Magpie

Thursday, June 29, 2006

Now we know why Dubya's administration has tried to keep Guantánamo cases from reaching the Supreme Court.

The prez knew he'd never win — even in a stacked, right-wing Court.

In a major legal defeat for Dubya's administration, the Supremes ruled this morning that using military tribunals to try Guantánamo prisoners violate the Geneva Conventions and US military rules. The vote was 5-3, with Chief Justice John Roberts not voting because he had previously ruled on the case when he was on a lower federal court.

Here's the summary of the decision from SCOTUSblog:

The Supreme Court ruled ... that Congress did not take away the Court's authority to rule on the military commissions' validity, and then went ahead to rule that President Bush did not have authority to set up the tribunals at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and found the commissions illegal under both military justice law and the Geneva Convention. In addition, the Court concluded that the commissions were not authorized when Congress enacted the post-9/1l resolution authorizing a response to the terrorist attacks, and were not authorized by last year's Detainee Treatment Act....

The Court expressly declared that it was not questioning the government's power to hold Salim Ahmed Hamdan "for the duration of active hostilities" to prevent harm to innocent civilians. But, it said, "in undertaking to try Hamdan and subject him to criminal punishment, the Executive is bound to comply with the Rule of Law that prevails in this jurisdiction."

Four Justices concluded that Salim Ahmed Hamdan could not be charged with conspiracy before a military commission, but that did not have majority support, so its binding effect is uncertain. (Emphasis mine)

While today's ruling did not deal with the question of whether Dubya can legally designate citizens as 'enemy combatants' and hold them indefinitely without trial, my guess is that the same majority that tossed out the administration's military tribunals will case a jaundiced eye on the notion of locking citizens up and throwing away the key.

| | Posted by Magpie at 8:57 AM | Get permalink

Wednesday, June 28, 2006

So, is your web surfing being monitored by the NSA?

Over at 27B Stroke 6, Kevin Poulson has a very ineresting post about what we currently know about the NSA's illegal wiretapping of phone and internet traffic to, from, and within the US. This knowledge comes from a statement by internet expert and former FCC advisor J. Scott Marcus [PDF file], filed last week with a federal court in Seattle as part of the Electronic Frontier Foundation's lawsuit against AT&T for aiding the NSA in its wiretapping efforts.

Here are the conclusions that Marcus draws after examining formerly secret AT&T documents submitted to the court by EFF:

The AT&T documents are authentic. That AT&T insists they remain under seal is evidence enough of this, but Marcus points out that the writing style is pure Bell System, with the "meticulous attention to detail that is typical of AT&T operations."
There may be dozens of surveillance rooms in AT&T offices around the country. Among other things, Marcus finds that portions of the documents are written to cover a number of different equipment rack configurations, "consistent with a deployment to 15 to 20" secret rooms.
The internet surveillance program covers domestic traffic, not just international traffic. Marcus notes that the AT&T spy rooms are "in far more locations than would be required to catch the majority of international traffic"; the configuration in the San Francisco office promiscuously sends all data into the secret room; and there's no reliable way an analysis could infer a user's physical location from their IP address. This, of course, directly contradicts President Bush's description of the "Terrorist Surveillance Program."
The system is capable of looking at content, not just addresses. The configuration described in the Klein documents -- presumably the Narus software in particular -- "exists primarily to conduct sophisticated rule-based analysis of content", Marcus concludes.

The most interesting part of Marcus' analysis, says Poulson, is something we figured out the very first time we heard about the NSA's wiretapping room at AT&T San Francisco networking center: Any internet traffic that passes through that center can be monitored — regardless of where that traffic originates or where it was going. In other words, you're not safe if you don't use AT&T or one of its subsidiaries as your ISP. If your internet traffic goes through San Francisco, the NSA can check out what you're doing.

To help make this paranoia real, Poulson offers a simple test that any Windows user can run to see whether the NSA eavesdroppers might be listening in. (You'll find it near the bottom of his post.)

I just ran the test and — yes — Magpie's traffic goes through AT&T's San Francisco network center.

| | Posted by Magpie at 9:25 AM | Get permalink

Sunday, June 25, 2006

Slow blogging ahead.

If you hadn't already noticed that it's been pretty slow blogging for the past few days. I'm starting a new job this week, and getting my life organized for having far less free time than I've gotten used to is ... well, taking a lot of time. Plus I have no idea ho much time I'll have to blog for the next few days as I settle into a new routine.

So please do keep checking in at Magpie, but don't be surprised to find that pickings are pretty slim. Hopefully this interruption in your scheduled service will go away Real Soon Now.

| | Posted by Magpie at 3:43 PM | Get permalink