Quote of the Day

by: Hopeful

Fri Apr 02, 2010 at 03:24:03 PM EDT

"Where does this leave the Obama administration? That's a good question."

Holt on NSA abuses

by: Hopeful

Tue Jun 16, 2009 at 10:45:59 PM EDT

"Some actions are so flagrant that they can't be accidental"

He's talking about how the NSA repeatedly has violated the law by spying on domestic e-mails.  Holt goes on to note that most Congressmen can't follow the technical details, but I think he's being a bit kind. What kind of technical knowledge is needed to understand this?

AMY GOODMAN: On the issue of the telecoms' role in domestic spying, I want to turn to Mark Klein. He's the former AT&T technician who blew the whistle on the involvement of phone companies in the Bush administration's domestic surveillance program. Klein was with AT&T for twenty-two years. In 2006, he leaked internal documents revealing the company had set up a secret room in its San Francisco office to give the NSA access to its fiber-optic internet cables.

     MARK KLEIN: We were told one day in late 2002 that an NSA representative was coming to the office to speak to a certain management technician about a special job. And this turned out to be installing a secret room in the next office I was going to be in the following year. And that secret room involved a lot of spying equipment. Only this one management technician could go in there, and the regular union technicians were not allowed to go in there.

     But when-- in 2003 I was assigned to that office, and I got hold of the documents which were available -- they're not classified-- and the documents showed what they were doing. They were basically copying the entire data stream going across critical internet cables and copying the entire data stream to this secret room, so the NSA was getting everything.

Rush Holt is quite right to push on this issue, because if the NSA is deliberately breaking the law than they cannot be trusted.  

I'd also like to say these violations are extraordinarily dangerous to our democracy, if nothing else because they can be used as a source of power by the unscrupulous. Just today we found out a well-known Republican Senator was being blackmailed over his affair.  It won't take you long to think of other Republicans and Democrats who have had career-ending secrets revealed: What would they have done to keep them secret? The Times article says one analyst was punished for spying on former President Bill Clinton. And what about the private sector? Did you know that one telecommunication executive who agreed to cooperate with illegal NSA programs now is getting a key job at G.M. (though he knows nothing about cars), while another who refused was sent to jail on fraud charges?  Maybe it's all on the up-and-up, but after following New Jersey politics can you really be confident it is?  

Holt wants answers about NSA wiretaps of Muslim Scholar

by: Jason Springer

Mon Dec 08, 2008 at 02:30:00 PM EST

A Congressional oversight panel plans to ask the National Security Agency to start an investigation into new evidence that the agency illegally wiretapped a Muslim scholar in Northern Virginia and concealed the eavesdropping during a 2005 trial in which the scholar was convicted on terrorism charges.

Representative Rush Holt, a New Jersey Democrat and chairman of the Select Intelligence Oversight Panel, said in an interview that he planned to ask the inspector general of the N.S.A. to open what would be the first formal investigation by the agency into whether its eavesdropping program had improperly interfered with an American's right to a fair trial.  

Mr. Holt said he was responding to new evidence presented to him and other Congressional leaders by the Muslim scholar's lawyer indicating that the Bush administration tried to hide the full extent of the government's illegal spying in the criminal case.

The scholar, Ali al-Timimi, once a spiritual leader in Northern Virginia and described by prosecutors as a "rock star" in the Islamic fundamentalist world, is now serving a life sentence in federal prison after he was convicted in 2005 on charges of inciting his Muslim followers to commit acts of violence overseas.

Prosecutors described Mr. Timimi as the spiritual mentor to a group of young men in Northern Virginia who were convicted of giving material support in Kashmir to Lashkar-e-Taiba - the separatist group blamed by the Indian authorities for the recent attacks in Mumbai. Several of the Northern Virginia men had received paramilitary training in Pakistan, apparently at the urging of Mr. Timimi, but there was no evidence that they had taken part in any terrorist attacks.

Mr. Timimi's lawyers maintain that the N.S.A., without acquiring court-approved warrants, used the eavesdropping operation approved by President Bush weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks to wiretap his communications, and that the interceptions might include evidence that would point to his innocence in what they regard as a free-speech case. They charge that the government has intentionally withheld that material despite repeated requests.

The Justice Department has denied that it had any other evidence of eavesdropping against him other than what it turned over to his lawyers. But the federal judge in the case, Leonie M. Brinkema in Alexandria, Va., has expressed increasing annoyance over persistent questions about the N.S.A.'s possible role.

Dr. Al-Tamimi was noted for being against terrorism, both in public and in private. He has been quoted as saying:

"If you consider this, then we can frankly say that certain acts of violence perpetrated by Muslims against non-combatant unbelievers over the last ten or fifteen years clearly contradict Islam. It is exceedingly important that Muslims are the first and foremost to condemn and reject such actions."[1]

"As at the time of the sending of the prophet Muhammad, the weapons employed in Arabia were simple sword, javelin, arrows, and so forth. It was only much later that the use of the catapult and the cannon became prevalent in warfare. The Muslim scholars writing at that time were in agreement that it was impermissible to use the catapult or the cannon against civilian populations. Their reasoning was that when laying siege to a city and you bombard it with catapults and cannons, this would necessarily result in the death of non-combatants. So therefore the Muslim army when laying siege to a city of a country to which they were at war, they should not use these weapons that in the modern times we would equate with weapons of mass destruction."

