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FBI says warrantless wiretapping lasted until 2006 The FBI indicated Wednesday that widespread irregularities in a program to gather confidential data on people in the United States after the Sept. 11 attacks continued into at least 2006. The bureau's use of national security letters to gather phone, Internet and credit records in terrorism and espionage investigations -- a power magnified by the Patriot Act -- first came under attack last March in a report by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine. In a study covering 2003 to 2005, Fine reported numerous instances of FBI personnel violating internal guidelines and procedures in how they obtained and used national security letters, which are a form of administrative subpoena. Testifying Wednesday on Capitol Hill, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III said that a second audit by the Justice Department's internal watchdog office, scheduled to be released soon, will show a continuation of problems into 2006. But Mueller said agency reforms he instituted are starting to work. National security letters are controversial because the FBI issues them without having to get court approval. The lack of protection led a federal judge in New York last year to strike down the practice, which he called "the legislative equivalent of breaking and entering." The Justice Department is appealing that ruling....
DHS Strains As Goals, Mandates Go Unmet Stumping for President Bush's ill-fated immigration overhaul in 2006, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff vowed that his department would wrest "operational control" of the nation's borders away from human and drug traffickers within five years. That projection was based on the prospect of tough new enforcement measures as well as a temporary-worker program meant to stanch the flow of illegal immigrants, including the most ambitious use of surveillance technology ever tried on the U.S.-Mexico border. Two years later, the legislative overhaul has been shelved, development of the "virtual fence" has been delayed, and its designers are going back to the drawing board. Completion of its first phase has been put off until as late as 2011, congressional investigators say. The possibility of this outcome was flagged early on by internal and external watchdogs, who warned of unrealistically tight deadlines, vague direction to contractors, harsh operating conditions and tough requirements of Border Patrol end-users. Among a slew of high-profile projects that have gone astray, DHS has struggled to field next-generation explosive-detection "puffer devices" at airports and has projected it could take $22 billion and 16 more years to deploy advanced baggage-screening systems in airports. It scaled back and indefinitely delayed the "exit" half of a $10 billion, biometric entry-exit system to track foreign visitors using digital fingerprints and photographs, citing technological and cost problems. Homeland Security also faces a congressional mandate after the Dubai Ports World controversy to scan 100 percent of U.S.-bound shipping containers overseas, while scientific and logistical problems have hampered a $1.2 billion effort to field highly effective nuclear detection devices....
Brain Scanner Can Tell What You're Looking At Tell me what you see. On second thought, don't: A computer will soon be able to do it, simply by analyzing the activity of your brain. That's the promise of a decoding system unveiled this week in Nature by neuroscientists from the University of California at Berkeley. As the decoder is refined, it could be used to explore the phenomenon of visual attention -- concentration on one part of a complicated scene -- and then to illuminate the dimly understood intricacies of the mind's eyes. After that, the decoding model could be harnessed for more visionary purposes: early warning systems for neurological diseases or interfaces that allow paralyzed people to engage with the world. Other uses may not be so noble, such as marketing campaigns crafted for maximum mental penetration or invasions of mental privacy mounted in the name of fighting terrorism and crime. Eventually, Haynes said, the Berkeley model could be harnessed for something akin to mind reading....Just wait 'till the TSA gets ahold of this.
Border Fence Divides Government, Landowners Washington plans to build 670 miles of fencing along stretches of the nearly 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexican border from California to Texas to help stem the tide of illegal immigration. More than 300 miles are already built, and the U.S. government is pushing hard to finish this year as mandated by Congress. But opposition by landowners could slow the project, about 54 percent of which is to be built on private property, a government watchdog agency said in a report in February. "Until the land issues are resolved, this factor will continue to pose a risk to meeting the deployments," the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said. Tamez is one of many opponents along the border who are fighting the fence. Ranchers fear they will lose access to irrigation pumps; ecologists worry it will block the migration of endangered species such as the jaguar and ocelot; anglers and boaters do not want to be cut off from the river. And in western states like Texas and Arizona, the government's concerns over illegal immigration clash with cherished values of landowner rights, which have helped sustain U.S. President George W. Bush's Republican Party in the region. "That was everybody's dream, we'll come out here ... develop the West and civilize it. Now the government is coming and saying 'Oh, we'll take that back, because we're going to build a wall. It's unAmerican,"' said rancher John Ladd of Naco, Arizona, whose land runs for 10 miles along the border with Mexico....
National Dragnet Is a Click Away Several thousand law enforcement agencies are creating the foundation of a domestic intelligence system through computer networks that analyze vast amounts of police information to fight crime and root out terror plots. As federal authorities struggled to meet information-sharing mandates after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, police agencies from Alaska and California to the Washington region poured millions of criminal and investigative records into shared digital repositories called data warehouses, giving investigators and analysts new power to discern links among people, patterns of behavior and other hidden clues. Those network efforts will begin expanding further this month, as some local and state agencies connect to a fledgling Justice Department system called the National Data Exchange, or N-DEx. Federal authorities hope N-DEx will become what one called a "one-stop shop" enabling federal law enforcement, counterterrorism and intelligence analysts to automatically examine the enormous caches of local and state records for the first time. "It's going from the horse-and-buggy days to the space age, that's what it's like," said Sgt. Chuck Violette of the Tucson police department, one of almost 1,600 law enforcement agencies that uses a commercial data-mining system called Coplink....
