Posted on 12/18/2005 7:57:09 PM PST by hipaatwo
What's this?
BUMP
[*snicker*]
outstanding find
The funny thing is that everyone going balistic about their privacy are to stupid to realize they have none. On my block there are six completely open wireless networks that a child could hack. There are at least a couple of million exposed computer network available to anyone with easily downloading tools found on the Internet. In addition, hackers, spyware, viruses, and adware make sure there is no privacy on the net.
Most cordless phones are easy to listen in on with a scanner. Cell phones converastions are easy too, the equipment just costs a little bit more. Millions upon millions of cameras spying on us. It is myth that we have the least bit privacy.
We were peeing our pants of FR over Echelon back during the Clinton administration. This I know for sure.
I don't know if this is the same BS the Donks are braying about today, because frankly I don't much care what the Donks are braying about today.
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That seems to go above what the press is bitching about now. The press is in a tissy now because the NSA is eavesdropping on calls. Clinton's EXO authorized "provide for the authorization of physical searches for foreign intelligence purposes", "without a court order"
Thanks, OXEN.
Every decade or so, "60 Minutes" drags out this story about the NSA and it's worldwide electronic eavesdropping. It's been around quite a while in one form or another. Does NSA do it? Yeah! Sure they do......I'm glad they do. I learned long ago that NO FORM of communication is safe from examination by those determined enough to do it. I was in communications for a number of years, and it's very easy...the tough part comes in getting the processing and filtering capacity for what you're looking for out of the untold millions of information bits flying around the world.......
Thanks for the link to the oped written in 1999:
"The hactivists organizing "jam day" believe Echelon works on the keyword system. They say the NSA's list includes: Oklahoma City, militia, gun, handgun, Randy Weaver, Davidian, Delta Force, Constitution, Bill of Rights and Whitewater, among others - words that seem to have less to do with international terrorism than with domestic militia movements, organizations that for the most part have not been linked to terrorist activities."
Thanks to Al Goron's invention, the internet, we can go back into history to see how the Clintoons and the rats did what the MSM is trying to blame GW for.
Thanks for that ping; added to my growing file regarding this matter. Do we need to start sending this stuff to conservative reporters or do you think they are doing their own research right now?
Thanks for the link. Do have any info on the misplaced 900 FBI files? I was hoping to get the NYT to finally launch and expose on that one.
Yeah...hey uh Echelon...we "fart in your general direction"...uhhh just kidding guys!
ping
(Read the whole thing)
Partisan Politics v. Bill of Rights
http://www.crimelynx.com/partpol.html
Clinton presses for anti-terrorism tools (7/1996)
http://www.cnn.com/US/9607/29/clinton.terrorism/
Dereliction Of Duty:
The Constitutional Record of President Clinton
(Excellent Footnotes to NYT and WP articles, if you can find them)
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-271.html
(snip from above)
Warrantless "National Security" Searches
The Clinton administration claims that it can bypass the warrant clause for "national security" purposes. In July 1994 Deputy Attorney General Jamie S. Gorelick told the House Select Committee on Intelligence that the president "has inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches for foreign intelligence purposes." [51] According to Gorelick, the president (or his attorney general) need only satisfy himself that an American is working in conjunction with a foreign power before a search can take place.
The warrant clause was designed to give the American people greater security than that afforded by the mere words of politicians. It requires the attorney general, or others, to make a showing of "probable cause" to a magistrate. The proponents of national security searches are hard-pressed to find any support for their position in the text or history of the Constitution. That is why they argue from the "inherent authority" of the Oval Office--a patently circular argument. The scope of such "authority" is of course unbounded in principle. Yet the Clinton Justice Department has said that the warrant clause is fully applicable to murder suspects but not to persons suspected of violating the export control regulations of the federal government. [52] If the Framers had wanted to insert a national security exception to the warrant clause, they would have done so. They did not.
