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“Bush Spying Story” Is Four Years Old
Sweetness & Light ^ | December 19, 2005 | N/A

Posted on 12/19/2005 11:34:08 AM PST by Sam Hill

Somehow the geeky Wired News managed to scoop the vaunted New York Times by more than four years:

Photo

Bush Submits His Laws for War

By Declan McCullagh
10:15 AM Sep. 20, 2001 PT

WASHINGTON -- President Bush sent his anti-terrorism bill to Congress late Wednesday, launching an emotional debate that will force U.S. politicians to choose between continued freedom for Americans or greater security.

Created in response to last week's bloody attacks, the draft "Mobilization Against Terrorism Act" (MATA) rewrites laws dealing with wiretapping, eavesdropping and immigration. The draft, intended to increase prosecutors' courtroom authority, also unleashes the government's Echelon and Carnivore spy systems.

"We will call upon the Congress of the United States to enact these important anti-terrorism measures," Attorney General John Ashcroft said this week. "We need these tools to fight the terrorism threat which exists in the United States, and we must meet that growing threat."

Although Ashcroft has said he hopes Congress will approve MATA by Saturday, Capitol Hill appears to be taking a more cautious approach. The House Judiciary committee has pledged a speedy but careful consideration, and Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) has his own legislation he'll highlight at a hearing next Tuesday.

At a press conference Thursday in Washington, scores of organizations from across the political spectrum urged politicians to tread carefully and protect civil liberties during wartime. The In Defense of Freedom coalition says it hopes to prevent a repetition of earlier wars that heralded greater government powers and sharply curtailed freedoms.

During the Civil War, President Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus, interfered with freedom of speech and of the press and ordered that suspected political criminals be tried before military tribunals. After declaring war in 1917, Congress banned using the U.S. mail to send any material urging "treason, insurrection or forcible resistance to any law."

President Wilson asked Congress to go even further: His draft of the Espionage Act included a $10,000 fine and 10 years imprisonment for anyone publishing information that could be useful to the enemy. The House of Representatives narrowly defeated it by a vote of 184-144.

This is the inevitable result of war: In national emergencies, even in liberal democracies, the uneasy relationship between freedom and order edges toward greater government power and control.

"There is no reason to think that future wartime presidents will act differently from Lincoln, Wilson or Roosevelt, or that future justices of the Supreme Court will decide questions differently from their predecessors," William Rehnquist, chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, wrote in a book published in 1998.

"It is neither desirable nor is it remotely likely that civil liberty will occupy as favored a position in wartime as it does in peacetime," Rehnquist wrote in All the Laws But One.

This time, there seems to be little interest in enacting laws against free expression -- but the draft version of MATA would curtail privacy in hopes of thwarting future terrorist attacks. It says:

In a statement, the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation said that this "broad legislation would radically tip the United States' system of checks and balances, giving the government unprecedented authority to surveil American citizens with little judicial or other oversight."

The American Civil Liberties Union said Wednesday: "Under the proposed legislation, legal and non-legal immigrants alike would be denied a hearing or any way to contest the accusations against them. This is an unprecedented move inconsistent with the pledge of our leaders not to respond to the terrorist attacks in a way that degrades our system of justice."

And low and behold, those jackbooted fascists in the Bush regime even sent out a press release -- which I guess the New York Times deemed unworthy or their attention:

Department of Justice Seal

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE AG

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2001 (202) 616-2777

TDD (202) 514-1888

WWW.USDOJ.GOV

ATTORNEY GENERAL ASHCROFT OUTLINES

MOBILIZATION AGAINST TERRORISM ACT

WASHINGTON, D.C. Attorney General John Ashcroft today presented the Mobilization Against Terrorism Act to Congress. Appearing before the House Judiciary Committee, Attorney General Ashcroft outlined the comprehensive legislative initiative which will redefine the antiterrorism effort while protecting civil liberties. The purpose of the legislation is to provide the President and the Department of Justice with the tools and resources necessary to disrupt, weaken, thwart, and eliminate the infrastructure of terrorist organizations, to prevent or thwart terrorist attacks, and to punish perpetrators of terrorist acts.

"The danger that darkened the United States of America and the civilized world on September 11 did not pass with the atrocities committed that day," said Ashcroft. "It requires that we provide law enforcement with the tools necessary to identify, dismantle, disrupt and punish terrorist organizations before they strike again. Terrorism is a clear and present danger to American's today."

