When one power is constrained (or simply not broad enough), interpret other powers to be unrealistically and shockingly expansive and shield that interpretation from public scrutiny…at least that’s what the FBI would tell you.

The FBI’s annual report on its use of spying powers released late last month reveals a meteoric 900% rise in the use of Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act under the Obama Administration (see graphic). This provision, reauthorized in 2011, allows the FBI to force unwilling businesses to hand over “any tangible things” simply upon showing the closed-door Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Courts (FISA court) that they are “relevant” to an “authorized investigation” into “international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities.” In a break with foundational Fourth Amendment principles, the person whose “tangible things” are sought need not be suspected of any criminal activity themselves. The FBI merely must show the FISA court that those “things” sought are “relevant” to an investigation into international terrorism.

So just how broad is this power?

A few courageous senators in the know have hinted that Americans would be “stunned” by the scope of the spy powers claimed under Section 215; the only problem is the government has kept this interpretation secret. Not only does this lack of transparency prevent public discourse on what the limits of the government’s powers should be, it also drips with irony under a president that denounced such broad powers as a “fishing expedition” while in the Senate.

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In a press conference Thursday, May 16, at the White House, President Obama stated he had no regrets over the AP scandal:

Obama said he made “no apologies” for being concerned about national security but that the free flow of information was important to him as well.

What exactly is this “free flow” of information? According to The Guardian blogger Glenn Greenwald:

If you talk to any real investigative journalist, they will tell you that an unprecedented climate of fear has emerged in which their sources are petrified to talk to them. That the Obama administration has prosecuted double the number of whistleblowers under espionage statutes as all previous administrations combined has already severely chilled the news gathering process. Imagine what message this latest behavior sends to journalists and their sources: that at any moment, the phone records of even the nation’s most establishment journalists can be secretly obtained by the DOJ, which has no compunction about doing so even in the most extreme and invasive manner.

This mind set is obviously not very conducive to a “free flow” of information. So apparently, President Obama’s “free flow” of information is only pertaining to that information which benefits his administration:

The Obama administration does not mind leaks of classified national security information; to the contrary, they love such leaks and are the most prolific exploiters of them. What they dislike are leaks that they don’t approve and/or which don’t glorify the president.

Interestingly,  the media is suddenly up in arms about this abuse by the Obama administration. This passage from the Washington Post had Greenwald laughing audibly:

President Obama, a former constitutional law lecturer who came to office pledging renewed respect for civil liberties, is today running an administration at odds with his résumé and preelection promises.

The Justice Department’s collection of journalists’ phone records and the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of conservative groups have challenged Obama’s credibility as a champion of civil liberties – and as a president who would heal the country from damage done by his predecessor.

Greenwald’s response?

You don’t say! The Washington Post’s breaking news here is only about four years late. Back in mid-2010, ACLU executive director Anthony Romero, speaking about Obama’s civil liberties record at a progressive conference, put it this way: “I’m disgusted with this
president.” In the spirit of optimism, one can adopt a “better-late-than-never” outlook regarding this newfound media awakening.

The news media should take a several steps back from its cozy relationship inside the Beltway and return to its adversarial position as a watchdog of government. We, the people, need the media on our side, not the side of the politically elite.

For the past three years, Google has attempted to become more transparent by releasing reports about which governments are requesting it to remove content from its search engine or other sites. Their latest report covering the last six months of 2012, shows a significant increase of 26% more requests from governments to remove videos from Youtube, delete blog posts from Blogger, or remove items from Google’s search results, making them harder to find. The reports show that the number of requests have been increasing steadily for the last three years. Since Google controls a significant amount of international internet traffic, its decisions about what to show or restrict access to can have far reaching consequences.

In a blog post, Google wrote:

It’s become increasingly clear that the scope of government attempts to censor content on Google services has grown. In more places than ever, we’ve been asked to remove political content…or blog posts criticizing government officials or their associates.

This latest report also clarified whether videos were taken down for violating Google’s community guidelines or for violating local laws.

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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?

