Current News

5/7, Adrian Chen, Gawker, Newly Declassified Memo Shows CIA Shaped Zero Dark Thirty’s Narrative

5/7, Paul Rosenzweig, Lawfare, CISPA – An Assessment

5/7, Greg Miller, Washington Post, CIA selects new head of clandestine service, passing over officer tied to interrogation program

5/6, Eyder Peralta, NPR, Prisoner Points To Quran Search For Gitmo Hunger Strike

5/6, CBS Staff, CBS (LA), Civil Rights Groups Sue LAPD, LA County Sheriff’s Department Over Automatic License Plate Readers

A coalition of religious leaders and human rights groups are protesting the possible promotion of a CIA official who was allegedly involved in the destruction of several videos showing US officials torturing detainees. The coalition against her promotion is led by the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, and also includes the Center for Victims of Torture, Human Rights Watch, Open Society Policy Center, and Physicians for Human Rights.

The group sent a letter to the CIA Director, John Brennan, calling on him not to promote anyone involved in torture “black sites,” or in the destruction of the torture tapes. The letter says, “Promoting such an individual would compound the existing impunity for torture, by suggesting that such actions are in fact rewarded.”

Although the name of the CIA official has not been made public, the Washington Post has reported a few things on her: she would be the first woman to lead the clandestine services area of the CIA, she is highly respected within the agency for her work, and she was a very strong advocate for the use of torture during interrogations after 9/11.

In 2002, this CIA operative helped run a “black site” in Thailand. It is widely acknowledged that the CIA was torturing detainees at these secret prisons. According to a report on US torture after 9/11 published by the Constitution Project, “many lower level troops believed ‘the gloves were off’ regarding treatment of prisoners.” At the CIA location in Thailand, 92 tapes of interrogation were recorded, reportedly including agents waterboarding a prisoner to the point of “screaming and vomiting.”

In 2004, a US court ordered the government to turn over or preserve all evidence in relation to its secret interrogation programs. In 2005, all 92 of the tapes were destroyed against court orders, allegedly at the request of this CIA official as well as CIA’s head of counterterrorism, Jose Rodriguez. The videos were destroyed the same month that Dana Priest wrote a exhaustive article about the CIA’s black sites, leading to increased public scrutiny of the practice.

This official is already acting as head of the clandestine operations, but John Brennan has hesitated in making her the permanent leader of that office. Clandestine operations oversees sending spies abroad and the CIA’s drone program, which has faced its own criticism lately over transparency.

Marc Thiessen, a former Bush administration official, wrote a defense of the agent, in which he worries that demoting this official could “send a chilling message through the ranks of the CIA…It would push the agency back into a risk-averse, pre-Sept 11, 2001, mindset.”

If the risks that the CIA is taking involves torturing people, then that is exactly the kind of message we should be sending. Depriving people of their rights from the Geneva Convention is not a “risk” we should ever be willing to take. So far, there has been no punishment for those involved in the destruction of the tapes. How can we hold the government accountable when they are destroying all of the evidence against themselves?

• 4/30, John Reed, Foreign Policy, The White House responds to the “Stop CISPA” petition
• 4/30, Editorial Board, New York Times, The President and the Hunger Strike
• 4/30, Benjamin Wittes, Lawfare, The President’s Guantanamo Comments
• 4/30, Natasha Lennard, Salon, Government preparing to fine tech firms that don’t comply with wiretaps
• 4/30, Eyder Peralta, NPR, Poll: Most Americans Are OK With Surveillance Cameras
• 4/30, Inside Story Americas, Al Jazeera, CIA: Buying peace in Afghanistan?

• 4/29, Jane Sutton, Reuters, American Medical Association questions Guantanamo force-feedings
• 4/29, Marc A. Thiessen, Washington Post, Why did Eric Holder drop the ball on Miranda reform?
• 4/29, Kim Zetter, Wired, Government Seeks to Fine Companies for Not Complying With Wiretap Orders
• 4/29, Elspeth Reeve, The Atlantic, Three Things the CIA Is Doing to Undermine American Values
• 4/29, Andrew Rosenthal, New York Times Opinion Pages, No Comment Necessary: Spying on Muslims
• 4/29, Ryan Gallagher, Slate, Lady Liberty’s Watching You

This blog post was authored by guest blogger Patrick Thronson, a 2013 JD Candidate at the University of Michigan School of Law.

The March 6 filibuster of John Brennan’s nomination to lead the CIA  was a rare occasion in which bipartisan voices in the Senate united with those of the family of a slain American teenager, other civilian victims of the CIA’s drone program, and a nation now growing willing to face the truth about its long slide away from its core constitutional ideals.

Senator Rand Paul’s (R-KY) speech has helped abate the helplessness many feel towards our nation’s disastrous course toward ever-eroding individual rights and endless war, by showing that one speech from a junior senator can compel the nation’s vast national security apparatus to account for itself.

A wide array of members of Congress, as well as prominent media pundits praised Senator Paul’s efforts. In his filibuster, Sen. Paul quoted material authored by numerous liberal commentators, including Glenn Greenwald, Conor Friedersdorf, Charles Pierce, and Kevin Gosztola. Although Senator Paul’s efforts garnered their most vocal support from Tea Party Republicans, a recent poll indicates a substantial majority of the public backs his position rejected targeted assassination of American citizens without trial.

