FLE

U.S. can open private mail in terrorism fight

U.S. officials can open personal mail arriving from abroad as part of the fight against terrorism, and do so when they deem it necessary to protect the country, a Customs and Border Protection spokeswoman said on Monday. News of the little-known practise follows revelations that the government approved eavesdropping on U.S. citizens without judicial oversight after the September 11 attacks, which sparked concern from civil liberties advocates and some lawmakers who called for congressional hearings. "Customs and Border Protection is charged with making sure that terrorists and terrorists' weapons don't enter the country," said Suzanne Trevino, a spokeswoman for the customs agency, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security. "One of our areas of responsibility is to inspect international mail coming into our country," she said. "We respect privacy and always keep that at the forefront, but at the same time we need to make sure we do our job in keeping U.S. citizens safe." Customs and Border Protection's web site notes that "all mail originating outside United States Customs territory that is to be delivered inside U.S. Customs territory is subject to Customs examination." Grant Goodman, an 81-year-old retired University of Kansas history professor, drew attention to the policy after a letter he received from a colleague in the Philippines was opened and resealed by Customs and Border Protection, and only then sent on to him....

Judges Just Briefed on Surveillance Plans

The federal judges who were bypassed when the Bush administration ordered warrantless wiretaps in the United States received a secret briefing Monday on details of the surveillance. Separately, a former FBI director and other lawyers questioned whether the surveillance is legal. The classified briefing at the Justice Department had been requested by U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, presiding judge on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court. Established by Congress in the late 1970s, the court oversees the government's handling of espionage and terrorism investigations. U.S. District Judge James Robertson last month resigned from the FISA court and other judges voiced concerns about the National Security Agency's electronic surveillance program, which President Bush authorized after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks. Gen. Michael Hayden, the principal deputy director of national intelligence, was among administration officials who attended the briefing. Hayden served as NSA director when the electronic surveillance program was launched and has since become the government's No. 2 intelligence official. Details of the program remain highly classified....

Report Rebuts Bush on Spying

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. The findings, the first nonpartisan assessment of the program's legality to date, prompted Democratic lawmakers and civil liberties advocates to repeat calls yesterday for Congress to conduct hearings on the monitoring program and attempt to halt it. The 44-page report said that Bush probably cannot claim the broad presidential powers he has relied upon as authority to order the secret monitoring of calls made by U.S. citizens since the fall of 2001. Congress expressly intended for the government to seek warrants from a special Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court before engaging in such surveillance when it passed legislation creating the court in 1978, the CRS report said. The report also concluded that Bush's assertion that Congress authorized such eavesdropping to detect and fight terrorists does not appear to be supported by the special resolution that Congress approved after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, which focused on authorizing the president to use military force. "It appears unlikely that a court would hold that Congress has expressly or impliedly authorized the NSA electronic surveillance operations here," the authors of the CRS report wrote. The administration's legal justification "does not seem to be . . . well-grounded," they said....

Gonzales' testimony eyed for hearing on surveillance

The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday said he has asked Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales to testify during open hearings on the legality of the Bush administration's domestic surveillance program. Sen. Arlen Specter, Pennsylvania Republican and Judiciary chairman, said Mr. Gonzales' testimony is being sought for the hearings, scheduled for early February, because he is the principal spokesman for the administration's position. The attorney general was White House counsel when Mr. Bush initiated the program, a role that could raise issues of attorney-client privilege in seeking his testimony. A message left with the Justice Department yesterday was not immediately returned. Asked on CBS' "Face the Nation" whether Mr. Gonzales had agreed to appear, Mr. Specter said, "Well, I didn't ask him if he had agreed. I told him we were holding the hearings, and he didn't object. I don't think he has a whole lot of choice on testifying." Sen. Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat, called for former Attorney General John Ashcroft and former Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey to testify at the hearings. "It would render these hearings useless and prevent the American people from getting to the bottom of this if the administration invoked executive privilege," Mr. Schumer, a Judiciary Committee member, said in a statement. Academics and others will be asked to appear, part of a list of witnesses "who think the president was right and people who think the president was wrong," Mr. Specter said....

NSA chief not concerned by congressional inquiries

The head of the National Security Agency told employees last month that NSA officials had not violated U.S. law by participating in an agency program that eavesdrops on U.S. citizens without judicial oversight, newly released documents show. "Media coverage surmises that administration and agency officials may have acted unlawfully -- notions I reject, categorically!" NSA Director Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander assured agency employees in a December 22 message. He acknowledged that Congress may schedule hearings on the domestic spying program, which President George W. Bush authorized in 2002 to eavesdrop on Americans' telephone calls and e-mails without first obtaining warrants. "Overall, we are not concerned," the NSA director said. "Our operations are carefully deliberated and measured; they are within the law; and they are nobly executed with strict oversight." The December 22 message, and an earlier one in which Alexander cautioned staff not to comment to the media, were released by the NSA in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from The New York Times, which first reported the program's existence last month....