For the month of February, sequestration held the focus of the political arena, but in March, that focus has shifted to issues of government surveillance and Americans’ constitutional rights.  Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) has been spearheading the political debate over surveillance and privacy, spurred by the warrantless wiretapping activities of the National Security Agency (NSA), but also by the nomination of John Brennan to head the CIA, and the release of the white paper explaining the process behind Obama’s “kill list.”

The white paper is not a legal document, but rather a summary of a classified memo prepared by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel.  Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), says the publication of the memo affirms:

The power that the government has to carry out the targeted killing of American citizens who are located far away from any battlefield, even when they have not been charged with a crime, even when they do not present any imminent threat in any ordinary meaning of that word. So it’s a pretty sweeping power that’s been set out.

The memo argues that, “The condition that an operational leader present an ‘imminent’ threat of violent attack against the United States does not require the United States to have clear evidence that a specific attack on U.S. persons and interests will take place in the immediate future.”

According to the memo, then, the government does not need any evidence to justify the targeted killing of American citizens. (more…)

Why Holder’s letter carries little water

Last week, Senator Rand Paul (R-TX) forced a long overdue conversation in Washington about checks and balances on executive power. Yet few observers recognize the ultimate importance of his actions, or why the Senate’s confirmation of the new CIA director remained premature.

Prompted by Sen. Paul’s filibuster last Wednesday, Attorney General Holder wrote a letter the following day, acknowledging that our government lacks authority to execute Americans within the US without trial.

His concession is welcome, but must be taken with a grain of salt. It behooves observers to understand why, for several reasons, Holder’s statement may be less secure than we would ideally hope.

Accepting disclosure without investigation

Much of the controversy surrounding Brennan’s nomination concerned mere disclosure: whether the executive branch would let Congress read the administration’s legal analysis governing the targeted assassination program. President Obama apparently heard the message, admitting in his State of the Union address that more transparency is required.

The result proved underwhelming. One congressional committee received a single legal memo among several, which did not even purport to delineate the boundaries of the assassination program, but rather explored the use of deadly authority against a single target among several hundred who have been killed, including at least four US citizens.

Mere disclosure of some OLC memos to some Senators is insufficient.

Meaningful congressional oversight requires full access to all the legal memos, as well as active investigation of the underlying facts. It is not enough to simply read executive legal analyses paying lip service to constitutional values routinely violated on the ground.

The congressional intelligence committees, after all, were founded after robust investigations revealed widespread abuses by intelligence agencies, including the CIA, spanning decades and the terms of several presidents. Factual investigation has revealed more recent abuses, as well.

Last year, the Senate Intelligence Committee concluded a thorough investigation of torture, which produced a report recognizing torture as an international human rights abuse that ultimately undermined US national security by producing false intelligence, eroding pro American sentiment abroad, and helping our enemies recruit foot soldiers.

Yet, reflecting its pattern of embracing secrecy while claiming transparency, the Obama administration has refused to declassify the report. It is only because neither the press nor the public know the facts that irresponsible Hollywood fiction proved so problematic and controversial.

Forgotten in commentary on Brennan’s confirmation were some troubling details suggesting that, on both torture and drone strikes, transparency remains inadequate.

First, Senators had to fight tooth & nail to secure even the most minimal disclosure from the White House. Second, other congressional committees also sought access to the OLC assassination memos, but were denied.

Finally, beyond disclosure of the OLC’s legal memos are important questions about how the standards in them are applied to real facts. The Obama administration and CIA still refuse to answer congressional questions beyond the memos—such as, “How much evidence does the President need to determine that a particular American can be lawfully killed?” These questions are crucial, but Brennan’s confirmation could ensure that Congress receives few answers.

How the facts suggest elastic powers

Brennan spoke to the committee of the “great care” taken to ensure that drone strikes kill only their intended targets. What little we know about them suggests otherwise.

