More lies and alibis.
POSTED BY: Fremdfirma
UPDATED: Monday, July 16, 2007 00:26
VIEWED: 2388
PAGE 1 of 3
FBI lied to get ISPs to turn over data
Nick Farrell
UK Inquirer
Friday, July 13, 2007
THE FBI'S counter terrorism unit sent a large number of fake emergency letters to phone companies, asking them to turn over phone records immediately.
According to Wired, the letters are part of a legitimate procedure which is supposed to be used so that the spooks can get access while the Feds are getting a warrant.
But it seems that the letters, signed by Larry Mefford,the Executive Assistant Director, in charge of the Counterterrorism/Counterintelligence Division, were faked and the department had no intention of getting a warrant.
More than 60 of the letters have been made found and made available by the Electronic Frontier Foundation,
It seems that the FBI have been ignoring guidelines about how they are supposed to be using these letters. Perhaps they were re-assured when Alberto Gonzales told a Congress that there was no way that the FBI would ever do anything like lie to ISPs.
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Here's a hefty 
for all those "But they'd never do that!" jackasses who stood in the way of folks with sense enough to KNOW this would happen.
The FBI was originally designed to help enforce prohibition, a terrible idea that has long since been shown to be an utter and ruinous failure - and then trying to clean up the organized crime CAUSED by prohibition, and then Prohibition II, the "War on Drugs" which shows they didn't learn a goddamn thing in the meantime, and now "Terrorism".... and in all this time, all we've seen is political maneuvering, citizen intimidation and harrassment, and not ONE WHIT of any kind of realistic progress on their assigned tasks.
So.. can we fucking FIRE these guys yet ?
Above all things, I loathe incompetence.
-Frem
It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it
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Exclusive: FBI Data Mining Program Raises Eyebrows in Congress
Share June 12, 2007 11:53 AM
Justin Rood Reports:
Lawmakers are questioning whether a proposed FBI anti-terrorist program is worth the price, both in taxpayer dollars and the possible loss of Americans' privacy.
The National Security Analysis Center (NSAC) would bring together nearly 1.5 billion records created or collected by the FBI and other government agencies, a figure the FBI expects to quadruple in coming years, according to an unclassified FBI budget document obtained by the Blotter on ABCNews.com.
Those numbers alone raised concerns from two congressmen, Reps. Brad Miller, D-Calif., and James Sensenbrenner, Jr., R-Wisc., the chair and ranking member of the oversight panel of the House Science and Technology Committee.
The FBI has a track record of improperly -- even illegally -- gathering personal information on Americans, most recently through the widespread abuse of so-called National Security Letters, the two men noted in a letter to Congress' investigative body, the Government Accountability Office.
Miller and Sensenbrenner asked GAO to determine whether the NSAC will include records on U.S. citizens, and whether there are protections in place to make sure all the data in the program was legally collected.
Of further concern to the two congressmen are the FBI's stated hopes to "pro-actively" mine the data to find terrorists using "predictive" analysis, according to its budget request, an unproven method according to experts and even the U.S. intelligence chief's office.
In theory, predictive analysis involves mapping a known pattern of terrorist behavior -- for instance, the sequence and timing of such mundane activities as bank transactions and travel purchases -- against a massive collection of such records like the NSAC databases. If an individual's actions match the pattern, they can be considered a suspect, even if they have no known ties to any suspected terrorists or known terrorist groups.
Such a method would help identify "sleeper cells," the FBI claims in its request -- secret groups of terrorists living innocuously within the United States, waiting for a signal from a terrorist group leader to assemble and strike.
But to date the approach has not proven workable. So far, terrorism researchers "cannot readily distinguish the absolute scale of normal behaviors" for terrorists or ordinary Americans, conceded a 2006 document from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and obtained by National Journal magazine. In other words, no one can figure out how terrorists act differently from normal Americans.
"We had no idea how on God's earth you would characterize and capture normal behavior," a former researcher for the ill-fated Total Information Awareness (TIA) program told the magazine last October.
TIA, the government's first attempt at anti-terrorism data mining on a massive scale, had its funding stripped by Congress over widespread concerns it would violate privacy laws. The National Security Agency -- arguably a more tech-savvy outfit than the FBI, whose computer woes are legendary -- continues to pour millions into data mining research.
