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Judge rips decision to order warrantless wiretaps in U.S.
BY MICHAEL J. SNIFFEN The Associated Press

   WASHINGTON — A federal judge who used to authorize wiretaps in terrorist and espionage cases criticized President Bush’s decision to order warrantless surveillance after the Sept. 11 attacks.
   Royce Lamberth, a district court judge in Washington, said Saturday it was proper for executive branch agencies to conduct such surveillance. “But what we have found in the history of our country is that you can’t trust the executive,” he said at the American Library Association’s convention.
   “We have to understand you can fight the war [on terrorism] and lose everything if you have no civil liberties left when you get through fighting the war,” said Lamberth, who was appointed by President Reagan.
   The judge disagreed with letting the executive branch alone decide which people to spy on in national security cases.
   “The executive has to fight and win the war at all costs. But judges understand the war has to be fought, but it can’t be at all costs,” Lamberth said. “We still have to preserve our civil liberties. Judges are the kinds of people you want to entrust that kind of judgment to more than the executive.”
   Lamberth was named chief of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in 1995 by then-Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist. Lamberth held that post until 2002.
   The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 established the court after domestic spying scandals in the 1970s.
   The court meets in secret to review applications from the FBI, the National Security Agency and other agencies for warrants to wiretap or search the homes of people in the United States in terrorist or espionage cases. Each application is signed by the attorney general. The court has approved more than 99 percent of them.
   Shortly after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Bush authorized the NSA to spy on calls between people in the United States and suspected terrorists abroad without FISA court warrants. The administration said it needed to act more quickly than the court could and that the president had inherent authority under the Constitution to order warrantless domestic spying.
   After the program became public and was challenged in court, Bush put it under FISA court supervision this year. The president still claims the power to order warrantless spying.
   White House spokesman Tony Fratto said Bush believes in the program, which is classified because its purpose is to stop terrorists’ planning.  

  
  
  

How much longer are we going to hear/read about these wiretaps? Right or wrong, they have been going on forever!  The only difference is that the opposing political machine is getting it out to the liberal media....which isn't too hard to do!

http://www.timesunion.com

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Our personal freedoms being infringed upon  
First published: Tuesday, July 3, 2007

Today I received a notice from E-ZPass that my service has been suspended for 60 days for exceeding the speed limit posted on "E-ZPass Only'' lanes. It was my second violation in a recent week.
  
I have recently returned from my winter address and did not know of this new Orwellian policy with its Big Brother eye keenly focused on my behavior, so I was stunned by the abruptness and finality of the strict new policy. It is so strict, in fact, that I was charged for driving 1 mph over the limit on one occasion and 2 mph over the limit on the other.

This is an example of the development of our society in ways that horrify this citizen, who grew up cherishing the freedoms he was taught to enjoy and defend. I feel violated to be so closely monitored by a service I pay for both directly and through taxation.

Each day, I read about more of the freedoms our government tries to wrestle away from us, and how we are being watched and monitored by cameras (satellite and ground), wiretaps, corporate and governmental data-sharing, and Internet surveillance. I fear the direction in which the people in power are taking us. I hope the youth of today see what we are losing, and soon come to our, and their, rescue, much like the brave ones who stood up in the late '50 and '60s to defend our freedoms.

EDWARD MICHAELS
Ballston Spa

Usually with EZPass, the speed limit posted is really not the allowed speed limit. You can usually go a bit faster than the sign says and you are ok. This guy must have been going quite a bit faster than he states to get a violation like that.

However, I do agree that 'Big Brother' is definately growing up and there are not many freedoms left. Everyone today has the perception that the government knows what's best for us. Heck...they don't even know what's best for them! And as far as the his statement referring to the 50's/60's generation....sure that generation was the one fighting 'against' the establishment. Today, they  are the same people, only grown up, that are creating this burocratic government. With more rules, regulations and laws in place than ever before in history. With that said....so much for the 50's/60's generation...they are now running the country!!!

