Saturday evening open thread

Sci-Fi Friday rocked. Stargate was good, Battlestar rocked, and Atlantis I just can't handle much longer. Started off so well and now it's as if the writers are struggling to come up with anything. Sigh. But BSG was amazing. Can't wait till next Friday. Read More......

Americans want warrants for government snooping

Let's hope the Kremlin, errrr, the White House hears about this poll. How about the Democrats start making a little more noise on this national disgrace as well? Who would imagine that after fifty years of the Cold War, the US (and UK) would become just like the Soviet Union and other dictatorships? Disgusting.

...56 percent of respondents in an AP-Ipsos poll said the government should be required to first get a court warrant to eavesdrop on the overseas calls and e-mails of U.S. citizens when those communications are believed to be tied to terrorism.

"We're a nation of laws. ... That means that everybody has to live by the law, including the administration," said Ahr, 64, a Democrat who argues for checks and balances. "For the administration to simply go after wiretaps on their own without anyone else's say-so is a violation of that principle." (This guys really gets it.)

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Open thread

Do not click this link if you're tired of the Mac vs. PC debate. Read More......

Congress trying to overturn state privacy laws regarding your phone communications

If you had any question whose side Republican Congress is on, now you know: the side of big business and the telemarketers.

From today's Chicago Trib:

Illinois officials say they want to stop companies from selling private telephone records without the consent of consumers, and they want to know how brokers got those records in the first place.

But even as Gov. Rod Blagojevich and Atty. Gen. Lisa Madigan work to prevent privacy invasion at the state level, some fear Congress may take steps to weaken related identity theft laws already on the books in Illinois and elsewhere. Consumer advocates are preparing to join the fight on both fronts.

"It's important that customers be able to properly protect themselves," said Brian Imus, senior policy advocate with the Illinois Public Interest Research Group. "Our privacy shouldn't be for sale."

In Congress, watchdogs are fighting a measure that they say would gut state laws requiring companies to notify consumers whenever their information security has been breached. As currently crafted, they contend, the proposal would require notification only when there's a good chance personal information has fallen into the wrong hands.

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130 dead in Iraq attacks

Jesus Read More......

Anyone can buy a list of your incoming and outgoing phone calls, cell or land-line, for $110 online

UPDATE: We now have an AMERICAblog email list - click here to join - and will be sending out updates and more starting with the new launch of AMERICAblog 2.0 over the next few months. Please join our list and help AMERICAblog become even stronger and more effective! Thanks, JOHN
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And the best part? Congress and the Executive branch have known about this problem for half a year or more and no one did a damn thing to fix it.

In a nutshell, the Chicago Sun-Times ran a story two days ago about a Web site that sells phone records, for cells and land-lines, for $110 a pop. The company boasts on its own Web site:

Give us the cell phone number and we will send you the calls made from the cell phone number.

So I went to their site, plopped down $110, and within a day I had a list of every single phone number that called my cell, or that I called from my cell, for the month of November. I even had the dates the calls were made, and for a premium I could find out how long the calls were.

I called Cingular and they were shocked by what I told them - yeah right.

And the best part? The article from the Sun-Times makes clear that the FBI is aware of this problem, the Chicago Police Department, one of the top two electronic privacy groups in the nation (EPIC), and even the office of Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY). EPIC apparently has known about this problem for a long time, and Schumer didn't seem very surprised either.

So, tell me why our government and our privacy groups have known forever about this problem (the Washington Post wrote an article about this last July), yet no one has done anything to fix it? Oh sure, Schumer "introduced legislation" to fix it and is waiting. Gee thanks Chuck. At least you got your face in front of a camera. This is the kind of story that gets legislation passed in a day, it's so outrageous. Either you don't care or you're incompetent if you introduce legislation on something this outrageous and you have sit back and wait for it to be considered. But hey, at least Schumer tried, so to speak - where were the other Senators and House members? Where is our president?

