Bathrooms in Capitol Building run out of toilet paper; Senators forced to use Fourth Amendment instead
“The House of Representatives voted 227-183 to update the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to allow warrantless wiretapping of telephone and electronic communications. The vote extends the FISA amendment for six months. ‘The administration said the measure is needed to speed the National Security Agency’s ability to intercept phone calls, e-mails and other communications involving foreign nationals “reasonably believed to be outside the United States.”
So the next obvious answer is to just use encrypted or “secure” cellphones, right? Use encryption, right?
Wrong. Looks like the NSA has pressured the Telecommunications Industry Association or TIA to cripple the algorithm used, so the NSA can crack that easily too.
Unfortunately, the TIA created a poor algorithm, and thousands of digital cellular users are now using it. How much of this is due to direct government intervention is unclear, but David Banisar, attorney for the Electronic Privacy Information Center, is ready to place the blame squarely on the NSA. “This is another illustration of how US government efforts to control cryptography threaten the security and privacy of Americans.“
Perhaps a handset like the OpenMoko, based upon Linux, will leverage a stronger encryption than the TIA has provided on commercial handsets.
Privacy advocates are outraged, as they should be. This administration wants to make it possible for the Attorney General to wiretap anybody, any place, any time without court review, without any checks and balances. We all know how well the current Attorney General is doing, with charges of perjury against him.
“The technotronic era involves the gradual appearance of a more controlled society. Such a society would be dominated by an elite, unrestrained by traditional values. Soon it will be possible to assert almost continuous surveillance over every citizen and maintain up-to-date complete files containing even the most personal information about the citizen. These files will be subject to instantaneous retrieval by the authorities.” –Zbigniew Brzezinski
“Today the path of total dictatorship in the United States can be laid by strictly legal means, unseen and unheard by the Congress, the President, or the People. Outwardly, we have a Constitutional government. We have operating within our government and political system, another body representing another form of government – a bureaucratic elite.” — Senator William Jenner 1954
“We shall have world government whether or not you like it, by conquest or consent.”— James Warburg, to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, February 17, 1950.
Lovely.