&T Inc. of helping the National Security Agency to spy on U.S. residents. U.S. District Judge Vaughn R. Walker, in a ruling filed in San Francisco federal court, allowed six news organizations to join the lawsuit. He denied their request to unseal records filed in April in the case, saying the documents weren't sufficiently related to the legal proceeding. The documents at issue came from Mark Klein, a retired AT&T technician. Klein said last year that...