BREAKING: Discover How A Slacker Makes $100,000 A Year!

WEBMASTERS! Get Your Website To The Top Of Google

Bush Isn’t Spying on al Qaeda … He’s Spying on You

Monday, August 6th, 2007

The extraordinary secrecy surrounding the spying operations revealed in Alberto Gonzales’ Senate testimony is not aimed at al-Qaeda, but at the American people.

By Robert Parry

The dispute over whether Attorney General Alberto Gonzales committed perjury when he parsed words about George W. Bush’s warrantless surveillance program misses a larger point: the extraordinary secrecy surrounding these spying operations is not aimed at al-Qaeda, but at the American people.

There has never been a reasonable explanation for why a fuller discussion of these operations would help al-Qaeda, although that claim often is used by the Bush administration to challenge the patriotism of its critics or to avoid tough questions.

On July 27, for instance, White House press secretary Tony Snow fended off reporters who asked about apparent contradictions in Gonzales’s testimony by saying:

“This gets us back into the situation that I understand is unsatisfactory because there are lots of questions raised and the vast majority of those we’re not going to be in a position to answer, simply because they do involve matters of classification that we cannot and will not discuss publicly.”

Discussion closed.

But al-Qaeda terrorists always have assumed that their electronic communications were vulnerable to interception, which is why 9/11 attackers like Mohamed Atta traveled overseas for face-to-face meetings with their handlers. They limited their phone calls to mostly routine conversations.

The terrorists also had no reason to know or to care that the U.S. government was or wasn’t getting wiretap approval from the secret court created by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. They simply took for granted that their communications could be intercepted and acted accordingly.

It never made sense to think that al-Qaeda terrorists suddenly would get loose-lipped just because the FISA court was or wasn’t in the mix. The FISA court rubber-stamps almost all wiretap requests from the Executive Branch for domestic spying, and overseas calls don’t require a warrant.

Can anyone really imagine a conversation like “Gee, Osama, since Bush has to get FISA approval, we can now call our sleeper agents and plan the next attack.”

Similarly, there’s no reason to think terrorists would change their behavior significantly if they knew that the U.S. government was engaged in massive data-mining operations, poring through electronic records of citizens and non-citizens alike.

The 9/11 attackers mostly stayed off the grid and many of their transactions, such as renting housing, would not alone have raised suspicions. Indeed, the patterns that deserved more attention, such as enrollment in flight-training classes and the arrival of known al-Qaeda operatives, were detected by alert FBI agents in the field but ignored by FBI officials in Washington — and by Bush while on a month-long vacation in Texas.

The 9/11 attacks were less a failure of intelligence than a failure of political attention by Bush’s national security team.

Americans in the Dark

So what’s the real explanation for all the secrecy about the overall structure of the so-called Terrorist Surveillance Program?

The chief reason, especially for the excessive secrecy around the data-mining operations, appears to be Bush’s political need to prevent a full debate inside the United States about the security value of these Big Brother-type procedures when weighed against invasions of Americans’ privacy.

Bush knows he could run into trouble if he doesn’t keep the American people in the dark. In 2002, for instance, when the Bush administration launched a project seeking “total information awareness” on virtually everyone on earth involved in the modern economy, the disclosure was met with public alarm.

The administration cited the terrorist threat to justify the program which involved applying advanced computer technology to analyze trillions of bytes of data on electronic transactions and communications. The goal was to study the electronic footprints left by every person in the developed world during the course of their everyday lives — from the innocuous to the embarrassing to the potentially significant.

The government could cross-check books borrowed from a library, fertilizer bought at a farm-supply outlet, X-rated movies rented at a video store, prescriptions filled at a pharmacy, sites visited on the Internet, tickets reserved for a plane, borders crossed while traveling, rooms rented at a motel, and countless other examples.

Cont http://www.alternet.org/rights/58806/?page=2

Have Your Say: Bush Isn’t Spying on al Qaeda … He’s Spying on You
Please read our posting guidelines before posting.
Alternatively you can discuss this report in our forum .

CIA, not Pakistan, should be asked about Osama’s whereabouts: Ghani

Monday, August 6th, 2007

By Khalid Hasan

Owais Ahmed Ghani, governor of Balochistan, said here on Thursday that it is the CIA and not Pakistan that should be asked where Osama Bin Laden is, since it was the CIA that recruited, trained and shepherded the future chief of Al Qaeda during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the ensuing conflict.

Pakistan, he said in answer to a question at a speaking engagement arranged by a local think tank, had never had anything to do with Bin Laden. “In fact, Bin Laden always hated Pakistan,” he added.

