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Mexican helicopter entered U.S. airspace

An unmarked helicopter belonging to the Mexican Attorney General's Office crossed into U.S. airspace Tuesday night, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection and nearly 30 eyewitnesses. The helicopter -- described as a black Huey -- was flying 40 yards off the ground and crossed into the United States near San Luis, Ariz., which is close to the Colorado River, before making its way back across into Algodones, Mexico, according to eyewitnesses and U.S. officials. Algodones is close to Yuma, Ariz. "The unmarked helicopter crossed into U.S. airspace and continued along the Colorado River for approximately half mile before returning to Mexico," according to a statement from the Yuma sector of U.S. Customs and Border Protection. "After proper coordination and verifications with the government of Mexico, they confirmed that the helicopter belonged to the Mexican Attorney General's Office (PGR) and had mistakenly and unintentionally crossed into U.S. airspace." PGR is the Mexican federal police force that investigates federal offenses, predominantly drug trafficking and organized crime. Eyewitness accounts of how long the helicopter was in U.S. airspace and who was on board conflict with a Customs and Border Protection release issued Thursday night. Denny Sheredy, another civilian border watcher, heard the U.S. Border Patrol agents on his scanner. "I heard it on the scanner and then nearly 20 minutes later I saw it for myself," Sheredy said. "That's about how long it took me to get to the group. That's how we know the helicopter was in U.S. airspace for at least that amount of time."....

Senate panel to tackle immigration legislation With immigration bills already flying left and right in Congress, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Friday unveiled his own comprehensive reform proposal. It's a big bundle, spanning 305 pages and covering everything from border fences to guest workers. But Specter stops short of what the House bill would do. The House measure, for instance, authorizes construction of a double-layer fence along much of the U.S.-Mexico border that could cost $2.5 billion or more. The Senate bill only authorizes studying a fence. The House bill makes illegal presence in the United States a felony. Specter would keep it a misdemeanor except for repeat violators. The House bill would require all workers to have their eligibility checked against a national database. The Senate bill covers only new employees. The Senate bill includes, as well, a new guest-worker program and a temporary legal status program that the House bill lacks. Tougher enforcement measures, including Specter's proposal to hire more than 1,000 additional customs and Border Patrol officers and investigators, are certain to be part of any immigration bill. A much bigger fight looms over the illegal immigrants already in this country. Specter's bill would create a new "conditional nonimmigrant work authorization" status for those currently in the United States illegally. The "alien," as the legislation puts it, would have to pay back taxes while the employer would have to pay a $500 fee. Separately, the Senate bill does include a new guest-worker provision, not limited to agriculture, which would permit working immigrants to enter the United States for a maximum of six years. Afterward, they would have to return home....

Trial may expose agency's inner code

The ongoing trial of two Border Patrol agents who shot an admitted drug dealer in the buttocks last year, sheds a rare light on the inner culture of the agency beyond rules and regulations. Prosecution lawyers in the case have talked of a "thin green line" of agents banding together, of a pecking order in which rookie agents don't dare question those with more seniority, and of the competition to land a drug seizure and the recognition it begets. Meanwhile, defense lawyers exposed the reality of agents who have relatives or friends on the other side of the law. The incident that led to the charges of assault against agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean occurred on Feb. 17, 2005. The agents shot at Osvaldo Aldrete Davila, who was running back into Mexico near Fabens. Compean allegedly shot at least 14 times and Ramos once, hitting Aldrete in the buttocks. The victim made it back to Mexico where he received medical treatment. There were seven other agents at the scene of the shooting, including one who said he saw Compean shoot, several who heard the shooting and the rest who arrived later, according to information that came out in court. But no one reported the shooting, and Assistant U.S. Attorney Debra Kanof said when internal affairs agents started investigating at the Fabens station, "nobody would talk." Kanof said the "thin green line," referring to the color of the Border Patrol uniform, "had to be permeated."....

