The ALCU is running this as a full page ad. Copy and pass along. Link
This is a good ad. It's clear. It's not a laundry list. The message is
simple. No one is above the law. It's asking for a simple action: a
call to a Member of Congress requesting an investigation. And it calls
to something commonly understood by every American: the system of
checks and balances.
If the wingers really want to contest that
-- regardless of who says it -- well, we can truth squad 'em with their
comments regarding a certain former President and his unfortunate
choice of recreational activities. Above the law, indeed. Consensual
sex, however tawdry, is not illegal. Lying about it under oath is, and
we know the results from that. I suspect *cough cough* lying under oath
is one of the lesser offenses of which President Bush and
Vice-President Cheney may be accused.
And regardless whether we ever see an impeachment of President Bush and
Vice-President Cheney, it's important to insist that the process be
followed, with the full force and intent of the law.
While this is certainly embarrassing and sickening, unseemly for a
human man, let alone a "pundit", it's just Matthew's EMOTION ... laid
bare and unashamedly.
It's not misinformation. Sadly, we have to take Matthew's word that he is smitten. Link
This year, of all the news anchors, columnists, pundits, and reporters
whose work we've critiqued and corrected, one man stands alone as a
clear successor to the O'Reilly throne. We are pleased to announce
broadcast journalist, former newspaper bureau chief, former
presidential speechwriter, and best-selling author Chris Matthews has earned the title of 2005's "Misinformer of the Year." At times, it has even been difficult to tell the difference between 2005's Misinformer of the Year and his predecessor.
For your reading pleasure, we've compiled some highlights of
Matthews's most egregious false and misleading claims, as well as his
glowing and gushing praise for President Bush.
Without further ado:
Chris ♥ George, Part 1: Bush sometimes "glimmers" with "sunny nobility." On MSNBC's Hardball, during a discussion with Washington Times
editorial page editor Tony Blankley of the effects on President Bush
and his administration of the investigation into the leak of the name
of CIA operative Valerie Plame, Matthews said "[S]ometimes it glimmers
with this man, our president, that kind of sunny nobility." [Hardball, 10/24/05]
Chris ♥ George, Part 2: "Everybody sort of likes the president, except for the real whack-jobs ..."Insulting the majority of Americans who hold an unfavorable opinion of President Bush, Matthews exclaimed on Hardball:
"Everybody sort of likes the president, except for the real whack-jobs,
maybe on the left," adding, "I mean, like him personally." [Hardball, 11/28/05]
Chris ♥ George, Part 3: Matthews praised Bush speech as "brilliant" even before it was delivered.Before Bush had even delivered his November 30 speech
at the U.S. Naval Academy, Matthews used variations of the word
"brilliant" twice to describe it, while deriding Democratic critics of
the Iraq war as "carpers and complainers." [MSNBC live coverage, 11/30/05]
Chris ♥ George, Part 4: Bush "belongs on Mount Rushmore."Recounting his experience at a White House party, Matthews said that he
"felt sensitive" during his interactions with the president, adding:
"You get your picture taken with him. It's like Santa Claus, and he's
always very generous and friendly." He continued: "I felt like I was
too towel-snappy with him," explaining that Bush had noted his "red
scarf" and remarked that he looked "preppy." During the same show,
Matthews stated: "If [Bush's] gamble that he can create a democracy in
the middle of the Arab world" is successful, "he belongs on Mount
Rushmore." [Hardball, 12/16/05]
Matthews on the filibuster debate: Democrats are "just sort of pouting and bitching."
Matthews weighed in on the filibuster debate in May, declaring: "I
think the Democrats started this fight. I think they did. ... You know,
I think Democrats should win more elections. That will solve their
problem." Days later, in discussing the Senate compromise agreement to
avert the "nuclear option" to ban judicial filibusters, Matthews
repeatedly espoused Republican talking points,
claiming, among other things, that because of the recent bipartisan
agreement aimed at averting the "nuclear option," Democrats can stop
"pouting and bitching ... [and] actually participate in legislation
now"; that Republicans might "get double-crossed or screwed by the
Democrats"; and that the Republican position that every judicial
nominee deserves an up-or-down vote "sounds great to me." [Hardball, 5/18/05]
Matthews repeatedly smeared Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.On April 24, Matthews attacked Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) by referring to her as a "sort of a Madame Defarge
of the left." On May 30, Matthews questioned Clinton's ability to lead,
expressing surprise that retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey, an NBC military
analyst, wasn't "chuckling a little bit" at the idea of Clinton giving
orders to the troops as commander in chief. On July 11, Matthews said
Sen. Clinton "looked more witchy" because she criticized
the Bush administration's homeland security spending priorities on July
8, a day after the London bombings. On July 27, Matthews asked Sen.