Jonathan Turley, who is representing Ali al-Tamimi, persuaded the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals to halt appellate proceedings January 24, 2006. The appellate court is considering whether to send the case back to the trial court to discover if the NSA warrantless surveillance was used to monitor Ali. If it does, Turley said, "the government would have to establish whether Dr. Al-Tamimi was intercepted under this or any other undisclosed operation, and the court could have to look at the legality of the whole operation

News Round-up and Open Thread for Tuesday, September 12

by: Sharon GR

Tue Sep 12, 2006 at 09:25:54 AM EDT

• The US Justice Dept. states that forcing telephone companies to comply with subpeonas issued by the NJ Attorney General's Office may reveal state secrets. Our Fair State wants to investigate the release of customer records to the NSA, and counters that since everybody and their cousin knows about the program, there are no 'secrets' to be revealed. The State also argued that the federal lawsuit oversteps the boundary of state sovereignty.
• The city of Newark may lay off up to 20% of its municipal workforce in response to a huge budget deficit. Between 400 and 800 employees could lose their jobs in an attempt to cut waste and slow spending, according to Mayor Cory Booker.
• Union Local President Jerry Collins is "cautiously optimistic" that the nurses' strike at RWJ University Hospital will end this week. A federal mediator has become involved in talks between the hospital and the nurses, who have been on strike for almost three weeks.
• An airline employee let a relative bypass security yesterday, resulting in a shutdown of part of terminal C in Newark Liberty Airport. The man was stopped when he tried to board an airplane without a boarding pass. On the 9/11 anniversary. Really.
• The civil trial about the Trenton Mayoral election began yesterday, with Tony Mack attempting to show election fraud, including disenfranchised voters and other election law violations. If Mack wins the case, the May 9th vote re-electing Mayor Doug Palmer may be declared void.
• No contamination: The state has new regulations requiring day-care centers in Our Fair State to show they are not within 400ft. of a contaminated site before they can open. The regulations are in response to the center in Franklin which was found to be on contaminated soil.
• Some contamination: Gov. Corzine and local residents feel that plans allowed or being considered by the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission for decontamination at two South Jersey sites are inadequate. The former Heritage Minerals in Manchester Twp (Ocean County) has removed radioactive waste to levels acceptable years ago when the plan was developed and plans to build 2,450 senior housing units on the site; critics want it cleaned up to currently acceptable levels. ShieldAlloy in Newfield (Gloucester County) wants to cap their radioactive waste on-site "with dirt and rocks" at a significant cost savings rather than ship it to specialized landfills.
• State Sen. Bill Gormley is pushing for Atlantic City to become a leader in off-shore wind power, proposing at least 100 windmills. State DEP Commissioner Lisa Jackson has said the state will take a serious look at offshore wind to meet the goal of 20% of the state's power by renewable resources by 2020.
• Former Gov. Tom Kean SENIOR defended the ABC crapodrama about events leading up to 9/11 yesterday, even though he hadn't seen the final version. That's lovely.

Open Thread: What's on your mind, Blue Jersey?

NSA has massive database of Americans' phone calls

by: Tandalayo Scheisskopf

Thu May 11, 2006 at 12:21:05 AM EDT

By Leslie Cauley, USA TODAY

The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA TODAY.

The NSA program reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans — most of whom aren't suspected of any crime. This program does not involve the NSA listening to or recording conversations. But the spy agency is using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity, sources said in separate interviews.

"It's the largest database ever assembled in the world," said one person, who, like the others who agreed to talk about the NSA's activities, declined to be identified by name or affiliation. The agency's goal is "to create a database of every call ever made" within the nation's borders, this person added.

For the customers of these companies, it means that the government has detailed records of calls they made — across town or across the country — to family members, co-workers, business contacts and others.

Link Here

It's ALIVE - the Inaugural Blue Jersey Podcast

by: Juan Melli

Sun Jan 29, 2006 at 10:02:32 PM EST

For this month's podcast, we sat down with Congressman Rush Holt to hear his thoughts on the upcoming State of the Union, political blogging, NSA domestic spying, rising energy costs, the President's upbringing (hint: it involved immersion in oil) and more.

On Medicare Part D: "I'm not going to accuse them of designing it to fail - although that thought has crossed my mind."

Holt answers the question: "Where are the Democrats?" and shares his thoughts on how to regain a Congressional majority.

If you're already subscribed to our feed, the podcast should download for you the next time you start up iTunes. If you have iTunes (free download) and haven't yet subscribed, just click the button below to subscribe to our feed. Otherwise, you can access the mp3 file directly through this link.

"We ain't one-at-a-timin' heah! Weah MASS communicatin'!"

by: DBK

Sun Jan 29, 2006 at 12:24:51 PM EST

Congressman Rush Holt on the war in Iraq and Homeland Security:
"I have found no one who actually feels safer, and can demonstrate that she or he is safer, because of our war in Iraq."

On warrantless domestic surveillance:
"I see no justification for the program that the White House has described. I see no reason to have an ongoing spying mechanism against Americans...now you have some functionary in the NSA, or worse, some political appointee in the White House, deciding whose phone is going to be tapped, whose email is going to be bugged, whose life is going to be invaded."

On presidential overreach and whether Congress should have limited White House power when authorizing the Iraq fiasco:
"The majority leadership certainly dropped the ball on this."

On the question of "Where are the Democrats?":
"I think there are many Democrats who are standing up and fighting...Jim McDermott, Louise Slaughter, there are a number of us who are standing up, who are speaking out. But remember, we are in the minority."