Ghani described the province of Balochistan as peaceful and secure, barring the tiny Bugti area where there is “some resistance”. “Ours is a society in transition and we have a rising middle class. We face stiff political challenges and there is class tension,” he explained. There were three kinds of terrorism, he said — ethnic, sectarian and the pure kind. Global terrorism should be differentiated from the local variety, he suggested. He also proposed renaming the global war on terrorism to the war on global terrorism. With the exception of three tribal chiefs, he claimed, the rest are now part of the political mainstream. He said the source of weapons that the dissident elements have in the province come from Afghanistan. Only one percent of the population is involved in the insurgency. He said as a young officer in the 1970s, General Musharraf fought against Baloch insurgents and on assuming power, the economic development and modernisation on Balochistan became his first priority. He said out of the 65 members of the Balochistan Assembly, only three now belong to sub-national parties..

Ghani spoke at length about Afghanistan, insisting that it is unfair to hold Pakistan responsible for the neighbouring country’s troubles. He cited several reasons for the situation in Afghanistan, among them: lack of coordination in NATO/Coalition forces, government corruption, lack of law and order, opium and narcotics trade and a disillusioned population. Ninety percent of the world’s heroin originates from Afghanistan, the governor charged, pointing out that the Afghan poppy cultivation area has jumped from 40,000 acres to 400,000 acres. The narcotics mafia has a global outreach, he warned. He denied that there are any Taliban in Balochistan or any training camps. The narcotic mafia, he said, does not want the Pak-Afghan border to be controlled and regulated. Al Qaeda, he said, is regrouping in Afghanistan, not Pakistan, because “we can take care of Al Qaeda”.

Ghani bristled at accusations and threats being made against Pakistan that it is harbouring Al Qaeda and Taliban elements in its tribal areas that could or should be militarily struck by the Unite States, if Pakistan fails to deal with them. “We don’t need such statements because they damage our efforts and they cause public resentment. People want to know if this is the appreciation we are getting after all that we have done and are doing in fighting terrorism.” Afghanistan, he said, needs what the Afghans call “Meesaq-e-Milli” or a national compact. He said when Pakistan suggests that political space should be provided to elements outside the ruling circles, it is accused of wanting the return of the Taliban. He added, “There are elements in the Afghan government that want the conflict to continue.” He denied that the Baloch people are being turned into “Red Indians”. While for the first 50 years of Pakistan, they did not receive their due share, since 1999 the situation has changed. For instance, 35 percent of the federal budget for road construction is being spent on Balochistan. Six new universities have been opened. Schools are being established in remote areas and the Baloch people are partners and shareholders in the development and progress of their province.

Have Your Say: CIA, not Pakistan, should be asked about Osama’s whereabouts: Ghani
Please read our posting guidelines before posting.
Alternatively you can discuss this report in our forum .

Unpaid fines may stop people leaving UK

Monday, August 6th, 2007

· Home Office plan outlined in ‘e-borders’ scheme
· Huge amounts of data likely to be produced

Alan Travis, home affairs editor
Monday August 6, 2007
The Guardian

Tens of thousands of people who have failed to pay court fines amounting to more than £487m would be banned from leaving the country under new powers outlined by the Home Office. Ministers are also looking at ways of using the new £1.2bn “e-borders” programme to collect more than £9m owed in health treatment charges by foreign nationals who have left the country without paying.The programme, to be phased in from October next year, will also allow the creation of a centralised “no-fly” list of air-rage or disruptive passengers which can be circulated to airlines.

The e-borders programme requires airlines and ferry companies to submit up to 50 items of data on each passenger between 24 and 48 hours before departure to and from the UK. With 200 million passenger movements in and out of the UK last year to and from 266 overseas airports on 169 airlines, an enormous amount of data is expected to be generated by the programme.

Passenger numbers are expected to rise to 305 million a year by 2015 and ministers claim the £1.2bn programme is the only way to provide a comprehensive record of all those seeking to enter and leave the UK. The immigration minister, Liam Byrne, claims that the programme will create a kind of border control, with information being passed to police and security services before passengers board a plane, boat or train: “It will create a new, offshore line of defence - helping genuine travellers, but stopping those who pose a risk before they travel.”

However, the long-term nature of the programme means that by 2009 only half the passenger movements in and out of Britain will be logged in the e-borders computers, and even by 2011 coverage will have reached only 95%.

A Home Office assessment of the secondary legislation that is being used to implement the programme gives some early indications of who, other than suspected terrorists and international criminals, will be on the British no-fly list and be banned from travelling to and from the country. It floats the idea that provisions should be introduced to ban travel overseas for the tens of thousands of offenders who have not paid outstanding court fines or failed to discharge confiscation orders made against them. Although no official estimate exists of the number of people who have to pay court fines the amount they owe has now reached a record £487m, with a further £300m in unpaid confiscation orders.

Passengers will be further encouraged in future to book their tickets and check in online. Other suggested benefits of the e-borders programme include easier identification of those who falsely claim non-domicile or non-resident status to avoid UK income tax, thought to be costing as much as £2bn a year, and those who wrongly claim social security benefits despite having left the country.

Have Your Say: Unpaid fines may stop people leaving UK
Please read our posting guidelines before posting.
Alternatively you can discuss this report in our forum .

Related News

This entry was posted on Monday, August 6th, 2007 at 1:30 am and is filed under Surveillance, Civil Liberties & Human Rights News . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Translate: