This is the type of chart only a true geek could make.

Awhile back I was watching a great documentary on the birth of the punk scene, it closed with former Black Flag frontman and current TV host Henry Rollins saying these words: “All it takes is one person to stand up and say ‘fuck this.’”

I truly hope so, because I’m finally doing just that.

And I should’ve done it a long time ago.

Deus Ex Malcontent

> MR. STANZEL: Well, those are conversations that are ongoing. And as
> you would remember, prospective liability was passed in August, and
> that gave liability protection to companies to assist going
> forward. That prospective liability comes into question with the
> expiration of the Protect America Act.
>
> So as you heard the leaders talk about, those companies are
> increasingly reluctant to help their country and help us track the
> activities of terrorists in foreign lands. It becomes more and more
> difficult as time goes on to obtain their cooperation on these
> issues, and that is of great concern.
>
> Yes, Helen?
>
> Q: What right does the President have to tell any company or any
> person in this country to break the law?
>
> MR. STANZEL: I — what’s your point?
>
> Q: No warrants and so forth; that they can go and spy on us without
> any warrants?
>
> MR. STANZEL: The Protect America Act was passed by Congress last
> August, as you know, and signed into law. So it is a lawful program
> that is expiring tomorrow night.
>
> Q: Well, if it’s lawful, why would you not get a warrant? It still
> prevails, doesn’t it?
>

Why CYA Prez Needs to Wiretap US

Today the Senate voted on a bill which would remove Telecom Immunity from the FISA Amendments Act of 2007.

Here is the voting record.

Both Republican and Democrat Senators in Virginia that believe it’s ok for Telecoms to assist the government in committing illegal acts, both Warner and Webb voted NAY - to keep the immunity provisions in the bill.

Obama voted YEA - to remove immunity to the telecoms from the FISA bill.

Clinton didn’t vote at all.

So, the redcross has been wardialing us for the last two week. Here’s a screenshot from my vonage log:

(more…)

In a separate N.S.A. project, executives at a Denver phone carrier, Qwest, refused in early 2001 to give the agency access to their most localized communications switches, which primarily carry domestic calls, according to people aware of the request, which has not been previously reported. They say the arrangement could have permitted neighborhood-by-neighborhood surveillance of phone traffic without a court order, which alarmed them.

New York Times

The Prince Group, the holding company that owns Blackwater Worldwide, has been building an operation that will sniff out intelligence about natural disasters, business-friendly governments, overseas regulations and global political developments for clients in industry and government.

Two analysts, whose names Total Intelligence Solutions would not release for security reasons, work at company headquarters in Ballston. A critic says the firm employs “rent-a-spies,” while its chairman says, “We break no laws.”

The operation, Total Intelligence Solutions, has assembled a roster of former spooks — high-ranking figures from agencies such as the CIA and defense intelligence — that mirrors the slate of former military officials who run Blackwater. Its chairman is Cofer Black, the former head of counterterrorism at CIA known for his leading role in many of the agency’s more controversial programs, including the rendition and interrogation of al-Qaeda suspects and the detention of some of them in secret prisons overseas.

washingtonpost.com

The leaders of an alternative newspaper chain were arrested after running a story about grand jury subpoenas they received seeking reporters’ notes and information on who visits their Phoenix weekly’s Web site.

Michael Lacey, executive editor of Village Voice Media, and Jim Larkin, CEO of the Phoenix-based chain, were arrested at their homes Thursday, the same day their story was published in the Phoenix New Times, a free, weekly alternative paper.

Capt. Paul Chagolla, a sheriff’s spokesman, said Lacey and Larkin were arrested on suspicion of violating grand jury secrecy and that the arrests came at the requests of the prosecutor.

The story, titled “Breathtaking Abuse of the Constitution,” said Maricopa County authorities want every story New Times has written about Sheriff Joe Arpaio since Jan. 1, 2004, and all the notes, tapes and records of the reporters.

The subpoenas also seek online profiles of anyone who read four specific articles about Arpaio and profiles of anyone who visited the paper’s Web site since Jan. 1, 2004. Also sought was information on what Web users did while on the site, the story said.

KPHO Phoenix

edit - original story - breathtaking-abuse-of-the-constitution.

Monday’s New York Post ran a story by bureau chief Charles Hurt blaming a delay in NSA surveillance activities to find information about captured soldiers in Iraq on the privacy framework that protects Americans from unfettered surveillance.

The biting story, based on a leak from an administration-friendly source, blames bureaucratic rules for a 10-hour delay in getting permission to set up a wiretap inside American telecom switches to capture Iraqi communications — hours that could have meant the difference between life and death for the soldiers.

Hurt’s piece, relying on a “senior congressional staffer with access to the classified case” is quite compelling, but would be even more so if it weren’t a carefully constructed, politically motivated lie that’s already been discredited.

Threat Level

From The Magazine : Radar Online : Inside Cryptome, the website the CIA doesn’t want you to see

During the past few years, Young has published detailed overhead satellite imagery of Site R, a military installation in Pennsylvania that he claims is Vice President Dick Cheney’s undisclosed location. Hours after the FBI announced charges in June against four men for plotting to blow up jet-fuel tanks at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, Cryptome ran photos of the airport tank farms, pointing out the exact route of a jet-fuel pipeline buried beneath nearby residential neighborhoods. He regularly publishes satellite photos of the homes of intelligence officials, including CIA Director Michael Hayden’s Washington, D.C., residence. He has exposed the names of what he claims are 276 British agents covertly working for MI6, the names of 400 secret Japanese intelligence agents, and the names and home addresses of what he claims are 2,619 CIA sources.

Young is a mad scientist of secrecy, working with little more than monomaniacal focus and an Internet connection to turn the tables on the spooks and expose what he regards as a worldwide criminal network of intelligence operatives. And the spies don’t like it. After he posted the MI6 list in 1999, the British government reportedly asked his Internet service provider at the time to shut the site down. The company refused, but in May of this year, his hosting service suddenly, without explanation, announced that it would no longer have anything to do with the site. (Young promptly relocated to another service.) He says he has received three visits to his home from the FBI, including one from a pair of agents with the Joint Terrorism Task Force. Young’s enemies have tried to shut the site down with denial-of-service attacks. Officials at the National Security Agency read his site with interest, and everyone wants to know where he gets his information.