Former FBI Agent Confirms the Surveillance State Is Real

beatyourselfup:

Greenwald wants to make sure we understand the full meaning of Clemente’s comments. “ ‘[N]o digital communication is secure,’ ” Greenwald repeats, “by which [Clemente] means not that any communication is susceptible to government interception as it happens (although that is true), but far beyond that: all digital communications—meaning telephone calls, emails, online chats and the like—are automatically recorded and stored and accessible to the government after the fact.

“To describe that is to define what a ubiquitous, limitless Surveillance State is,” Greenwald adds.

Congressman: Department of Justice Tapped Congressional Rooms as Well as Reporters' Offices

priceofliberty:

Has the Obama Department of Justice Violated the Separation of Powers?

Liberals rightfully lambasted the Bush administration for considering doing something similar.  As Mother Jones reported in 2009:

James Risen and Eric Lichtblau report in the New York Times today that the NSA may have exceeded the wiretapping authority it was given by Congress in 2008.

***

But then there’s this buried in the middle of the story, which isn’t vague at all:

New details are also emerging about earlier domestic surveillance activities, including the agency’s attempt to wiretap a congressman without court approval on an overseas trip, according to interviews with current and former intelligence officials.

….The agency believed that the congressman, whose identity could not be determined, was in contact as part of a congressional delegation to the Middle East in 2005 or 2006 with an extremist who had possible terrorist ties and was already under surveillance, the official said. The agency then sought to eavesdrop on the congressman’s conversations to gather more intelligence, the official said.

The official said the plan was ultimately blocked because of concerns from some officials in the intelligence community about the idea of using the N.S.A., without court oversight, to spy on a member of Congress.

Jesus.  If a member of Congress isn’t a “United States person” protected from warrantless surveillance by every version of FISA that’s ever been on the books, who is?  Shouldn’t this have set off alarm bells at every possible level at NSA, rather than merely being “ultimately blocked” because “some” officials had “concerns” about it?

But – even though top expert say that Obama is trampling on separation of powers and Constitutional liberties more than Bush or Nixon – many Democrats are still hypnotized by what liberal writer Glenn Greenwald calls the “cult of personality“.

Update:  Nunes’ director of communications – Jack Lagner – has issued a clarification:

What Rep. Nunes meant by “tapped” was that the DOJ seized the phone records, as has been widely reported. There was a little confusion between him and the host during the conversation: He did not mean to refer to phone records of the cloakroom itself, but of the Capitol. This refers to the phone records for the AP from  the House press gallery, which the DOJ admitted to looking at. He was explaining that if those phone records were seized, they would reveal a lot of conversations between the press and members of Congress, since reporters often speak to Members from the press gallery phones. The notion of the DOJ looking at phone records from the Capitol of conversations between Members of Congress and reporters is something that concerns Rep. Nunes, bringing up issues related to the separation of powers.

Nunes’ point still stands, though. The Department of Justice collection of phone records of conversations between Congress members and reporters violates the principal of separation of powers.

News to Me: Pure Madness: U.S. Aims To Force Web Services To Compromise Message Encryption

newstome1:





Source: EWeek



Even if it accomplished nothing else, the Middle Eastern governments’ crackdowns on communications during the Arab Spring movement two years ago demonstrated how much governments, in general, and repressive governments, in particular, hate encryption—particularly in the hands of private citizens.

This is why governments from Egypt to Oman to India have tried to ban BlackBerry smartphones with their uncrackable encryption. Now, in the United States, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the military and intelligence agencies are going after your encrypted communications on Google, Facebook and other Web communication services.

Google, as you’ll likely recall, was hacked by the Chinese military who tried to get into the email accounts of dissidents who use Gmail for communicating their pro-freedom activities. The Chinese, a repressive regime if there ever was one, just hates dissidents. So the military hackers wanted to read their email to find out who they were and what they were up to.

