Sunday, January 29, 2006
ID cards 'will track where people go'
Anti-ID cards campaigners accused the Home Office yesterday of misleading parliament and the
public over plans to include radio tracking devices in ID cards.
Only last month, Andy Burnham, the Home Office minister, said in a parliamentary written answer that there were "no plans to use radio frequency identification (RFID) tags in ID cards".
However, a leaked letter from Mr Burnham indicates that the chips will use radio frequencies to allow "contactless" reading of the card by special scanners.
The Home Office said the signals emitted would be picked up only at a distance of a few inches. But Phil Booth, co-ordinator of the No2ID campaign, said receivers could easily be boosted to receive signals from much further away. This would allow anyone carrying the card to be tracked in the street or entering a building.
Mr Booth said that unlike normal RFID technology, which simply broadcast a number as a means of identifying an individual holder, the chips envisaged for use would transmit personal details.
He added: "This technology will make the cards a snooper's paradise. It is outrageous for the Government to conceal this from the public and try to deny it in parliament."
However, he said that since there would be no legal requirement to carry the cards, the people that the police most wanted to keep tabs would not be picked up if they took the simple precaution of leaving the card at home.
Mr Burnham said the radio technology was being introduced to meet international regulations enabling identity documents to be read by scanners at airports. It was "nonsense" to suggest the frequencies could be used to monitor people's movements.
"This kind of scaremongering is designed to whip up fears about the ID cards scheme. I hope people will see it for what it is."
Only last month, Andy Burnham, the Home Office minister, said in a parliamentary written answer that there were "no plans to use radio frequency identification (RFID) tags in ID cards".
However, a leaked letter from Mr Burnham indicates that the chips will use radio frequencies to allow "contactless" reading of the card by special scanners.
The Home Office said the signals emitted would be picked up only at a distance of a few inches. But Phil Booth, co-ordinator of the No2ID campaign, said receivers could easily be boosted to receive signals from much further away. This would allow anyone carrying the card to be tracked in the street or entering a building.
Mr Booth said that unlike normal RFID technology, which simply broadcast a number as a means of identifying an individual holder, the chips envisaged for use would transmit personal details.
He added: "This technology will make the cards a snooper's paradise. It is outrageous for the Government to conceal this from the public and try to deny it in parliament."
However, he said that since there would be no legal requirement to carry the cards, the people that the police most wanted to keep tabs would not be picked up if they took the simple precaution of leaving the card at home.
Mr Burnham said the radio technology was being introduced to meet international regulations enabling identity documents to be read by scanners at airports. It was "nonsense" to suggest the frequencies could be used to monitor people's movements.
"This kind of scaremongering is designed to whip up fears about the ID cards scheme. I hope people will see it for what it is."
Sunday, January 15, 2006
Did the NSA help Bush hack the vote?
www.onlinejournal.com
By Bob FitrakisOnline Journal Guest WriterJan 11, 2006, 02:26
What do we make of the president boldly proclaiming that he has "spy powers?" Does he have X-ray vision too?
When he and his cronies crawl up into Cheney's bunker with the sign on the door "He-man Woman-haters Club. No Girls Allowed (except Condi)," do they synchronize their spy decoder rings and decide what new absurd folly to unleash on the world?
Illegal invasion of Iraq, suspending writs of habeus corpus, secret CIA torture dungeons, or election rigging? Most people outgrow such childish games and fantasies by the time they're 10 years old. And by age 12, most understand that the president is not a king. Or a dictator. That U.S. citizens have inalienable rights.
That there are such things as search warrants. If the executive branch of government is going to conduct surveillance on the American people, they have to get a warrant from the judicial branch specifying what they're looking for and the reasons for the search.
The Bush administration's utter contempt for the U.S. Constitution and the specific information we now know about its use of the National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance network should further call into question Bush's 2004 presidential "election." In a recent revelation, we have learned that the NSA shared the fruits of its illegal spying on behalf of Bush with other government agencies.
What are e-voting machines and central tabulators that pass the voting results over electronic networks from the Internet to phone lines? No more than data easily spied on and tapped into. The Franklin County Board of Elections, for example, tells us that it was a "transmission error" in Gahanna Ward 1B, where 638 people cast votes and Bush, the Wonder Boy, received 4,258 votes. It's not magic, nor is it an accident or an act of God. If the vote total wasn't so hugely illogical, no one would have caught it.
