Hillary Clinton to Council on Foreign Relations: “It’s good to have an outpost of the Council right here down the street from the State Department… I won’t have as far to go to be told what we should be doing”
July 19th, 2009Via: U.S. State Department:
Thank you very much, Richard, and I am delighted to be here in these new headquarters. I have been often to, I guess, the mother ship in New York City, but it’s good to have an outpost of the Council right here down the street from the State Department. We get a lot of advice from the Council, so this will mean I won’t have as far to go to be told what we should be doing and how we should think about the future.
Research Credit: Rmohanx
The NSA Wiretapping Story Nobody Wanted
July 18th, 2009Full text backup below.
Via: ComputerWorld:
The NSA Wiretapping Story Nobody Wanted
Whistleblower Mark Klein tells in his new book of how he was ignored. He spoke with IDG News.
By Robert McMillan
July 17, 2009 07:35 PM ET
They sometimes call national security the third rail of politics. Touch it and, politically, you’re dead.
The cliché doesn’t seem far off the mark after reading Mark Klein’s new book, “Wiring up the Big Brother Machine … and Fighting It.” It’s an account of his experiences as the whistleblower who exposed a secret room at a Folsom Street facility in San Francisco that was apparently used to monitor the Internet communications of ordinary Americans.
Klein, 64, was a retired AT&T communications technician in December 2005, when he read the New York Times story that blew the lid off the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program. Secretly authorized in 2002, the program lets the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) monitor telephone conversations and e-mail messages of people inside the U.S. to identify suspected terrorists. Klein knew right away that he had proof — documents from his time at AT&T — that could provide a snapshot of how the program was siphoning data off of the AT&T network in San Francisco.
Amazingly, however, nobody wanted to hear his story. In his book he talks about meetings with reporters and privacy groups that went nowhere until a fateful January 20, 2006, meeting with Kevin Bankston of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). Bankston was preparing a lawsuit that he hoped would put a stop to the wiretap program, and Klein was just the kind of witness the EFF was looking for.
With the EFF on board, Klein was briefly a media celebrity — the man who had the guts to expose the NSA’s secret wiretapping program. In his book he provides the documents and the stories that illustrate how all of this transpired.
Klein has been politically active since the 1960s, when he protested the Vietnam war. “I came to view the government with great suspicion like a lot of people back then and I still do,” he said in an interview he granted the IDG News service on Friday. “I guess that sort of laid the groundwork for my later experience, because I didn’t trust the government to begin with.”
Today he lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife, Linda, and his two dogs. He self-published his book last week.
Following is an edited transcript of the interview.
IDG News Service: By some estimates there are 15 to 20 of these secret wiretapping rooms across the country. You’re the only AT&T employee who has come forward and talked about them in detail. Why?
Mark Klein: Fear. First of all it was a scary time. It still is a scary time, but during the Bush years it was sort of a witch hunt atmosphere and people were afraid. People are afraid of losing their jobs, and it’s a rule of thumb that if you become a whistleblower you’ll probably lose your job. And if you have a security clearance, you not only lose your job, but you probably will be prosecuted by the government. The Bush administration made that very clear in statements they made over and over again: ‘Anybody who reveals anything about our secret programs will be prosecuted and we are running investigations to find out who leaked this to the New York Times.’ Well that puts a fear in people.
IDGNS: Have you heard from other AT&T employees who told you that they knew of these activities?
Klein: I haven’t tried to get in contact with people I knew at AT&T for this very reason. I didn’t want to jeopardize their livelihood.
IDGNS: In your book you describe how a meeting with your lawyer was videotaped to preserve evidence in case you “disappeared.” How scared were you?
Klein: I was very worried. The Bush administration was capable of very crazy things and illegal things. I knew they were doing torture. And I knew they had taken into custody and jailed people who were citizens of the United States … and just thrown them away in a brig with no trial and no charges. So I didn’t think it was beyond the possibility that they’d do the same to me. Maybe I was getting a little paranoid in hindsight, but hindsight is cheap.
I was most worried at the time when the LA Times was killing my story, but at the same time the LA Times showed it to the government. Then I really was panicking because that meant that the government knew everything and probably knew my name, but I didn’t have any publicity.
IDGNS: The media merit a full chapter (entitled: ‘Going Public vs. Media Chickens’) in your book. What happened there?
Klein: The LA Times was particularly egregious because they were planning a front-page spread. They were the first entity I’d given all the documents to. Then they talked to the government about it, and it turned out they were talking to not only the NSA director, but the director of national intelligence, who was John Negroponte at the time. So that meant the government knew it. And then a few weeks later the LA Times killed the story. So the only thing you can read into is that basically the government squashed the story. [The LA Times’ editor in early 2006, Dean Baquet, said the government had nothing to do with the decision. ‘We did not have a story, that we could not figure out what was going on,’ he told ABC News — ed.]
IDGNS: How long did they have the story?
Klein: I started dealing with them in late January 2006, and in February they showed it to the government, and then they started wobbling. By the end of March 2006, they officially told me the story was killed.
IDGNS: Did they cover it in April, after it became public?
Klein: No that was funny. After it finally hit the news everywhere else, The LA Times didn’t run with the stuff I’d given them. They’d squashed the whole thing.
IDGNS: A lot of people you might have expected to be interested in this story weren’t interested initially. In the book, you talk about going to EPIC [the Electronic Privacy Information Center] and getting nowhere; you talk about the media and you also talk about Congress. You never testified before Congress.
Klein: This book has several aspects. The first aspect is the spying itself and the technical apparatus; another aspect is the role of the media and how the media has basically functioned as a propaganda apparatus for the government, more or less willingly. Part of the book is about the struggle to make the media cover this story. And the third part of this story is about Congress. It was a struggle, a struggle which failed I might add, to get Congress to investigate and do something about this. Congress ran away from me. They didn’t want to touch me with a 10-foot pole, starting with my own senator, Dianne Feinstein, who was a key member of both the Intelligence Committee in the Senate and the Judiciary Committee. She was one of the first legislators I tried to contact in February 2006. I was given the number of her chief attorney in Washington, and he first was very interested. He talked to me on the phone and asked me a bunch of detailed questions and told me he’d get back to me. And then I never heard from him again.
IDGNS: Why do you think you had trouble getting Congress interested?
Klein: With the Republicans, it’s obvious why they didn’t want to deal with it. Their administration was responsible for the whole illegal spying operation. The first layer of the Democratic party leadership, it turns out, had been knowledgeable and briefed on this program and was complicit, in my view.
IDGNS: What do you think you’ve accomplished by coming forward with these documents?
Klein: My main accomplishment is to let everybody know about what exactly the government is doing to people. How the government in detail is screwing over people’s privacy and trampling over the Constitution and the Fourth Amendment, and lay out in great detail how everybody’s personal lives are being delved into by the government and stored in secret databases for future reference.
Research Credit: AHuxley
And Now… Tony Blair for President of EU?
July 18th, 2009Via: Telegraph:
Downing Street has been forced to admit that it is backing Tony Blair to be President of the European Union.
The intervention came after Baroness Kinnock embarrassed Gordon Brown by admitting that the Government wants Mr Blair to take up the newly created role.
The position will come into force if the Lisbon Treaty is ratified across Europe. It is expected to carry a salary and perks package worth at least £200,000 a year.
The admission came as a close ally of Mr Blair told The Daily Telegraph that the former Prime Minister is set on landing the position which would wield considerable power and influence.
Baroness Kinnock, who was the controversial choice for Europe Minister in Mr Brown’s recent reshuffle, revealed Mr Blair was being supported for what will be a new position that comes into force if the Lisbon Treaty is finally ratified across the continent.
She said: “The UK government is supporting Tony Blair’s candidature for president of the council.
“I am not saying there has been any formal confirmation or statement from Tony but it is certainly is the government’s position. I am sure they would not do it without asking him.”
Downing Street was then forced to admit that they would back Mr Blair.
Man Given Six Months to Live Discovers Tumour is Harmless Abscess
July 18th, 2009Via: Telegraph:
Phil Collins, 61, quit his job, planned his own funeral and blew £18,000 from a pension pay-out after being told he had inoperable gallbladder and liver cancer.
He fulfilled a lifelong dream of buying a Triumph motorbike, bought wife Isabel a car and made financial arrangements to ensure she was secure after his death.
But when the six month deadline passed he went back to hospital – where further checks revealed the growth on his liver was in fact an abscess.
However, Mr Collins claims that complications from the cocktail of cancer drugs he was prescribed have ruined his health and he is now planning a legal bid for compensation.
Legal Immunity Set for Swine Flu Vaccine Makers
July 18th, 2009Via: AP:
The last time the government embarked on a major vaccine campaign against a new swine flu, thousands filed claims contending they suffered side effects from the shots. This time, the government has already taken steps to head that off.
Vaccine makers and federal officials will be immune from lawsuits that result from any new swine flu vaccine, under a document signed by Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius, government health officials said Friday.
Since the 1980s, the government has protected vaccine makers against lawsuits over the use of childhood vaccines. Instead, a federal court handles claims and decides who will be paid from a special fund.
The document signed by Sebelius last month grants immunity to those making a swine flu vaccine, under the provisions of a 2006 law for public health emergencies. It allows for a compensation fund, if needed.
The government takes such steps to encourage drug companies to make vaccines, and it’s worked. Federal officials have contracted with five manufacturers to make a swine flu vaccine. First identified in April, swine flu has so far caused about 263 deaths, according to numbers released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday.
The CDC said more than 40,000 Americans have had confirmed or probable cases, but those are people who sought health care. It’s likely that more than 1 million Americans have been sickened by the flu, many with mild cases.
The virus hits younger people harder that seasonal flu, but so far hasn’t been much more deadly than the strains seen every fall and winter. But health officials believe the virus could mutate to a more dangerous form, or at least contribute to a potentially heavier flu season than usual.
“We do expect there to be an increase in influenza this fall,” with a bump in cases perhaps beginning earlier than normal, said Dr. Anne Schuchat, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.
On Friday, the Food and Drug Administration approved the regular winter flu vaccine, a final step before shipments to clinics and other vaccination sites could begin.
The last time the government faced a new swine flu virus was in 1976. Cases of swine flu in soldiers at Fort Dix, N.J., including one death, made health officials worried they might be facing a deadly pandemic like the one that killed millions around the world in 1918 and 1919.
Federal officials vaccinated 40 million Americans during a national campaign. A pandemic never materialized, but thousands who got the shots filed injury claims, saying they suffered a paralyzing condition called Guillain-Barre Syndrome or other side effects.
“The government paid out quite a bit of money,” said Stephen Sugarman, a law professor who specializes in product liability at the University of California at Berkeley.
Vaccines aren’t as profitable as other drugs for manufacturers, and without protection against lawsuits “they’re saying, ‘Do we need this?'” Sugarman said.
The move to protect makers of a swine flu didn’t go over well with Paul Pennock, a prominent New York plaintiffs attorney on medical liability cases. The government will likely call on millions of Americans to get the vaccinations to prevent the disease from spreading, he noted.
“If you’re going to ask people to do this for the common good, then let’s make sure for the common good that these people will be taken care of if something goes wrong,” Pennock said.
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Amazon Deletes Copies of 1984 and Animal Farm from Kindle Ebook Readers
July 18th, 2009I don’t understand why anyone would buy a Kindle. Then again, I don’t understand the popularity of many things.
Via: New York Times:
This morning, hundreds of Amazon Kindle owners awoke to discover that books by a certain famous author had mysteriously disappeared from their e-book readers. These were books that they had bought and paid for—thought they owned.
But no, apparently the publisher changed its mind about offering an electronic edition, and apparently Amazon, whose business lives and dies by publisher happiness, caved. It electronically deleted all books by this author from people’s Kindles and credited their accounts for the price.
This is ugly for all kinds of reasons. Amazon says that this sort of thing is “rare,” but that it can happen at all is unsettling; we’ve been taught to believe that e-books are, you know, just like books, only better. Already, we’ve learned that they’re not really like books, in that once we’re finished reading them, we can’t resell or even donate them. But now we learn that all sales may not even be final.
As one of my readers noted, it’s like Barnes & Noble sneaking into our homes in the middle of the night, taking some books that we’ve been reading off our nightstands, and leaving us a check on the coffee table.
You want to know the best part? The juicy, plump, dripping irony?
The author who was the victim of this Big Brotherish plot was none other than George Orwell. And the books were “1984” and “Animal Farm.”
Scary.
Senator Quashes Treasury’s Bid for Humorist
July 18th, 2009Via: The Hill:
The chairman of the Senate Democratic Policy Committee quashed an effort by the Treasury Department to hire a cartoonist after the link to the job ad was posted on the Drudge Report.
Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) contacted the Treasury Department to complain after Matt Drudge’s website linked to a want ad for contractors with the “ability to create cartoons on the spot about [Bureau of the Public Debt] jobs.”
The cartoonist was sought to provide presentations for the bureau’s management meetings, according to the ad.
“The contractor shall conduct two, 3-hour Humor in the Workplace programs that will discuss the power of humor in the workplace [and] the close relationship between humor and stress,” the ad stated.
Several conservatives on Capitol Hill found it highly amusing that the Bureau of the Public Debt found it necessary to resort to humor in order to ease the stress of management meetings at a time when the federal deficit is ballooning.
But Dorgan didn’t find it so funny.
“Of all the agencies, the Bureau of Public Debt should know that there is very little that is funny about today’s economic conditions,” Dorgan said in a statement. “I understand the need for motivation in the workplace, but I think we have a greater motivation to save the taxpayers some money.”
The bureau canceled its plan to hire a cartoonist after Dorgan intervened.
NHS Instructed to Plan For Up to 65,000 Swine Flu Deaths
July 17th, 2009Via: Medical news Today:
In a week that has seen the British swine flu death toll reach 29 and it is estimated that 55,000 people have caught the virus, hospitalizing 652 of them, the National Health Service (NHS) has received instructions to plan for the death toll reaching up to 65,000.
On Thursday, the UK’s Chief Medical Officer (CMO), Professor Sir Liam Donaldson, who is also the professional head of all medical staff in England, told the NHS to plan for between 19,000 and 65,000 swine flu deaths occuring this winter.
He stressed that the figures are not predictions but “worst case scenarios” to enable health authorities to plan. He explained that there haven’t been enough cases to produce proper estimates.
U.S. Commercial Paper Market Collapsing
July 17th, 2009Via: Bloomberg:
The U.S. commercial paper market, the cheapest source of corporate cash, is shrinking at a record pace, raising the cost of capital for borrowers from Consolidated Edison Inc. to Kellogg Co.
The market for company debt due within nine months has plunged 28 percent since April 8 to $1.1 trillion, its longest and deepest slump, Federal Reserve data show. Investor demand for all but top-rated commercial paper, or CP, evaporated after September’s collapse of the $62.5 billion Reserve Primary Fund sparked a run on money-market accounts, and as the recession sapped companies’ need for short-term credit to expand.
Proposals from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in June may worsen the slump by restricting money-market funds, which hold 40 percent of the paper, to only top-rated debt. That would force more companies to sell bonds that may cost an extra 8 percentage points in interest, or $8 million a year for every $100 million borrowed.
…
For now, companies are willing to pay higher rates to ensure access to capital after watching credit dry up almost overnight as the subprime mortgage contagion spread in 2007 and 2008 and Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. collapsed in September.
Research Credit: Lagavulin
