harikari.com

School districts across the country are supplying students with laptops for students to use both at school and home.

Unfortunately, one school district has decided to use the laptops as a means of invading the privacy of the students and their families.  It is alleged that the Lower Merion School District in Pennsylvania , used the embedded camera as a way to monitor the behavior and activities of students.

According to TechNewsWorld:

What sparked the discovery was Assistant Principal Lindy Matsko’s assertion in early November that Harriton High School student Blake Robbins had been “engaging in improper behavior in his home,” the filing explains. Matsko allegedly used as evidence of that behavior a photograph taken by the webcam in Robbins’ computer.

Robbins’ father then confirmed with the school that the district had the ability to remotely activate the webcams in the laptops it gives its students. Documentation accompanying the laptops, the family charged, made no reference to that ability.

“As the laptops at issue were routinely used by students and family members while at home, it is believed and therefore averred that many of the images captured and intercepted may consist of images of minors and their parents or friends in compromising or embarrassing positions, including, but not limited to, in various stages of dress or undress,” the filing states.

The functionality to monitor computer use as discussed in this article is not unusual, and is well known to those who use their employer’s computers.  What makes unusual is the use of the webcam to capture images of the user, without prior notice,  whether or not the user is at the keyboard.

As I write this I keep looking at my own webcam staring at me.  I never use it, but can’t help but think what it could capture if someone had control over it…

As of late, most of the news media has been reporting on our current financial crisis, and it is very important; however, I think it is also important to to point out that as recessions and depressions come and go, and as corporate greedheads come and go, (most not to where I would like to see them go), and as income taxes go up and down, we usually manage to hold on to our basic rights as citizens in this country of ours that is governed not by a king or despot, but by “We the People.”

I said usually…

On Monday our government released what were known as the Bush Torture Memos, but the scope of the nine memos released on Monday is much broader than torture.  Here’s a clip from the New York Times article about the memos.  (my emphasis added).

The secret legal opinions issued by Bush administration lawyers after the Sept. 11 attacks included assertions that the president could use the nation’s military within the United States to combat terrorism suspects and to conduct raids without obtaining search warrants.

That opinion was among nine that were disclosed publicly for the first time Monday by the Justice Department, in what the Obama administration portrayed as a step toward greater transparency.

The opinions reflected a broad interpretation of presidential authority, asserting as well that the president could unilaterally abrogate foreign treaties, ignore any guidance from Congress in dealing with detainees suspected of terrorism, and conduct a program of domestic eavesdropping without warrants.

…

The Oct. 23 memorandum also said that “First Amendment speech and press rights may also be subordinated to the overriding need to wage war successfully.” It added that “the current campaign against terrorism may require even broader exercises of federal power domestically.”

Mr. Yoo and Mr. Delahunty said that in addition, the Posse Comitatus Act, which generally bars the military from domestic law enforcement operations, would pose no obstacle to the use of troops in a domestic fight against terrorism suspects. They reasoned that the troops would be acting in a national security function, not as law enforcers.

In another of the opinions, Mr. Yoo argued in a memorandum dated Sept. 25, 2001, that judicial precedents approving deadly force in self-defense could be extended to allow for eavesdropping without warrants.   [WTF?]

Still another memo, issued in March 2002, suggested that Congress lacked any power to limit a president’s authority to transfer detainees to other countries, a practice known as rendition that was widely used by Mr. Bush.

We here at harikari have been ranting about Bush’s heinous abuse of power since we went on line in 2005.  These memos prove that we and everyone else who made our views known to anyone who would listen were right when we said that George W. Bush was not abiding by The Constitution he swore not once, but twice, to uphold as President of the United States.  These memos prove that he and the political hacks he hired to staff his Justice Department were stretching legal opinion farther than any reasonably educated U.S. Citizen would ever dare.  These memos essentially argue that the president is above the law and that he answers to no one.  Simply put, that he is a king.

This is the issue that we should be discussing.

Obama knew of these memos before his his speech to a joint session of congress, and that is why he felt it was necessary to say:

To overcome extremism, we must also be vigilant in upholding the values our troops defend, because there is no force in the world more powerful than the example of America.  And that is why I have ordered the closing of the detention center at Guantanamo Bay and will seek swift and certain justice for captured terrorists… because living our values doesn’t make us weaker.  It makes us safer, and it makes us stronger.