Now, before you write this off as just another sad story, let me explain to you just how serious the situation really is - not just to your own personal privacy, but to law enforcement, every politician in DC and around the country, and to national security.

1. Are you an FBI agent with confidential sources?

Again, I quote the Sun-Times:

To test the service, the FBI paid Locatecell.com $160 to buy the records for an agent's cell phone and received the list within three hours, the police bulletin said.

2. Are you a police officer with confidential sources?

The Chicago Sun-Times paid $110 to Locatecell.com to purchase a one-month record of calls for this reporter's company cell phone. It was as simple as e-mailing the telephone number to the service along with a credit card number. The request was made Friday after the service was closed for the New Year's holiday.

On Tuesday, when it reopened, Locatecell.com e-mailed a list of 78 telephone numbers this reporter called on his cell phone between Nov. 19 and Dec. 17. The list included calls to law enforcement sources, story subjects and other Sun-Times reporters and editors.

3. Are you a journalist with confidential sources?

Do you think anyone in Washington, DC would like to know who James Risen of the New York Times, the reporter who broke Bush's domestic spying scandal, has been talking to over the last year? Well, just plop down a few hundred bucks and buy his phone records. Kiss his sources goodbye. Or how about Bob Novak? Be fun to find out who he was talking to, oh, around the spring of 2003... Or the phone records of any US reporters - imagine the fun the Bush administration could have LEGALLY getting a record of every single phone call you've ever received or made. Spying on Christiane Amanpour? Who needs to! Her phone records are available for $110 and the click of a button.

4. Are you a Democratic or Republican member of Congress?

Imagine the fun should some rich Democratic or Republican donor plop down $1 million to get the phone records of every single member of Congress from the other party. Who have they been talking to? George Soros? Pat Robertson? Their mistress? Did any of them talk to any reporters on or around the day that any big leak came out of Congress? Did you ever have a phone conversation with Jack Abramoff? I do oppo research for a living - I would give my right thumb to have a list of every phone call made or received by a member of Congress from the other party on their cell phone. Go ahead, make my day.

5. Are you a Bush administration official?

Imagine the fun should someone get Karl Rove's phone records, or Dick Cheney's, or President Bush's.

6. Are you a special prosecutor by the name of Patrick Fitzgerald?

Love to see who HE's been talking to?

7. Are you an Al Qaeda terrorist?

Don't you think they'd love to pull up the phone records of FBI, CIA, and Homeland Security officials to find out if any other Al Qaeda "affiliates" are snitches, or at least to see who they're talking to. Or pull up the records of their own people to see if they've been talking to reporters or FBI agents?

8. Are you a regular old American criminal, a member of the Mafia for example?

Think they'd find it useful to check who among their associates has been talking to reporters, politicians, or law enforcement?

9. Are you someone who's being abused by your spouse?

Wouldn't it be great to have your partner find out you're talking to an abused women shelter or to the police?

10. Got AIDS, cancer or any other disease you might want to keep private?

Imagine the fun should your employer find out you call the AIDS hotline every week, or the women's breast cancer clinic.

My point here is that this is incredibly dangerous, our government has known about it for a good half year or longer, and no one has done a damn thing about it.

11. Are you a woman who ever has, may, or will get an abortion?

Do you want everyone knowing you made a few too many phone calls to the Planned Parenthood clinic?

The list goes on and on and on.

What's most infuriating to me is that our government, both Congress and the executive branch, has known about this since at least last July when the Washington Post story ran, and they didn't do a damn thing about it. Congress could have easily passed legislation to make this illegal. But they didn't. Hell, Bush could have evoked his apparently all-powerful divine right of kings and simply outlaw the damn practice - a much better use of his dictator police-state powers than spying on innocent Americans.

But Bush did nothing. Republicans and Democrats in Congress did nothing. And the FBI and the privacy groups have known about this for a long time, and they did nothing.

This is the kind of issue that you could get fixed on Capitol Hill IN ONE DAY. But that would require someone who actually understands politics, who understands how to get things accomplished, and who gives a damn. It also takes someone who isn't in the pocket of the telecommunications industry, the telemarketers, and the direct marketing lobbyists.