Border debate shifts to employers

Businesses that hire undocumented workers are emerging as a new target for state lawmakers in a year already brimming with illegal immigration measures. In Iowa, state Democratic leaders want the attorney general to investigate companies that hire undocumented workers. In Arizona, Gov. Janet Napolitano (D) is backing a bill that would impose heavy fines on companies that employ illegal immigrants. Similar proposals have been discussed in a growing number of states, including Colorado, Indiana, Maryland and New Hampshire, as legislators ratchet up state-based efforts to deal with illegal immigration by pointing their pens at those who hire illegal immigrants, not just at workers. The focus on penalizing employers comes as states increasingly are frustrated with federal border enforcement and are forced to address an immigration boom, which has affected everything from schools to hospitals to prisons. The results have been a rash of new state laws -- and more legislation in 2006 -- targeting where illegal immigrants can live, work and learn....

National Guard outlines cost of border stations

More than $32,000 a day. That's what it would cost - $32,100, to be exact - for Gov. Janet Napolitano to station 100 of the state's National Guard troops on the border. Arizona National Guard officials presented that figure Thursday to a legislative panel considering the feasibility of using the military to secure the border. Napolitano is said to be considering the issue. In August, she joined fellow Democratic Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico in declaring an emergency along the border. More recently, Napolitano kicked off the legislative session with a State of the State address that asserted her willingness to station guardsmen on the border if the federal government will pick up the tab. Maj. Gen. David Rataczak of the Arizona National Guard told lawmakers Thursday that those negotiations between the Governor's Office and Department of Defense are continuing. Even if the feds won't pony up, Rep. John Allen, R-Scottsdale, suggested the state would see a savings in illegal immigration costs by funding the operation. Members of the House Select Committee on Government Operations, Performance and Waste heard testimony from ranchers and others who described a border in chaos with drug running, human smuggling and a continual flow of people across their properties. Roger Barnett, who has a 22,000-acre ranch near the border in Cochise County, showed legislators pictures of bodies and marijuana bales. He's found both on his property. "We're getting run over," he said. "Our lives are jeopardized."....

US fears Mexico "Laser Visas" being used illegally

A growing number of high-tech U.S. visas aimed at boosting security on the Mexico border may be winding up on the black market for sale or rent, U.S. officials said on Friday. At least 11,840 Laser Visas, issued to Mexican citizens for travel to the United States, were reported lost or stolen in two major border cities last year, up nearly 15 percent from 2004, they said. The credit card-sized documents, which include the bearers' photograph and scanned fingerprints, were introduced in 1998 to increase security and standardize documents used by Mexicans to cross the border. "While many may have been legitimately 'lost,' it seems probable that quite a few are either 'stolen' or 'reported stolen' in order to sell them," a U.S. consular official, who declined to be named, told Reuters. "There appears to be a healthy market for both buying and renting laser visas on the border," she added. Dubbed "micas" in border communities, they allow holders to cross by land without other supporting documents, and travel up to 25 miles inside California and Texas for a stay of up to 30 days. According to figures obtained by Reuters, 8,745 of the border crossing cards went astray last year in Ciudad Juarez, south of El Paso, Texas, and 3,095 in Tijuana, opposite San Diego, California. No figures were available for other cities along the 2,000-mile (3,200-km) border....

