CRACKING THE CODE TO PRIVACY: HOW FAR CAN THE FBI GO?
Despite the FBI’s assurances that the KLS did not record communications,
it still might be over-inclusive. The FBI, for all its good intentions,
had no way of knowing whether Scarfo would use his computer keyboard to
type his PGP passphrase or a letter to his attorney within the
confidential and privileged attorney-client relationship. If use of the
KLS becomes widespread, the FBI would potentially get a lot more
information than authorized by their search warrants. The court
addressed these concerns by likening the use of the KLS to the search of
a file cabinet for a specific file. “…[I]t is true that during a search
for a passphrase ‘some innocuous [items] will be at least cursorily
perused in order to determine whether they are among those [items] to be
seized.”13 This argument is not
compelling–the FBI did not determine whether each keystroke was an item
to be seized, but rather seized them al and then determined whether they
constituted the information sought.
Source: Duke Law & Technology Review, January 28, 2002
Judge OKs FBI Keyboard Sniffing
The Justice Department can legally use a controversial
electronic surveillance technique in its prosecution of an alleged
mobster.
In the first case of its kind, a federal judge in Newark, New Jersey has ruled
that evidence surreptitiously gathered by the FBI about Nicodemo S.
Scarfo’s reputed loan shark operation can be presented in a trial later
this year.
U.S. District Judge Nicholas Politan said last week that it was
perfectly acceptable for FBI agents armed with a court order to sneak
into Scarfo’s office, plant a keystroke sniffer in his PC and monitor
its output.
Source: Wired, Jan 4, 2002
Opinion of Judge Politan in Matter of FBI Keyboard Sniffing
Dear Counsel:
This matter comes before the Court on Defendant Nicodemo S. Scarfo’s (“Scarfo”)
pretrial motion for discovery and suppression of evidence. The Court
heard oral argument on July 30, 2001 and again on September 7, 2001.
Co-defendant Frank Paolercio (“Paolercio”) joined in the motion. The
government thereafter moved to invoke the Classified Information
Procedures Act. For the following reasons, the Defendants’ motion for
discovery is granted in part and denied in part, and the motion to
suppress evidence is denied.
BACKGROUND
This case presents an interesting issue of first impression dealing
with the ever-present tension between individual privacy and liberty
rights and law enforcement’s use of new and advanced technology to
vigorously investigate criminal activity. It appears that no district
court in the country has addressed a similar issue. Of course, the
matter takes on added importance in light of recent events and potential
national security implications.
Source: http://lawlibrary.rutgers.edu/
December 26, 2001
FBI keyboard tap raises cyber-age privacy issue
The courts may write new privacy law before Congress can
get around to it, as fast-emerging technology provides law enforcement
agencies with ever-powerful snooping tools. Experts say a New Jersey
case, in which the FBI intercepted every keystroke made on a business
computer, is likely to provoke the next big showdown.
At issue is how far federal agents should be allowed to
go in using high-tech tools to gain evidence against suspects. Acting on
a search warrant, FBI agents made surreptitious entry to the offices of
New Jersey businessman Nicodemo S. Scarfo and placed a device in his
computer keyboard, logging every keystroke. Agents took the action,
according to court records, to learn passwords to encryption software,
so they could read computer documents seized in an upcoming raid. Scarfo
was targeted as a suspect in gambling and loan-sharking operations.
Source: Virtual New York, 8 December 2000
FBI Database Monitors Catholic Bishops and Pro-Life Groups
It has been rumored for years, but dismissed as nutty
conspiracy theory, that the federal government has been assembling an
extensive database on pro-life organizations under the auspices of
tracking potential criminals involved with “domestic terrorism.” The
Justice Department has admitted such a federal task force exists but has
denied it tracks innocent civilians or groups.
Then how to explain newly obtained internal Justice
Department documents that lay out justification for “intrusive
investigative activity” by the FBI, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and
Firearms, the U.S. Postal Inspection and U.S. Marshals services and
other federal law-enforcement agencies to compile dossiers on groups as
divergent as the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, the National
Rifle Association and the Women’s Coalition for Life?
Source: News World Communications, Insight on the News Online, News Alter, July 17, 2000
Uncle Sam is Monitoring Your Online Activities in a Big Way
While President Clinton has led an effort to crack down
on corporate snooping and impose new regulations on business, privacy
advocates say federal agencies still are collecting vast amounts of data
on visitors to taxpayer-sponsored Web sites.
