While U.S. Government Secretly Tapped Phones and Internet, Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board was Stymied

June 7th, 2013 | Posted by Jim Cook in Barack Obama | Democrats | George W. Bush | Homeland Insecurity | Liberty | Politics | Tech - (3 Comments)

This morning, you may feel like wearing a tin-foil hat to protect yourself, and such an act wouldn’t be entirely kooky. Yesterday, leaks to newspapers revealed that the United States government has not only been seizing the records of billions of phone calls taking place inside and outside the United States, but also has been tapping directly in to the internet servers of Google, Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo, Facebook, YouTube, Skype and AOL, all (according to the Washington Post) without the knowledge or permission of the internet giants. This leaked classified image from the National Security Agency shows the start dates for the massive data surveillance.

NSA Special Source Operations Slide Describes PRISM collection directly from big-name internet servers

According to this schedule, government surveillance of Microsoft internet servers began under the presidency of George W. Bush, but the majority of the surveillance programs began and have continued under the watch of President Barack Obama (who promised as a candidate that he would reform, not expand, the government’s warrantless surveillance program).

Something else started under George W. Bush, something that would have been able to bring this kind of activity to our attention long ago. That something is the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. Under a federal law passed in the 110th Congress, the PCLOB is empowered to obtain confidential documents and testimony under independent subpoena power in order to investigate abuses of our constitutionally-protected civil liberties by the United States government, and to report on such abuses twice a year to both Congress and the public. The PCLOB could have ferreted out and reported these assaults against Americans’ civil liberty — if it had existed.

Although the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board existed in hypothetical terms, it was not until 2012 that President Barack Obama got around to actually nominating members of the board. Then the Senate Judiciary Committee sat on the nominations. Then, when four of five members of the PCLOB were confirmed, the position of the Chairman was left unfilled, guaranteeing that the board could neither hire staff nor make any decisions.

Taken together, all these failures to act guaranteed that from the moment President Barack Obama took office until … when? … the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board was either nonexistent or stymied, with years of evidence uncollected, with 9 biannual reports to the public unwritten and unreleased, with massive warrantless surveillance enterprises against the American people unexposed.

In a coda to this story, David Medine was finally confirmed as Chairman of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board one month ago today, May 7 2013. Finally, a full 1,569 days after Barack Obama was sworn into office as President, the Privacy and Civil Oversight Board exists and is functional. Whether it actually fulfills its functions remains to be seen.

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U.S. Government Financial Surveillance Hit All-Time High in 2012 — Media Fall Silent

May 11th, 2013 | Posted by Jim Cook in Economy | Ethics | George W. Bush | Homeland Insecurity | Media - (3 Comments)

Think back 5 years to the case of Eliot Spitzer, who then was Governor of New York and a rising political star. Some said he should run for President, but then Spitzer’s political career came to an end. When the U.S. government found out that Spitzer had been consorting with prostitutes, Governor Spitzer left office in shame.

Hold to the side for a moment whether you believe Eliot Spitzer’s activities were moral and consider how those activities were uncovered. As you may not know, Spitzer’s activities were uncovered thanks to surveillance of Spitzer that occurred without a warrant or any prior suspicion of wrongdoing on Spitzer’s part. Whether or not Spitzer’s extramarital liaisons were proper, the surveillance of Spitzer was constitutionally improper, at least under a literal reading of the 4th Amendment to the Constitution, which declares:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

This surveillance of a person’s papers and effects occurred occurred, regardless of the constitution, without a warrant or pre-existing probable cause. It happens all the time, with the federal government tasking banks and other financial institutions across the country to engage in surveillance as a matter of routine and pass on “suspicious activity reports” for government review. As Adam Davidson of NPR reported back in 2008:

Banks monitor every transaction. Every one, no matter how small…. The software is checking to see if maybe that $4 is part of a pattern…. The report goes to a bank’s compliance officer, listing all recent suspicious transactions. Every transaction is given a numerical score…. The computer makes the score based on who is making the transaction, where does he come from, who is he associated with, what else is he up to. Every bank customer has, somewhere, in some computer database, a risk assessment score.