Rick Santorum (R-PA) if he thought Sen. Clinton is a "big-government
socialist." [Hardball, 5/30/05; The Chris Matthews Show, 4/24/05; Hardball,7/11/05; Hardball, 7/27/05]
Matthews falsely claimed Democrats accused Alito of being "lenient on the mob." During MSNBC's coverage of the nomination of Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. to the Supreme Court, Matthews repeatedlymisrepresented
a document about Alito that was circulated by Democrats. Waving the
document around on camera -- but not quoting directly from it --
Matthews falsely claimed that the document accused Alito of being
"lenient on the mob" and made the baseless assertion that, by
mentioning a case involving organized crime, Democrats were "go[ing]
after [Alito's Italian] ethnicity." In fact, the document, available here,
made no mention of Alito's ethnicity and simply noted that he lost a
high-profile mob case -- not that he was "lenient" on anybody. [Hardball, 10/31/05]
Matthews made false claim about Jan. 30 Iraqi election.In praising the Iraqi election in January, Matthews falsely claimed
that no insurgent attacks had occurred at polling places on election
day. In fact, attacks on Iraqi polling places were widely reported
during the January 30 elections. [Hardball, 1/31/05]
Matthews distorted poll data to claim Catholics are increasingly Republican. Matthews cherry-picked poll data
to support his misleading claim that Catholics have voted increasingly
Republican since 1960. In fact, exit poll data indicate that Catholics
are actually a swing constituency: In every presidential election since
1980, a majority or plurality of Catholics have voted for the candidate
who won the popular vote, including Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996 and
Al Gore in 2000. [The Chris Matthews Show, 4/10/05]
Matthews's panels consistently skew to the right. Matthews
has hosted numerous MSNBC panels that contained far more conservative
commentators than progressives. In 2005, the trend was especially
prevalent during MSNBC's presidential inauguration coverage; and both before and after Bush's State of the Union address. While moderating discussion panels on Hardball, Matthews has repeatedly emphasized the liberal allegiances of progressive guests while failing to note that other guests on the same panels were Republican.
Matthews distorted Murtha's Iraq proposal.Matthews repeatedly suggested that Rep. John P. Murtha's (D-PA) call
for a redeployment of U.S. forces from Iraq was inconsistent with his
record of being "known as the soldiers' friend" and "pro-Pentagon,
pro-soldier." The suggestion echoed news reports
that described Murtha as being "usually pro-military" -- implying that
his position on redeployment is not -- and a "pro-military" Democrat,
suggesting that the typical Democrat is not. [Hardball, 11/18/05]
Matthews resurrected false claim that Saddam let Sunni fundamentalists "come in for ... training."
Matthews falsely claimed that, prior to his overthrow by U.S.-led
forces, Saddam Hussein allowed Islamic terrorists to train for chemical
warfare in northern Iraq. In fact, as the Los Angeles Times
noted on June 15, 2003, the training camp, operated by Kurdish Islamic
fundamentalist group Ansar al-Islam, "was in an autonomous Kurdish
region not ruled by Hussein." [Hardball, 11/9/05]
Matthews falsely insisted that the ongoing insurgency in Iraq was unexpected.Ignoring evidence that the Bush administration received repeated prewar
warnings of the potential for a sustained insurgency in Iraq, Matthews
insisted that the continuing bloodshed had not been anticipated.
Matthews suggested that the "enduring" nature of the Iraqi insurgency
was a surprise and told viewers that he didn't "know many people who
expected it to still be going on this long." However, as reported by USA Today,
"Military and civilian intelligence agencies repeatedly warned prior to
the invasion that Iraqi insurgent forces were preparing to fight and
that their ranks would grow as other Iraqis came to resent the U.S.
occupation and organize guerrilla attacks." [The Chris Matthews Show, 9/25/05]
Matthews falsely attacked Wilson over Niger trip's genesis.Matthews falsely accused former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV of claiming during his July 6 Meet the Press appearance and in his July 6 New York Times
op-ed that Vice President Dick Cheney had sent him on his February 2002
trip to investigate whether Iraq had tried to acquire uranium from
Niger. In fact, Wilson never made such a claim in either his Times op-ed or his appearance on Meet the Press. Wilson wrote in his Times op-ed that CIA officials, not the vice president, asked him to go to Niger; discussing his op-ed on Meet the Press,
Wilson said that the "the question [of Iraq seeking uranium from Niger]
was asked of the CIA by the office of the vice president." [The Chris Matthews Show, 7/24/05]
Matthews mischaracterized Democratic efforts to complete intel probe as "disingenuous," "using crocodile tears."
Matthews baselessly assigned motives to both the Democrats' support for
authorizing the president to take the country to war in October 2002
and their recent push
to complete "phase two" of the Senate Intelligence Committee's probe
into the prewar intelligence on Iraq. Matthews characterized Democrats'
efforts to fully examine the Bush administration's handling of the
intelligence as "disingenuous," "using crocodile tears," and "trying to
climb down off the war." Matthews ignored Democrats' argument that the
judgments provided to Congress on the Iraqi threat prior to the vote
were later found to have been false or exaggerated. [Hardball, 11/1/05]
Chris has strayed so far off the reservation, that Tip O'Neil must be rolling in his grave over what Matthews has become.
