IRS Can Read Emails and Track You w o Warrant

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Triste cosa es no tener amigos, pero más triste ha de ser no tener enemigos porque quién no

tenga enemigos señal es de que no tiene talento que haga sombra, ni carácter que impresione, ni

valor temido, ni honra de la que se murmure, ni bienes que se le codicien, ni cosa alguna que se

le envidie. A sad thing it is to not have friends, but even sadder must it be not having any

enemies; that a man should have no enemies is a sign that he has no talent to outshine others,

nor character that inspires, nor valor that is feared, nor honor to be rumored, nor goods to be

coveted, nor anything to be envied. -Jose Marti

From the desk of Craig B Hulet?

Groundbreaking 'War on Whistleblowers' Investigation Exposes Obama Admin's Record

of Censorship and Persecution of Unsung Heroes and Journalists

IRS: We can read emails without warrant

Privacy protections booted from CISPA data-sharing bill

IRS: We can read emails without warrant

By Brendan Sasso - 04/10/13 12:56 PM ET

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has claimed that agents do not need warrants to read

people's emails, text messages and other private electronic communications, according to internal

agency documents.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which obtained the documents through a

Freedom of Information Act request, released the information on Wednesday.

In a 2009 handbook, the IRS said the Fourth Amendment does not protect emails because

Internet users "do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in such communications." A 2010

presentation by the IRS Office of General Counsel reiterated the policy.

Under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) of 1986, government officials only

need a subpoena, issued without a judge's approval, to read emails that have been opened or that

are more than 180 days old.

Privacy groups such as the ACLU argue that the Fourth Amendment provides greater privacy

protections than the ECPA, and that officials should need a warrant to access all emails and other

private messages.

Traditionally, the courts have ruled that people have limited privacy rights over information they

share with third parties. Some law enforcement groups have argued that this means they only

need a subpoena to compel email providers, Internet service companies and others to turn over

their customers' sensitive content.

But in 2010, a federal appeals court ruled that police violated a man's constitutional rights when

they read his emails without a warrant.

More from The Hill

• House Judiciary threatens subpoena over DOJ kill memos

• Manchin, Toomey reach gun deal including background checks

Despite the court decision, U.S. v. Warshak, the IRS kept its email search policy unchanged in a

March 2011 update to its employee manual, according to the ACLU.

In an October 2011 memo obtained by the ACLU, an IRS attorney explained that the Warshak

decision only applies in the Sixth Circuit, which covers Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and

Tennessee.

But the attorney noted that if a service provider fought the search request, it would likely result

in "protracted litigation," meaning that any leads from the emails would be "stale" if the IRS ever

obtained them.

The IRS did not respond to a request to comment.

The ACLU also submitted requests for documents from the FBI and the Justice Department on

their policies for emails searches, but has not received responses yet.

Lawmakers in both chambers are working on legislation that would update the ECPA to require

a warrant for emails and other private online messages.

At a hearing last month, Elana Tyrangiel, the acting assistant attorney general for the Justice

Department's Office of Legal Policy, agreed that there is "no principled basis" for treating emails

differently depending on how old they are.

IRS claims it can read your e-mail without a warrant

The ACLU has obtained internal IRS documents that say Americans enjoy "generally no privacy" in their

e-mail messages, Facebook chats, and other electronic communications.by Declan McCullagh April

10, 2013

The IRS continued to insist on warrantless e-mail access, internal documents obtained by the

ACLU show, even after a federal appeals court said the Fourth Amendment applied.

The Internal Revenue Service doesn't believe it needs a search warrant to read your e-mail.

Newly disclosed documents prepared by IRS lawyers say that Americans enjoy "generally no

privacy" in their e-mail, Facebook chats, Twitter direct messages, and similar online

communications -- meaning that they can be perused without obtaining a search warrant signed

by a judge.

That places the IRS at odds with a growing sentiment among many judges and legislators who

believe that Americans' e-mail messages should be protected from warrantless search and

seizure. They say e-mail should be protected by the same Fourth Amendment privacy standards

that require search warrants for hard drives in someone's home, or a physical letter in a filing

cabinet.

An IRS 2009 Search Warrant Handbook obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union argues

that "emails and other transmissions generally lose their reasonable expectation of privacy and

thus their Fourth Amendment protection once they have been sent from an individual's

computer." The handbook was prepared by the Office of Chief Counsel for the Criminal Tax

Division and obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.

Nathan Wessler, a staff attorney at the ACLU's Speech, Privacy & Technology Project, said in a

blog post that the IRS's view of privacy rights violates the Fourth Amendment:

Let's hope you never end up on the wrong end of an IRS criminal tax investigation. But if you

do, you should be able to trust that the IRS will obey the Fourth Amendment when it seeks the

contents of your private emails. Until now, that hasn't been the case. The IRS should let the

American public know whether it obtains warrants across the board when accessing people's

email. And even more important, the IRS should formally amend its policies to require its agents

to obtain warrants when seeking the contents of emails, without regard to their age.

The IRS continued to take the same position, the documents indicate, even after a federal appeals

court ruled in the 2010 case U.S. v. Warshak that Americans have a reasonable expectation of

privacy in their e-mail. A few e-mail providers, including Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and

Facebook, but not all, have taken the position that Warshak mandates warrants for e-mail.

The IRS did not immediately respond to a request from CNET asking whether it is the agency's

position that a search warrant is required for e-mail and similar communications.

Before the Warshak decision, the general rule since 1986 had been that police could obtain

Americans' e-mail messages that were more than 180 days old with an administrative subpoena

or what's known as a 2703(d) order, both of which lack a warrant's probable cause requirement.

The rule was adopted in the era of telephone modems, BBSs, and UUCP links, long before

gigabytes of e-mail stored in the cloud was ever envisioned. Since then, the 6th Circuit Court of

Appeals ruled in Warshak, technology had changed dramatically: "Since the advent of e-mail,

the telephone call and the letter have waned in importance, and an explosion of Internet-based

communication has taken place. People are now able to send sensitive and intimate information,

instantaneously, to friends, family, and colleagues half a world away... By obtaining access to

someone's e-mail, government agents gain the ability to peer deeply into his activities."

A March 2011 update to the IRS manual, published four months after the Warshak decision, says

that nothing has changed and that "investigators can obtain everything in an account except for

unopened e-mail or voice mail stored with a provider for 180 days or less" without a warrant. An

October 2011 memorandum (PDF) from IRS senior counsel William Spatz took a similar

position.

A phalanx of companies, including Amazon, Apple, AT&T, eBay, Google, Intel, Microsoft, and

Twitter, as well as liberal, conservative, and libertarian advocacy groups, have asked Congress to

update the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act to make it clear that law enforcement

needs warrants to access private communications and the locations of mobile devices.

