Friends of Liberty

China asks U.S. to explain Internet surveillance

BEIJING | Mon Jun 17, 2013 6:15am EDT

(Reuters) - China made its first substantive comments on Monday to reports of U.S. surveillance of the Internet, demanding that Washington explain its monitoring programs to the international community.

Several nations, including U.S. allies, have reacted angrily to revelations by an ex-CIA employee over a week ago that U.S. authorities had tapped the servers of internet companies for personal data.

"We believe the United States should pay attention to the international community's concerns and demands and give the international community the necessary explanation," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said at a daily briefing.

The Chinese government has previously not commented directly on the case, simply repeating the government's standard line that China is one of the world's biggest victims of hacking attacks.

A senior source with ties to the Communist Party leadership said Beijing was reluctant to jeopardize recently improved ties with Washington.

The explosive revelations of the U.S. National Security Agency's (NSA) spying programs were provided by Edward Snowden, a former CIA employee and NSA contractor currently holed up in Hong Kong, a China-controlled city.

Snowden told the South China Morning Post, Hong Kong's main English language newspaper, last week that Americans had spied extensively on targets in China and Hong Kong...

New "Legal" Immigrants to Compete With America's Low-Skilled Labor Force

June 15, 2013
by Peter Kirsanow
Western Virginia Gazette

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- The Senate has begun debate on the proposed immigration reform bill. If this bill becomes law, there is one likely outcome for low-skilled West Virginia workers: Disaster.

The assurances of the bill's proponents that the bill will somehow help the economy obscure copious evidence that the bill will wreak enormous damage to the employment prospects of American workers who have already seen their wages and employment rates plummet over the last several years.

Indeed, it is no secret that the employment picture for low-skilled workers is abysmal. The national unemployment rate has been above 7.5 percent for more than four years and millions have dropped out of the workforce entirely. Among those without a high school diploma, the unemployment rate in May reached 11.1 percent, and for blacks without a high school diploma, it is more than 24 percent. The labor-force participation rate is at historic lows and long-term unemployment is the worst since the Great Depression. The workweek is shrinking, as well as wage rates. Barely one in two adult black males has a full-time job. A record 47 million people are on food stamps.

The immigration reform bill has the potential to make things even worse. Not only will the bill grant amnesty to 11 million illegal immigrants, it will act as a magnet for future illegal immigration and substantially increase the number of legal immigrants. It is conservatively estimated that the bill will result in 30 million to 33 million additional immigrants over the next 10 years.

The bill is structured so that most of the immigrants will be low-skilled. These immigrants will compete with Americans in the low-skilled labor markets. The competition is most fierce in some of the industries in which blacks historically have been highly concentrated, such as construction, agriculture and service. Since the supply of low-skilled workers already exceeds the demand, the massive influx in low-skilled immigrants bodes ill for all such workers, but particularly black males. Evidence adduced before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights shows that immigration accounts for 40 percent of the 18-point percentage decline in black employment rates over the last several decades -- the bulk of the decline occurring among black males. That's hundreds of thousands of blacks thrown out of work; hundreds of thousands who can't support their families without taxpayer assistance.

The evidence adduced by the commission shows that not only does illegal immigration depress the employment levels of low-skilled Americans, it drives down the wages for available jobs. For example, an economist for the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta estimated that as a result of the growth of undocumented workers, the annual earnings of actual documented workers in Georgia in 2007 were $960 lower than they were in 2000. In the leisure hospitality sectors of the economy, the wages were $1,520 lower.

A $960 annual decrease in wages may not seem like much to some members of Congress, but as President Obama observed when he signed the extension of the payroll tax cut in 2012, an extra $80 a month makes a big difference to many families. It means $80 more toward rent, groceries and the cost of gasoline. Besides, why should American workers suffer any decline in their wages because of illegal immigration?

Recent history shows that a grant of legal status to illegal immigrants results in a further influx of illegal immigrants who will crowd out low-skilled workers from the workforce. Contrary to the mythology promoted by some supporters of the bill, this isn't because low-skill Americans -- regardless of race -- are unwilling to work. It's because they're unwilling to work at the cut-rate wages (and often substandard conditions) offered to illegal immigrants -- a cohort highly unlikely to complain to the EEOC, OSHA or the Wage and Hour Division of the Department of Labor. This inexorably increases the number of low-skill Americans depending upon the government for subsistence, swells the ranks of the unemployed and reduces the wages of those that do have a job.

Before the federal government grants legal status to illegal immigrants, serious deliberation must be given to the affect such grant will have on the employment and earnings prospects of low-skilled Americans. History shows that granting such legal status is not without profound and substantial costs to American workers.

Does Congress care?

Kirsanow is a labor and employment attorney in Cleveland, a former member of the National Labor Relations Board, a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, and the former chairman of the Center for New Black Leadership.