Making a Meth of the PATRIOT Act

If you thought al Qaeda or Iraqi insurgents were the major threats facing America, Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.) says you're wrong. According to Dent, "The growing availability of methamphetamine is a form of terrorism unto itself." Many of Dent's colleagues apparently agree, so they've attached surveillance, "smuggling", and "money laundering" provisions to the reauthorization of the USA PATRIOT Act. These vast new police powers, contained in a new "Combat Methamphetamine Act" (CMA) and other provisions, serve no purpose in the ongoing and serious struggle against terrorism. One proposal could place millions of Americans who purchase cold medicine on a huge government watch list; another could broaden powers that have been used to prosecute people for catching lobsters whose tails are too short. What could possibly be Congress' motivation in adding stuff like this to a mammoth piece of counterterrorism legislation (ironically, as part of an agreement negotiated with wavering Senators to put more checks on the government's PATRIOT Act powers)? The answer is, to tweak the parlance of pundits, very September 10th. The CMA pushes Congress's favorite pre-9/11 bipartisan activity: escalating the never-ending War on Drugs. Ironically, some Democrats who objected to National Security Agency wiretaps in December actually championed provisions that step on privacy in the name of stopping meth. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, (D-Calif.), who voted for a filibuster after the revelation of the National Security Agency's domestic spying program in December, co-sponsored the CMA and helped insert it into the PATRIOT Act conference report after failed attempts to pass it through other legislation. The new provisions were stalled with the filibuster and temporary PATRIOT extensions, but now appear to be poised for passage with the compromise bill. The CMA would move cold medicines such as Sudafed behind the counter, on the grounds that their active ingredient, pseudoephedrine, is a potential meth component. In DiFi's words, the solution to this non-problem would include "requiring purchasers to show identification and sign a log book." Once you sign for your medicine, your name becomes part of "a functional monitoring program" that would "allow law enforcement officials to track and ultimately prevent suspicious buying behavior of ingredients for meth production," according to a Feinstein press release describing a similar stand-alone bill. Provisions such as these have already been enacted at the state level, and they've attracted criticism from groups not normally opposed to strong measures in the war on terror or the war on drugs. The conservative groups Frontiers of Freedom and the American Legislative Exchange Council, along with Dennis Vacco, New York State's Republican former Attorney General, have criticized state bans on over-the-counter cold medicine. But the federal CMA goes further than even many of the state laws have. In North Carolina, a state not notorious for being soft on drugs, lawmakers exempted liquid and gelcap forms of medicines with pseudoephedrine, as well as children's versions of the medicine, from behind-the-counter rules. The federal CMA makes no such exceptions....

TIA Lives On

A controversial counter-terrorism program, which lawmakers halted more than two years ago amid outcries from privacy advocates, was stopped in name only and has quietly continued within the intelligence agency now fending off charges that it has violated the privacy of U.S. citizens. Research under the Defense Department's Total Information Awareness program -- which developed technologies to predict terrorist attacks by mining government databases and the personal records of people in the United States -- was moved from the Pentagon's research-and-development agency to another group, which builds technologies primarily for the National Security Agency, according to documents obtained by National Journal and to intelligence sources familiar with the move. The names of key projects were changed, apparently to conceal their identities, but their funding remained intact, often under the same contracts. It is no secret that some parts of TIA lived on behind the veil of the classified intelligence budget. However, the projects that moved, their new code names, and the agencies that took them over haven't previously been disclosed. Sources aware of the transfers declined to speak on the record for this story because, they said, the identities of the specific programs are classified. Two of the most important components of the TIA program were moved to the Advanced Research and Development Activity, housed at NSA headquarters in Fort Meade, Md., documents and sources confirm. One piece was the Information Awareness Prototype System, the core architecture that tied together numerous information extraction, analysis, and dissemination tools developed under TIA. The prototype system included privacy-protection technologies that may have been discontinued or scaled back following the move to ARDA. A $19 million contract to build the prototype system was awarded in late 2002 to Hicks & Associates, a consulting firm in Arlington, Va., that is run by former Defense and military officials. Congress's decision to pull TIA's funding in late 2003 "caused a significant amount of uncertainty for all of us about the future of our work," Hicks executive Brian Sharkey wrote in an e-mail to subcontractors at the time. "Fortunately," Sharkey continued, "a new sponsor has come forward that will enable us to continue much of our previous work." Sources confirm that this new sponsor was ARDA....