And finally, let's not forget the biggest criminals of all in this affair. The phone companies. There is no way that these online services are outright stealing this information, if they're able to get in just a few hours consistently. They've got access to the info, and from the reading I've done it seems the cell and land-line companies are selling our info for profit. So, the biggest slap in the face should be to any phone company out there who has ever sold one big of information about you to anyone else. Not only is it unethical, but they just might have helped Al Qaeda. Congrats.

So, anybody got Bill Frist's or Harry Reid's phone numbers? Or maybe the phone number of the FBI tip line? Read More......

Wash Post editorial: Pat Robertson is a "pathetic... religious extremist"

Sometimes even the Washington Post gets it:

CHRISTIAN television evangelist Pat Robertson and the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, have a well-established affinity for the outrageous. This time their mutual embrace of indecency places them in a category all to themselves. As Ariel Sharon lies hospitalized and critically incapacitated by a massive stroke, Mr. Robertson, one of America's best-known religious extremists, and his Iranian counterpart -- no slouch when it comes to religious demagoguery -- suggested that Israel's prime minister had it coming. Speaking on his TV show, "The 700 Club," on the Christian Broadcasting Network, Mr. Robertson said the Bible "makes it very clear that God has enmity against those who 'divide my land.' "....

Pat Robertson and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are probably beyond the point where they can be reached by embarrassment or shame. But they are not beyond the kind of strong condemnation that they have richly earned. We need not recite the records of contemptible remarks made by both men in the past. There is little reason to believe that either will cease his disgraceful behavior. Mr. Ahmadinejad, the president of a country with a lamentable human rights record and a nuclear program, is dangerous, where Mr. Robertson is only pathetic.

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More Josh Marshall on Christiane Amanpour spy brouhahah

I don't for a minute trust the Bush administration when they say they didn't spy on Amanpour, only because I no longer trust anything they say. But, I think Josh's analysis is spot-on. Namely, we all noticed some hedging going on in the administration's statement on this issue, broadcast on CNN Thursday night.

Josh dissects the parsing of words, and I think he's right.

Remember that what Andrea Mitchell said or asked in her interview of James Risen was this: "Do you have any information about reporters being swept up in this net? (italics added)"

To be 'swept up' in a net isn't the same as being 'targetted' -- just ask dolphins. And toward the end of Ensor's piece on the CNN website, there's some hint that this distinction might be what we're talking about ...

So if Amanpour was only "swept up" in the wiretapping, then what did they hear? Who was she speaking to? Did they get any calls her husband was making to John Kerry? Read More......

DeLay Out as Majority Leader

CNN reporting that DeLay is stepping aside as Majority Leader "under pressure from other Republican leaders". This follows his prior decision to step down temporarily. By permanently stepping down, this paves the way for a new leadership struggle in the House.

What this move shows is that the damage to the Republican Party right now is significant. By shoving DeLay overboard, the Republicans clearly recognize that the "Culture of Corruption" language has the potential to topple their House majority. Democrats are you listening? You can win this one...

UPDATE 1: From AP:

DeLay intends to remain in Congress, these officials said, and plans to seek a new term in November.

DeLay acted hours after a small vanguard of Republicans circulated a petition calling for leadership elections and citing DeLay's legal problems as well as his long ties to Abramoff.

If Texas sends him back to Congress they are pathetic excuses for Americans. Read More......

Gene Shalit is an A-hole

UPDATE: The Advocate republishes an interesting 1997 commentary by Gene Shalit about his gay son. Perhaps someone is still working through some issues.

