New Senate Report: Counterterrorism "Fusion Centers" Invade Innocent Americans’ Privacy and Don’t Stop Terrorism

The Department of Homeland Security’s 70 counterterrrorism "fusion centers" produce "predominantly useless information," "a bunch of crap," while "running afoul of departmental guidelines meant to guard against civil liberties" and are "possibly in violation of the Privacy Act."

These may sound like the words of EFF, but in fact, these conclusions come from a new report issued by a US Senate committee. At the cost of up to $1.4 billion, these fusion centers are supposed to facilitate local law enforcement sharing of valuable counterterrorism information to DHS, but according to the report, they do almost everything but.

DHS described its fusion centers as "one of the centerpieces of [its] counterterrorism strategy" and its database was supposed to be a central repository of known or "appropriately suspected" terrorists. In theory, local law enforcement officers, in conjunction with DHS officials, conduct surveillance and write up a report—known as a Homeland Intelligence Report (HIR)—for DHS to review. If credible, DHS would then spread the information to the larger intelligence community.

Yet, the Senate report found the fusion centers failed uncover a single terrorist threat. Instead, like so many post-9/11 surveillance laws passed under the vague guise of “national security,” the system was overwhelmingly used for ordinary criminal investigations, while at the same time facilitating an egregious amount of violations of innocent Americans’ rights.

An entire section of the Senate report is dedicated to Privacy Act violations and the collection of information completely unrelated to any criminal or terrorist activity in the HIRs. In one instance, a DHS intelligence officer filed a draft report about a US citizen who appeared at a Muslim organization to deliver a day-long motivational talk and a lecture on positive parenting. In another, one intelligence officer decided to report on two men who were fishing at the US-Mexican border. A reviewer commented, “I…think that this should never have been nominated for production, nor passed through three reviews.” A report was even initiated on a motorcycle group for passing out leaflets informing members of their legal rights. A reviewer commented, "The advice given to the groups’ members is protected by the First Amendment."

Over and over again the Senate report quotes reviewers chastising DHS officials for recording constitutionally protected activities and for publishing such reports. One reviewer wrote, “The number of things that scare me about this report are almost too many to write into this [review] form." In some cases, DHS retained cancelled draft reports that may have contained information in violation of the Privacy Act for a year or more after the date of the reports' cancellation. Worse, the intelligence officials responsible "faced no apparent sanction for their transgressions."

While it’s commendable the Senate exposing these civil liberties violations, the problems detailed in the report are not new. Since the government started its various information sharing programs after 9/11, media organizations have extensively documented how, when they’re not being outright abused by local law enforcement, are overwhelmingly used for ordinary investigations that had nothing to do with terrorism. EFF has long warned that completely innocent Americans’ privacy has become collateral damage in the government’s thirst to collect more and more digital information on its own citizens.

Even DHS’ own internal audits of the fusion centers showed they didn't work, according to the Senate report. The privacy disaster is also a boondoggle for taxpayers: DHS can’t account for much of the money it spent on the program, estimating they spent between $289 million and $1.4 billion—a discrepancy of more than $900 million dollars.

Despite these facts, Attorney General Eric Holder issued new guidelines in March for the National Counter Terrorism Center (NCTC) that  dramatically expanded the NCTC’s information sharing powers. The NCTC can now mirror entire federal databases containing personal information and hold onto the information for ten times longer than they could before—even if the person is not suspected of any involvement in terrorism. Journalist Marcy Wheeler summed up the new guidelines at the time, saying, “So…the data the government keeps to track our travel, our taxes, our benefits, our identity? It just got transformed from bureaucratic data into national security intelligence.”

Now that the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations has issued this unusually harsh report lambasting the same type of information sharing centers, Eric Holder should also rescind his new data retention guidelines for NCTC counterterrorism centers until new safeguards are put in place. EFF also joins the ACLU’s call for full Congressional hearings on the DHS fusion centers. In fact, the government should issue a moratorium on all fusion centers until this problem is fixed. Local governments can also prevent their law enforcement agencies from participating.

While “information sharing” centers were sold to the American people as providing "a vital role in keeping communities safe all across America," it’s clear all they’ve done is play a vital role in violating American's civil liberties.