The proposed legislation seeks to combat terrorist activity on several fronts. Title I enhances the Department's capacity to gather intelligence necessary to combat terrorist organizations who increasingly employ sophisticated modes of global communications. Existing wiretap authority and procedures have not kept pace with the development of modern technology or the mode of operations of international terrorist organizations. Since current wiretap authority is often restricted to specific property as opposed to allowing law enforcement to follow suspects, current authority is inadequate for investigative personnel to monitor terrorist agents and associates. These proposals update the law to the technology. Terrorist offenses necessitate and justify comprehensive intelligence gathering.

Title II enhances the authority of the Immigration and Naturalization Service to detain and remove suspected terrorists by expanding the definition of terrorists to include those who lend support to terrorist organizations. The ability of terrorists to enter the United States and operate within the country is the obvious prerequisite to their capacity to inflict damage on citizens and facilities. These proposals protect the integrity of the United States borders without sacrificing the ability to welcome law-abiding visitors and legal immigrants.

Title III proposes changes to enhance prosecutors' ability to disable terrorists organizations through the legal process. The proposal amends current law to encourage investigation and prosecution prior to successful completion of a devastating terrorist attack. Terrorism should be considered no less than murder and the elimination of the statute of limitations on terrorist acts is reflective of these sentiments. In addition, this legislation provides for alternative maximum sentences, up to life, for the commission of terrorist acts, giving judges the ability to punish terrorists commensurate to their crimes. A number of other proposals are designed to punish or deter those who would assist terrorists and their organizations through concealment of their activities or their members. The lending of support that works to further terrorist organizations and to perpetuate terrorist attacks is expressly criminalized. In these specific changes to the law of crimes and criminal procedure, the constitutional rights of the accused are respected.

Title IV aims at the financial infrastructure of terrorist organizations whose sophisticated operations require substantial financial resources. Often such resources are provided by those not directly responsible for terrorist acts. These proposals will cripple the capacity of terrorist organizations to finance their illegal activities through criminal and civil forfeiture of resources. In addition, criminal liability is specifically imposed on those who knowingly engage in financial transactions involving the proceeds of these acts.

Title V authorizes emergency operations in response to the September 11 attacks and assists the Attorney General in providing support and relief to the victims. These proposals provide the Attorney General greater discretion and authority to disburse funds with regard to rewards to be offered in connection with crimes of terrorism.

So the obvious question becomes, why did our one party media decide to trot this story out again? You may well ask why these same "watchdogs" thought it was important to regurgitate the "CIA prison" stories that came out last spring.

But you know why. The DNC/MSM cannot allow the good news coming out of Iraq and Afghanistan to be reported.

They have to throw up something to keep their defeat America agenda on-track. That is job number one.


TOPICS: Extended News; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: 20010920; bush43; carnivore; d; echelon; homelandsecurity; mata; nsa; patriotleak; spying; surveillance
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach

How are you dear "Ernest_at_the_Beach"?


21 posted on 12/19/2005 12:04:55 PM PST by anonymoussierra (Merry Christmas)
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To: Sam Hill
With the help of Google turned up this website :

News stories about echelon
America's Global Surveillance Network

22 posted on 12/19/2005 12:06:02 PM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach (History is soon Forgotten,)
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To: gondramB

"Anybody acting surprised about this is either stupid or dishonest."

That just about covers all of the Rats serving in Congress!

LLS


23 posted on 12/19/2005 12:10:00 PM PST by LibLieSlayer (Preserve America... kill terrorists... destroy dims!)
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To: All
And there is this:

Echelon spy system wildly exaggerated – official

********************************************

Do the bloody maths...

By Thomas C Greene in Washington
Published Tuesday 1st August 2000 09:45 GMT
Get breaking Internet news straight to your desktop - click here to find out how

Defcon 08 By wireless...

The infamous Echelon satellite spy system, reportedly operated by the US National Security Agency (NSA), is largely a product of popular imagination and journalistic mythology, a US government official with ties to the intelligence community said during several sessions at Defcon.

Click Here

"I wish we had something like that which was that good. I mean, it would make my life so much easier, but it just isn't there," the official, who asked not to be identified, told reporters during a press conference. "I don't really expect a lot of people having a great time with these Echelon stories to believe what I tell you, but just go back and do the math."

