RebelINK

Victor Marrero, a judge of the Federal District Court in Manhattan has said that Congress exceded it authority when it included provisions for allowing the FBI to use national security letters to demand information from corporations about their customers. The government has time to appeal before the provision goes out of effect.

From the New York Times

Judge Marrero said he feared that the law could be the first step in a series of intrusions into the judiciary’s role that would be “the legislative equivalent of breaking and entering, with an ominous free pass to the hijacking of constitutional values.”

According to a report from the Justice Department’s inspector general in March, the F.B.I. issued about 143,000 requests through national security letters from 2003 to 2005. The report found that the bureau had often used the letters improperly and sometimes illegally. (more)

From the BBC

The Patriot Act allows for the use of national security letters, or administrative subpoenas, in cases relating to spying or terrorism.

Under such a subpoena, personal records of clients and customers must be handed over to the FBI from such sources as banks, telephone firms and internet service providers.

Judge Marrero ruled in favour of the American Civil Liberties Union, which had complained against the use of such letters.

He said his ruling did not mean the FBI must get court approval before ordering records, but that it must be able to justify why the request should be kept secret. (more)

From the Wired

The ACLU sued on behalf of an anonymous internet service provider, which was served an NSL about one of the websites it hosted. The ISP contested the order, which the FBI subsequently dropped, but the ISP remains unable to even acknowledge that it got a request, and the company’s president said he’s been forced to lie to his friends and girlfriend about it.

Judge Victor Marrero of the Southern District of New York ruled that the gag order and the strict rules about how to contest them amounted to prior restraint on speech and allowed the FBI to pick and choose which persons would be gagged, based on whether the feds believed the target might speak critically of the government. Judge Marrero found, in a 106 page opinion, that the gag order provisions couldn’t be struck down without affecting the rest of the statute so he found that the entire NSL provision was unconstitutional. He also stuck down a provision that prescribed the standards courts should use in judging the FBI’s arguments for keeping gag orders. Marrero wrote that Congress had overstepped its bounds in setting out those standards.(more) (PDF of Ruling)

… Aside from that, though, the software has a lot of shortcomings. I wonder if they were designed to be intentional?

As I’ve indicated in previous posts, defense attorneys for years have been trying to discover the software source code used by manufacturers of various breathalyzer models. (See “Secret Breathalyzer Software Still Secret”) The accuracy of these machines, which essentially determine a suspect’s guilt or innocence, depends upon the accuracy of the software driving them; as the computer techs say, “Garbage in, garbage out”. But the manufacturers have refused to produce the information, relying upon a claim of “trade secrets” — that is, that the code of each model is a unique creation of the manufacturer. And prosecutors, apparently more concerned with profits than with justice, have joined them in resisting disclosure.

Recently, however, judges in Florida, Minnesota, New Jersey and a growing number of other states have begun ordering the manufacturers to reveal the inner workings of their machines to the defense. (See “Judge: Divulge Breathalyzer Code…or Else”.) Not surprisingly, the manufacturers have refused to comply. Until a few days ago….

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His sentence was commuted to life in prison!

From the New York Times:

The Texas pardons board, appointed by the governor, took the unusual action of voting 6 to 1 Wednesday to recommend commutation of Mr. Foster’s death sentence. The result was not released until Thursday morning and shortly afterward, Mr. Perry, a Republican, announced he had accepted the recommendation.

“After carefully considering the facts of this case, along with the recommendations from the Board of Pardons and Paroles, I believe the right and just decision is to commute Foster’s sentence from the death penalty to life imprisonment,” the governor said in a statement.

He said he was also concerned about the law that allowed Mr. Foster and the actual triggerman to be tried together and urged the Legislature to re-examine the issue. (more)

From Save Kenneth Foster on Blogspot:

Perry’s decision is historic. Not only has the Board of Pardons and Paroles rarely recommended clemency (by one count, 3 times since 1982), but Rick Perry has overseen more executions than any Governor of the State of Texas, including George Bush. (more)

I mentioned this case before. Even if you agree with the death penalty (I don’t), Perry’s decision to commute Foster’s sentence is important. His guilt and death sentence was largely based on the guilt of another person; he was not tried separately. Guilt by association should never be enough to have someone executed.

The Pentagon has said it will shut down its TALON program, which collected information on groups deemed a threat to the U.S. military. Quakers, churches, and student anti-war organizations were among the groups watched by TALON. According to the BCC:

A Pentagon review found that it had included reports on peaceful protesters and anti-war demonstrations which should have been deleted.

However, the report by the defense department’s inspector general said the Pentagon had acted legally in collecting information on US citizens because the reports were gathered for law enforcement rather than intelligence purposes. (read the entire article)

Honestly, that makes me feel so much better.

Kot Hordynski is a student that was involved in one of the groups watched by TALON. You can find out more about his experiences from the ACLU.

I am personally disgusted. I knew it was going on, but the part that disgusts me the most is where McConnell says these companies deserve immunity for violating our civil rights.

WASHINGTON - National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell pulled the curtain back on previously classified details of government surveillance and of a secretive court whose recent rulings created new hurdles for the Bush administration as it tries to prevent terrorism.

McConnell’s comments were made in an interview with the El Paso Times last week and posted as a transcript on the newspaper’s web site Wednesday.

The revelations raised eyebrows for their frank discussion of previously classified eavesdropping work conducted under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, known as FISA.