The Clinton administration's national security exception to the warrant clause is nothing more, of course, than an unsupported assertion of power by executive branch officials. The Nixon administration relied on similar constitutional assertions in the 1970s to rationalize "black bag" break-ins to the quarters of its political opponents. [53] The Clinton White House--even after the Filegate scandal--assures Congress, the media, and the general public that it has no intention of abusing this power.
Attorney General Reno has already signed off on the warrantless search of an American home on the basis of the dubious "inherent authority" theory. [54] The actual number of clandestine "national security" searches conducted since 1993 is known only to the White House and senior Justice Department officials.
Warrantless Searches of Public Housing
In the spring of 1994 the Chicago Public Housing Authority responded to gang violence by conducting warrantless "sweeps" of entire apartment buildings. Closets, desks, dressers, kitchen cabinets, and personal effects were examined regardless of whether the police had probable cause to suspect particular residents of any wrongdoing. Some apartments were searched when the residents were not home. Although such searches were supported by the Clinton administration, Federal District Judge Wayne Anderson declared the Chicago sweeps unconstitutional. [55] Judge Anderson found the government's claim of "exigent circumstances" to be exaggerated since all of the sweeps occurred days after the gang-related shootings. He also noted that even in emergency situations, housing officials needed probable cause in order to search specific apartments. Unlike many governmental officials who fear demagogic criticism for being "soft on crime," Judge Anderson stood up for the Fourth Amendment rights of the tenants, noting that he had "sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution" and that he would not "use the power of [his] office to override it, amend it or subvert it." [56]
The White House response was swift. President Clinton publicly ordered Attorney General Reno and HUD secretary Henry Cisneros to find a way to circumvent Judge Anderson's ruling. One month later the president announced a "constitutionally effective way" of searching public housing units. The Clinton administration would now ask tenants to sign lease provisions that would give government agents the power to search their homes without warrants. [57]
The Clinton plan was roundly criticized by lawyers and columnists for giving short shrift to the constitutional rights of the tenants. [58] A New York Times editorial observed that the president had "missed the point" of Judge Anderson's ruling. [59] Harvard law professors Charles Ogletree and Abbe Smith rightly condemned the Clinton proposal as an open invitation to the police to "tear up" the homes of poor people. [60]
Warrantless Drug Testing in Public Schools
The Clinton administration has defended warrantless drug testing programs in the public schools. In March 1995 the Supreme Court heard arguments on whether public school officials could drug test student athletes without a warrant or any articulable suspicion of illegal drug use. The Department of Justice sided with the school authorities, arguing that the privacy rights of individual students were outweighed by the interest of the school in deterring drug use by the student body generally. [61]
Solicitor General Days, arguing for the government, claimed that the school district "could not effectively educate its students unless it undertook suspicionless drug testing as part of a broader drug-prevention program." [62] Days maintained that the Fourth Amendment's requirement of individualized suspicion would "jeopardize" the school's drug program. Justices Sandra Day O'Connor, John Paul Stevens, and David Souter expressed skepticism about that claim and pointed out that if the Supreme Court followed the Justice Department's reasoning, America's public school students might well end up receiving less constitutional protection under the Fourth Amendment than do convicted criminals under correctional supervision. [63]
The Clinton administration supports warrantless drug tests in other contexts as well. Thus, when Republican presidential candidate Robert Dole said, during the 1996 campaign, that he would subject welfare recipients to warrantless, suspicionless drug tests, President Clinton quickly followed suit with his own approval of such an initiative. [64]
Warrantless Wiretapping
The Supreme Court has recognized that electronic surveillance, such as wiretapping and eavesdropping, impinges on the privacy rights of individuals and organizations and is therefore subject to the Fourth Amendment's warrant clause. [65] President Clinton, however, has asked Congress to pass legislation that would give the Federal Bureau of Investigation the power to use "roving wiretaps" without a court order. [66] The president also fought for sweeping legislation that is forcing the telephone industry to make its network more easily accessible to law enforcement wiretaps. Those initiatives have led ACLU officials to describe the Clinton White House as "the most wiretap-friendly administration in history." [67]