I agree in total, Bumble.

http://www.dailygazette.com

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EDITORIALS
Security cams something we can live with

   One could argue that the day after the Fourth of July is not the right time to be discussing this, but on the other hand, maybe it’s precisely the right time. The subject is surveillance cameras, which Sen. Joseph Lieberman, chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security, has called for many more of to deal with the terrorist threat. Finding the proper balance between freedom and security has been an issue all throughout this country’s history, but never more so than now. It is, therefore, a most worthy topic for July Fourth week.
   “The Brits have got something smart going in England, and it was part of why I believe they were able to so quickly apprehend suspects in the terrorist acts over the weekend,” said Lieberman earlier in the week. He was referring to the cameras they have all over London and other major cities. Those cameras have helped authorities catch other terrorists in the past, including those who tried to bomb London buses and subway trains in 2005 after the successful attacks of a few months before.
   In a perfect world, we would all be free to go about our business without any surveillance cameras snapping our pictures. But this is far from a perfect world; in fact, it is a very dangerous one. Cameras are a way of getting people to behave — as with traffic cameras, bank security cameras, and those used to fight crime in Schenectady (District Attorney Robert Carney announced Monday that another 30 will be added to the 10 already in place in the city) — and to find them if they don’t.
   In England cameras aren’t just in a few places but everywhere, so a person who is out and about is photographed many more times during the day. But we have them here too; it’s really only a matter of degree.
   These devices are a minimal violation of privacy — after all, they’re taking pictures of you in public, not your home — and well worth the price for the added security they offer.

Quoted from Admin

http://www.dailygazette.com
Cameras are a way of getting people to behave — as with traffic cameras, bank security cameras,

I don't see security cameras in banks holding back those bank robbers. God, you read about bank robberies ALL the time. And even with the cameras and showing pictures of the bank robbers on TV...some still are never caught. I'm not opposed 'totally' with security cameras, but the 'bad guys' will just figure out another way to beat the system.

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“The Brits have got something smart going in England, and it was part of why I believe they were able to so quickly apprehend suspects in the terrorist acts over the weekend,”

So they were apprehended.....cant catch them BEFORE the carnage????

At least they caught the terrorists so that they didn't get away to do it all over again.

You are right when you say 'at least'.....

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  Woman Arrested for Not Watering Lawn
July 6th, 2007 @ 10:00pm
Sam Penrod Reporting

A widow and grandma spent the morning in jail, arrested for refusing to give a policeman her name when he tried writing her a ticket for failing to water her yard. The woman hasn't watered her lawn in more than a year, and the condition of her yard violates an Orem zoning ordinance.

Tonight, the woman says she is traumatized and shocked that she was hauled to jail, just because she says she can't afford to water her lawn.



Betty Perry says, "I never thought they would ever do anything like that to a person that is 70 years old. I've never bothered anybody, I've never hurt anybody."

She says the policeman who brought her home tonight was very courteous, even held open the door for her. But there were no gentlemen there when she was taken from her home this morning and booked into jail.

When Betty Perry heard a knock at her door and saw a police officer standing outside, she never imagined she would end up in jail. That's what happened, though, when the officer tried enforcing Orem's nuisance ordinance against neglected yards.



"I didn't want to tell him anything until I talked to a lawyer or my son. I wanted to see what he'd tell me to do. I've never had any experience before with the law, ever in my life," she said.

As the enforcement officer started writing her a ticket, she tried going back in her house. That's when the officer tried to handcuff her for refusing to give her name and resisting the ticket. She tripped on the steps, scraping up her nose and elbows, leaving blood on her door, her porch and her clothes. Perry was handcuffed, fingerprinted and put in a jail cell, where she sat for more than an hour.

"I laid down in there. I never seen the inside of a jail before. I didn't know how it looked, I was really scared," she says.

When police brass learned what happened, she was immediately released.

Orem police spokesman Lt. Doug Edwards said, "Every officer in his career has situations they find themselves getting into, at the end of it they scratch their head and say, ‘gosh, how did this happen?' Today, I think, was one of those days. Clearly there were some other options available."

