For the second year running, all snooping-on-citizens requests have been granted by our nation's most secret court, the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

A secretive federal court last year approved all of the 1,856 requests to search or electronically surveil people within the United States “for foreign intelligence purposes,” the Justice Department reported this week.

The 2012 figures represent a 5 percent bump from the prior year, when no requests were denied either.

This surveillance was supposed to be limited to American citizens in contact with entities outside of the United States, but requesters found that adding the words "Al Qaeda" into the mix allowed eavesdropping on email and phone calls that never leave the country. This being a secret court, one running without oversight and immune from lawsuits, it seems operatives can request pretty much anything and have it approved. It's the ultimate rubber stamp process and one that can be asked for after the fact. Even a still-theoretical rejection can't slow down the spying.

The legislation does not require the government to identify the target or facility to be monitored. It can begin surveillance a week before making the request to the secret court, and the surveillance can continue during the appeals process if, in a rare case, the spy court rejects the surveillance application.

On the bright less oppressively gloomy side, there has been a slight reduction in National Security Letters, those wonderful sheets of paper law enforcement and security agencies use to compel pretty much any business (ISPs, banks, credit agencies, etc.) to hand over as much data on the named citizen as possible.

The same Justice Department report this week said the government issued 15,229 National Security Letters last year, down from 16,511 in 2011.

We'll have to see how much this number tails off in 2013 considering a federal judge ruled these letters unconstitutional in March. There's no reason to stop writing these letters quite yet, though. The ruling has been stayed for 90 days pending the administration's appeal. Given the track record of this administration (and the last), one would expect these letters to live a full, healthy (and unconstitutional) life, perhaps revived by an Executive Order or some sort of "national safety/security" exemption.

On top of the usual concerns about increased surveillance of American citizens is the fact that this 2-page "report" gives us no useful information about whether all of this spying is actually having any impact in the War on Terror.

As an instrument of public oversight, the annual reports on FISA are only minimally informative. They register gross levels of activity, but they provide no measures of quality, performance or significance. Neither counterintelligence successes nor failures can be discerned from the reports. Nor can one conclude from the data presented that the FISA process is functioning as intended, or that it needs to be curbed or refined.

The less data there is available, the fewer questions there are to answer. Right now, there's plenty of questions, but until the courts force the issue (a route that doesn't look terribly promising, despite the recent decision on National Security Letters), these questions can be safely ignored.

It's long been assumed (or hinted at very strongly by a variety of evidence) that the feds have been making and collecting copies of pretty much every digital communication available. A whistleblower from AT&T more or less revealed the details on that. The NSA's ability to collect all this data is well documented, and people are just now coming to terms with the legal loopholes used to justify this mass sweeping up of communications.

However, for the most part, it was believed that the content of phone calls was not included in this broad sweep. While it's well known that law enforcement can get a wiretap on your phone if they suspect something, there was little indication that other calls are being recorded. Similarly, information about who you called and when you spoke to them tends to be easy for law enforcement to get. However, Glenn Greenwald is noting that a former FBI counterterrorism agent, Tim Clemente, went on TV, and in discussing the investigation of Katherine Russell (the wife of deceased accused Boston bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev) has clearly said that the contents of historical phone calls are also available to the feds.

BURNETT: Tim, is there any way, obviously, there is a voice mail they can try to get the phone companies to give that up at this point. It's not a voice mail. It's just a conversation. There's no way they actually can find out what happened, right, unless she tells them?

CLEMENTE: "No, there is a way. We certainly have ways in national security investigations to find out exactly what was said in that conversation. It's not necessarily something that the FBI is going to want to present in court, but it may help lead the investigation and/or lead to questioning of her. We certainly can find that out.

BURNETT: "So they can actually get that? People are saying, look, that is incredible.

CLEMENTE: "No, welcome to America. All of that stuff is being captured as we speak whether we know it or like it or not."

It's possible this was an exaggeration, but when questioned about this particular point later, Clemente again insisted that it was the case and specifically added that "all digital communications in the past" are recorded and stored. Of course, again, he may have misspoken. Or he may be exaggerating for effect. There's also the possibility that Tamerlan's phone calls were actually being tapped given the earlier investigation of him for possible terrorist connections.

