Was DOJ Hiding a Section 215 Gun Registry from Congress?
Among other documents, ODNI released on Monday all the Attorney General Reports on Section 215 use from 2005 to 2011 (2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012).
This is the classified version of a report that also gets released in…
By "Application" the Administration Didn't Mean "Memorandum of Law"
This is a very minor point.
But, perhaps to rebut my observation that the government withheld significant constructions of law from the oversight committees until after the PATRIOT Act was reauthorized in 2010, ODNI released these this July…
8 Years Later, NSA Still Using Same PR Strategy to Hide Illegal Wiretap Program
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Between these two posts (one, two), I've shown that the Executive Branch never stopped illegally wiretapping Americans, even after the worst part of it got "shut down" after the March 2004 hospital confrontation.…
Where Is the Moral Rectitude When Political Retaliation Drone Strike Hits Settled Area, Misses Target?
Early this morning, just hours after the US had assured Pakistan that drone strikes would be curtailed if Pakistan is able to restart peace talks with the Taliban (after the US disrupted them with a drone strike), John Brennan lashed out with…
The Empire's New Clothes
Jay Rosen likes to talk about the Snowden effect -- the events that have followed on Edward Snowden's leaks that lead to more public knowledge.
This is surely a superb example of it. Someone has leaked the US Redlines -- US negotiating goals…
The Five Year Parade of Internet Dragnet Violations
Monday's document release provided mounting evidence that when the hospital confrontation "heroes" moved the Internet dragnet they had deemed to be illegal under the auspices of the FISA Court, neither they, nor Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly…
The John Bates Internet Metadata Opinion Probably Dates to July 2010
I've seen a lot of outright errors in the reporting on the John Bates opinion authorizing the government to restart the Internet metadata program released on Monday.
Bates' opinion was likely written in July 2010.
We know it had to have…
Erik Prince's Latest Graymail: Deliberately Targeting an American Teenager
Technically, I suppose, Erik Prince's latest disclosure (unlike some earlier ones) is not gray mail, as he seems intent (as Jeff Stein reported months ago) to exact revenge no matter what and claims the CIA has already done whatever damage…
John Bates' TWO Wiretapping Warnings: Why the Government Took Its Internet Dragnet Collection Overseas
A couple of us were joking on Twitter the other day that the June-July 2010 John Bates opinion released the other day -- in which he yelled mightily about illegal collection that had persisted for 5 years but then rubber stamped the government's…
For Susan Rice, Love of Endless War Means Never Having to Say US Is Sorry
Yesterday evening, reports appeared in both the New York Times and Khaama Press in Afghanistan that the final hurdle for the Bilateral Security Agreement had been cleared and that US President Barack Obama would sign a letter to be read at the…
Wrong Agency, Wrong Minimization: Two More Ways the Original Phone Dragnet Application Violated the Law
In addition to everything else several of us have been pointing out in the original Internet metadata opinion and the phone metadata application, there are two more problems with the phone dragnet.
They're using the wrong agency and the wrong…
Freedom of Association: From Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon to Three Degrees of Terry Stop
One thing the July 24, 2004 Colleen Kollar-Kotelly opinion and the May 23, 2006 phone dragnet application reveal is that the government and the court barely considered the First Amendment Freedom of Association implications of the dragnets.
The…
Colleen Kollar-Kotelly Ate the Serpent's Fruit of Judicial "Oversight" in Lieu of Law
Sometime next week, I will have a post on what known documents the government chose not to release in yesterday's dump -- a significant chunk, for example, almost certainly show how the dragnet programs are tied inextricably to the content programs.
But…
With Deal in Sight, Pressure Mounts on All Sides for P5+1, Iran
Fars News reports that Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and Catherine Ashton, chief negotiator for the European Union, will meet for lunch tomorrow just before the next round of P5+1 talks with Iran kick off in Geneva later in the…
The "Heroes" of the Hospital Confrontation Brief the FISC
I'm going to have several posts on the documents released yesterday, starting with the Internet dragnet opinion and the phone dragnet application.
But to give those two background, I want to look at a passage in the Internet dragnet opinion,…
Truth Claims, Malaprops, Cows, and the NSA Debate
I was obviously unexcited about the way last night's Chiefs-Broncos game went because I made the perhaps ill-advised decision to point out an obvious error in this post from former NSA analyst John Schindler.
He was trying to make a legitimate…
Weep for the Spurned Billion Dollar Mercenary!
In what is sure to be some interesting book publicity, Erik Prince has gone sobbing to the WSJ about the shoddy treatment the government that paid him billions treated him. In the piece, he continues to reveal new details about some of the operations…
US Failures in Afghanistan Multiplying: Negotiation Impasse, Bomb at Jirga Site and Increasing Violence
It is difficult to imagine how the situation could be any worse for the US ahead of Thursday's opening of the loya jirga that was meant to give a stamp of approval to the Bilateral Security Agreement that would govern US troops remaining in…
The Phone Dragnet White Paper, Revisited
I made the mistake of referring to the Administration's White Paper on the phone dragnet, which led me to do another close read of the document. Given what we know now there are several passages I find to be quite telling.
Still hiding the…
The Era of Big Pen Register: The Flaw in Jeffrey Miller's Moalin Decision
As I noted, on Thursday Judge Jeffrey Miller rejected Basaaly Moalin's bid for a new trial based on disclosures of the Section 215 dragnet. Miller rejected the bid largely by relying on Smith v. Maryland and subsequent decisions that found no…