Google responded by encrypting its network from end to end. Facebook, after being attacked repeatedly, has done the same thing. Other networks that pride themselves on their security are also providing encrypted communications, including BlackBerry, which is widely used by the U.S. government precisely for this reason.

Of course those other repressive governments never actually banned BlackBerry devices because their own intelligence agencies also use them and needed the security more than they needed to read other people’s email.

So now we come to the FBI and other U.S. law-enforcement agencies that are trying to read the text messages, chats and the email of people they think are bad guys. The feds say that they’re doing this to fight crime and terrorism. And they say they have a right to get information if they have a legally obtained wiretap order.

The problem is, as The Washington Post reported recently, that not all providers of communications services have the ability to comply with a federal wiretap order. Their systems are secure and they’re meant to stay that way. What the FBI is asking for is the ability to fine those companies that don’t comply with a wiretap order, even if they’re technically unable to do so within a time limit set by the FBI.

In other words, if you can’t provide the feds with a back door to your system, the government will keep piling on fines until you go out of business. The idea, of course, is to compel companies that provide secure communications to also build in a means for the feds carry out get their wiretaps.

U.S. Aims to Force Web Services to Compromise Message Encryption 

The stick that would compel them is a series of increasing fines that theoretically (if you do the math) keep doubling until it reaches an infinitely large amount of money. It’s maybe even enough money to make Google pay attention, although it’s not clear that’s even possible.

In one sense this is understandable. The federal government does have a requirement to catch criminals and prevent terrorists from carrying out attacks like the 9/11 attacks in New York or the Boston Marathon bombing on April 15.

It also has the right to get a court-approved warrant to obtain access to the private communications of suspected criminals. But to fine a company into oblivion for something that they can’t do or because they need time to develop the technical ability to comply with the government’s demands seems insane. Sure, it will get their attention, but if the government drives the communication service out of business, law-enforcement officials won’t get the information they want.

Worse, threatening such a punitive response to a technically difficult problem only means that the federal government is either going to make locating a business in the U.S. unprofitable, result in wretchedly poor service or both.

Faced with such a punitive fine as the feds are contemplating, why would a company willingly place itself in harm’s way? After all, the Internet is everywhere. All that the FBI may accomplish is that these companies place themselves beyond the reach of U.S. law enforcement by, say, moving to Canada or Mexico.

Or, if the company is already in the U.S., they could very well force the creation of a back door that would satisfy the FBI, but at the same time lets in those same international and domestic bad guys that the FBI is chasing. This would happen because of the FBI’s time limit—to develop a back door in 60 days (or whatever they set the deadline at) or you’re fined into bankruptcy.

Does the FBI really want to force U.S. communications providers to implement insecure solutions just so they can satisfy their need for instant gratification? Does it really want to force the Facebooks of the world to locate in Canada, the European Union or some other nation that isn’t likely to honor a warrant from a U.S. court? But are such punitive measures really worth it?

For some reason, I’m reminded of a comment from the days of the Vietnam War as reported by legendary journalist Peter Arnett: “We had to burn down the village in order to save it.” Is that really the goal of the federal law-enforcement agencies–to cripple Internet communications and destroy companies that don’t have the means to comply with their demands?



Secondary Source

The Orwellian Surveillance State

newstome1:



May 4, 2013



I am sick and tired of libertarians complain about so-called government abuse and manufacture crazy conspiracy theories. Tyranny? That could never happen here. After all, “we are the government.” Privacy and civil liberties? What, do you have something to hide or something? I mean it’s not like the U.S. government has the power and the ability to monitor every single telephone call or email in the country or anything.



Posted on May 4, 2013 at 02:09 PM |

BBC News - Dutch police may get right to hack in cyber crime fight

violentwaters:

This is CrAzY! Did you guys read this?
“Under a new bill, investigators would be able to hack into computers, install spyware, read emails and destroy files.”