After being arrested, Perry is now scared of the police. She says, "Don't ever say no when the police tell you do to something. You better do what they tell you no matter what, even if you don't have anybody to help you. You've got to do what they tell you or they will hurt you."

The officer was sent home for the day and placed on paid administrative leave. Police are not pressing any charges against Betty Perry for either neglecting her yard or resisting the ticket.


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widow and grandma spent the morning in jail, arrested for refusing to give a policeman her name when he tried writing her a ticket for failing to water her yard. The woman hasn't watered her lawn in more than a year, and the condition of her yard violates an Orem zoning ordinance.

I think that officer should come to Rotterdam and go to walmart and given them a citation..... :P

I know a girl who came here to live from Germany. She said that in Germany everyone is responsible for the 'government' land in front of their home. Including the street. (no street cleaners there) And she said that it would be an embarrassment to have the front of your house 'messy' and unkept. Perhaps we should start doing that here too.

http://www.timesunion.com

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The way I look at it is if you don't have anything to hide why worry about it. If you do it's just a matter of time and they can get a wire tap from a judge and get the information legally. The government isn't looking for anything but possible terrorist activity and I don't thionk they'er interested in my boring life.

You have a good point shadow...BUT....we are looking at society as it is today in 2007 with the leaders we have in place TODAY. But we don't know what or who the future will bring on society. This surveillance technology, which I know has been around for a long time, would be absolutely disaterous in the wrong hands! Cause ya know what....as boring as my life may be....I don't want anyone or any government entity watching or listening in on it! And that is 'my' constitutional right.

Yeah, imagine this, and this is a possible scenario on how things COULD play out.  Let's just say that I'm a Republican who is running for a seat this November on the County Legislature.  

Guess I better send any of my remarks via e-mail, considering the fact that someone would probably get their hands on my phone call to my mother and decide that there's something in it they can use in an upcoming election, like how I said "I remember the country we came from and wish we could be back there again."  I may be thinking about taking a vacation to "the mother land" (whereever that is), but the competition would say "See how much they care about the county?  They don't even want to be here."

If someone tries to use information against you that was obtained illegally they could be prosecuted for illegal wire tapping. I've been finger and palm printed, got a mug shot, and had my whole back ground investigated at least 3 times due to my job b4 I retired. Once was for KAPL clearance, once for clearance to work in maximum security prisons, and last was to get my pistol permit. The government already knows more about me than I do so what can I hide from them?

http://www.dailygazette.com

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Growing use of biometric scanners helps employers, angers workers
BY DAVID B. CARUSO The Associated Press