Firearms database won’t work, study says Collecting ballistic "fingerprints" from millions of new firearms in the United States would create a database too unreliable to be useful in solving gun crimes, a team of scientists said Wednesday. In a 300-page report from the National Research Council, the scientists advised against a proposal that some lawmakers recommended in the aftermath of the 2002 sniper shootings in Washington and its outskirts. The concept relies on the assumption that individual guns leave unique markings, like fingerprints, on bullets and shell casings. Some in Congress have said that every new gun sold in the United States should be test-fired so those markings could be entered into a database. The thinking was that investigators could use the database to identify the firearm that fired bullets found at crime scenes. The study said the idea is not feasible because digital imaging technology is not sufficiently reliable to distinguish tiny differences in the markings....
Police, feds OK'd to check on mail U.S. postal authorities have approved more than 10,000 law enforcement requests to record names, addresses and other information from the outside of letters and packages of suspected criminals every year since 1998, according to U.S. Postal Inspection Service data. In each of those years, officials approved more than 97% of requests to record the information during criminal inquiries. In 2004, 2005 and 2006, the most recent year provided, officials granted at least 99.5% of requests, according to partial responses to inquiries filed by USA TODAY under the Freedom of Information Act. Postal officials have closely guarded the warrantless surveillance mail program, used for decades to track fugitives and to interrupt the delivery of illegal drugs or other controlled substances such as explosives. In other government surveillance, such as most wiretap programs, a judge approves requests. In this one, the USPIS' chief inspector has authority to grant or deny a request. The Postal Service handles 214 billion pieces of mail each year. Correspondence and packages transported by private carriers, such as FedEx and UPS, are not subject to the surveillance. Postal officials also would not discuss how much mail is being opened for content examinations, which do require a warrant authorized by a judge....
FBI boosts training in Islamic 'sensitivity' The FBI believes its agents still aren't sensitive enough to Muslims and their culture, so the bureau has extended by "a few weeks" its Islamic cultural "enrichment" training program, WND has learned. During a recent outreach event at a Washington-area mosque, FBI officials also reassured a large turnout of concerned Muslims that the bureau is not profiling Arabs and Muslims for terrorism, and has made investigating alleged "hate crimes" against them and other minorities "the second-highest priority in the criminal division of the FBI." Among the officials who attended the Feb. 8 "town hall meeting" at the large ADAMS Center mosque were Timothy Healy, deputy assistant director for FBI intelligence, and Dave Bennett, assistant special agent in charge of the FBI's Washington field office. The officials said terrorism is "not a new phenomenon" limited to Muslims, and they cited abortion-clinic bomber Eric Rudolph as an example of a Christian terrorist. While they said they are concerned about the threat from "homegrown terror" perpetuated by second-generation Muslim immigrants, the officials assured the Muslim audience they are no more concerned about such homegrown attacks than they are "about bank robberies," and are not targeting the Muslim community for special surveillance....
Illegal-immigrant criminals siphon funds The next time a San Diego sheriff's deputy arrests a man who tries to steal a car, hauls him to a county detention center, starts asking questions and discovers he's in the country illegally, here's what will happen: The tax-supported district attorney's and public defender's offices will handle his case, a tax-supported judge will preside if it goes to trial, he'll spend an average three weeks in the local jail at $100 each day, a state prison could house him for years at $121 a day, and tax-funded probation officers will follow his progress. Only after that will he be deported. For years, the White House and border communities such as San Diego have argued over who should pay for all this. As a group of border states yesterday unveiled a report on the costs of incarcerating illegal immigrants linked to crimes, President Bush is again trying to eliminate all federal reimbursement for the task. One study released last summer found that illegal immigrants cost the San Diego County law enforcement system about $75 million a year. The county received just under $2.5 million in federal reimbursements in fiscal 2007....
UK - ID database will be 'universal' by 2017 All British citizens will be signed up to a national ID scheme within 10 years under plans outlined by the Government today. Millions of people in sensitive jobs, including teachers, carers and health workers will be among the first to be entered onto the identity register. Up to 100,000 airport staff will be issued with unique personal identity number starting later this year in a bid to kick-start the multi-billion pound project. Foreign nationals working in Britain will be issued with cards over the next two years. From 2010 young people will be able to get an identity card if they choose. Later that year the scheme will be opened to voluntary applicants of any age. From 2011 - after the next general election - anyone applying for a new passport will automatically be fingerprinted and their personal details logged on the database. In one change from original plans, Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, said it will be possible to decline the card itself and rely upon a passport as an identity document. Miss Smith said the aim of the timetable was to make coverage of the population "universal" by 2017....
Feds Have a Backdoor Into Wireless Carrier A U.S. government office in Quantico, Virginia, has direct, high-speed access to a major wireless carrier's systems, exposing customers' voice calls, data packets and physical movements to uncontrolled surveillance, according to a computer security consultant who says he worked for the carrier in late 2003. "What I thought was alarming is how this carrier ended up essentially allowing a third party outside their organization to have unfettered access to their environment," Babak Pasdar, now CEO of New York-based Bat Blue told Threat Level. "I wanted to put some access controls around it; they vehemently denied it. And when I wanted to put some logging around it, they denied that." Pasdar won't name the wireless carrier in question, but his claims are nearly identical to unsourced allegations made in a federal lawsuit filed in 2006 against four phone companies and the U.S. government for alleged privacy violations. That suit names Verizon Wireless as the culprit. According to his affidavit, Pasdar tumbled to the surveillance superhighway in September 2003, when he led a "Rapid Deployment" team hired to revamp security on the carrier's internal network. He noticed that the carrier's officials got squirrelly when he asked about a mysterious "Quantico Circuit" -- a 45 megabit/second DS-3 line linking its most sensitive network to an unnamed third party. Quantico, Virginia, is home to a Marine base. But perhaps more relevantly, it's also the center of the FBI's electronic surveillance operations....