The FBI has requested $12 million for its NSAC project. That amount would pay for 90,000 square feet of space and an additional 53 employees, according to its budget request. Whether Congress will approve the funds has yet to be determined.
The bureau did not respond to a request for comment.
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FBI Details Data Mining Efforts
WASHINGTON, July 11, 2007
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(AP) The FBI is gathering and sorting information about Americans to help search for potential terrorists, insurance cheats and crooked pharmacists, according to a government report obtained Tuesday.
Records about identity thefts, real estate transactions, motor vehicle accidents and complaints about Internet drug companies are being searched for common threads to aid law enforcement officials, the Justice Department said in a report to Congress on the agency's data-mining practices.
In addition, the report disclosed government plans to build a new database to assess the risk posed by people identified as potential or suspected terrorists.
The chairman of the Senate committee that oversees the Justice Department said the database was "ripe for abuse." The American Civil Liberties Union immediately derided the quality of the information that could be used to score someone as a terror threat.
The report, sent to Congress this week, marked the department's first public detailing of six of its data-mining tools, which look for patterns to catch criminals. The disclosure was required by lawmakers when they renewed the USA Patriot Act in 2005. It comes as the Justice Department faces sharp criticism from Congress and civil liberties advocates for violating peoples' privacy rights in terror and spy investigations.
Justice spokesman Dean Boyd said the databases are strictly regulated to protect privacy rights and civil liberties.
"Each of these initiatives is extremely valuable for investigators, allowing them to analyze and process lawfully acquired information more effectively in order to detect potential criminal activity and focus resources appropriately," Boyd said in a statement.
All but one of the databases — the one to track terrorists — have been up and running for several years, the report showed. The lone exception is the System to Assess Risk, or STAR, program to rate the threat posed by people already identified as suspected terrorists or named on terror watch lists.
The system, still under construction, is designed to help counterterror investigators save time by narrowing the field of people who pose the greatest potential threat and will not label anyone a terrorist, Boyd said.
But it could be based, in part at least, on commercial or public information that might not be accurate — potentially ranking an innocent person as a terror threat. Watch lists, for example, have mistakenly identified people as suspects based on their similar names or birthdates to terrorists.
The Justice report also leaves open the possibility that the STAR program might draw up lists of terror suspects based on information from other sources, including from Data Mart. The report described Data Mart as a collector of government information, but also travel data from the Airlines Reporting Corp. and other information from private data-aggregators like ChoicePoint Inc. Private data aggregators often sell commercial credit records as well as other databases, like voter and vehicle registration.
"When you put bad information into a system and you don't have any mechanism of ensuring the information is of high quality, you're certain to get bad information spit out on the back end," said ACLU senior legislative counsel Tim Sparapani. "And that has profoundly negative consequences for the individuals who are wrongly identified as potential terrorists."
The five other databases detailed in the report include:
An identity theft intelligence program, used since 2003, to examine and analyze consumer complaints to identify major identity theft rings in a given geographic area.
A health care fraud system that looks at billing records in government and private insurance claims databases to identify fraud or over-billing by health care providers. It also has been running since 2003.
A database created in 2005 that looks at consumer complaints to
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So.. for "Terrorism" to "Umm, fraud, yeah, that's the ticket, sure..." to "We don't need a reason, PEONS!" to....
Where does it end folks ?
Shut it down, now - call your rep and give that fucker a kiwi enema, then go ask your local police chief if he really wants to be the FBI's bitch.
And while yer at it, since they've played fast and loose with OUR personal info, dig out said info on every FBI employee you can find, and feed it to every spammer, scumbag, credit and identity thief, bulk mailer, telemarketer and other scumbag you can possibly find.
See how much they like being on the recieving end of this shit.
-Frem
It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it
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Hmmm,
Seems to be the usual deathly silence from the right of the House.
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Careful Frem, you'll scare the women-folk.
Chrisisall
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I ... love Big Brother.
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Quote:They don't intimidate me.
Originally posted by Fremdfirma:
citizen intimidation and harrassment
But they do do some good work, if Mulder and Scully weren't out there busting Alien balls you'd have to leave it all to that arsehole Will Smith.
More insane ramblings by the people who brought you beeeer milkshakes!
No one can see their reflection in running water. It is only in still water that we can see.
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GOOD THING I DONATED A SH*TLOAD OF $$$ TO THE EFF.
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Always look upstream.
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