'Big Brother' Watching E-mail, Computer Data: US Report

Fast-evolving Internet and communications technology is outpacing privacy laws and leaving a treasure trove of personal data prey to government surveillance, a new report warned. The survey by the non-profit Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) appeared as debate rages over a domestic wiretap program in the United States and government lawyers demand search records held by firms like Google. "The gap between law and technology is widening every day, and privacy is eroding," said Jim Dempsey, the CDT policy director who authored the report. "What makes this even more troubling is that most users of these new technologies don't realize they are putting their privacy in jeopardy." Modern consumers live in an age when web based e-mails pileup on services like Microsoft's Hotmail and Google's Gmail, and all kinds of files from personal photos to bank, medical and travel records are stored online. Few computer users realise however, that web based e-mail is subject to much weaker protections than messages stored on home computers. While the government needs a warrant, issued by a judge, to search someone's home computer, it can access a person's webmail account with only a subpoena, issued without judicial review. In another example, the ubiquitous cellphone makes communication on the move easy -- but it has a downside, in that it can be used theoretically by government agencies to pinpoint an individual's location. There are no existing laws laying out explicit standards for government location tracking, so official use of such technology is only controlled by an inadequate patchwork of laws and precedents, the report said....

The limits of the anti-terrorism powers asserted by President Bush are hard to see

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales says Congress approved the National Security Agency's warrantless domestic wiretaps when it authorized a military response to the September 11 terrorist attacks. He also has said President Bush later decided not to ask for congressional approval of the surveillance program (approval he supposedly already had) because Congress probably would have said no (even though, by Gonzales' account, it already had said yes). Now the Bush administration is pursuing legislation suggested by Sen. Mike DeWine (R-Ohio) that would provide the congressional blessing it says it always had yet never sought. But since the president apparently thinks he has unilateral authority to do whatever he deems necessary to prevent terrorism, any law that aims to regulate his conduct in this area may not accomplish much. The administration claims the post-9/11 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) amended the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which requires warrants to monitor communications of people within the U.S. The legislators who voted for the AUMF clearly did not think they were saying anything about wiretaps, since they later explicitly loosened the rules for surveillance in ways that would make no sense if they already had granted the exemption discerned by Gonzales. The administration tries to bolster its argument by citing a 2004 decision in which the U.S. Supreme Court recognized the detention of prisoners captured on the battlefield as "a fundamental incident of waging war" implicitly authorized by the AUMF. But while it's hard to imagine how U.S. forces could have attacked Al Qaeda and its Taliban allies in Afghanistan without taking prisoners, monitoring the international e-mail and telephone calls of Americans on U.S. soil—even Americans suspected of links to Al Qaeda—is not a necessary part of the military action approved by Congress....

The spy who bills us

WHEN YOUR phone bill arrives this month, you might want to take a moment to think about how much you trust your telephone company. While the National Security Agency has gotten a lot of press since it was revealed in December that its analysts engaged in the warrantless surveillance of US citizens, the eavesdropping agency would not have been able to conduct the operation without the intimate -- and likely illegal -- cooperation of private telecommunications providers. After the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, the NSA adopted a bold new approach. Seeking more unfettered access to the vast communications channels that run through the country, the agency approached executives at major telecommunications companies and requested that they provide the NSA with secret backdoors into the hubs and switches through which our telephone calls and e-mails are routed. Whereas the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act requires spies to obtain individual warrants for each target in an investigation, the phone companies provided unfiltered access to the full current of communications -- not just Al Qaeda's calls, but everyone else's as well. One problem with this approach is that it's like drinking from a fire hose. The NSA intercepts about 650 million communications worldwide every day, and, in something of a paradox, the better the agency is at hoovering in phone calls and e-mails, the worse it is at isolating critical and timely information from the white noise. According to recent reports, few of the tips the agency generated from its wiretapping program resulted in the identification of actual terrorists or plots. Another problem is that trolling indiscriminately through the communications stream is illegal. The mechanism for eavesdropping established by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is simple: Target first, eavesdrop second. If there are grounds to suspect that a person is a terrorist or agent of a foreign power, a warrant is granted to spy on that person. With this new program, the agency has inverted the traditional steps: Eavesdrop first, then identify targets within the stream of intercepted communications....

