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DEA Agent Who Shot Self In Foot Sues U.S.

A Drug Enforcement Administration agent who stars in a popular online video that shows him shooting himself in the foot during a weapons demonstration for Florida children is suing over the tape's release, claiming that his career has been crippled and he's become a laughingstock due to the embarrassing clip's distribution. Lee Paige, 45, blames the video's release on DEA officials in an April 7 federal lawsuit filed against the U.S. government. A copy of the pro se complaint by Paige, a DEA agent since 1990, can be found below. According to the lawsuit, Paige was making a "drug education presentation" in April 2004 to a Florida youth group when his firearm (a Glock .40) accidentally discharged. The shooting occurred moments after Paige told the children that he was the only person in the room professional enough to carry the weapon. The accident was filmed by an audience member, and the tape, Paige claims, was turned over to the DEA....

Documents Show Link Between AT&T and Agency in Eavesdropping Case

Mark Klein was a veteran AT&T technician in 2002 when he began to see what he thought were suspicious connections between that telecommunications giant and the National Security Agency. But he kept quiet about it until news broke late last year that President Bush had approved an N.S.A. program to eavesdrop without court warrants on Americans suspected of ties to Al Qaeda. Now Mr. Klein and a few company documents he saved have emerged as key elements in a class-action lawsuit filed against AT&T on Jan. 31 by a civil liberties group, the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The suit accuses the company of helping the security agency invade its customers' privacy. Mr. Klein's account and the documents provide new details about how the agency works with the private sector in intercepting communications for intelligence purposes. The documents, some of which Mr. Klein had earlier provided to reporters, describe a mysterious room at the AT&T Internet and telephone hub in San Francisco where he worked. The documents, which were examined by four independent telecommunications and computer security experts at the request of The New York Times, describe equipment capable of monitoring a large quantity of e-mail messages, Internet phone calls, and other Internet traffic. The equipment, which Mr. Klein said was installed by AT&T in 2003, was able to select messages that could be identified by keywords, Internet or e-mail addresses or country of origin and divert copies to another location for further analysis....

AT&T asks judge to order documents alleging wiretaps returned

Attorneys for AT&T have asked a federal judge to order a San Francisco civil liberties group to return ``highly confidential'' documents that allegedly show that the telecommunications giant provided detailed records of millions of its customers to a government intelligence agency. In documents filed on Monday, AT&T's attorneys also asked Judge Vaughn Walker to order the Electronic Frontier Foundation to refrain from referencing the documents in its lawsuit. The EFF filed a lawsuit against AT&T in January alleging that AT&T had collaborated with the National Security Agency in a ``massive and illegal program to wiretap and data-mine Americans' communications.'' Last week, the group filed additional documents to the federal court in San Francisco totaling more than 140 pages. The documents purportedly provide evidence of the technology that AT&T had used to conduct surveillance for the NSA. The documents, which included a sworn declaration from retired AT&T technician Mark Klein and confidential company documents, were voluntarily placed under seal by the group pending a decision by the judge to make them public....

Librarians Win as U.S. Relents on Secrecy Law

After fighting ferociously for months, federal prosecutors relented yesterday and agreed to allow a Connecticut library group to identify itself as the recipient of a secret F.B.I. demand for records in a counterterrorism investigation. The decision ended a dispute over whether the broad provisions for secrecy in the USA Patriot Act, the antiterror law, trumped the free speech rights of library officials. The librarians had gone to federal court to gain permission to identify themselves as the recipients of the secret subpoena, known as a national security letter, ordering them to turn over patron records and e-mail messages. It was unclear what impact the government's decision would have on the approximately 30,000 other such letters that are issued each year. Changes in the Patriot Act now allow the government discretion over whether to enforce or relax what had been a blanket secrecy requirement concerning the letters. Lawyers for the group, the Library Connection of Windsor, Conn., argued that their client was eager to participate freely in the debate last year over the reauthorization of the Patriot Act. But federal prosecutors asserted that the Patriot Act required that the group's identity remain secret and that the government would suffer irreparable harm if any information about its investigations became known. The decision by the Justice Department to drop the case was applauded by the American Civil Liberties Union, which brought the lawsuit on behalf of the librarians. The civil liberties group said it would identify its clients at a news conference once court proceedings in the case are completed in a few weeks....

Efforts to secure US borders ‘have slowed since 9/11’

The growth in the number of agents patrolling US borders has slowed in the 4½ years since the September 11 terrorist attacks and concerns over illegal immigration override fears of terrorist infiltration in the allocation of border resources, according to a new analysis. The report, by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (Trac) at Syracuse University and released last week, also found that, although the national commission investigating the 2001 attacks warned of vulnerabilities on the long northern border with Canada, the southern border with Mexico has continued to take priority. The administration and Congress “have not taken the commission’s recommendations to heart”, the study said. The data gathered by Trac show that the US has poured resources into border security over the past decade, but that the effort has actually slowed since 2001. It said the annual growth rate in the number of full-time Border Patrol agents was higher in both the first and second terms of president Bill Clinton than it has been so far under President George W. Bush. Between 1997 and 2001, the second Clinton term, the number of agents increased by 42 per cent to 9,651. In the four years following the attacks, that number has risen by a more modest 15 per cent to 11,106. Proposals under consideration by Congress would almost double the size of the Border Patrol to 21,000 – making it by far the largest federal law enforcement agency, nearly double the current size of the Federal Bureau of Investigation....

Security lapse reveals secrets of Air Force One

Air Force One, the presidential jet, is a near-mythical symbol of US power, shrouded in so much secrecy that even foreign leaders invited on board are forbidden from seeing every corner. But the aircraft just became rather less mysterious after it emerged that detailed plans of its interior and exterior had been made publicly available on the website of an American air force base. One diagram shows the location of the president's suite, at the very front of the Boeing 747, which is known to include a medical facility, workout room, kitchen and office, as well as a bedroom. Another shows the location of oxygen tanks which could, in theory, be targeted by a terrorist sniper. The information appears to be intended for personnel involved in responding to an emergency on board. The documents, which had not been removed from the site yesterday, add precise detail to what was already known about the president's plane: that it contains 85 telephones, 19 televisions, facilities for film screenings, flares to repel missiles and shielding to protect onboard electronics from an electromagnetic pulse. They also underline the previously publicised fact that the plane always pulls up at public events with its left side facing people and buildings - protecting the president's quarters on the right side....