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The Cyber Information and Sharing Act (CISPA) was first introduced last year by Representatives Mike Rogers (R-MI) and Dutch Ruppersberger (D-MD). It received widespread opposition, including a veto threat from President Obama, in addition to a petition with over 800,000 signatures, and a widespread online campaign dubbed “Stop Cyber Spying week.”

Support for the bill came mainly from big corporations such as Facebook, whose VP for Public Policy, Joel Kaplan, stated in a letter to the House Intelligence Committee and the bill’s sponsors:

Your legislation removes burdensome rules that currently can inhibit protection of the cyber ecosystem.

The rules that Facebook interprets as burdensome are some of the few civil liberties firewalls remaining between government surveillance and private companies. Under CISPA, these “burdensome rules” even include the company’s already weak terms of service. Concerns about the civil liberties implications ultimately led to the rejection of the bill.

It was clear after the bill’s defeat, however, that it would be back. CISPA was reintroduced in the House on February 13th, by the same sponsors as last year. Currently, there are letters of support from companies like AT&T and IBM, but opposition among civil liberties advocates remains strong.

In a press release, Rep. Rogers claims that the bill is needed because:

This is clearly not a theoretical threat – the recent spike in advanced cyber attacks against the banks and newspapers makes that crystal clear.  American businesses are under siege. We need to provide American companies the information they need to better protect their networks from these dangerous cyber threats.

The bills’ sponsors argue that CISPA contains strong civil liberties and privacy protections while streamlining response to the threat of “cybercrime,” but it is this very streamlining that leads to civil liberties concerns. The bill would create an unprecedented information sharing regime between private corporations and government agencies, such as the Department of Homeland Security or National Security Agency, all under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence.

Specifically, the bill allows “elements of the intelligence community to share cyber threat information with private-sector entities and to encourage the sharing of such intelligence.” Private entities can be “certified” and receive privacy clearance to allow them to receive such information. They can also share that information with other certified entities. One particularly concerning facet of the bill is that it:

allows companies to choose which government agency to share the information with, including the National Security Agency or other element of the Department of Defense.

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In Attorney General Eric Holder’s recent contentious appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee, he hinted that President Obama would soon make a speech on the topic of drone usage for targeted killing. Holder alluded to President Obama’s promise for more openness on the issue in his State of the Union address:

“We have talked about a need for greater transparency in what we share, what we talk about,” said Holder, who added that with the release of more information, “there would be a greater degree of comfort that this government does these things reluctantly but also in conformity with international law, with domestic law and with our values.”

Transparency

The executive’s track record on this has been dismal. The administration first denied the existence of any sort of drone or targeted killing program, continued to use the denial as a shield against liability for its killings in court, while beginning to announce its reasoning informally in speeches by various executive officials.

Any actual documentation of the administration’s logic for assassinating  both citizens and non-citizens was unseen until a “white paper“ summarizing a portion of the goverment’s logic was leaked to the press.

Finally, the administration has begun to show some of the actual (still classified legal) memos outlining the criteria for extra judicial killing to selected members of congress.  However, the public still doesn’t know under what circumstances the President and his lawyers think would justify their murder from the sky.

Transparency would be a good first step. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) staked out a courageous position on in his recent filibuster, finally forcing Eric Holder to declare:

Does the President have the authority to use a weaponized drone to kill an American not engaged in combat on American soil?” The answer to that question is no.

However, this representation (which begs the question: how does Holder define combat?), disclosure of all of the legal memos around drones, and a clear speech from President Obama explaining his necessity for keeping a “kill list” (or “disposition matrix,” if you prefer the administration’s sanitized euphemism) are only the beginning.

Accountability

Ultimately, the people of the United States and their all too often cowed representatives in Washington need to demand a stop to murder, killing and assassination by drones in contravention of the Constitution, international law and human rights law. The broad claims staked out in the leaked white paper make clear that the administration is currently operating under a rubric that violates all three.

While some constitutional issues are esoteric, the protections of due process under the Fifth Amendment are not.  The government does not have the right to deprive you of your life, after review of your perceived sins by government officials on “Terror Tuesdays.”

