Analysis: New Law Gives Government Six Months to Turn Internet and Phone Systems into Permanent Spying Architecture - UPDATED

August 16, 2007

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/08/analysis-new-la.html

By Ryan Singel August 06, 2007 | 2:11:02 AM

Categories: Surveillance

A new law expanding the government's spying powers gives the Bush Administration a six-month window to install possibly permanent back doors in the nation's communication networks. The legislation was passed hurriedly by Congress over the weekend and signed into law Sunday by President Bush.

The bill, known as the Protect America Act, removes the prohibition on warrantless spying on Americans abroad and gives the government wide powers to order communication service providers such as cell phone companies and ISPs to make their networks available to government eavesdroppers.

The Administration pushed for passage of the changes to close what it called a "surveillance gap," referring to a long-standing feature of the nation's surveillance laws that required the government to get court approval to capture communications inside the United States.

While the nation's spy laws have been continually loosened since 9/11, the Administration never pushed for the right to tap the nation's domestic communication networks until a secret court recently struck down a key pillar of the government's secret spying program.

The Administration argues that the world's communication networks now route many foreign to foreign calls and emails through switches in the United States.

Prior to the law's passage, the nation's spy agencies, such as the National Security Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency, didn't need any court approval to spy on foreigners so long as the wiretaps were outside the United States.

Now, those agencies are free to order services like Skype, cell phone companies and arguably even search engines to comply with secret spy orders to create back doors in domestic communication networks for the nation's spooks. While it's unclear whether the wiretapping can be used for domestic purposes, the law only requires that the programs that give rise to such orders have a "significant purpose" of foreign intelligence gathering.

The law:

Defines the act of reading and listening into American's phone calls and internet communications when they are "reasonably believed" to be outside the country as not surveillance.

Gives the government 6 months of extended powers to issue orders to "communication service providers," to help with spying that "concerns persons reasonably believed to be outside the United States." The language doesn't require the surveillance to only target people outside the United States, only that some of it does.

Forces Communication Service providers to comply secretly, though they can challenge the orders to the secret Foreign Intelligence Court. Individuals or companies given such orders will be paid for their cooperation and can not be sued for complying.

Makes any program or orders launched in the next six months perpetually renewable after the six month "sunset" of the new powers last for a year after being authorized

Grandfathers in the the current secret surveillance program -- sometimes referred to as the Terrorist Surveillance Program -- and any others that have been blessed by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

Requires the Attorney General to submit to the secret surveillance court its reasons why these programs aren't considered domestic spying programs, but the court can only throw out those reasons if it finds that they are "clearly erroneous."

Requires the Attorney General to tell Congress twice a year about any incidents of surveillance abuse and give statistics about how many surveillance programs were started and how many directives were issued.

Makes no mention of the Inspector General, who uncovered abuses of the Patriot Act by the FBI after being ordered by Congress to audit the use of powerful self-issued subpoenas, is not mentioned in the bill.

In short, the law gives the Administration the power to order the nation's communication service providers --

which range from Gmail, AOL IM, Twitter, Skype, traditional phone companies, ISPs, internet backbone providers, Federal Express, and social networks -- to create possibly permanent spying outposts for the federal government.

These outposts need only to have a "significant" purpose of spying on foreigners, would be nearly immune to challenge by lawsuit, and have no court supervision over their extent or implementation.

Abuses of the outposts will be monitored only by the Justice Department, which has already been found to have underreported abuses of other surveillance powers to Congress.

In related international news, Zimbabwe's repressive dictator Robert Mugabe also won passage of a law allowing the government to turn that nation's communication infrastructure into a gigantic, secret microphone.

UPDATE: This analysis originally said that the orders entered under the new rules could be renewed indefinitely. That is not accurate. I conflated the ability of the government to continue indefinitely the programs under way under FISA before the law was signed, with the section that says that the programs under the new law go for a full year, despite the 6 month sunset.

That said, if a future bill includes the same grandfather clause that this bill has, the spying outposts could easily permanent.

Those interested in seeing how I made this mistake, look at Section 6 of the bill. I regret the error.

UPDATE 2: James Risen, the New York Times reporter who broke the story of the warrantless wiretapping program, has an analysis piece here.

See Also:

More Known Unknowns in NSA Spy Controversy: Secret Appeals Courts, Tea Leaves and the Mineshaft Gap

Bush Administration Reportedly Rejects NSA Spying Compromise Bill

Democrats Halt Move to Revamp Spying Laws

Patrick Radden Keefe's Slate piece Wiretap at Will

Photo: Room 641A at AT & T's internet switching facility in San Francisco. Former AT & T technician Mark Klein says the room is a secret internet spying outpost for the government.

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I have been researching 9/11 for over four years and there are serious unanswered questions from that day, I will propose 5. I hope you investigate these for yourself¡1) Never in the history of steel structures has a building collapsed from fire yet 3 did on 9/11; WTC tower 1,2 & 7. All three buildings came down at free fall speed with no resistance; tower 7 was never hit by an airplane yet came down symmetrically in seven seconds? Additionally odd, tower 2 fell before tower 1 although tower 1 was hit first and tower 2 was hit with a glancing blow. The explosion/ collapse in tower 2 started above where the plane hit the tower? Jet fuel burns at only about 1500 Degrees Fahrenheit in the open air and structural steel does not melt or even get significantly weakened until more than a thousand degrees hotter with a melting point of near 3300 degrees F.

