Remember when we were told that the scary powers of the Patriot Act would only be used against terrorists? Good times! Imagine an open-ended, secret audit of your business finances -- just in case. Just as we saw RICO abused by the FBI in the 80s and 90s, now they're using the Patriot Act to sidestep the legal process for reasons that have nothing to do with terrorism. Michael Isokoff:
The FBI has dramatically increased its use of a controversial provision of the Patriot Act to secretly obtain a vast store of business records of U.S. citizens under President Barack Obama, according to recent Justice Department reports to Congress. The bureau filed 212 requests for such data to a national security court last year – a 1,000-percent increase from the number of such requests four years earlier, the reports show.
The FBI’s increased use of the Patriot Act’s “business records” provision — and the wide ranging scope of its requests -- is getting new scrutiny in light of last week’s disclosure that that the provision was used to obtain a top-secret national security order requiring telecommunications companies to turn over records of millions of telephone calls.
Taken together, experts say, those revelations show the government has broadly interpreted the Patriot Act provision as enabling it to collect data not just on specific individuals, but on millions of Americans with no suspected terrorist connections. And it shows that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court accepted that broad interpretation of the law.
On April 15, 2013, the FBI raided the home of the rapper in that video. Deric Lostutter, aka @KYAnonymous, published tweets and Instagram photos that ultimately led to the conviction of football players Trent Mays and Malik Richmond for raping and then mocking a sixteen-year old girl. Had the videos and photos not been published, Lostudder would be making rap albums and doing whatever he was doing. Instead, he's facing federal charges for computer crimes which carry a maximum term of ten years.
Lostutter, a self-employed IT security consultant and self-described Anonymous member, said on his blog that he'd just returned from a turkey hunt when he noticed what appeared to be a FedEx truck in his driveway.
"As I open the door to great [sic] the driver approximately 12 F.B.I. Swat Team agents jumped out of the truck screaming for me to 'Get The F**k Down' with m-16 assault rifles and full riot gear armed safety off, pointed directly at my head," Lostutter wrote."They seized my laptop, my girlfriend's laptop, flash drives, music CDs, an external hard-drive, two cell phones and my brother's xbox 360 for some reason," Lostutter told HuffPost.
If Lostutter were some kind of terrorist, you might expect this sort of reaction. But it's difficult to know exactly what it is he is alleged to have done. Public tweets and Instagram photos aren't something one gains by hacking, after all. They're there for all to see and if they're saved before the user deletes them, it's hardly a federal crime. They're evidence of a crime, published by the criminal as a trophy.
Angered that a small town was turning their back on justice, several hacktivist groups got involved, including Deric Lostutter, who helped post a video on the football team’s website outing the assailants and bringing national attention to their crimes.
“If convicted of hacking-related crimes, Lostutter could face up to 10 years behind bars—far more than the one- and two-year sentences doled out to the Steubenville rapists,” reports Mother Jones, in an exclusive interview with Lostutter.
The first-time digital activist claims he never hacked the page, but was the masked man in the video. His relatively light touch reportedly didn’t stop the FBI from treating him like a world-class terrorist.
This kind of overreach is why people don't trust the government. How did the FBI come to focus on Lostutter? Was it his tweets, was it his public association with Anonymous, or was it simply that they saw someone they thought they could intimidate?
Mother Jones has an exclusive interview with Lostutter:
Lostutter first got involved in Anonymous about a year ago, after watching the documentary We Are Legion. "This is me," he thought as he learned about the group's commitment to government accountability and transparency. "It was everything that I'd ever preached, and now there's this group of people getting off the couch and doing something about it. I wanted to be part of the movement."
He'd read about the Steubenville rape in the New York Times, but didn't get involved until receiving a message on Twitter from Michelle McKee, a friend of an Ohio blogger who'd written about the case. (You can read her story here.) McKee gave Lostutter the players' tweets and Instagram photos, which he then decided to publicize because, as he put it, "I was always raised to stick up for people who are getting bullied."