Matthews' show has morphed into "Softball" with his pathetic buttsmooching of the current administration.
Like Woodward, Matthews has become enamored of being one of the
popular crowd and has sold his integrity to maintain his good standing
with Jr. and his "crew" of criminals.
Chris, it's not the horserace that is important! It's the substance. Good call by Media Matters for America - and not just for the above atrocities...
As Bob Somerby at The Daily Howler has consistently pointed out,
Matthews was the phoniest, fakest shill for the RNC in 2000 - his
smears of Gore were just awful. He gave a repeat performance in 2004,
giving the Swift Boat Liars credibility when they deserved none.
In a way, 2005 is not Chris's best work - that comes in an election
year, when he can smear, distort, pretent to read minds, and just plain
old make s*** up.
When I heard Matthew's story about the red scarf and the Christmas
party. It sounded like a romantic diary
entry from a teenage girl. I did not realize Matthews was ever an
actual journalist until I read it here.
The Bush administration's surveillance policy has failed to make a dent in the war against al Qaeda. This kind of shortsightedness is the reason why empires always fail to win guerilla wars:
U.S.
law enforcement sources said that more than four years of surveillance
by the National Security Agency has failed to capture any high-level al
Qaeda operative in the United States. They said al Qaeda insurgents
have long stopped using the phones and even computers to relay
messages. Instead, they employ couriers.
"They
have been way ahead of us in communications security," a law
enforcement source said. "At most, we have caught some riff-raff. But
the heavies remain free and we believe some of them are in the United
States."
Several
members of Congress have been briefed on the effectiveness of the
government surveillance program that does not require a court order.
Senate
Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, Pennsylvania Republican,
who was briefed by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on the matter,
said he plans to hold hearings on the program by February 2006.
"There may be legislation which will come out of it [hearings] to restrict the president's power," Mr. Specter said.
The
law enforcement sources said the intelligence community has identified
several al Qaeda agents believed to be in the United States. But the
sources said the agents have not been found because of insufficient
intelligence and even poor analysis.
The
assertions by the law enforcement sources dispute President Bush's
claim that the government surveillance program has significantly helped
in the fight against terrorism. The president said the program, which
goes beyond the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, limits
eavesdropping to international phone calls.
The
sources provided guidelines to how the administration has employed the
surveillance program. They said the National Security Agency in
cooperation with the FBI was allowed to monitor the telephone calls and
e-mails of any American believed to be in contact with a person abroad
suspected of being linked to al Qaeda or other terrorist groups.
At
that point, the sources said, all of the communications of that
American would be monitored, including calls made to others in the
United States. The regulations under the administration's surveillance
program do not require any court order.
"The
new regulations don't require this because it is considered an ongoing
investigation," a source familiar with the program said.
The
sources said the Patriot Act was based on the assessment that al Qaeda
had established cells in Muslim communities in the United States.
Documents
obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union confirm that the FBI has
monitored and infiltrated a range of Muslim and Arab groups, including
the Washington-based American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.
But
despite the huge amount of raw material gathered under the legislation,
the FBI has not captured one major al Qaeda operative in the United
States. Instead, federal authorities have been allowed to use
non-terrorist material obtained through the surveillance program for
investigation and prosecution.
In
more than one case, the sources said, a surveillance target was
prosecuted on non-terrorist charges from information obtained through
wiretaps conducted without a court order. They said the FBI supported
this policy in an attempt to pressure surveillance targets to cooperate.
"The
problem is not the legislation but lack of intelligence and analysis,"
another source said. "We have a huge pile of intercepts that never get
translated, analyzed and thus remain of no use to us. If it
[surveillance] was effective, that's one thing. But it hasn't been
effective."
Could it be that Al Queda isn't doing vegan cookouts, Gay Pride marches or Quaker peace meetings?
I know it's hard to believe, but they might have other interests.
Being forced to
watch this movie for all eternity would be like finding yourself in one
of those "Twilight Zone" episodes in which the same torture keeps
happening again and again.
Before all the leftover Christmas turkey is gone, there may
still be time to have a look back at the classic Salon.com article from December
2001 concerning the central flaw in It’s a Wonderful Life—that Pottersville, the
supposedly nightmarish town that would have sprung up had George Bailey not
existed, actually looks a hell of a lot more fun than Bedford Falls, which it
replaces in George’s Clarence-inspired hallucinations. Put more succinctly by
the writer, Gary Kamiya: “There’s just one problem: Pottersville rocks!”