And that is why I can stand here tonight and say without exception or equivocation that the United States of America does not torture.  We can make that commitment here tonight.

And both sides of the aisle stood up and gave him one of their loudest and longest rounds of applause.

That applause was an affirmation that no matter what the outcome in Iraq, George W. Bush will go down in history as one of the worst presidents ever because he willingly undermined our Constitution and took away our rights.  He was NOT working FOR the people, he was working AGAINST the people.

He was, in effect, a tyrant.

Have you ever had discussions with people who support the Bush warrantless wiretapping program and heard the “if you haven’t done anything wrong you have nothing to worry about” argument?  Well you might want to share this article with those people, because it proves that their trust in government not abusing its power is delusory at best.

From today’s Los Angeles Times:

U.S. intelligence analysts eavesdropped on personal calls between Americans overseas and their families back home and monitored the communications of workers with the Red Cross and other humanitarian organizations, according to two military linguists involved in U.S. surveillance programs.

…
 
Describing the allegations as “extremely disturbing,” Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said the panel had launched an inquiry and requested records from the Bush administration.
 
The linguists said that recordings of intimate conversations between citizens and their loved ones were sometimes passed around, out of prurient interest, among analysts at an electronic surveillance facility at Ft. Gordon, Ga.
 
They also said they were encouraged to continue monitoring calls of aid workers and other personnel stationed in the Middle East even when it was clear the callers had no ties to terrorists or posed no threat to U.S. interests.

“There were people who called the States to talk to their families,” said Adrienne Kinne, 31, a former Arab linguist in the Army Reserve who worked at a National Security Agency facility at Ft. Gordon from 2001 to 2003.

…
 
“I observed people writing down, word for word, very embarrassing conversations,” Faulk told The Times. “People would say, ‘Hey, check this out, you’re not going to believe what I heard.’”

You probably argued that if we give government unchecked power to invade our privacy, they will abuse it.  You were right.

About two weeks ago the Senate passed their version of the RESTORE Act – the bill that updates FISA for new types of communications that have been developed since FISA was enacted in 1978.  The House version of the bill does not include a grant of immunity to all the telecommunications companies that participated in the government’s spying program.  House Democrats argue that there is no reason to grant immunity because they’ve always had immunity so long as they obeyed the law.  The House version of the RESTORE Act includes protection for telecommunications companies that lawfully participate in the surveillance program in the future.  (Scroll down for my reaction to the eighteen Spineless Motherf@#*ing Democrats that voted for the Senate version of the bill that includes the immunity clause that Bush says absolutely must be included in the final bill.)

Bush has been bashing the House Democrats since Congress reconvened last week.  He has been making false claims about how intelligence agencies haven’t been able to do their jobs since the Protect America Act expired, and about how, without immunity, there would be frivolous lawsuits against telecoms that would lead to their financial ruin.

First off, the intelligence agencies have not been affected in any significant way, because the laws that are in place now allow them to continue their surveillance programs.  The New York Times reported yesterday:

One lawyer in the telecommunications industry, who spoke on condition of anonymity because wiretapping operations are classified, said he had seen little practical effect on the industry’s surveillance operations since the law expired. Most operations appear to have continued unabated, the lawyer said.

Secondly, if the telecoms did not break any laws as Bush claims, then why does he want to grant them immunity?  Furthermore, any lawsuits that do arise would be dismissed by the courts if they were found to be groundless.

Some of the pending lawsuits probably do have merit, and that’s what worries Bush.  A successful lawsuit against a telecom would not only expose the illegal actions of the telecommunications company, it would also expose the lawlessness of the Bush Administration.  So by immunizing the telecoms Bush would in effect be immunizing himself, and that’s what he’s really wants – to save his own ass.

We already know he lied to us about the warrantless spying operation up until December 2005 when he was forced to acknowledge it after the New York Times story was published.  He should have been impeached right then and there, but the anti-American, freedom-hating Republicans in the Senate would never agree to removing their man from the White House.  (And apparently some craven Democrats too.)

So are there grounds for successful lawsuits against any of the telecoms?  Probably.  Here’s an excerpt from a nice rant that Keith Olbermann delivered a couple weeks ago describing what happened at AT&T:

… Did you see Mark Klein on this newscast last November?