Source: EFF

Copyright Scofflaws Beware: ISPs to Begin Monitoring Illicit File Sharing

The nation’s major internet service providers by year’s end will institute a so-called six-strikes plan, the “Copyright Alert System” initiative backed by the Obama administration and pushed by Hollywood and the major record labels to disrupt and possibly terminate internet access for online copyright scofflaws.

The plan, now four years in the making, includes participation by AT&T, Cablevision Systems, Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Verizon. After four offenses, the historic plan calls for these residential internet providers to initiate so-called “mitigation measures” (.pdf) that might include reducing internet speeds and redirecting a subscriber’s service to an “educational” landing page about infringement.

The internet companies may eliminate service altogether for repeat file-sharing offenders, although the plan does not directly call for such drastic action.

“We are farily confident the program will launch by year’s end,” said Jill Lesser, the executive director of the Center for Copyright Information, the name of the group behind the program.

The program, which monitors peer-to-peer file-sharing services, was to have been deployed sooner, according to Gigi Sohn, president of digital rights group Public Knowledge, and an adviser to the center.

Sohn noted that the internet was aflame in January with federal anti-piracy proposals — the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act — both of which went down in flames amid a huge backlash and internet blackout.

“SOPA and PIPA definitely had an impact. There was some concern, if they moved ahead to quickly, public opinion would be so raw, this would be caught in the whirlwind of bad PR,” she said in a telephone interview.

Rights holders remain free to sue internet subscribers who are detected of engaging in infringing activities.

The Copyright Act allows damages of up to $150,000 per infringement of a work registered with the Copyright Office. Peer-to-peer file sharing of copyrighted works is the infringement being targeted. It’s easily detectable, as IP addresses of internet customers usually reveal themselves during the transfer of files. Cyberlockers, e-mail attachments, shared Dropbox folders and other ways to infringe are not included in the crackdown.

To be sure, the deal is not as Draconian as it could have been.

The agreement, heavily lobbied for by the Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America, does not require internet service providers to filter copyrighted material transiting their networks. U.S. internet service providers and the content industry have openly embraced that kind filtering — though it’s not clear that any ISP actually practices. The Federal Communications Commission, in crafting its net neutrality rules, has all but invited the ISPs to practice it.

Here’s how the program works:

On the first offense, internet subscribers will receive an e-mail “alert” from their ISP saying the account “may have been” misused for online content theft. On the second offense, the alert might contain an “educational message” about the legalities of online file sharing.

On the third and fourth infractions, the subscriber will likely receive a pop-up notice “asking the subscriber to acknowledge receipt of the alert.”

After four alerts, according to the program, “mitigation measures” may commence. They include “temporary reductions of internet speeds, redirection to a landing page until the subscriber contacts the ISP to discuss the matter or reviews and responds to some educational information about copyright, or other measures (as specified in published policies) that the ISP may deem necessary to help resolve the matter.”

Sohn said copyright scofflaws are not going to be dinged each time internet-snoop MarkMonitor detects infringement on peer-to-peer file-sharing networks.

“Each strike is not one infringement. Each strike is dozens or scores or hundreds of infringements,” Sohn said in a telephone interview.

Lesser explained that, when the first infringement is detected, “you will get an alert.”

But after that, strikes will only be counted every seven days. “There’s a grace period between each alert,” Lesser said.

“The goal was to come up with a program that was educational in nature, not with the intention of being punitive,” she said.

A spokeswoman for MarkMonitor said the San Francisco company has a policy of not publicly discussing its clients.

None of the ISPs involved responded for comment. The RIAA did not respond for comment.

Chris Dodd, chairman of the MPAA, said in an interview last week that that the whole purpose of the program was “educational.” Members of the MPAA include Walt Disney Studios, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures, Twentieth Century Fox, Universal City Studios and Warner Bros.

The RIAA, which includes Universal Music Group Recordings, Warner Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment and EMI Music North America, kicked off marathon negotiations for the plan in December 2008, when it abruptly stopped a litigation campaign that included around 30,000 lawsuits targeting individual file sharers.

Key leverage in the negotiations included the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which demands that ISPs have a termination policy in place for repeat infringers. Andrew Cuomo brought the parties together when he was New York’s attorney general.

Top-ranking Obama administration officials, including the U.S. copyright czar Gloria Espinel, played an active role in secret negotiations between Hollywood, the recording industry and ISPs to disrupt internet access for users suspected of violating copyright law, according to internal White House e-mails.

The e-mails, obtained via the Freedom of Information Act, show the administration’s cozy relationship with Hollywood and the music industry’s lobbying arms and its early support for the copyright-violation crackdown system publicly announced in July, 2011.

Under the six-strikes plan, internet subscribers may challenge their dings for a $35 filing fee paid to an arbitration service. They also get a free pass, one time, if they claim the infringement was based on having an open, unencrypted Wi-Fi network.

France has a much more stringent plan. Last month, the nation levied its first fine, $193, under its three-strikes plan.

11-Year-Old Boy Makes Most Important Woolly Mammoth Discovery Of The Century

Yevgeny Salinder found an extraordinarily well-preserved fossil in northern Russia (complete with its 1.5-meter-long penis intact!).

It has become awfully easy to discover woolly mammoth remains in northern Russia as the permafrost thaws--so easy a child could do it. (Thanks, climate change!) Still, we have to give some credit to the 11-year-old who stumbled upon an exquisitely preserved adult mammoth recently.

Yegevny Salinder was walking his dogs alongside the Yenisei river bank, when he smelled the mammoth's heels. That's right, smelled 'em. The "unpleasant" odor led him to a 30,000-year-old giant fossil that had a skeleton, ears, a tusk, some facial features and even a 1.5-meter long penis intact.

Mammoth experts from Moscow's Zoology Institute dug up the mammoth, which is now on his way to Moscow for further study. Alexei Tikhonov, director of the Institute's Zoological Museum, suggests that geneticists might try to clone him.

Monsanto found guilty of chemical poisoning in landmark case

A French farmer who can no longer perform his routine farming duties because of permanent pesticide injuries has had his day in court, literally, and the perpetrator of his injuries found guilty of chemical poisoning. The French court in Lyon ruled that Monsanto's Lasso weedkiller formula, which contains the active ingredient alachlor, caused Paul Francois to develop lifelong neurological damage that manifests as persistent memory loss, headaches, and stuttering during speech.

Reports indicate that the 47-year-old farmer sued Monsanto back in 2004 after inhaling the Lasso product while cleaning his sprayer tank equipment. Not long after, Francois began experiencing lasting symptoms that prevented him from working, which he says were directly linked to exposure to the chemical. Since Lasso's packaging did not bear adequate warnings about the dangers of exposure, Francois alleged at the time that Monsanto was essentially negligent in providing adequate protection for its customers.

To the surprise of many, the French court agreed with the claims and evidence presented before it, declaring earlier this year that "Monsanto is responsible for Paul Francois' suffering after he inhaled the Lasso product ... and must entirely compensate him." The court is said to be seeking expert opinion on how to gauge Francois' losses in order to determine precisely how much Monsanto will be required to compensate him in the case.

"It is a historic decision in so far as it is the first time that a (pesticide) maker is found guilty of such a poisoning," said Francois Lafforgue, Paul Francois' lawyer, to Reuters earlier in the year.

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), exposure to alachlor can cause damage to the liver, kidneys, spleen, and eyes, and may lead to the development of anemia and even cancer. The EPA apparently views alachlor as so dangerous, in fact, that the agency has set the maximum contaminant level goals (MCLG) for alachlor to zero in order to "prevent potential health problems." (http://water.epa.gov/drink/contaminants/basicinformation/alachlor.cfm)

In 2007, France officially banned Lasso from use in the country in accordance with a European Union (EU) directive enacted in 2006 prohibiting the chemical from further use on crops in any member countries. But despite all the evidence proving that alachlor can disrupt hormonal balance, induce reproductive or developmental problems, and cause cancer, the chemical is still being used on conventional crops throughout the U.S. to this very day. (http://www.pesticideinfo.org/Detail_ChemReg.jsp?Rec_Id=PC35160)

"I am alive today, but part of the farming population is going to be sacrificed and is going to die because of (alachlor)," added Francois to Reuters.

Source: Natural News