    NEW YORK — Some workers are doing it at Dunkin’ Donuts, Hilton hotels, even at Marine Corps bases.
    Employees at a growing number of businesses around the nation are starting and ending their days by pressing a hand or finger to a scanner that logs the precise time of their arrival and departure — information that is automatically reflected in payroll records.
    Manufacturers say these biometric scanners improve efficiency and streamline payroll operations. Employers big and small buy them with the dual goals of curtailing fraud and automating outdated record keeping systems that rely on paper time sheets.
    The new systems, however, have raised complaints from some workers who see the efforts to track their movements as excessive or even creepy.
    “They don’t even have to hire someone to harass you anymore. The machine can do it for them,” said Ed Ott, executive director of the New York City Central Labor Council of the AFL-CIO. “The palm print thing really grabs people as a step too far.”
    The International Biometric Group, a consulting firm, estimated that $635 million worth of these high-tech devices were sold last year.
    Protests over using palm scanners to log employee time have been especially loud in New York City, where officials are spending $410 million to install an automated attendance tracking system that may eventually be used by 160,000 city workers.
    Scores of civil servants who are members of Local 375 of the Civil Service Technical Guild rallied Tuesday against a plan to add the city medical examiner’s office to the list of 17 city agencies which already have the scanners in place.
    The scanners have rankled draftsmen, planners and architects in the city’s Parks Department, which began using them last year.
    “Psychologically, I think it has had a huge impact on the work force here because it is demeaning and because it’s a system based on mistrust,” said Ricardo Hinkle, a landscape architect who designs city parks.
    He called the timekeeping system a bureaucratic intrusion on professionals who never used to think twice about putting in extra time on a project they cared about, and could rely on human managers to exercise a little fl exibility on matters regarding work hours.
    “The creative process isn’t one that punches in and punches out,” he said.
    A spokesman for Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Matthew Kelly, said the system isn’t meant to be intrusive and has clear benefi ts over old-style punch clocks or paper time sheets.
    The city expects to save $60 million per year by modernizing a complicated record keeping system that now requires one fulltime timekeeper for every 100 to 250 employees. The new system, dubbed CityTime, would free up thousands of city employees to do less paper-pushing.
    Another benefit of the system is curtailing fraud. Several times each year, New York City’s Department of Investigation charges city employees with taking unauthorized time off and then filling out a false timecard later to make it look as though they worked.
    Other cities have embraced similar technology.
    Cities as big as Chicago and as small as Tahlequah, Okla., have turned to biometric ID systems to record employee work hours in recent years.
    Ingersoll Rand Security Technologies, the Campbell, Calif.-based manufacturer of the hand scanners being used in New York, said it has easily sold more than 150,000 of the devices worldwide to clients including Dunkin’ Donuts and McDonald’s franchises, Hilton hotels and even Marine Corps bases that use them to track civilian work hours.
    Jon Mooney, Ingersoll Rand Security Technologies’ general manger of biometrics, said the privacy concerns are unfounded. The hand scanners don’t keep large databases of people’s fingerprints — only a record of their hand shape, he said.
    The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees complained vigorously two years ago after the city of Pittsburgh proposed installing fingerprint readers.
    “We had a lot of questions, a lot of concerns, and so far they haven’t put it in,” said AFCME Council 84 Director Richard Caponi.
    Union officials in New York said they are concerned that the machines could eventually be used not just to crack down on employees skipping work, but to nitpick honest workers.
    “The bottom line is that these palm scanners are designed to exercise more control over the workforce,” said Claude Fort, president of Local 375. “They aren’t there for security purposes. It has nothing to do with productivity . . . It is about control, and that is what makes us nervous.”


RICHARD DREW/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS An employee of the New York City Parks Department uses a palm scanner as he arrives for work on Wednesday.

Is this any different than having to scan your ID card in a reader which logs who you are, what time you entered, and when you left a building? That technology has been around for 20 years and has been used to gain entry into secure buildings by the company I used to work for.

Just because someone is 'scanned in' doesn't mean they're gonna hustle but on the assembly line.....and it only streamlines the taxes and matches it to our income tax forms so they know who is filing-or not quicker......commit a crime outside work---bingo,,,,,you're it.....it cannot make people more honest and it wont speed up the system......it is just tracable 'ants'......

scenario---you own National grid money for the month and you are late paying it.....they track your hand to work and have access to your paycheck(which is actually virtual money,like hedge funds)....the government will make employers give your # to all vendors in the area and whamo......you have no more control over your time or money and the 'cartel' wins......there is no more straw for the bricks...... >:( :D

Quoted from Shadow

Is this any different than having to scan your ID card in a reader which logs who you are, what time you entered, and when you left a building? That technology has been around for 20 years and has been used to gain entry into secure buildings by the company I used to work for.

This technology has been around for years...but it was exactly as you say shadow, it was usually for security purposes in a highly secured area. It was never intended for the everyday to work person.

I mean like will McDonald's, Burger King, Dunkin Donuts workers have to 'scan in'? Who knows, they may have to do that already. I don't actually know.

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CIA enlists Google's help for spy work
US intelligence agencies are using Google's technology to help its agents share information about their suspects
Jonathan Richards

Google has been recruited by US intelligence agencies to help them better process and share information they gather about suspects.

Agencies such as the National Security Agency have bought servers on which Google-supplied search technology is used to process information gathered by networks of spies around the world.