So there are numerous possibilities here, but it is still a case of an FBI counterterrorism agent claiming, multiple times, that the contents of all phone calls are being recorded, which, if true, would be quite a revelation (and probably not something Clemente is supposed to be revealing via an interview with the media). At the very least, it would be good for there to be some serious follow up on this to find out how true Clemente's claims really are.

When we wrote last year about a Dutch idea to give police there the power to break into computers -- even those located abroad -- we and many others pointed out a number of deep flaws with the plan. Undeterred, the Dutch government seems to be going ahead with the scheme, as Bits of Freedom explains:

The police should be allowed to hack into mobile phones and computers, even when these are located abroad. This is proposed by the Dutch government on May 2nd of 2013. While this appears to be a powerful asset for law enforcement, in reality it creates unnecessary vulnerabilities for citizens.

Not content with that really bad idea, there's a couple of others tacked on for good measure, as the BBC reports:

The bill would also make it a crime for a suspect to refuse to decipher encrypted files during a police investigation.

It is expected the draft legislation will be put to parliament by the end of the year.

The bill singles out child pornography and terrorism as two areas of special concern. The publication of stolen data would also become punishable.

It's easy to see how the last of those could be abused to silence inconvenient whistleblowers. Bits of Freedom sums up well the key danger with the bill:

other countries, such as China, will use the powers as a justification for their own activities. They will follow the Dutch example by allowing their police to use the same methods, including hacking abroad, in order to delete controversial data. Civilians will become the victims in an arms race between hacking governments.

Indeed, it's worth considering for a moment what the Chinese response will be when it finds Dutch police, with the full approval of the Dutch government, deleting files or installing spyware on computers on its territory. It won't matter if the latter were involved in breaking into Dutch systems, or controlling a global botnet: national pride will be at stake over what will effectively be an attack on Chinese citizens and property. So as not to lose "face", a robust response is guaranteed. Is the Netherlands (population 6,065,459 16,788,973) really ready to take on China (population 1,353,821,000) over this?

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You may recall that in the course of the case against Kim Dotcom in New Zealand, it was revealed that the New Zealand intelligence service, the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB), illegally wiretapped and spied on Kim Dotcom. The GCSB's mandate is that it can only spy on foreign communications, but used its powers illegally domestically. While NZ prime minister John Key apologized for the episode, it has raised lots of questions about his role in the whole matter -- and when he knew the law was being broken. Other info has come out as well, including attempts to cover up the illegal surveillance, and the fact that the GCSB illegally spied on nearly 100 people. Dotcom is now suing the government over this whole mess.

Given all that, you might think that PM Key would be focused on putting in place safeguards to stop the system from being so abused in the future. Not so. Instead, as reader aster points out, Key is now trying to change the law to make it easier to spy on citizens and others in the country. In other words, he's seeking to legalize domestic spying for the intelligence agency. The new proposal would allow for domestic spying on citizens and residents if approved by PM Key. As if he didn't already appear untrustworthy in the matter, he's now suggesting that because it has to go through him, it'll somehow avoid abuses? Opposition politicians are pointing out how laughable it is that Key is now asking people to trust him personally that such spying powers won't be abused.

When cameras first came about there was a bit of a moral panic around them. People feared being photographed at all and so there were various concerns raised, moral panics followed, and even an occasional proposed law about how cameras could be used. It would appear that we may be approaching a similar moral panic around the coming launch of Google Glass. There's been a growing buzz about "privacy" concerns around Google Glass -- one that has even led former Homeland Security boss Michael Chertoff to worry about the implications, and suggest Congress and the FTC take a look. A publicity campaign called "Stop the Cyborgs" (seriously guys?) has sprung up offering Google Glass Ban Signs for places that want to ban the as-yet-unreleased technology. And, most recently, someone put together a White House petition urging the White House to ban the devices until "limitations on public surveillance" can be put in place. Not that the White House has that kind of authority, of course.

The whole thing seems to be screaming moral panic around a new technology, which still might not even catch on. Of course, even if Glass doesn't catch on, this is how technology works, and sooner or later, someone will get this kind of product right, such that eventually it won't even look odd like Glass, but will just fit into a contact lens or be directly embedded. That's just how this stuff is likely to go. People can freak out about it all they want and demand that there be a law, but most people recognize that the technology is coming one way or the other, and that's not going to change or go away. The right thing to do is figure out how to deal with it, rather than looking for ways to stop it. Though, just wait until someone at the MPAA wakes up and realizes that with Glass, someone will be able to record a movie...

