(…)These precedents inform us of the extent of the struggle to preserve liberty and to relieve those in civil life from military trials. The founders of our government were familiar with the history of that struggle; and secured in a written constitution every right which the people had wrested from power during a contest of ages. By that Constitution and the laws authorized by it this question must be determined. The provisions of that instrument on the administration of criminal justice are too plain and direct, to leave room for misconstruction or doubt of their true meaning. (…)

Reminds me of Yoo’s NPR Steve Inskeep interview, explaining that “detainee” Habeus Corpus rights would be “too expensive.”

INSKEEP: Do you, as a lawyer who’s worked for the Bush administration and obviously thought a lot about these issues, think this law does everything possible to prevent error?

YOO: I think we could probably do a lot more, but it’d be a lot more expensive. I think what we have here is something that’s very close to the civilian system.

INSKEEP: Are you saying it’d be too expensive to give habeas corpus protection to non-citizens?

YOO: Yeah, I think that’s what Congress decided when it passed this law last week, is that you could have the possibility of hundreds and hundreds of habeas corpus proceedings. And they do impose a cost. They impose a cost on our judicial system. They impose a cost on our government, on our military.

NSA datamining pushes tech envelope

ThinThread, a technology developed in the late ’90s for wiretapping and providing sophisticated analysis of large amounts of resulting data was one of these projects. Designed to both collect data as well as encrypt sensitive or private information for later analysis, the program operated within legal and privacy-based boundaries via that encryption.

After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, policy changed and the ThinThread project evolved into a system known as Trailblazer. Designed to gather similar data but without the encryption feature built into the ThinThread technology to provide privacy aspects, the Trailblazer technology and the resulting phone-tap efforts that have grown from this have been deployed as a critical terrorist-locating tool and defended as “critical to our national security” via the Bush administration.

SAIC Announces Financial Results for Fiscal Year 2003

A contract from the National Security Agency (NSA) to provide the technology demonstration platform phase of the TRAILBLAZER program. This phase of the program currently is estimated at $280 million and will be performed over a period of 26 months.

After the 2001 attacks, the NSA lawyers who had blocked the program reversed their position and approved the use of the program without the enhanced technology to sift out terrorist communications and without the encryption protections.

The NSA’s new legal analysis was based on the commander in chief’s powers during war, said former officials familiar with the program. The Bush administration’s defense has rested largely on that argument since the warrantless surveillance program became public in December.

And the next part is out and out BULLSHIT!

The strength of ThinThread’s approach is that by encrypting information on Americans, it is legal regardless of whether the country is at war, according to one intelligence official.

Basically, this “intelligence official/cum legal expert” says it is perfectly legal to capture and record all of our communications, just as long as they don’t “listen” to them…until such time as they think they should “listen” to them.

Fookin’ BULLSHIT!

How about they just place cameras in our homes and promise not to watch…until they want to watch?

Fookin’ BULLSHIT!

Hillary, you might want to kick Bill in the family jewels and ask him: “WTF were you thinking?”

EW’s commenters really need to read that link!

This stuff about “Thin Thread” raises the hair on the back of my neck:

Officials say that after the successful tests of ThinThread in 1998, Taylor argued that the NSA should implement the full program. He later told the 9/11 Commission that ThinThread could have identified the hijackers had it been in place before the attacks, according to an intelligence expert close to the commission.

But at the time, NSA lawyers viewed the program as too aggressive. At that point, the NSA’s authority was limited strictly to overseas communications, with the FBI responsible for analyzing domestic calls. The lawyers feared that expanding NSA data collection to include communications in the United States could violate civil liberties, even with the encryption function.

And this was in 1998 under Clinton! NSA was hoovering domestic communications back then.

There can be zero doubt about the fact that Washington has been lying to us all for years regarding illegal domestic communications intercepts.

Fookin’ lying through their teeth! And Congress had to have known about it!

From the dissent:

“…Except for the actual command of military forces, all authorization for their maintenance and all explicit authorization for their use is placed in the control of Congress under Article I, rather than the President under Article II. As Hamilton explained, the President’s military authority would be “much inferior” to that of the British King:

“It would amount to nothing more than the supreme command and direction of the military and naval forces, as first general and admiral of the confederacy: while that of the British king extends to the declaring of war, and to the raising and regulating of fleets and armies; all which, by the constitution under consideration, would appertain to the legislature.” The Federalist No. 69, p. 357.