NSA admits listening to U.S. phone calls without warrants

by Declan McCullagh
CNET.com
June 15, 2013 4:39 PM PDT

The National Security Agency has acknowledged in a new classified briefing that it does not need court authorization to listen to domestic phone calls.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat, disclosed this week that during a secret briefing to members of Congress, he was told that the contents of a phone call could be accessed "simply based on an analyst deciding that."

If the NSA wants "to listen to the phone," an analyst's decision is sufficient, without any other legal authorization required, Nadler said he learned. "I was rather startled," said Nadler, an attorney and congressman who serves on the House Judiciary committee.

Not only does this disclosure shed more light on how the NSA's formidable eavesdropping apparatus works domestically, it also suggests the Justice Department has secretly interpreted federal surveillance law to permit thousands of low-ranking analysts to eavesdrop on phone calls.

Because the same legal standards that apply to phone calls also apply to e-mail messages, text messages, and instant messages, Nadler's disclosure indicates the NSA analysts could also access the contents of Internet communications without going before a court and seeking approval.

The disclosure appears to confirm some of the allegations made by Edward Snowden, a former NSA infrastructure analyst who leaked classified documents to the Guardian. Snowden said in a video interview that, while not all NSA analysts had this ability, he could from Hawaii "wiretap anyone from you or your accountant to a federal judge to even the president."

There are serious "constitutional problems" with this approach, said Kurt Opsahl, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation who has litigated warrantless wiretapping cases. "It epitomizes the problem of secret laws."

The NSA yesterday declined to comment to CNET. A representative said Nadler was not immediately available. (This is unrelated to last week's disclosure that the NSA is currently collecting records of the metadata of all domestic Verizon calls, but not the actual contents of the conversations.)...

Lies and the susceptibility of the American public to political propaganda

by "barefoot accountant"
June 15, 2013

Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels believed that if one told a big lie and repeated it many times that the majority of the general public would believe it. In fact, Goebbels further believed and said, “the bigger the lie, the more it will be believed.” Such techniques were not invented by Hitler or Goebbels. Vladimir Lenin was aware of their effectiveness prior to Hitler’s rise to power. Telling lies to the general public is not only not new, it also is not a governmental practice restricted to foreign lands.

After William Casey's first staff meeting as head of the CIA in 1981, he was quoted as saying, "I'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." And one may recall the lies of the Nixon administration during the Watergate investigations of the 1970s in its attempt to deny its innumerable crimes. What they all believed and knew is that you could fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time, and too many of the people too much of the time. What Casey and other American politicians also know is that you need not fool all of the people all of the time, since if you fool enough of the electorate enough of the time, you could discredit the rest of the people and get re-elected as well as push through your political agenda. Recall that Hitler seized power by fooling only a third of the people.

Of course, politicians employing propaganda to achieve political ends and control of the populace need the assistance of the media to do so. Radio and films were used very successfully by the Nazis to brainwash the people of Germany against the Jews and other races. Today the radio, the press, television, and the internet are all exploited by governmental forces to distort the truth and disseminate false information in order to achieve political ends. Yes, political ideology, driven by greed and desire for power and control, justify the means however untrue and unjust the message is. So one should not be incredulous about whether this technique of deliberately promulgating disinformation is occurring today in our American debate about taxes...

Was It OK for Snowden to Leak Secrets?

June 12th, 2013
06:32 PM ET

Posted by

CNN Political Unit

(CNN) - Was it right or wrong for Edward Snowden to leak information about secret government surveillance programs?

A new national poll indicates Americans are divided.

Documents Snowden provided to journalists revealed the existence of secret National Security Agency programs to collect records of domestic telephone calls in the United States and the internet activity of overseas residents. Snowden, who fled to Hong Kong, was fired from his position Monday at the Booz Allen Hamilton consulting firm. The FBI is investigating the leaks.

According to a survey by Gallup that was conducted Monday and Tuesday and released Wednesday, 44% said it was right for Snowden to share information about the surveillance programs, with 42% saying it was wrong and 14% unsure.

There was a slight partisan divide, with nearly half of Republicans and independents questioned saying it was right for Snowden to leak the information. That number drops to 39% among Democrats.

The Gallup poll questioned 1,008 adults nationwide by telephone, with an overall sampling error of plus or minus four percentage points. The question regarding Snowden's actions was asked to half the respondents, with a sampling error of plus or minus six percentage points.

CNN Political Editor Paul Steinhauser contributed to this story

Prostitution, drugs alleged in State Department memo

By Ashley Fantz and Jill Dougherty, CNN
June 12, 2013 -- Updated 1039 GMT (1839 HKT)

Washington (CNN) -- Senior State Department and Diplomatic Security officials may have covered up or stopped investigations of inappropriate or even criminal misconduct by staff, according to an internal memo from the department's Office of the Inspector General.

The timeline surrounding the allegations places the incidents during former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's tenure, opening the possibility that a widening scandal might taint both her record and her possible political aspirations. Clinton has also taken heat for the department's response to the September 2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya.

The memo itself, purportedly written by Ambassador Larry Dinger, describes some of the information as coming from office chatter.

"Sometimes the sources are one or more agents who became aware of the case from colleagues in what, given cubicles, can be a collegial environment," the memo says.

Regarding the latest allegations, CNN was provided the documents by a lawyer for a whistle-blower who is a former senior inspector general investigator.

They include:

• An active U.S. ambassador "routinely ditched his protective security detail in order to solicit sexual favors from both prostitutes and minor children," the memo says. The ambassador's protective detail and others "were well aware of the behavior," the memo asserts. When a diplomatic security officer tried to investigate, undersecretary of state for management Patrick Kennedy allegedly ordered the investigator "not to open a formal investigation."

On Tuesday, CNN obtained a statement from the ambassador, who vigorously denied the allegations, calling them "baseless."

A source close to the investigation of the ambassador told CNN that the ambassador's security detail reported to the inspector general that the ambassador would leave his house at night without notifying the detail. The detail followed the ambassador and saw the ambassador once go to a park that's known for illegal activity, the source told CNN. The detail said they never witnessed the ambassador engage in any sexual activity, the source said.

The ambassador went to Washington and was asked what he was doing and he denied any wrongdoing, the source told CNN. The ambassador explained that sometimes he fights with his wife, needs air and he goes for a walk in the park because he likes it.

Kennedy also issued a statement Tuesday, saying it is his responsibility "to make sure the department and all of our employees -- no matter their rank -- are held to the highest standard, and I have never once interfered, nor would I condone interfering, in any investigation."

• A State Department security official in Beirut allegedly "engaged in sexual assaults" against foreign nationals working as embassy guards. The security official, the Office of the Inspector General says, was also accused of committing "similar assaults during assignments in Baghdad, and possibly Khartoum and Monrovia." The office's memo says that an inspector general's investigator who went to Beirut to try to conduct an investigation was not given enough time to complete the job.

• A member of Clinton's security detail allegedly "engaged prostitutes while on official trips in foreign countries." The inspector general's agent assigned to investigate "concluded" that the "prostitution problem was endemic."

• In Iraq, an "underground drug ring" may have been operating near the U.S. Embassy and "supplying" drugs to State Department security contractors, but an agent sent to investigate the allegations was prevented from completing the job.

The allegations were first reported Monday by CBS...

Sorry, Mr. Obama, the Constitution is not negotiable

by Senator Rand Paul (R-KY)
June 12, 2013
FoxNews.com

In the United States, we are supposed to have a government that is limited with its parameters established by our Constitution. This notion that the federal government can monitor everyone’s phone data is a major departure from how Americans have traditionally viewed the role of government.

If this is acceptable practice, as the White House and many in both parties now say it is, then there are literally no constitutional protections that can be guaranteed anymore to citizens.
In the name of security, say our leaders, the Constitution has become negotiable.

This is what the White House is saying when it defends the National Security Agency’s gathering of Verizon’s client data en masse, or what President Obama calls a “modest encroachment” on our rights, as he assures us that “Nobody is listening to your phone calls.”

Anytime we give up our liberty—we lose.

Perhaps he can also assure us that nobody at the Internal Revenue Service is targeting political dissidents.

Perhaps he can assure us that nobody at the Justice Department is seizing reporters’ phone records.

Sorry, Mr. President, but “trust me” is not good enough.

President Obama says, “You can't have 100 percent security and also then have 100 percent privacy and zero inconvenience.” But we couldn’t have 100 percent security even if we turned America into a total police state—something too many seem eager for—because there’s no such thing as a risk free society.

When balancing liberty against security, the American tradition has always been to err on the side of liberty. Targeting potential terror suspects by obtaining a warrant is an “inconvenience” the Founders’ intentionally put upon the government in order to protect the privacy of citizens.
Now this president turns this core constitutional principle on its head.

There are also Republicans who seem to want more power for government and less for citizens. One senator, a particularly zealous defender of the surveillance state, has said that he would be fine with “censoring the mail” if “necessary” to keep us safe.

This senator would open citizens’ mail, detain them indefinitely if he decided they were dangerous, claw his way through their trash, peek in their bedrooms if he decided they were an enemy, and then if they dared to ask for a lawyer, he would bark: "Shut up! You don’t get a lawyer!"

Such arrogance and tone deafness!

A government as omnipotent as this may be powerful enough to spy on all of its citizens all of the time, but doesn’t seem to be able to even stop terrorists like the Boston Marathon bombers and the “underwear bomber” – both of whom set off warnings before they were noticed.