Mark Klein was the AT&T whistleblower who explained in the placid, dull terms of your local neighborhood IT desk how he personally attached all AT&T circuits, everything, carrying every one of your phone calls, every one of your e-mails, every bit of your Web browsing into a secure room, room No. 641-A at the Folsom Street facility in San Francisco, where it was all copied so the government could look at it.

If we are to believe Bush, the government went to the FISA court and requested permission to tap into communication lines of a suspected terrorists.  AT&T responded by turning over everything they had on everyone using their service.  That’s kind of like the police getting a warrant to search one office in a ninety-story office building and having the security firm for the building giving the police the keys to every office in the building.  Maybe the police would only search the one office they had obtained the warrant for, and maybe they wouldn’t.  Either way, what the security firm did was wrong.

Bush says: 

At issue is a dispute over whether telecommunications companies should be subjected to class-action lawsuits because they are believed to have helped defend America after the attacks of 9/11.

“…believed to have helped defend America?”  Excuse me?  That’s not what the lawsuits are about.  Nobody has any issue with the telecoms legally complying with government warrants that would help find terrorists.  The issue is how these companies violated the privacy of their customers simply because the government asked them to do so.

Bush then played his Fear Card: 

Without the cooperation of the private sector, we cannot protect our country from terrorist attack.

There is a key word missing in that statement:  “legal” and it belongs right before “cooperation.”

There’s a name for the merger of business and state interests in a consolidated effort to deny citizens their privacy and freedoms – it’s called fascism.

The House Democrats are heroically standing up to fascism by not giving in to Bush’s demands.  They should be applauded.

What can you do?  Write your House Reprenstative and urge him or her to not back down on the issue of immunity for telecoms.

And, if you have not signed this petition, do so now.

Former Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey submitted his written responses to questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee today.  Here’s what he had to say about events leading up to the Alberto Gonzales’s late-night visit to Ashcroft’s hospital bed in an effort to get him to renew the warrantless NSA wiretap program:

Vice President Cheney told Justice Department officials that he disagreed with their objections to a secret surveillance program during a high-level White House meeting in March 2004, a former senior Justice official told senators yesterday.

The meeting came one day before White House officials tried to get approval for the same program from then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, who lay recovering from surgery in a hospital…

Comey said that Cheney’s office later blocked the promotion of a senior Justice Department lawyer, Patrick Philbin, because of his role in raising concerns about the surveillance.

The disclosures also provide further details about the role played by then-White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales. He visited Ashcroft in his hospital room and wrote an internal memorandum on the surveillance program shortly afterward…

It is unclear who directed the two Bush aides to make the visit.

Democrats said yesterday that the new details from Comey raise further questions about the role of Cheney and other White House officials in the episode.

“Mr. Comey has confirmed what we suspected for a while — that White House hands guided Justice Department business,” said Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.). “The vice president’s fingerprints are all over the effort to strong-arm Justice on the NSA program, and the obvious next question is: Exactly what role did the president play?”

A White House spokesman declined to comment.

Comey also named eight Justice Department officials who were prepared to quit if the White House had not backed down, including FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III, current U.S. Attorney Chuck Rosenberg of Alexandria and Jack Goldsmith, who headed the Office of Legal Counsel and led an internal legal review of the surveillance program.

The only thing that is “unclear” here is whether or not Cheney was acting on Bush’s orders or if he was pushing his own agenda.  Cheney was definitely involved in the decision to renew the illegal spying program even after many members of the Justice Department raised questions about its constitutioinality and recommended that it be discontinued.
 
But that didn’t stop Cheney from attempting to undermine the Justice Department by trying to get an ailing, drugged John Ashcroft to sign off on its renewal. 
 
Congress should subpoena Cheney immediately and require him to tell them about the NSA program and why he thought it necessary to ignore the advice he was getting from lawyers in the Justice Department and push through what he was being told was an illegal program.
 
I’ve always said that THIS is the issue that will unravel the Bush Administration, because they were clearly in violation of existing laws and the U.S. Constitution, and they’ve even admitted to it.
 
If there is an investigation and for some crazy reason the TRUTH is revealed, Bush and Cheney will be impeached for their total disregard of laws they swore on The Bible to uphold when they took office.

What in the world is going on in this administration?