In November, a Senate panel approved the e-mail warrant requirement, and last month Rep. Zoe

Lofgren, a Democrat whose district includes the heart of Silicon Valley, introduced similar

legislation in the House of Representatives. The Justice Department indicated last month it will

drop its opposition to an e-mail warrant requirement.

IRS tracks your digital footprint The IRS has quietly upgraded its technology so tax

collectors can track virtually everything people do online.

April 11, 2013

The Internal Revenue Service is collecting a lot more than taxes this year -- it's also acquiring a

huge volume of personal information on taxpayers' digital activities, from eBay auctions to

Facebook posts and, for the first time ever, credit card and e-payment transaction records, as it

expands its search for tax cheats to places it's never gone before.

The IRS, under heavy pressure to help Washington out of its budget quagmire by chasing down

an estimated $300 billion in revenue lost to evasions and errors each year, will start using "robo-

audits" of tax forms and third-party data the IRS hopes will help close this so-called "tax gap."

But the agency reveals little about how it will employ its vast, new network scanning powers.

Tax lawyers and watchdogs are concerned about the sweeping changes being implemented with

little public discussion or clear guidelines, and Congressional staff sources say the IRS use of

"big data" will be a key issue when the next IRS chief comes to the Senate for approval. Acting

commissioner Steven T. Miller replaced Douglas Shulman last November.

"It's well-known in the tax community, but not many people outside of it are aware of this big

expansion of data and computer use," says Edward Zelinsky, a tax law expert and professor at

Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law and Yale Law School. "I am sure people will be concerned

about the use of personal information on databases in government, and those concerns are well-

taken. It's appropriate to watch it carefully. There should be safeguards." He adds that taxpayers

should know that whatever people do and say electronically can and will be used against them in

IRS enforcement.

Consumers are already familiar with Internet "cookies" that track their movements and send

them targeted ads that follow them to different websites. The IRS has brought in private industry

experts to employ similar digital tracking -- but with the added advantage of access to Social

Security numbers, health records, credit card transactions and many other privileged forms of

information that marketers don't see.

"Private industry would be envious if they knew what our models are," boasted Dean Silverman,

the agency's high-tech top gun who heads a group recruited from the private sector to update the

IRS, in a comment reported in trade publications. The IRS did not respond to a request for an

interview.

he agency declined to comment on how it will use its new technology. But agency officials have

been outlining plans at industry conferences, working with IBM, EMC and other private-sector

specialists. In presentations, officials have said they may use the big data for:

Charting and analyzing social media such as Facebook.

Targeting audits by matching tax filings to social media or electronic payments.

Tracking individual Internet addresses and emailing patterns.

Sorting data in 32,000 categories of metadata and 1 million unique "attributes."

Machine learning across "neural" networks.

Statistical and agent-based modeling.

Relationship analysis based on Social Security numbers and other personal identifiers.

Privacy protections booted from CISPA data-sharing bill

Committee overwhelmingly votes down privacy amendments that would have curbed National Security

Agency's access to private sector data. Now the bill heads to the House floor for a vote.

by Declan McCullagh

April 10, 2013

House Intelligence chairman Mike Rogers, CISPA's author (left), says allowing U.S. companies

to share types of data with the National Security Agency will allow them to fend off "cyber

looters."

A controversial data-sharing bill won the approval of a key congressional committee today

without privacy amendments, raising concerns that the National Security Agency and other spy

agencies will gain broad access to Americans' personal information.

The House Intelligence committee, by a vote of 18 to 2, adopted the so-called CISPA bill after

an unusual session closed to the public where panel members debated and voted on the proposed

law in secret.

Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), who proposed three unsuccessful privacy amendments, said

afterward she was disappointed her colleagues did not limit the NSA and other intelligence

agencies from collecting sensitive data on Americans. (See CNET's CISPA FAQ.)

Her privacy amendments would have "required that companies report cyber threat information

directly to civilian agencies, and maintained the long-standing tradition that the military doesn't

operate on U.S. soil against American citizens," Schakowsky said.

Schakowsky had attempted to fix one of the most contested parts of CISPA: language overruling

every state and federal privacy law by allowing companies to "share" some types of confidential

customer information with the NSA and other intelligence and law enforcement agencies. While

no portion of CISPA requires companies to share data with the feds, major telecommunications

providers have illegally shared customer data with the NSA before, leading to a congressional

grant of retroactive immunity in 2008.

Today's committee decision advances CISPA to the House floor, with a vote expected as soon as

next week. It's a difficult vote to handicap: it could be a reprise of last year, when members

approved the legislation by a vote of 248 to 168. On the other hand, if only 40 members switch

their votes from yea to nay, CISPA is defeated.

Last time around, a formal veto threat by President Obama a day before the House vote helped

galvanize Democratic opposition -- Democrats preferred their own legislation, which had a

different set of privacy problems. But the White House has not responded to an anti-CISPA

petition that topped 100,000 signatures a month ago, and the president's recent signature on a

cybersecurity executive order may mean the administration's position on legislation has shifted.

CISPA's advocates say it's needed to encourage companies to share more cybersecurity-related

information with the federal government, and to a lesser extent among themselves. A "Myth v.

Fact" paper (PDF) prepared by the House Intelligence committee says any claim that "this

legislation creates a wide-ranging government surveillance program" is a myth.

"Cyber-hackers from nation-states like China, Russia, and Iran are infiltrating American cyber

networks, stealing billions of dollars a year in intellectual property, and undermining the

technological innovation at the heart of America's economy," House Intelligence chairman Mike

Rogers (R-Mich.), sponsor of CISPA, said after the vote. "This bill takes a solid step toward

helping American businesses protect their networks from these cyber looters."

The four privacy amendments that were rejected included:

• Limiting the sharing of private sector data to civilian agencies, and specifically excluding the

NSA and the Defense Department. (Failed by a 4-14 vote.) (PDF)

• Directing the president to create a high-level privacy post that would oversee "the retention,

use, and disclosure of communications, records, system traffic, or other information" acquired by

the federal government. It would also include "requirements to safeguard communications" with

personal information about Americans. (Failed by a 3-16 vote.) (PDF)

• Eliminating vague language that grants complete civil and criminal liability to companies that

"obtain" information about vulnerabilities or security flaws and make "decisions" based on that

information. (Failed by a 4-16 vote.) (PDF)

• Requiring that companies sharing confidential data "make reasonable efforts" to delete

"information that can be used to identify" individual Americans. (Failed by a 4-16 vote.) (PDF)

Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) voted against CISPA in committee today because the U.S. military

-- which includes the NSA -- shouldn't "operate on U.S. soil against American citizens."