Yet another reason to not watch NBC's Today Show. From E Online via Yahoo:

The veteran Today show critic has been taken to task by the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation over his negative review of the gay cowboy western, in which he referred to Jake Gyllenhaal's character, Jack, as a "sexual predator" who "tracks Ennis down and coaxes him into sporadic trysts."
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"Shalit's bizarre characterization of Jack as a 'predator' and Ennis (Heath Ledge) as a victim reflects a fundamental lack of understanding about the central relationship in the film and about gay relationships in general," GLAAD said in a statement. "It seems highly doubtful that Shalit would similarly claim that Titanic's Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio) was a 'sexual predator' because he was pursuing a romantic relationship with Rose (Kate Winslet)."

Did Shalit even stay for the end of the movie or was he off in some fantasy land in his own head? (Can you imagine a fantasy land where Gene Shalit has a sexual predator following him? Eww.)

UPDATE 1: Decide for yourself if you think it's worth the fuss. GLADD has video here. Read More......

Saturday Morning Open Thread

Just say it. You know you want to say it. Read More......

Austin American-Statesman reports on Amanpour Spying issue

Slowly, ever so slowly, the Mitchell-Amanpour spying story is making it's way into the traditional media:

CNN said it is "looking into" whether its chief international correspondent, Christiane Amanpour, has been targeted by the Bush administration's domestic spying program, a charge sources at the National Security Agency have denied to CNN.

"Neither CNN nor Christiane Amanpour . . . is aware of alleged eavesdropping by the government on Ms. Amanpour," CNN spokeswoman Laurie Goldberg said Friday.

Amanpour's name came up this week when NBC News reporter Andrea Mitchell interviewed James Risen, the New York Times reporter who revealed the secret NSA program to eavesdrop on phone calls and e-mails of U.S. citizens and overseas contacts believed to be linked to terrorism. Mitchell asked whether Risen had any information to suggest that the NSA had eavesdropped on CNN's Amanpour. Risen said he had no such information.

Reporters have to know that the Bush team is capable of just about anything. They don't always report on it...but they know it. Read More......

DeLay is getting dumped by the House GOP

Starting to look like the House GOPers are going to dump DeLay. They delayed the start of Congress so he could get through his Texas trial, but apparently Abramoff is the tipping point -- which is ironic because so many in the GOP caucus benefited from Jack's largesse by way of DeLay:

Rank-and-file House Republicans took the first formal step toward permanently replacing Rep. Tom DeLay (Tex.) in the House's leadership by unveiling a petition to hold a special leadership election in the coming weeks.

The petition -- drafted by moderate Reps. Charles Bass (N.H.) and Christopher Shays (Conn.) and conservative Rep. Jeff Flake (Ariz.) with the support of as many as two dozen members -- is the latest blow to DeLay, who was forced to relinquish his post as majority leader in September after he was indicted in Texas on campaign finance charges. DeLay had hoped that case would be resolved in his favor by the end of January, clearing the way for his return. Instead, it has dragged on through a series of pretrial maneuvers.

It'll be interesting to watch all the GOP House members get all sanctimonious. But, if the GOP thinks bagging DeLay is going to be enough, they're wrong. DeLay = GOP = Corruption. Read More......

1984 comes to Britain

How creepy is this? The so-called leaders of democracy have a love affair with spying on their citizens these days. I can't believe that people are tolerating this rubbish. Read More......

My Lai hero dies

Hugh Thompson Jr, who intervened to stop the massacre and saved lives, died yesterday. Thompson's role was not known for years and he even was attacked by some in Congress who thought that he should have been prosecuted. Sounds like those people were the early Swift Boaters. I wonder if those attackers ever asked questions about Colin Powell and his classic military response of trying to sweep it all under the rug, a response that never seems to go away. Read More......

Congress' independent research arm says Bush's legal argument for unwarranted domestic spying is shaky at best

From Saturday's Post:

A report by Congress's research arm concluded yesterday that the administration's justification for the warrantless eavesdropping authorized by President Bush conflicts with existing law and hinges on weak legal arguments.

The Congressional Research Service's report rebuts the central assertions made recently by Bush and Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales about the president's authority to order secret intercepts of telephone and e-mail exchanges between people inside the United States and their contacts abroad.

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