Eliot Spitzer’s financial activities brought him down, generating a “suspicious activity report” that brought the force of the government down. Here’s the first page of his SAR:

Eliot Spitzer SAR suspicious activity report page 1

Further excerpts of Spitzer’s SAR get into explicit detail:

Debits from the account during the same time period included 66 checks totaling $81,067.17 payable in most cases to individuals which included, but were not limited to a doctor, an acupuncturist, a recruiter in the entertainment industry, an adult film star and a Belgium musician. Eight transactions totaling $22,173.34 were debited from the account via international wire transfer. Internet searches linked some of the payees of these international wire transfers to a judge and a female adult entertainer.

How can I be sharing these details with you when these details are supposed to be strictly confidential? The answer is that this sort of information leaks out from the government into the public, making all the information collected in bank surveillance not just a matter between a bank and a client, not just a matter between a bank, a client, and the government, but potentially a matter open to anybody.

The government-mandated warrantless surveillance that resulted in Governor Spitzer’s fall took place in 2007 and 2008, under the administration of President George W. Bush. Now that President Barack Obama and his Democratic Party colleagues are in control of executive branch of government, surely all this surveillance activity must have decreased, mustn’t it? After all, according to popular opinion Democrats hold individual civil liberty in greater respect than Republicans.

New data released by the Treasury Department this week show otherwise. Under President Barack Obama, the number of suspicious activity reports to the federal government rose in 2012 to a new record high.

Suspicious Activity Reports from 1996 to 2012

Postscript: The chances are good that you haven’t heard about this news from anywhere else. Only two news outlets, none of them a major print newspaper — Housing Wire and Mortgage Daily — made any report on these new statistics since they’ve been released.

If you think other Americans should know about this then you can’t sit on your hands; it’s up to you to help spread the word. Otherwise, this expansion of surveillance will float quietly down the Memory Hole.

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The Dead Will March Outside Of George W. Bush’s Presidential Library

April 24th, 2013 | Posted by Peregrin Wood in Activism | George W. Bush - (3 Comments)

Tomorrow, the corporate-funded George W. Bush presidential library will be officially opened in Dallas, Texas. However, those who seek to enter, to celebrate the presidency of Dubya, will be forced to confront to confront the dead.

dead march against bushThe March Of The Dead will be in remembrance of those who were tortured and killed as a result of George W. Bush’s inept and criminal leadership. It’s a part of The People’s Response, a week-long series of protests to provide a grassroots counterbalance to the pro-Bush attempt to reconstruct the sad history of Bush’s terms in office.

Southern Methodist University has forbidden any anti-Bush protesters to even walk onto the school’s campus. The value of dissent isn’t on the curriculum at SMU, it seems. That citation is not stopping the anti-Bush protests from marching on – they’ll continue through Friday morning.

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FISA Doomsday Vote In Senate Tomorrow

December 26th, 2012 | Posted by jclifford in Barack Obama | Democrats | George W. Bush | Homeland Insecurity | Legislation | Liberty - (5 Comments)

Much of the nation, including those of us here at Irregular Times, have taken a break for the last couple days from the bumping, jostling world of public affairs. Now, on December 26, it’s crucial that we get back into the fray. Legislation that will have a dramatic impact on the future of political cuture in the USA is being pushed forward, with the President and members of Congress desperate to pass it before the end of the year,

No, I am not talking about the “Fiscal Cliff”. The idea that there is an absolute end-of-year deadline for dealing with budget matters is an exagerration, an item of propaganda used to create a sense of false urgency. It’s the kind of tool used by salesmen who know that they’re selling an inferior product. They try to convince people that they talk to that the terms they are offering will exist for a “limited time only”, so that potential customers won’t give themselves the time to think crtically or properly research what’s for sale.

I am referring to the vote in the Senate on the renewal of the FISA Amendments Act.

The FISA Amendments Act is a law that retroactively legalized the massive seizure of Americans’ private online information ordered by George W. Bush. The FISA Amendments Act has allowed the creation of a massive system of electronic surveillance that grabs much of Americans’ own online activity: Online calendars, social networks, email, cell phone calls, GPS data, financial transactions and more are being sucked into a giant database, which can be searched not just by federal government spies, but even by local law enforcement officials – your county’s deputy sheriff, for example.

