The floggings will continue until moral improves

"honest to goodness the bars weren't open this morning
they must have been voting for a new president of something,
do you have a quarter?"
i said yes because i did
honest to goodness the tears have been falling all over the country's face
it was better before before they voted for whats his name
this is suppose to be the new world
it was better before before they voted for whats his name
this is suppose to be the new world

X, "The New World"

Ok. I understand that the world is a complex and broken place. Politics just more so than usual. So perhaps it is just my failure to understand the adult world of politics when I wonder just exactly why the Democratic Majority would shit itself with fear over the possibility of being called soft on terror for not giving our fearless leader yet another dip into out little jar of civil liberties.

Soft on terror? How the fuck are you supposed to be hard on terror?

The thing that sent me spinning off into a Very Angry Place was the following quote:

Yet Bush administration officials have already signaled that, in their view, the president retains his constitutional authority to do whatever it takes to protect the country, regardless of any action Congress takes. At a tense meeting last week with lawyers from a range of private groups active in the wiretapping issue, senior Justice Department officials refused to commit the administration to adhering to the limits laid out in the new legislation and left open the possibility that the president could once again use what they have said in other instances is his constitutional authority to act outside the regulations set by Congress.

Fucking Article Two super powers!! That dickhead needs to Jail. Grumble grumble grumble.

Anyway, let us get on the Orwellian ride and see what is being said about the changes:

Vanee Vines, a spokeswoman for the office of the director of national intelligence, said the concerns raised by Congressional officials about the wide scope of the new legislation were “speculative.” But she declined to discuss specific aspects of how the legislation would be enacted. The legislation gives the director of national intelligence, Mike McConnell, and Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales broad discretion in enacting the new procedures and approving the way surveillance is conducted.

Bush administration officials said the new legislation, which amends FISA, was critical to fill an “intelligence gap” that had left the United States vulnerable to attack.

The legislation “restores FISA to its original and appropriate focus — protecting the privacy of Americans,” said Brian Roehrkasse, Justice Department spokesman. “The act makes clear that we do not need a court order to target for foreign intelligence collection persons located outside the United States, but it also retains FISA’s fundamental requirement of court orders when the target is in the United States.”

Sweet. Now we have an intelligence gap. Not that it comes as a great surprise to any of us, this is a product of the Executive branch after all. Ahhhh, they mean that sort of Intelligence gap. I am not sure how dealing with the latest gap protects the privacy of Americans. No doubt in my mind that we can trust Mr. Gonzales to do the right thing. Perhaps if we look a little closer into the details a little sense might emerge?

Several legal experts said that by redefining the meaning of “electronic surveillance,” the new law undercuts the legal underpinnings several provisions in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, known as FISA, indirectly giving the government the power to use intelligence collection methods far beyond wiretapping that previously required court approval if conducted inside the United States. These new powers include the collection of business records, physical searches, and so-called “trap and trace” operations, analyzing specific calling patterns.

Now I am starting to feel a little better. The definition of “electronic surveillance” is what catches my eye for the time being - not that the other parts of it are not equally frightening. it is just that I understand this section a little better.

So our friends in DOJ, DOD or wherever get the idea that some person is an enemy of the state. This person is not currently residing in the geographic US there is no judicial hurdle to overcome for any sort of surveillance. I am a little confused if this applies only to non-citizens as targets not in the US. Something to look a little closer at, yes? This is where things get a little odd.

So now we have this person that you wish to monitor. This is not like the 1950's where you go plug wires into somebody's phone circuit and listen in to the lively show. We are talking about data monitoring here. Discussions using old circuit based phone tapping language are misleading and a distraction to the reader. In data monitoring, you monitor IP addresses, or some higher protocol attached to them. Since you can not strongly determine the nationality of a given data packet (in any sort of legal sense) you have to be able to look at all traffic. This really is quite important in that there are no nationalities for internet traffic.

I am a little confused at this point about the details here. It is all nice and fine to say that an individual needs to be monitored because they represent some sort of threat to national security. Perhaps it is not all that nice and fine, but for the time being I will not belabor this point. How is this person monitored? It is the tie between an individual and an internet address that things begin getting interesting. For a person located outside of the geographic US, there are jurisdictional issues for requesting an individuals data and phone monitoring. That is the point of this, yes? To speed things up? So we can not get at this persons traffic directly. What we need to do is try to tap data which traverses US owned carriers or servers within the US. This is where all the talk about this not being a big deal to tap infrastructure comes from:

“I don’t think it’s a fair reading,” the official said. “The intent here was pure: if you’re targeting someone outside the country, the fact that you’re doing the collection inside the country, that shouldn’t matter.”

With this in mind, you are now having to tap services. Say the user logs into a chat server like AOL or Yahoo. Any user on that service may now interact with the suspect. Again I am a little unclear on exactly what the threshold for interaction is. In any case from what I understand, you would need to sort this all out after you do the basic recording. On some chat services (like IRC), communications between individuals are reflected back to all users of the service. This means that privileged communications between citizens will be monitored even if they do not directly communicate with the suspect.

All this will be recorded and perhaps looked at.

It may seem like I am splitting hairs, but the scenario that I just spelled out is a clear violation of the law as I understand it that would just happen as a byproduct of this new law. I need to look at this in a little more detail and will return with more information.

I also want to look into what exactly is being requested - internet addresses or human names. The distinction is huge and requires a complete reworking of the language used to describe what is being done.

Later.