Bush and his cabal are notorious for collecting raw intelligence data and using it for their political gain. While many progressives accept the fact that our government manufactured an illegal war in Iraq and routinely violates human rights worldwide, many are reluctant to accept that they would spy on John Kerry and rig the election -- which is very easy to do when the NSA does your bidding.
What part of the headline in the Columbus Dispatch: "Diebold vote machine can be hacked, test finds" don't people understand? The electronic hacking and monitoring of votes by U.S. intelligence agencies has a long history, from mainframe computers in the 70s and 80s to DREs in the 80s and 90s. In fact, W.'s father appears to be one of the first beneficiaries of e-voting fraud with his victory over Bob Dole in the 1988 New Hampshire primary.
Most voting rights advocates are well aware of Al Gore's infamous loss of 16,000 votes in the 2004 Florida presidential election, which allowed Bush's cousin at Fox News to call the election for Dubya. How do we explain the bizarre "rob georgia" Diebold file that Bev Harris of Black Box Voting found on the Internet after the stunning upset of Senator Max Cleland of Georgia.
The recent revelations about hacking of Diebold voting machines and the findings of the General Accountability Office as to the insecurity of the e-voting networks cannot be separated from the president's criminal use of the NSA to spy on American citizens. As much as we rejoice in the resignation of Diebold CEO Walden O'Dell and the pending lawsuits by shareholders against Diebold, it should not obscure the massive continued potential to hack the vote.
Both Popular Science and Popular Mechanics magazines ran November 2004 cover stories on how easy it is to hack the e-voting machines and their communication networks. In one famous cartoon, a teenage hacker was announced as the president.
This is precisely the type of game George W. and his He-man authoritarian boy's club would engage in. Recently, Professor Steve Freeman of the University of Pennsylvania spoke at a New York election reform forum and told the audience that a third of the Kerry voters who showed up in exit polls in rural Republican-dominated areas simply don't show up in the actual vote tally. Not just in Ohio, but throughout the nation.
Would a president who believes he has spy powers, the right to torture, the ability to wage illegal wars based on bogus, manufactured intelligence reports, simply refuse to spy on Kerry and rig an election electronically? In Ohio, two burglaries occurred against the Democratic Party in Lucas County and Franklin County, just prior to the 2004 election, involving computer theft.
Congress must investigate whether Bush used the NSA for partisan political gain during the 2004 election, and whether any NSA Bush operatives or other members of the security-industrial complex had access to e-voting machines, central tabulators or the communication lines that delivered the voting results.
Bob Fitrakis is the co-editor of Did George W. Bush Steal America's 2004 Election? with Harvey Wasserman and co-counsel with Cliff Arnebeck in the Alliance for Democracy suit against the Hocking County Board of Elections.
www.onlinejournal.com
By Bob FitrakisOnline Journal Guest WriterJan 11, 2006, 02:26
What do we make of the president boldly proclaiming that he has "spy powers?" Does he have X-ray vision too?
When he and his cronies crawl up into Cheney's bunker with the sign on the door "He-man Woman-haters Club. No Girls Allowed (except Condi)," do they synchronize their spy decoder rings and decide what new absurd folly to unleash on the world?
Illegal invasion of Iraq, suspending writs of habeus corpus, secret CIA torture dungeons, or election rigging? Most people outgrow such childish games and fantasies by the time they're 10 years old. And by age 12, most understand that the president is not a king. Or a dictator. That U.S. citizens have inalienable rights.
That there are such things as search warrants. If the executive branch of government is going to conduct surveillance on the American people, they have to get a warrant from the judicial branch specifying what they're looking for and the reasons for the search.
The Bush administration's utter contempt for the U.S. Constitution and the specific information we now know about its use of the National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance network should further call into question Bush's 2004 presidential "election." In a recent revelation, we have learned that the NSA shared the fruits of its illegal spying on behalf of Bush with other government agencies.
What are e-voting machines and central tabulators that pass the voting results over electronic networks from the Internet to phone lines? No more than data easily spied on and tapped into. The Franklin County Board of Elections, for example, tells us that it was a "transmission error" in Gahanna Ward 1B, where 638 people cast votes and Bush, the Wonder Boy, received 4,258 votes. It's not magic, nor is it an accident or an act of God. If the vote total wasn't so hugely illogical, no one would have caught it.
Bush and his cabal are notorious for collecting raw intelligence data and using it for their political gain. While many progressives accept the fact that our government manufactured an illegal war in Iraq and routinely violates human rights worldwide, many are reluctant to accept that they would spy on John Kerry and rig the election -- which is very easy to do when the NSA does your bidding.
What part of the headline in the Columbus Dispatch: "Diebold vote machine can be hacked, test finds" don't people understand? The electronic hacking and monitoring of votes by U.S. intelligence agencies has a long history, from mainframe computers in the 70s and 80s to DREs in the 80s and 90s. In fact, W.'s father appears to be one of the first beneficiaries of e-voting fraud with his victory over Bob Dole in the 1988 New Hampshire primary.
Most voting rights advocates are well aware of Al Gore's infamous loss of 16,000 votes in the 2004 Florida presidential election, which allowed Bush's cousin at Fox News to call the election for Dubya. How do we explain the bizarre "rob georgia" Diebold file that Bev Harris of Black Box Voting found on the Internet after the stunning upset of Senator Max Cleland of Georgia.
The recent revelations about hacking of Diebold voting machines and the findings of the General Accountability Office as to the insecurity of the e-voting networks cannot be separated from the president's criminal use of the NSA to spy on American citizens. As much as we rejoice in the resignation of Diebold CEO Walden O'Dell and the pending lawsuits by shareholders against Diebold, it should not obscure the massive continued potential to hack the vote.
Both Popular Science and Popular Mechanics magazines ran November 2004 cover stories on how easy it is to hack the e-voting machines and their communication networks. In one famous cartoon, a teenage hacker was announced as the president.
This is precisely the type of game George W. and his He-man authoritarian boy's club would engage in. Recently, Professor Steve Freeman of the University of Pennsylvania spoke at a New York election reform forum and told the audience that a third of the Kerry voters who showed up in exit polls in rural Republican-dominated areas simply don't show up in the actual vote tally. Not just in Ohio, but throughout the nation.
Would a president who believes he has spy powers, the right to torture, the ability to wage illegal wars based on bogus, manufactured intelligence reports, simply refuse to spy on Kerry and rig an election electronically? In Ohio, two burglaries occurred against the Democratic Party in Lucas County and Franklin County, just prior to the 2004 election, involving computer theft.
Congress must investigate whether Bush used the NSA for partisan political gain during the 2004 election, and whether any NSA Bush operatives or other members of the security-industrial complex had access to e-voting machines, central tabulators or the communication lines that delivered the voting results.
Bob Fitrakis is the co-editor of Did George W. Bush Steal America's 2004 Election? with Harvey Wasserman and co-counsel with Cliff Arnebeck in the Alliance for Democracy suit against the Hocking County Board of Elections.
Friday, January 06, 2006
IRS tracked taxpayers’ political affiliation
The News Tribune Published: January 6th, 2006 02:30 AM
http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/story/5440902p-4912739c.html
WASHINGTON – As it hunted down tax scofflaws, the Internal Revenue Service collected information on the political party affiliations of taxpayers in 20 states.
Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., a member of an appropriations subcommittee with jurisdiction over the IRS, said the practice was an “outrageous violation of the public trust” that could undermine the agency’s credibility.
IRS officials acknowledged that party affiliation information was routinely collected by a vendor for several months. They told the vendor last month to screen the information out.
“The bottom line is that we have never used this information,” said John Lipold, an IRS spokesman. “There are strict laws in place that forbid it.”
Washington state residents do not express a party preference when they register to vote. Residents of 20 other states and the District of Columbia have to provide a party affiliation when registering. Voter registration information is publicly available.
Murray said she learned about the problem from the president of the National Treasury Employees Union, Colleen Kelly. The IRS is part of the Treasury Department.
“This agency should not have that type of information,” Murray said in a telephone interview from Seattle. “No one should question whether they are being audited because of party affiliation.”
Kelly said Thursday that several IRS employees had complained to the union about the practice. She said IRS officials weren’t even aware of it until she wrote them in late December.
In a letter to Kelly, Deputy IRS Commissioner John Dalrymple said the party identification information was automatically collected through a “database platform” supplied by an outside contractor that targeted voter registration rolls among other things as it searched for people who aren’t paying their taxes.
“This information is appropriately used to locate information on taxpayers whose accounts are delinquent,” he said.
Murray and Kelly, however, remained skeptical. Kelly said the collection of such data was even more troubling because the IRS intends to start using private collection agencies later this year to go after back taxes.
“We think Congress should suspend IRS plans to use private collections agencies until these questions have been resolved,” she said.
According to Murray’s office, the 20 states in which the IRS collected party affiliation information were Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas, Utah and Wisconsin.