Last night, during my 1 hour commute which takes me all of 12 miles, I was listening to NPR and heard the very compelling testimony of former Deputy Attorney General James Comey and was surprised by the lengths that the White House would go to get a ’signature’ to approve their domestic spying program.

It really is best if you listen to the NPR story, but here is the main part:

“I thought I had just witnessed an effort to take advantage of a very sick man, who did not have the powers of the attorney general because they had been transferred to me,” Comey testified.

The sick man was John Ashcroft, who was in the hospital with acute pancreatitis. Hours before his hospitalization, Ashcroft and Comey had decided not to reauthorize the president’s secret, controversial, domestic-surveillance program.

The night after the Justice Department told the White House, Comey received a phone call. The president’s chief of staff, Andy Card, and then-White House counsel Alberto Gonzales were on their way to Ashcroft’s hospital room.

“I told my security detail that I needed to get to George Washington Hospital immediately,” Comey testified. “They turned on the emergency equipment and drove very quickly to the hospital. I got out of the car and literally ran up the stairs.”

The room was dark. Mrs. Ashcroft was standing by the bed. Comey said that Ashcroft, in his sixth day in intensive care, was not in good shape. He was unfocused, disoriented.

“And it was only a matter of minutes that the door opened and in walked Mr. Gonzales, carrying an envelope, and Mr. Card,” Comey said. “They came over and stood by the bed, greeted the attorney general very briefly, and then Mr. Gonzales began to discuss why they were there — to seek his approval for a matter.”

Then, Ashcroft did something that stunned Comey. He lifted his head off the pillow and explained in strong, detailed terms why he would not sign the paper.

“And as he laid back down, he said, ‘But that doesn’t matter because I’m not the attorney general. There is the attorney general.’ And he pointed to me,” Comey testified. “I was just to his left. The two men did not acknowledge me. They turned and walked from the room.”

That was not the end of it. Before Comey left the hospital, he received an urgent call from White House Chief of Staff Andy Card.

“Mr. Card was very upset and demanded that I come to the White House immediately,” Come said. “I responded that after the conduct I had just witnessed, I would not meet with him without a witness present. He replied, ‘What conduct? We were just there to wish him well.’”

Wow.  The White House has some serious cajones.  Hopefully this is just the start of many, many years of hearings that will investigate the actions of this administration.

According to a new report titled Devices That Tell On You: The Nike+iPod Sport Kit and published by a group of University of Washington graduate students, the new Nike+iPod Sport Kit could lead to all sorts of secret surveillance.

Scott Saponas the lead author on the report believes that anyone could monitor someone’s activities by creating an inexpensive network of computers that would monitor the movement of the person with the Nike+iPod Sport Kit transmitter.

Apparently the Nike+iPod Sport Kit transmits up to 60 feet versus the miniscule 10 inch reach of more common RFIDs on many consumer goods.
From the Seattle P-I article:

Anyone passing by with a sensor in his or her shoe — or a sensor planted in, say, a pocket or backpack — could be tracked.

The researchers outlined a scenario in which “Marvin,” a troubled ex-boyfriend, places detectors at remote locations so he could know when “Alice,” who is carrying a sensor, enters or departs a particular place.

This story has been on the local Seattle news station and this morning on CNN. The news story even shows the students testing their theory on the UW campus. It looked scary with the students monitoring, via laptops, the subject’s movement on campus.
Ultimately, if you are thinking about using this technology to surveil or are concerned that someone would use this technology to surveil you, you should really take an honest look at your relationships and those around you. You have bigger issues than whether this is a threat or not.
In order for this to work, one must secretly plant the Nike+Ipod Sport Kit, have the technological know-how to create a small network of receivers, places to discreetly hide the receivers and protect them from the elements, and a way to retrieve the information. While the receivers could be linked up to an open WiFi connection, I doubt that this would be reliable, as I don’t know anyone who’s WiFi doesn’t regularly drop and need a reboot.

Is it possible? Yes.

Is it plausible? I don’t think so. But someone will probably try to use it.

Ultimately, I do not think this will replace traditional stalking anytime soon.

Back in July of 2005, Elizabeth Holtzman wrote a lengthy article for The Nation in which she made the case for how Bush and his top advisors could be prosecuted under the War Crimes Act. She ended the article with this:

Still, calls for the Attorney General to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate possible criminal liability under the war crimes and anti-torture laws can be issued, and members of Congress and the Senate can press for it.

