The Flake Effect
As you no doubt know, Democrats got shellacked yesterday. Not only did they lose the Senate in spectacular fashion, but Jim and I are stuck with our shitty Republican governors. Locally, the GOP succeeded in term-limiting our Mayor who wins…
The FBI's Black Hole of Devised Ignorance Surrounding Americans Subject to Section 215
Over at VICE, I've got a long piece summarizing all the ways (well, probably just some of them) FBI refuses to count its intelligence surveillance, meaning there's a black hole about what FBI does with some of its most intrusive surveillance.
Among…
Glaring Front Page Error by David Sanger, New York Times as Iran Nuclear Negotiations Near Deadline
See the update below, as of about 2:45 pm, the Times has changed the wording of the erroneous paragraph without adding a note of the correction. Oops. I got off on the wrong paragraph when I checked back. See the comment from Tony Papert below.
For…
New and Improved FBI! Now with 12 New Pages of Investigative Methods!
Among the documents ACLU obtained as part of its EO 12333 FOIA are 3 pages out of the bajillion-paged Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide.
The actual content of the pages isn't all that interesting. The content has been available…
An Unclassified Statement about Where NSA's Internet Dragnet Went
In a declaration submitted in EPIC's FOIA for the PRTT dragnet data, NSA's David Sherman tried to explain why NSA can't reveal additional details of the domestic Internet dragnet shut down in 2011.
In an effort to explain why NSA can't…
Suicide Bomber Strikes Near Pakistan-India Flag-Lowering Border Site
The video above shows the elaborate ceremony that takes place daily at the Wagah border crossing just outside the Pakistani city of Lahore. On Sunday evening, a suicide bomber who was stopped at a checkpoint just outside the ceremonial site…
President Who Had Yemeni Journalist Jailed Criticizes Impunity for Mistreatment of Journalists
November 2, 2014 was the first annual International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists.
To mark the date, the President just issued this statement.
History shows that a free press remains a critical foundation for prosperous,…
ICREACH and EO 12333
Because I need a hobby, I'm knee deep in tracking how EO 12333 got changed in 2008. Part of the impetus came from Congress, some members of which were furious that OLC had given the President authority to pixie dust EO 12333 in secret.
But…
Big Games and the End of the Hokey Pokey Era Trash Talk
My my, there is a lot going on in the sporting world this weekend, so let's take a look at some of the more interesting bits and pieces. First off there was some big news in Ann Arbor yesterday that pretty much answers the burning question from…
More Catcalling Debate Room Needed at New York Times
[Update below]
So, the New York Times today has up another in their series called "Room For Debate". Today's topic is "catcalling", and the supposedly relevant question for debate is "Do We Need a Law Against Catcalling?" The 'debate" is based…
Pre-Empting the Abdulmutallab "Confession" with a Drone Killing Decision
Make sure to read the update below: It's possible McMahon's estimate is off and this whole review process has gotten hopeless screwed up.
Update: yes, this memo is actually the February 19, 2010 memo, not an earlier one. The referenced…
Classified Briefings: For When Your Public Claims Don't Hold Up to Scrutiny
As I laid out when he gave his speech at Brookings, Jim Comey's public explanation for needing back doors to Apple and Android phones doesn't hold up. He conflated stored communication with communication in transit, ignored the risk of a back…
Do Verizon and AT&T's Super Cookies Count as Sesson Identifiers?
Over the past weeks, we've been learning more and more about a supercookie that Verizon and AT&T have stuck in the phone browsing of users on their mobile network. In the case of Verizon, you can't opt out of sending the supercookie any…
US Military Suddenly Decides to Classify Its Analysis of Afghan Troop Capability
The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction just released the 25th quarterly report (pdf) on US reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan. We are of course at a major crossroads in US involvement in Afghanistan, as US and NATO combat…
Bizarre Deployment of McDonough Torture Role in Article Bitching about Obama Non-Panic
The NYT has a long story claiming to show that Obama is "lurching from crisis to crisis" but ultimately providing evidence to support this observation, which appears at the very end of the story.
Yet he remains deliberative, methodical and…
The Last Time NSA Submitted Secret Authorities, It Was Actively Hiding Illegal Wiretapping
Via Mike Masnick, I see that in addition to submitting a new state secrets declaration and a filing claiming EFF's clients in Jewel v. NSA don't have standing, the government also submitted a secret supplemental brief on its statement of…
Was Quantum Entanglement Experiment Behind "Classified Cryptographic Equipment" Confusion After Antares Crash?
Yesterday evening, an Antares rocket built and operated by Orbital Sciences Corporation exploded shortly after liftoff. The rocket was intended to ferry supplies and equipment to the International Space Station. Orbital and Spacex have taken…
Going Postal. And Digital. And Financial: The Dragnet Elephant
The NYT has a report on an IG Report from May that reveals the Postal Service has been doing a lot more "mail covers" (that is, tracking the metadata from letters) than it had previously revealed.
In a rare public accounting of its mass surveillance…
The Public Interest and the International Surveillance State
I've been contemplating how to respond to this hilarious piece from Yishai Schwartz -- another of the many "rebuttals" to CitizenFour that betrays rank ignorance of many of the things Edward Snowden leaked. To some degree, Conor Friedersdorf…
The Warmongers Hang Out the Insular Bumblers
At the risk of being misunderstood as defending Susan Rice, let me explore a couple of things about this article, complaining about her "bumbling" as National Security Advisor.
3,000 words into a 3,500 word article, this sentence -- which…