“President Bush has authorized the continuation of the N.S.A. program every 45 days by executive order to allow the N.S.A. to conduct wiretaps on international communications without a court warrant. When the current order expires, however, President Bush has decided not to reauthorize the program, officials said.” (NY Times article)

One must consider the possibility that this is all a setup.

I realize that legal weasels like Alberto Gonzales are always in CYA mode, but they also are always looking for an advantage.

So, why would legal weasel Gonzales suddenly seem to reverse himself on FISA? Scared that the Democratic-controlled Congress might uncover how illegal a surveillance program the Bush White House has actually been operating?

Or is legal weasel Gonzales setting Democrats up for criticism (and electoral losses) in case there is another terrorist attack on the U.S.?

Remember, Gonzales’ good buddy, Pat Robertson, recently announced that God has told him that there will be a terrorist attack toward the latter part of this year. Strange, all this occurring at the same time. Coordinated neo-con effort, maybe?

Anyway, I can imagine the Republicans, just before the presidential primary season begins next year, allowing a terrorist attack to occur, and then turning around and accusing the Democrats of being responsible, because you see, if only the Democrats hadn’t stopped Bush and his warrantless wiretapping program, then Bush could have stopped the terrorist attack from happening.

In other words, never look at anything the nutjob Republicans do in isolation, especially anything proposed by the insane legal weasel Gonzales. Think of their anti-democratic agenda as a mosaic, with certain pieces fitting the overall pattern of corruption.

This is why Democrats should immediately have all the FISA court judges appear before a committee (or committees) in Congress, behind closed doors, and individually. We (or at least our trusted elected representatives…no, not the neo-con nutjobs) need to know right now how extensive the illegal Bush surveillance program really is, or was.

Since Congress established the FISA court, then Bush can’t block the subpoenaes issued to the FISA court judges by claiming executive privilege. This should be a no-brainer for the Democrats. Use the power of subpoena to get to the bottom of this illegal Bush activity, and make what can be revealed known.

Especially before Bush, who also supposedly gets messages from God like Robertson, lets a terrorist attack occur and tries to blame Democrats in a attempt to game the 2008 elections. I, personally, wouldn’t put anything past Bush and legal weasel Gonzales at this stage of their corrupt administration.

In contrast, all the pro-bono Gitmo lawyers are legal eagles.

So, what are the characteristics of a legal weasel like Gonzales?

1) Lying.

2) Evasiveness.

3) Withholding information from the duly-elected representatives of “We the People.”

Concerning established law (Geneva Conventions, U.S. Constitution, etc.), the legal weasel says that if something isn’t “specifically” mentioned or prohibited, then the legal weasel will “interpret” it any damn way they please…in an attempt to weasel their way around or out of following established “rule of law.”

Concerning the creation of new law, the legal weasel will inject “weasel words” into a bill, words which are non-specific, giving the legal weasel plenty of weasel room. For instance, they’ll add to the end of a bill’s section the words “and for other purposes,” thus giving them wide latitude, and no boundaries, like the legal weasels did with the Patriot Act and the $385 million detention center construction bill.

In other words, the Bush administration’s legal weasels are nothing more than corrupt little neo-fascists, and no amount of lauding by Orrin Hatch, the pornography-obsessed senator, of Alberto Gonzales in a hearing will change this SPECIFIC FACT.

Which is why all the Republican-fascist legal weasels have had a major problem with FISA and it’s declaration that it is the binding law.

So, my suggestion to the Democrats holding these hearings in an attempt to control the legal weasels:

Call all the FISA court judges to appear before them, behind closed doors, one at a time. To get to the bottom of what all the fascist legal weasels, like Alberto Gonzales, have really been doing illegally in direct contravention of FISA.

Then, let the censuring or impeachments begin. The legal weasels are more dangerous to our “rule of law” democracy than Osama bin Laden or al Qaeda could ever dream of being. Because while the al Qaeda religious terrorists might attack us physically, the fascist legal weasels are trying to destroy the soul of our democracy.

Enough is enough. Let’s stuff and mount the legal weasels.

Jake Tapper covered the jury trial selection on Nightline last night; the details about the jurors was nearly as good as your live blogging, and in some ways highly complementary because of the details included. Somebody at ABC was scrambling to do research…

I have no doubt whatsoever that the “research” done, was not independent at all.
The person would have done nothing more than READ THE BLOGS!!!
I’d bet my left nut on it.