It is unclear why the president made warrantless roving wiretaps a priority matter since judges routinely approve wiretap applications by federal prosecutors. According to a 1995 report by the Administrative Office of U.S. Courts, it had been years since a federal district court turned down a prosecutor's request for a wiretap order. [68] President Clinton is apparently seeking to free his administration from any potential judicial interference with its wiretapping plans. There is a problem, of course, with the power that the president desires: it is precisely the sort of unchecked power that the Fourth Amendment's warrant clause was designed to curb. As the Supreme Court noted in Katz v. United States (1967), the judicial procedure of antecedent justification before a neutral magistrate is a "constitutional precondition," not only to the search of a home, but also to eavesdropping on private conversations within the home. [69]
President Clinton also lobbied for and signed the Orwellian Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, which is forcing every telephone company in America to retrofit its phone lines and networks so that they will be more accessible to police wiretaps. [70] The cost of that makeover is expected to be several billion dollars. Any communications carrier that fails to meet the technology standards of the attorney general can be fined up to $10,000 per day. The passage of that law prompted Attorney General Reno to marvel at her newly acquired power: "I don't think J. Edgar Hoover would contemplate what we can do today." [71] That is unfortunately true. In the past, law enforcement had to rely on the goodwill and voluntary cooperation of the American people for investigative assistance. That tradition is giving way to a regime of coercive mandates. [72]
(End)
Clinton's Wiretap-Heavy Budget
http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,34164,00.html
CALEA Disguises National Wire Tap Law
http://www.thewinds.org/1997/06/wiretap.html
The Clinton Administration's War on Privacy
http://www.fff.org/comment/ed0796b.asp
Source: Freeh, not Reno, on Way Out
http://www.newsmax.com/articles/?a=1996/12/08/153019
(snip)
WIRETAP
Free-lance journalist Scott Wheeler, who has pursued the Mena Airport story more than any other, alleges he was the subject of an FBI wiretap earlier this year. Wheeler has doggedly investigated evidence that organized crime, with the complicity of Arkansas state government, used a tiny airport in Mena, Ark., as a transshipment point for cocaine and other narcotics.
On March 3, 1996, the Tribune-Review reported that Wheeler had "uncovered documentary evidence suggesting drug activity at the airport during the past year." This evidence was garnered, the Tribune-Review reported, through access Wheeler gained to U.S. Customs Department computers. Wheeler, who continually photographs planes and their tail numbers at the airport, recently compared the numbers to official records in Customs Department computers. He discovered that a half dozen planes he photographed had tail numbers that had been illegally appropriated from legally registered planes.
Another Customs document Wheeler unearthed indicated that as late as 1989, Dan Lasater, a convicted cocaine distributor and friend of Bill Clinton, was the target of a federal drug probe. Lasater had claimed he dropped any drug activities after his conviction on drug charges in 1986. Lasater was pardoned by Bill Clinton in 1990.
Recently, a congressional investigator reviewing FBI files came across a heavily redacted transcript that resulted from an FBI wiretap relating to Mena. The staffer, who thought the transcript sounded like Wheeler, shared the transcript with him. Wheeler said he was astounded to see it was in fact a conversation he had from his home phone soon after the Tribune-Review disclosed Wheeler's access to Customs Department computers and sources.
"I think (government wiretapping) is a lot more common than people think," Wheeler told the Tribune-Review. He said that although the wiretap indicates that his sources were providing accurate information, he is curious about why federal authorities were concerned about leaks on drug smuggling and the activities of Dan Lasater.
More to come... I need actual legislation to see who supported and wrote it up, I may be surprised who backed it and they may still be around, as well as bloviating on MSM.
1996, Clipper Chip.
The one rejection of a wiretap Wen Ho Lee.
We have to go back way before that to at least 1996.
Since the military gets the best in crypto available on the globe, I was sort of implying that. NIST is responsible for setting standards for crypto that is not up to military requirements, like you and I use.
Yes, some of us right here on FR were called "conspiracy theorists", "tinfoil hatters" and other derogatory references back in the late 1990's when we were posting here about this system.
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