Everything questionable that Bloomberg has overseen in his position as mayor of New York -- all the civil rights violations, all the increased surveillance, all the the dubious actions and policies that sent the message that Bloomberg was very interested in crafting a hybrid nanny/police state -- is coming home to roost.

With the police force under attack from multiple lawsuits and his soda ban overturned by a NY judge for being "arbitrary and capricious" (name a ban that isn't), Bloomberg is on the defensive -- and he sounds it. Rather than addressing concerns with thoughtful answers, the mayor has decided to respond by lashing out at his critics and backing up his dubious claims with even worse rationale.

Bloomberg pointed fingers and threw out the obligatory 9/11 card during his speech/diatribe delivered from the friendly confines of the NYPD headquarters. Bloomberg's comments hold everyone accountable for the current unpleasantness (and future theoretic unpleasantness) -- everyone but Bloomberg and the NYPD. The arguments Bloomberg uses are so abysmal it's almost possible to believe this is a very broadly played satire, rather than an actual event that actually happened. Just take a look at this statement.

“God forbid terrorists succeed in striking our city because of a politically driven law that undermines the N.Y.P.D.’s intelligence gathering efforts,” he said.

"Terrorists." "God forbid." Someone needs to find a new rhetorical device.

Believe it or not, this is Bloomberg's argument against appointing an independent Inspector General to review police policies. The argument has two parts, both equally awful. The first uses the tired "but terrorism" threat/excuse/cliche. The second part actually makes the claim that an Inspector General would result in other agencies being less willing to share info with the NYPD. That may be true, but why is it true and why is this an "acceptable" truth? To put it in words frequently directed towards US citizens: what do they have to hide?

Bloomberg's words play to the home crowd (NYPD) , but holy shit is that an ugly bit of truth to (inadvertently) drop in the middle of a loaded sentence. If NYPD intelligence gathering is "undermined" by the presence of independent oversight, the problem is with the NYPD and every agency that decideds to cut them out of the loop, willfully endangering the public in favor of CYA opacity.

Bloomberg said more, but this statement is just terrible. It indicates there's an acceptable level of corruption within the police force and that the mayor has no interest in addressing that issue. Everything else becomes so much banality aimed at satiating his audience, a collection of NYPD police chiefs. There's terrorism (again):

“Look at what’s happened in Boston,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “Remember what happened here on 9/11. Remember all of those who’ve been killed by gun violence and the families they left behind.”

OK. And what? Honor their memories by giving the police carte blanche to shove any citizen up against the nearest wall and pat them down? Cover every inch of the city with cameras, microphones and facial recognition software in hopes of "preventing" a statistically anomalous event (and proclaiming victory when the more statistically probable nothing continues to happen)?

To top this all off, Bloomberg steps past the empty rhetoric and defense of shady police "business as usual" to hypocritically deride others for "playing politics with people's lives."

“The attacks most often come from those who play no constructive role in keeping our city safe, but rather, view their jobs as pointing fingers from the steps of City Hall,” he said.

Said the man who is City Hall, pointing fingers from NYPD headquarters.

Bloomberg's statements are ugly, but at least they were delivered out in the open, rather than in a closed-door meeting with the "home team." All of Bloomberg's finger pointing and cheap rationale is a matter of public record. This is a small, inadvertent, victory. Bloomberg wants his constituents' lives to be open books, but wants the NYPD to remain an inscrutable, unassailable means of enforcement and "security." That's a load of crap and Bloomberg seems to be having trouble shoveling it correctly. If he keeps feeling this sort of heat, we may see him slipping into full blown opacity or devolving even further into a ranting apologist for systemic failure.

You knew it was coming. Former DHS official Stewart Baker got the ball rolling with his atrocious attempt to portray the ACLU and the EFF as hacker-and-terrorist sympathizers. A few politicians bravely read the tea leaves (while the tea was still brewing!) and declared the Boston bombing to be Exhibit A in the argument for tougher immigration laws.

Now it's time for those who love surveillance cameras to stand up and claim a piece of this tragedy as their own. An article in the Wall Street Journal collects a few quotes from some political camera enthusiasts who believe this successful manhunt justifies increased surveillance by law enforcement.