Among the disclosures:

McConnell confirmed for the first time that the private sector assisted with President Bush’s warrantless surveillance program. AT&T, Verizon and other telecommunications companies are being sued for their cooperation. “Now if you play out the suits at the value they’re claimed, it would bankrupt these companies,” McConnell said, arguing that they deserve immunity for their help.

He provided new details on court rulings handed down by the 11-member Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which approves classified eavesdropping operations and whose proceedings are almost always entirely secret. McConnell said a ruling that went into effect May 31 required the government to get court warrants to monitor communications between two foreigners if the conversation travels on a wire in the U.S. network. Millions of calls each day do, because of the robust nature of the U.S. systems.

McConnell said it takes 200 hours to assemble a FISA warrant on a single telephone number. “We’re going backwards,” he said. “We couldn’t keep up.”

Offering never-disclosed figures, McConnell also revealed that fewer than 100 people inside the United States are monitored under FISA warrants. However, he said, thousands of people overseas are monitored.

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I’d suggest everyone experiencing this sort of problem with Comcast phone them up and demand answers. The way I see it, this is deceptive marketing practices and a breach of contract. I pay them for service, and I expect that service in return. I’m sure some of you will disagree, but if I’m trying to obtain linux distributions for my customers or legally purchased games over STEAM, I take a performance hit. I would also suggest contacting the Electronic Frontier Foundation about these practices, and see if they’d be willing to take a case. If enough of us do so, maybe we can get somewhere against Comcast and similar ISPs.

Over the past weeks more and more Comcast users started to notice that their BitTorrent transfers were cut off. Most users report a significant decrease in download speeds, and even worse, they are unable to seed their downloads. A nightmare for people who want to keep up a positive ratio at private trackers and for the speed of BitTorrent transfers in general.

ISPs have been throttling BitTorrent traffic for almost two years now. Most ISPs simply limit the available bandwidth for BitTorrent traffic, but Comcast takes it one step further, and prevents their customers from seeding. And Comcast is not alone in this, Canadian ISPs Cogeco and Rogers use similar methods on a smaller scale.

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Also, you might want to check out this Slashdot discussion of the article linked above.

In the last part of the News Hour’s series on No Child Left Behind (apparently it was three-parts, not two :p), they discussed how teachers felt about the act. The story focused on how teachers feel they are put under tremendous pressure and scrutiny by No Child Left Behind, and how they feel upset that they were not included in the decisions leading to its creation or implementation.

The most important part, which I believe they glossed over, is that teachers are teaching to a multiple-choice test, and that teaching beyond the test can have a negative impact on test scores. As said in the story:

JOHN MERROW: Lynn Riggs ran into a different problem when her fifth-grade students did a project on deep sea vents, underwater volcanoes.

LYNN RIGGS: One of the things that is absolutely fascinating about this fabulous ecosystem that is miles beneath the ocean, there is no sunlight there. What is it that’s driving this ecosystem? What is this chemo-synthesis? How does this work? I’ve got to be able to explain it to fifth-graders.

JOHN MERROW: Riggs says her students love tackling such a difficult subject.

LYNN RIGGS: But the kicker is, this spring, as the kids were preparing for their state tests, one of the questions was about food chains. Of course, the right answer is “the sun.” And I’m thinking, “Great, they’re going to get the question wrong. I’ve taught them too much. They’re going to be thinking, ‘But what about the deep-sea vents, chemosynthesis? There’s no sunlight that deep down in the ocean. It’s dark.’”

In addition, the standardized tests to not adequately measure important skills, such as critical thinking and deductive reasoning. If teachers are forced to spend all of their time teaching to the test, we may have a generation that can not analyze infomation and come to their own conclusions.

In the second part of their series on “No Child Left Behind,” the News Hour discussed how some San Diego parents used provisions in “No Child Left Behind” to take control of two failing middle schools, changing them into charter schools, and how the San Diego school district retaliated by making superficial changes to lure students away from the charter schools.

While I applaud the parents for taking control of their children’s education, and while I generally approve of the idea of charter schools, I feel that the News Hour’s treatment of “No Child Left Behind” was once again that it would work, if just the local governments would stay out of it.

The News Hour on PBS is doing a two-part series on “No Child Left Behind.” For the first part, they discussed how states are able to manipulate the data to look like they are fulfilling the requirements of “No Child Left Behind.”

There is also an opportunity to discuss “No Child Left Behind” with two U.S. Representatives.

“No Child Left Behind” is a very controversial act, and, although I wonder about the tone of the News Hour’s discussion of the topic (to me it seems to blame the states for the failure of “No Child Left Behind”, although I will wait until tomorrow evening to make a final call.), they do raise some interesting issues.

Another day, another story critical of the FISA decision.

A big “thank fuck you” is in order to every one of you America-hating senators and house representatives who voted for this thing, regardless of when it expires. The fact you wanted to go home more than you wanted to uphold your job of acting as a check and balance against this administration and your failing to protect and uphold the constitution should be considered an act of treason. Your selfishness is allowing the President to continue to run roughshod over our rights and our freedom, but you people couldn’t care less.

Thanks for not doing your jobs, assholes.

What if you or I could secretly commit crimes against our fellow citizens, bury the evidence of the crime by stamping it “TOP SECRET,” refuse to answer questions when we are accused of committing the crime, and then, before we can be prosecuted for the crime, we can make a law that says the crime we committed is no longer a crime. And then call ourselves heroes.

Welcome to the New America.

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