You Have No Privacy Anywhere: Administration Pushes Forward With Domestic Spy Satellite Program

from the don't-mind-us... dept

While everyone's arguing over the legality of warrantless wiretaps, it looks like the administration and the Department of Homeland Security have moved on to even bigger fish: using spy satellites to spy more thoroughly throughout the US. For rather obvious reasons, this has many folks concerned. The government has shown a decided lack of ability to "stick to the rules" when it comes on domestic spying programs, and given what some of these spy satellites can do, it has people concerned about why the US is using such military hardware, normally reserved to spy on enemy countries, to spy on our own citizens. Somehow, DHS boss Michael Chertoff's response to his critics isn't particularly reassuring:

"There is no basis to suggest that this process is in any way insufficient to protect the privacy and civil liberties of Americans... I think we've fully addressed anybody's concerns. I think the way is now clear to stand it up and go warm on it."

To translate: "You should trust us, because we're trustworthy people who would never do anything wrong (please ignore all we've done wrong over the past few years). So, now that that's settled, let's get this baby rolling..."

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FBI Apparently Believes That Court Orders Are For Suckers

from the data-mining-the-FBI dept

Wired's invaluable Ryan Singel has been panning for gold in the muddy stream of FBI e-mails and other documents recently obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation under a Freedom of Information Act request, and has already hit a couple of intriguing nuggets, such as overeager agents' willingness to bypass court-order requirements when seeking cell phone records. The documents reveal how this caused tension and dispute even within the Bureau.

One e-mail, from a tech specialist in the FBI's Minneapolis office, complained that other agents would even pose as that specialist when calling telecom carriers, hoping to persuade them to turn over cell records without a judge's order. The cell information would apparently then be used as part of a high-tech tracking program that allowed agents to pinpoint a cell user's location.

Equally intriguing is the report that the Bureau's national-security wiretapping software recorded almost 28 million "session" intercepts in 2006. While it's not clear precisely what counts as a "session," this is obviously vastly more than the 2,176 FISA warrants (pdf) obtained by the government that year, at least some of which only covered physical searches. Unless terror suspects talk on the phone far more than the average teenager, the discrepancy hints that each warrant may have covered a very large number of individuals.

Julian Sanchez is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Julian Sanchez and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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