Re: Intel Official: Expect Less Privacy
jim added these comments in the current discussion du jour ...
> Intel Official: Expect Less Privacy
>
> WASHINGTON (AP) -- As Congress debates new rules for
> government
> eavesdropping, a top intelligence official says it is time
> that people in the United States changed their definition of
> privacy.
>
> Privacy no longer can mean anonymity, says Donald Kerr,
> the principal
> deputy director of national intelligence. Instead, it should
> mean that government and businesses properly safeguard
> people's private communications and financial information.
>
> Kerr's comments come as Congress is taking a second look
> at the
> Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
>
> Lawmakers hastily changed the 1978 law last summer to
> allow the
> government to eavesdrop inside the United States without court
> permission, so long as one end of the conversation was
> reasonably believed to be located outside the U.S.
>
> The original law required a court order for any
> surveillance conducted
> on U.S. soil, to protect Americans' privacy. The White House
> argued that the law was obstructing intelligence gathering
> because, as technology has changed, a growing amount of
> foreign communications passes through U.S.-based channels.
>
> The most contentious issue in the new legislation is
> whether to shield
> telecommunications companies from civil lawsuits for allegedly
> giving the government access to people's private e-mails and
> phone calls without a FISA court order between 2001 and 2007.
>
> Some lawmakers, including members of the Senate
> Judiciary Committee,
> appear reluctant to grant immunity. Suits might be the only
> way to determine how far the government has burrowed into
> people's privacy without court permission.
>
> The committee is expected to decide this week whether
> its version of
> the bill will protect telecommunications companies. About 40
> wiretapping suits are pending.
>
> The central witness in a California lawsuit against AT&T
> says the
> government is vacuuming up billions of e-mails and phone calls
> as they pass through an AT&T switching station in San
> Francisco.
>
> Mark Klein, a retired AT&T technician, helped connect a
> device in 2003
> that he says diverted and copied onto a government
> supercomputer every call, e-mail, and Internet site access on
> AT&T lines.
>
> The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which filed the
> class-action suit,
> claims there are as many as 20 such sites in the U.S.
>
> The White House has promised to veto any bill that does
> not grant
> immunity from suits such as this one.
>
> Congressional leaders hope to finish the bill by
> Thanksgiving. It
> would replace the FISA update enacted in August that privacy
> groups and civil libertarians say allows the government to
> read Americans' e-mails and listen to their phone calls
> without court oversight.
>
> Kerr said at an October intelligence conference in San
> Antonio that he
> finds concerns that the government may be listening in odd
> when people are "perfectly willing for a green-card holder at
> an (Internet service provider) who may or may have not have
> been an illegal entrant to the United States to handle their
> data."
>
> He noted that government employees face up to five years
> in prison and
> $100,000 in fines if convicted of misusing private
> information.
>
> Millions of people in this country - particularly young
> people -
> already have surrendered anonymity to social networking sites
> such as MySpace and Facebook, and to Internet commerce. These
> sites reveal to the public, government and corporations what
> was once closely guarded information, like personal statistics
> and credit card numbers.
>
> "Those two generations younger than we are have a very
> different idea
> of what is essential privacy, what they would wish to protect
> about their lives and affairs. And so, it's not for us to
> inflict one size fits all," said Kerr, 68. "Protecting
> anonymity isn't a fight that can be won. Anyone that's typed
> in their name on Google understands that."
>
> "Our job now is to engage in a productive debate, which
> focuses on
> privacy as a component of appropriate levels of security and
> public safety," Kerr said. "I think all of us have to really
> take stock of what we already are willing to give up, in terms
> of anonymity, but (also) what safeguards we want in place to
> be sure that giving that doesn't empty our bank account or do
> something equally bad elsewhere."
>
> Kurt Opsahl, a senior staff lawyer with the Electronic
> Frontier
> Foundation, an advocacy group that defends online free speech,
> privacy and intellectual property rights, said Kerr's argument
> ignores both privacy laws and American history.
>
> "Anonymity has been important since the Federalist
> Papers were written
> under pseudonyms," Opsahl said. "The government has tremendous
> power: the police power, the ability to arrest, to detain, to
> take away rights. Tying together that someone has spoken out
> on an issue with their identity is a far more dangerous thing
> if it is the government that is trying to tie it together."
>
> Opsahl also said Kerr ignores the distinction between
> sacrificing
> protection from an intrusive government and voluntarily
> disclosing information in exchange for a service.
>
> "There is something fundamentally different from the
> government having
> information about you than private parties," he said. "We
> shouldn't have to give people the choice between taking
> advantage of modern communication tools and sacrificing their
> privacy."
>
> "It's just another 'trust us, we're the government,'" he
> said.
>
>
> (Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press. All Rights
> Reserved.)
>
> http://www.11alive.com/news/article_news.aspx?storyid=106
> 257
Seems like we really do need some sort of change in the White House
in 2008. it'd be nice if we could get it earlier, but we cannot.
I'm not an attorney thus hardly a Constitutional law expert, but my
simple engineer's mind in reading the Bill of Rights and the "due
process of law" clause of the 14th amendment strongly suggests that
the post-9/11 Big Brother changes brought about by FISA being
emasculated and this thing people think is the Patriot Act has
pretty much destroyed the Bill of Rights. Now, besides what this
Intel guy says that I think is, as the Brits would say, Spot On,
there is also the issue of some number, perhaps into the millions,
of ordinary U.S. Postal Service mail being opened by the bully boys
and girls. And, I believe it is in 2009 that new Federal
requirements to state-issued driver's licenses to facilitate
central tracking takes effect. Now, too bad the same Beltway Boys
(and Girls) that have so blatantly ignored the law and their own
oaths of office don't have the same candor when asked to explain
their actions. And then, we have the issue of illegal aliens. Some
think the number is 12 million, others north of 20. Whatever the
number, the bill passed by Congress and signed into law by the
president mandating an 800 mile double fence across the border to
Mexico will never be finished, the Border Patrol is literally
scared blind into total inaction lest they too get jail time for
enforcing the law, and ICE simply sends the illegals back. Maybe
I've missed something small here, but I think I grasp the bigger
picture: it is only a VERY small step before all of us law abiding
citizens of this great country, the United States of America, will
be required to carry "papers" and travel authorizations reminiscent
of those required of French citizens during the Nazi occupation of
France for nearly 5 years. Think it cannot happen here? Well, think
again. Besides said FISA and USA PATRIOT Act (Uniting and
Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to
Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism), we have the historical
precedents of the Alien and Sedition Act during John Adams 2nd term
and the Sedition Act in Woodrow Wilson's 2nd term. Both made it a
federal crime to even criticize an elected official, so Lord knows
what such a law might be like with today's "activist" judges who
like more and more to legislate from the bench. Thankfully, the 2
prior sedition laws were overturned by the Supreme Court as being
unconstitutional, but the spectre of Big Brother from the George
Orwell novel "1984" looms ever and ever larger. I'll end this rant
by observing that if any of what I think is going on is at all what
is really going on, the Intel prediction is correct, and the horror
of civil libertarians everywhere is well-founded then it may well
come to pass that the Feds break down the door to our homes, arrest
us, and confiscate our PCs because they've been monitoring our E-
mails, Usenet posts, and web sites/hits and determined that we are
some perverted terrorist planning an attack. This quote from the
Holcaust sums it up a different way:
"First they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was
not a Jew. Then they came for the Communists and I did not speak
out because I was not a Communist. Then they came for the trade
unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade
unionist. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak
out for me" - Jewish saying from the Holocaust
--
HP, aka Jerry