The six amendments that were adopted include:

• Specifying that Homeland Security will be copied on information sent by companies to other

federal agencies "in as close to real time as possible." This amendment also prohibits companies

submitting data to the federal government from specifying that it would be sent only to one

federal agency. Submitted data can be shared with other agencies. (Approved by voice vote.)

(PDF)

• Requiring that privacy officers from the Director of National Intelligence, the Justice

Department, and other agencies "annually and jointly submit to Congress a report" about how

CISPA is used. There is no requirement, however, that the report be unclassified and available to

the public. (Approved by voice vote.) (PDF)

• Saying that organizations receiving information from companies may only use it to safeguard

systems, block unauthorized access, and patch vulnerabilities. There's a big loophole: that does

not apply to the federal government. (Approved by voice vote.) (PDF)

• Deleting nebulous language that would have allowed information shared with the federal

government to be used "to protect the national security." That information can still be used for

cybersecurity purposes, prosecuting cybersecurity crimes, and for prosecuting violent crimes and

people accused of possessing child pornography. (Approved by voice vote.) (PDF)

The primary reason CISPA is so contentious is that it overrides every other state and federal law

on the books, including laws dealing with e-mail privacy, when authorizing companies to share

data with the feds. Data that can be shared includes broad categories of information relating to

security vulnerabilities, network uptime, intrusion attempts, and denial-of-service attacks, with

no limit on including personal data.

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who proposed one of four unsuccessful privacy amendments and

joined Schakowsky in opposing the final bill, said afterward he was "disappointed" that his

proposal was overwhelmingly rejected by his colleagues.

CISPA Excerpts

Excerpts from the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act:

"Notwithstanding any other provision of law, a self-protected entity may, for cybersecurity

purposes -- (i) use cybersecurity systems to identify and obtain cyberthreat information to protect

the rights and property of such self-protected entity; and (ii) share such cyberthreat

information with any other entity, including the Federal Government...

The term 'self-protected entity' means an entity, other than an individual, that provides goods or

services for cybersecurity purposes to itself."

"It is not too much to ask that companies make sure they aren't sending private information about

their customers, their clients, and their employees to intelligence agencies," Schiff said.

Unlike last year's Stop Online Piracy Act outcry, in which Internet users and civil liberties

groups allied with technology companies against Hollywood, no broad alliance exists this time.

Companies including AT&T, Comcast, EMC, IBM, Intel, McAfee, Oracle, Time Warner Cable,

and Verizon have instead signed on as supporters of CISPA.

The Software and Information Industry Association, for instance, applauded the bill's committee

approval after the vote, saying it "supports CISPA because it would provide the critical necessary

framework for early detection and notification of cybersecurity threats."

There are some exceptions. As CNET reported last month, Facebook has been one of the few

companies to rescind its support. Microsoft has also backed away. Google has not taken a public

position.

Michelle Richardson, ACLU legislative counsel, said her organization had identified four

problems with CISPA before today's closed-door vote: limiting government use of shared data,

civilian vs. military access, protection of personal information, and clearly prohibiting "hacking

back" in self-defense to disrupt a suspected attacker's system.

CISPA remains a terrible idea after today's amendments, Richardson said: "Eighty percent of our

original materials and criticism stands. It's going to take a lot of effort on our part to make sure

word gets out to members of the House."

CISPA's Sponsor Can't Even Keep His Story Straight About NSA Having Access To Your

Data

from the also,-wtf-politico? dept

CISPA's sponsors are doing the same thing they did last year when confronted with serious

opposition to a terrible bill: they start lying about it. First, they released a "fact vs. myth" sheet

about the bill that was so ridiculously misleading that the EFF had to pick apart nearly every

dubious claim. A big part of this is trying to hide the fact that the bill has very broad definitions

that will make it much easier for the NSA to get access to private data. No one has claimed that

this automatically allows the NSA to do full "surveillance" via CISPA, but that's what CISPA's

supporters pretend critics have said, so they can fight back against the strawman.

What's incredible is that the statements from CISPA's supporters are, themselves, quite

contradictory. Take, for example, the hilarious statements from CISPA sponsor Mike Rogers to

Politico, in which he seeks to "fire back" at critics who worry about CISPA being used by

the NSA. Read his comments carefully, and you'll see that he goes from saying that the NSA

won't have anything to do with it, to saying that the definitions are broad (so that maybe the NSA

will have something to do with it) to then saying that the NSA is the best at this, so it should be

able to use CISPA to get access to private information. All within a matter of a few sentences.

Here's the full bit from Rogers: "I don't know where they get that. It doesn't say that in the bill.

NSA is not authorized to monitor; this is not a surveillance bill. If you read the bill — I

encourage those privacy groups to actually read the bill — you won't find that in the bill. ...

We're agnostic on how the government would form [an info-sharing regime]; some want

DHS, some want others. We thought, let's be agnostic on that portion so you get the right

regime. But if you don't have the capability of the NSA, taking that information from the Iranians

and the North Koreans and others, and allowing that to get back into the system, it's worthless.

And if you want the gold-standard protection from cyberattacks, the NSA has to be at least

somewhere. They don't have to get it, they don't have to be the lead in it, but they're the ones that

have the capability for overseas collection."

So, basically, it's all an overstatement that the NSA might get access to your data... er... I mean,

we don't actually specify, so we'll let the federal government make its own decisions later when

its outside of public scrutiny and... oh yeah, of course we want the NSA to have access to the

data, because they're "the gold-standard."

That's not going to put the privacy concerns to rest, now, is it? Rogers' problem is that he's

pretending that privacy critics are saying this is an ongoing "surveillance" bill, rather than one

where the NSA can get access to private data. As far as I know, none of the privacy groups

protesting CISPA have made that claim of it being a surveillance bill. They're just worried about

how CISPA destroys (literally, wipes out) any privacy protections for companies handing private

info over to the government. Basically, the end of his statement exactly confirms the concerns

raised by privacy advocates, even as he pretends that it disproves them. Incredible.

Meanwhile, aren't reporters supposed to push back on bogus claims from politicians, rather than

just restating them as fact? *Sigh*

Separately, Rogers' own statements contradict that "fact vs. myth" statement that his staff put

out. In that statement, the House Intelligence Committee argue that there aren't any problems

with "broad" definitions in the bill. And yet, here he clearly talks about how they're "agnostic" on

how the program plays out. That's exactly the kind of "broad" issues that people are concerned

about.

Big data: the greater good or invasion of privacy?