America's fleecing in the name of security

Rest easy, America. As a response to the Sept. 11 attacks, the Princeton, N.J., Fire Department now owns Nautilus exercise equipment, free weights and a Bowflex machine. The police dogs of Columbus, Ohio, are protected by Kevlar vests, thank God. Mason County, Wash., is the proud owner of a half-dozen state-of-the-art emergency radios (never mind that they are incompatible with existing county radios). All of these crucial purchases -- and many more like them -- were paid for with homeland security grants. Doesn't it make you feel more secure that $100,000 in such money went to fund the federal Child Pornography Tipline? That $38 million went to cover fire claims related to the April 2001 Cerro Grande fire in New Mexico? And that $2.5 billion went to "highway security" -- that is, building and improving roads? Since Sept. 11, 2001, Congress has appropriated nearly $207 billion to protect us from terrorism. Total homeland security spending in 2006 will be at least $50 billion, split between the Department of Homeland Security and many other agencies, including, improbably, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Commerce and NASA. But far from making us more secure, the money is being allocated like so much pork. While the Department of Homeland Security is finally making some improvements in how it allocates resources, much more needs to be done, especially by Congress. Indeed, as the above examples suggest, states and cities are spending federal homeland security grants on pet projects that have little or nothing to do with security....

Why's a Retired Army Lieutenant Colonel on the "No-Fly" List?

The federal officials who are busy assuring Americans that they've got their act together when it comes to managing port security are not inspiring much confidence with their approach to airline security. When Dr. Robert Johnson, a heart surgeon who did his active duty with the U.S. Army Reserve before being honorably discharged with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, arrived at the Syracuse airport near his home in upstate New York last month for a flight to Florida, he was told he could not travel. Why? Johnson was told that his name had been added to the federal "no-fly" list as a possible terror suspect. Johnson, who served in the military during the time of the first Gulf War and then came home to serve as northern New York's first board-certified thoracic surgeon and an active member of the community in his hometown of Sackets Harbor, is not a terror suspect. But he is an outspoken critic of the war in Iraq, who mounted a scrappy campaign for Congress as the Democratic challenger to Republican Representative John McHugh in 2004 and who plans to challenge McHugh again in upstate New York's sprawling 23rd District....

Justice Dept. Rejects Google's Concerns

Concerns by Google Inc. that a Bush administration demand to examine millions of its users' Internet search requests would violate privacy rights are unwarranted, the Justice Department said in a court filing. The 18-page brief filed Friday argues that because the information provided would not identify or be traceable to specific users, privacy rights would not be violated. The brief was the Justice Department's reply to strident arguments filed by Google last week as a rebuff the government's demand to review its search requests during a random week. The department believes the information will help revive an online child protection law that has been blocked by the U.S. Supreme Court. By showing the wide variety of Web sites that people find through search engines, the government hopes to prove Internet filters are not strong enough to prevent children from viewing pornography and other inappropriate material online. The Justice Department submitted a declaration by Philip B. Stark, a researcher who rejected the privacy concerns, noting that the government specifically requested that Google remove any identifying information from the search requests. "The study does not involve examining the queries in more than a cursory way. It involves running a random sample of the queries through the Google search engine and categorizing the results," Stark, a statistics professor at the University of California, Berkeley, said. Mountain View, Calif.-based Google has staunchly resisted the Justice Department since receiving a subpoena last summer, setting the stage for the current legal battle....

Homeland Security Objected to Ports Deal

The Homeland Security Department objected at first to a United Arab Emirates company's taking over significant operations at six U.S. ports. It was the lone protest among members of the government committee that eventually approved the deal without dissent. The department's early objections were settled later in the government's review of the $6.8 billion deal after Dubai-owned DP World agreed to a series of security restrictions. On Saturday, congressional leaders, the company and Bush administration officials appeared to move closer to a compromise intended to derail plans by Republicans and Democrats for legislation next week that would force a new investigation of security issues relating to the deal. Discussions underway Saturday were to continue through the weekend. The company's surprise decision Thursday to indefinitely postpone its takeover of U.S. port operations did little to quell a political furor or appease skeptical members of Congress that the deal does not pose any increased risks to the U.S. from terrorism. Among the proposals being discussed is a new, intensive 45-day review of the deal by the government — something the White House had refused to consider as recently as Friday....