After
making a hilarious, point-by-point argument (weakened only when he
mistakenly
calls the taxi driver Bert—of course, the cabbie is Ernie; Bert is the
cop), the writer concludes with this salient point:
In Capra's Tale of
Two Cities, Pottersville is the Bad Place. It's the demonic foil to
Bedford Falls, the sweet, Norman Rockwell-like town in which George
grows up. Named after the evil Mr. Potter, Pottersville is the setting
for George's brief, nightmarish trip through a world in which he never
existed. In that alternative universe, Potter has triumphed, and we are
intended to shudder in horror at the sinful city he has spawned -- a
kind of combo pack of Sodom, Gomorrah, Times Square in 1972, Tokyo's
hostess district, San Francisco's Barbary Coast ca. 1884 and one of
those demon-infested burgs dimly visible in the background of a
Hieronymus Bosch painting.
There's just one problem: Pottersville rocks!
Pottersville makes
its brief but memorable appearance during that tumultuous scene when
George, who has just been bounced from Nick's Bar and is beginning to
seriously freak out, rushes down the main street. Many bartenders, after being subjected to this insufferably patronizing
sermon -- "Off with you, my lad, and be lively"? "That's a good man"?
-- on top of being ordered to make an insultingly impractical drink,
would simply reach behind the bar and bring down a baseball bat upon
the head of the offending customer. To his credit, Nick does not.
Instead, he delivers a speech that, while perhaps not as gracious as it
could have been, is a model of frankness and concision. "We serve hard
drinks for men who want to get drunk fast," he tells Clarence, "and we
don't need any 'characters' hanging around to give the joint
'atmosphere.'"
I have made, I believe, a definitive case that Pottersville has gotten
a bad rap and that Bedford Falls is grossly overrated. But if there are
any who are still unconvinced, I would just like to remind them of one
little detail: in the real world, Potter won.
We all live in Pottersville now. Bedford Falls is gone. The plucky
little Savings and Loan closed down years ago, just like in George's
nightmare. Cleaned up, his evil eyebrows removed, armed with a good PR
firm, Mr. Potter goes merrily about his business, "consolidating" the
George Baileys of the world. To cling to dreams of a bucolic America
where the little guy defeats the forces of Big Business and the
policeman and the taxi driver and the druggist and the banker all sing
Auld Lang Syne together is just to ask for heartbreak and confusion
when you turn off the TV and open your front door. So don't fight it. It's a Pottersville world! Welcome jitterbuggers! Get me -- (ka-ching!) -- I'm giving out wings!
The AFA believes that the Girl's Inc. "I Can" band leads to dead fetuses and wanton dykery.
A short while back the bible-beaters were up in arms over American
Girl dolls, and the line's affiliation with Girls Incorporated, which
helps young, underprivileged young women build a sense of self-respect
and self-determination. The problem is that Girls Inc. also teaches
girls about their bodies, health and sexuality. The big siren went off
in AmTalibanland.
The all-too-familiar bigots at the American Family Association ran a petition campaign with this message spamming out to American Girl President Ellen Brothers and Mattel Chairman Bob Eckert. (Mattel owns American Girl):
I have been made aware of your cash donation and continuing proceeds through the "I Can" bracelet to Girls Inc.
I feel American Girl and Mattel has made a tragic mistake in
partnering with Girls Incorporated, a pro-abortion, pro-lesbian
advocacy group.
After viewing the Girls Inc. website, I am convinced your financial
support for them will cause a lot of American Girl fans and consumers
to abandon their longtime loyalty and faithfulness to your company.
I implore you to reconsider your partnership with Girls Inc. and let
me know of your decision. Your response to my concerns will greatly
affect how I choose to do business with American Girl and Mattel in the
future.
Well, which road did Mattel take -- the Kraft
path ("screw you" AmTaliban"), maybe? No, like Ford, Mattel caved in to
the bible beaters. (CBS):
That
was until the Wiesners found out that the American Girl company donates
money to an organization called Girls Incorporated, which offers
support to underprivileged girls. Girls Inc. also endorses Roe v. Wade
- the right to abortion and it promotes acceptance of homosexuality.
It's an association that families like the Wiesners are protesting with
their wallets.
"This year, we're not going to buy any of the products for Christmas," Wiesner says bluntly.
...American Girl, which just launched its first ever major ad campaign in its 20-year history, released a statement saying it is "profoundly disappointed that certain groups have chosen to misconstrue American Girl's purely altruistic efforts."
Also Mattel, the maker of the doll has decided it will not renew its partnership with Girls Inc.which runs out this year.
I can almost guarantee you that Mattel won't do a mea culpa in the end as the automaker did. Joyce M. Roch, President of Girls, Inc., responded to the controversy on its site.
Recently,
our mission to help girls develop their self-esteem and self-reliance
has become the target of false, inflammatory statements from people who
are pursuing a narrow political agenda.
Girls Incorporated stands on its long positive history. The
millions of lives we have touched speak for who we are and our values.
Thanks to all of you who believe in our mission of inspiring girls to
be strong, smart, and bold. Together, we will continue to work to help
all girls realize their potential.
