Bush administration is basically asking for the ability to monitor all email communications

[kpete]

March 4, 2008
MONITORING EMAIL....The Protect America Act, which revises the FISA law, is partly designed to ensure that communications entirely outside the U.S. that happen to pass through a U.S. switch can be monitored without a warrant. Both Democrats and Republicans agree that this is fine. But the Washington Post reports today that assistant attorney general for national security Kenneth Wainstein put a slightly different spin on this at an ABA breakfast on Monday:

At the breakfast yesterday, Wainstein highlighted a different problem with the current FISA law than other administration officials have emphasized....In response to a question at the meeting by David Kris, a former federal prosecutor and a FISA expert, Wainstein said FISA's current strictures did not cover strictly foreign wire and radio communications, even if acquired in the United States. The real concern, he said, is primarily e-mail, because "essentially you don't know where the recipient is going to be" and so you would not know in advance whether the communication is entirely outside the United States. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/03/AR2008030302814.html?hpid=topnews

But if there's no way to know in advance where the recipient of an email is going to be, then the Bush administration is basically asking for the ability to monitor all email communications that pass through a U.S. switch. And they interpret the text of PAA as giving them that authority. Right?

—Kevin Drum
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_03/013250.php

[hobbit709]

1. Clog their database-send as many emails a day as you can.

Send emails to everyone you can think of.

[crimsonblue]

18. Not gonna do anything

The White House isn't doing the spying, that'd be the NSA. The NSA has supercomputers so powerful that they can run the entire internet (which they are piped into thanks to At&T) as an application, like you might run Solitaire or Word. Considering there are something like 3 trillion websites, I highly doubt that a few million or billion emails will even make a dent, except to get you noticed by the NSA. If you thought the Gov spying on your library records was bad, wait until typing a word into Google will make you a terror suspect.

[Lint Head]

2. Send daily emails directly to the White House and say,

"Monitor this." Then list every crime Bush and Cheney has committed. Don't forget to 'cc' Pelosi, Harry Reid and any other Congressman or Senator your prefer. :dem:

[VP505]

16. WOW, I really like that idea

and for sure it will be a must do on my daily to do list, LOL.

[askeptic]

3. Encrypt all E-mail, something I'm sure terrorists would never do

Get something like PGP and encrypt everything. If everyone did this, it would cripple their spying on Americans, since decryption would take an unholy amount of computer resources...

[varelse]

4. Except those on the RNC server

Those emails are protected by executive privilege until they can be deleted by accident.

[EFerrari]

5. They can't even track their own.

lol

[seafan]

6. Kenneth Wainstein: We also want to vacuum up all e-mail. HOUSE DEMS, STOP THIS.

Take a look at some of the history of this Bush minion, Kenneth Wainstein, **assistant attorney general for national security**, who is jockeying for access to all of our e-mail:



Wainstein refused to deliver Bob Graham's subpoena to the FBI informant living with two of the 9-11 hijackers



Ken Wainstein is ALSO *handling the initial assessment* at DOJ of the destroyed torture tapes.





Wiretap Compromise in Works

By Ellen Nakashima and Paul Kane
March 4, 2008

House and Senate Democratic leaders are headed into talks today that they say could lead to a breakthrough on legislation to revamp domestic surveillance powers and grant phone companies some form of immunity for their role in the administration's warrantless wiretapping program after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

.....

....a resolution has been delayed partly by the need for all members of the House Judiciary Committee to gain access to the letters and other relevant documents sent to the phone companies by the administration requesting their assistance.
House Democratic leaders demanded such access before they would contemplate immunity, and the administration granted full access last week.

.....

The dilemma faced by Democrats is that Republicans and the administration oppose any bill other than the measure passed by the Senate that includes full retroactive immunity for the telecommunications companies.
"This is not amnesty," (Kenneth) Wainstein (assistant attorney general for national security) said at the meeting. "This is targeted immunity" for companies who meet requirements specified in the Senate bill that include having received an attorney general's certification that their assistance was determined to be lawful.

A group of several dozen moderate to conservative House Democrats, known as "Blue Dogs," has pushed Hoyer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to approve the Senate bill. Some aides on Capitol Hill were discussing the potential for the House passing the Senate version but breaking it into two votes: one on the portion of the bill that deals with revising FISA provisions and a second on the immunity measure.

This procedural move would allow many Democrats to vote against immunity but still make its approval all but certain, since almost every Republican and some centrist Democrats would vote in favor.