No one knows how extensive the abuses of the FISA Amendments Act really are, because Barack Obama has followed the lead of George W. Bush, and kept most information about the extent of the spying program secret, even from Congress. The very possibility of government electronic surveilance has chilled the hope once felt that the Internet could revitalize citizen participation in American democracy. With private companies like Facebook and Google using new Big Data techniques to integrate Americans’ offline activities into online surveillance systems, the scope of the FISA Amendments Act spying power grows stronger every passing year.

The FISA Amendments Act is in plain violation of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. The Fourth Amendment promises that no private information (“papers”, in the archaic language of hundreds of years ago) can be seized by the government without a search warrant designating the specific person and location to be searched, along with evidence, backed by oath, that the person subject to the search is suspected of criminal behavior. Spying under the FISA Amendents Act takes place without any such warrant.

The FISA Amendments Act was supposed to expire years ago, as only a temporary cover for George W. Bush’s illegal spying activities, or as a temporary response to a supposedly vigorous international threat from Al Quaida. The FISA Amendments Act, however, has already been renewed once. This year, the House of Representatives has already voted to approve a bill to extend the FISA Amendments Act for 5 more years – months after Barack Obama completes his second term.

The U.S. Senate will vote on a bill tomorrow that will mirror the action of the U.S. House of Representatives, and allow the Big Brother government electronic spying system to persist for another 5 years. The bill offers no reforms to provide any assurance that Americans’ constitutional rights are being protected.

At Irregular Times, we have written repeatedly this year about the legislation to exend the FISA Amendments Act, as we have written about the law since its earliest consideration, back when Barack Obama, as a first-term senator, broke his promise to vote against the legislation. Barack Obama signed the previous extension of the FISA Amendments Act into law, and has stated that he will also approve the current renewal legislation, if it passes both houses of Congress.

All that has to happen for the unconstitutional abuses of the FISA Amendments Act to go away is for the Senate to fail to pass the extension legislation it will consider tomorrow. Given past votes on the issue, that’s not likely, and there’s not very much that Americans can do at this late hour to stop the bill. The time for citizen action passed long ago, and the citizenry failed to seize the opportunity. Distracted by the dramatic spectacle of the presidential election, Democrats felt reluctant to acknowledge that their own political party’s candidate had a history of support for a profoundly illiberal surveillance law. Rank-and-file Democratic voters swept the issue under the rug, and gave cover to Democrats in Congress to support George W. Bush’s old Homeland Insecurity regime.

While it’s too late now to stop the legislation to renew the FISA Amendments Act, there is one thing that Democratic voters can do to begin to make up for their neglect of this issue: They can pay attention to tomorrow’s vote. They can finally admit that the FISA Amendments Act presents a grave threat to American democracy. They can take note of which senators vote for the bill, and which vote against the bill. They can then spread that information, through their blogs, their social media networks, their email… all the systems that are currently under FISA surveillance. They can organize to replace every Democratic senator who votes in favor of the renewal of the FISA Amendments Act.

Only with such grassroots vigilance can we expect the Democratic Party to take the appropriate position in 2017, the next time the FISA Amendments Act will be considered for renewal. Without such grassroots action, the extraordinary government surveillance of the FISA Amendments Act will come to be regarded by an entire generation as a normal, uncontroversial part of American life.

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How Four Years Changes the Meaning of One Bumper Sticker

September 4th, 2012 | Posted by Jim Cook in Barack Obama | Bumper Stickers | Election 2008 | Election 2012 | George W. Bush | Politics - (9 Comments)

Four years ago this month, the third most popular bumper sticker we sold read “I like Obama, but is America ready for a President with Brains?”

Red and blue bumper sticker on Barack Obama's identity as the first black president of the United States

At that time, there were many bloggers and pundits muttering or whispering or vaguely miming the idea that they liked Barack Obama, all right, but they just weren’t sure that America was ready for a black president. Some of them said it straight out: search for “Is America Ready for a Black President?” on Google and you’ll get more than 65,000 results.

The “is America ready for a President with brains?” bumper sticker was a retort to those who were focusing on the color of Barack Obama’s skin as if it were an insurmountable stumbling block on the road to the White House. Clearly, it was not. While the bumper sticker turned the subject back from trivial skin to more relevant considerations of capability, it made an implicit contrast with George W. Bush, who has been so derided and mocked for his bumbling performance that he was shut out of the 2012 Republican National Convention, just four years after leaving office.