Some in Congress and the punditocracy have suggested that the due process problem be solved by so called “drone courts” where the government would secretly present the evidence against you to a judge who would then sign a death warrant. While paying some lip service to the idea that an independent judiciary can constrain executive power, a secret court authorizing murder is not a check or balance in any meaningful way.

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In just two months, in April, 2013, Yale University will officially open its doors to the United States Special Forces as the University debuts its first ever training center for military interrogators.  Yale and the U.S. Department of Defense see New Haven’s large immigrant community as a perfect test population for the lie detection and interrogation techniques they will be developing at the center.

In 2006, the New York Times called New Haven, Connecticut one of the poorest cities in the United States, where almost 25% of the population lives below the poverty line and the per capita income hovered at $16,393 in 2011.  The large majority of New Haven’s population is non-white; non-Hispanic whites made up 31.8% of the city’s population in 2010.  New Haven’s stark racial and economic divide is further emphasized by the presence of Yale University, a symbol of economic and racial privilege, which is now using these privileges to coerce its immigrant population into the role of guinea pig in the new center for “warrior academics.”

Charles Morgan III, a professor of psychiatry at Yale and head of the University’s new interrogation training program, euphemistically referred to “warrior academics” as fostering “people skills.”  He will specifically require the center’s test subjects to be brown-skinned immigrants, specifically naming “Moroccans, Colombians, Nepalese, Ecuadorians and others” as possible participants.  These individuals will be financially compensated for their participation, but far from being benevolent, this compensation stands as proof that the Military Industrial Complex (now inextricably linked with academic institutions) preys upon the economic vulnerability of marginalized populations to advance its own agenda.

The use of brown faces (which Professor Morgan hopes signifies “someone [soldiers] can’t necessarily identify with”) will only continue to disadvantage global and local non-white populations.  Here on  U.S. soil, New Haven’s non-white populations will be postured as unfamiliar racial “others.”  Abroad, it is likely that American soldiers will enter interrogation settings being predisposed to mistrust brown faces and with the supposition that all brown people “must belong to the same ‘category’ of liar” (which the center naturally assumes is a different category than white liars) as Guest Columnists for the Yale Daily News Nathalie Batraville and Alex Law argue.

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Don’t want to wear your heart on your sleeve? Stealth Wear may be for you. Stealth Wear is a collection of clothing designed by conceptual artist, Adam Harvey. The collection protects its wearer from a variety of surveillance mediums, which include thermal imaging, x-rays, and wiretapping. It consists of four pieces of clothing that will be displayed by Primitive London and Tank Magazine in London, England starting this Thursday, January 17.

Each piece of clothing has it’s own purpose, including an “anti-drone hoodie and scarf hide you from thermal imaging, the XX-shirt protects your heart from x-ray radiation, and an accessory called Off Pocket can instantly black out your phone signal.”

Dissenting against surveillance technologies has been a longtime passion for Harvey. He created makeup and hair styling products that would interfere or deflect facial recognition systems for his New York University masters’ thesis. This creation is called CV Dazzle. CV stands for computer vision and Dazzle was a type of camouflage used during World War I. All of Harvey’s creations blend the facets of an individual’s person and transforms them into barrier of dissent against unwanted surveillance.

Harvey is not the only artist fighting against domestic surveillance. Essam Attia is a New York artist that was arrested for designing a series of posters against the use of drones. Harvey’s new clothing line is a direct response to the dramatic use of drones for domestic surveillance. Joanne McNeil interviewed Harvey for Rhizome magazine, where he discussed his thoughts on privacy. Harvey explained, “building privacy into modern garments can make them feel more comfortable and, like armor, more protected. Data and privacy are increasingly valuable personal assets and it doesn’t make sense to not protect them.”

This balance of design and privacy truly incorporates the concerns of the connected, online individual with the sensibility and ascetic of the modern world. These clothes are more than just cover up for the new surveillance world. These clothes are a statement to those who partake in use of surveillance. And the message is clear: We will not consent to our rights being violated against our will and without our knowing.