Source: Scripps Howard News Service, Capitol Hill Blue, June 24, 2000
Former Veep Mondale opens FBI file, talks about excesses
When the young Minnesota attorney general gave his speech
at a civil rights rally in St. Paul, he didn’t mean to make an entry in
a long and not very sexy chronicle of his life in politics. In fact, he
didn’t know such a document existed.
The young politician was Walter Mondale. The year was 1963. The
diarist was an FBI agent on a routine assignment to monitor yet another
NAACP meeting. The journal was Mondale’s FBI file.
Mondale said he was horrified to learn how the FBI in the 1960s
tailed, wiretapped and slandered the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.,
“attempting to destroy his movement and his marriage.”
The committee found that the FBI had sought to destroy King by, among
other things, bugging hotel rooms in which he had extramarital sexual
liaisons. Tapes and transcripts were then circulated to journalists,
politicians and other opinion leaders to discredit King.
Source: Scripps Howard News Service, June 4, 2000
FCC Grants FBI Surveillance Standards Request
In a decision released on August 31, the Federal
Communications Commission (FCC) largely adopted technical standards
proposed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) that would
re-design the nation’s telecommunications networks to facilitate
electronic surveillance. The ruling could result in a significant
increase in government interception of digital communications. Included
is a requirement that cellular telephone networks must provide police
the ability to track the physical location of cell phone users.
Source: Electronic Privacy Information Center, 1 September 1999
Odd Coalition Would Curb Civil Forfeitures
In February, 1998, Federal agents confiscated the Red
Carpet Motel in Houston, Texas, even though the owners were not charged
with any crimes. The U.S. attorney in Houston announced that the motel
owners “had “tacitly approved” of drug activity by their guests by
failing to implement police security recommendations. One of those
recommendations was to raise their room rates.”
Similar confiscations by federal agents have helped unite a
bipartisan coalition in Congress to pass the Civil Asset Forfeiture
Reform Act, a bill, that if passed, would make it harder for the federal
government to seize private property without filing criminal charges.
Source: The Washington Post (online), June 23, 1999
Clinton’s IRS Gestapo
In a very real way, the IRS has been Clinton’s secret police agency — the
go-to guys when no other punishment will do.
Source: WorldNetDaily, March 19, 1999
Sleepers alarmed by helicopter-borne commandos
In the black of a peaceful winter night in the Beaver
County countryside, the first mean machines came chop-chop-chopping low
and loud over Don and Phyllis Wilfong’s house at 3:27 a.m. yesterday,
rattling the windows and obliterating any hope of sleep.”
Source: Post-Gazett.com, March 19, 1999
Questions loom over DNA databases
“Of the last 100 arrests for rape and sodomy (in New York
City), 14 had records (for sex offenses),” says New York City police
Commissioner Howard,
who has proposed testing everyone arrested. “But 75 had arrest records
for all kinds of smaller stuff. Think how many more could have been
gotten (with a DNA database of everyone arrested).’
But legal problems loom. The Constitution’s Fourth Amendment protects
against unreasonable searches and seizures. Testing everyone arrested,
says defense lawyer and former Manhattan prosecutor Harlan Levy, is the
sort of quot;blunderbuss approach” the Constitution frowns on.
Source: USA Today
Reno urges study of broad DNA testing
Attorney General Janet Reno has asked a federal
commission to study the legality of taking DNA samples from everyone
arrested instead of just the convicted sex offenders and violent felons
currently permitted by law.
Such widespread testing would hugely expand government’s reach by placing the
genetic fingerprints of millions of Americans into state crime databases even if
they never were convicted of a crime.
Source: USA Today
The FBI proposals would — among other things — enable
law enforcement to determine the location of individuals using cellular
telephones. Also at issue is the surveillance of “packet-mode”
communications such as those that form the core of the Internet. The
comments were filed as part of the FCC’s proceeding on implementation of
the controversial Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act
(CALEA).
Source: Electronic Privacy Information Center, December 17, 1998
Robots may soon be harder to shake off than a bloodhound
Big Brother may not only be watching you, he may be
following you too. Researchers in California have developed a robot
called an Autonomous Observer (AO) that could lead to surveillance
systems that follow people wherever they go.
Other systems can’t follow moving objects that are trying to evade
detection. If an object disappears from view, the tracking system loses
it. To overcome this, computer scientist Jean-Claude Latombe at Stanford
University has developed small mobile robots that not only watch
targets but also work out their potential escape routes. The robots can
then position themselves for an optimum view.
ource: New Scientist, 17 October 1998
Inside view of Night Stalkers
The use of live fire in civilian areas during secret
military training exercises is not that uncommon, according to a former
Night Stalker. Such exercises are conducted in cities that give
permission, and in others that have
not been consulted in advance.