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• 4/23, Tom Keane, Boston Globe, Surveillance and privacy
• 4/22, Jason Leopold, TruthOut, Inmates Rising: Worsening Gitmo Mass Hunger Strike in Prisoners’ Own Words
• 4/22, Jerry Markon, Sari Horwitz and Jenna Johnson, Washington Post, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev charged with using ‘weapon of mass destruction’
• 4/22, Matthew J. Belvedere, CNBC, ‘Islamophobia’ Concern Hinders Officers: Former CIA Head
• 4/22, Editor, New York Times, Criminal Complaint Against Dzhokhar Tsarnaev
• 4/22, Kevin Cirilli, Politico, 10 facts about enemy combatants
• 4/22, Tracie Hunte, WNYC, NYPD Commissioner Calls for More Surveillance Cameras
• 4/21, Wendy Kaminer, The Atlantic, ‘We Don’t Cower in Fear’: Reconsidering the Boston Lockdown

• 4/10, Chris O’Brien, Los Angeles Times, CISPA passes House committee, angering privacy activists
• 4/10, Andy Sullivan, Yahoo! News, Obama budget makes cybersecurity a growing U.S. priority
• 4/10, Declan McCullagh, CNET, IRS claims it can read your e-mail without a warrant
• 4/10, Jennifer Martinez, The Hill, House Dem to offer set of amendments to cyber intelligence-sharing bill
• 4/9, Spencer Ackerman, Wired, Blood Money, Kill Lists, Favors for Favors: Deep Inside the CIA’s Targeted Killings
• 4/9, Editor, The Hartford Guardian, Hartford Group to Protest Guantanamo
• 4/9, NPR Staff, NPR, ‘Way Of The Knife’ Explains CIA Shift From Spying To Killing

Speaking at a recent data conference in New York, chief technology officer Ira Hunt of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) commented on the increasing quantities of available information – including emails, videos, and tweets – in the current digital age. Regarding the prevalence and applications of such digital information, Hunt states that:

The value of any piece of information is only known when you can connect it with something else that arrives at a future point in time. Since you can’t connect dots you don’t have, it drives us into a mode of, we fundamentally try to collect everything and hang on to it forever.

With the enhanced abilities of computers to compute massive quantities of information, Hunt’s statements depict the CIA’s aspirations in accumulating and mapping large sets of data, a sentiment reflected in the agency’s recent contracts with industry giants such as Amazon.com. In this instance, this contract specifically focuses on cloud computing software, in that Amazon will aid the CIA in constructing a private cloud system, potentially for hosting sensitive and classified information that would otherwise be susceptible to security concerns in the public technological domain.

The CIA’s efforts are reminiscent of certain programs undertaken by the National Security Agency (NSA), which has conducted such investigations despite public worries over privacy and related Fourth Amendment concerns.  One such critic of the NSA is whistle-blower William Binney, whose was recently interviewed by filmmaker Laura Poitras for her documentary short regarding post-September 11th America. Having publicly admonished the NSA, Binney (who resigned from the agency in 2001) described a foreign intelligence program conducted by the NSA that focused upon classified domestic spying, which he believes to have been initiated shortly after September 11th. As reported by the New Yorker:

“Binney and a team of some twenty others believed that they had pinpointed the N.S.A.’s biggest problem—data overload. ThinThread, the “little program” that he invented to track enemies outside the U.S., “got twisted,” and was used for both foreign and domestic spying: “I should apologize to the American people. It’s violated everyone’s rights. It can be used to eavesdrop on the whole world.”

Such data programs espouse distinct similarities with a former Department of Defense (DOD) project known as the “total information awareness” program, which was “based on a vision of pulling together as much information as possible about as many people as possible into an ‘ultra-large-scale’ database.” However, in 2003, Congress de-funded the Defense Advanced Research Projects Area’s (DARPA) total information awareness program, which the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) had often likened to the “Big Brother” project of the current era. In essence, the aforesaid CIA and NSA programs represent instances in which the executive has significantly expanded its power though its replication of policies that Congress has expressly rejected.

• 4/2, Editor, RT, FBI loses appeal in StingRay surveillance case
• 4/1, Marc A. Thiessen, Washington Post, Betraying one of the CIA’s ‘Band of Sisters’?
• 4/1, Sabrina Siddiqui, Huffington Post, Florida State Senator: Sharia Law Like Disease We Should Vaccinate Against
• 4/1, Ben Wolfgang, Washington Times, FAA to hold online drone privacy forum
• 4/1, Conor Friedersdorf, The Atlantic, Can Voters Fight Domestic Drones at the Ballot Box?

• 3/28, Ryan Gallagher, Slate, Feds Accused of Hiding Information From Judges About Covert Cellphone Tracking Tool
• 3/28, Joshua Kopstein, The Verge, Why Mayor Bloomberg’s vision of a drone-filled city doesn’t fly
• 3/28, Kelsey D. Atherton, PopSci, FBI Wants To Spy On Your Online Chats As They Happen
• 3/28, Glenn Greenwald, Guardian (UK), The fun-filled ocean resort at Guantánamo Bay
• 3/28, Ewen MacAskill, Guardian (UK), CIA names woman to head clandestine operations amid torture controversy
• 3/27, Ajinur Setiwaldi, The Oklahoma Daily, Coalition fights discrimination against Sikh religion
• 3/27, The Editorial Board, New York Times, Monitoring New York City’s Police