There are benign uses of data-mining, but for most of us the bigger issue is protection from

corporate and state snooping

Pratap Chatterjee guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 12 March 2013 08.30 EDT

Google maintains massive amounts of user data, and the "Do Not Track" icon of its browser has

been shown not to function. Photograph: Uncredited/AP

Spying on ordinary citizens' internet searches is usually considered politically unpalatable,

especially if the government's at hand. Nobody is thrilled about social media applications like

Facebook doing the same, yet many of us indulge anyway – even if we are aware that our

activity can be easily tracked.

As we spill more and more of our secrets – posting drinking sessions on Twitter and asking

Google indiscreet questions, the kind we would never ask our closest confidants – some say that

there's a way to harness our online activity for the betterment of humanity, like spotting potential

health threats. But is there also a downside to "big data" (the new term among information

technology circles for the vast quantities of information now stored online, possibly forever)

being opened up to researchers?

Last week, scientists at Columbia and Stanford, led by Russ B Altman, published their analysis

of 82m online searches, which were provided to them by Microsoft to learn about the symptoms

and conditions of certain drugs. In an article written for the Journal of the American Medical

Informatics Association, the team announced that they had uncovered an unexpected medical

find: the combination of two drugs – paroxetine, an antidepressant, and pravastatin, a

cholesterol-lowering drug – caused high blood sugar.

Such an approach could well support the Sentinel Initiative, a US Food and Drug Administration

(FDA) project meant to track the impact of drugs after they enter the marketplace – or at least,

that has been suggested by some, like John Markoff at the New York Times.

Confusingly, however, the FBI has a new mega-database with exactly the same name – Sentinel

– to track suspected criminals and terrorists. And yes, the FBI also wants to mine "social

networks, including Facebook and Twitter, and immediately translate foreign language tweets

into English" to follow what ordinary people are doing online.

How similar are the tracking technologies used by medical researchers and security agencies?

Well, they're really not that different. And they can be easily used against you, says Paul Ohm,

an associate professor at the University of Colorado law school, who wrote a paper titled

"Broken Promises of Privacy: Responding to the Surprising Failure of Anonymization", in which

he explains that scientists have demonstrated that they can often "re-identify" or "de-anonymize"

individuals hidden in "anonymous" data with astonishing ease. In another paper, this one for the

Harvard Business Review, Ohm wrote:

"In my work, I've argued that these databases will grow to connect every individual to at least

one closely guarded secret. This might be a secret about a medical condition, family history, or

personal preference … It is a secret that, if revealed, would cause more than embarrassment or

shame; it would lead to serious, concrete, devastating harm."

Indeed, Jon Leibowitz, the chairman of the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC), recently

coined the word "cyberazzi" to describe data companies that trawl the internet for information on

consumers. Like paparazzi who stake out restaurants in Hollywood, and who snap pictures of

celebrities in indiscreet situations, the cyberazzi stake out your web browsers and mobile phones

to quietly harvest data on what you like, where you go and what kind of questions you ask.

In addition to medical researchers and the security state, all this data is a gold mine for

marketers. A fascinating Times feature about the statistician Andrew Pole and the scientist

Andreas Weigend, who work for Target and Amazon, respectively, explained how retailers

subtly track life-altering episodes, like pregnancy. Pole told the author:

"Just wait. We'll be sending you coupons for things you want before you even know you want

them."

"It knows who you are. It knows where you live. It knows what you do," wrote another Times

reporter, this time about Acxiom, the biggest company in the world of database marketing.

"It peers deeper into American life than the FBI or the IRS, or those prying digital eyes at

Facebook and Google."

Acxiom is just one of many – Corelogic, Datalogix, eBureau, ID Analytics, Intelius, Peekyou,

Rapleaf and Recorded Future – who sell data to Amazon and Target, who then pitch us products

that we don't need, convincing us to waste our hard earned money. And a number of these

companies are also quietly selling our information to government security agencies.

So how does one ensure that big data is used in a way that is good for everyone?

The policymakers working at the FTC recently offered a three-point plan – privacy by design,

simplified choice for businesses and consumers, and greater transparency.

Ohm's advice?

"We need to slow things down, to give our institutions, individuals, and processes the time they

need to find new and better solutions … Do not push the privacy envelope. Companies that use

personal information in ways that go well beyond the practices of their competitors risk crossing

the line from responsible steward to reckless abuser of consumer privacy."

In theory, most browsers and website allow you to permanently opt out of online behavioral

advertising, but they don't actually prevent tracking. (The "Do Not Track" button in Google

Chrome doesn't actually work) In fact, the current rules allow websites to decide what to do with

information. Much of this may change if the World Wide Web Consortium comes up with

amenable rules, but for now, activists and database marketers have yet to find common ground.

As Jonathan Mayer, a Stanford privacy researcher, told CNN:

"The advertisers have been extraordinarily obstructionist, raising the same issues over and over

again, forcing new issues that were not on the agenda, adding new issues that have been closed,

and launching personal attacks."

Until such an agreement is reached, I recommend reading an article by Stanton McCandlish, who

put together a dozen ways to protect your online privacy. A more detailed and up-to-date guide

from the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse can be found here.

Why we should all worry about being tracked online

'Riot' software developed to monitor people on social networks is as sinister as it sounds. We

need legal safeguards, and fast

James Ball guardian.co.uk, Monday 11 February 2013

'By extracting location details from Facebook, check-ins and photos it builds it builds a picture

of where someone’s been, who they’ve been there with, and where they might go next.

Photograph: Dominic Lipinski/PA

Separating paranoia from healthy caution in the 21st century is only getting harder, as it gets

easier and easier for governments and corporations to track our online behaviour. The latest

development, revealed by the Guardian, is that defence giant Raytheon has created software

capable of tracking people based on information posted to social networks.

Its capabilities are impressively creepy: by extracting location information from Facebook,

check-ins, and even latitude and longitude details from photographs in which targets are tagged

(did you know cameras stored that?), it builds a picture of where someone's been, who they've

been there with, and where they might go next.

This software, named Riot, is the latest in a long line of products offered to track people online,

whether through spyware on their machines or by generating fake online personas who befriend

dissidents. In the past, tracking individuals was difficult and costly, and so kept well targeted.

Today, it's so easy that mass-surveillance is feasible – and so-called "big data" makes it seem

tempting and innocuous.

The "big data" theory works like this: by grabbing hundreds or thousands of datapoints on

millions of people, we build a systematic picture of how everyday people act. By analysing these

by machine for "outliers", or suspicious activity, we can catch the bad guys – and it's OK,

because only at that stage is another human being looking through your personal info.

This is, by and large, fantasy. For one thing, any algorithm will generate hundreds if not

thousands of false positives (innocent people who hit a red flag). Given how rare, say, terrorism

is, the vast majority of people bothered by these systems will be ordinary people facing

previously unbelievable intrusion.

Second, these systems and techniques are just as useful to draconian governments around the

world – as demonstrated in the Middle East uprisings, and time and again with China's internet

monitoring and censorship.

The reality of surveillance tends to be mundane. For years in the United Kingdom, there was (in

certain circles) outrage over the Ripa Act, which allowed councils and public bodies to initiate

targeted surveillance with very limited oversight. Now, the world has moved on: public bodies

barely even need to use Ripa – as they can glean far more information on anyone they choose

through "overt" online sources, with no safeguards whatsoever.

It's easy to believe those with nothing to hide have nothing to fear – and most of us are

essentially decent people, with frankly boring social network profiles. But, of course, to (say) a

petty official with a grudge, almost anything is enough: a skive from work, using the wrong bins,

anything. Everyone's got something someone could use against them, even if only for a series of

annoyances.

It's also tempting to believe that with good privacy settings and tech savvy, we can protect

ourselves. Other people might be caught, but we're far too self-aware for that. But stop and think.

Do you trust every friend you have to lock their privacy settings down? Your mum? Your

grandad? Do they know to strip location data from photos? Not to tag you in public posts? Our

privacy relies on the weakest point of each of our networks – and that won't hold.

Surveillance is getting cheaper and easier by the day, which in turn proves almost irresistible –

for those with good and bad intentions – to make more use of it.

The only way to prevent such a shift is to group together, raise funds, and lobby hard for real

legal safeguards, fast, before the culture shift is irreversible. Anything less is acquiescence.

The anti-drone hoodie that helps you beat Big Brother's spy in the sky

Unmanned surveillance drones are a global concern, but designer Adam Harvey has concocted

an outlandish solution (Not that you’d stand out or anything like that right? Ed)

Tom Meltzer The Guardian, Sunday 31 March 2013

Blending in? … The anti-drone hoodie, as modelled by Tom Meltzer, keeps surveillance off your

back. Photograph: David Levene for the Guardian

I am wearing a silver hoodie that stops just below the nipples. Or, if you prefer, a baggy crop-top

with a hood. The piece – this is fashion, so it has to be a "piece" – is one of a kind, a prototype. It

has wide square shoulders and an overzealous zip that does up right to the tip of my nose.

It does not, it's fair to say, make its wearer look especially cool. But that's not really what this

hoodie is about. It has been designed to hide me from the thermal imaging systems of unmanned

aerial surveillance vehicles – drones. And, as far as I can tell, it's working well.

"It's what I call anti-drone," explains designer Adam Harvey. "That's the sentiment. The material

in the anti-drone clothing is made of silver, which is reflective to heat and makes the wearer

invisible to thermal imaging."

The "anti-drone hoodie" was the central attraction of Harvey's Stealth Wear exhibition, which

opened in central London in January, billed as a showcase for "counter-surveillance fashions". It

is a field Harvey has been pioneering for three years now, making headlines in the tech

community along the way.

It began in 2010 with Camoflash, an anti-paparazzi handbag that responds to the unwanted

camera flashes with a counter-flash of its own, replacing the photograph's intended subject with a

fuzzy orb of bright white light.

Then came his thesis project CV Dazzle, a mix of bold makeup and hairstyling based on military

camouflage techniques, designed to flummox computer face-recognition software. It worked, but

also made you look like a cyberpunk with a face-painting addiction. Which was not

exactly inconspicuous.

Once again, though, that wasn't really the point. "These are primarily fashion items and art

items," Harvey tells me. "I'm not trying to make products for survivalists. I would like to

introduce this idea to people: that surveillance is not bulletproof. That there are ways to interact

with it and there are ways to aestheticise it."

There is, I point out, no obvious target audience for anti-drone fashion. He's unfazed. "The kind

of person who would wear it really depends on what drones end up being used for. You can

imagine everything, from general domestic spying by a government, or more commercial

reconnaissance of individuals." I suggest perhaps political protesters. "Yeah, sure. Maybe that's

the actual market."

Harvey is well aware his work can seem a little before its time. "I wouldn't say many people have

a problem being imaged by drones yet," he deadpans. "But it imagines that this is a problem and

then presents a functional solution."

Reality, to be fair, is not so far behind. Over the next 15 years the US Federal Aviation

Administration anticipates more than 20,000 new drones will appear in American skies, owned

not just by law enforcement agencies and the military, but also public health bodies and private

companies.

In the UK, several police forces are already experimenting with drones, and not just for thermal

imaging. "They can be equipped with things called IMSI-catchers that will work out the mobile

phone numbers of any people in a certain area," explains Richard Tynan, research officer at

campaign group Privacy International.

"If police deploy these things for crowd control there's no issue with them figuring out every

single person who's in there – and their mobile phone numbers. They can also intercept calls and

send out false messages. It's not just the police either. Cybercriminals can use these, or even

business opponents. This technology already exists."

Tynan is sceptical about the power of inventions such as the hoodie to protect us from such

technology. "The growth in [civilian counter-surveillance] will be dependent on the kind of work

we do here to uncover what surveillance is being used. They will always lag behind in the

battle."

Not least because many of the people making counter-surveillance equipment are keen to keep it

out of civilian hands. "The only people who really don't need to be seen," says military

camouflage designer Guy Cramer, "are the ones who are doing something wrong out there."

Cramer is, in a sense, Harvey's military equivalent: another pioneer in the art of vanishing. Last

year, Cramer's delightfully shady-sounding company HyperStealth Biotechnology Corp made

headlines worldwide with its claim to have built a functioning "invisibility cloak", using light-

bending optical camouflage to make a soldier simply disappear. So far, only various members of

military top brass have been permitted to see the cloak in action – for fear, he says, that the

technology will fall into the wrong hands.

Cramer has also created an "intelligent textile" named Smartcamo, capable of changing colour to

match its surroundings. Unlike with the cloak, Cramer plans to make the technology available to

consumers. But hopes of becoming invisible to Big Brother won't be drastically improved; when

selling to the public he and many of his competitors deliberately leave civilian customers

exposed.

"When we sell to the commercial market, we use special inks that actually don't work under

infrared conditions. It looks identical but you show up on the infrared as a big white target." The

motive is mistrust of the civilian buyer. "It would cost me pennies more to add the infrared but I

wouldn't want to give the bad guys that advantage."

He, too, is sceptical about the real-world application of anti-drone fashionwear: "It doesn't matter

how good your clothing is, if you're not masking every part of your body – your hands, your

face, your eyes – it's going to give away your position." An anti-drone burqa, then? That, he

admits, would do the trick. But it would really take the fashion out of counter-surveillance

fashionwear.

Northern Ireland police to use drones at G8 summit

Police force want to buy two remote-controlled aircraft to assist with security at this summer's

economic summit

guardian.co.uk, Friday 15 March 2013

The drones could cost the PSNI up to £1m. Photograph: Keith Morris/Alamy

The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) is expected to buy two drones for the G8 summit

in County Fermanagh in June, it emerged tonight. The aircraft can relay live pictures from high-

quality cameras and are flown remotely.

It was reported that they could cost around £1m.

World leaders such as US president Barack Obama are expected to attend this summer's

economic gathering, and a massive security operation is planned at the luxury Lough Erne golf

resort which is hosting the conference.

The PSNI has told the Policing Board that it wants to buy the drones for use during the G8

summit and afterwards to combat terrorism and crime, the BBC said.

The board has to be briefed in advance about any planned purchase or deployment, and that

briefing will take place next week.

A board spokeswoman said: "I can confirm that there will be discussions at the board next week

around the policing arrangements for the G8 summit."

Protester wins surveillance database fight

John Catt, who has no criminal record, wins legal action to have records deleted from police

database of suspected extremistsRob Evans, Paul Lewis and Owen Bowcott

The Guardian, Thursday 14 March 2013

An 88-year-old campaigner has won a landmark lawsuit against police chiefs who labelled him a

"domestic extremist" and logged his political activities on a secret database.

The ruling by three senior judges puts pressure on the police, already heavily criticised for

running undercover operatives in political groups, to curtail their surveillance of law-abiding

protesters.

The judges decided police chiefs acted unlawfully by secretly keeping a detailed record of John

Catt's presence at more than 55 protests over a four-year period.

The entries described Catt's habit of drawing sketches of the demonstrations. Details of the

surveillance, which recorded details of his appearance such as "clean-shaven" and slogans on his

clothes, were revealed by the Guardian in 2010.

The pensioner, who has no criminal record, is among thousands of political campaigners

recorded on the database by the same covert unit that has been embedding spies such as Mark

Kennedy – a police officer who infiltrated environmental protest groups – in political movements

for more than a decade.

On Thursday Lord Dyson, who is the Master of the Rolls, and two other appeal court judges

ordered Bernard Hogan-Howe, the commissioner of the Metropolitan police, to delete Catt's file

from the database, ruling that the surveillance had significantly violated his human rights.

The judges noted that the police could not explain why it was necessary to record Catt's political

activities in minute detail.

Lawyers for the police had argued that the anti-war activist regularly attended demonstrations

against a Brighton arms factory near his home, which had at times descended into disorder.

The judges dismissed arguments from Adrian Tudway, the police chief then in charge of the

covert unit, that police needed to monitor Catt because he "associates closely with violent"

campaigners against the factory of the EDO arms firm.

They said it was "striking" that Tudway had not said the records held on the pensioner had

helped police in any way.

"Mr Tudway states, in general terms, that it is valuable to have information about Mr Catt's

attendance at protests because he associates with those who have a propensity to violence and

crime, but he does not explain why that is so, given that Mr Catt has been attending similar

protests for many years without it being suggested that he indulges in criminal activity or

actively encourages those that do."

The judges added that it appeared that officers had been recording "the names of any persons

they can identify, regardless of the particular nature of their participation".

Catt said: "I hope this judgment will bring an end to the abusive and intimidatory monitoring of

peaceful protesters by police forces nationwide.

"Police surveillance of this kind only serves to undermine our democracy and deter lawful

protest."

A similar court of appeal ruling four years ago forced the Met to remove 40% of photographs of

campaigners held on another database.

In a separate ruling, which also challenged the police's practice of storing the public's personal

data on databases, the three judges ordered the Met to erase a warning that had been issued

against an unnamed woman.

Three years ago officers had warned the woman for allegedly making a homophobic comment

about a neighbour. But she argued that police had treated her unfairly as she had not been given

an opportunity to respond to the allegation.

She took legal action to prevent the Met keeping a copy of the warning notice on their files for

12 years. She feared it could be disclosed to employers when they checked her criminal record.

A Met spokesperson said: "We are disappointed with today's judgment and intend to consider it

carefully before reaching a decision on whether to appeal.

"Police databases, including those containing data on domestic extremism, are maintained in

compliance with the police information statutory code of practice.

"This provides a framework for the collection of information for policing purposes. The national

domestic extremism unit database is maintained according to these principles."

Groundbreaking 'War on Whistleblowers' Investigation Exposes Obama Admin's Record

of Censorship and Persecution of Unsung Heroes and Journalists

Robert Greenwald's new documentary sheds light on how far the national security state will go

to keep its secrets.

April 9, 2013

The 9/11 attacks on America did not just launch Washington’s war on terrorism; they launched a

new White House war on whistleblowers, first under President George W. Bush and then under

President Barack Obama, according to a bold new documentary directed by filmmaker Robert

Greenwald.

War on Whistleblowers: Free Press and the National Security State traces how two of the most

powerful and secretive Washington power centers—the Pentagon’s military-industrial complex

and Internet era’s national security state—ran amok after 9/11 and declared war on a handful of

whistleblowers who went to the press to expose lies, fraud and abuses that meant life or death for

troops and spying on millions of Americans. It explores why Obama, who promised the most

transparent administration, became the most secretive president in recent decades and even more

vindictive to intelligence-related whistleblowers than George W. Bush.

Whistleblowers are not spies or traitors, as the Bush and Obama administration’s lawyers have

alleged. They are patriotic and often conservative Americans who work inside the government

and with military contractors, and who find unacceptable—and often life-threatening—or illegal

behavior goes unheeded when they report it through the traditional chain of command. They

worry about doing nothing and feel compelled to go to the press, even if they suspect they may

lose their jobs. What they don’t realize is that their lives will never quite be the same again,

because they underestimate the years of government persecution that follows.

The documentary portrays the whistleblower as a special kind of American hero—one whose

importance is easily forgotten in today’s infotainment-drenched media. Since the Vietnam War

in the 1960s, whistleblowers have been part of many history-changing events: questioning the

war in Vietnam by releasing the Pentagon Papers on military’s failings; exposing the Watergate

burglary that led to President Richard Nixon's resignation; exposing the illegal nationwide

domestic spying program by the George W. Bush administration after 9/11; revealing the

military’s failure to replace Humvees in Iraq and Afghanistan with better bomb-deflecting

vehicles, leading to hundreds of deaths and maimings; revealing how the nation’s largest military

contractor was building a new Coast Guard fleet with ships whose hulls could buckle in rough

seas and putting radios on smaller rescue boats that wouldn’t work when wet.

These are some of the scandals and issues whose contours are traced by the documentary,

especially the explosive growth of the military-industrial complex and national security state

after 9/11, and how these institutions sought to silence those who questioned and tried to correct

mistakes or seek accountability. The film also shows how reporters, at blogs, newspapers and TV

networks, have real power to put pressure on government and force change, and how public-

interest activists are a conduit for that critical exchange of information. A free press very much

matters.

A key element of War on Whistleblowers is the number of nationally known journalists who

speak out collectively and for the first time in reaction to the government’s attacks on their

sources and their reporting. The film features many respected mainstream investigative reporters,

including theWashington Post’s Dana Priest, the New Yorker'sJane Mayer and Seymour Hersch,

USA Today’sTom Vanden Brook,New York Times’ media critic David Carr and former Times

editor Bill Keller, among others.

Still, the documentary leaves a lingering impression that the system—many government agencies

and their embedded codes of secrecy, self-interest and self-protection—endures in the long run,

even if whistleblowers stop or slow their agenda. Indeed, the film makes a powerful case that

Obama has been seduced by the nation’s spymasters, which is why his prosecutors have tried to

intimidate and punish these messengers more than all recent presidencies combined.

The Military-Industrial Complex

The film starts with a modern telling of an old story. President Dwight Eisenhower’s warned the

nation about the "military-industrial complex" nearly 65 years ago. The film shows what that

means in 2006, when the Marine Corp’s first female officer, Major Megan McClung, was killed

by a roadside bomb while riding in a Humvee.

At the Pentagon, Franz Gayl was Marine Corp’s science and technology advisor and started

looking at why there were so many roadside deaths and injuries. He discovered that Humvees

weren’t designed to withstand the blasts, but the military had other troop carriers that could. “If

not me, then who? If not now, then when? It was one of those situations,” he tells the

filmmakers. “I said, it doesn’t matter what the consequences are, personal or otherwise.’ I said,

this needs to be fixed."

The film shows how patriotic and selfless impulses like these collide with Washington’s system:

the mix of administrative, institutional, political and private sector resistance to acknowledging

mistakes, their impact, the cost and doing something about it.

Gayl discovered that Humvees, made by an Indiana-based company, were never designed to

withstand roadside bombs. As a result, one third of that war’s casaulties up to that time were in

Humvees hit by the buried bombs. “Hundreds of marines were tragically lost, thousands were

tragically maimed, probably unnecessarily,” he said. “So I said, let’s replace the Humvees with

what are called MRAPs, mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles.” These ride higher above the

ground and deflect blasts from below.

Gayl said the Marines had asked for MRAPs, but somehow that request was sidelined at the

Pentagon, causing “19 months of delay and that had a direct impact on lost lives, unnecessarily.”

He went up the Pentagon chain of command: he told his supervisors, the agency that was

supposed to be providing support, then systems command, and at every step got nowhere. He

then tried to tell the Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s staff, but they looked at his report.

“They said absolutely not, that cannot be allowed to go forward,” he recounted. That’s when

Gayl decided to contact Sharon Weinberger, a reporter at Wired’s DangerRoom, a blog dedicated

to cutting-edge military technology.

Gayl, notably, is an insider in the military-industrial complex. But he says the military is

supposed to drive industry to meet its needs, not the other way around. DangerRoom’s report got

the attention of then senator Joe Biden’s staff. They arranged for him to talk to USA Today’sTom

Vanden Brook to give the issue more prominence. “I provided him unclassified information

which was key to understanding the issue,” Gayl said. It was obviously a front-page story in July

2007, with thousands of lives at stake and questions about why the Pentagon was resisting an

immediate and obvious solution.

But getting results dragged on. Two years after deciding he had to act, Gayl testified in Congress

in 2009. “Now it is in the press and the [Marine Corps] Commandant is getting asked about it

during House Armed Service Committee testimony,” Gayl recounted, to which the nation’s top

marine told the committee, “We don’t have an answer right now to how long-term the MRAP is

going to be.”

Then the backlash began.Vanden Brook was told his Pentagon access was going to end. Gayl

received performance reviews saying he was a substandard employee, “bottom 3 percent,”

unreliable, untrustworthy, and was put on administrative leave. “The MRAPs are starting to get

media attention, but the guy who makes it happen, Franz Gayl, is losing his security clearance

and is getting pounded on in his own job,” said Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project

on Government Oversight (POGO). Losing a security clearance meant Gayl could not get

military work in Washington.

Gayl, it turns out, was lucky as far as whistleblowers go. After Robert Gates became Secretary of

Defense, he publically backed the MRAPs. Soon, more than 24,000 were being built 'round the

clock and sent to Iraq and Afghanistan. Soldiers said they started saving American lives. “The

number of deaths and maimings just plummeted,” Gayl said. But he was still “losing his job,

even as the right thing was happening,” POGO’s Brian said. So POGO and other advocates

launched a media and legal campaign, which got Gayl his Pentagon job back. “But why didn’t

they do the right thing?” he asked.

The answer is the profits for Humvee contracts. There are hundreds of millions of dollars at

stake, the film points out. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars were more than an economic boom for

defense contractors. “It is the military industrial complex,” Gayl said. “I’m not some left-wing

guy who grabbed onto that concept. I consider myself a conservative, a patriotic American. But

it’s real. And there are so many conflicts of interest. This is the beast that we have in

industrialized society. This problem is real.”

The National Security State

The documentary then jumps to an even deeper problem. Washington’s lobbying world revolves

around money, power and influence. To some extent, Gayl’s story is more about the money side

of this equation than the power side. But the obsession with power cuts deeper.

If the military-industrial complex is a 20th-century creation formed after WWII, the 21st

century’s behemoth is national-security state, formed after 9/11. This data-driven world includes

federal monitoring of virtually every electronic transaction or message by all Americans,

regardless of constitutional protections and legal procedures written in the age of paper

documents and search warrants.

“What we discovered… was there are over 1,200 government organizations working at the top-

secret level on counterterrorism,” said the Washington Post’s Priest. “There are another close to

2,000 companies that work for the government on top-secret matters. And they’re all located in

about 10,000 locations throughout the country. There are close to 1 million people who have top-

secret clearance.”

Calling it a "state within the state" is not an exaggeration. The national security state is a vast

convergence of government agencies and private interests that are as determined to preserve its

power and influence and do whatever it takes to achieve its goals. “We talk about a national

security state that pretends that it is interested in national security," said Daniel Ellsberg, the

Vietnam War whistleblower. “But in fact, it is interested in the security of corporate interests, of

agency interests, of politicians keeping their jobs.”

The film says that whistleblowers are needed more than ever to hold this secret segment of

government and industry accountable. And what’s most surprising is that the Obama

administration has been cracking down on a handful of federal employees-turned-whistleblowers

in a way that makes what happened to Gayl seem like child’s play.

The documentary goes on to profile Thomas Drake, the former senior executive of the National

Security Agency, whose first day on the job was Sept. 11, 2001. His job was to oversee

electronic intelligence gathering by all federal agencies and to sift through it to identify threats.