Residents, who were not warned of the event, were reported to be
extremely frightened. A retirement home only a few hundred feet from the
exercise, reported many elderly people were fearful that the world was
coming to an end and were under beds crying. The sound of machine gun
fire and explosives continued for two hours.
Night Stalkers often are sent on missions directly into cities to see
how far they can get before someone calls 911. They monitor police
frequencies and listen for when a complaint comes in. When they are
reported to local police they abort the mission.
Source: WorldNetDaily
Stop terrifying small-town “invasions,” Libertarians demand of U.S. military
How would you like the U.S. military to ‘invade’ your town?
That’s what happened — complete with swooping attack helicopters,
live weapons fire, flashbang grenades, and buildings burnt to the ground
— without warning in at least five towns in Texas and Louisiana over
the past several weeks.
Source: Libertarian Party Press Release
IRS Admits ‘Sins’ in Seizing Property
The Internal Revenue Service admitted on Friday [July
10, 1998] that it improperly seized property from taxpayers in more than
one in four cases studied, including an attempt to force a dying man,
his wife and two school-age children from their home.
Source: Deseret News, Salt Lake City, Saturday, July 11, 1998, pp. A1, A3.
The complaint seeks forfeiture of a commercial enterprise
— the Red Carpet Inn at 6868 Hornwood — not financially tied to
narcotics trafficking, a broader interpretation of drug forfeiture laws
usually used to confiscate property purchased with drug money.
The hotel’s owners, GWJ Enterprises, are accused of giving “tacit
consent” to illegal activity by failing to act to stop it after being
notified by police and city officials.
Source: HoustonChronicle.com, 2/17/1998
President Clinton has all the authority he needs to place
this country under a dictatorship with the stroke of the pen. He could
do it at any time. Congress has given him the power. The laws are in the
statute books. And the courts have already refused to say “no.”
Source: WorldNetDaily, January 26, 1999
Executive orders … national emergencies … a domestic
“commander-in-chief” … the threat of terrorism and weapons of mass
destruction. ….
An impeached president is leading America ever closer toward the
reality of a police state, and there’s been hardly a peep from the civil
liberties establishment. In fact, those who dare address such issues
are quickly denounced as paranoid “extremists.”
Source: WorldNetDaily, January 26, 1999
FBI Trys To Trick Richard Jewell
The decision by FBI agents to trick Richard Jewell into
giving up his right to a lawyer endangered the investigation of last
year’s bombing at the Atlanta Olympic Games, the Justice Department said
Monday
Source: NY Times
Sources: Houston Chronicle (online), 1997
Senior federal and military officials Thursday offered
their sympathy to the family of a U.S. citizen shot by Marines on an
anti-drug operation near the border, but stood by their claim that the
soldiers had no choice but to kill the 18-year-old when he allegedly
shot at them twice while tending his family’s goats.
Source: Houston Chronicle (online), May 22, 1997
A Marine on an anti-drug operation along the border near
Big Bend National Park shot and killed an 18-year-old high school
student who authorities said had opened fire.
Source: Houston Chronicle (online), May 21, 1997
FBI Crime Laboratory
The US Inspector General issued a report that criticized
the [FBI's crime] laboratory, and the criticisms included the following
points.
- Agents “working on such big cases as the World Trade Center and
Oklahoma City bombings produced flawed scientific reports and slanted
their findings to favor the prosecution.”
- At least one instance is known where “an agency supervisor allowed
such evidence to be presented to the court, even when he know the
scientific evidence did not support the findings.”
- “Even more disturbing, the FBI assigned someone who was known to
have produced flawed reports to the Oklahoma City bombing case.”
- “When the people we entrust to enforce our laws start bending the
truth – particularly scientific evidence that few of us can afford to
test on our own – none of us is safe.”
The author, Robert E. Precht, is director of the Office of Public Service
at the University of Michigan Law School.
Source: Deseret News (Utah), April 19, 1997
CIA Attempts To Assassinate Fidel Castro
The Associated Press reported that according to a CIA
document recently declassified, the CIA in the early 1960s tried to have
Fidel Castro assassinated. They contacted the Mafia and offered
$150,000 for the quot;hit”. At least one other attempt by the CIA was
made to murder Castro. Detailed knowledge of these attempts was kept
from the White House, although President Kennedy and his brother Robert,
the Attorney General, told the CIA to ‘Do what ever it takes to get rid
of Castro.’
Source: The Salt Lake Tribune (Utah) July 2, 1997
|
No comments:
Post a Comment