Posted on 05/01/2013 10:27:04 AM PDT by Theoria
Justice Department agreed to issue "2511 letters" immunizing AT&T and other companies participating in a cybersecurity program from criminal prosecution under the Wiretap Act, according to new documents obtained by the Electronic Privacy Information Center.
Senior Obama administration officials have secretly authorized the interception of communications carried on portions of networks operated by AT&T and other Internet service providers, a practice that might otherwise be illegal under federal wiretapping laws.
The secret legal authorization from the Justice Department originally applied to a cybersecurity pilot project in which the military monitored defense contractors' Internet links. Since then, however, the program has been expanded by President Obama to cover all critical infrastructure sectors including energy, healthcare, and finance starting June 12.
"The Justice Department is helping private companies evade federal wiretap laws," said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, which obtained over 1,000 pages of internal government documents and provided them to CNET this week. "Alarm bells should be going off."
Those documents show the National Security Agency and the Defense Department were deeply involved in pressing for the secret legal authorization, with NSA director Keith Alexander participating in some of the discussions personally. Despite initial reservations, including from industry participants, Justice Department attorneys eventually signed off on the project.
The Justice Department agreed to grant legal immunity to the participating network providers in the form of what participants in the confidential discussions refer to as "2511 letters," a reference to the Wiretap Act codified at 18 USC 2511 in the federal statute books.
The Wiretap Act limits the ability of Internet providers to eavesdrop on network traffic except when monitoring is a "necessary incident" to providing the service or it takes place with a user's "lawful consent."
(Excerpt) Read more at news.cnet.com ...
How secret can it be if CNet is covering it?
These surveillance procedures will be used against law-abiding Americans and American of faith. Think locally! Vote out the creeps at the local level and then proceed upwards, because nobody, but nobody is protecting the middle class from the top, down.
Count on it.
Well, not like AT&T brags about it.
Of course. All these laws that have been set up over the years will be for you and me. If the US was serious, they could.... fill in the blank.
Doesn't that qualify as 'conspiracy' [and maybe sedition] according to the law?
Take a guess whether anyone posting on this forum has been spied upon, - but perhaps I’m paranoid?
Writing a letter saying you are immune from breaking the law as we command it is a criminal act making it possible to prosicute the executive branch. The note itself is proof.
Serious, Marxist Idiots. If they want to change the laws, get the legleslative branch to do so. But illegal orders are a thin defence in the judical branch.
And one day Adults will be in charge again.
Waving and sending a big howdy to black suit behind the screen.
Way back when they had classes in high school to “immunize” students against propaganda, in its many forms. The logic was that if you knew what it was, you would be less susceptible to its influence, be it government propaganda or commercial advertisement.
At the time I thought it was an amusing novelty, but soon realized that they were doing students a great favor by making them less trusting of the motives of others.
I mention this because today, it becomes increasingly important to teach students the importance of electronics and personal information security. Unlike propaganda, once others have your information, there are no limits as to how they can use and abuse it. And there are endless schemes, both government and commercial, to do so, *at your expense*.
The lesson plan has to include:
1) Minimizing release of personal information.
2) Creating false information that can be used to “track the trackers”, so you will know for sure who is abusing your information, to not trust them in the future.
3) (The hardest one) Correcting false and improper information about you that can seriously hurt you. For example, you do not want your medical records to incorrectly identify your blood type. Nor do you want them to contain information about you that is not of medical relevance, like your gun ownership.
4) And finally, tracking critical records that you want retained, such as birth certificate, medical powers, will, vehicle and home titles, etc.
TOR over encrypted VPN, with the VPN located in Hong Kong.
Satan must be out shopping for a new parka, because something just hit the wires that we and the Leftards/DUmmies likely all agree on.
If you haven’t been spied on you shouldn’t call yourself a FReeper.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.