2) There is no large plane wreckage in front of the Pentagon from the 757 that hit it. Taking from the official story, the 757 that hit the pentagon flew over a highway, parallel and 5 to 10 feet above the ground and impacted the pentagon between the 1st and 2nd floor. You can see the video the pentagon released here, notice how the 757 is only flying several feet above the ground-

(official story) The airplane did not leave any markings or large debris (ex wings) on the front of the pentagon. the 757 supposedly was sucked into a 16ft by 24ft hole, before the ceiling collapsed a 1/2 hour later, and incinerated. how did this plane hit only 15 ft above the ground after descending so rapidly without ever hitting the ground and flown by an amateur pilot? The 3 slides the pentagon released to the public shows a small shaped device flying horizontally, very low to the ground and leaving a small smoke trail. Just recently Pilots for 9/11 Truth, an international organization of pilots and aviation professionals, petitioned the National Transportation and Safety Board (NTSB) in regards to the flight data recovered from Flight 77. The data provided by the NTSB contradicts the flight path given by the 9/11 commission report. The flight data that the NTSB provided shows the 757 that hit the pentagon at 300 feet above the highway and could not have clipped the light poles and subsequently struck the pentagon between the first and second floor. Please see the article here- http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_24288.shtml .

How come the Pentagon has not released video from the cameras mounted on the roof? lastly, after traveling through three rings of the Pentagon, the plane or whatever it was left a small circular exit hole in the third ring.

3. All four hijacked planes flew for an average of 40 minutes, 1 hour 50 minutes total, without any fighter jet intercept over NY and Washington. As you are aware, NY and Washington are some of the most protected airspace in the world.

4. Where is the plane wreckage from the plane crash in Shanksville, PA? in pictures and video all you see is a small ditch with no fires, plane debris, seats, bodies, etc.?

5. How was the Patriot Act and the War on Terror so quickly developed after 9/11? Was this new program a reaction to 9/11 or something that was worked on before September 11th and just conveniently ready for a terrorist attack?9/11 was an inside job, a false flag operation. Sadly, the sophistication of this operation points more towards state sponsored terrorism than a small group of bandits inside a cave. I continue to hear government and military officials saying we are fighting Al Qaeda in Iraq and globally. Does this mean as the lone superpower we supposedly were attacked by this rag tag group on September 11th and have been fighting them for the last 6 years without 'mission accomplished'? How often have our leaders evoked the memory of 9/11 to rally our people for certain causes (i.e. Iraq)?

fight on in peace. I hope you decide to investigate the truth of 9/11 for yourself.NamasteShawn CooperPS For a summary and the best documentary of 9/11 I recommend watching Loose Change 2. You can watch it for free here-http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7866929448192753501 & q=loose+change+2 & hl=en

or visit www.wtc7.net or www.st911.org and start your own research...

Lastly, allot of the public does not know that Rosie O'Donnell and Charlie Sheen are not the only ones questioning the official story of 9/11. Almost 600 senior military, intelligence-service, law-enforcement and government officials; engineers, architects, pilots and aviation professionals; professors, 9/11 survivors and family members; and entertainment and media professionals now question the official account of what happened on 9/11. please see www.patriotsquestion911.com for more on this.

Posted by: Shawn Cooper | Aug 6, 2007 12:29:57 AM

Welcome to the police state. Once again the DemoCrap party betrays America because of their cowardice and their weakness.

Sieg heil.

Posted by: Mogadishu Jones | Aug 6, 2007 5:10:59 AM

This is why people need to spread the love of Ron Paul.

ronpaul2008.com

He WILL be the next President.

Posted by: Ron Paul Supporter | Aug 6, 2007 7:12:30 AM

Same as it ever was. So all the Congressional concern about warrantless wiretapping abuse, and Gonzales power tripping was a smoke screen? The Internet, the people's representative, is quickly and methodically being legislated into a tool for government datamining and repression.I guess the Aye's didn't take time to read Tim Weiner's book about the CIA, Legacy of Ashes [http://www.tomhull.com/blog/archives/614-Legacy-of-Ashes.html] .

Posted by: Thinktank | Aug 6, 2007 7:37:01 AM

maybe its just me... but has noone else noticed that due to the US governments rabid grip on the internet infrastructure (DNS, routing etc) means that they can - AT WILL -

redirect ANY and ALL traffic through the US making it fall under the umberella of this scheme? so joe blogs in London is talking to jaques d'frog in paris about a forthcoming business venture, lo and behold, it gets routed via Langley and before you know it a US firm shoulders in on the deal instead. How about 2 Americans chatting? (in america) route the communication via Uzbekistan and it becomes 'foreign' communication from a known terrorist affiliated state. This is one big f$uk up waiting to happen.

Posted by: revere | Aug 6, 2007 7:44:54 AM

We should have an official "Thank DARPA For the Internet Day."

Maybe everybody can affix a Fox News or Homeland Security logo to their dirty underwear and hang it out a window for the day.

Posted by: America Jones | Aug 6, 2007 8:14:49 AM

More blog- http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/08/analysis-new-la.html