by Tom Burghardt
April 17, 2011
from
GlobalResearch Website
|
Tom Burghardt is a researcher
and activist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In addition to
publishing in Covert Action Quarterly and Global Research, he is a
Contributing Editor with Cyrano's Journal Today. His articles can be
read on Dissident Voice, The Intelligence Daily, Pacific Free Press,
Uncommon Thought Journal, and the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks.
He is the editor of Police State America: U.S. Military "Civil
Disturbance" Planning, distributed by AK Press and has contributed
to the new book from Global Research, The Global Economic Crisis:
The Great Depression of the XXI Century.
Call it another virtual "defense"
of privacy rights by U.S. lawmakers. |
In the week of April 11, senators John Kerry (D-MA) and John McCain (R-AZ)
introduced legislation in the U.S. Senate, the "Commercial Privacy Bill of
Rights Act of 2011," they claimed would "establish a framework to
protect
the personal information of all Americans."
During a D.C. press conference, McCain told reporters that the proposed law
would protect a,
"fundamental right of American citizens,
that is the right to privacy."
While Kerry and McCain correctly state that,
"The ease of gathering and compiling
personal information on the Internet and off, both overtly and
surreptitiously, is becoming increasingly efficient and effortless due
to advances in technology which have provided information gatherers the
ability to compile seamlessly highly detailed personal histories of
individuals" (p. 4), there's one small catch.
CNET's Declan McCullagh
reported that the bill,
"doesn't apply to data mining, surveillance,
or any other forms of activities that governments use to collect and
collate Americans' personal information."
While the measure would apply to "companies and
some nonprofit groups," CNET disclosed that,
"federal, state, and local police agencies
that have adopted high-tech surveillance technologies including cell
phone tracking, GPS bugs, and requests to Internet companies for users'
personal information - in many cases without obtaining a search warrant
from a judge" would be exempt.
As we know, a gaggle of privacy-killing agencies
inside the secret state, the
National Security Agency, the Federal
Bureau of Investigation, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security as well as
offices and subunits sprinkled throughout the Pentagon's sprawling
bureaucracy, including
U.S. Cyber Command, all claim authority to
extract personal information on individuals from still-secret Office of
Legal Counsel memoranda and National 'Security' Presidential
Directives.
As the American Civil Liberties Union
reported in March, what little has
been extracted from the Executive Branch through Freedom of Information Act
litigation is heavily-redacted, rendering such disclosures meaningless
exercises.
For example, the bulk of the November 2, 2001 21-page
Memorandum for the
Attorney General, penned by former Deputy Assistant Attorney General John
C. Yoo, which provided
the Bush administration with a legal fig-leaf for
their warrantless wiretapping programs, is blank.
That is, if one ignores exemptions to FOIA now
claimed by
the Obama administration. (B1, b3, b5, exemptions relate to
"national security," "inter-departmental communications" and/or programs
labeled "TS/SCI" - Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information, the
highest classification).
And, as of this writing, the American people still do not have have access
to nor even knowledge of the snooping privileges granted securocrats by the
Bush and Obama administrations under cover of the Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative (CNCI).
As Antifascist Calling
previously reported, CNCI derives authority from
classified annexes of National Security Presidential Directive 54, Homeland
Security Presidential Directive 23 (NSPD 54/HSPD 23) first issued by our
former "decider."
Those 2008 presidential orders are so contentious that both the Bush and
Obama administrations have even refused to release details to Congress,
prompting a 2010 Freedom of Information Act
lawsuit by the Electronic
Privacy Information Center (EPIC) demanding that the full text, and
underlying legal authority governing federal cybersecurity programs be made
public.
McCullagh points out that the bill "also doesn't apply to government
agencies including the Department of Health and Human Services, the
Department of Veterans Affairs, the Social Security Administration, the
Census Bureau, and the IRS, which collect vast amounts of data on American
citizens."
Nor are there provisions in the bill that would force federal or state
agencies to notify American citizens in the event of a data breach. No small
matter considering the flawed data security practices within such agencies.
Just last week, InformationWeek
revealed that the,
"Texas comptroller's office began notifying
millions of people Monday that their personal data had been involved in
a data breach. The private data was posted to a public server, where it
was available - in some cases - for over a year."
"The posted records," we're told, "included people's names, mailing
addresses, social security numbers, and in some cases also dates of
birth and driver's license numbers."
None of the data was encrypted and was there for
the taking by identity thieves or other shady actors.
InformationWeek pointed out although,
"most organizations that experience a
serious data breach" offer free credit monitoring services to victims,
"to date, Texas has not said it will offer such services to people
affected by the comptroller's breach."
CNET reminds us that the,
"Department of Veterans Affairs suffered a
massive security breach in 2006 when an unencrypted laptop with data on
millions of veterans was stolen."
McCullagh avers that,
"a government report last year listed IRS
security and privacy vulnerabilities" and that "even the Census Bureau
has, in the past, shared information with law enforcement from its
supposedly confidential files."
The limited scope of the Kerry and McCain
proposal is underscored by moves by the Obama Justice Department to actually
increase the secret state's already formidable surveillance powers and
short-circuit anemic privacy reforms that have been proposed.
In fact, as Antifascist Calling
reported last week, during hearings before
the Senate Judiciary Committee, Associate Attorney General James A. Baker
warned the panel that granting,
"cloud computing users more privacy
protections and to require court approval before tracking Americans'
cell phones would hinder police investigations."
But even when it comes to reining-in
out-of-control online tracking by internet advertising firms, the
Kerry-McCain bill comes up short.