The Echelon system is said to be capable of intercepting virtually all the world's electronic communications via fax, microwave and e-mail, and automatically filtering out the noise to get at the titbits of interest to the US national security apparatus - a miraculous feat which The Register has questioned on grounds of feasibility many times in the past.

"Get some of those articles that purport to describe the ability of the Echelon system to do marvellous things, and [think through] the engineering work," the official suggested. "Figure out how much processing power it would require, the types of collaboration one would need with people who build telecommunications systems, and the amount of government employees you would need to read all the stuff that gets scooped out. We just haven't got it."

"We're the government," he quipped. "Why would you reasonably expect us to be any more advanced than the private sector?"

Instead of the automated, science-fiction system generally imagined, the NSA and similar agencies rely on the old-fashioned method of developing sources and leads, and targeting them for further observation, he maintained.

"The basic problem is someone giving us a hint to tell us where to look. Since we can't process anywhere near the volume of stuff that people generate, we have to have some clue that tells us to go after a particular place or a particular thing."

Conspiracy paranoiacs will be further disappointed to learn that the US government does not make a habit of targeting electronic communications simply because they happen to be encrypted, the official said, again illustrating his point by appeal to the common-sense argument that there simply is not an unlimited amount of time, money or personnel available.

"There has to be some association that makes us want to [conduct surveillance]. We do not have the resources, time, interest or attention spans to go after everyone who wants to use encryption."

Still, a great number of people believe that the NSA is conducting mass-scale, indiscriminate monitoring of encrypted traffic, and either breaking the code or relying on back doors implanted in commercial crypto products by compliant manufacturers.

The notion that the government either encourages, or as some believe, forces, software companies to put back doors in their encryption applications also fails to make sense, he said.

"If a [software] firm ever got caught doing that, they would flat be out of business. And how often after that would a company want to co-operate with a government that asked them to do it? You don't set them up to where they're going to get wiped out in public... it's just bad business."

During an open session, he was questioned about US military preparations to defend against, and prosecute, information warfare, a capability which popular imagination also believes to be in an advanced state of development.

He indicated that America's cyberwar capabilities are as grossly overestimated as its spying capabilities. "I'm not even sure how we would determine that [an information attack] was happening," he observed.

"The biggest problem that we have in cyberspace is figuring out who's [attacking]. There are no fingerprints, no physical evidence; and if you don't know who did it, then you have a hard time figuring out why it was done. Identification and intent are key elements in international law. If you want to go whack someone, you have to be able to make a plausible, provable case that Enemy X is the one that [attacked] you; and if you can't determine who they are, then you have a real problem."

And malicious hackers should beware, he said, as this uncertainty in identification could one day cause a great deal more harm than intended. "An individual conducting a [network attack] on US soil against a foreign state could conceivably be interpreted as an agent of the US government. And if that's the case, then you have a situation where an individual could cause an international incident."

As for the US military's offensive cyberwar capabilities, there is little real-world data to go on in assessing it. "We did not conduct any successful virus attacks during the Gulf War," the official noted. "We had a target identified that we thought it useful to knock out to support the air campaign. We were prepared to go against it, but in the complexities of that war, we inadvertently removed the access pathway to the target before we were able to attack it."

As for its defensive capabilities, at least some assessment can be inferred from its difficulties in protecting on-line systems from relatively unsophisticated attacks by script kiddies, and the increasing alarm among federal law enforcement agencies which are scrambling to obtain ever-expanding powers of surveillance and to impose ever-harsher penalties for such minor abuse.

The myth of invincibility doesn't stand up long when FBI Director Louis Freeh and Attorney General Janet Reno wring their hands in public, demanding a relaxation of on-line trap and trace laws and a lowering of the standards by which federal involvement in on-line crime is triggered.

Another obstacle to the defence of crucial US assets from cyber attack is the simple fact that many of them are privately owned, the official noted. "The government doesn't own a lot of the stuff that needs to be protected," he said. "We can't just walk in and tell people how to take care of their personal property."

Some private assets with serious public implications, like telecommunications, finance and non-nuclear energy, have co-operative agreements to harden their crucial assets from attack, but the government is in no position to dictate the particulars of how this is to be accomplished.