The Wisdom in Wiretaps

The Bush Administration's use of warrantless wiretaps in the war on terrorism continues to generate controversy, and Congress is planning hearings. Some of the loopier elements of the Democratic Party have even suggested the wiretaps are grounds for impeachment. But the more we learn about the practice, the clearer it is that the White House has been right to employ and defend it. The issue is not about circumventing normal civilian Constitutional protections, after all. The debate concerns surveillance for military purposes during wartime. No one would suggest the President must get a warrant to listen to terrorist communications on the battlefield in Iraq or Afghanistan. But what the critics are really insisting on here is that the President get a warrant the minute a terrorist communicates with an associate who may be inside in the U.S. That's a loophole only a terrorist could love. To the extent the President's critics are motivated by anything other than partisanship, their confusion seems to involve a 1978 law called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. FISA provides a mechanism by which the executive can conduct warrant-approved surveillance under certain circumstances. But FISA covers only a limited number of intelligence-gathering scenarios. And no Administration -- Democrat or Republican -- has recognized FISA as a binding limit on executive power. Jimmy Carter's Attorney General, Griffin Bell, emphasized when FISA passed that the law "does not take away the power of the President under the Constitution." And in the 1980 case of United States v. Truong, the Carter Administration successfully argued its authority to have conducted entirely domestic, warrantless wiretaps of a U.S. citizen and a Vietnamese citizen who had been passing intelligence to the North Vietnamese during the 1970s Paris peace talks. In 1994, Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick also asserted an "inherent authority" not just to warrantless electronic surveillance but to "warrantless physical searches," too. The close associate of Hillary Rodham Clinton told Congress that much intelligence gathering couldn't be conducted within the limits placed on normal criminal investigations -- even if you wanted to for the sake of appearances. For example, she added, "it is usually impossible to describe the object of the search in advance with sufficient detail to satisfy the requirements of the criminal law."....

The FISA Farce

President Bush proudly announced last month that he is violating federal law. He declared that in 2002 he ordered the National Security Agency to begin conducting warrantless wiretaps and email intercepts on Americans. He asserted that the wiretaps would continue, regardless of the law. Bush claims that he must ignore the law because the secret federal court created to authorize such wiretaps moves too slowly to protect U.S. national security. Amazingly, his claim has been treated with respect, if not deference, by much of the nation’s media. Much of the media has groveled to his claim the same way that the special court grovels to federal agencies. In 1978, responding to scandals about political spying on Americans in the name of counterespionage, Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). FISA created a new “court” to oversee federal surveillance of foreign agents within the United States. The FISA court may be the biggest bunch of lapdogs in the federal government. The court approved almost every one of the 15,000 search warrant requests the feds submitted between 1978 and 2002, and it continues to approve more than 99 percent of requests. FISA provides a judicial process only in the sense that the room where the political appointees convene is called a “court.” As national security expert James Bamford observed, “Like a modern Star Chamber, the FISA court meets behind a cipher-locked door in a windowless, bug-proof, vault-like room guarded 24 hours a day on the top floor of the Justice Department building. The eleven judges (increased from seven by the Patriot Act) hear only the government’s side.” Federal agencies can submit retroactive search warrant requests up to 72 hours after they begin surveilling someone. In 2002, for instance, Attorney General John Ashcroft personally issued more than 170 emergency domestic spying warrants — permitting agents to carry out wiretaps and search homes and offices for as many as 72 hours before the feds requested a search warrant from the FISA court. He used such powers almost a 100 times as often as attorneys general did before 9/11....

Poll: Most Want Court OK for Gov't Taps

A majority of Americans want the Bush administration to get court approval before eavesdropping on people inside the United States, even if those calls might involve suspected terrorists, an AP-Ipsos poll shows. Over the past three weeks, President Bush and top aides have defended the electronic monitoring program they secretly launched shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, as a vital tool to protect the nation from al-Qaida and its affiliates. Yet 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. Agreeing with the White House, some 42 percent of those surveyed do not believe the court approval is necessary. "We're at war," Bush said during a New Year's Day visit to San Antonio. "And as commander in chief, I've got to use the resources at my disposal, within the law, to protect the American people. ... It's a vital, necessary program." According to the poll, age matters in how people view the monitoring. Nearly two-thirds of those between age 18 to 29 believe warrants should be required, while people 65 and older are evenly divided. Party affiliation is a factor, too. Almost three-fourths of Democrats and one-third of Republicans want to require court warrants....

Your phone records are for sale

The Chicago Police Department is warning officers their cell phone records are available to anyone -- for a price. Dozens of online services are selling lists of cell phone calls, raising security concerns among law enforcement and privacy experts. Criminals can use such records to expose a government informant who regularly calls a law enforcement official. Suspicious spouses can see if their husband or wife is calling a certain someone a bit too often. And employers can check whether a worker is regularly calling a psychologist -- or a competing company. The Chicago Police Department is looking into the sale of phone records, a source said. Late last month, the department sent a warning to officers about Locatecell.com, which sells lists of calls made on cell phones and land lines. "Officers should be aware of this information when giving out their personal cell phone numbers to the general public," the bulletin said. "Undercover officers should also be aware of this information if they occasionally call personal numbers such as home or the office, from their [undercover] ones." 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. Representatives of Data Find Solutions Inc., the Tennessee-based operator of Locatecell.com, could not be reached for comment. Frank Bochte, a spokesman for the FBI in Chicago, said he was aware of the Web site. "Not only in Chicago, but nationwide, the FBI notified its field offices of this potential threat to the security of our agents, and especially our undercover agents," Bochte said. "We need to educate our personnel about the dangers posed by individuals using this site and others like it. We are stressing that they should be careful in their cellular use."....