The NSA’s longtime mandate was not to spy on Americans, but as Drake learned, that’s exactly

what certain corners of the agency was doing on a scale that was unprecedented: sifting through

tens of millions of emails, phone calls and other data to try to find and stop terrorists. There were

no controls, no accountability and no oversight, he discovered. It was electronic warfare without

battlefield rules. When he voiced his concerns to his boss, Drake was told, “It’s all been

approved. Don’t worry about it.”

The documentary also profiles Michael DeKort, a former lead systems engineer for the

Deepwater Program, where the nation’s largest defense contractors, Lockeed-Martin, had a $24

billion contract to build a new generation of Coast Guard cutters and outfit smaller rescue boats.

DeKort discovered that the radios Lockheed-Martin planned to install on the smaller rescue boats

were not waterproof, and that the hulls of the new boats were prone to bending and buckling

under pressure—which is exactly what happens in stormy seas. “Like most people, maybe they

tell their boss and they drop it. That wasn’t good enough,” he said.

The film also profiles Thomas Tamm, a former Department of Justice attorney at what was then

called the Office of Intelligence Policy and Review. When a suspected terrorist was arrested

abroad, if his cellphone or computer had U.S. phone numbers on it, Tamm was part of a team

that would go before a secret court to get permission to monitor those numbers and emails for 90

days. Tamm discovered that there was a separate initiative, simply called the “program,” where

monitoring occurred without going through any court. Some of his colleagues thought it was

illegal, he said, but they were told to overlook it.

All of these people went up their chain of command—in their agencies, to Congress’ oversight

committees, or up the corporate ladder to the executive suite—and got nowhere.

“I came to the decision that I thought the American people should know, and let the American

people decide if the government was doing what they considered legal or not,” Tamm said,

echoing sentiments held by Drake and DeKort. And all of these people came to the unavoidable

conclusions that they had to speak to the press, even if it put their jobs at risk and upended their

lives. “I remember picking up the cradle of the [pay]phone and calling a reporter by the name of

Eric Lichtblau at theNew York Times,” Tamm said. “Once I put the phone down, I knew I was

committed to the path I decided to take. I was pretty confident that my life would not be the

same.”

Tamm and Drake became whistleblowers during the Bush administration. But they did not

anticipate that the Obama administration would take up Bush’s anti-whistleblower vendetta,

especially because they were involved in intelligence-gathering. When Obama took office, he

promised his administration would be the most transparent ever. But that’s not what happened.

“In 2011, there were 92 million classification decisions, four times the number of decisions as

the last year of George W. Bush,” said Ellsberg, talking about the government’s warehouses of

secret files. “That’s not increased transparency, of course. That’s closing the curtains.”

When it came to Tamm and Drake, the legal hammer that fell on them got far worse—until both

men had their day in court. “I never imagined that he [Obama] would just run with it, and take it

far beyond what the Bush administration had implemented,” Drake said. “They have indicted

more people for violating secrecy than all of the prior administrations put together,” said ex-New

York Times editor Keller.

Eventually, these men also found relief from federal judges who rejected these sham

prosecutions and reprimanded the government’s prosecutors. In June 2011, the DOJ, after four

years of accusing Drake of a dozen felonies that could have meant 35 years in jail, dropped all

but one charge: a misdemeanor count of unauthorized use of a computer. That is the electronic

equivalent of a parking ticket.

That same spring, after seven years, the government also dropped its investigation of Tamm,

without explanation, apology or offering him his job back. Drake is now working at an Apple

store while he completes a PhD in advanced public administration. Tamm is strugging as a

private defense attorney and seeking speaking engagements to talk about this experience. Their

careers, like DeKort’s, were derailed if not ruined.

Last fall, Congress passed and Obama signed the Whistleblower Enhancement Protection Act.

But laws governing whistleblowers in the intelligence sphere remain weaker than in other areas,

the film notes, saying that discrepancy prompted Obama to issue a directive protecting

intelligence agency whistleblowers, but only to talk to superiors within the government—not to

the press. That is a key distinction, because in all of the film’s examples, corrective action only

came after whistleblowers spoke with reporters and a handful of government oversight advocacy

groups launched media campaigns.

Meanwhile, the Obama administration hasn’t dropped charges against former Private Bradley

Manning, Wikileak’s source. And the FBI’s investigation into who leaked information about a

computer worm created to dismantle Iran’s nuclear program, is continuing. Indeed, some of the

news organizations whose reporters and editors are interviewed in the documentary are still

fighting the federal government in court.

America’s founders understood that the worst of human nature had to be kept in check by

limiting how political power was held and shared. That’s why they created branches of

government with checks and balances, and protected the press in the First Amendment. As War

on Whistleblowers: Free Press and the National Security Statereminds us, the men and women

who dare to speak out have a unique role in this democratic process—as does a free press—and

should be seen as patriots. They sacrifice their careers, all because they believed that American

govermment could do better to serve its soldiers overseas and its citizenry at home.

Brave New Films seeks to distribute the film as widely as possible, using traditional and digital

platforms including Netflix, iTunes, Hulu, Amazon and Time-Warner.New York Timesreporter

Scott Shane and Public Editor Margaret Sullivan,Rolling Stone’s Michael Hastings and

MSNBC’s Mike Isikoffwill participate in panel discussions of the documentary atpremieres in

New York City (April 17), Los Angeles (April 23)and Washington (April 16).Screenings are also

being scheduled on university campuses across the country.For more information, contact

Linsey Pecikonis at Brave New Films.

Craig B Hulet was both speech writer and Special Assistant for Special Projects to Congressman

Jack Metcalf (Retired); he has been a consultant to federal law enforcement DEA, ATF&E of

Justice/Homeland Security for over 25 years; he has written four books on international relations

and philosophy, his latest is The Hydra of Carnage: Bush’s Imperial War-making and the Rule of

Law - An Analysis of the Objectives and Delusions of Empire. He has appeared on over 12,000

hours of TV and Radio: The History Channel “De-Coded”; He is a regular on Coast to Coast

AM w/ George Noory and Coffee Talk KBKW; CNN, C-Span ; European Television "American

Dream" and The Arsenio Hall Show; he has written for Soldier of Fortune Magazine,

International Combat Arms, Financial Security Digest, etc.; Hulet served in Vietnam 1969-70,

101st Airborne, C Troop 2/17th Air Cav and graduated 3rd in his class at Aberdeen Proving

Grounds Ordnance School MOS 45J20 Weapons. He remains a paid analyst and consultant in

various areas of geopolitical, business and security issues: terrorism and military affairs. Hulet

lives in the ancient old growth Quinault Rain Forest.