I used to regularly post on a British message board and when a person who was actually on the train that was bombed on the 7th/7/05 wrote a post on the message board about her survival story it was picked up by the BBC and printed. Word for word!

None of the story was sourced, asked permission for, accredited to, or from, the actual person who was on train and who wrote the original story (or in this case, in her diary and then a post on a message board)
Let alone be paid for the story.
All the Journo did was copy her words in it’s entirety and gave it to his Editor to be published.

Rachels Story of when she was on the train that was blown up.
Definitely worth the time to read it!

Just look at how easily the MSM Journo’s are led up the garden path by Bush and Co. Printing their bullshit without ever checking the facts of what they have just been told.

I guess I’m too ethical to do cr@p like that.

Privacy and Consumer Profiling

Profiling is the recording and classification of behaviors. This occurs through aggregating information from online and offline purchase data, supermarket savings cards, white pages, surveys, sweepstakes and contest entries, financial records, property records, U.S. Census records, motor vehicle data, automatic number information, credit card transactions, phone records (Customer Proprietary Network Information or “CPNI”), credit records, product warranty cards, the sale of magazine and catalog subscriptions, and public records. Profiling has sparked an entire industry euphemistically labeled “Customer Relations Management” (CRM) or “Personalization.”

Companies collect information derived from a number of resources to build comprehensive profiles on individuals in order to sell products and to sell dossiers on behavior. This is often done without notice or extending a choice to the individual to opt-out of the dossier building. These dossiers may be used by marketers for target advertising, and they may be sold to government for law enforcement purposes. Companies also “enhance” dossiers that they already own by combining or “overlaying” information from other databases. These dossiers may link individual’s identities to the following attributes: (detailed list at link)

….Profiling companies have well-developed lexicons to classify individuals. Claritas, for instance, divides individuals into fifteen different groups, which are in turn categorized into various subgroups. These include: (list at link)

…These profiles can be purchased at surprisingly low prices. Many companies will sell information at a cost of $65 per thousand names….

…No aspect of an individual’s private life is too sensitive to be categorized, compiled, and sold to others. For instance, the Medical Marketing Service sells lists of persons suffering from various ailments. These lists are cross-referenced with information regarding age, educational level, family dwelling size, gender, income, lifestyle, marital status, and presence of children. The list of ailments includes:(list at link)

…Catalog sales companies and magazines sold profiling data for many years before the advent of online tracking and profiling. This data is often keyed to specific information about the subscriber or purchaser.

Experian is one of the prime providers of cooperative database information provided from catalog and magazine sales. These include:…

…Telecommunications companies that provide local, long distance, and wireless services collect CPNI based on individuals’ telephone calling behaviors. CPNI includes subscribers’ names, addresses, services, amount of usage of services, and calling records. “Calling records” are lists of phone numbers that the subscriber receives calls from or dials. Most people consider CPNI private, and under a 1996 telecommunications law, companies must first gain permission from the subscriber (opt-in) before using CPNI for marketing. However, telecommunications companies have challenged the interpretation of that law, and seek to sell CPNI and allow marketing and profiling based on individuals’ calling behaviors with only opt-out protections….

…The danger in this profiling is increased by the fact that supermarkets are not limited by law in sharing the information they collect. A supermarket can sell the information to a health insurance company or to other aggregators in order to make a more complete profile on an individual….

…The three major credit reporting agencies (CRAs), Equifax (formerly Retail Credit Inc.), Trans Union, and Experian (formerly TRW), sell credit “header” information for profiling purposes. The credit header is information that appears “above the line” of a credit report. This information includes name, address, phone number, social security number, date of birth, and previous address. The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), which is enforced by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), allows the unregulated sale of credit headers. Individuals cannot opt-out of the credit header sales….

…There are federal and state legal restrictions that prevent the government from building dossiers on individuals without cause. However, these protections do not prevent the private sector from building comprehensive profiles on individuals. The government can then purchase this information from the private sector. Several companies, including Experian and ChoicePoint, possess multi-million dollar contracts with the federal government to sell personal information to law enforcement. Profiling partnerships generally rely on the compilation of public records, and are covered in more detail on the EPIC Public Records and Privacy Web Page.

The link is well worth the time to read it. A minimal amount of the total content was shared here.

rumi @ 158
3rd party brokers won’t be able to physically store *that* much data, unless they are given a specific list of people to get history on.