COWARDS!!! THE WHOLE LOT OF THEM.



More from the http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/03/AR2008030302814.html?hpid=topnews">Post

At the breakfast yesterday, Wainstein highlighted a different problem with the current FISA law than other administration officials have emphasized. Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell, for example, has repeatedly said FISA should be changed so no warrant is needed to tap a communication that took place entirely outside the United States but happened to pass through the United States.

But in response to a question at the meeting by David Kris, a former federal prosecutor and a FISA expert, Wainstein said FISA's current strictures did not cover strictly foreign wire and radio communications, even if acquired in the United States. The real concern, he said, is primarily e-mail, because "essentially you don't know where the recipient is going to be" and so you would not know in advance whether the communication is entirely outside the United States.

So, according to Kenneth Wainstein, all of our e-mail is one of the main targets of Bush's mass surveillance.




People, this is where the rubber meets the road.


This is our last chance to preserve our rights and to discover just WHO George W. Bush has been spying on since February, 2001.

If the House and Senate Democrats compromise on this, and give retroactive immunity to the telecoms for breaking existing law, we are truly lost as a nation of laws.



NO IMMUNITY FOR BUSH'S LAWBREAKING.



Bush has been spying on us since February, 2001.


This exposes Bush in yet another lie that this surveillance 'is necessary to prevent further 9-11 attacks.'




Wider Spying Fuels Aid Plan for Telecom Industry

By ERIC LICHTBLAU, JAMES RISEN and SCOTT SHANE
December 16, 2007

.....

In a separate program], N.S.A. officials met with the Qwest executives in February 2001 and asked for more access to their phone system for surveillance operations, according to people familiar with the episode. The company declined, expressing concerns that the request was illegal without a court order.

While Qwest’s refusal was disclosed two months ago in court papers, the details of the N.S.A.’s request were not. The agency, those knowledgeable about the incident said, wanted to install monitoring equipment on Qwest’s “Class 5” switching facilities, which transmit the most localized calls. Limited international traffic also passes through the switches.

A government official said the N.S.A. intended to single out only foreigners on Qwest’s network, and added that the agency believed Joseph Nacchio, then the chief executive of Qwest, and other company officials misunderstood the agency’s proposal. Bob Toevs, a Qwest spokesman, said the company did not comment on matters of national security.

Other N.S.A. initiatives have stirred concerns among phone company workers. A lawsuit was filed in federal court in New Jersey challenging the agency’s wiretapping operations. It claims that in February 2001, just days before agency officials met with Qwest officials, the N.S.A. met with AT&T officials to discuss replicating a network center in Bedminster, N.J., to give the agency access to all the global phone and e-mail traffic that ran through it.

The accusations rely in large part on the assertions of a former engineer on the project. The engineer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said in an interview that he participated in numerous discussions with N.S.A. officials about the proposal. The officials, he said, discussed ways to duplicate the Bedminster system in Maryland so the agency “could listen in” with unfettered access to communications that it believed had intelligence value and store them for later review. There was no discussion of limiting the monitoring to international communications, he said.

“At some point,” he said, “I started feeling something isn’t right.”

.....

NO IMMUNITY FOR BUSH'S LAWBREAKING

[opusprime]

7. House is ready to cave...

I cant believe they are going to cave again.

I called both my Senators and Congressman. They have all voted against this garbage up to now, but I told them it was unacceptable that this was even being considered.

Need some more rec's to get this up.

[Hydra]

8. Be aware that they already do this

They just want a legal rubber stamp on it so they can spend even more money on the infrastructure they need for this(Supercomputers, datasifting software, prototype tech like optical chips, etc)

[MelissaB]

9. Yep!

[ThomWV]

10. Monitor! Think about that. What does it mean to "Monitor"

This is not survelence for some suspected crime, this is monitoring your daily life to see if you conform to whatever norm they decide is appropriate.

Monitor.

Think about it.

[Joshua N]

11. K & R. This is crazy.

[LibertyLover]

12. All your e-mails they belong to us!

n/t

[OneBlueSky]

13. anytime I hear that the Democrats are "compromising" with Bush and the Repugs . . .

the only word that comes to mind is "capitulation" -- yet again . . .

[flashl]

14. K&R n/t

[opihimoimoi]

15. Its cheap after all, only our privacy and $5758696079785756.08

[LSK]

17. 10 more months of this utter sheer stupidity