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?  

NSA mining our Phone Records, an update

by: Jay Lassiter

Mon May 07, 2007 at 04:22:51 PM EDT

(Trenton)--

Public Advocate Ron Chen met with the Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee today to hash out Chen's office's budget for next fiscal year. 

(According to their website, Chen's Department of Public Advocacy is the "principal executive department of the state dedicated to making government more accountable and more responsive to the needs of average New Jerseyans.")

Today  most committee members wanted to discuss Eminent Domain (more on that later) but one Senator had other things on her mind. 

Senator Barbara Buono used today's hearing to gently nudge Chen on the status of an Amicus brief Chen filed after learning the NSA was sorting through the phone records of NJ residents, in violation of state law.

(Some quick background: When the NSA's domestic spying follies came to light way-back-when, then-AG Zulima Farber wanted some answers.  After all, the Attorney General is  charged with protecting New Jerseyans from consumer fraud.   In this case, the questions surrounded whether telecom companies violated their own privacy statements by releasing this information to NSA. According to Chen, the current AG Stuart Rabner was keen to pursue this after taking over.)

When Sen. Buono asked about the status of that suit -- and the Amicus brief that went with it -- Chen's answer was pretty shocking.  

Apparently, Rabner's efforts have most recently been met with Federal intervention as the Department of Justice moved to block the AG's enforcement of the telecom companies' privacy agreements, citing "state secrets."

How crazy is that?

Anyway, stay tuned.  This is currently playing itself out in the courts.  In June the case will be heard by a judge in California, which is one of a half dozen states to join NJ to press forward with the issue of telecom's roll in domestic spying.

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."