Les Blumenthal: 202-383-0008
The News Tribune Published: January 6th, 2006 02:30 AM
http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/story/5440902p-4912739c.html
WASHINGTON – As it hunted down tax scofflaws, the Internal Revenue Service collected information on the political party affiliations of taxpayers in 20 states.
Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., a member of an appropriations subcommittee with jurisdiction over the IRS, said the practice was an “outrageous violation of the public trust” that could undermine the agency’s credibility.
IRS officials acknowledged that party affiliation information was routinely collected by a vendor for several months. They told the vendor last month to screen the information out.
“The bottom line is that we have never used this information,” said John Lipold, an IRS spokesman. “There are strict laws in place that forbid it.”
Washington state residents do not express a party preference when they register to vote. Residents of 20 other states and the District of Columbia have to provide a party affiliation when registering. Voter registration information is publicly available.
Murray said she learned about the problem from the president of the National Treasury Employees Union, Colleen Kelly. The IRS is part of the Treasury Department.
“This agency should not have that type of information,” Murray said in a telephone interview from Seattle. “No one should question whether they are being audited because of party affiliation.”
Kelly said Thursday that several IRS employees had complained to the union about the practice. She said IRS officials weren’t even aware of it until she wrote them in late December.
In a letter to Kelly, Deputy IRS Commissioner John Dalrymple said the party identification information was automatically collected through a “database platform” supplied by an outside contractor that targeted voter registration rolls among other things as it searched for people who aren’t paying their taxes.
“This information is appropriately used to locate information on taxpayers whose accounts are delinquent,” he said.
Murray and Kelly, however, remained skeptical. Kelly said the collection of such data was even more troubling because the IRS intends to start using private collection agencies later this year to go after back taxes.
“We think Congress should suspend IRS plans to use private collections agencies until these questions have been resolved,” she said.
According to Murray’s office, the 20 states in which the IRS collected party affiliation information were Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas, Utah and Wisconsin.
Les Blumenthal: 202-383-0008
Sunday, January 01, 2006
www.rense.com
NSA Spied On OwnEmployees, Journalists,Other Intel
By Wayne Madsen 12-29-5
NSA spied on its own employees, other U.S. intelligence personnel, and their journalist and congressional contacts. WMR has learned that the National Security Agency (NSA), on the orders of the Bush administration, eavesdropped on the private conversations and e-mail of its own employees, employees of other U.S. intelligence agencies -- including the CIA and DIA -- and their contacts in the media, Congress, and oversight agencies and offices.
The journalist surveillance program, code named "Firstfruits," was part of a Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) program that was maintained at least until October 2004 and was authorized by then-DCI Porter Goss. Firstfruits was authorized as part of a DCI "Countering Denial and Deception" program responsible to an entity known as the Foreign Denial and Deception Committee (FDDC). Since the intelligence community's reorganization, the DCI has been replaced by the Director of National Intelligence headed by John Negroponte and his deputy, former NSA director Gen. Michael Hayden.
Firstfruits was a database that contained both the articles and the transcripts of telephone and other communications of particular Washington journalists known to report on sensitive U.S. intelligence activities, particularly those involving NSA. According to NSA sources, the targeted journalists included author James Bamford, the New York Times' James Risen, the Washington Post's Vernon Loeb, the New Yorker's Seymour Hersh, the Washington Times' Bill Gertz, UPI's John C. K. Daly, and this editor [Wayne Madsen], who has written about NSA for The Village Voice, CAQ, Intelligence Online, and the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC).
In addition, beginning in 2001 but before the 9-11 attacks, NSA began to target anyone in the U.S. intelligence community who was deemed a "disgruntled employee." According to NSA sources, this surveillance was a violation of United States Signals Intelligence Directive (USSID) 18 and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. The surveillance of U.S. intelligence personnel by other intelligence personnel in the United States and abroad was conducted without any warrants from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. The targeted U.S. intelligence agency personnel included those who made contact with members of the media, including the journalists targeted by Firstfruits, as well as members of Congress, Inspectors General, and other oversight agencies. Those discovered to have spoken to journalists and oversight personnel were subjected to sudden clearance revocation and termination as "security risks."
In 2001, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court rejected a number of FISA wiretap applications from Michael Resnick, the FBI supervisor in charge of counter-terrorism surveillance. The court said that some 75 warrant requests from the FBI were erroneous and that the FBI, under Louis Freeh and Robert Mueller, had misled the court and misused the FISA law on dozens of occasions. In a May 17, 2002 opinion, the presiding FISA Judge, Royce C. Lamberth (a Texan appointed by Ronald Reagan), barred Resnick from ever appearing before the court again. The ruling, released by Lamberth's successor, Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelley, stated in extremely strong terms, "In virtually every instance, the government's misstatements and omissions in FISA applications and violations of the Court's orders involved information sharing and unauthorized disseminations to criminal investigators and prosecutors . . . How these misrepresentations occurred remains unexplained to the court."