"In addition, since 1992 Girls Inc. has provided over $1.8 million
in college scholarships to girls who have become leaders in all walks
of life and has played a crucial role in advancing girls' rights
through supporting legislation such as Title IX and the Violence
Against Women Act. Recently, our mission to help girls develop their
self-esteem and self-reliance has become the target of false,
inflammatory statements from people who are pursuing a narrow political
agenda."
I have to agree with Senator Barack Obama
-- this is silly. These people are boycotting American Girl because
Girls Inc. wants to see women succeed outside of the home. Women can be
whatever they want! Organizations like Girls Inc. don't need to
encourage women to be homemakers -- there have been hundreds of years
of encouragement ingrained into our culture. And the "Christian"
churches advocate baby-making and homemaking more than enough.
What
I find dangerous in all this is that these "Christians" are trying to
co-opt "feminism." I'm a glutton for punishment, so sometimes I listen
to Relevant Radio
-- the "orthodox" Catholic talk radio station. They've talked about how
we should view women in light of the gifts God has given them. (Which
is code word for uteruses.) They argue this is the new feminism --
respecting women for who/what they really
-- or rather, what God made them (i.e. baby-factories). Unsaid in all
of it is the view that God created women to be mothers. The consistent
absence of a discussion of what God created women to be is incredibly
conspicuous.
Bin Laden Niece in Glamour Shots The niece of Osama Bin Laden has posed for provocative photographs for an American magazine.
Wafah Dufour, an aspiring musician and model, is the daughter of the al-Qaeda leader's half-brother Yeslam.
She appears stripped to ostrich feather lingerie, and in a bubble bath, in photos for American GQ magazine.
US-born, she says she is an American, and distances
herself from her uncle. "Everyone relates me to that man, and I have
nothing to do with him," she says.
Ms Dufour, 26, took her mother's maiden name after the events of 11 September 2001.
She lived in Saudi Arabia, where Bin Laden is from, until she was 10, before moving on to Geneva and back to the US.
'Like any New Yorker'
She says she never sees any of the extended Bin Laden clan, including her father.
"There are 400 other people related to him, but they are
all in Saudi Arabia, so nobody's going to get tarred with it. I'm the
only one here," she said.
Her father and Osama Bin Laden are among more than 50
children fathered by Mohammed Bin Laden, a Yemeni immigrant to Saudi
Arabia, and construction magnate.
Ms Dufour was in Geneva when the 11 September 2001 attacks on the US, masterminded by her uncle, were launched.
She said: "I was freaking out, crying hysterically,
watching this in horror. I was like 'Somebody's bombing my city, and I
wanna go home!'"
"I was born in the States, and I want people to know I'm
American, and I want people to understand that I'm like anyone in New
York. For me, it's home," she said.
CHICAGO--With winter's onset driving the demand for surface coal to
record-high levels, the mineral's cost is now beyond the reach of low-
and middle-income Americans who wish to punish their naughty children.
"Coal in one's stocking is meant to serve as an admonishment or
warning, not as a dependable grade-B investment," said William
Menchell, a commodities adviser for T. Rowe Price. "In today's market,
children should only have their stockings stuffed with lumps of coal if
they have been studious and obedient, and show an interest in long-term
investments in the energy sector." For more affordable punitive
options, analysts point to the relatively stagnant switch market, which
could soon go the way of coal if demand increases for combustible
wooden sticks.
A good question was raised by a caller on TOTN (Talk of the Nation)
yesterday. she asked if this technology was used by the administration
during the 2004 election to spy on the kerry camp and peaceful
protestors of the administration (i'm paraphrasing). without FISA/FISC
oversight, and without any transparency, how can this be trusted? The FBI already missused such powers against civil rights leaders (including MLK).
When the NSA wiretapping story
first hit the pages of the NYT a few days ago, there were clearly a
huge number of unanswered questions. Is the wiretapping that the
President has authorized illegal under the FISA act? Is it
unconstitutional? If it's illegal, does the President have the
authority to violate the law if he's acting in the best interests of
the republic? And then there's the question of why the NYT sat on this
story for over a year before going public with it.
I'm not really going to make any attempt to answer questions of
legality and constitutionality, because the Internet is full of
armchair constitutional scholars right now who're fighting tooth and
nail over these questions, generating much heat but very little light.
Instead, I'd like to point your attention to some later developments in
this case that clearly indicate that there's much more going on here
than we initially assumed. When the truth comes out (if it ever does),
this NSA wiretapping story will almost certainly be a story not just
about the Constitutional concept of the separation of powers, but about
high technology.
To return to the last question in the first paragraph, let's take a
look at the NYT's own answer. The quotes below are from NYT executive
editor Bill Keller's statement on the matter:
A year ago, when this information first became known to Times
reporters, the Administration argued strongly that writing about this
eavesdropping program would give terrorists clues about the
vulnerability of their communications and would deprive the government
of an effective tool for the protection of the country's security...
As we have done before in rare instances when faced with a
convincing national security argument, we agreed not to publish at that
time.