A view of the Constitution that gives the Executive authority to use military force rather than the force of law against citizens on American soil flies in the face of the mistrust that engendered these provisions….“

That last comment seems to directly contravene the OLC Opinion: “…[O]ur office recently concluded that the Fourth Amendment had no application to domestic military operations….”

http://www.baltimoresun.com/ne…..ory?page=1

And I still stay you’re talking apples to my oranges. What Conyers has specifically asked for is evidence of what immunity would immunize. That is dramatically different–and much wider–than the authorization for specific programs.

And, again, I’m talking something much more narrow. Conyers has the names of at least three opinions from late October to early November. Two of those opinions specifically reference “communications.” One does not. Conyers is still asking for the one that does not reference “Communications.” ALL I AM SAYING IN THIS THREAD is that it is highly likely that he has two those opinions referencing “Communications,” and that they, in some significant way, pertain to the authorization of the program.

You may be distrustful. But to argue against my point, you’d be arguing that Conyers wouldn’t ask specifically for those two opinions that reference “communications,” even while he was asking for the one that didn’t, even while he was saying he had stuff from that same time period, and even while staffers from his committee have asserted they got the authorization for the program.

I’m arguing that four committees have opinions that they believe to be the authorizations for the program.

Where do they say that – that’s what I have missed and where we are disconnecting.

I know they supposedly have been briefed and have received some documents or, in the case of some like SWhitehouse, have had to go sit in a room somewhere and read through opinions, but where we are missing connections is that I have just missed the Committees saying they have seen all the authorizing opinions. Instead, everytime I hear about stuff being turned over, I seem to have seen responses like Conyers – which doesn’t indicate that he thinks he does have all the opinions. It was back almost two months ago that he was asking for one in particular – the 10/23 opinion now being discusses – and also saying that no one will settle the point of whether or not the there were other programs than TSP, etc. so that just doesn’t sound to me like a guy who is comfortable he has all the authorizations for everything that was going on.

Oh well, I have to take off now – sorry to monopolize but if I’ve missed the Committees saying they got everything then I’d like to go back and see what they did sayabout what was turned over to them while it’s on my mind.

Conyers obviously had some pretty specific information about the 10/23 memo, which made him able to ask for it specifically – but if OLC hasn’t provided him with all memos, and he doesn’t know specifics on all of them, he can’t ask with that kind of specificity about other memos.

The kinds of language that you mention as being about “other things” is the kind of language laywers use to get everything – they wouldn’t parcel out a separate paragraph on memos unless they knew something about something being withheld (as, apparently, Conyers did).

I look at what Conyers writes and assuming that he had access to the same things the others at intel and judiciary have been provided, he seems to be saying to me that:

a) he hasn’t received assurances or documents sufficient to convince him he has all authorization information on the TSP (including memos – but he wants everything);

b) he did know about the existence of at least one memo that had NOT been provided to him and implicitly that is bringing into question whether or not he has, indeed, had all memos turned over; and

c) he hasn’t received assurances that the program referred to as the TSP program that the President acknowledged in 2005 is the only warrantless surveillance program in which the President, NSA, telecoms etc. were involved with and DOJ and the Whitehouse may be parsing about and pretending a program that predated the 04 changes is something “other than” the TSP, in particular if that program was so illegal it was discontinued.

With Conyers being that clear and specific on his objections, it makes me question what the other Committees have been provided. I do know that Sheldon Whitehouse has looked at a lot of opinions, on things including the deference DOJ has decided it must give to the President’s “interpretation” of the law and the PResident’s interpretation of his CIC powers, but I also haven’t heard SWhitehouse go so far as to say he knows he has seen everything and/or that the WH has certified that all opinions relating to warrantless surveillance and telecom involvement have definitely been provided. It will be interesting to see if Sheldon indicates the 10/23 memo was included in what he did look at and, if not, again you have to wonder what the committees really have or have not seen. SWhitehouse may have said publically that he has seen everything on all the warrantless programs; I absolutely could have missed that.

Looking for the Conyers link originally, I also found this, which, grantedly, is from Rockefeller and he seems as confused as they come or else as dissembling as they come, but still:

“This is about the reauthorization of the wiretapping and the legal opinions that came from [former Attorney General Alberto] Gonzales,” Rockefeller said.

So there is maybe at least one other opinion, this one not from OLC but from Gonzales, that attempted to cover the showdown period maybe? I haven’t seen much about a Gonzales opinion(s) on the warrantless program, but that would be interesting to see.