After the Justice Department appealed the FISC decision, the FISA Review court met for the first time in its history. The three-member review court, composed of Ralph Guy of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Edward Leavy of the 9th Circuit, and Laurence Silberman [of the Robb-Silberman Commission on 911 "intelligence failures"] of the D.C. Circuit, overturned the FISC decision on the Bush administration's wiretap requests.
Based on recent disclosures that the Bush administration has been using the NSA to conduct illegal surveillance of U.S. citizens, it is now becoming apparent what vexed the FISC to the point that it rejected, in an unprecedented manner, numerous wiretap requests and sanctioned Resnick.
http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/
NSA Spied On OwnEmployees, Journalists,Other Intel
By Wayne Madsen 12-29-5
NSA spied on its own employees, other U.S. intelligence personnel, and their journalist and congressional contacts. WMR has learned that the National Security Agency (NSA), on the orders of the Bush administration, eavesdropped on the private conversations and e-mail of its own employees, employees of other U.S. intelligence agencies -- including the CIA and DIA -- and their contacts in the media, Congress, and oversight agencies and offices.
The journalist surveillance program, code named "Firstfruits," was part of a Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) program that was maintained at least until October 2004 and was authorized by then-DCI Porter Goss. Firstfruits was authorized as part of a DCI "Countering Denial and Deception" program responsible to an entity known as the Foreign Denial and Deception Committee (FDDC). Since the intelligence community's reorganization, the DCI has been replaced by the Director of National Intelligence headed by John Negroponte and his deputy, former NSA director Gen. Michael Hayden.
Firstfruits was a database that contained both the articles and the transcripts of telephone and other communications of particular Washington journalists known to report on sensitive U.S. intelligence activities, particularly those involving NSA. According to NSA sources, the targeted journalists included author James Bamford, the New York Times' James Risen, the Washington Post's Vernon Loeb, the New Yorker's Seymour Hersh, the Washington Times' Bill Gertz, UPI's John C. K. Daly, and this editor [Wayne Madsen], who has written about NSA for The Village Voice, CAQ, Intelligence Online, and the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC).
In addition, beginning in 2001 but before the 9-11 attacks, NSA began to target anyone in the U.S. intelligence community who was deemed a "disgruntled employee." According to NSA sources, this surveillance was a violation of United States Signals Intelligence Directive (USSID) 18 and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. The surveillance of U.S. intelligence personnel by other intelligence personnel in the United States and abroad was conducted without any warrants from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. The targeted U.S. intelligence agency personnel included those who made contact with members of the media, including the journalists targeted by Firstfruits, as well as members of Congress, Inspectors General, and other oversight agencies. Those discovered to have spoken to journalists and oversight personnel were subjected to sudden clearance revocation and termination as "security risks."
In 2001, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court rejected a number of FISA wiretap applications from Michael Resnick, the FBI supervisor in charge of counter-terrorism surveillance. The court said that some 75 warrant requests from the FBI were erroneous and that the FBI, under Louis Freeh and Robert Mueller, had misled the court and misused the FISA law on dozens of occasions. In a May 17, 2002 opinion, the presiding FISA Judge, Royce C. Lamberth (a Texan appointed by Ronald Reagan), barred Resnick from ever appearing before the court again. The ruling, released by Lamberth's successor, Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelley, stated in extremely strong terms, "In virtually every instance, the government's misstatements and omissions in FISA applications and violations of the Court's orders involved information sharing and unauthorized disseminations to criminal investigators and prosecutors . . . How these misrepresentations occurred remains unexplained to the court."
After the Justice Department appealed the FISC decision, the FISA Review court met for the first time in its history. The three-member review court, composed of Ralph Guy of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Edward Leavy of the 9th Circuit, and Laurence Silberman [of the Robb-Silberman Commission on 911 "intelligence failures"] of the D.C. Circuit, overturned the FISC decision on the Bush administration's wiretap requests.
Based on recent disclosures that the Bush administration has been using the NSA to conduct illegal surveillance of U.S. citizens, it is now becoming apparent what vexed the FISC to the point that it rejected, in an unprecedented manner, numerous wiretap requests and sanctioned Resnick.
http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/
