FBI Director Says Congress Will Fix Phone Encryption 'Problem;' Congress Says 'Bite Us'

from the Bureau-cordially-invited-to-go-fuck-itself dept

James Comey's pleas that something must be done for the [potentially-molested] children of the United States seem to be falling on mostly deaf ears. Mostly. After realizing that there's nothing in current laws that compels Google and Apple to punch law enforcement-sized holes in their default encryption, Comey has decided to be the change he wishes to force in others.

Having set the stage with a Greek chorus comprised of law enforcement officials chanting "iPhones are for pedophiles," Comey is now making overtures to legislators, targeting an already-suspect law for further rewriting: CALEA, or the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act. As it stands now, the law specifically does NOT require service providers to decrypt data or even provide law enforcement with the means for decryption. Up until this point, the FBI's director seemed to consider Congressional support a foregone conclusion.

Last week, FBI director James Comey suggested that encryption "threatens to lead all of us to a very dark place" and suggested that if Apple and Google don't remove default encryption from iOS and Android then "Congress might have to force this on companies."

Now, Congress members are firing back at Comey, reminding him that Congress doesn't have to do shit.

"To FBI Director Comey and the Admin on criticisms of legitimate businesses using encryption: you reap what you sow," California Republican Rep. Darrell Issa tweeted. "The FBI and Justice Department must be more accountable—tough sell for them to now ask the American people for more surveillance power."

Rep. Zoe Lofgren estimates Comey's legislative "fix" has a "zero percent" chance of passing. This tepid statement is the warmest response Comey's received so far.

“It's going to be a tough fight for sure,” Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), the Patriot Act’s original author, told The Hill in a statement.

Of course, in this anti-surveillance climate, there aren't too many representatives willing to openly support toxic rewrites like the one Comey desires. But give it a few more years and anything's possible. This is the time to start watching upcoming bills closely. It's not completely unheard of for unpopular legislation to be tacked onto other bills whose popularity (or complete mundanity) gives them a higher chance of passing.

Comey also still seems to think that it's simply a matter of wording. He's done all he can to portray the encrypted future as a nightmarish world where child abusers, drug dealers and terrorists run amok while law enforcement fumbles around in the dark. This clumsy propaganda machine has done little to soften up the public or its representatives. Now, he's shifting gears, pretending that it's not a "backdoor" he's seeking, but rather some sort of magical doggie door for law enforcement.

“We want to use the front door with clarity and transparency,” he said.

How that word picture converts to real life remains to be seen. Comey doesn't seem to have any idea but believes the answer runs through an amended CALEA. The good news is that no one's in any hurry to help him out. The FBI (and much of law enforcement) is so used to getting what they want (as well as being completely absent when it's time to reap what's been sown) with minimal resistance that this pushback has forced them to think on their feet -- something they're clearly not comfortable doing. Between talk of "golden keys" and the hilarious assumption that Congress would simply do as it's told, the FBI's anti-encryption fit-pitching is looking more ridiculous by the moment.

Filed Under: darrell issa, encryption, fbi, james comey, jim sensenbrenner, phones, zoe lofgren

Everybody Knows FBI Director James Comey Is Wrong About Encryption, Even The FBI

from the this-is-your-best-shot? dept

FBI Director James Comey is apparently a likable guy, but if he's going to attack encryption, it might help if he actually understood it better than, say, the editorial board of the Washington Post, who recently argued against "backdoors" in technology, and for a magical "golden key" -- as if the two were somehow different. We wrote a quick take on Comey's Brooking's talk last week, but the deeper you dive into his talk the more and more evident it is that he not only doesn't quite understand the issues he's talking about, but that he doesn't even seem to understand when his own statements conflict with each other.

Just two days earlier, in a 60 Minutes interview, Comey had insisted, incorrectly, that the FBI can never read your email without a court order. This was simply false, and Comey had to 'fess up to that at the Brookings event when called on it. But if he needed to "clarify" that, it seems like he needs to do much more clarifying as well. Because much of his speech presented scenarios for why the phone encryption now being put in place by Apple and Google would have harmed investigations -- and after digging into those examples, it appears that his explanations were, once again, incorrect. Here are his examples:

In Louisiana, a known sex offender posed as a teenage girl to entice a 12-year-old boy to sneak out of his house to meet the supposed young girl. This predator, posing as a taxi driver, murdered the young boy and tried to alter and delete evidence on both his and the victim’s cell phones to cover up his crime. Both phones were instrumental in showing that the suspect enticed this child into his taxi. He was sentenced to death in April of this year.

In Los Angeles, police investigated the death of a 2-year-old girl from blunt force trauma to her head. There were no witnesses. Text messages stored on her parents’ cell phones to one another and to their family members proved the mother caused this young girl’s death and that the father knew what was happening and failed to stop it. Text messages stored on these devices also proved that the defendants failed to seek medical attention for hours while their daughter convulsed in her crib. They even went so far as to paint her tiny body with blue paint—to cover her bruises—before calling 911. Confronted with this evidence, both parents pled guilty.

In Kansas City, the DEA investigated a drug trafficking organization tied to heroin distribution, homicides, and robberies. The DEA obtained search warrants for several phones used by the group. Text messages found on the phones outlined the group’s distribution chain and tied the group to a supply of lethal heroin that had caused 12 overdoses—and five deaths—including several high school students.

In Sacramento, a young couple and their four dogs were walking down the street at night when a car ran a red light and struck them—killing their four dogs, severing the young man’s leg, and leaving the young woman in critical condition. The driver left the scene, and the young man died days later. Using “red light cameras” near the scene of the accident, the California Highway Patrol identified and arrested a suspect and seized his smartphone. GPS data on his phone placed the suspect at the scene of the accident and revealed that he had fled California shortly thereafter. He was convicted of second-degree murder and is serving a sentence of 25 years to life.

The evidence we find also helps exonerate innocent people. In Kansas, data from a cell phone was used to prove the innocence of several teens accused of rape. Without access to this phone, or the ability to recover a deleted video, several innocent young men could have been wrongly convicted.

Powerful stories, right? Just imagine if the data on those phones were locked up and unavailable to law enforcement? Well, imagine-no-more, because people have been looking into these stories, and Comey's fear mongering doesn't check out. First up, The Intercept looked into these cases and their results can be summed up in the URL slug which includes "FBI Dude Dumb Dumb."

In the three cases The Intercept was able to examine, cell-phone evidence had nothing to do with the identification or capture of the culprits, and encryption would not remotely have been a factor.

In the most dramatic case that Comey invoked — the death of a 2-year-old Los Angeles girl — not only was cellphone data a non-issue, but records show the girl’s death could actually have been avoided had government agencies involved in overseeing her and her parents acted on the extensive record they already had before them.

In another case, of a Lousiana sex offender who enticed and then killed a 12-year-old boy, the big break had nothing to do with a phone: The murderer left behind his keys and a trail of muddy footprints, and was stopped nearby after his car ran out of gas.

And in the case of a Sacramento hit-and-run that killed a man and his girlfriend’s four dogs, the driver was arrested a few hours later in a traffic stop because his car was smashed up, and immediately confessed to involvement in the incident.

The link provides a lot more details about each of those cases, suggesting phones had little to nothing to do with any of those stories, and if there were encryption on those phones it wouldn't have made the slightest difference. And it's not just the folks over at The Intercept recognizing this. The Associated Press called bullshit on most of the examples as well.

And, remember, these were the hand-picked examples the FBI came up with after weeks of time to prepare its case for not allowing such encryption. And they don't hold up under scrutiny.

During the Q&A, Comey was again challenged on these and asked for "real live examples" where encryption would be an issue and his answer did not inspire confidence that Comey has any idea what he's talking about:

Rescuing someone before they’re harmed? Someone in the trunk of a car or something? I don’t think I know – yet? I’ve asked my folks just to canvas – I’ve asked our state and local partners are there some examples where this – I think I see enough, but I don’t think I’ve found that one yet. I’m not looking. Here’s the thing. When I was preparing the speech, one of the things I was inclined to talk about was — to avoid those kids of sort of ‘edge’ cases because I’m not looking to frighten people. Logic tells me there’re going to be cases just like that, but the theory of the case is the main bulk of law enforcement activity. But that said I don’t know the answer. I haven’t found one yet.

In the talk, Comey also disputed the notion of a "back door," but rather claimed he wanted a "front door."

We aren’t seeking a back-door approach. We want to use the front door, with clarity and transparency, and with clear guidance provided by law. We are completely comfortable with court orders and legal process—front doors that provide the evidence and information we need to investigate crime and prevent terrorist attacks.

Right. So, just like the question of what's the difference between a back door and a magic golden key, Comey was asked about the difference between a front door and a back door, and his answer was... he doesn't know.

When asked technical questions about the solution he was suggesting, Comey didn’t have the answers. At one point, the host, Benjamin Wittes, a senior fellow at the Brooking Institution, asked Comey to explain his “front door” distinction, to which he responded, “I don’t think I am smart enough to tell you what 'front door' means.”

Yup. You're the director of the FBI and you just gave a key speech -- pushing for legislation -- which focuses on the idea of wanting a "front door" into technology, and when questioned on what the hell that means your answer is "I don't think I'm smart enough to tell you what 'front door' means"? This isn't making me feel any safer.

You know what would make me feel safer? A hell of a lot more encryption. And you know who agrees? the FBI. This is from the FBI's own website for "safety tips to protect your mobile device" In case you can't read it, it says:

Depending on the type of phone, the operating system may have encryption available. This can be used to protect the user’s personal data in the case of loss or theft.

It also recommends passcode protecting your phone (which is how these default encryption systems now work). So, um, here we have the FBI telling people to encrypt their phones... and complaining that such things will lead to the end of the world, though it's unable to actually give an example, or even explain what its new proposal is really about. As Marcy Wheeler pointed out before the speech, this sort of clueless dichotomy seems to follow Comey around. In that 60 Minutes interview, he both talked about how dangerous the internet is, and why people need to protect themselves... and then attacked one of the most important tools for people to protect themselves.

It's almost as if Comey has absolutely no idea what he's talking about.

And that's because he almost certainly does not. He may understand other issues related to crime and law enforcement, but when it comes to encryption, it appears he's reading the hastily prepared script of someone else. The simple fact is that he's wrong. Strong encryption is in the public interest and not only protects people from questionable surveillance, but from bad actors as well. It's the best way to make us all safer -- much better than relying on FBI agents running around trying to snoop on phones.

Thankfully, so far, the folks in Congress don't sound particularly impressed by Comey's demand for "front doors" that he's not smart enough to understand. Hopefully it stays that way.

Filed Under: encryption, fbi, fear mongering, fud, james comey, privacy, safety

FBI Director Continues His Attack On Technology, Privacy And Encryption

from the not-how-it-works dept

FBI Director James Comey has doubled down on his basic attack on technology and privacy with a speech at the Brookings Institution entitled "Going Dark: Are Technology, Privacy, and Public Safety on a Collision Course." He admits that he wants "every tool" available to law enforcement, and he's worried about that darn tech industry for wishing to keep users' information private. He calls it a "public safety problem." Others may disagree.

Unfortunately, the law hasn’t kept pace with technology, and this disconnect has created a significant public safety problem. We call it “Going Dark,” and what it means is this: Those charged with protecting our people aren’t always able to access the evidence we need to prosecute crime and prevent terrorism even with lawful authority. We have the legal authority to intercept and access communications and information pursuant to court order, but we often lack the technical ability to do so.

We face two overlapping challenges. The first concerns real-time court-ordered interception of what we call “data in motion,” such as phone calls, e-mail, and live chat sessions. The second challenge concerns court-ordered access to data stored on our devices, such as e-mail, text messages, photos, and videos—or what we call “data at rest.” And both real-time communication and stored data are increasingly encrypted.

Of course, many of us look at that encryption itself as a public safety issue on the other side. Greater encryption allows people to communicate safely, securely and privately -- which is an important public safety consideration. The simple fact is that crimes have been committed throughout human history without the ability of law enforcement to eavesdrop on people. It's merely an accident of history that so much communication recently has had backdoors and holes by which eavesdropping was even possible. Closing those doors doesn't mean law enforcement can't solve crimes, and it's silly to mandate backdoors when it's not necessary and can create more problems.

Comey seems particularly annoyed that the tech industry is locking stuff up in response to the Snowden revelations, because he argues, that's blocking all sorts of other stuff he'd like to have access to:

In the wake of the Snowden disclosures, the prevailing view is that the government is sweeping up all of our communications. That is not true. And unfortunately, the idea that the government has access to all communications at all times has extended—unfairly—to the investigations of law enforcement agencies that obtain individual warrants, approved by judges, to intercept the communications of suspected criminals.

Some believe that the FBI has these phenomenal capabilities to access any information at any time—that we can get what we want, when we want it, by flipping some sort of switch. It may be true in the movies or on TV. It is simply not the case in real life.

It frustrates me, because I want people to understand that law enforcement needs to be able to access communications and information to bring people to justice. We do so pursuant to the rule of law, with clear guidance and strict oversight. But even with lawful authority, we may not be able to access the evidence and the information we need.

Again, there's an interesting sense of entitlement there. There's lots of information law enforcement would like to have, and even may legally have the right to have, but which they cannot have. And that's been true throughout history, and law enforcement has survived and crimes have been stopped and criminals caught and prosecuted. What Comey is advocating here is to make everyone less safe just in case law enforcement wants it. That's a problem.

Bizarrely, Comey is quite upset that companies are now marketing the fact that they keep you secure.

Encryption isn’t just a technical feature; it’s a marketing pitch. But it will have very serious consequences for law enforcement and national security agencies at all levels. Sophisticated criminals will come to count on these means of evading detection. It’s the equivalent of a closet that can’t be opened. A safe that can’t be cracked. And my question is, at what cost?

The cost of privacy and trust. Which are, you know, kind of important too...

And then he goes back to his simply wrong declaration that this is about making people "above the law." But that's not true. There is no legal requirement that this information be available. It's not above the law at all. Being above the law means ignoring the law and getting away with it. But, to Comey, being above the law is apparently doing stuff that makes the FBI's job marginally more difficult.

I hope you know that I’m a huge believer in the rule of law. But I also believe that no one in this country should be above or beyond the law. There should be no law-free zone in this country. I like and believe very much that we need to follow the letter of the law to examine the contents of someone’s closet or someone’s cell phone. But the notion that the marketplace could create something that would prevent that closet from ever being opened, even with a properly obtained court order, makes no sense to me.

I think it’s time to ask: Where are we, as a society? Are we no longer a country governed by the rule of law, where no one is above or beyond that law? Are we so mistrustful of government—and of law enforcement—that we are willing to let bad guys walk away...willing to leave victims in search of justice?

And then there's this: He's not a scaremonger, but you should be afraid:

I’ve never been someone who is a scaremonger. But I’m in a dangerous business.

And, of course, he wants Congress to step in and fix things for him, making everyone less safe:

We also need a regulatory or legislative fix to create a level playing field, so that all communication service providers are held to the same standard and so that those of us in law enforcement, national security, and public safety can continue to do the job you have entrusted us to do, in the way you would want us to.

A "level field"? Really? The field has been tilted strongly towards the FBI and NSA for well over a decade. It's only now, with further encryption, that it's been leveling out...

Filed Under: doj, encryption, fbi, james comey, privacy, public safety, security

60 Minutes Tells Stories About FBI And NSA But Somehow Fails To Connect The Dots

from the comey's-no-hero dept

60 Minutes, which has been harshly criticized for running puff pieces for the NSA and FBI recently, is at it again. Last night, they ran two unrelated yet completely conflicting segments—one focusing on FBI Director Jim Comey, and the other on New York Times reporter James Risen—and the cognitive dissonance displayed in the back-to-back interviews was remarkable.

First up was 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley's interview with FBI Director Jim Comey. 60 Minutes aired the first part of the interview last week, which ran 14 minutes and did not contain a single adversarial question. This time, Scott Pelley asked him at least asked a couple softballs about civil liberties, although the primary one Comey just refused to answer.

The main focus of the piece, however, was Comey's supposed commitment to "the rule of law." "That's a principle over which James Comey is willing to sacrifice his career," Pelley explains to the audience. He then proceeded to re-tell the infamous "hospital bed" scene from 2004 during the Bush administration, where Comey, then deputy attorney general, threatened to resign unless Bush altered the original NSA warrantless surveillance program. Bush relented a bit and so Comey stayed on as deputy attorney general for more than a year afterwards.

Comey is portrayed as the hero, who stopped illegal surveillance from going forward. What Comey did was certainly admirable, but this episode happened in March 2004 and only pertained to a small portion of the NSA's illegal activities. The NSA's illegal warrantless wiretapping program (as the public knew it) was first exposed more than eighteen months later in December 2005. 60 Minutes explains this in the very next segment but couldn't apparently put two and two together: Jim Comey was presumably also responsible for signing off on the illegal program the New York Times exposed after his hospital bed protest.

During this segment, 60 Minutes interviewed James Risen about the Obama administration's war on leaks and described the scoop he is most famous for: his Pulitzer Prize-winning story exposing that same warrantless wiretapping program.

Risen explains to 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl that the NSA was not only gathering metadata without a warrant on Americans in 2005, but the content of phone conversations as well. And as Stahl herself points out—and as former NSA chief Michael Hayden basically admits in the segment—this was in direct violation of the 1978 law the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which required court orders to conduct such spying.

Critically, Risen's first story in December 2005 makes it clear the warrantless wiretapping of Americans was ongoing at the time. And we learned just last year as part of the Snowden revelations that Comey's hospital protest was over Internet metadata, not illegal eavesdropping on phone calls.

So to sum up: the government was breaking the law in December 2005. This is the program that Comey had presumably signed off on after the much-talked-about incident and he remained deputy attorney general. Yet Comey is still uncontroversially portrayed as a man dedicated to "the rule of law."

This information was readily available to 60 Minutes, as it's in the most well-known recounting of the hospital bed scene done by reporter Barton Gellman for the Washington Post and in his book The Angler in 2007. As Barton Gellman reported in 2007, Comey forced some changes with his potential resignation in 2004, but "much of the operation remained in place."

"Imagine you're doing ten things one day, and the next day you're only doing eight of them," an unnamed official told Gellman in The Angler. "That's basically what happened here."

Cross posted from the Freedom of the Press Foundation.

Filed Under: 60 minutes, fbi, fisa, james comey, james risen, nsa, surveillance
Companies: cbs

FBI Director: The Internet Is The Most Dangerous Parking Lot Imagineable

from the james-comey:-bad-at-analogies dept

FBI Director James Comey was on 60 Minutes on Sunday, in a segment that will continue next week as well. Apparently next week is when we'll find out his views on mobile encryption and whether or not the FBI is spying on all of us, but this week, he gave us a tiny hint towards the end of the segment, in which he discusses why the internet is so dangerous. As far as I can tell, the summary is "don't open attachments" (i.e., the same advice that you've been hearing for a decade, and which has little to do with many internet threats today):

Scott Pelley: Do people understand, in your estimation, the dangers posed by cybercrime and cyber espionage?

James Comey: I don't think so. I think there's something about sitting in front of your own computer working on your own banking, your own health care, your own social life that makes it hard to understand the danger. I mean, the Internet is the most dangerous parking lot imaginable. But if you were crossing a mall parking lot late at night, your entire sense of danger would be heightened. You would stand straight. You'd walk quickly. You'd know where you were going. You would look for light. Folks are wandering around that proverbial parking lot of the Internet all day long, without giving it a thought to whose attachments they're opening, what sites they're visiting. And that makes it easy for the bad guys.

Scott Pelley: So tell folks at home what they need to know.

James Comey: When someone sends you an email, they are knocking on your door. And when you open the attachment, without looking through the peephole to see who it is, you just opened the door and let a stranger into your life, where everything you care about is.

Scott Pelley: And what might that attachment do?

James Comey: Well, take over the computer, lock the computer, and then demand a ransom payment before it would unlock. Steal images from your system of your children or your, you know, or steal your banking information, take your entire life.

About the only thing I get from all this is that FBI Director James Comey is bad at analogies. Yes, you shouldn't click on attachments from unknown people, and you should even be careful about attachments from known folks. But that makes the internet the "most dangerous parking lot imaginable"? Perhaps the other thing I've learned is that James Comey doesn't have a very strong imagination.

Filed Under: attachments, cybersecurity, internet, james comey

FBI Director Angry At Homebuilders For Putting Up Walls That Hide Any Crimes Therein

from the wtf dept

We already wrote about how law enforcement was freaking out over the (good) news that Apple and Google were making encryption a default on both iOS and Android. Then we had a followup where a recently retired FBI guy insisted that such encryption would have meant a kidnap victim died... until everyone pointed out that the entire premise of that story was wrong and the Washington Post had to change the entire thing. We had hoped that, maybe, just maybe the misguided whining and complaining wouldn't come from those in charge, but apparently that's not happening.

On Thursday, FBI boss James Comey displayed not only a weak understanding of privacy and encryption, but also what the phrase "above the law" means, in slamming Apple and Google for making encryption a default:

"I am a huge believer in the rule of law, but I am also a believer that no one in this country is above the law," Comey told reporters at FBI headquarters in Washington. "What concerns me about this is companies marketing something expressly to allow people to place themselves above the law."

[....]

"There will come a day -- well it comes every day in this business -- when it will matter a great, great deal to the lives of people of all kinds that we be able to with judicial authorization gain access to a kidnapper's or a terrorist or a criminal's device. I just want to make sure we have a good conversation in this country before that day comes. I'd hate to have people look at me and say, 'Well how come you can't save this kid,' 'how come you can't do this thing.'"

First of all, nothing in what either Apple or Google is doing puts anyone "above the law." It just says that those companies are better protecting the privacy of their users. There are lots of things that make law enforcement's job harder that also better protect everyone's privacy. That includes walls. If only there were no walls, it would be much easier to spot crimes being committed. And I'm sure some crimes happen behind walls that make it difficult for the FBI to track down what happened. But we don't see James Comey claiming that homebuilders are allowing people to be "above the law" by building houses with walls.

"I get that the post-Snowden world has started an understandable pendulum swing," he said. "What I'm worried about is, this is an indication to us as a country and as a people that, boy, maybe that pendulum swung too far."

Wait, what? The "pendulum" hasn't swung at all. To date, there has been no legal change in the surveillance laws post-Snowden. The pendulum is just as far over towards the extreme surveillance state as it has been since Snowden first came on the scene. This isn't the pendulum "swinging too far." It's not even the pendulum swinging. This is just Apple and Google making a tiny shift to better protect privacy.

As Christopher Soghoian points out, why isn't Comey screaming about the manufacturers of paper shredders, which similarly allow their customers to hide papers from "lawful surveillance?"

But, of course, the freaking out continues. Over in the Washington Post, there's this bit of insanity:

“Apple will become the phone of choice for the pedophile,” said John J. Escalante, chief of detectives for Chicago’s police department. “The average pedophile at this point is probably thinking, I’ve got to get an Apple phone.”

Um. No. That's just ridiculous. Frankly, if pedophiles are even thinking about encryption, it's likely that they already are using one of the many encryption products already on the market. And, again, this demonizing of encryption as if it's only a tool of pedophiles and criminals is just ridiculous. Regular everyday people use encryption every single day. You're using it if you visit this very website. And it's increasingly becoming the standard, because that's just good security.

Filed Under: crime, encryption, fbi, james comey, john escalante, mobile encryption, overreaction

New Boss At The FBI Still Focused On Making Up Pretend Terrorist Threats; May Also Make Up Fake Criminal Plots Too

from the because-that's-what-the-fbi-is-good-at dept

Earlier this year, we noted that the FBI had quietly changed its own description about how it was primarily focused on "law enforcement" to claiming that it was now primarily focused on "national security." That is, over the past decade, the FBI has shifted from being a law enforcement agency, looking to stop crimes, to an intelligence agency, spying on Americans and searching for "terrorists." Of course, this focus has meant that it has basically ignored tons of criminal activity including things like mortgage fraud, which helped create the economic crisis a few years ago. Instead, the FBI has expended so much effort on creating and busting its own fake terrorist plots.

As we've seen over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again, the FBI seems to spend an awful lot of time creating totally fake terrorist plots, luring some gullible individual into the plot (where every other participant is FBI, and where all the "weapons" are fake) and then arresting the individual and scoring big headlines about stopping another "plot" -- despite the fact no plot would have existed without the FBI.

When new FBI boss James Comey took the job, he had suggested that he might move the FBI back towards a law enforcement agency, but according to the NY Times, he's been convinced to stick with focusing on terrorism plots. He insists that the risk is much bigger than he thought before he was in the job, though all of the examples he gives are of terrorism happening overseas, not in the US. Given that it must be a lot easier to concoct bogus terrorist plots and ensnare gullible individuals, than it is to track down actual criminals, it's not hard to see why many in the Bureau might have pushed Comey to continue these current efforts.

By Mr. Comey's own account, he also brought to the job a belief, based on news media reports, that the threat from Al Qaeda was diminished. But nine months into his tenure as director, Mr. Comey acknowledges that he underestimated the threat the United States still faces from terrorism.

"I didn't have anywhere near the appreciation I got after I came into this job just how virulent those affiliates had become," Mr. Comey said, referring to offshoots of Al Qaeda in Africa and in the Middle East during an interview in his sprawling office on the seventh floor of the J. Edgar Hoover Building. "There are both many more than I appreciated, and they are stronger than I appreciated."

The article uses the example of the Boston Marathon bombings as an example of domestic terrorism, but as multiple people, including former FBI agent Mike German noted to the NY Times reporter, the problem there was that the FBI ignored all of the key info about the Tsarnaevs, in part because they are flooded in irrelevant info.

"You had all this information coming in, and nearly all of it wasn't helpful," said Mr. German, a former F.B.I. agent, "so agents became accustomed to leads going nowhere and everything they opened became an exercise in how quickly you can close it."

[....] "The year the F.B.I. investigated the older brother, it said it did 1,000 assessments," Mr. German said. "There weren't 1,000 terrorists in Boston that year, and a vast majority of resources were obviously going to things that didn't matter."

Perhaps even more troubling is that Comey thinks that the FBI's "experience" with terrorism may now be useful in tackling other types of crimes.

And Mr. Comey said he also wanted to apply the lessons learned in fighting terrorism to fighting other crimes. If Congress approves, he plans to move the bureau's head of intelligence out of the national security division and create a new intelligence branch that will amass information on crimes like fraud in an effort to more quickly identify trends and perpetrators.

To me, that sounds like the FBI is now going to start creating bogus criminal plots as well for other types of crimes, looking to ensnare gullible people. After all, it's worked so well in going after fake terrorists.

Of course, the FBI could focus on actually going after criminals, but as German points out, the FBI agents focused on fake terrorist plots haven't actually been trained in how to find real crimes.

But the bureau's focus on counterterrorism has led to criticism that a generation of agents have spent their entire careers doing nothing else. Mr. German and other critics say they never learned the basic policing skills needed for a criminal investigation. Mr. Comey has acknowledged the problem, ordering that the F.B.I.'s newest class of recruits, scheduled to start training in June, spend significant time on criminal investigation squads.

From that, it appears that over a decade's worth of FBI agents have never learned basic law enforcement skills to track down criminals. This seems like a recipe for a continuing disaster.

Filed Under: doj, fbi, james comey, law enforcement, terrorism

Rand Paul Files Lawsuit Against The NSA While Peter King Questions His Party's Loyalty To The Surveillance State

from the NSA-swiftly-shooting-up-'America's-favorite-defendant'-chart dept

Shortly after the first Snowden leak back in June of last year, Sen. Rand Paul threatened to file a class action lawsuit against the government for its surveillance of American citizens. This move, while interesting, seemed to be less useful than actually trying to reform the NSA using the legislative process. Nonetheless, Paul was apparently serious and has officially filed his lawsuit in the DC federal court, naming President Obama, NSA head Keith Alexander, ODNI Director James Clapper and FBI Director James Comey as defendants.

“There’s a huge and growing swell of protest in this country of people who are outraged that their records are being taken without suspicion, without a judge’s warrant and without individualization,” Paul said at a news conference outside the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia…

“I’m not against the NSA, I’m not against spying, I’m not against looking at phone records,” Paul said. “I just want you to go to a judge, have an individual’s name and [get] a warrant. That’s what the Fourth Amendment says.”

It seems like a simple enough requirement. Targeted warrants have long been used for investigations, and there's no reason to believe they simply don't work anymore. The nation's investigative and security agencies have just become accustomed to circumventing this aspect of the Fourth Amendment.

Rand Paul and an untold number of others will be represented by Ken Cuccinelli, former Virginia attorney general, who explains why Paul's lawsuit is different than the dozens of others that have been filed in the wake of Snowden's leaks.

“This case is, first of all, the only case that is strictly challenging the Fourth Amendment elements of the telephone metadata gathering,” Cuccinelli said. “Second of all, this will be certified later in the case as a class action, on behalf of all Americans. The other cases thus far are on behalf of individual plaintiffs … that does not provide relief for every American using telephones. This case will.”

This filing has prompted angry comments (of course) from terrorist appeaser (and current Congressman) Peter King ([sigh] of course.)

Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) expressed anger Wednesday that Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is slated to file a lawsuit against President Obama and other officials over National Security Agency surveillance…

“I think that has really hurt the country,” King said of the leaks on MSNBC. “That is why I am so angry that Rand Paul is bringing this lawsuit today.”

King went on to question whether his party should have Snowden sympathizers in its ranks.

“And let's just say as Republicans ... do we really want people in our party somehow saying they don’t know whether he is a patriot or not? ... Who actually put him in the same classification as the director of national intelligence?”

These questions presumably received no answer other than a saddened headshake from King himself. It looks as though there's only one way to be a Republican these days, and that's to be in total servitude to the surveillance state. Even questioning King's assertion that Snowden is a traitor is bad for America the Republican party King's normally boyishly exuberant outlook on life the current legislative majority, as envisioned by pro bono NSA flack, Peter King.

Filed Under: james clapper, james comey, keith alexander, nsa, odni, peter king, rand paul

Mike Rogers Tries To Make The Case That Glenn Greenwald Should Be Prosecuted For 'Selling Stolen Material'

from the is-he-insane? dept

Rep. Mike Rogers apparently just can't help but spin wild and ridiculous conspiracy theories. Fresh off his latest attempt to argue that Ed Snowden is a Russian spy -- an argument debunked by just about everyone, including his Senatorial counterpart Dianne Feinstein -- it appears he's now decided to pick up the ridiculously insane thread kicked off (purposefully) last week by Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, hinting that journalists who reported on Ed Snowden are somehow "accomplices" who can be prosecuted.

During a House Intelligence Committee in which many members (from both parties) angrily criticized the intelligence community, Rogers continued to do everything possible to defend them, including pushing the bogus argument that Glenn Greenwald "sold stolen goods" in questions to FBI director James Comey:

REP. ROGERS: You -- there have been discussions about selling of access to this material to both newspaper outlets and other places. Mr. Comey, to the best of your knowledge, is fencing stolen material -- is that a crime?

DIRECTOR JAMES COMEY: Yes, it is.

REP. ROGERS: And would be selling the access of classified material that is stolen from the United States government -- would that be a crime?

DIR. COMEY: It would be. It’s an issue that can be complicated if it involves a news-gathering and news promulgation function, but in general, fencing or selling stolen property is a crime.

REP. ROGERS: So if I’m a newspaper reporter for -- fill in the blank -- and I sell stolen material, is that legal because I’m a newspaper reporter?

DIR. COMEY: Right, if you’re a newspaper report and you’re hocking stolen jewelry, it’s still a crime.

REP. ROGERS: And if I’m hocking stolen classified material that I’m not legally in possession of for personal gain and profit, is that not a crime?

DIR. COMEY: I think that’s a harder question because it involves a news-gathering functions -- could have First Amendment implications. It’s something that probably would be better answered by the Department of Justice.

REP. ROGERS: So entering into a commercial enterprise to sell stolen material is acceptable to a legitimate news organization?

DIR. COMEY: I’m not sure I’m able to answer that question in the abstract.

REP. ROGERS: It’s something we ought to think about, is it not?

DIR. COMEY: Certainly.

REP. ROGERS: And so if there are accomplices in purveying stolen information, shouldn’t we be concerned about that?

DIR. COMEY: We should be concerned about all the facts surrounding the theft of classified information and its promulgation.

REP. ROGERS: Hmm. And interesting that over the -- again, the Munich Conference, where we had individuals tell us that in fact there are individuals who are saying to be in possession of this information who are eager to sell this information to other news organizations, would that be a legitimate exercise on behalf of a reporter?

DIR. COMEY: That’s a question -- now you’re getting from the general to the particular. I don’t want to talk about the case in particular because it’s an active investigation of ours.

REP. ROGERS: It’s an active investigation for accomplices brokering in stolen information?

DIR. COMEY: We are looking at the totality of the circumstances around the theft and promulgation.

Glenn Greenwald is not named, but that's clearly who they are targeting. A few folks have brought up the ridiculous charges of him "selling" the Snowden leaks to news organizations, but that's clearly bullshit. Greenwald has been doing freelance journalism work for a while. Publications pay him in the same way they pay any freelancer. He's not selling any documents at all -- and in fact has shared many of the documents with multiple publications for their own reporting activities.

It's pretty clear that Rogers is continuing his desperate, despicable and downright McCarthy-like arguments in an attempt to create chilling effects and to protect his friends in the intelligence community. You'd think that someone who is supposed to uphold the Constitution would respect the freedom of the press, but Rogers seems to be actively trying to stifle it -- just like his staff did to me last year, when they lied about me and told reporters that they could sue me for defamation.

Rogers has shown time and time again that he's little more than a lumbering bully who will do pretty much anything to protect his friends in the intelligence community, even if that means trampling all over the Constitution. Rogers can push these claims as much as he wants. I think it's unlikely that the DOJ would go anywhere near charging a reporter with "selling stolen goods" in a case like this, because they know that argument would almost certainly fail. That means the only reason Rogers is doing this is to try to scare off people with bluster and threats. Thankfully, most of the people that's targeted at actually understand the law and the Constitution, and take such threats as clear suggestions that they're on the right track. It all makes you wonder, just what does Mike Rogers want to keep hidden so badly?

Filed Under: congress, ed snowden, glenn greenwald, house intelligence committee, james clapper, james comey, journalism, mike rogers, nsa, selling stolen goods

FBI Director Uses Appearance At International Police Convention To Complain About FBI Budget Cuts

from the mind-on-his-money-and-his-money-on-his-mind dept

The currently ongoing International Association of Chiefs of Police has, so far, seen law enforcement officials exhibit a new found wariness of rolling out invasive surveillance technology in the wake of the NSA leaks. This sort of caution and concern has sadly been missing up until now. The generally accepted practice has been to roll out surveillance programs quickly, with little in the way of oversight or privacy protections, and deal with the fallout later.

As I expressed in the previous post, I was concerned if this would change following appearances by James Comey, the new director of the FBI, and Attorney General Eric Holder, neither of which have a history of prioritizing Americans' civil liberties.

Comey has made his appearance, but rather than attempt to "calm" the suddenly rational voices of law enforcement, he took this opportunity to complain about the FBI's budget woes, something he's done pretty much nonstop since he took the position.

At a time when FBI agents play a larger role than ever fighting violent crime and terrorism, they are facing potentially devastating cuts because of congressional budget slashing.

“I’m required to cut 3,500 positions, to cut my operations to the bone, to do things like ration gas money and to stare at the prospect of sending my folks home for an extended period,” FBI Director James Comey said.

This CBS report claims this is the "first time" Comey's spoken publicly about the FBI's money problem, but Reuters quotes him as speaking to "major news outlets" about the same issue back in September, shortly after he took office.

The FBI during Mueller's final year made its budget by "looking through the couch cushions," Comey said. With a new government fiscal year set to begin October 1 and Congress not close to passing a budget, "the couch has been turned upside-down," he said...

Comey said he was considering a furlough of 10 days or more for each of the FBI's 36,000 employees. New agent classes at a bureau compound in Quantico, Virginia, stopped within the past few months, he said.

"I'm happy to have a discussion with anyone who thinks I have too many people or too many resources," Comey said.

Great! Let's have that discussion.

The FBI, unlike many, many other government agencies (including the DOJ, which oversees it), has had very few budget fiascoes. But this lack of headline-grabbing waste scandals does not mean the FBI is necessarily running a tight ship. Comey claims a loss of projected cut of $800 million (from a budget of $8.1 billion) will result in the slashing of 3,600 jobs. Before he gets to the point of handing out pink slips, he may want to take a look at some areas where money's being wasted.

The DOJ has plenty of questionable expenditures, including the overuse of private jets and a love for expensive conferences, both of which resulted in $61 million of arguably wasted funds. As the FBI is a department of the DOJ, it would probably benefit from some belt-tightening further up the ladder.

The FBI, like millions of people around the world, is easily flattered. For no apparent reason other than the possibility of rubbing elbows with stars, the FBI funds a "Hollywood division" that provides consultation and free use of FBI facilities to TV and movie producers. This $1.5 million expenditure isn't much more than a couple of atoms of the drop in the bucket, considering the agency's $8 billion budget, but it seems to be set up in the most ingratiatingly backwards way. Shouldn't studios be paying the FBI for its expertise and facilities, rather than allowing taxpayers to pick up the tab? Just something to consider, Comey.

After Comey's first statements on the agency's budget woes, the ACLU made some suggestions of its own. Why not eliminate some programs that rank high on the busywork scale but low on actual results? Bonus: fewer civil liberties violations and their attendant lawsuits. In addition to the questionable profiling performed under its "Domain Management" programs, there's plenty of waste to be found in other intelligence gathering/investigative programs.

Modifications to guidelines governing the FBI's domestic operations in 2008 gave it the leeway to perform "assessment," i.e. intrusive investigations targeted at persons without any suspicion of illegal activity or threats to national security.

In the two years from March of 2009 to March 2011, the FBI opened more than 82,000 of these assessments of people and groups without a factual basis to suspect wrongdoing. Only 3,315 of these assessments found information sufficient to justify further investigation.

Not only was the hit rate insignificant (and hardly enough to justify the opening of 82,000 assessments), but the FBI is still holding onto the data collected on the 78,000 targets it was unable to find any reason to continue investigating.

The Suspicious Activity Reporting program is also a failure, although the FBI notes that the thousands of "tips" it receives a year justify continued funding. (It glosses over the fact that the SAR system is nearly as worthless as its "assessments.")

The ACLU of Northern California recently obtained hundreds of SARs from California, including many that were entered into eGuardian, which clearly show people are targeted based on racial and religious characteristics and First Amendment-protected activity like photography. The Government Accountability Office criticized the federal government's SAR programs for failing to establish metrics to determine whether they actually improve security. Any program that violates rights and doesn't improve security should be closed immediately.

On top of that, there's the Fusion Centers the FBI works with. Although these are technically a DHS line item, any money being spent collaborating with (or withholding information from[?]) entities a Congressional investigation called "wasteful," "useless" and "possibly fraudulent" is money better spent elsewhere.

So, there's some more areas where money could be saved, or at the very least, diverted to investigative activities with better success rates (and, of course, fewer instances of civil liberties violations).

But even without cutting back a single program, there's something to be said for cutting staff. While unpleasant for those on the receiving end of pink slips, the fact is that the FBI's budget has more than doubled since 2001 ($3.2 billion to $8.1 billion). It has also added nearly 7,000 positions over that same period. The FBI goes on at length about its counterterrorism work but there's little hard evidence to support the theory that the terrorist threat has expanded at the same rate as its budget. But this discrepancy between budget and staff indicates the issue isn't too many employees.

When Comey talks about cutting staff, he's not looking at the real problem. An agency that's ballooned to twice its size budget-wise in 12 years without coming anywhere close to doubling its staff is likely sitting on a ton of redundant systems and inefficient processes. If the agency was truly stretched, it would be adding more agents rather than more initiatives and sketchy surveillance programs.

Let's not forget that the agency has twice blown a significant amount of money on updating its computer system. It gave $600 million to SAIC (the contractors behind Oakland's new Orwellian surveillance system), which managed to cobble together a spectacular failure over a five-year period, one so terrible it was scrapped immediately. The job was handed off to a new contractor and given a $400 million budget and a four-year window back in 2006. That system finally went fully live in August of 2012.

This is the FBI director's response to a 10% budget cut. He makes it sound as though the agency will fade quietly out of existence unless given more money than it was given the year before, and he obviously expects this to continue in perpetuity. If he believes a $800 million haircut (relatively-speaking) will make the agency resort to "looking through the couch cushions" in order to fund its work, then it's hardly a surprise it's asking for $270,000 to fulfill an FOIA request. Hard times mean looking for new revenue streams.

Filed Under: budget cuts, complaints, doj, fbi, james comey