Instead of monitoring billions of phone calls and spying on law-abiding Americans, perhaps we should have been done more targeted monitoring of the Boston bombing suspects, one of whom traveling to Chechnya, largely undetected.

Clutching desperately for relevance, some Republican Senators point wildly at the Boston Marathon bombing and grit out, "See, I told you so! America is too part of the battlefield.”

Duh! No one is arguing that our enemies won’t attack us here and that we shouldn't defend ourselves. Constitutionalists simply argue that we can defend the homeland and the Bill of Rights simultaneously, and to relinquish concrete liberties for an illusive security is a fool's errand.

I can remember not so long ago, when the war caucus—and we don’t need to name any names—were all saying “we have to fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them here.”

Now, they are saying we have to give up our liberties to fight them here? Who is winning this battle?

Regardless, anytime we give up our liberty—we lose.

National security is the federal government’s top priority. We have always balanced liberty with common sense security precautions. There are unquestionably exceptions to every rule.

But those who continue to defend the National Security Agency’s actions are essentially saying that something that would be controversial even as an exception—blanket phone trolling by the government—is now the new rule. They are saying it’s OK to spy on citizens’ phone data without a warrant, not just one time or a few times, but all the time.

They are saying that suspending the Bill of Rights is now the new normal.

In my world, the Constitution still applies.

Republican Rand Paul represents Kentucky in the United States Senate.

Whistleblower�s NSA warning: �Just the tip of the iceberg�

By Shaun Waterman
The Washington Times
Friday, June 7, 2013

The National Security Agency’s collection of phone data from all of Verizon’s U.S. customers is just the “tip of the iceberg,” says a former NSA official who estimates the agency has data on as many as 20 trillion phone calls and emails by U.S. citizens.

William Binney, an award-winning mathematician and noted NSA whistleblower, says the collection dates back to when the super-secret agency began domestic surveillance after the Sept. 11 attacks.

“I believe they’ve been collecting data about all domestic calls since October 2001,” said Mr. Binney, who worked at NSA for more than 30 years. “That’s more than a billion calls a day.”

He called his figures “back of the envelope” estimates, adding that they include emails as well as telephone calls.

Mr. Binney, who left the agency in October 2001, said the data were collected under a highly classified NSA program code-named “Stellar Wind,” which was part of the warrantless domestic wiretapping effort — the Terrorist Surveillance Program — launched on orders from President George W. Bush.

The Terrorist Surveillance Program was revealed by The New York Times in 2005, but officials said it only monitored calls between Americans and suspected terrorists abroad. The Bush administration said it based the program’s legal authority on the president’s powers as commander-in-chief.

Congress subsequently amended the law governing wiretapping by spy agencies — the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) — to provide legislative authority for the program and require supervision by the special secret court the 1978 act established.

Britain’s Guardian newspaper posted online late Wednesday a copy of the “Top Secret” FISA court order directing telecommunications giant Verizon to hand over “metadata” about every call made or received by all of its customers in the United States. Such metadata include the calling and receiving phone numbers, the time of day and length of the call, and the whereabouts of the two parties.

NSA taps in to user data of Facebook, Google and others

Glenn Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill
The Guardian (UK)
Friday 7 June 2013

A slide depicting the top-secret PRISM program

The National Security Agency has obtained direct access to the systems of Google, Facebook, Apple and other US internet giants, according to a top secret document obtained by the Guardian.

The NSA access is part of a previously undisclosed program called PRISM, which allows officials to collect material including search history, the content of emails, file transfers and live chats, the document says.

The Guardian has verified the authenticity of the document, a 41-slide PowerPoint presentation – classified as top secret with no distribution to foreign allies – which was apparently used to train intelligence operatives on the capabilities of the program. The document claims "collection directly from the servers" of major US service providers.

Although the presentation claims the program is run with the assistance of the companies, all those who responded to a Guardian request for comment on Thursday denied knowledge of any such program.

In a statement, Google said: "Google cares deeply about the security of our users' data. We disclose user data to government in accordance with the law, and we review all such requests carefully. From time to time, people allege that we have created a government 'back door' into our systems, but Google does not have a back door for the government to access private user data."

Several senior tech executives insisted that they had no knowledge of PRISM or of any similar scheme. They said they would never have been involved in such a program. "If they are doing this, they are doing it without our knowledge," one said.

An Apple spokesman said it had "never heard" of PRISM.

The NSA access was enabled by changes to US surveillance law introduced under President Bush and renewed under Obama in December 2012.

The program facilitates extensive, in-depth surveillance on live communications and stored information. The law allows for the targeting of any customers of participating firms who live outside the US, or those Americans whose communications include people outside the US...

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