In the final analysis, there is no sure way to compel the government to investigate itself or to hold high-level government officials accountable under applicable criminal statutes. But if the public does not seek to have it happen, it will not happen. Those in the public who care deeply about the rule of law and government accountability must keep this issue alive. Failure to investigate wrongdoing in high places and tolerating misconduct or criminality can have only the most corroding impact on our democracy and the rule of law that sustains us.

About a year later, The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in the Hamdan Case that the Bush Administration had broken rules outline in the Geneva Conventions and that they had broken other international treaties governing the treatment of detainees.

In August 2006, a Federal Judge ruled that Bush had broken wiretapping laws.

If Congress were to call for a special prosecutor to investigate the Bush Administration, they could be made to stand trial for breaking the laws, and the penalties for breaking the laws are substantial. Thom Hartmann wrote much more about this here and here.

So what did Congress do? Last week it passed the Military Commissions Act that gave Bush the power to detain and torture anyone he wants to. But that’s not all, the bill also includes this:

The legislation would narrow the range of offenses prohibited under the War Crimes Act. This would protect civilians (such as CIA interrogators and White House officials) from being prosecuted for committing acts that would have been considered war crimes under the old definition. The change is retroactive to 1997, which means any crimes committed since 1997 would be prosecuted under the new standard, not the old one.

That’s’ Bush’s first “Get out of Jail Free” card.

Look for the next one when Congress reconvenes after the mid-term elections to address the wiretapping problem. This could happen even if the Democrats manage to gain control of one of the houses of Congress. Remember, eleven Democrats voted for the torture bill. If they thought that was okay, they’ll probably think it’s okay to hand out another pass on the wiretapping violations.

If you are like me, you are outraged by the president’s blatant disregard for the rule of law and Congress’s lame response to his claim to unlimited executive power. But that’s not the only thing that’s making me crazy.

He lied about it at least three times, and hardly anybody gives a damn. What kind of hypocrisy is that? Many of the same Republicans that were in Congress that pushed for Clinton’s impeachment because he lied about his affair with Monica Lewinsky are still in office and they don’t seem to have any problem with their president lying about a matter of constitutional law that affects the rights of American citizens. How’s that for moral relativism?

It’s one thing for them to argue the interpretation of the law and wrongly insist that “it’s not clear that Bush actually broke any laws,” but what about his lying to the American people about what he was doing? Next time you get into an argument with a Bush supporter about warrantless eavesdropping, be sure to ask what he or she thinks about the lying.

All you need is a timeline and a few quotes right off the Whitehouse website to make your case-no genetic testing required.

The timeline begins with Bush signing the presidential order authorizing the NSA spying program in 2002. Here’s what he said after the program was well under way:

Stained Blue Dress Number One

Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires — a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we’re talking about chasing down terrorists, we’re talking about getting a court order before we do so. – 4/20/04

Stained Blue Dress Number Two

A couple of things that are very important for you to understand about the Patriot Act. First of all, any action that takes place by law enforcement requires a court order. In other words, the government can’t move on wiretaps or roving wiretaps without getting a court order. – 7/14/04

Stained Blue Dress Number Three

The Patriot Act was written with clear safeguards to ensure the law is applied fairly. The judicial branch has a strong oversight role. Law enforcement officers need a federal judge’s permission to wiretap a foreign terrorist’s phone, a federal judge’s permission to track his calls, or a federal judge’s permission to search his property.-06/09/05

Lies… Lies … Lies…

But that’s okay, because you know… the terrorists hate our freedom, and that excuses everything.

Percentage of Americans who said that Bush spying program was wrong: 50%

Percentage of American who said the president had definitely or probably broken the law: 49% Probably or definitely not: 47% (link)

Margin by which total votes for Democrats in the last three Senate elections exceeded those for Republicans: 2,900,000

Number of seats won by Democrats and Republicans, respectively: 46, 56 (link)

President Bush’s public approval rating as measured over the last two weeks: 34% to 38% (link)

President Clinton’s approval rating on the day of his impeachment: 73% (link)

Hmmm… vote for censure or not vote for censure? Hell, even if I was a Republican senator, I’d vote for censure just to put some measurable distance between myself and Bush.