Oh! Here’s a song for you! SubHumAns •Big Brother http://youtu.be/8gKkBtb0VCA

Government Funded Phone App Tracks “Vaccine Refusers”

beatyourselfup:

A new phone application called Vaccine Refuseddeveloped by the University of Iowa tracks – just as the name implies – vaccine refusals. [1]

The application is intended to be used by health professionals to report the location of the refusal, the vaccine refused, and patient demographics. The output of the data, which is supposedly anonymous and stored securely at the University of Iowa, provides a heat map of the refusals.

I’m going to show you how the government will likely use this information – and it isn’t pretty. Let me tell you more.

Application is Government Funded

To understand the importance of this particular application, we need to know how it is being funded and who is leading the research. This will give us a clue as to how the data will likely be used.

The research for the phone application is led by Dr. Philip Polgreen, Director of Infectious Disease Society of America’s Emerging Infections Network. [2]

Why is this significant?

According to the IDSA’s website, “In 1995, the CDC [Centers for Disease Control] granted a Cooperative Agreement Program award to the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) to develop a provider-based emerging infections sentinel network: the Emerging Infections Network (IDSA EIN).” [3]

The project’s main University of Iowa page clearly states the research is funded by the National Institutes of Health and by a contract from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. [4]

So now we know the lead researcher for the phone application has direct ties to the Centers for Disease Control as well receiving funds for the research.

Here’s the important point…

Vaccine Refused Application is Technology Black Boxing

This is your typical “black boxing” effort in developing tracking technology. By this I mean very simply, two separate technologies are being developed and will be combined to form a system at a later date.

An analogy would be the designing of a car. The engine, steering, and breaking system are all developed separately but then combined in the manufacturing process to make a car.

Much in the same way, an application tracking vaccine refusals may seem harmless on the surface. However, the Centers for Disease Control are collecting other data.

In a recent article, I wrote about how the CDC collects information on who vaccinates their children and who does not. They also know how many children have opted out of being vaccinated. [5]

If you didn’t know, the Centers for Disease Control has been quietly rolling out a nationwide program called the Immunization Information Systems (IIS), registering your vaccine information (and if you refuse or not) into databases. [6]

But what would happen if data from the phone application was combined or analyzed with vaccine registry information?

The Correlation of Data

Here’s what you need to know.

The government (along with corporations) collects, correlates, and tracks data about you. I highly recommend a very informational article written by Information Security expert Bruce Schneier.

He writes, “Governments are happy to use the data corporations collect – occasionally demanding that they collect more and save it longer – to spy on us. And corporations are happy to buy data from governments. Together the powerful spy on the powerless, and they’re not going to give up their positions of power, despite what the people want.” [7]

The CDC’s Immunization Information System already tracks your vaccine refusals. If you recall from the last article, a small amount of the data collected included: the patient’s name, birth date, mother’s name, home address and phone number, and vaccine provider.

How easy would it be to correlate any “refuser” data and make a map out of it with home addresses? It seems theVaccine Refused application can accomplish this task quiet easily.

Researchers at the University of Iowa say the data collected by the application is secure and anonymous. You and I should know better; this could be changed with the stroke of the pen.

Heck, the CDC is paying for the research. Are you sure there isn’t a hidden agenda?

Conclusion

George Washington can be quoted as saying, “Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.”

What happens if we take the intention of the Vaccine Refused phone application and Immunization Information System to its conclusion? Will these technologies be used to track you down and forcibly vaccinate you and your children?

It sure seems that way to me.

U.S. Secretly Obtains Two Months of A.P. Phone Records

infoneer-pulse:

The Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for The Associated Press in what the news cooperative’s top executive called a “massive and unprecedented intrusion” into how news organizations gather the news.

The records obtained by the Justice Department listed outgoing calls for the work and personal phone numbers of individual reporters, for general AP office numbers in New York, Washington and Hartford, Conn., and for the main number for the AP in the House of Representatives press gallery, according to attorneys for the AP. It was not clear if the records also included incoming calls or the duration of the calls.

In all, the government seized the records for more than 20 separate telephone lines assigned to AP and its journalists in April and May of 2012. The exact number of journalists who used the phone lines during that period is unknown, but more than 100 journalists work in the offices where phone records were targeted, on a wide array of stories about government and other matters.

» via The New York Times (Subscription may be required for some content)

Bigger than Benghazi and #IRSGATE: Obama's possibly illegal wiretapping of AP journalists

priceofliberty:

againstpower:

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for the Associated Press in what the news cooperative’s top executive called a “massive and unprecedented intrusion” into how news organizations gather the news.

Holy moley. If you are a scumbag politician who is cheating on his wife, now is the best time to come forward with your juicy gossip.

everyone’s getting wiretapped!

hipsterlibertarian: thefreelioness: “The American Civil Liberties Union was curious about warrantless government snooping on citizens’ text messages. So the group filed a Freedom of Information Act request to the Justice Department.  Here’s what they got back: A memo header:  “Guidance for the Minimization of Text Messages over Dual-Function Cellular Telephones” and then 15 pages, completely blacked out.”  Source Wow. It’s almost hard to believe this isn’t The Onion. They literally sent them a completely redacted memo.
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hipsterlibertarian:

thefreelioness:

“The American Civil Liberties Union was curious about warrantless government snooping on citizens’ text messages. So the group filed a Freedom of Information Act request to the Justice Department. 

Here’s what they got back: A memo header:  “Guidance for the Minimization of Text Messages over Dual-Function Cellular Telephones” and then 15 pages, completely blacked out.” 

Source

Wow. It’s almost hard to believe this isn’t The Onion. They literally sent them a completely redacted memo.

Infowars: FBI Shrugs Off Law Requiring Email Warrants

infowarsdotcom:

allgov.com
May 13, 2013

Despite a federal appeals court ruling that government snooping on emails requires a search warrant, the FBI and other federal law enforcers regularly ignore this constitutional mandate, according to documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union under the Freedom of Information Act. At the same time that it acts as if it has the authority to violate the privacy of citizens’ emails, the FBI is seeking Congressional authorization for its unlawful activities.

It has been illegal for law enforcement to open sealed envelopes and packages in the U.S. mail since 1877, when the Supreme Court case of Ex Parte Jackson held that a warrant is required by the Fourth Amendment. It has also been illegal to snoop on ongoing electronic communications like phone calls without a warrant since the 1967 case of Katz v. U.S. Although emails have raised new issues that have yet to be entirely resolved, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals (which hears cases from Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee) ruled in Warshak v. U.S (2010) that opening emails requires a warrant based on probable cause.

According to the documents obtained by the ACLU, however, federal law enforcement, including the FBI, IRS and others, believes the warrant requirement does not apply to emails, and U.S. Attorneys’ offices around the country have issued inconsistent and even conflicting standards to the issue. The resulting confusion creates plenty of room for mischief.

Read more

Using Eminent Domain to Screw the Little Guy in Spring Valley, New York

priceofliberty:

Probably what will cheer you up this morning is a story about eminent domain abuse paid for by you. If so, you’re in luck, gentle reader.  

Officials in Spring Valley, New York, which is about 20 miles north of Manhattan, have been seizing properties in the village’s 15-block downtown area for the past decade and flipping them to private developers. Federal community development block grants helped pay for the acquisitions.

From The Journal News:

Mercy Anim can’t bring herself to drive down Main Street, where she had cared for young children at her day-care center before being displaced by a condo complex as part of the village’s urban renewal project.

She never found a spot to reopen Little Angels. The condo builder offered her pre-manufactured trailers to care for infants to 12-year-olds. She chose to close in 2009.

“My heart was so broken,” Anim said. “I’ve never driven on the street since I closed. They took away from me the children and their parents. I want to cry. I don’t go to Spring Valley no more.”

Village leaders, two of whom are now under federal indictment for extortion and wire fraud in an unrelated matter, demolished Anim’s business and several others in 2009. What they haven’t done is pay Anim for improvements made to the property. They’ve offered $96,000. Anim’s appraiser says she should be getting north of $1 million.

In the meantime, the developers, aided further by a variety of state and local subsidies, built senior housing as well as expensive condominiums designed to meet kosher standards.

Back to The Journal News:

[The developers] are accused of steering the condos to ultra-Orthodox Jews and discouraging non-religious people from buying units.

The NAACP filed a complaint after people tried to buy a condo, saying they were given more expensive prices and the runaround.

The village could be liable to repay HUD up to $1 million for not reporting the sale of property to the developer, according to a HUD audit.

Former officials say everything is above board; they knew going in that the condos would go to Orthodox Jews. But that may violate federal fair-housing rules all the same. HUD is investigating.

That’s little consolation to Anim: “I had an investment in that building,” Anim said. “They put up condos to benefit certain people. I can’t believe this can happen in America. Eminent domain is not supposed to be used that way.”

Democratic Sen. Mark Udall says the Justice Department should not allow FBI agents to peruse Americans' private communications without obtaining a search warrant from a judge.

beatyourselfup:

Last month, Sen. Mark Udall and a handful of other privacy-focused politicians persuaded the IRS to promise to cease warrantless searches of Americans’ private correspondence.

Now Udall, a Colorado Democrat, is taking aim at the Justice Department, which has claimed the right to conduct warrantless searches of Americans’ e-mail, Facebook chats, and other private communications.

“I am extremely concerned that the Justice Department and FBI are justifying warrantless searches of Americans’ electronic communications based on a loophole in an outdated law that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit ruled was unconstitutional,” Udall said in a statement sent to CNET Thursday.

Udall’s statement cites a CNET article yesterday that was the first to disclose the Justice Department and the FBI’s electronic search policies. The article was based on internal government documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union.

The senator’s statement urges Congress to move quickly to update the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act — enacted during an era of dialup modems and the black and white Macintosh Plus — that currently does not require search warrants for all e-mail messages. The 6th Circuit ruled in 2010, however, that the privacy protections enshrined in the Fourth Amendment require police to obtain search warrants signed by a judge first.

Local police want to bypass DPS on wiretapping but rarely use labor-intensive tactic

beatyourselfup:

Earlier, Grits complained at length about a bill passed out of the Texas Senate, SB 188, by Sen. Joan Huffman, expanding wiretapping authority and on Monday its House companion HB 530, by Rep. Allen Fletcher, will be heard by the House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee. The legislation would let the six largest police departments and the Harris County Sheriff engage in wiretapping on their own authority. Under current law, when local prosecutors get wiretap orders they must be implemented by DPS officers. The argument by bill proponents last week, and in prior committee hearings, was that DPS was too overwhelmed to handle wiretapping duties. But here’s a table Grits compiled of the total number of wiretapping requests by local Texas agencies since before the turn of the century.

Wiretap orders issued by
Texas state district judges: 1997-2011
2011: 2
2010: 1
2009: 0
2008: 2
2007: 4
2006: 2
2005: 4
2004: 0
2003: 4
2002: 2
2001: 1
2000: 0
1999: 4
1998: 5
1997: 0
Source


Why do local agencies need this authority when right now they hardly ever use wiretaps? At last week’s House Criminal Jurisprudence meeting there was a telling exchange when the committee heard essentially similar legislation to SB 188 from state Rep. Gene Wu. Committee member Matt Schaefer asked a Houston police detective, who said this bill would let him do more wiretaps, how many times HPD had requested a DPS wiretap last year. He replied that HPD had not requested any because they knew DPS was too “busy.” DPS, however, has never turned down an agency that asked them to perform a wiretap if they’ve got the proper orders from their local judge. The argument seems to be, “If we didn’t have to go through DPS we’d do more of them.” But why? Can they credibly say that without having even tried going through the existing legal mechanisms?

Read the full article

Federal judge denies motion to throw out evidence gathered via fake cell tower

infoneer-pulse:

In a criminal case on Wednesday, a federal judge denied a motion to suppress evidence gathered with the help of a stingray—a device that can create a false cellphone tower signal.

The use of a stingray allows authorities to determine a specific mobile phone’s precise location. The technology isn’t new and many believe law enforcement agencies nationwide have used them for many years.

» via ars technica

beatyourselfup: Megaupload Launches Frontal Attack on White House Corruption “The Truth will come out.” Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom has been announcing it for months on his website and a white paper released today is the first big step towards that goal. Titled “The United States vs You (and Kim Dotcom)” and written by Megaupload lawyers Ira Rothken and Robert Amsterdam, the paper accuses the Obama administration of being a pawn of big corporations. It further describes in detail how the authorities obliterated Megaupload on flaky legal grounds. “The message is clear. The White House is for sale. Due process and the rule of law have little value to the current administration. More and more of our rights are eroding away to protect the interests of large corporations and their billionaire shareholders,” Dotcom tells TorrentFreak. According to Dotcom his case is just one example of how corporate interests threaten people’s rights and freedom on the Internet in general. “Silicon Valley has been turned into Surveillance Valley. Kids with keyboards are the new terrorists. Copyright is now a matter of national security. This is all very un-American. Read the White Paper and wake up.” The 38-page white paper starts with a bang: “The criminal prosecution of Megaupload and Kim Dotcom is purportedly the ‘largest copyright case in history,’ involving tens of millions of users around the world, and yet it is founded on highly dubious legal principles and apparently propelled by the White House’s desire to mollify the motion picture industry in exchange for campaign contributions and political support,” the white paper begins. One of the main complaints against the legal process is that under U.S. law Megaupload and its employees can’t be held criminally responsible for copyright infringements committed by the site’s users. “The prosecution seeks to hold Megaupload and its executives criminally responsible for alleged infringement by the company’s third-party cloud storage users. The problem with the theory, however, is that secondary copyright infringement is not – nor has it ever been – a crime in the United States.” “The federal courts lack any power to criminalize secondary copyright infringement; the U.S. Congress alone has such authority, and it has not done so. As such, the Megaupload prosecution is not only baseless, it is unprecedented,” Rothken and Amsterdam write. The paper continues to give a detailed overview of legal jurisprudence in Megaupload’s favor. Among other things, the lawyers note that Megaupload granted very broad DMCA takedown powers to copyright holders, who could remove any file from the cloud hosting service without oversight. Most of the legal arguments laid out in the white paper have been highlighted previously. What is new, however, is the legal team’s frontal attack on the Obama administration. The suggestion is, that the White House has been corrupted by corporate money and that the assault on Megaupload was a payoff. “The degree to which the Copyright Lobby, and the MPAA specifically, have managed to instrumentalize the current Administration to take down a foreign corporation and its executives is, quite literally, un-American,” the lawyers write. Corrupted by sizable election contributions from corporate interest groups, the United States no longer stands for principled standards and the rule of law, the lawyers argue. “Those values appear to have fallen by the wayside under this White House, which seems content to violate the due process rights of criminal defendants, mislead the courts, and advance baseless legal theories so long as its fund-raising remains uninterrupted.” The Truth Will Come Out Megaupload’s lawyers see the MPAA as the driving force behind the criminal prosecution of the cloud hosting site and its employees. According to them, it is no coincidence that the Hollywood group is headed by former Senator Chris Dodd, one of Vice President Joe Biden’s best friends. “As the new Chairman and CEO of the MPAA, Chris Dodd improperly leveraged his friendship with Joe Biden to achieve the MPAA’s objectives. Former Senator Dodd’s relationship with the Vice President– who comes off manipulated, a cheerfully credulous facilitator – together with the Obama Administration’s ravenous hunger for campaign contributions, has given the MPAA absolute control over how the U.S. Department of Justice plays the game in enforcing copyright law,” they write. Continuing on the corruption theme, Rothken and Amsterdam go on to describe MPAA’s influence in Washington as “State Capture.” “The MPAA’s overt use of campaign contributions to sway the U.S. government into engaging in what amounts to unlawful action against Megaupload reflects a form of State Capture, a term coined by the World Bank to describe a brand of corruption characterized by the ability of a relatively small number of private interests to shape the official rules of the game through direct payments or other forms of financial influence.” One cited example of how political funding was used to influence decisions was a January 2012 threat from the MPAA’s Chris Dodd. He stated that Hollywood would stop donating to politicians who fail to protect their interests. “By threatening to revoke vital political and monetary support from the Administration at a crucial moment, the MPAA has exercised de facto control over key levers of executive power in Washington – law enforcement, prosecutors, trade negotiators – and is using those instruments of state power to further the financial interests of its members in Hollywood.” The white paper further gives numerous examples of how Megaupload’s lawyers believe the authorities abused their power to further the interests of the copyright lobby. The overall conclusion is that people’s rights and freedoms are trumped to secure political donations, which are clear signs of contract prosecution. “The U.S. government’s attack against Megaupload bears all the hallmarks of a contract prosecution: a case resting on erroneous theories of criminal law, littered with due process violations and prosecutorial abuses, carried out for the benefit of a select few in exchange for their political and financial support,” the lawyers write. “In the name of eliminating copyright infringement, Hollywood has exerted a corrupting influence in Washington, leading us all down a slippery slope that not only threatens innovation and Internet freedom, but also has profound implications for constitutional principles of free speech, privacy and due process.” Finally, the white paper suggests that this is not an isolated incident. It warns the public that these corrupt forces can quash anything that stands in the way of the private interests of those who make significant campaign contributions. “Megaupload and Kim Dotcom are today’s targets, but the crosshairs can just as easily be trained on anybody who dares challenge or inconvenience a special interest that holds sway in Washington, and the current Administration – with its notoriously insatiable appetite for campaign contributions – seems all too willing to cooperate.” The above points are just samples from the white paper, which is certainly worth reading in its entirety. There is no doubt that the Megaupload legal team have just planted a virtual bomb under the Megaupload prosecution. It will be interesting to see how this is received, and whether we will hear a response from the accused.
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beatyourselfup:

Megaupload Launches Frontal Attack on White House Corruption

“The Truth will come out.”

Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom has been announcing it for months on his website and a white paper released today is the first big step towards that goal.

Titled “The United States vs You (and Kim Dotcom)” and written by Megaupload lawyers Ira Rothken and Robert Amsterdam, the paper accuses the Obama administration of being a pawn of big corporations. It further describes in detail how the authorities obliterated Megaupload on flaky legal grounds.

“The message is clear. The White House is for sale. Due process and the rule of law have little value to the current administration. More and more of our rights are eroding away to protect the interests of large corporations and their billionaire shareholders,” Dotcom tells TorrentFreak.

According to Dotcom his case is just one example of how corporate interests threaten people’s rights and freedom on the Internet in general.

“Silicon Valley has been turned into Surveillance Valley. Kids with keyboards are the new terrorists. Copyright is now a matter of national security. This is all very un-American. Read the White Paper and wake up.”

The 38-page white paper starts with a bang:

“The criminal prosecution of Megaupload and Kim Dotcom is purportedly the ‘largest copyright case in history,’ involving tens of millions of users around the world, and yet it is founded on highly dubious legal principles and apparently propelled by the White House’s desire to mollify the motion picture industry in exchange for campaign contributions and political support,” the white paper begins.

One of the main complaints against the legal process is that under U.S. law Megaupload and its employees can’t be held criminally responsible for copyright infringements committed by the site’s users.

“The prosecution seeks to hold Megaupload and its executives criminally responsible for alleged infringement by the company’s third-party cloud storage users. The problem with the theory, however, is that secondary copyright infringement is not – nor has it ever been – a crime in the United States.”

“The federal courts lack any power to criminalize secondary copyright infringement; the U.S. Congress alone has such authority, and it has not done so. As such, the Megaupload prosecution is not only baseless, it is unprecedented,” Rothken and Amsterdam write.

The paper continues to give a detailed overview of legal jurisprudence in Megaupload’s favor. Among other things, the lawyers note that Megaupload granted very broad DMCA takedown powers to copyright holders, who could remove any file from the cloud hosting service without oversight.

Most of the legal arguments laid out in the white paper have been highlighted previously. What is new, however, is the legal team’s frontal attack on the Obama administration. The suggestion is, that the White House has been corrupted by corporate money and that the assault on Megaupload was a payoff.

“The degree to which the Copyright Lobby, and the MPAA specifically, have managed to instrumentalize the current Administration to take down a foreign corporation and its executives is, quite literally, un-American,” the lawyers write.

Corrupted by sizable election contributions from corporate interest groups, the United States no longer stands for principled standards and the rule of law, the lawyers argue.

“Those values appear to have fallen by the wayside under this White House, which seems content to violate the due process rights of criminal defendants, mislead the courts, and advance baseless legal theories so long as its fund-raising remains uninterrupted.”

The Truth Will Come Out

Megaupload’s lawyers see the MPAA as the driving force behind the criminal prosecution of the cloud hosting site and its employees. According to them, it is no coincidence that the Hollywood group is headed by former Senator Chris Dodd, one of Vice President Joe Biden’s best friends.

“As the new Chairman and CEO of the MPAA, Chris Dodd improperly leveraged his friendship with Joe Biden to achieve the MPAA’s objectives. Former Senator Dodd’s relationship with the Vice President– who comes off manipulated, a cheerfully credulous facilitator – together with the Obama Administration’s ravenous hunger for campaign contributions, has given the MPAA absolute control over how the U.S. Department of Justice plays the game in enforcing copyright law,” they write.

Continuing on the corruption theme, Rothken and Amsterdam go on to describe MPAA’s influence in Washington as “State Capture.”

“The MPAA’s overt use of campaign contributions to sway the U.S. government into engaging in what amounts to unlawful action against Megaupload reflects a form of State Capture, a term coined by the World Bank to describe a brand of corruption characterized by the ability of a relatively small number of private interests to shape the official rules of the game through direct payments or other forms of financial influence.”

One cited example of how political funding was used to influence decisions was a January 2012 threat from the MPAA’s Chris Dodd. He stated that Hollywood would stop donating to politicians who fail to protect their interests.

“By threatening to revoke vital political and monetary support from the Administration at a crucial moment, the MPAA has exercised de facto control over key levers of executive power in Washington – law enforcement, prosecutors, trade negotiators – and is using those instruments of state power to further the financial interests of its members in Hollywood.”

The white paper further gives numerous examples of how Megaupload’s lawyers believe the authorities abused their power to further the interests of the copyright lobby. The overall conclusion is that people’s rights and freedoms are trumped to secure political donations, which are clear signs of contract prosecution.

“The U.S. government’s attack against Megaupload bears all the hallmarks of a contract prosecution: a case resting on erroneous theories of criminal law, littered with due process violations and prosecutorial abuses, carried out for the benefit of a select few in exchange for their political and financial support,” the lawyers write.

“In the name of eliminating copyright infringement, Hollywood has exerted a corrupting influence in Washington, leading us all down a slippery slope that not only threatens innovation and Internet freedom, but also has profound implications for constitutional principles of free speech, privacy and due process.”

Finally, the white paper suggests that this is not an isolated incident. It warns the public that these corrupt forces can quash anything that stands in the way of the private interests of those who make significant campaign contributions.

“Megaupload and Kim Dotcom are today’s targets, but the crosshairs can just as easily be trained on anybody who dares challenge or inconvenience a special interest that holds sway in Washington, and the current Administration – with its notoriously insatiable appetite for campaign contributions – seems all too willing to cooperate.”

The above points are just samples from the white paper, which is certainly worth reading in its entirety. There is no doubt that the Megaupload legal team have just planted a virtual bomb under the Megaupload prosecution. It will be interesting to see how this is received, and whether we will hear a response from the accused.