"We also continued reporting, and in the ensuing months two things
happened that changed our thinking... Second, in the course of
subsequent reporting we
satisfied ourselves that we could write about this program --
withholding a number of technical details -- in a way that would not
expose any intelligence-gathering methods or capabilities that are not
already on the public record.
(Emphasis in the above quote and in all subsequent quotes is added.)
So the NYT sat on this story for a year in part because they were
concerned that they wouldn't be able to report it without revealing
some crucial technical details of how the program works.
Now let's take a look a statement of former senator Bob Graham (D-FL),
who was one of the few senators to be briefed on the program. From a
new Washington Post article:
"I came out of the room with the full sense that we were dealing with a
change in technology but not policy," Graham said, with new
opportunities to intercept overseas calls that passed through U.S.
switches.
Kevin Drum at the Washington Monthly has rounded up
a few more quotes like those above (including the NYT quote), that also
help make a very good case that what's at issue here is some kind of
new NSA surveillance technology:
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales,
telling reporters why Bush didn't simply ask Congress to pass a law
making the program clearly legal: "We've had discussions with members
of Congress, certain members of Congress, about whether or not we could
get an amendment to FISA, and we were advised that that was not likely
to be - that was not something we could likely get, certainly not
without jeopardizing the existence of the program, and therefore,
killing the program."
President Bush,
answering questions at Monday's press conference: "We use FISA
still....But FISA is for long-term monitoring....There is a difference
between detecting so we can prevent, and monitoring. And it's important
to know the distinction between the two....We used the [FISA] process
to monitor. But also....we've got to be able to detect and prevent."
Senator Jay Rockefeller,
in a letter to Dick Cheney after being briefed on the program in 2003:
"As I reflected on the meeting today, and the future we face, John
Poindexter's TIA project sprung to mind, exacerbating my concern
regarding the direction the Administration is moving with regard to
security, technology, and surveillance."
This last quote above, the one about TIA, is especially telling. TIA
was a massive electronic intelligence gathering program designed to
mechanically sift through phone calls, emails, and other electronic
communications in order to build pictures of how individuals fit into
larger networks. We covered TIA here on Ars, but of all the coverage I
think Caesar's initial take on it seems the most directly applicable to
the current situation:
This system's purpose would be to monitor communications and detect
would-be terrorists and plots before they happen... This project is not
interested in funding "evolutionary" changes in technology, e.g.,
bit-step improvements to current data mining and storage techniques.
Rather, the amount of data that the directors are anticipating
(petabytes!) would require massive leaps in technology (and perhaps
also some massive leaps in surveillance laws). According to DARPA, such
data collection "increases information coverage by an order of
magnitude," and ultimately "requires keeping track of individuals and
understanding how they fit into models."
"Massive leaps in surveillance laws" indeed. TIA became public in
2002, and Congress quickly put the kibosh on it. This is right about
the time that Bush secretly signed the executive order authorizing the
new NSA wiretap program.
So, are TIA and the NSA wiretapping directive related? That probably
depends on what you mean by "related." I doubt seriously they're the
same thing, but it's entirely possible that the undescribed new
technology used in the NSA wiretapping program was also going to be
deployed as a part of TIA's massive data collection efforts.
My main point in bringing up TIA is twofold: 1) TIA-like efforts are still going on (Defensetech catalogs some),
and 2) the government has been trying to use new technology, like
database tech and voice recognition, for domestic surveillance for a
long time. And when I say a long time, I mean well before the current
administration came into office.
The domestic electronic surveillance ball really got rolling under
the Clinton administration, with the 1994 Communications Assistance for
Law Enforcement Act (CALEA). CALEA mandated that the telcos aid
wiretapping by installing remote wiretap ports onto their digital
switches so that the switch traffic would be available for snooping by
law enforcement. After CALEA passed, the FBI no longer had to go
on-site with wiretapping equipment in order to tap a line�they could
monitor and digitally process voice communications from the comfort of
the home office. (The FCC has recently ruled that CALEA covers VOIP services, which means that providers like Vonage will have to find a way to comply.)
CALEA opened up a huge can of worms, and PGP creator Phil Zimmermann
sounded the alarm back in 1999 about where the program was headed:
A year after the CALEA passed, the FBI disclosed plans to require the
phone companies to build into their infrastructure the capacity to
simultaneously wiretap 1 percent of all phone calls in all major U.S.
cities. This would represent more than a thousandfold increase over
previous levels in the number of phones that could be wiretapped. In
previous years, there were only about a thousand court-ordered wiretaps
in the United States per year, at the federal, state, and local levels
combined. It's hard to see how the government could even employ enough
judges to sign enough wiretap orders to wiretap 1 percent of all our
phone calls, much less hire enough federal agents to sit and listen to
all that traffic in real time. The only plausible way of processing
that amount of traffic is a massive Orwellian application of automated
voice recognition technology to sift through it all, searching for
interesting keywords or searching for a particular speaker's voice. If
the government doesn't find the target in the first 1 percent sample,
the wiretaps can be shifted over to a different 1 percent until the
target is found, or until everyone's phone line has been checked for
subversive traffic. The FBI said they need this capacity to plan for
the future. This plan sparked such outrage that it was defeated in
Congress. But the mere fact that the FBI even asked for these broad
powers is revealing of their agenda.