Again, keeping it simple. It’s easier to keep all valuable (for profit) information on everyone than it is to pick and choose what might be valuable one day.
___________________________
christine @ 163

But companies most likely won’t spend the time (cpu, people, etc) to glean the good stuff out that is wanted by the Feds (unless there’s a court order to do so). That’s where remote access or mass data dumps will take place and let the user in question do their own syncsorts. Especially since the Feds item of interest is subject to change on a whim. It can take several hours to set up a really good syncsort to get a very specific set of data.

I think we might be discussing 2 different needs but I would like to hear more about the systems you describe. Regardless of the difference, it’s just an example of the many ways the problem can be approached.

But companies most likely won’t spend the time (cpu, people, etc) to glean the good stuff out that is wanted by the Feds (unless there’s a court order to do so).

This is part of how we might be looking at it differently. I see the companies aggregating all of our data and using it for profit. This is also what is valuable to LE at one time or another. The biggest threat is the unregulated private intel/security industry that does this without any accountability to use or error.

Yeah, I think we are talking about 2 different things now.

Yes, companies will do some aggrigate roll ups on individual clients, stores, and/or items in order for inventory control and what you the customer has purchased before. I can see this getting complicated…. Let’s take Acme Department Store (and I’m going to presume that most places work generally in a similar manner). A report will be generated each day talling how many widgets were sold for the day, by day, by store location, by state, and by sales person. This info will be contained in a flat file and kept for a short period of time, but there’s no way to trace anyone off of this data, it’s just inventory numbers. The file will be rolled up into a day to week file and a weekly file with these stats will be put out. Same for a week to month file, and a month to year file. There wouldn’t be anything that would lead to any particular individual. These files are great for knowing when they need to ship more or less widgets to store x and not to store y, saves the company tons of money.

What the feds are looking for is a pattern of buying by individuals. They need raw data for that. When you have the raw data you can syncsort out every individual purchase of widgets between day one and day 10 and the individual also bought rope between the same day. Aggregate files won’t have that kind of detail the Feds are looking for.

If you’d like to take this off line, you can email me at christinenotes at gmail dot com. I just set this email acct up, but please be specific in your header. I delete everything that I don’t recognize the name or subject from, without opening.

rumi @ 158
3rd party brokers won’t be able to physically store *that* much data, unless they are given a specific list of people to get history on.

Again, keeping it simple. It’s easier to keep all valuable (for profit) information on everyone than it is to pick and choose what might be valuable one day.
___________________________
christine @ 163

But companies most likely won’t spend the time (cpu, people, etc) to glean the good stuff out that is wanted by the Feds (unless there’s a court order to do so). That’s where remote access or mass data dumps will take place and let the user in question do their own syncsorts. Especially since the Feds item of interest is subject to change on a whim. It can take several hours to set up a really good syncsort to get a very specific set of data.

I think we might be discussing 2 different needs but I would like to hear more about the systems you describe. Regardless of the difference, it’s just an example of the many ways the problem can be approached.

But companies most likely won’t spend the time (cpu, people, etc) to glean the good stuff out that is wanted by the Feds (unless there’s a court order to do so).

This is part of how we might be looking at it differently. I see the companies aggregating all of our data and using it for profit. This is also what is valuable to LE at one time or another. The biggest threat is the unregulated private intel/security industry that does this without any accountability to use or error.

3rd party brokers won’t be able to physically store *that* much data, unless they are given a specific list of people to get history on.

Again, keeping it simple. It’s easier to keep all valuable (for profit) information on everyone than it is to pick and choose what might be valuable one day.

But companies most likely won’t spend the time (cpu, people, etc) to glean the good stuff out that is wanted by the Feds (unless there’s a court order to do so). That’s where remote access or mass data dumps will take place and let the user in question do their own syncsorts. Especially since the Feds item of interest is subject to change on a whim. It can take several hours to set up a really good syncsort to get a very specific set of data.

Thanks Scarecow !

missed everything but the waiting room threads yesterday

Did you know that it is a crime to tell a lie to the federal government? Even if your lie is oral and not under oath? Even if you have received no warnings of any kind? Even if you are not trying to cheat the government out of money? Even if the government is not actually misled by your falsehood? Well it is.

emphasis cbl

then for once, I am glad a Fed Statute/Section is virtually boundless -

http://library.findlaw.com/2004/May/11/147945.htm

Not only that, but back in the pre sentencing guidelines day, you could get 5 years for lying to a fed chicken inspector, and only 2 for committing perjury in or out of fed court.

One of life’s mysteries.