Replies to post #29036 on Tornado Alley (PROG)

[F6]

FBI's powers may become fearsome

By Dan K. Thomasson

Posted on Tue, May. 24, 2005

Some really scary things are happening around Washington these days.

Congress has become a place of great incivility and rancor, which threaten to undermine any hope of legislative remedy to a myriad of problems, from Social Security to soaring health-care costs to immigration to a steadily crumbling manufacturing base once the envy of the world.

But perhaps the most frightening prospect for Americans is an unfettered national police force with the sole discretion to determine who can be investigated as a potential terrorist. That's the impact of little-known proposals to greatly expand the powers of the FBI, permitting its agents to seize business records without a warrant and to track the mail of those in terrorist inquiries without regard to Postal Service concerns.

Because the government can label almost any group or individual a terrorist threat, the potential for abuse by not having to show probable cause is enormous, prompting civil libertarians to correctly speculate about who will guard against the guardians. Up until now the answer was the Constitution as interpreted by the judiciary. But it is clear that sidestepping any such restriction is the real and present danger of the post-9/11 era.

A wise man, the late Sen. John Williams of Delaware, once counseled that any proposed legislation should be regarded in the light of its worst potential consequence, particularly when it came to laws that enhance the investigative and prosecutorial powers of the government at the expense of civil rights. This is most likely to occur in times of national stress, when the Constitution is always vulnerable to assault - i.e., the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.

Think it can't happen?

Well, it does all the time.

Ask the lawyer in Oregon whom the FBI misidentified as having taken part in the terrorist bombing of the Spanish railway.

Ask any number of persons since Sept. 11, 2001, arrested and detained for months without charges or counsel before they were released.

If that isn't enough to satisfy you about the inadvisability of these proposals, think back to the Cold War days when the most casual acquaintance with a group or person on J. Edgar Hoover's anti-communist watch list could land one in water hot enough to make life miserable for a long time - maybe even put him or her on one of the infamous blacklists.

If you weren't around in those times, read about them. One thing you will learn quickly is that the sole determination of who or what had communist inclinations belonged to the FBI. Even then, however, Congress was smart enough not to rescind the checks and balances that protect our civil liberties. Federal law-enforcement officers outside the FBI have complained of late about the bureau's penchant for seizing jurisdiction over almost any crime by relating it to terrorism.

Both of these over-reactive proposals are as fearsome as the threat of another al Qaeda attack, for they accomplish the same thing: the intrusion on and disruption of the rights of Americans. Like portions of the Patriot Act, which are rightly being challenged by conservatives as well as liberals, they are medicine worse than the cancer.

Dan K. Thomasson is former editor of Scripps Howard News Service, 1090 Vermont Ave., N.W., Suite 1000, Washington, DC 20005-4901.

© 2005 The Sun Herald and wire service sources.

http://www.sunherald.com/mld/thesunherald/news/editorial/11721829.htm [F6 note -- also at http://www.infowars.com/articles/ps/fbi_powers_become_fearsom.htm ]

[F6]

(COMTEX) B: U.S. Probing Passenger Screening Program ( AP Online )

WASHINGTON, Jun 15, 2005 (AP Online via COMTEX) -- The Homeland Security
Department's top privacy official said Wednesday she is investigating whether
the agency's airline passenger screening program broke privacy laws by failing
to properly disclose its use of commercial databases.

The review also will cover the security of the system, known as Secure Flight,
said Nuala O'Connor Kelly. Some commercial data vendors have had security
breaches.

"We need to give a hard look at any program that collects information on
Americans," she said in an interview. "The scrutiny is appropriate."

She spoke on the sidelines of a public hearing at Harvard Law School by the
department's data-privacy advisory committee.

Government agencies are required by law to state publicly how they will use and
store records about people. The Privacy Act of 1974 prohibits the government
from keeping a secret database.

The official in change of Secure Flight said the government will update its
description of records kept for the program.

Justin Oberman of the Transportation Security Administration said information
from private databases will not be fed into a central repository. It will be
deleted from Homeland Security records within a day or two, he said.

In November, the TSA said in the Federal Register that it would not access or
use commercial data.

Tim Sparapani, a privacy rights lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union,
said the agency should not be allowed retroactively to change the description of
the Secure Flight database.

"The great question about this program is whether the program is effective,
number one, but whether TSA and commercial data brokers can be trusted to
safeguard passengers' most sensitive personal information," Sparapini said.

"TSA has shown a repeated, consistent failure to act with appropriate care and
concern for that data," he said.

Under Secure Flight, the government automatically would check every airline
passenger's name against terrorist watch lists. But efforts to develop Secure
Flight have been slowed by revelations that airlines gave the government
information about passengers without their permission or knowledge.

Class-action laws suits have been brought against airlines and government
contractors for sharing passenger information. As a result, airlines only agreed
to turn over passenger data for testing after they were ordered to do so by the
government.

One of the TSA's subcontractors that is now providing commercial data for
testing of Secure Flight is Arkansas-based Acxiom Corp. The company shared
information about JetBlue Airways' passengers with a defense contractor in 2002.

