Bush Subpoenas Google - Your Records

[QueEx]

<font size="5"><center>Google refuses White House search request </font size></center>

The Guardian
Simon Jeffery and agencies
Friday January 20, 2006

Google is resisting a White House subpoena to hand over the records of the searches internet users are asking it to perform, it has emerged.

The request was first made last summer, but when California-based Google refused to comply, the US attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, lodged papers with a federal judge in San Jose to enforce the order.

The White House argues that a list of all requests entered into its search engine over a single week - which could span tens of millions of queries - will help it build up a profile of internet use it needs to defend an online pornography law.

It also wants a million randomly selected addresses from the index of websites that Google searches.

The papers said Google's search record "would assist the government in its efforts to understand the behavior of current web users [and] to estimate how often web users encounter harmful-to-minors material in the course of their searches".

The Bush administration insists it does not want to tie the search requests to the person or computer that made them but the subpoena has nevertheless raised serious privacy concerns.

Ashok Ramani, Google's lawyer, replied in a letter to the White House that the internet giant - whose corporate motto is "Don't be evil" - would not hand over its records.

"Google's acceding to the request would suggest that it is willing to reveal information about those who use its services. This is not a perception that Google can accept."

He added that the subpoena also threatened to expose some of Google's "crown-jewel trade secrets". Google is concerned that its requests could be used to deduce the size of its index and how many computers it uses. "This information would be highly valuable to competitors or miscreants seeking to harm Google's business," Mr Ramani wrote.

Google's main competitors <u>have complied with the White House subpoena</u>, according to the court papers. A spokeswoman for Yahoo!, the second-placed search engine, said it did not consider the request "a privacy issue" while MSN refused to comment on the White House request. A statement merely said it worked "closely with law enforcement officials worldwide to assist them when requested". Google is one of the fastest growing companies of all time and its booming advertising revenues turned a third-quarter profit of £215m in 2005. The company's strength as an advertiser is that it knows what people want because they tell them every time they use it.

As the world's dominant search engine, Google has built up valuable records of the wants of internet users.

Pam Dixon, the executive director of the World Privacy Forum, told the Associated Press that Google was right to resist the requests.

"This is exactly the kind of thing we have been worrying about with search engines for some time. Google should be commended for fighting this."

She said she hoped the case would remind people to be careful when they used search engines. "When you are looking at that blank search box, you should remember that what you fill can come back to haunt you unless you take precautions," she said.

Privacy concerns in the US have been magnified by recent revelations that the White House authorised eavesdropping on civilian communications after 9/11 attacks without obtaining court approval.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1691273,00.html

 

[domex]

More Power to Google!!

 

[QueEx]

<font size="4"><center>
"government lawyers argue that the ... data
will prove particularly useful for its purposes"</font size></center>


<IFRAME SRC="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4631924.stm" WIDTH=780 HEIGHT=1500>
<A HREF="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4631924.stm">link</A>

</IFRAME>

 

[london]

Google, the defiant one
By Steven Musil
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
Published: January 20, 2006, 10:00 AM PST

Federal prosecutors defending a controversial Internet pornography law are trying to force Google to hand over millions of search records--a request that the search giant is rejecting.

The Bush administration asked a federal judge to force Google to comply with a subpoena for the information, which would reveal the search terms of a broad swath of the search engine's visitors. Prosecutors are requesting a "random sampling" of 1 million Internet addresses accessible through Google's popular search engine, and a random sampling of 1 million search queries submitted to Google over a one-week period.

The Bush administration's request is part of its attempts to defend the 1998 Child Online Protection Act, which is being challenged in court by the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU says Web sites cannot realistically comply with COPA and that the law violates the right to freedom of speech mandated by the First Amendment.

An attorney for the ACLU said Microsoft, Yahoo and AOL received identical subpoenas and chose to comply with them rather than fight the request in court.

Google said in a statement sent to CNET News.com that it will resist the request "vigorously."





Other readers championed Google for its actions.

"Slowly we sit here while parents leave parenting to the government and the government seems to think it knows best what is good for me," Tom Eldred wrote. "Here's to Google for resisting."

On one level, the situation involves a straightforward question of whether the department's demands are too onerous and therefore not permitted under federal law. On another, the dispute raises novel questions about search engines' privacy protections and the relationship that four tech giants have with the federal government.

What does it all mean, and what happens next? CNET News.com prepared an FAQ to address some of your questions.

Meanwhile, U.S. senators on Thursday blasted what they called an "explosion" in Internet pornography and threatened to enact new laws aimed at targeting sexually explicit Web sites.

Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Stevens, an Alaska Republican, lashed out at an adult-entertainment industry representative, saying that the industry needs to take swift moves to devise a ratings system and to clearly mark all its material as "adult-only."

A lawyer representing companies offering "lawful, adult-oriented entertainment" agreed.

"I think any adult producer would agree," said Paul Cambria, counsel to the Adult Freedom Foundation. It would just be a matter of organizing the industry, he added.

"My advice is you tell your clients they better do it soon, because we'll mandate it if they don't," Stevens said.

Wild, wild Web
Crime is big business on the Internet these days, and it seems to be getting bigger.

A popular advertising site came under a denial-of-service attack this week from blackmailers demanding a ransom. The Million Dollar Homepage site is battling a DoS onslaught that has escalated since it began last week, its owner said. The site, which successfully brought in $1 million by selling ad space for $1 per pixel, was launched by British student Alex Tew and gained notoriety for its unique approach to online advertising.

The blackmailers have demanded a ransom of $50,000, said Russell Weiss, vice president of technical services at InfoRelay, which operates the site. Tew and InfoRelay are working with the FBI on the case, Weiss added.

"There are clues that a Russian group may be involved, but we'll leave that assessment up to the FBI," he said.

Meanwhile, phishing attacks reached a new high at the end of 2005 after growing steadily all year, according to a new study. The number of unique e-mail-based fraud attacks detected in November 2005 was 16,882, almost double the 8,975 attacks launched in November 2004.

Phishing e-mails pretend to come from legitimate companies, such as banks and e-commerce sites, and are used by criminals to try and trick Web users into revealing personal information and account details.

The number of brands targeted increased by almost 50 percent over the course of 2005, from 64 to 93 percent in November. And attacks are becoming increasingly sophisticated, with a quarter of all phishing Web sites hosting keylogging malicious software.

But phishing is far from the greatest threat on the Net. Dealing with viruses, spyware, PC theft and other computer-related crimes costs U.S. businesses a staggering
$67.2 billion a year, according to the FBI. The FBI calculated the price tag by extrapolating results from a survey of 2,066 organizations.

The survey found that 1,324 respondents, or 64 percent, suffered a financial loss from computer security incidents over a 12-month period. The average cost per company was more than $24,000, with the total cost reaching $32 million for those surveyed.

Often survey results can be skewed because poll respondents are more likely to answer when they have experienced a problem. So, when extrapolating the survey results to estimate the national cost, the FBI reduced the estimated number of affected organizations from 64 percent to a more conservative 20 percent.

http://news.com.com/Week+in+review+Google,+the+defiant+one/2100-1083_3-6029046.html?tag=nefd.top

 

[london]

Google fights Bush on search data

Email
Print
Normal font
Large font
By Catherine Elsworth, David Derbyshire
Los Angeles, London
January 22, 2006
AdvertisementAdvertisement
Google is resisting Bush Administration attempts to force it to hand over records about the behaviour of millions of people who use its search engine.

The Justice Department wants data about every internet search during a one-week period. It claims the information is vital to restore online child protection laws the US Supreme Court struck down.

But Google said the White House demands were too broad. It said to comply would give the impression it was willing to disclose personal information about those who use its services, "not a perception that Google can accept".

Civil liberties groups said the request highlighted the potential for governments to seize online databases and use them to spy on people.

The disclosure bid is a reminder to the world's 1 billion internet users that most online companies keep detailed records of their movements on the web.

The Administration has issued similar subpoenas to other companies - Yahoo, Microsoft and AOL. Yahoo and AOL said they complied but no personal information was shared. Microsoft refused to say whether it received a subpoena.

The demands emerged last week after US Attorney-General Alberto Gonzales asked a federal judge to order Google to comply with the White House subpoena issued last year.

Google has a huge database of information attractive to advertisers and law enforcement agencies.

In addition to a breakdown of every request typed into its search engine during a single week - potentially hundreds of millions of queries - the Government asked for a million random web addresses.

The subpoena stressed that authorities did not want any "additional information . . . that would identify the person who entered the text string into the search engine".

The Justice Department wants the information to show how easy it is to stumble across pornography on the internet, bolstering its case that a law aimed at combating child pornography is needed because filtering software is ineffective.

Yahoo defended its decision to comply, saying no personal information was provided. "This is not a privacy issue," a spokesman said.

AOL said it "did not comply with the specific requests in that subpoena" but "gave them a generic aggregated list of anonymous searches from a one-day period".

Some experts said although the request was only for details of searches, not the people making them, it still raised serious privacy concerns. Google says it intends to "resist the Government's efforts vigorously".

The case highlights how much information internet companies have on users.

Internet service providers keep a record of every website a customer visits, and the destination, date and time of emails.

Under a controversial directive passed before Christmas and designed to help police investigate terrorism, service providers will have to keep information for two years.

Yaman Akdeniz, the director of the British organisation Cyber-Rights and Cyber-Liberties, described the move as "disturbing".

"It is worrying to hear that Google are keeping that much data, when their users are not aware of this," Mr Akdeniz, a law lecturer at Leeds University, said.

"The US Government appears to be on a fishing expedition. What people look for on a search engine is private. If you type in neo-Nazi or child porn, it doesn't mean that you are committing a crime."
http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/google-fights-bush-on-search-data/2006/01/21/1137734186112.html

 

[london]

[frame]http://news.google.ca/news?hl=en&tab=wn&ie=UTF-8&ncl=http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/google-fights-bush-on-search-data/2006/01/21/1137734186112.html[/frame]

 

[QueEx]

<font size="5"><center>After Subpoenas, Internet Searches Give Some Pause </font size></center>

The New York Times
By KATIE HAFNER
Published: January 25, 2006

Kathryn Hanson, a former telecommunications engineer who lives in Oakland, Calif., was looking at BBC News online last week when she came across an item about a British politician who had resigned over a reported affair with a "rent boy."

It was the first time Ms. Hanson had seen the term, so, in search of a definition, she typed it into Google. As Ms. Hanson scrolled through the results, she saw that several of the sites were available only to people over 18. She suddenly had a frightening thought. Would Google have to inform the government that she was looking for a rent boy - a young male prostitute?

Ms. Hanson, 45, immediately told her boyfriend what she had done. "I told him I'd Googled 'rent boy,' just in case I got whisked off to some Navy prison in the dead of night," she said.

Ms. Hanson's reaction arose from last week's reports that as part of its effort to uphold an online pornography law, the Justice Department had asked a federal judge to compel Google to turn over records on millions of its users' search queries. Google is resisting the request, but three of its competitors - Yahoo, MSN and America Online - have turned over similar information.

The government and the cooperating companies say the search queries cannot be traced to their source, and therefore no personal information about users is being given up. But the government's move is one of several recent episodes that have caused some people to think twice about the information they type into a search engine, or the opinions they express in an e-mail message.

The government has been more aggressive recently in its efforts to obtain data on Internet activity, invoking the fight against terrorism and the prosecution of online crime. A surveillance program in which the National Security Agency intercepted certain international phone calls and e-mail in the United States without court-approved warrants prompted an outcry among civil libertarians. And under the antiterrorism USA Patriot Act, the Justice Department has demanded records on library patrons' Internet use.

Those actions have put some Internet users on edge, as they confront the complications and contradictions of online life.

Jim Kowats, 34, a television producer who lives in Washington, has been growing increasingly concerned about the government's data collection efforts. "I'm not a conspiracy theorist, I just feel like it's one step away from ... what's the next step?" Mr. Kowats said. "The government's going to start looking into all this other stuff."

Until last year, Mr. Kowats worked at the Discovery Channel, and a few years ago, in the course of putting together a documentary on circumcision, he and his colleagues were doing much of the research online. "When you're researching something like that and you look up the word 'circumcision,' you're going to end up with all kinds of pictures of naked children," he said. "And that can be misconstrued."

"There're so many things you can accidentally fall into when you're surfing on the Internet," he said. "I mean, you can type in almost anything and you're going to end up with something you didn't expect."

Privacy is an elusive concept, and when it comes to what is considered acceptable, people tend to draw the line at different points on the privacy spectrum.

Ming-Wai Farrell, 25, who works for a legal industry trade association in Washington, is one of those who draw the line somewhere in the middle. They are willing to part with personal information as long as they get something in return - the convenience of online banking, for example, or useful information from a search engine - and as long as they know what is to be done with the information.

Yet these same people are sometimes appalled when they learn of wholesale data gathering. Ms. Farrell said she would not be able to live without online banking, electronic bill paying or Google, but she would consider revising her Web activity if she had to question every search term, online donation or purchase.

"It's scary to think that it may just be a matter of time before Googling will invite an F.B.I. agent to tap your phone or interrogate you," Ms. Farrell said.

David Bernstein and Michael Falcone contributed reporting for this article.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/25/n...n=2ade8e8d0d574d52&ex=1138856400&partner=IWON

 

[QueEx]

<font size="5"><center>Google, US to face off over data </font size>
<font size="4">company seeks to quash a subpoena for search data</font size></center>

Tuesday March 14, 6:34 AM EST
By Eric Auchard

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Google Inc (GOOG) faces off against the U.S. Justice Department in federal court on Tuesday as the Internet company seeks to quash a subpoena for search data, including millions of user queries, in a battle over privacy issues on the Web.

Google will defend its motion to deny a demand by U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales for data the government wants the company to produce as part of a separate case over the extent to which online pornography is a threat to children.

Google, based in Mountain View, California, is set to appear before Judge James Ware in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in San Jose to answer the government subpoena for a random sample of data.

The Justice Department's demand has raised concerns over how far customers can trust Google to protect the privacy of their search habits from government snooping.

The standoff with President George W. Bush's administration sent a chill through Google's stock when the challenge was revealed in January. But legal analysts say the company is on firm ground contesting the government's bid to compel its participation.

"The government has the obligation to come forth and make its own case," said Bruce Fein, a former general counsel of the Federal Communications Commission under President Ronald Reagan and now a principal in his own law firm.

"It is invading the privacy of Google as a business operation," Fein argued. "It's within Google's rights to tell the government to 'Get off my back."'

Analysts said the Google case shows it is only a matter of time before the U.S. government may seek access to individual Internet records, just as federal agencies already can do for library or medical records.

"The rights we enjoy in our home are not the rights we enjoy with our computers," said Michael Parekh, an investor and pioneering Internet analyst formerly with Goldman Sachs.

"It creates an aura for an ordinary person where maybe they will think twice about the privacy of their Internet searches," Fein said.

Google also opposes the government request for data on the grounds it is being asked to reveal details on how its market-dominating search system operates.

Google's decision to fight the request contrasts with rival Internet companies Yahoo Inc. (YHOO) and Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) , which complied after being assured no specific customer data was involved, only general lists of search terms.

The Justice Department has responded in legal filings that it is not asking Google to disclose any personal data, arguing the information is necessary for the government to defend its case and that Google trade secrets are protected.

The data is meant to support a separate case in which the Justice Department seeks to appeal a 2004 Supreme Court injunction of a law to penalize Web site operators who allow children to view pornography.

The issue boils down to whether Google's data is necessary to the Bush administration's case or "does nothing to further the government's case in the underlying action," as Google's motion opposing the demand argued last month.

Ware is likely to take a narrow procedural approach to the government request.

The 20-year-old Electronic Communications Act restricts government access to telephone and e-mail records but not Web site or search service data, one expert said.


©2005 Reuters Limited.

http://money.iwon.com/ht/nw/bus/20060314/hl_bus-n14316239.html?PG=home&SEC=news

 

[GET YOU HOT]

IN REPONSE...GUESS WHAT HAPPENS NOW?


NEW YORK - Former president Bill Clinton helped launch a new Internet search company backed by the Chinese government which says its technology uses artificial intelligence to produce better results than Google Inc. http://www.google.com/

"I hope you all make lots of money," Clinton told executives at the launch of Accoona Corp., which donated an undisclosed amount to the William J. Clinton Foundation.

The Chinese government, one of several large backers, has granted Accoona a 20-year exclusive partnership with the China Daily Information Co., the government agency that runs an official Chinese and English Web site.

http://accoona.com/ "THE ANSWER"

 

[JUju2005]

Can’t always believe what you see, or read

 

[QueEx]

<font size="5"><center>Google told to reveal Web sites, not search terms</font size></center>

Reuters
Fri Mar 17, 2006 10:29 PM ET
By Eric Auchard and Adam Tanner

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A federal judge denied a U.S. government request that Google Inc. be ordered to hand over a sample of keywords customers use to search the Internet, but required on Friday that the company produce some Web addresses indexed in its system.

In a 21-page ruling, Judge James Ware of the U.S. District for the Northern District of California said the privacy considerations of Google users led him to deny part of the Justice Department's request.

"To the extent the motion seeks an order compelling Google to disclose search queries of its users the motion is denied," Ware wrote.

U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales had subpoenaed Google to turn over data the government wanted from the company as part of the Bush Administration's attempt to defend a federal law on child pornography on the Internet.

"You have to disclose what your robots find, but you don't have to disclose what people search for," Andy Serwin, a privacy law expert, said of the automated software tools Google uses to catalog the Web.

"The order does get the government what it probably needed, not what it wanted," said Serwin, a partner with Foley & Lardner and author of the "Internet Marketing Law Handbook."

During a court hearing on Tuesday the government reduced the number of Google searches it wanted data on to just 50,000 Web addresses and roughly 5,000 search terms from the millions or potentially billions of addresses it had initially sought.

"The court grants the government's motion to compel only as to the sample of 50,000 URLs (Uniform Resource Locators), from Google's search index," the judge ruled, referring to the searchable catalog of documents that form the core of Google's Web search service, the most widely used in the world.

"What his ruling means is that neither the government nor anyone else has carte blanche when demanding data from Internet companies," Nicole Wong, Google's associate general counsel, said in a statement on the company's Web site. The full comment is at http://googleblog.blogspot.com/.

STAND ON PRIVACY

Ware ruled that the 50,000 Web addresses, or URLs, were a relevant request by the government, which wants the data for a statistical study it is doing to show the effectiveness of filtering software at issue in a separate case -- ACLU v. Gonzales -- that concerns a federal law on online child pornography.

"The expectation of privacy by some Google users may not be reasonable, but may nonetheless have an appreciable impact on the way in which Google is perceived, and consequently the frequency with which users use Google," Ware wrote.

"This concern, combined with the prevalence of Internet searches for sexually explicit material ... gives this court pause as to whether the search queries themselves may constitute potentially sensitive information," he said.

In his decision, Judge Ware wrote of the "three vital interests" that needed to be weighed in the case: national interest, proprietary business information and privacy concerns.

"This Court is particularly concerned any time enforcement of a subpoena imposes an economic burden on a non-party," he wrote in a filing made at the close of business of Friday.

Professor T. Barton Carter, a professor of communication at Boston University's College of Communication, said that beyond privacy issues there remain further concerns.

"It is still a little disturbing that essentially the government can compel information from a party that is not involved in a lawsuit," he said.

"Given their initial request, obviously it is a victory for privacy to the extent that no information entered from the users is being offered," Carter said.

(Additional reporting by Adam Tanner, Duncan Martell and Jim Christie in San Francisco)

http://today.reuters.com/news/NewsA...Z_01_N17225386_RTRUKOC_0_US-GOOGLE-RULING.xml

 

[QueEx]

<font size="5"><center>Lawyer: Ex-Qwest Exec Ignored NSA Request</font size></center>

May 12, 8:27 PM (ET)
Associated Press
By KATHERINE SHRADER

WASHINGTON (AP) - Telecommunications giant Qwest refused to provide the government with access to telephone records of its 15 million customers after deciding the request violated privacy law, a lawyer for a former company executive said Friday. For a second day, the former National Security Agency director defended the spy agency's activities.

In a written statement, the attorney for former Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio said the government approached the company in the fall of 2001 seeking access to the phone records of Qwest customers, with neither a warrant nor approval from a special court established to handle surveillance matters.

"Mr. Nacchio concluded that these requests violated the privacy requirements of the Telecommunications Act," attorney Herbert J. Stern said from his Newark, N.J., office.

The Bush administration is facing new questions about civil liberties after the disclosure that the NSA collected information on millions of Americans' everyday telephone calls.

On Friday, CIA director nominee Michael Hayden defended as lawful the secret surveillance programs he oversaw as NSA head from 1999 to 2005, but he declined to comment on the phone-calls database or specific operations.

"It's been briefed to the appropriate members of Congress," Hayden told reporters outside a Senate office. "The only purpose of the agency's activities is to preserve the security and the liberty of the American people. And I think we've done that."

Nacchio told Qwest officials to refuse the NSA requests, which kept coming until Nacchio left the company in June 2002, his lawyer said.

In contrast, AT&T Corp., Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ) and BellSouth Corp. (BLS) complied with the request to turn over phone records shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, USA Today first reported on Thursday.

Qwest, the No. 4 U.S. local phone company, serves customers in 14 Western states. Based in Denver, Qwest Communications International Inc. (Q) has come under fire over criminal and ethical allegations. Nacchio himself is under federal indictment on insider-trading charges.

In a statement, Verizon said press coverage has contained errors about how the company handles customer information. "Verizon will provide customer information to a government agency only where authorized by law for appropriately defined and focused purposes," the company said.

Two New Jersey public interest lawyers sued Verizon on Friday for $5 billion, claiming the phone carrier violated privacy laws by turning over customers' records. The lawsuit asks the court to stop Verizon from supplying the information without a warrant or the subscriber's consent.

Lawmakers have been pressing the Bush administration for information about the NSA's database of telephone records in advance of hearings reviewing Hayden's nomination to be CIA director, scheduled for next Thursday.

The White House on Friday reiterated its support for Hayden and the NSA's operations.

"We're 100 percent behind Michael Hayden," said press secretary Tony Snow. "There's no question about that, and confident that he is going to comport himself well and answer all the questions and concerns that members of the United States Senate may have in the process of confirmation."

Snow added that questions on classified material may have to be handled in closed sessions with select senators who are cleared for access to that information.

Some senators were trying to separate the issue of Hayden's confirmation from questions about White House decisions and the surveillance programs.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said he didn't yet know if collection of the phone records was illegal.

Yet Reid said he has no "specific problems" with Hayden going into the hearing process and said the Air Force general "has always proven to be a person of intellect and a person of independence."

Republicans, including Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner of Virginia, have said Hayden was relying on the advice of top government lawyers when the operations were initiated.

But Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., an Intelligence Committee member, said he now questions Hayden's credibility, adding, "The American people have got to know that when the person who heads the CIA makes a statement that they are getting the full picture."

The NSA was using the data to analyze calling patterns to detect and track suspected terrorist activity, according to information the White House gave to Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo. "Telephone customers' names, addresses and other personal information have not been handed over to NSA as part of this program," Allard said.

Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., said on PBS'"NewsHour With Jim Lehrer" that "the president's program uses information collected from phone companies" - the telephone number called and the caller's number. Bond is a member of the select panel allowed access to all information on another controversial Bush program, the warrantless surveillance operations.

After meeting with Hayden on Friday, Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., said he had "absolute confidence" in the general and that his Senate confirmation hearings should provide the facts on the monitoring programs.

"He's going to have to explain what his role was. To start with, did he put that program forward, whose idea was it, why was it started?" Hagel said.

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, praised Hayden as an excellent nominee. But the chairwoman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee said it was disconcerting "to have information come out by drips and drabs, rather than the administration making the case for programs I personally believe are needed for our national security."

---

Associated Press writers Michael J. Sniffen and Elizabeth White contributed to this report.

http://apnews1.iwon.com//article/20060513/D8HIIG3G1.html?PG=home&SEC=news

 

[QueEx]

[frame]http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/05/11/cauley/index.html[/frame]

 

[QueEx]

[frame]http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/05/11/nsa.phonerecords.ap/index.html[/frame]

 

[QueEx]

<font size="5"><center>AP NewsBreak: Verizon Faces Suit Over NSA </font size></center>


Staff and agencies
12 May, 2006
By BETH DeFALCO, Associated Press Writer 11 minutes ago

TRENTON, N.J. - Verizon Communications Inc. faces its first lawsuit that claims the phone carrier violated privacy laws for giving phone records to the National Security Agency for a secret surveillance program.

"This is the largest and most vast intrusion of civil liberties we‘ve ever seen in the United States," said New Jersey attorney Bruce Afran, who sued with attorney Carl Mayer in federal district court in Manhattan, where Verizon is headquartered.

Verizon said in a statement that because the NSA program is highly classified, it wouldn‘t confirm or deny whether the company participated in the program. It also declined to comment about the lawsuit.

Afran said that he and Mayer will also ask for documents dealing with the origination of the program and President Bush ‘s role in it.



© 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

http://www.newsone.ca/hinesbergjournal/stories/index.php?action=fullnews&id=186496

 

[QueEx]

<font size="5"><center>Telecoms named in NSA story
say they guard privacy</font size>
<font size="4">Lawsuit filed against Verizon, AP reports</font size></center>

Friday, May 12, 2006; Posted: 10:10 p.m. EDT (02:10 GMT)

CNN) -- Verizon Communications on Friday would neither confirm nor deny whether it has provided domestic telephone records to the National Security Agency, but the company insisted it protects customer privacy and would never participate in a government "fishing expedition."

AT&T also released a statement saying that though it has an "obligation" to assist government agencies "responsible for protecting the public welfare," it does so "strictly within the law and under the most stringent conditions" to protect customer privacy.

"Beyond that, we don't comment on matters of national security," AT&T said in a statement.

Thursday, USA Today reported that Verizon, AT&T and BellSouth have provided the NSA with records of billions of domestic phone calls since shortly after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. According to the report, the NSA doesn't record or listen in on the conversations, but uses data about the calls -- numbers, times and locations -- to look for patterns that might suggest terrorist activity.

In the wake of the report, President Bush -- without confirming or denying the existence of such a program -- insisted that NSA intelligence activities are lawful and target only al Qaeda.

"The government does not listen to domestic phone calls without court approval," he said Thursday. "The privacy of ordinary Americans is being fiercely protected."

Verizon said it "will provide customer information to a government agency only where authorized by law for appropriately defined and focused purposes."

"When that information is provided, Verizon seeks to ensure it is properly used for that purpose and is subject to appropriate safeguards against improper use. Verizon does not, and will not, provide any government agency unfettered access to our customer records, or provide information to the government under circumstances that would allow a fishing expedition."

Verizon said it could not comment on the NSA program referred to by Bush because it "is highly classified."

"Nor can we confirm or deny whether we have had any relationship to it," the company's statement said.

Verizon sued
Meanwhile Friday, two attorneys filed suit to stop Verizon from turning over any more records to the NSA without a warrant or consent of the subscriber, according to The Associated Press.

"This is the largest and most vast intrusion of civil liberties we've ever seen in the United States," New Jersey attorney Bruce Afran, who sued with attorney Carl Mayer in federal district court in Manhattan, where Verizon is headquartered, told the AP.

The lawsuit seeks $1,000 for each violation of the Telecommunications Act, or $5 billion if the case is certified as a class-action, the AP reported.

Copyright 2006 CNN. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Associated Press contributed to this report.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/05/12/phone.records/index.html

 

[QueEx]

<font size="5"><center>Police Bypass Subpoenas, Gather Phone Data
From Private Brokers</font size></center>

Jun 20, 4:52 PM (ET)
Associated Press
By TED BRIDIS and JOHN SOLOMON

WASHINGTON (AP) - Federal and local police across the country - as well as some of the nation's best-known companies - have been gathering Americans' phone records from private data brokers without subpoenas or warrants.

These brokers, many of whom market aggressively across the Internet, have broken into customer accounts online, tricked phone companies into revealing information and sometimes acknowledged that their practices violate laws, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.

Legal experts and privacy advocates said police reliance on private vendors who commit such acts raises civil liberties questions.

Those using data brokers include agencies of the Homeland Security and Justice departments - including the FBI and U.S. Marshal's Service - and municipal police departments in California, Florida, Georgia and Utah. Experts believe hundreds of other departments frequently use such services.

"We are requesting any and all information you have regarding the above cell phone account and the account holder ... including account activity and the account holder's address," Ana Bueno, a police investigator in Redwood City, Calif., wrote in October to PDJ Investigations of Granbury, Texas.

An agent in Denver for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Anna Wells, sent a similar request on March 31 on Homeland Security stationery: "I am looking for all available subscriber information for the following phone number," Wells wrote to a corporate alias used by PDJ.

Congressional investigators estimated the U.S. government spent $30 million last year buying personal data from private brokers. But that number likely understates the breadth of transactions, since brokers said they rarely charge law enforcement agencies.

A lawmaker who has investigated the industry said Monday he was concerned about data brokers.

"There's a good chance there are some laws being broken, but it's not really clear precisely which laws, said Rep. Ed Whitfield, R-Ky., head of the House Energy and Commerce investigations subcommittee that plans to begin hearings Wednesday.

Documents gathered by Whitfield's committee show data brokers use trickery, impersonation and even technology to try to gather Americans' phone records. "They can basically obtain any information about anybody on any subject," Whitfield said.

James Bearden, a Texas lawyer who represents four such data brokers, likened the companies' activities to the National Security Agency, which reportedly compiles the phone records of ordinary Americans.

"The government is doing exactly what these people are accused of doing," Bearden said. "These people are being demonized. These are people who are partners with law enforcement on a regular basis."

Many of the executives summoned to testify before Congress this week plan to refuse to answer questions, invoking their Fifth Amendment right against self incrimination.

Larry Slade, PDJ's lawyer, said no one at the company violated laws, but he acknowledged, "I'm not sure that every law enforcement agency in the country would agree with that analysis."

PDJ always provided help to police for free. "Agencies from all across the country took advantage of it," Slade said.

The police agencies told AP they used the data brokers because it was quicker and easier than subpoenas, and their lawyers believe their actions did not violate the Fourth Amendment's guarantee against unlawful search and seizure.

Some agencies, such as Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, instructed agents to stop the practice after congressional inquiries. Police in Orem, Utah, likewise plan to end the practice because of concerns about "questionable methods" used by the data brokers, Lt. Doug Edwards said.

The records also list some of America's most famous corporate names - from automakers to insurers to banks - as purchasing information on private citizens from data brokers, which often help companies track down delinquent customers.

For instance, a 2003 customer list for data broker Universal Communications Company listed Ford Motor Credit Co., the automaker's lending arm, as the single largest purchaser of phone toll records, paying $17,435 to buy such data that year. In all, Ford's lending arm spent more than $50,000 with that data broker that year. Ford also paid $9,000 to another such company, Global Information Group, in 2004, the records state.

Also on UCC's or Global Information's paying client list was the insurer State Farm's banking arm, Chrysler's consumer lending arm, Enterprise Rent-A-Car and banking giants Wells Fargo and Wachovia Financial Services.

At least 50 departments of Wachovia made data requests in 2004, accumulating thousands of dollars in charges. Most of the companies could not provide an immediate explanation when called for comment Tuesday.

Ford Motor Credit spokeswoman Meredith Libby said Tuesday her company used the vendors in the past to help locate customers who weren't paying and had disappeared but the companies "are no longer on our approved vendor lists."

Asked why Ford would need phone toll records, Libby said her company "did not necessarily say (to the vendor), 'Give us this specific piece of data, but rather help us to find this person,'" and the charges for phone records were part of the process.

None of the police agencies interviewed by AP said they researched their data brokers to determine how they gather sensitive information like names associated with unlisted numbers, records of phone calls, e-mail aliases - even tracing a person's location using their cellular phone signal.

"If it's on the Internet and it's been commended to us, we wouldn't do a full-scale investigation," Marshal's Service spokesman David Turner said. "We don't knowingly go into any source that would be illegal. We were not aware, I'm fairly certain, what technique was used by these subscriber services."

At Immigration and Customs Enforcement, spokesman Dean Boyd said agents did not pay for phone records and sought approval from U.S. prosecutors before making requests. Their goal was "to more quickly identify and filter out phone numbers that were unrelated to their investigations," Boyd said.

Targets of the police interest include alleged marijuana smugglers, car thieves, armed thugs and others.

The data services also are enormously popular among collection agencies, bails bondsmen, private detectives and suspicious spouses. Customers included:

_A U.S. Labor Department employee who used her government e-mail address and phone number to buy two months of personal cellular phone records of a woman in New Jersey.

_A buyer who received credit card information about the father of murder victim Jon Benet Ramsey.

_A buyer who obtained 20 printed pages of phone calls by pro basketball player Damon Jones of the Cleveland Cavaliers.

"I'm very disappointed," Jones told AP on Tuesday. "I paid for a service and that service is being violated. I've been an upstanding guy, never been in any trouble or anything like that. I was shocked, and I really want to get to the bottom of this."

Privacy advocates bristled over data brokers gathering records for police without subpoenas.

"This is pernicious, an end run around the Fourth Amendment," said Marc Rotenberg, head of the Washington-based Electronic Privacy Information Center which advocates tougher federal regulation of data brokers. "The government is encouraging unlawful conduct; it's not smart on the law enforcement side to be making use of information obtained improperly."

Legal experts said law enforcement agencies would be permitted to use illegally obtained information from private parties without violating the Fourth Amendment as long as police did not encourage crimes to be committed.

"If law enforcement is encouraging people in the private sector to commit a crime in getting these records, that would be problematic," said Mark Levin, a former top Justice Department official under President Reagan. "If, on the other hand, they are asking data brokers if they have any public information on any given phone numbers, that should be fine."

Levin said he nonetheless would have advised federal agents to use the practice only when it was a matter of urgency or national security and otherwise to stick to a legally bulletproof method like subpoenas for everyday cases.

Congress subpoenaed thousands of documents from data brokers describing how they collected telephone records by impersonating customers.

"I was shot down four times," data broker employee Michele Yontef complained in an e-mail in July 2005 to a colleague. Yontef was among those ordered to appear at this week's hearing.

Another company years ago even acknowledged breaking the law.

"We must break various rules of law in acquiring all the information we achieve for you," Touch Tone Information Inc. of Denver wrote to a law firm in 1998 that was seeking records of calls made on a calling card.

http://apnews.excite.com/article/20060620/D8IC60KG0.html

 

[QueEx]

Cleveland Cavaliers' Damon Jones scratches his head during
a timeout against the Toronto Raptors during their NBA
basketball game March 7, 2006, in Cleveland. Data obtained
from congressional investigators by the Associated Press
show that a customer asked for cell phone records of Jones
in early 2006 from a data broker. (AP Photo/Mark Duncan)

In this document obtained by the Associated Press from
congressional investigators, e-mails from February 2006
show how a customer was trying to obtain information on
NBA basketball player Damon Jones of the Cleveland Cavaliers.
(AP Photo)

In this document obtained by the Associated Press from
congressional investigators, a Jan. 9, 1997, letter outlines
credit card information on John Ramsey, Jon Benet Ramsey's
father that a customer requested from a data broker. (AP Photo)

 

[Helico-pterFunk]

Orwell ... 1984 ...

 

[QueEx]

[frame]http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/05/11/cauley/index.html[/frame]

<font size="5"><center>USA Today Takes Back
Some of NSA Phone-Record Report</font size></center>

Washington Post
By Frank Ahrens and Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, July 1, 2006; Page A02

USA Today has acknowledged that it cannot prove key elements of a blockbuster May 11 story in which it reported that several telecommunications companies were handing over customer phone records to the National Security Agency.

The May article named AT&T Inc., Verizon Communications Corp. and BellSouth Corp. as cooperating with the NSA in compiling an unprecedented database of domestic phone records. Though the NSA was not listening to calls, the spy agency was scouring the records to search for ties to terrorism, the paper said.

The report angered the White House, alarmed privacy advocates and sent other news media scurrying to match the story.

Yesterday, in a lengthy article and accompanying "note to our readers," the nation's largest-circulation newspaper said it could not confirm that BellSouth or Verizon contracted with the NSA, which is charged with intercepting and analyzing foreign communications to look for possible threats to U.S. national security.

The correction illustrates the difficulty of reporting sensitive and often classified government actions, as anonymous sources sometimes backtrack, pursue their own agendas by leaking selective information or say more than they know. News organizations attempt to assemble authoritative stories from multiple sources and agencies, creating plenty of room for potential error.

"We take every error seriously," USA Today Editor Ken Paulson said in an interview. "This was obviously a big story. . . . All we can do is set the record straight."

Reporter Leslie Cauley revealed her unidentified sources to a top editor, Paulson said, and "the sources are credible," adding, "They have a track record with Leslie and she trusts them." But several members of the congressional intelligence committees later contradicted the sources on the question of whether Verizon and BellSouth had provided information to the NSA.

USA Today stood by much of its initial report, saying it had followed up with lawmakers and intelligence and telecom sources. Yesterday's article reported: "Members of the House and Senate intelligence committees confirm that the National Security Agency has compiled a massive database of phone call records."

In the next sentence, the paper wrote: "But some lawmakers also say that cooperation by the nation's telecommunication companies was not as extensive as first reported by USA Today on May 11."

Yesterday, Verizon said it had no further comment on the matter, referring instead to its May 16 rebuttal of the USA Today story.

USA Today said the BellSouth and Verizon denials that came after the May 11 article were "unexpected." The paper said its reporters read sections of the article to sources at the companies and gave them the opportunity to deny their involvement. BellSouth did not deny its participation, and Verizon said it would not comment on national security issues.

So USA Today ran the story. Later, BellSouth said it had conducted an internal investigation into the matter and concluded that the company did not contract with the NSA or turn over phone records, the paper reported yesterday.

"As we have stated numerous times, the NSA never contacted BellSouth, and we never supplied customer calling records to the NSA," BellSouth spokesman Jeff Battcher wrote in an e-mail. "In addition we do not and have never had a contract with the NSA."

Some conservative bloggers instantly reacted to the USA Today correction by citing it as another example of what some on the right see as liberal, anti-Bush sentiment in the "mainstream media."

Some liberal bloggers noted the USA Today story accompanying the correction as further proof of domestic spying by the government but did not mention the correction.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/30/AR2006063000692.html

 

[thoughtone]

^^^^^^^^^