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Attorney General Jerry Brown's office has sparked debate about its interpretation of state privacy laws after it determined that a spokesman had not done anything illegal by secretly taping conversations with news reporters. At issue is state penal code section 632, which prohibits the intentional recording without consent of "confidential communication." While announcing the results of an internal investigation, Chief Assistant Attorney General Dane Gillette wrote that the privacy protection of such communication did not include on-the-record media interviews – a view that clashes with the common understanding of a state Supreme Court ruling on the law. Under Gillette's interpretation,...

Clueless Chris Matthews: "See - we have a problem," Matthews said. "How do we know when someone like Hasan is going to make his move and do we know he's an Islamist until he's made his move? He makes a phone call or whatever, according to Reuters right now. Apparently he tried to contact al Qaeda. Is that the point at which you say, ‘This guy is dangerous?' That's not a crime to call up al Qaeda, is it? Is it? I mean, where do you stop the guy?" [VIDEO AT SITE]I love it how Dr. Jasser is trying to...

Fox News can confirm that Fort Hood suspect Army Major Nidal Hasan is awake and speaking to medical staff at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio.Hospital spokesperson Maria Gallegos says he's in critical but stable condition. A U.S. Army spokesman says Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the suspected Fort Hood gunman, is in critical but stable condition three days after he allegedly opened fire on the military base that killed 13 and left 29 wounded. Hasan, 39, was shot during an exchange of gunfire during Thursday's attack. The military moved him on Friday to Brooke Medical Center, where he...

Charges against 14 snared in insider-trading probe make for unusually entertaining reading. The insider-trading case outlined by federal prosecutors in New York Thursday has all the elements of a classic television crime drama: wiretaps, clandestine cash handoffs and people with nicknames like "the Greek" and "octopussy." Authorities say a trader known as "the octopussy" is at the center of the ring, which included other traders, a Moody's Investors Service analyst, and hedge fund managers, and two lawyers, one of whom was a young associate who allegedly passed along tips about private-equity deals being done by his big law firm's clients....

Attorney General Jerry Brown's communications director, Scott Gerber, submitted his resignation Monday after admitting last week that he had secretly taped conversations with reporters. In the letter to Chief Deputy Attorney General James Humes, Gerber said he was resigning "with a heavy heart" but emphasized that "neither the Attorney General nor any other attorneys from our office were aware that I was recording interviews without permission." The questionable, perhaps illegal, behavior came to light after Gerber told the San Francisco Chronicle that one of its reporters had misquoted Humes based on Gerber's recording of the conversation between Humes and political...

Homeland Security: Provisions of the law that spared New York another 9/11 are set to expire Dec. 31. So why do Democrats want to gut this law and remove the immunity telecom companies have for helping protect America? To borrow a British expression from World War II, it was a very near thing. The capture, arrest and indictment of 24-year-old Afghan immigrant Najubullah Zazi before he could set off bombs made from store-bought chemicals prevented a tragedy of potentially devastating proportions. It wouldn't have happened if the critics of Patriot Act had their way. The capture of Zazi was made...

SAN FRANCISCO -- After years of wrangling over legal procedures, the lawyer for a defunct Islamic charity laid out his case Wednesday that former President George W. Bush's secret wiretapping program was illegal - an argument that an Obama administration attorney refused to discuss. "May the president of the United States break the law in the name of national security? ... We're asking this court to say, 'no,' " Jon Eisenberg, lawyer for the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, told a federal judge in San Francisco. Neither the president's constitutional powers as commander in chief nor Congress' authorization to use military force...

Whistleblower Mark Klein tells in his new book of how he was ignored. He spoke with IDG News. July 17, 2009 (IDG News Service) They sometimes call national security the third rail of politics. Touch it and, politically, you're dead. The cliché doesn't seem far off the mark after reading Mark Klein's new book, "Wiring up the Big Brother Machine ... and Fighting It." It's an account of his experiences as the whistleblower who exposed a secret room at a Folsom Street facility in San Francisco that was apparently used to monitor the Internet communications of ordinary Americans.

The Bush White House so strictly controlled access to its warrantless eavesdropping program that only three Justice Department lawyers were aware of the plan, which nearly ignited mass resignations and a constitutional crisis when a wider circle of administration officials began to question its legality, according to a watchdog report released today.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Obama administration insists it has no obligation to provide access to a top secret document in a wiretapping case, setting up a showdown next week with the judge who ordered it released. Justice Department lawyers, in a response Friday with the U.S. District Court in San Francisco, also argued that Judge Vaughn Walker had no cause to penalize the government over its refusal to turn over the document. Walker on May 22 threatened to punish the administration for withholding the document, which he ordered given to lawyers suing the government over its warrantless wiretapping program. The...

San Francisco, CA (AP) -- A federal judge is threatening to severely sanction the Obama Administration for withholding a top secret document he ordered turned over to lawyers suing the government over its warrantless wiretapping program. U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker in San Francisco has ordered Justice Department lawyers to court June 3 to tell him why he shouldn't award damages to the now-defunct Oregon arm of the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation.

Communications firms are being asked to record all internet contacts between people as part of a modernisation in UK police surveillance tactics. The home secretary scrapped plans for a database but wants details to be held and organised for security services. The new system would track all e-mails, phone calls and internet use, including visits to social network sites. The Tories said the Home Office had "buckled under Conservative pressure" in deciding against a giant database. Announcing a consultation on a new strategy for communications data and its use in law enforcement, Jacqui Smith said there would be no single...

WASHINGTON — The National Security Agency intercepted private e-mail messages and phone calls of Americans in recent months on a scale that went beyond the broad legal limits established by Congress last year, government officials said in recent interviews.

Pop Quiz [Cliff May] Guess who said the following: [T]the decision to release classified information "is committed to the discretion of the Executive Branch, and is not subject to judicial review. Moreover, the Court does not have independent power . . . to order the Government to grant counsel access to classified information when the Executive Branch has denied them such access." ... federal judges are "ill-equipped to second-guess the Executive Branch." Was it Dick Cheney? David Addington? John Yoo? Andy McCarthy? Nope. It was the Obama Justice Department. The Wall Street Journal notes: The practical effect is to prevent...

The Obama DOJ's embrace of Bush's state secrets privilege in the Jeppesen (torture/rendition) case generated substantial outrage, and rightly so. But it's now safe to say that far worse is the Obama DOJ's conduct in the Al-Haramain case -- the only remaining case against the Government with any real chance of resulting in a judicial ruling on the legality of Bush's NSA warrantless eavesdropping program. Here's the first paragraph from the Wired report on Friday's appellate ruling, which refused the Obama DOJ's request to block a federal court from considering key evidence when deciding whether Bush broke the law in...

WASHINGTON, (AP) -- The Obama administration has lost its argument that a potential threat to national security should stop a lawsuit challenging the government's warrantless wiretapping program. A federal appeals court in San Francisco on Friday rejected the Justice Department's request for an emergency stay in a case involving a defunct Islamic charity. Yet government lawyers signaled they would continue fighting to keep the information secret, setting up a new showdown between the courts and the White House over national security. The Obama administration, like the Bush administration before it, claimed national security would be compromised if a lawsuit brought...

(02-23) 17:32 PST SAN FRANCISCO -- A federal judge in San Francisco is raising questions about the constitutionality of a law designed to dismiss suits against telecommunications companies accused of cooperating with government wiretapping. Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker has asked President Obama's Justice Department to present its views by Wednesday on whether the law gives the attorney general too much power to decide whether a company is immune from lawsuits. Obama supported the measure as a senator when Congress approved it last year. Department spokesman Charles Miller declined to discuss the administration's response before Wednesday's filing. But Obama's...

(01-18) 21:00 PST -- President-elect Barack Obama dismayed civil liberties groups last summer when he voted to authorize President Bush's clandestine wiretapping program after publicly denouncing it. Now, thanks to a ruling by a San Francisco federal judge, Obama must take a stand on whether the Bush administration violated Americans' rights when it intercepted their phone calls and e-mails without seeking a court's permission. The Jan. 5 decision by Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker revived the last remaining lawsuit against the program Bush authorized after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Without seeking congressional approval or court warrants,...

WASHINGTON — A federal intelligence court, in a rare public opinion, is expected to issue a major ruling validating the power of the president and Congress to wiretap international phone calls and intercept e-mail messages without a court order, even when Americans’ private communications may be involved, according to a person with knowledge of the opinion.

LOS ANGELES - Former Hollywood private eye Anthony Pellicano and his entertainment lawyer co-defendant were convicted Friday of charges linked to the wiretapping of billionaire investor Kirk Kerkorian’s former wife in a child support battle. Pellicano and attorney Terry Christensen were each convicted of conspiracy to commit wiretapping. Pellicano was also convicted of wiretapping and Christensen was convicted of aiding and abetting a wiretap. “We are disappointed, think the jury is wrong, and we will be appealing,” said Patricia Glaser, Christensen’s attorney and law partner.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Hollywood private eye Anthony Pellicano was sentenced Monday to 15 years in prison for running a wiretapping scheme that spied on the rich and famous. U.S. District Judge Dale Fischer also ordered the 64-year-old Pellicano and two other defendants to forfeit a total of $2 million. Pellicano showed no emotion when the sentence was read. "I have taken full and complete responsibility for all my actions," he said. Fischer said Pellicano engaged in "reprehensible behavior" while digging up dirt for his well-heeled clients to use in legal and other disputes. "He did this eagerly, sometimes maliciously...

LOS ANGELES – Hollywood private eye Anthony Pellicano says he won't apologize to the people he spied on but does take responsibility for the tactics that brought him a 15-year prison sentence.

Anthony Pellicano handled some sticky situations during his days as a private investigator for some of the biggest names in Hollywood. He helped Michael Jackson fend off child molestation allegations and found the remains of Elizabeth Taylor's third husband after they were stolen from a cemetery. One of his toughest challenges, however, has been acting as his own lawyer in his federal wiretapping trial that could go the jury in the next few days. Though he built his reputation as a tough-talking, bare-knuckled gumshoe, Pellicano mostly left his aggressive demeanor outside the courtroom and chose to preserve his loyalty to...

SAN FRANCISCO — What if Google knew before anyone else that a fast-spreading flu outbreak was putting you at heightened risk of getting sick? And what if it could alert you, your doctor and your local public health officials before the muscle aches and chills kicked in?

"Mike Kernell, a longtime Tennessee state assemblyman from Memphis and a technology enthusiast, is concerned about future elections because the new machines are harder to get a look at. ''We used to be able to check the machines and see if they'd been tampered with,'' he said. ''It is now almost impossible.'' Mr. Kernell wonders whether he will have to hire a computer programmer in his next race to make sure the machines are working smoothly and haven't been tampered with. ''We've hit a brick wall,'' he said." - NY Times A "technology enthusiast" indeed. Did he help with his...

You are clever and creative; it's time to find a target worthy of your talents. Like Sarah Palin. Start harassing her! ......PS: Don't blow up our servers. Thanks! .....and that it was time for them to find a new target. We even threw out a suggestion: Sarah Palin! And then yesterday, this happened........ Just last week, we posted a brief open letter to Anonymous, the Internet-based rabble-rousers who have made a name for themselves taking on Scientology, in which we said that they'd succeeded in ruining the Church's reputation, and that it was time for them to find a new...

Hey, it's politics. In the primary, when Barack Obama wanted to connect with his party's disaffected left, he said that he would support a filibuster to stop a reauthorization of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act if it granted retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that had cooperated with the federal government after the 9/11 attacks. Now Obama has those voters in the bag. So he is reaching out to the majority of Americans who want aggressive international surveillance to prevent another terrorist attack. And the average voter certainly isn't going to lose sleep if the price of that security is that...

Senate passes Electronic Surveillance Bill 69-28

Weak, timid, spineless. Those are a few words to describe Congress as it prepares to back President Bush's plans to justify his warrantless spying on Americans. What's billed as a compromise measure to codify rules on antiterrorist surveillance is too tame by half. The agreement kowtows in important ways to Bush's overwrought view that the war of terror cannot be bound by judicial oversight or the Bill of Rights. At issue is a bid by the White House to legitimize its covert eavesdropping on communications between this country and overseas. Under a 1978 law, such surveillance needed the approval a...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. phone companies would be shielded from potentially billions of dollars in lawsuits under an anti-terror spy measure that appears headed toward approval, congressional sources said on Wednesday. House of Representatives Democratic Leader Steny Hoyer, a lead negotiator on the bill, said, "We're very close to having an agreement," and a House vote could come as early as Friday. Democratic and Republican aides and a lobbyist familiar with negotiations said the House would likely approve the measure overwhelmingly. Despite opposition from its top two Democrats, the Senate would then likely give it final approval, clearing the way...

Sweden approves wiretapping law Sweden's parliament has approved controversial new laws allowing authorities to spy on cross-border e-mail and telephone traffic. The country's intelligence bureau will be able to scan international calls, faxes and e-mails. The measure was passed by a narrow majority after a heated debate in the Stockholm parliament. Critics say it threatens civil liberties and represents Europe's most far-reaching eavesdropping plan. "By introducing these new measures, the Swedish government is following the examples set by governments ranging from China and Saudi Arabia to the US government's highly criticised eavesdropping programme," said Peter Fleischer, of Google. Checks and...

