The Illegal Spying Whistle Blower Express...

Has just left the station:

A former NSA analyst is confirming to [Keith Olbermann] what so many "tinfoliers" already believed:

The NSA is listening, watching and reading communications from citizens, people in the United States with no security threat, rhyme or reason, at least none that would allow such an intrusion into the lives of your common citizen. No surprise to many, but it does surprise me the beans are being spilled on prime time right now.

This is without FISA, warrants or with any other Constitutional protections.

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Yes... They were spying on journalists, as many people speculated.

More to come tomorrow on Countdown.

Expect this to be the first in a long line of whistle blowers to come forward with information on specific crimes committed by the criminal Bush administrations. They no longer have worry about retribution from the most corrupt administration to ever seize power in the USA.

And getting run over by this freight train of truth will be poor little Oxy-Rush:

Earlier today, President Obama issued his first set of executive orders. One of these orders instructs “federal agencies to handle requests for information from the public and press under the Freedom of Information Act [FOIA] with an eye toward disclosure, not refusal.” The order reportedly returns to “pre-Bush administration policies” regarding FOIA.

In response to the “new standard of openness,” conservative talker Rush Limbaugh said that he fears that the more open FOIA rules will make it easier for Bush to be held to account for any misdeeds he committed as president:

LIMBAUGH: What I’m afraid of is that what Obama did with this executive order is actually make it easier for the media to go get Bush documents. Because you know Pelosi and some of the guys over in congress are talking about war crimes trials and charges and so forth. […]

What I’m afraid of is what Obama’s done here is made the gathering of the information for this kind of stuff– This is not American. This is not America. This is not what America does. We don’t– This is Banana Republic kind of stuff.

Oxy-Rush can't handle the truth getting out and I really think he may be smoking bananas.

[update] Via AMERICAblog, just an update on the journalists suspected to be targeted by illegal spying:

MSNBC's Keith Olbermann interviewed a former National Security Agency analyst tonight. The analyst says that, under the ruse of making sure that the NSA did NOT target American media and journalists, they actually collected information on every communication those journalists and media organizations had 24/7.

This is extremely complicated stuff, and appears to be a rather significant story. Ironically, we had reported back in 2005 on this very issue, asking whether the Bush administration was spying on American journalists. At the time, there was a specific question as to whether CNN's Christiane Amanpour was a subject of inquiry. At the time, CNN's David Ensor dismissed the story, saying that he had a contact in the intelligence agency who "looked into it" and said, nah, it's not happening, don't worry. Yes, because I'm sure the NSA would tell David Ensor if they were spying on him. Anyway, seems Mr. Ensor may get to do a follow-up story.

Connecticut Librarians Under Gag Orders

Via Wired News:

Life in an FBI muzzle is no fun. Two Connecticut librarians on Sunday described what it was like to be slapped with an FBI national security letter and accompanying gag order. It sounded like a spy movie or, gulp, something that happens under a repressive foreign government. Peter Chase and Barbara Bailey, librarians in Plainville, Connecticut, received an NSL to turn over computer records in their library on July 13, 2005. Unlike a suspected thousands of other people around the country, Chase, Bailey and two of their colleagues stood up to the Man and refused to comply, convinced that the feds had no right to intrude on anyone's privacy without a court order (NSLs don't require a judge's approval). That's when things turned ugly.

The four librarians under the gag order weren't allowed to talk to each other by phone. So they e-mailed. Later, they weren't allowed to e-mail.

After the ACLU took on the case and it went to court in Bridgeport, the librarians were not allowed to attend their own hearing. Instead, they had to watch it on closed circuit TV from a locked courtroom in Hartford, 60 miles away. "Our presence in the courtroom was declared a threat to national security," Chase said.

And yes... The story gets worse as you read further into it and find that the FBI started investigating those evilly-wordy, library-card-terrorizing, fundamental-reading- bookofascist librarians because they would not comply with the "National Security Letter" demands. It got so bad the ACLU "advised Chase to move to a safehouse."

The Bridgeport courts decided the librarians were correct but get a load of this crap:

Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wisconsin) wrote an op-ed in USA Today that said:

"Zero. That's the number of substantiated USA Patriot Act civil liberties violations. Extensive congressional oversight found no violations. Six reports by the Justice Department's independent inspector general, who is required to solicit and investigate any allegations of abuse, found no violations."

