The Carnage In Isla Vista, Hashtag Justice and Echidne
I have not been there in a while, but I have been there quite a bit before, and the Isla Vista/Goleta area surrounding UCSB is everything good and bad that surrounds any major university. It is a melting pot teeming with brilliant young minds,…
USA Freedumber Will Not Get Better in the "Prosecutors" Committee
Having been badly outmaneuvered on USA Freedumber -- what was sold as reform but is in my opinion an expansion of spying in several ways -- in the House, civil liberties groups are promising a real fight in the Senate.
“This is going to…
Memorial Day Foodie Talk
Hey there Emptywheel lugnuts, how is your holiday weekend going? I see there is no post since Jim White's on Friday and thought maybe we should have a little fun. For the record, I almost did a Fast Trash post for the Monaco Grand Prix and Indy…
Pakistani Troops Seize Miram Shah. Does That Remove Drone Strike Justification?
Aside from a May 14 drone strike described as being on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, there have been no documented US drone strikes in Pakistan since December 26 of last year. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism links this…
Four Reasons USA Freedumber is Worse than the Status Quo
In the post-HR 3361 passage press conference yesterday, Jerry Nadler suggested the only reason civil libertarians oppose the bill is because it does not go far enough.
That is, at least in my case, false.
While I have concerns about unintended…
Why USA Freedumber Doesn't End (What You and I Think of as) Bulk Collection
I fear, reading this Kevin Drum post, that my explanations of why USA Freedumber will not end what you and I think of as bulk collection have not been clear enough. So I'm going to try again.
It is now, with the bill in current form, a 4-part…
Why Can't Jason Leopold Have the Information Mike Rogers Already Leaked, and in Less Than Four Months?
Noted FOIA terrorist Jason Leopold liberated a copy of the Defense Intelligence Agency's damage assessment about Edward Snowden's leaks (story, document).
The report, as anticipated, doesn't appear to talk about actual damage DOD has suffered.…
95 People Learn to Love the Dragnet
Earlier this morning, the House passed HR 3361, which I call the USA Freedumber Act.
The bill passed by a large margin: 303 to 121.
That means that somewhere in the neighborhood of 86 people who voted for Amash-Conyers less than a year…
The Disturbing Paradox of the David Barron Nomination
Barack Obama has a preternatural preference for ivory tower elites from Harvard when it comes to judicial and executive branch appointees, and David Barron is the latest example. The White House is in the final stages of an all out push to insure…
USA Freedumber Appears to Strengthen RuppRoge's Affirmative Endorsement of an Internet Dragnet
Working on a detailed comparison of the difference between the USA Freedumb and USA Freedumber bills, one of the most alarming changes is the gutting of Pen Register minimization procedures. They took language not only adding minimization procedures…
FBI Will Now Videotape In Custody Interrogations
[Significant Update Below]
My hometown paper, the Arizona Republic, broke some critically important news a few minutes ago. The story by Dennis Wagner, a superb reporter at the Republic for a very long time, tells of a monumental shift in…
Freedumb versus Freedumber
I've already done a few posts on the USA Freedumber bill, AKA HR 3361. This post shows that the Administration has gotten explicit that the chaining process is now about "connected" identifiers and not necessarily "contacts" between them. And…
Afghan Election Commission Fires 3300 Staffers, But Runoff Will Proceed in Most Corrupt Place on Earth
Reuters brings us the shocking news that the election commission in Afghanistan has just fired over 3000 staffers even though the runoff election for President is only about three weeks from now on June 14:
Afghanistan's election commission…
Obama to Release OLC Memo after Only 24 Congressional Requests from 31 Members of Congress
Congratulations to Rand Paul, who, having made request number 24, has finally gotten the Administration to agree to publicly release the OLC memo authorizing the drone killing of Anwar al-Awlaki.
Here, for posterity, is a record of the at…
New & Improved USA Freedumb Act, with Twice the Contractors Compensated
Somewhere Booz Allen Hamilton Vice Chairman (and former NSA Director) Mike McConnell just said, "Ka-Ching."
As I noted, the initial manager's amendment of HR 3361 (AKA USA Freedumb Act) added compensation language to Section 215 that didn't…
The Administration Stops Pretending Phone Dragnet Is Only about Phone Calls
The other day, I noted that the language describing contact-chaining had been changed to permit chaining between identifiers that had a "connection" even without any actual phone contact. At a minimum, this permits the government to contact…
David Barron's ECPA Memo
Last week, I laid out the amazing coinkydink that DOJ provided Sprint a bunch of FISA opinions -- including the December 12, 2008 Reggie Walton opinion finding that the phone dragnet did not violate ECPA -- on the same day, January 8, 2010,…
Pakistan's Geo Now Accused of Blasphemy: That Couldn't Happen Here, Could It?
Just under a month ago, Pakistan's largest private television news station was engaged in a dispute with Pakistan's intelligence agency, ISI, over charges that the ISI was behind an assassination attempt on one of its anchors. For Geo, those…
The "Consult with Congress" Stage of USA Freedumb
Remember how, in the days after President Obama announced his principles for reforming the dragnet, his Senior Administration Official pretended that any efforts to make the scope of the program worse would come from Congress?
First and very…
NSA Collects All Phone Calls from One of World's Most Secretive Tax Havens, But Doesn't Track That
In its report on how the NSA collects every cell phone conversation that takes place in the Bahamas, The Intercept focuses on the use of such intercepts for drug investigations (indeed, one of the other countries targeted in the MYSTIC program…