Google is also providing the search features for a Wikipedia-style site, called Intellipedia, on which agents post information about their targets that can be accessed and appended by colleagues, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

The contracts are just a number that have been entered into by Google's 'federal government sales team', that aims to expand the company's reach beyond its core consumer and enterprise operations.

In the most innovative service, for which Google equipment provides the core search technology, agents are encouraged to post intelligence information on a secure forum, which other spies are free to read, edit, and tag - like the online encyclopedia Wikipedia.

Depending on their clearance, agents can log on to Intellipedia and gain access to three levels of info - top secret, secret and sensitive, and sensitive but unclassified. So far 37,000 users have established accounts on the service, and the database now extends to 35,000 articles, according to Sean Dennehy, chief of Intellipedia development for the CIA.

"Each analyst, for lack of a better term, has a shoe box with their knowledge," Mr Dennehy was quoted as saying. "They maintained it in a shared drive or Word document, but we're encouraging them to move those platforms so that everyone can benefit."

The collection of articles is hosted by the director of national intelligence, Mike McConnell, and is available only to the CIA, the FBI, the National Security Agency, and other intelligence agencies.

Google's search technology usually rates a website's importance by measuring the number of other sites that link to it - a method that is more problematic in a 'closed' network used by a limited numbr of people. In the case of Intellipedia, pages become more prominent depending on how they are tagged or added to by other contributors.

As well as working with the intelligence agencies, Google also provides services to other US public sector organisations, including the Coast Guard, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration.

Often, the contract is for something as simple as conducting earch within an organisation's own database, but in the case of the Coast Guard, Google also provides a more advanced version of its satellite mapping tool Google Earth, which ships use to navigate more safely.

There is no dedicated team promoting sales of Google products to the British Government, but a Google spokesperson said the company did target public sector organisations such as councils, schools and universities through the team that run AdWords, its internet advertising platform.

http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article3652494.ece

If I am understanding this correctly, which I may not be, but Google will also have access to this information, right?  

Yes, they're already collecting TONS of information about us - gmail, banking, creditcards, surfing habits, etc.

yeah.....the cliff is ahead..... :X

http://www.dailygazette.com

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http://www.dailygazette.com

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EDITORIALS
Terrorist ties or not, we will wiretap you

    Back in July, more than 2 1 /2 years after The New York Times exposed it, Congress legitimized the Bush administration’s illegal warrantless eavesdropping program. Would it have done so if it knew that personal calls between American citizens at home and abroad, having absolutely nothing to do with terrorists or terrorism, were being monitored at a National Security Agency (NSA) listening post in Georgia? That is what two former Arab linguists have alleged, both to ABC News and to author James Bamford, an expert on intelligence agencies, whose new book, “The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America,” was released Tuesday.
    During the long debate and negotiations over revamping the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which the administration had brazenly violated by ordering wiretaps without the special FISA court’s permission, President Bush and his intelligence officials repeatedly assured the nation that only American citizens in this country with ties, or suspected ties, to al-Qaida were being targeted. Not so, say the two whistleblowers. Calls home to wives and girlfriends from military officers, aid workers, journalists, etc., in Iraq were routinely intercepted. These communications were not only listened to but recorded — and those involving pillow talk or phone sex were then played back for people’s amusement.
    The whistleblowers say that when they questioned the legality of this with their superiors, they were told intelligence agency lawyers had approved it. That, presumably, was based on the same unconstitutional claim of executive power that Bush had used to justify defying Congress, ignoring FISA and conducting the warrantless wiretap program.
    Jay Rockefeller, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has opened an investigation; and Patrick Leahy and Arlen Specter, chairman and ranking minority member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, respectively, have done the same. If the claims turn out to be true, Congress shouldn’t cave, as it did with FISA, when it restored the authority of the FISA courts but also expanded executive authority in this area while granting retroactive immunity to everyone involved, including the telecom companies. Such abuses of civil liberties and the right to privacy are not even remotely connected to national security, and the Bush administration shouldn’t be allowed to confl ate and politicize them, as it has so often in the past.

Let me qiqqle now before it is 'illeqal' like an alien....ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha