.
Insight into FBI surveillance not so long ago …
Fire Mueller by BooMan
Mon Jan 18th, 2010 at 11:47:19 PM ESTRobert Mueller was confirmed to a ten-year term as Director of the FBI and took over the position on September 4th, 2001. Obviously, he should not be confirmed for a second decade-long term, but he really should be shit canned right now. Not tomorrow. Right now.
“The FBI illegally collected more than 2,000 U.S. telephone call records between 2002 and 2006 by invoking terrorism emergencies that did not exist or simply persuading phone companies to provide records, according to internal bureau memos and interviews. FBI officials issued approvals after the fact to justify their actions.
E-mails obtained by The Washington Post detail how counterterrorism officials inside FBI headquarters did not follow their own procedures that were put in place to protect civil liberties. The stream of urgent requests for phone records also overwhelmed the FBI communications analysis unit with work that ultimately was not connected to imminent threats.
A Justice Department inspector general’s report due out this month is expected to conclude that the FBI frequently violated the law with its emergency requests, bureau officials confirmed.”
Obama should throw Mueller out on his ass, and with extreme prejudice. Invoking terrorism threats that did not exist? Think about it. What are we? Living in the movie Brazil?
Unless of course, insight into the level of terror threat has sky rocketed in the last few months.
In Europe, matters may even be worse. Britain’s Foreign Minister William Hague tells his listeners not to worry about the listening posts of GCHQ. From my earlier diary in 2010 …
Israel’s Verint Intercepts Dutch Phone Taps
Dutch intercept recordings done by Israeli supplier Verint …
Phone taps, Justice and intelligence services
(BBC News) Sept. 7, 2005 – The Dutch have been using telephone tap evidence since the 1970s – anyone who is suspected of having committed a crime punishable with four or more years in prison can be the subject of a telephone intercept.
Once Dutch police officers have a warrant from a judge they tell the telephone service providers to divert all calls via a central intercept centre. The calls are recorded digitally and the police computer can store as many as 10 million calls.
Safeguards
Robert Van Bosbeek, the Dutch police commissioner in charge of this operation, stresses that ordinary police officers are not allowed access to the area where the recordings are made in order to preserve the integrity of the recordings.
All calls are recorded so that they can also provide material for the defence. However, there are some concerns from the Dutch data protection authorities about the recording of calls between lawyers and their clients.
More below the fold …
Dutch Police Don’t Know How to Delete Intercepted Calls
“The law in the Netherlands says that intercepted phone calls between attorneys and their clients must be destroyed. But the Dutch government has been keeping under wraps for years that no one has the foggiest clue how to delete them (Google translation). Now, an email (PDF) from the National Police Services Agency (KLPD) has surfaced, revealing that the working of the technology in question is a NetApp trade secret. The Dutch police are now trying to get their Israeli supplier Verint to tell them how to delete tapped calls and comply with the law. Meanwhile, attorneys in the Netherlands remain afraid to use their phones.”
Dutch article NRC newspaper: Ministry of Justice had no knowledge how to delete wiretaps
See e-mail from an expert of the Korps Landelijke Politiediensten (KLPD) establishing the fact the technology is proprietary of the Israeli supplier of the computersystem for intercepts (Verint).
“It is explained to me by representatives of the head company that information is deleted in one of the subsystems of the interceptsystem. This subsystem is named “Netapp” and is obtained by our supplier from their supplier of this subsystem.”
- Crashing the Wiretapper’s Ball
- Cybercops in the Netherlands
- The Verint Connection
- Communications Surveillance: Privacy and Security at Risk