As the Electronic Frontier Foundation
points out, the Kerry-McCain bill
won't stop online tracking by advert pimps who hustle consumers' private
details to the highest bidder.
The civil liberties' watchdogs aver,
"the privacy risk is not in consumers seeing
targeted advertisements, but in the unchecked accumulation and storage
of data about consumers' online activities."
"Collecting and retaining data on consumers can create a rich repository
of information," EFF's legislative analyst Rainey Reitman writes, one
that "leaves consumer data vulnerable to a data breach as well as
creating an unnecessary enticement for government investigators, civil
litigants and even malicious hackers."
Additionally, the proposal is silent on Do Not
Track,
"meaning there is no specific proposal for a
meaningful, universal browser-based opt-out mechanism that could be
respected by all large third-party tracking companies," and consumers
"would still need to opt-out of each third party individually," a
daunting process.
Worst of all, consumers,
"won't have a private right of action in the
new Commercial Privacy Bill of Rights. That means consumers won't be
granted the right to sue companies for damages if the provisions of the
Commercial Privacy Bill of Rights are violated."
In other words, even when advertising firms and
ISPs violate their users' privacy rights, the bill would specifically
prohibit individuals from seeking relief in the courts.
Moving in for the
Cybersecurity Kill
While the Kerry-McCain bill would exempt government agencies from privacy
protections, the Defense Department is aggressively seeking more power to
monitor civilian computer networks.
NextGov
reported that General Keith Alexander, the dual-hated commander of
U.S. Cyber Command and the
National Security Agency said that his agency,
"cannot monitor civilian networks" and that
congressional authorization will be required so that CYBERCOM can "look
at what's going on in other government sectors" and other "critical
infrastructures," i.e., civilian networks.
Mendacity aside, considering that NSA already
vacuums-up terabytes of America's electronic communications data on a daily
basis, reporter Aliya Sternstein notes that Alexander,
"offered hints about what the Pentagon might
be pushing the Obama administration to consider."
"Civil liberties and privacy are not [upheld] at the expense of
cybersecurity," he said. "They will benefit from cybersecurity,"
available only, or so we've been led to believe, from the military,
well-known for their commitment to civil liberties and the rule of law
as the case of Pfc.
Bradley Manning amply demonstrates.
Cyberspace, according to Alexander, is a domain
that must be protected like the air, sea and land, "but it's also unique in
that it's inside and outside military, civilian and government" domains.
Military forces,
"have to have the ability to move seamlessly
when our nation is under attack to defend it... the mechanisms for doing
that have to be laid out and agreed to. The laws don't exist in this
area."
While Cyber Command currently shares network
security duties with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, as I
reported
last year, a
Memorandum of Agreement between DHS and NSA, claims that
increased,
"interdepartmental collaboration in
strategic planning for the Nation's cybersecurity, mutual support for
cybersecurity capabilities development, and synchronization of current
operational cybersecurity mission activities," will be beneficial.
We were informed that the Agreement,
"will focus national cybersecurity efforts,
increasing the overall capacity and capability of both DHS's homeland
security and DoD's national security missions, while providing integral
protection for privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties."
But as Rod Beckström, the former director of
Homeland Security's National Cybersecurity Center (NCSC), pointed out in
2009 when he resigned his post, he viewed increased control by NSA over
national cybersecurity programs a "power grab."
In a
highly-critical letter to DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano, Beckström
said that NSA,
"effectively controls DHS cyber efforts
through detailees [and] technology insertions."
Citing the agency's role as the secret state's
eyes and ears that peer into America's electronic and telecommunications'
networks, Beckström warned that handing more power to NSA could
significantly threaten,
"our democratic processes...if all top level
government network security and monitoring are handled by any one
organization."
Those warnings have gone unheeded.
National Defense Magazine
reported that retired Marine Corps General Peter
Pace, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
"would hand over the Department of Homeland
Security's cybersecurity responsibilities to the head of the newly
created U.S. Cyber Command."
Seconding Pace's call for cybersecurity
consolidation, under Pentagon control, Roger Cressey, a senior vice
president with the ultra-spooky Booz Allen Hamilton firm, a company that
does billions of dollars of work for the Defense Department,
"agreed that putting all the responsibility
for the federal government's Internet security needs would help the
talent shortage by consolidating the responsibilities under one roof."
"The real expertise in the government," Cressey told National Defense,
"capable of protecting networks currently lies in the NSA."
Cressey's is hardly an objective opinion.
The former member of the National Security
Council and the elitist Council on Foreign Relations, joined Booz Allen
after an extensive career inside the secret state.
A military-industrial complex powerhouse, Booz Allen clocks-in
at No. 9 on
Washington Technology's list of 2010 Top 100 Contractors with some $3.3
billion in revenue.
As Spies For Hire author Tim Shorrock pointed out for
CorpWatch,
"Among the many services Booz Allen provides
to intelligence agencies... are data-mining and data analysis, signals
intelligence systems engineering (an NSA specialty), intelligence
analysis and operations support, the design and analysis of
cryptographic or code-breaking systems (another NSA specialty), and
'outsourcing/privatization strategy and planning'."
With "data mining, surveillance, or any other
forms of activities that governments use to collect and collate Americans'
personal information" off the Kerry-McCain "privacy" bill table, as CNET
reported, enterprising security firms are undoubtedly salivating over
potential income - and lack of accountability - which a cybersecurity
consolidation, Pentagon-style, would all but guarantee.