"They had to piece together I don't know how many thousands of videos," said Rep. Peter King, a New York Republican who is on the House Committee on Homeland Security. "I think CCTV [closed-circuit television] cameras are much more needed in urban areas."

The FBI and police already had "how many thousands of videos," and yet it's still not enough. More cameras are "needed." King continues this line of thinking in an interview with MSNBC.

So, I do think we need more cameras. We have to stay ahead of the terrorists and I do know in New York, the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative, which is based on cameras, the outstanding work that results from that. So yes, I do favor more cameras. They're a great law enforcement method and device. And again, it keeps us ahead of the terrorists, who are constantly trying to kill us.

Constantly? That's an interesting ridiculous take on reality. (The odds of an American being killed by a terrorist attack are effectively zero.) King must spend plenty of sleepless, terrorized nights chatting with Mike Rogers, whose fear of hackers prevents him from catching any shuteye. Either that or he's been chatting with the FBI and the NYPD who it seems can barely go a week without creating and shutting down another terrorist "plot."

[Peter King worries about terrorists... but only if they're Muslim. He's perfectly fine with white Irish terrorists, seeing as he went on record during the 80s stating his support for the IRA, which notably bombed a shopping center during the Christmas season, killing six and injuring 90. He was very concerned about their civil rights. Those were his kind of terrorists. These ones, not so much.]

New York mayor Michael Bloomberg also feels the bombing in Boston justifies extensive surveillance in New York City... or more than it already has.

"The Boston bombing is a terrible reminder of why we've made these investments—including camera technology that could help us deter an attack, or investigate and apprehend those involved," New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said this past week. He added the network now has the ability to "alert police to abnormalities it detects on the street, such as an abandoned package that is left on a corner."

Personally, I could do without the "terrible reminders" and the "investments." Bloomberg claims the tragedy justifies the surveillance, but there's very little effort being made to curtail either sides of this false equation. New York law enforcement seems to spend most of its time hanging out in mosques or shoving non-white male youths up against the nearest wall for a little of the old stop-and-frisk.

There's a chicken-and-egg thing going on here. Apparently, we "need" to increase surveillance because awful things happen. But when awful things fail to happen, no one in the surveillance "community" takes the time to wonder if perhaps the current surveillance efforts might be excessive. Surveillance, like any other vehicle of government control, only expands over time. Various government agencies will once again be asking you to trade privacy for security. The problem is these agencies can't promise security. The only thing they can truly guarantee is "taking" your privacy.

There have been a lot of kneejerk reactions to the Boston Marathon bombing. Between certain politicians and pundits quickly turning the horrific event into makeshift planks to support their pet legislation/conspiracy theories and the New York Post cranking out reports so "exclusive" they weren't even true, the internet and airwaves have been filled with the sort of stupidity we've sadly come to expect when tragedy strikes.

Then something comes along that swaggers right up to you and punches you in the face with its breathtaking imbecility. This is Stewart Baker's "contribution" to the national discussion, filed over at the otherwise esteemed Volokh Conspiracy under the heading "Fool Me Once..."

When people say, "The stupid! It burns!" they're usually referring to garden variety stupidity or the occasional bit of advanced moronics that momentarily derails entire comment threads. This thing that Baker has cobbled together out of the stuff he likes best -- surveillance and more surveillance -- towers over other moments of burning stupid like a Wicker Man made entirely from straw. The stupid here doesn't simply burn. It immolates the rational person's mind, replacing coherent arguments with searing, nightmarish pain that reduces responses to stunted internet-native declarations like "wat."

Baker wants us to believe that the EFF and the ACLU are wrong... in both instances. What it actually shows is the EFF/ACLU's consistency on these issues. Unless Baker has heard otherwise, the EFF and ACLU are still against widespread surveillance (along with CISPA). This event, as terrible as it was, doesn't change that stance.

Only someone like Baker, a former DHS "company man" and freelance contributor to the underdeveloped "TSA porn" genre, would take the stance that the FBI's release of camera footage capturing the two bombing suspects' images justifies the massive amount of surveillance many in this country are subjected to in nearly every public space. (His take conveniently ignores the fact that the stills posted by the FBI appear to have been captured by cameras deployed by private businesses.)