Today, that same bumper sticker has a different meaning. “I like Obama” is a preamble that says what follows is nothing personal. The following phrase, “but is America ready for a President with brains?,” suggests that President Obama has been misguided or inept in his presidency.

This bumper sticker isn’t selling as quickly as it was four years ago, but it is selling, and that’s telling.

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Have You Seen An I Miss W Bumper Sticker on an Actual Car?

September 1st, 2012 | Posted by Jim Cook in Bumper Stickers | George W. Bush | Politics | Questions | Republicans - (2 Comments)

I’ve seen plenty of Ron Paul lawn signs. I’ve seen my share of pro-Romney bumper stickers. But never, ever, have I seen this bumper sticker any place but a shop window:

I Miss W Bumper Sticker for sale in a shop window. Does anyone buy these things?

Have you ever seen an “I Miss W” bumper sticker on an actual car?

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3 Years Ago, 5 Years Ago, 7 Years Ago: History Circles Back on Us

August 1st, 2012 | Posted by Jim Cook in Economy | Environment | George W. Bush | Politics | Religion | Republicans | Sex and Gender | War and Peace - (0 Comments)

Some things change with the passage of time, but much remains the same.

Seven years ago today, President George W. Bush spoke before a national Boy Scout Jamboree, praising its practice of kicking out Boy Scouts when it finds out they are gay or don’t believe in God. This week, eagle scouts from across the country returned their medals to the Boy Scouts of America after the organization reaffirmed its discriminatory practices.

Seven years ago today, oil industry officials blamed a rise in oil prices on the death of Saudi Arabia’s King Fahd while on the way to record profits they happily accepted new subsidies from the federal government. Last month, the Energy Information Administration released data showing that the latest spike in oil prices wasn’t coming from too little oil production — it was coming from increased consumption.

Five years ago today, the pastor of the Walnut Creek Community Church in Windsor Heights, Iowa admitted that he had explicitly used his tax-exempt perch to campaign for the election of Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee. This is a violation of the promise to stay out of politics that the Walnut Creek Community Church made when it voluntarily sought to avoid paying taxes. Last month, Nathan Cherry announced that in October, churches across the country will break the promises they made when applying for the privilege of not paying taxes. These churches while continuing to refuse paying taxes, will issue a wave of church-based political endorsements just before Election Day.

Five years ago today, the Walnut Creek Community Church held on tight to national political attention, declaring that good Protestant Christians could not possibly vote for Sam Brownback because Brownback was Catholic. Last month, the hosts of the national Wallbuilders Live! radio program declared that not voting for Mitt Romney would be a sin.

Three years ago today, Democratic Representative Dennis Kucinich attended a rally with Green Party representatives to oppose Democratic Party foot-dragging on universal health care, leading to speculation that Kucinich might run for President in 2012 as a Green. Today, Dennis Kucinich is off the presidential campaign scene and is preparing to leave the Congress. But the Green Party has gained ballot access in three more states over the past week, laying the groundwork for Jill Stein’s Green presidential bid.

Three years ago today, Congress passed an appropriations measure that expanded the military budget to a full 58 percent of discretionary spending. Today, Republican senators are heading out on a four-state tour, campaigning to protect the military budget from a “$500 billion cut.” But it’s not a “$500 billion cut” to the military budget that’s being proposed — the $500 billion sum is spread across ten annual military budgets. For the annual military budget, there’s only a $50 billion sum being considered. Besides, the $50 billion spending reduction isn’t actually a cut — it’s a reduction in the rate of growth of the military budget. The reality of military spending three years ago and today is that the United States spends more on its military than the next 10 biggest military spenders — China, Russia, the UK, France, Japan, Germany, Italy, Saudi Arabia, South Korea and India — combined.

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George W. Bush: Mitt Romney would do Well Without Me

July 20th, 2012 | Posted by Jim Cook in Election 2012 | George W. Bush | Politics | Republicans - (3 Comments)

“I’m a supporter of Mitt Romney. I hope he does well. But he can do better well without me.”

- George W. Bush, July 2012, explaining why the Republicans don’t want him he doesn’t want to go to the Republican National Convention.

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