One can only hope that old-fashioned economic self-interest will inspire them to do a decent job of it. ®

Related stories

What the hell is - the Echelon scandal?
Euro Parliament to investigate Echelon
NSA memos suggest ECHELON exists
Scheme to crash US Echelon net snoop ops hatched
Reno gets her teeth into Carnivore
ACLU seeks Congress' help against FBI's 'Carnivore'
RIP Bill: Full coverage


24 posted on 12/19/2005 12:12:05 PM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach (History is soon Forgotten,)
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To: anonymoussierra

GOD bless you and your Nation! Merry Christmas!

LLS


25 posted on 12/19/2005 12:12:30 PM PST by LibLieSlayer (Preserve America... kill terrorists... destroy dims!)
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To: Sam Hill
It's almost as if the NY Times wants us to lose the War On Terror.

It's all politics. If a Democrat were currently infesting the Oval Office and conducting the WOT in precisely the same manner that Bush currently is you can bet the farm the NYT would be on-board with every last Presidential move. So it's not that the MSM wants us to lose, just that they want us to lose as long as there's a GOP President. Partisan politics trumps national security in their feeble brains.

26 posted on 12/19/2005 12:16:06 PM PST by Mr. Mojo
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To: Sam Hill

If this was incorporated into the Patriot Act...was this in effect when W authorized it? Or was W going on his presidential powers ability?


27 posted on 12/19/2005 12:17:28 PM PST by shield (The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and instructions.Pr 1:7)
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To: Sam Hill; Gucho; blackie

Thank you "Sam Hill" for this information news.


28 posted on 12/19/2005 12:20:49 PM PST by anonymoussierra (Merry Christmas)
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To: LibLieSlayer

Thank you "LibLieSlayer"


29 posted on 12/19/2005 12:21:45 PM PST by anonymoussierra (Merry Christmas)
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To: Sam Hill

NY Times and the Democratic Party are bankrupt morally, spiritually, intelectually, and politically.

They have not come up with a bright idea since FRD's New Deal.

They are sunk, and they know it, thus they must continue to pull out of their butts four-year-old "issues" to try to denigrate our President and his policies.

As Newt said, they would rather see an entire US city nuked than let the FBI do what they've been doing from time immemorial, i.e., wiretap the bad guys.

The president's approval ratings are on the rise again, and this is giving the Dems nightmares.


30 posted on 12/19/2005 12:22:10 PM PST by Palladin (Merry Christmas! God bless us, every one!)
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To: Palladin

I meant FDR, of course.


31 posted on 12/19/2005 12:22:56 PM PST by Palladin (Merry Christmas! God bless us, every one!)
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To: Sam Hill
More commentary:

NSA uses ECHELON against US citizens ~ ALLeged
And the Pat Act is off for now,/a>

32 posted on 12/19/2005 12:28:07 PM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach (History is soon Forgotten,)
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To: anonymoussierra

Sara ~ we are surronded by traitors, right here in this country!


33 posted on 12/19/2005 12:29:59 PM PST by blackie (Be Well~Be Armed~Be Safe~Molon Labe!)
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To: anonymoussierra

GWB is the man!


34 posted on 12/19/2005 12:31:52 PM PST by blackie (Be Well~Be Armed~Be Safe~Molon Labe!)
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To: blackie; Gucho; TexKat; pbrown; Peach

"Fight. Fight for your nation you love. Fight as soldier for your nation. Infero Tadeusz Kosciuszko came from my nation eto fore helping you, infore now you can fight with all your wisdom of your love intero of your nation you love needs help of you."


35 posted on 12/19/2005 12:36:50 PM PST by anonymoussierra (Merry Christmas)
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To: blackie; anonymoussierra
we are surrounded by traitors, right here in this country!


I agree, disturbing, but true.
36 posted on 12/19/2005 12:45:06 PM PST by Gucho
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To: Rakkasan1

"just wondering"

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1543471/posts

Did you listen to press conference today?

Just wondering . . .


37 posted on 12/19/2005 12:45:44 PM PST by Cap Huff
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To: Sam Hill


Read more at FReeper Fedora's post:
Traitors of Record: The Record of the New York Times

38 posted on 12/19/2005 12:46:51 PM PST by Zacs Mom (Proud wife of a Marine! ... and purveyor of "rampant, unedited dialogue")
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To: Gucho

"Fight lies." Thank you "Gucho"


39 posted on 12/19/2005 12:46:56 PM PST by anonymoussierra (Merry Christmas)
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To: anonymoussierra
"Fight. Fight for your nation you love. Fight as soldier for your nation.


Bump!
40 posted on 12/19/2005 12:46:56 PM PST by Gucho
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