A federal jury has found Los Angeles private detective Anthony Pellicano guilty of racketeering and conspiracy. The verdict, which could mean a penalty of eight to 10 years in federal prison, effectively brings to a close the career of the most infamous private eye in Los Angeles -- a man who insinuated himself into the loftiest legal and entertainment circles in town and even consulted on law enforcement cases, until he became the subject of one. Pellicano sat grinning and looking around room before the verdicts were read. But when he realized the jury had found him guilty, he crossed...

A judge on Thursday dropped nearly half the charges against "private eye to the stars" Anthony Pellicano and a co-defendant at the request of prosecutors, who were preparing to rest their case in the wiretapping and bribery trial. The 28 counts against Pellicano and ex-Los Angeles police sergeant Mark Arneson were dismissed by U.S. District Judge Dale Fischer after federal prosecutors said that witnesses required to prove them could not be brought to court. Both men still face 35 counts in the case, which centers on accusations that Pellicano wiretapped telephones and bribed police and telephone company officials to run...

In 1998, Congressman Jim McDermott...obtained and distributed to the media an illegally-obtained tape of a private conversation of Representative John Boehner. After litigating the dispute for ten years, and losing each step of the way, McDermott is now being forced by a federal judge to pay Boehner some $1.6 million in damages and legal fees: Still, it's amazing that House Democrats have stood with McDermott in his attempts to prod the courts to authorize warrantless wiretaps by private citizens against other law-abiding private citizens, while they continue to refuse to authorize government wiretaps of terrorist communications. And unfortunately for McDermott,...

WASHINGTON - House Democratic leaders agreed Thursday to a rare closed-door session — the first in 25 years — to debate surveillance legislation. Republicans requested privacy for what they termed "an honest debate" on the new Democratic eavesdropping bill that is opposed by the White House and most Republicans in Congress. The closed-door debate was scheduled for late Thursday night, after the House chamber could be cleared and swept by security personnel to make sure there are no listening devices. The last private session in the House was in 1983 on U.S. support for paramilitary operations in Nicaragua. Only five...

A do-gooder who recorded abusive Boston police officers was himself arrested under a controversial ‘wiretapping’ law This past October, when Simon Glik used his cell phone to record Boston police officers making what he thought was an overly forceful arrest on Tremont Street, he didn’t think he would be the one who ended up in the back of a police cruiser. But cops saw Glik using his cell phone’s camera with its sound-recording feature, so they arrested him for breaking the Massachusetts law that prohibits secret electronic recording, deemed “wiretapping.”Was he wiretapping, though? In Massachusetts, a “two-party consent” state since...

U.S. spy agencies have missed intelligence in the days since terrorism surveillance legislation expired, the Bush administration said on Friday, but Democrats accused it of fear mongering and blamed it for any gaps. U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey and Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell fired the latest shot in the administration's battle with Congress to obtain new legislation to wiretap terrorism suspects. The officials told Congress telecommunications firms have been reluctant to cooperate with new wiretaps since six-month temporary legislation expired last weekend. "We have lost intelligence information this past week as a direct result of the uncertainty created...

The U.S. Supreme Court's refusal Tuesday to hear a lawsuit challenging President Bush's electronic surveillance program left a critical balance-of-powers question - whether judges can decide the legality of the secretive program - in the hands of two federal courts in San Francisco. The justices rejected an appeal by the American Civil Liberties Union, which sued on behalf of journalists, lawyers and academics who believed their phone and e-mail messages were being intercepted. That ended the only case so far to test the constitutionality of Bush's order that launched the surveillance program in early 2002. U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs...

From DCRTV: Sunday Afternoon Fireworks On WMAL - 2/17 - A DCRTVer tells us about "a nasty, dragged out, and loud blowout" between WMAL's Jerry Klein (on the political left) and Chris Plante (on the political right) during their program, "The Chris Plante And Jerry Klein Show," on Sunday afternoon. "It got so bad, that Chris walked out of the studio at one point." The topics were waterboarding, wiretapping, and terrorism. "It got very personal and downright nasty." The audio is not yet up at Chris Plante's audio page at wmal.com, but maybe soon.....

Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Democrats appear to have decided that November's election is a distraction from their effort to simply pull the plug on a sitting President... Democrats voted yesterday, for the first time in decades, to hold two White House officials in contempt of Congress. Hours later it emerged that Ms. Pelosi has apparently decided not to vote on the warrantless wiretap bill passed by the Senate... This means that the Protect America Act -- which conferred Congressional support to wiretapping suspected al Qaeda terrorists -- will expire at midnight... We admit to wondering earlier this week whether...

Keith Weissman and Steven Rosen Are PhDs and Middle East Experts Who Did Some Lobbying. They Thought They Were Doing What Washington Insiders Always Do. Thomas O’Donnell didn’t reveal his job when he phoned Keith Weissman in 2004 and got the policy analyst’s wife. He says he didn’t want to scare her. When Weissman returned the call and found out O’Donnell was an FBI agent, his first reaction was to attempt a joke: “What did I do?” “I’m sure you didn’t do anything,” O’Donnell told him. He wanted to meet that day, for five or ten minutes, and get Weissman’s...

LOS ANGELES A federal judge refused to suppress evidence in a government case that accused Hollywood private eye Anthony Pellicano of illegally wiretapping stars. U.S. District Judge Dale S. Fischer issued six separate rulings on Friday that went against Pellicano and five co-defendants. The motions sought to suppress evidence the defense argued was mishandled or obtained through government misconduct. That included recordings of Pellicano's telephone conversations that were seized in a search of his Sunset Strip offices four years ago. One of the motions sought to have the entire criminal indictment dismissed. "We are extremely pleased with the court's ruling,"...

Congressman backed Ramadan, Diwali, But the Washington Democrat drew the line at Christmas.

The long legal fight between two members of Congress over an illegally taped telephone call ended Monday when the Supreme Court refused to review the case. The court, without comment, left in place a federal appeals court ruling that Representative Jim McDermott, Democrat of Washington, acted improperly in giving reporters access to a recording of a 1996 telephone call of Republican leaders discussing the House ethics case against Representative Newt Gingrich, who was then House speaker. Mr. McDermott had asked the justices to hear his appeal of that ruling, which he said infringed on his free-speech rights.

LOS ANGELES - A federal appeals court in San Francisco yesterday handed a major victory to the Bush administration, ruling that a lawsuit challenging the government's warrantless wiretapping program could not go forward because of the "state secrets" privilege. In a 3-to-0 decision, the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit sided with the government, which had argued that allowing an Islamic charity's assertion that it was illegally spied upon would threaten national security. In the opinion, Judge M. Margaret McKeown flatly rejected the government's argument that "the very subject matter of the litigation is a state secret."

Excerpt - Attorney General Dustin Mc-Daniel said the state Republican Party chairman took “a cheap shot” in asking him to investigate whether then-first lady Hillary Clinton violated state law during her husband’s presidential campaign in 1992 by listening to a recording of a phone conversation. McDaniel, a Democrat who is co-chairman of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign in Arkansas, said GOP Chairman Dennis Milligan “wanted... to get me to make some sort of comment that in some way blurred the lines between my job as attorney general and the fact that I am supporting Hillary. “ They know that this was...

Big Brother Britain: Government and councils to spy on ALL our phonesBy JASON LEWIS - More by this author » Last updated at 23:31pm on 29th September 2007  Officials from the top of Government to lowly council officers will be given unprecedented powers to access details of every phone call in Britain under laws coming into force tomorrow.  The new rules compel phone companies to retain information, however private, about all landline and mobile calls, and make them available to some 795 public bodies and quangos. The move, enacted by the personal decree of Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, will...

At first blush it's not particularly easy to connect the New England Patriots' spying flap to President Bush, but Democratic presidential hopeful Bill Richardson found a way to do it Friday. "The president has been allowed to spy on Americans without a warrant, and our U.S. Senate is letting it continue," said the New Mexico governor in a statement. "You know something is wrong when the New England Patriots face stiffer penalties for spying on innocent Americans than Dick Cheney and George Bush." Richardson attended high school and college in the Boston area. After the NFL determined the Patriots secretly...

The US director of intelligence has said wiretaps played a significant role in stopping bomb attacks by suspected Islamists in Germany last week. Michael McConnell told a Senate committee eavesdropping had revealed that the suspects had obtained explosive liquids. He said Congress should not restrict the programme. In August, a temporary bill was adopted allowing eavesdropping on foreign terror suspects without a warrant. Controversial programme Mr McConnell said the surveillance programme had made "significant contributions" in discovering and breaking up a suspected plot in Germany to bomb US installations. "It allowed us to see and understand all the connections to...

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...