Once President Bush reauthorized the Patriot Act, the FBI lifted the librarians' gag order.

This may be a month old story, but it bears repeating as we hear more about the further abuses of the criminal bush administration, their obstruction of justice, and their refusal to follow the basic rule of law at every turn.

There is a way to stop the lunacy, ya know?

BIG TELCOs Illegally Spy on You For bush?

If you are unsure just how much you are ILLEGALLY being spied upon by the bush administration than you need to see this:

Former AT&T technician Mark Klein and Internet expert Brian Reid describe an NSA listening room that Klein discovered while working at the company's operations center. In "Spying on the Home Front" FRONTLINE talks to intelligence insiders and asks: Is the Bush administration's domestic war on terrorism jeopardizing our civil liberties? Coming May 15 to PBS and here online.

In "Spying on the Home Front," coming May. 15, 2007 at 9pm (check local listings) Reporter Hedrick Smith presents new material on how the National Security Agency's domestic surveillance program works and examines clashing viewpoints on whether the President has violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and infringed on constitutional protections.

In another dramatic story, the program shows how the FBI vacuumed up records on 250,000 ordinary Americans who chose Las Vegas as the destination for their Christmas-New Year's holiday, and the subsequent revelation that the FBI has misused National Security Letters to gather information. Probing such projects as Total Information Awareness, and its little known successors, Smith discloses that even former government intelligence officials now worry that the combination of new security threats, advances in communications technologies, and radical interpretations of presidential authority may be threatening the privacy of Americans.

You have to remember that the phone companies have been sued for illegally providing information to the corrupt bush administration even BEFORE 911. The lying bush administration and the BIG TELCOs have absolutely no regard for the rule of law, nor your civil rights.

The rundown on lawsuits against BIG TELCOs via ThinkProgress:

This morning, USA Today reported that three telecommunications companies – AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth – provided “phone call records of tens of millions of Americans” to the National Security Agency. Such conduct appears to be illegal and could make the telco firms liable for tens of billions of dollars. Here’s why:

1. It violates the Stored Communications Act. The Stored Communications Act, Section 2703(c), provides exactly five exceptions that would permit a phone company to disclose to the government the list of calls to or from a subscriber: (i) a warrant; (ii) a court order; (iii) the customer’s consent; (iv) for telemarketing enforcement; or (v) by “administrative subpoena.” The first four clearly don’t apply. As for administrative subpoenas, where a government agency asks for records without court approval, there is a simple answer – the NSA has no administrative subpoena authority, and it is the NSA that reportedly got the phone records.

2. The penalty for violating the Stored Communications Act is $1000 per individual violation. Section 2707 of the Stored Communications Act gives a private right of action to any telephone customer “aggrieved by any violation.” If the phone company acted with a “knowing or intentional state of mind,” then the customer wins actual harm, attorney’s fees, and “in no case shall a person entitled to recover receive less than the sum of $1,000.”

(The phone companies might say they didn’t “know” they were violating the law. But USA Today reports that Qwest’s lawyers knew about the legal risks, which are bright and clear in the statute book.)

3. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act doesn’t get the telcos off the hook. According to USA Today, the NSA did not go to the FISA court to get a court order. And Qwest is quoted as saying that the Attorney General would not certify that the request was lawful under FISA. So FISA provides no defense for the phone companies, either.

In other words, for every 1 million Americans whose records were turned over to NSA, the telcos could be liable for $1 billion in penalties, plus attorneys fees. You do the math.

– Peter Swire and Judd Legum

UPDATE: Many of you had questions about this legal analysis. Peter provides the answers here. We’ll continue to address your questions as this story develops.

UPDATE II: Orrin Kerr agrees with our analysis in the New York Times:

Orin Kerr, a former federal prosecutor and assistant professor at George Washington University, said his reading of the relevant statutes put the phone companies at risk for at least $1,000 per person whose records they disclosed without a court order.

“This is not a happy day for the general counsels” of the phone companies, he said. “If you have a class action involving 10 million Americans, that’s 10 million times $1,000 — that’s 10 billion.”

Too many Americans don't even realize just how much their rights to privacy are being ignored and the means they have to remedy this gross injustice.