Oberman said the TSA is testing passenger information against commercial data to
see if that would improve the agency's ability to match names against watch
lists by confirming people's identity.

Acxiom and a different subcontractor, InsightAmerica Inc., are providing
passengers' names, addresses, birth dates and gender, Oberman said.

Secure Flight also has run into technical challenges.

According to a March report by the Government Accountability Office, the TSA had
not figured out how to obtain data from commercial reservation systems, which
handle much of the airline reservation functions.

The report also said Secure Flight might not keep terrorists off planes because
of the quality of the information on watch lists as well as the quality of
passenger information.

Congress on May 20 asked the GAO to conduct a follow-up investigation.

In March, a separate government investigation found that the TSA misled the
public about its role in getting information on 12 million airline passengers to
test airline screening.

---

Associated Press Technology Writer Brian Bergstein in Boston contributed to this
report.

---

On the Net:

Transportation Security Administration: http://www.tsa.gov

---

By LESLIE MILLER
Associated Press Writer

Copyright 2005 Associated Press, All rights reserved

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[F6 note -- in addition to (items linked in) the post to which this post is a reply and preceding and (other) following, see also (items linked in) http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=6675135 and preceding (and any future following)]

[F6]

(COMTEX) B: House Votes to Limit Patriot Act Rules ( AP Online )

WASHINGTON, Jun 15, 2005 (AP Online via COMTEX) -- The House voted Wednesday to
block the FBI and the Justice Department from using the anti-terror Patriot Act
to search library and book store records, responding to complaints about
potential invasion of privacy of innocent readers.

Despite a veto threat from President Bush, lawmakers voted 238-187 to block the
part of the anti-terrorism law that allows the government to investigate the
reading habits of terror suspects.

The vote reversed a narrow loss last year by lawmakers complaining about threats
to privacy rights. They narrowed the proposal this year to permit the government
to continue to seek out records of Internet use at libraries.

The vote came as the House debated a $57.5 billion bill covering the departments
of Commerce, Justice and State. The Senate has yet to act on the measure, and
GOP leaders often drop provisions offensive to Bush during final negotiations.

Congress is preparing to extend the Patriot Act, which was passed quickly in the
emotional aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Then, Congress
included a "sunset" provision under which 15 of the law's provisions are to
expire at the end of this year.

Supporters of rolling back the library and bookstore provision said that the law
gives the FBI too much leeway to go on "fishing expeditions" on people's reading
habits and that innocent people could get tagged as potential terrorists based
on what they check out from a library.

"If the government suspects someone is looking up how to make atom bombs, go to
a court and get a search warrant," said Jerold Nadler, D-N.Y.

Supporters of the Patriot Act countered that the rules on reading records are a
potentially useful tool in finding terrorists and argued that the House was
voting to make libraries safe havens for them.

"If there are terrorists in libraries studying how to fly planes, how to put
together biological weapons, how to put together chemical weapons, nuclear
weapons ... we have to have an avenue through the federal court system so that
we can stop the attack before it occurs," said Rep. Tom Feeney, R-Fla.

Last year, a similar provision was derailed by a 210-210 tie tally after several
Republicans were pressured to switch their votes.

In the meantime, a number of libraries have begun disposing of patrons' records
quickly so they won't be available if sought under the law.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales told Congress in April that the government has
never used the provision to obtain library, bookstore, medical or gun sale
records.

But when asked whether the administration would agree to exclude library and
medical records from the law, Gonzales demurred. "It should not be held against
us that we have exercised restraint," he said.

Authorities have gained access to records through voluntary cooperation from
librarians, Gonzales and FBI Director Robert Mueller said.

By ANDREW TAYLOR
Associated Press Writer

Copyright 2005 Associated Press, All rights reserved

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*** end of story ***

[F6]

TO ALL: another of my 'see also (items linked in)' reference compilations of related links, one that is relevant to the post to which this post is a reply, appears at http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=6708587 -- accordingly, please add
' http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=6708587 and preceding' to the 'see also (items linked in)' reference compilation of related links that appears in the post to which this post is a reply -- and yeah, I know, as if that compilation wasn't long enough already (. . .), lol -- and please try to forgive any overlap of this new compilation with the compilation in the post to which this is a reply -- the focus in http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=6708587 was somewhat different and more broad (the basic search was 'arab terror') than in the post to which this post is a reply (several searches relating to 'Patriot Act'/'Patriot Act II'), and I didn't want to cut the new compilation short just because I knew I'd also be making this post adding it to the compilation that appears in the post to which this post is a reply -- thanks

in general, I'm just trying to establish a few of these compilations with respect to certain of the major themes that run through the posts that have been made on this board (and as I keep finding when putting these compilations together, there really have been many quite significant and interesting posts made on this board, ones that continue to be well worth reading and considering) -- my hope and intention is that the posts I make with these compilations will, first, simplify providing links to related posts in new posts relating to a given theme (i.e., just post in reply to, or include a link to, a post with a relevant compilation), and will second enable free members who visit this board (who do not have access to the 'search this board' function) to readily access at least some decent portion of the past posts on this board that relate to the given theme