Read the quote above carefully, and see if it doesn't ring any bells
for you. The salient points that Zimmermann makes are these:
In 1995, back when the Pentium Pro was hot stuff, the FBI
requested the legal authorization to do very high-volume monitoring of
digital calls.
There's no way for the judicial system to approve warrants for the number of calls that the FBI wanted to monitor.
The
agency could never hire enough humans to be able to monitor that many
calls simultaneously, which means that they'd have to use voice
recognition technology to look for "hits" that they could then follow
up on with human wiretaps.
It is entirely possible that the NSA technology at issue here is some
kind of high-volume, automated voice recognition and pattern matching
system. Now, I don't at all believe that all international calls are or
could be monitored with such a system, or anything like that. Rather,
the NSA could very easily narrow down the amount of phone traffic that
they'd have to a relatively small fraction of international calls with
some smart filtering. First, they'd only monitor calls where one end of
the connection is in a country of interest. Then, they'd only need the
ability to do a roving random sample of a few seconds from each call in
that already greatly narrowed pool of calls. As Zimmermann describes
above, you monitor a few seconds of some fraction of the calls looking
for "hits," and then you move on to another fraction. If a particular
call generates a hit, then you zero in on it for further real-time
analysis and possible human interception. All the calls can be
recorded, cached, and further examined later for items that may have
been overlooked in the real-time analysis.
In a recent press conference, Deputy Director for National Intelligence Michael Hayden said the following (via Defensetech):
And here the key is not so much persistence as it is agility. It's a
quicker trigger. It's a subtly softer trigger. And the intrusion into
privacy -- the intrusion into privacy is significantly less. It's only
international calls. The period of time in which we do this is, in most
cases, far less than that which would be gained by getting a court
order.
This sounds pretty much like what I've described above. And yes,
this kind of real-time voice recognition, crude semantic parsing and
pattern matching is doable with today's technology, especially when you
have a budget like the NSA.
The "softer trigger" here is a phrase that's on a watch list, or a
call with an abnormally high volume of a certain type of vocabulary.
The "agility" bit is a reference to the technology's ability to move
from call to call, taking small slices. That's also probably what's
behind the claim that the technology is less intrusive than a
traditional wiretap, because the time slices are very short.
Finally, I know a lot of people are bringing up Echelon here, and
Echelon is indeed relevant. However, the relevance isn't in how the NSA
program is connected to Echelon - it probably isn't - but in the fact that
Echelon is yet another example of a government-run, high-volume,
automated intelligence gathering project that looks for certain words
or phrases in samples of electronic communications.This really goes to the crux of the matter. Any "terrorist" worth his
salt would certainly have better tradecraft than to use any kind of
"plainly spoken" phrase that would be picked up by the government
filters. After all, we trained a lot of the people who trained these
people during the Soviet war in Afganistan, and I can't imagine the CIA
wouldn't teach them these simple principles of tradecraft.
You
might catch some of the "stupid" ones. Or the non-trained ones. Or the
home-grown ones not connected to a "professional" terrorist group. But,
you could probably catch those people through legal means too, and not
risk impeachment and public outrage. So, if not for terror (which seems
to be the administration's "stock" response for everything since 9/11),
then why?
The neo-con stated goal of ensuring Republican control of the country seems a likely candidate to me.
The implication of this type of surveillance is that you monitor
everyone. Or at least a huge chunk of them. Whether you think that is
right, wrong, justifiable, etc. it's obviously a massive change which
dictates a public discussion. But I suspect, or at least hope, that a
significan number of Americans would be genuinely opposed to such a
change in surveillence techniques. In my thinking, the fact that it
might be computers listening instead of people doesn't change the
nature of the privacy invasion. If anything, it makes it worse because
what would have been impossible with humans (listen to every single
phone call) because possible with computers.
Even if the article
is wrong in guessing that this is what's behind the current tiff, I do
think that this type of approach is coming if not already here. Take
for example 'roving wiretaps'. I haven't seen any discussion of how
exactly that works. It could very well involve tapping all phones in an
area a scanning for the voiceprint of the wiretap subject.
Another
example of late. The story about the student who got a visit from the
government for requesting a book by Mao for inter-library loan. If you
assume that the student was not already under surveillance, the only
way for that to happen is if the governement is monitoring all
inter-library loans. Which would certainly explain why they are so
tight lipped about the library record provisions in the Patriot act.
So to take a stab at making a "real world" layman's example of this
technology: This is basically like cops going around neighborhoods,
opening up your front door, and glancing around real fast to see if
there's anything suspicious. If they don't see anything, they move on
to the next house. If something doesn't look right, they hang around
and check things out more closely.