Only someone who seems to detest the actions of privacy advocates would insinuate through a disingenuous headline ("What they said about street cameras before the bombing") that the EFF and ACLU would change their views on surveillance after an event like this. They won't. Only fair-weather friends of Constitutional rights and civil liberties change their stances after a tragedy like this. (See also: EVERYTHING THE GOVERNMENT HAS ENACTED SINCE SEPT. 11, 2001 THAT DEALS WITH NATIONAL "SAFETY" OR "SECURITY.")

And only someone who knows CISPA is a purposely flawed bill aimed at giving the government even more control and surveillance powers would have the gall to cheapen this tragedy by attempting to equate the two using a bullshit "conclusion" hastily MS Painted together and dropped unceremoniously into the blogosphere like a flaming bag of foul-smelling rhetoric on the doormat.

One question, though, Stewart, tied into Boston Marathon as you've done with yours: all of this surveillance, all these increased security measures, all this warrantless wiretapping, all these pat downs and scans at the airport, all of these drones flying all over the world, all these double-secret interpretations of super-secret laws, all of these redacted FOIA responses, all of this Cyber Pearl Harbor hand wringing, all of encroachment of the government into every aspect of American existence?

What did it prevent?

Remember how the New Zealand intelligence organization GCSB (Government Communications Security Bureau) had to admit that it had illegally spied on Kim Dotcom? That kicked off an investigation that has now revealed that the GCSB illegally spied on somewhere around 85 people.

GCSB director Ian Fletcher said in February that his agency did not illegally spy on anyone else on behalf of law enforcement agencies.

But the Kitteridge report contradicts this - questioning the lawfulness of GCSB surveillance involving 85 New Zealanders. The agency is forbidden from spying on anyone with citizenship or permanent residence here.

The illegal spying was conducted between April 2003 and September last year and done on behalf of the Security Intelligence Service, the domestic spy agency.

But wait... there's more. The report also found that it's likely GCSB violated other laws as well, including the Privacy Act and the Defence Act. Not surprisingly, the report also finds a mess of an agency with terrible management, poor record-keeping and little oversight. Shocking, isn't it, that such conditions would lead to abuse of power and illegal surveillance, huh?

We just recently had a post on the head of one of Homeland Security's "Fusion Centers" (the same Fusion Centers found by a Congressional investigation to be a near total waste of time and money, finding no terrorists, but violating the public's civil liberties) who claimed that the DHS centers did not spy on Americans, and then immediately admitted that they spied on "anti-government" Americans.

The definition of "anti-government" was mostly left as an exercise to the reader. However, in a bout of good timing, the Partnership for Civil Justice has released some new DHS documents it received via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, showing that DHS regularly spied on peaceful demonstrators and activists. Because exercising your First Amendment rights must make you one of them there "anti-government" Americans, which means the DHS is free to spy on you.

Functioning as a secret political police force against people participating in lawful, peaceful free speech activity, the heavily redacted documents show that the DHS “Threat Management Division” directed Regional Intelligence Analysts to provide a “Daily Intelligence Briefing” that includes a category of reporting on “Peaceful Activist Demonstrations” along with “Domestic Terrorist Activity.” (p. 68)

The PCJF has obtained thousands of pages of documents pursuant to its Freedom of Information Act demands and made them available for public viewing. The newly obtained documents show coordination and intelligence monitoring by the DHS, the FBI, the NYPD and other law enforcement agencies of “Occupy-type” protests.

The documents show the routine use of Fusion Centers for intelligence gathering on peaceful demonstrations as well as the use of DHS’ “Mega Centers” for collection of surveillance information on demonstrations.

And it's not just the big cities. The new documents show that DHS is involved in spying on peaceful protesters and activists around the country. It also shows that DHS helped local law enforcement "crack down" on the various Occupy gatherings. But the key thing is that DHS seems to have no qualms at all about spying on anyone who disagrees with the prevailing positions of today's federal government. And it's clearly not because they're trying to protect others from any threat of actual harm. They seem to be focused on spying to further the goal of preventing the administration from looking bad:

The documents show a Department of Homeland Security that appears obsessed with the question of whether any and all protests that are being surveilled receive media attention and coverage. Reporting within the DHS on media coverage of First Amendment protected activities, even in the smallest places, appears to be a routine part of DHS intelligence reports. None of the documents explain why media coverage of peaceful demonstrations is of interest to law enforcement or concerns “homeland security” in any way.

That's because it doesn't concern "homeland security" at all. It concerns the job security of those employed by Homeland Security.