News for October 19th, 2007
It was a fast and loose week, and we’ll follow it up with a fast and loose News segment. Between attempted assassinations, vetoed health care bills, wiretapping, presidential campaign shenanigans, and record oil prices, it was hard to keep up, and we barely did.
Overwhelmed, the staff retreated to our regular coverage of irregularly covered news topics for this, the Timothy Jordan Show News for the 19th of October, 2007.
Wiretapping was in the news again this week, with Congressional hearings on Capitol hill that revealed widespread corporate participation in the warrantless wiretapping program and a Republican end-run around the bill intended to reform the wiretapping program.
It’s been known for years that most of our nation’s major telecommunications companies actively participated in the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program. Responding in written testimony to inquiries from the House Committee on Energy and Commerce about the program, several companies responded with written testimony.
Not surprisingly, AT&T was the least forthcoming, defending itself with a familiar claim of state secrets privileges. They offered that, “our company essentially finds itself caught in the middle of an oversight dispute between the Congress and the executive relating to government surveillance activities.”
The AT&T response lists 19 different statues, many of which were part of the Patriot Act, which authorize the sharing of private customer information with government agencies. This is not to say that AT&T admits sharing customer information in their letter to Congress.
That was left to Verizon, which admitted to serving over 94,000 Federal requests for customer information via a National Security Letter or Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court warrant between 2005 and last month. That’s over 90 requests per day, every day, or almost four per hour, and we’re only talking about one of the major telecoms.
Keep in mind that these are fully legal requests, according to Verizon, requests that aren’t part of the warrantless wiretapping program. The full extent of that program is still well shrouded, but Verizon legal counsel, Randal Milch, confirmed one detail in his official response, telling Congress that Verizon has received Federal requests for, “… telephone numbers based on a two-generation community of interest.”
This means that the government wants to be able to trace who the friends of friends calling after the fact. To get a sense of how broad a second-generation record would be, I’d like our listeners out there to think of how many people you’ve called in the last week, and how many people they’ve all called. Starting from a single phone number, at the second-generation level we’re now talking about thousands of people.
And while all three companies that responded to the Congressional request continue to assert that everything they’ve done for the Bush administration is completely legal, they’re not about to give up the fight for immunity from prosecution.
To paraphrase the words of AT&T, it would be unfair to the telecoms if Congress doesn’t protect them from legal repercussions because of the potential cost of fighting thousands of difficult court cases. “This is so even when the carriers are alleged, as in the situation of the current NSA litigation, to have cooperated with fully authorized intelligence activities that our nation’s highest officials have determined to be, and continue to maintain are, legal.”
Yeah, and there were weapons of mass destruction a half hour away from being deployed in Iraq; waterboarding isn’t torture; and I have a magical puppy who grants me three wishes every day.
• Rep. John Dingel’s letter to AT&T PDF (276.9KB)
• Verizon response PDF (4.7MB)
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Just the other day I wished for the Democratic leadership in Congress to show a little backbone, and it may have actually happened.
It relates back to that legal protection for telecommunication companies. The major telecoms and the Bush administration have made it clear that immunity from prosecution is an essential part of any wiretapping authorization bill. Yes, they’re all still claiming that everything that has and will be done is completely legal, but they’re not so confident that they’re willing to leave it open for the courts to decide.
The version of the bill being proposed in the Senate was set to provide that immunity, but two Senators, Chris Dodd and Barack Obama have come out in opposition to the bill. Dodd has gone one step further and pledged to place a hold on the bill to prevent it leaving the Judiciary Committee so long as retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies’ cooperation with the warrantless wiretapping program is part of the legislation.
This display of testicular fortitude wasn’t extended to the House, where the companion bill’s sponsors were forced to withdraw their authorization bill from consideration thanks to poison-pill shenanigans by Republican legislators.
The House version of the bill, known as the RESTORE Act, lacked immunity for the telecoms, and also required that any wiretapping taking place within the United States be authorized with a court order, basically bringing the law back to where it was before 2001.
But House Republicans threatened to offer an amendment that would have stripped any warrant requirements, by offering that nothing written in the proposed law, “shall be construed to prohibit the intelligence community from conducting surveillance needed to prevent Osama Bin Laden, Al Qaeda, or any other foreign terrorist organization…from attacking the United States or any United States person.”
Rep. Eric Cantor charged that, “Democrats have played petty politics with this bill.” An interesting statement, since it was his wacky amendment causing trouble for the legislation in the first place.
The existing Patriot Act extension expires in February, giving lawmakers plenty of time to work towards an agreement.
• H.R.3773, the RESTORE Act of 2007
• Obama statement, via Talking Points Memo
• Rep. Cantor’s statement on his amendment
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Feeling safer on the airlines thanks to all of those long security lines and the x-raying of shoes? Well don’t, because screeners at Los Angeles International airport missed 75% of the fake bombs and bomb parts smuggled through security lines during tests last years.
According to USA Today, a classified report indicates that Federal airport security guards are even more incompetent than they appear. The internal Transportation Security Agency review covered three airports, Los Angeles International, Chicago O’Hare, and San Francisco.
The first two are served by Federal security screeners, while SFO continues to be monitored by a private security company. There were 70 smuggling attempts made in LA, and over 50 of them were successful.
We joked a few weeks ago on this program about smuggling explosives into an airport using a giant fat suit. Apparently it’s enough to just run them through the x-ray machine if you’re flying through LAX.
The security situation is better at SFO, with only 20% of smuggled bomb material making it through security.
• USA TODAY, Most Fake Bombs Missed by Screeners
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This next story is something of a public service announcement, in that it’s an opportunity to do some public service. Have some extra time on your hands, an overflowing fountain of patience, and an urge to live in Washington D.C.? If you do, perk those ears up, because there’s an opening for the job of loneliest man in the U.S. government, according to the National Archives.
The current director of the Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO) is retiring in a few weeks, creating a job opportunity for anyone who’s needing a little more frustration in their life.
It pays up to $154,000 per year, and offers little to no job satisfaction. The ISOO is responsible for monitoring classified documents and how they’re handled. It made this news program earlier back in June when documents revealed that Vice President Cheney’s office had stopped cooperating with the office in 2002.
The Vice President’s response was to suggest that he wasn’t part of the Executive Branch, and then to attempt the abolishment of the ISOO when they persisted in asking for records of Cheney’s handling of the classified material stored in his two man-sized safes.
• Wanted, Director Information Security Oversight Office
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The stock markets closed down for the week on thanks to continued worries over the effects of rising oil prices on the already weakened economy. Those oil prices hit a record high of $90 per barrel this morning.
Faint cries of jubilation from the Exxon board room were heard down on the street many floors below.
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And I’ll utter my own cry of jubilation as I come to the end of the program; but before we go there’s just enough time for a smorgasbord of excellence. It’s…
Excellent? Yeah, that’s New Zealand, according to this year’s Durex Sexual Well-being Global Survey, where we discovered that Kiwi women are the world’s most promiscuous. Now that’s pretty good, and may determine my future travel plans, but it’s not quite excellent enough to win.
No, excellence is Chuck Yeager.
It was fifty years ago this week, on October 14th, 1947, that a young test pilot climbed into the cockpit of an experimental rocket airplane.
His goal that day was to push the edge of the sound barrier, but instead of just pushing it be broke right through.
Editor’s note: The News copy peters out here. Check the podcast for the full Award of Excellence
• USAF, First Mach flight propels Yeager, Air Force into history