Sound about right? If that's
the case, then yeah, I can see why they
A) wouldn't want to go to
Congress to ask for a change in the law, and B) wouldn't want to try to
get a warrant for these.
In both cases, they'd be told to go fly a
kite. So, if this is the case, it's probably what I expected when the
story first broke. It's another case of "they might say no, so let's
not ask."
Election officials spooked by tampering in a test last week of
Diebold optical-scan voting machines should be equally wary of
optical-scan equipment produced by other manufacturers, according to a
computer scientist who conducted the test.
Election officials in Florida's Leon County, where the test
occurred, promptly announced plans to drop Diebold machines in favor of
optical-scan machines made by Election Systems & Software, or
ES&S. But Hugh Thompson, an adjunct computer science professor at
the Florida Institute of Technology who helped devise last week's test,
believes other systems could also be vulnerable.
"Looking at these systems doesn't send off signals that ... if we
just get rid of Diebold and go to another vendor we'll be safe,"
Thompson said. "We know the Diebold machines are vulnerable. As for
ES&S, we don't know that they're bad but we don't know that they're
(good) either."
Thompson and Harri Hursti, a Finnish computer scientist, were able
to change votes on the Diebold machine without leaving a trace. Hursti
conducted the same test for the California secretary of state's office
Tuesday. The office did not return several calls for comment.
Information about the vulnerability comes as states face deadlines
to qualify for federal funding to replace punch-card and lever machines
with new touch-screen or optical-scan machines. In order to get
funding, states must have new machines in place by their first federal
election after Jan. 1, 2006.
Optical-scan machines have become the preferred choice of many
election officials due to the controversy over touch-screen voting
machines, many of which do not produce a paper trail. Optical-scan
machines use a paper ballot on which voters mark selections with a pen
before officials scan them into a machine. The paper serves as a backup
if the machine fails or officials need to recount votes.
The hack Thompson and Hursti performed involves a memory card that's
inserted in the Diebold machines to record votes as officials scan
ballots. According to Thompson, data on the cards isn't encrypted or
secured with passwords. Anyone with programming skills and access to
the cards -- such as a county elections technical administrator, a
savvy poll worker or a voting company employee -- can alter the data
using a laptop and card reader.
To test the machines, Thompson and Hursti conducted a mock election
on systems loaded with a rigged memory card. The election consisted of
eight ballots asking voters to decide, yes or no, if the Diebold
optical-scan machine could be hacked.
Six people voted "no" and two voted "yes." But after scanning the ballots, the total showed one "no" vote and seven "yes" votes.
Diebold did not return several calls for comment.
Thompson said in a real race between candidates someone could
pre-load 50 votes for Candidate A and minus 50 votes for Candidate B,
for example. Candidate B would need to receive 100 votes before
equaling Candidate A's level at the start of the race. The total number
of votes on the machine would equal the number of voters, so election
officials wouldn't become suspicious.
"It's self-destroying evidence," he said. "Once ... the machine gets
past zero and starts counting forward for Candidate B, there's no
record that at one point there were negative votes for Candidate B."
Thompson said a second vulnerability in the cards makes it easy to
program the voting machine so that it thinks the card is blank at the
start of the race. This is important because before voting begins on
Election Day, poll workers print a report of vote totals from each
machine to show voters that the machines contain no votes.
"The logic to print that zero report is contained on the memory card
itself," Thompson said. "So all you do is alter that code ... to always
print out a zero report (in the morning)."
David Jefferson, a computer scientist at Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory and chair of California's Voting Systems Technical
Assessment and Advisory Board, said that programming software on a
removable memory card raises grave concerns.
"The instant anyone with security sensibility hears this, red flags
and clanging alarms happen," Jefferson said. "Because this software
that i
This year, of all the news anchors, columnists, pundits, and reporters
whose work we've critiqued and corrected, one man stands alone as a
clear successor to the O'Reilly throne. We are pleased to announce
broadcast journalist, former newspaper bureau chief, former
presidential speechwriter, and best-selling author 
The Bush administration's surveillance policy has failed to make a dent in the war against al Qaeda. This kind of shortsightedness is the reason why empires always fail to win guerilla wars:
Before all the leftover Christmas turkey is gone, there may
still be time to have a look back at the classic Salon.com article from December
2001 concerning 
A short while back the bible-beaters were up in arms over American
Girl dolls, and the line's affiliation with Girls Incorporated, which
helps young, underprivileged young women build a sense of self-respect
and self-determination. The problem is that Girls Inc. also teaches
girls about their bodies, health and sexuality. The big siren went off
in AmTalibanland.
Wafah Dufour, an aspiring musician and model, is the daughter of the al-Qaeda leader's half-brother Yeslam.
Election officials spooked by tampering in a test last week of
Diebold optical-scan voting machines should be equally wary of
optical-scan equipment produced by other manufacturers, according to a
computer scientist who conducted the test.