Feds To Seek Sweeping Changes That Allow Internet Wiretaps

Federal officials are preparing to seek sweeping new regulations for the Internet, arguing that their ability to wiretap criminal and terrorism suspects is “going dark” as people increasingly communicate online instead of by telephone, reports the New York Times. Officials want Congress to require all services that enable communications — including encrypted e-mail transmitters like BlackBerry, social networking Web sites like Facebook and software that allows direct “peer to peer” messaging like Skype — to be technically capable of complying if served with a wiretap order. The mandate would include being able to intercept and unscramble encrypted messages.

The bill, which the Obama administration plans to submit to lawmakers next year, raises fresh questions about how to balance security needs with protecting privacy and fostering innovation. And because security services around the world face the same problem, it could set an example that is copied globally. James X. Dempsey, vice president of an Internet policy group, said the proposal challenged “fundamental elements of the Internet revolution” — including its decentralized design.  But law enforcement officials contend that imposing such a mandate is reasonable and necessary to prevent the erosion of their investigative powers.

Paul Sullivan

Executive Director

Veterans for Common Sense

Post Office Box 77304

Washington, DC 20013

(202) 558-4553

Paul@VeteransForCommonSense.org 

www.VeteransForCommonSense.org

FBI Investigation Manual Alarms Privacy Advocates

The FBI’s disclosure of its Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide manual has opened the widest window yet onto how agents have been given greater power in the post-Sept. 11 era, the New York Times reports. The bureau says it needs greater flexibility to hunt for would-be terrorists inside the U.S., but the manual’s details have alarmed privacy advocates.

It lays out a low threshold to start investigating a person or group as a potential security threat. It also allows agents to use ethnicity or religion as a factor — as long as it is not the only one — when selecting subjects for scrutiny. “It raises fundamental questions about whether a domestic intelligence agency can protect civil liberties if they feel they have a right to collect broad personal information about people they don’t even suspect of wrongdoing,” said Mike German, a former FBI agent now at the American Civil Liberties Union. FBI general counsel Valerie Caproni says the bureau has adequate safeguards to protect civil liberties. “Those who say the F.B.I. should not collect information on a person or group unless there is a specific reason to suspect that the target is up to no good seriously miss the mark,” she said. “The F.B.I. has been told that we need to determine who poses a threat to the national security — not simply to investigate persons who have come onto our radar screen.”

FBI Still Lacks Translators To Interpret Wiretaps, E-Mail

The FBI’s collection of wiretapped phone calls and intercepted e-mail has been soaring, but the bureau is failing to review "significant amounts" of material partly for lack of translators, says a Justice Department inspector general's report quoted by the New York Times.

The government’s ability to review and translate materials quickly has been an item of concern since the 2001 terrorist attacks. Two previous inspector general reports faulted the bureau for significant backlogs in reviewing information in other languages. Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA), who has pressed the FBI to improve its translation abilities, praised the bureau for its recent arrest of several terrorism suspects inside the U.S. but said that its linguist department remained “a big hole.”

A New National Intelligence Strategy

Respect for civil liberties and stepped up cybersecurity are key elements of the 2009 National Intelligence Strategy, released Tuesday by Dennis C. Blair, the Director of National Intelligence. The new NIS, the first since 2005, maintains previous goals such as countering WMD proliferation and violent extremism, but focuses new energy on information sharing and accountability within the intelligence community.

Click here to read the NIS announcement.

Use The Crime Report for more information on Homeland Security Issues and Cyber Crime.

FBI Counter-Terror Unit Investigated Vets

The FBI this year launched a nationwide operation targeting white supremacists and "militia/sovereign-citizen extremist groups," including a focus on veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan, the Wall Street Journal reports. The initiative, dubbed Operation Vigilant Eagle, was outlined in February, two months before a memo giving a similar warning was issued on April 7 by the Department of Homeland Security.

Disclosure of the DHS memo this week has sparked controversy among some conservatives and veterans groups. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano defended the assessment, but apologized to veterans who saw it as an accusation. Documents outlining Operation Vigilant Eagle cite a surge in activity by such groups. The memos say the FBI's focus on veterans began as far back as December, during the final weeks of the Bush administration, when the bureau's domestic counterterrorism division formed a special joint working group with the Defense Department.

Napolitano Downplays Veteran-Extremism Link

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said a report warning that military veterans could be prone to joining right wing extremism was a routine assessment giving a "situational awareness" of potential threats, reports the Associated Press. Napolitano defended the internal agency intelligence report against criticism during a series of interviews on network news shows as she toured the troubled U.S.-Mexican border.

Napolitano said the report was a routine form of guidance for state and local police and that it is a set of assertions, "not accusations." She said, "we do not mean to suggest that veterans as a whole are at risk of becoming violent extremists." House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) assailed Napolitano's department and called on the agency to apologize to veterans.

In a New Era: Does Security Trump Civil Liberties?

Experts at the 4th Annual H.F. Guggenheim conference discuss whether security changes are imminent from the Bush administration to the Obama administration.

Terror Watch List Hits 1 Million, Up One-Third Since '07

The government's terrorist watch list has hit 1 million entries, up 32% since 2007, reports USA Today. Federal data show the rise comes despite the removal of 33,000 entries last year by the FBI's Terrorist Screening Center in an effort to purge the list of outdated information and remove people cleared in investigations. It's unclear how many individuals those 33,000 records represent — the center often uses multiple entries, or "identities," for a person to reflect variances in name spellings or other identifying information. The remaining million entries represent about 400,000 individuals, according to the center.

The new figures were provided by the screening center and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in response to requests from USA TODAY. People put on the watch list by intelligence and law enforcement agencies can be blocked from flying, stopped at borders or subjected to other scrutiny. About 95% of the people on the list are foreigners, the FBI says, but it's a source of frequent complaints from U.S. travelers.

Fusion Centers Questioned On Data Gathering, "Mission Creep"

After Sept. 11, 2001, law enforcement agencies at all levels agreed that they should do a better job of sharing information to help prevent future terror acts. Time magazine says making that happen is easier said than done, which is why newfangled, multi-organizational agencies were set up to promote cooperation and overcome turf battles. Critics are charging that these so-called fusion centers are making it all too easy for government to collect and share data from numerous public databases. The American Civil Liberties Union is pushing to restrict fusion centers' access to data. Legislation is pending in New Mexico that would prohibit any law enforcement agency from collecting information about the religious, political and social associations of law-abiding New Mexicans. In what would be a first for the nation, the bill would allow private citizens to sue law enforcement agencies for damages over the unauthorized collection of such data. Privacy advocates point to Maryland, where last year it was revealed that in 2005 and 2006 undercover members of the Maryland State Police had carried out surveillance of war protesters and death penalty opponents.

Congressional reports have warned of the potential for "mission creep" by the 60  fusion centers. Some focusing exclusively on criminal activity, others on both criminal and terrorist threats, and some on very specific acts, such as human smuggling, gang activity, online predators, or drug trafficking. Much of the funding for the large state centers comes from the federal government, including a new infusion of $250 million in the stimulus law to be spent by 2010 on "upgrading, modifying, or constructing" state and local fusion centers.

Big Crowd for Inauguration

D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty estimated Tuesday's crowd at "roughly" 1.8 million, shattering the previous record of 1.2 million for President Lyndon Johnson's 1965 inauguration.

There were no inaugural-related threats in the weeks before the swearing-in, D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier has said. Yet on Tuesday, FBI and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials announced they were investigating information of "uncertain" credibility that suggested a potential threat to disrupt the day.

Terrorism

As a topic of research and training expertise, terrorism has boomed since Sept. 11, 2001. Not coincidentally, the spigot of both government and private funding has been flowing wide open into the field. Thousands of potential sources now claim expertise in terrorism, from academics to think tanks to expert witnesses to for-profit firms that hawk anti-terrorism law enforcement or consumer products. (A Stanford University sociologist put together a research paper on the burgeoning subject—not terrorism, but terrorism experts: “The Rise of the Terrorism Expert: The Emergence of a New Field of Expertise.”) As always, journalists should be aware of the motivations of potential sources. This source list includes the RAND Corporation, the vast California-based nonprofit has one of the world’s largest and most venerable terrorism research divisions, with dozens of experts on staff who can speak to a number of terrorism-related topics. It might be a good place to start in the non-government sector.