The FBI is trying to pin the hack of the football team's website on Lostutter. If they succeed, he will face up to ten years in federal prison. The rapists he exposed, on the other hand, will be out of their probation camp in 2014 and moving on with their lives.
Beyond the injustice of this specific case, there's a larger question about how the law enforcement community is approaching computer crimes. Even if he did deface the page of the football team -- and there's no real public evidence he did -- how on earth is that somehow a worse crime than raping a sixteen year old and then mocking her to her community and peers? Why would rapists get two years and the guy who brought attention to them get ten?
Since we're in the middle of this huge discussion about online privacy and the proper conduct of government law enforcement entities, let's also have a discussion about justice, and reasonable, proportionate consequences for actions taken online which are outside of the law.
Let's be clear: Not running for office is Michele Bachmann's best bet at avoiding a criminal conviction. Once a candidate announces they're resigning, or not running for reelection, that's when the FBI usually (but not always) puts pending indictments of public officials on ice. It frustrated me as a reporter when they didn't follow through on those cases, but an FBI agent explained to me how much more efficient it was to let those investigations die. "We get a bad guy out of office and save the cost of going to trial, that's a win/win," he told me. (I didn't agree.)
In her first interview since announcing she will not seek reelection in 2014, Rep. Michele Bachmann said that decision doesn’t mean she’s going anywhere.
Speaking with Fox News’s Sean Hannity on Thursday night, Bachmann said she may even run for public office again.
“There’s just a time when you’ve served, and then it’s time to move on,” Bachmann said. “I’m not retiring, I’m not going silent, I’m not quitting my public involvement. In fact, I may run for another public office, that may happen, but for right now, I think I’m going to find another perch to weigh in on these matters.”
The Minnesota Republican also left open the possibility for another presidential bid in 2016.
“I’m not taking anything off the table, but … that’s not my No. 1 item that I’m looking at right now, either. I’m in the game for the long haul,” Bachmann said.
Michele, honey? You're even more full of hot air than usual. As David Shuster reported:
New York Times Warning: Trust Authorities On Boston Bombing, Or You're Nuts By Russ Baker on May 31, 2013
Like most of the corporate media, the New York Times has been largely AWOL from investigations of disturbing events like the Boston bombing, 9/11, and Bush’s misleading the public into war. But it’s right out there on the front lines fighting against those who ask questions.. And the fighting is dirty.
Officer Collier Shooting: "Rosebud" Moment Of The Boston Bombing? The Contradictions Keep Coming By Russ Baker on May 23, 2013
Of all the things that don’t add up in the Boston Marathon bombing case, perhaps the strangest of them all is the killing of MIT police officer Sean Collier. It turns out that what we were told about that wasn’t true—and the actual circumstances look very strange indeed. So does the effort to turn the shooting into a major propaganda moment.
Rep. Louis Gohmert is that crazy relative that comes to family dinners and hisses under their napkin about "those people" and how they're "ruining America." Except Gohmert is in Congress, and isn't as easily dismissed as Aunt Gert at the end of the evening.
The FBI, on the same token, they have brought as you know what the Dallas federal court and the fifth circuit court of appeals identified as the two largest Muslim Brotherhood front organizations in America, CAIR and ISNA, and so you know they have been working with them, they have been advised by CAIR. They finally suspended their so-called partnership with CAIR but you have Muslim Brotherhood members who have advised the FBI and have been telling them things that just simply make it virtually impossible to properly and adequately investigate and defend this country. The job they did was really amazing considering the fact that they have purged their lexicon of any words that Muslim Brotherhood advisers have told them that they find offensive.
Oh, dear God. WTF is he talking about, you ask? If you want to slither down the rabbit hole of right wing insanity, try a Google search on Dallas FBI + CAIR. The results are conspiracy and Islamophobe sites, top to bottom. No hate is too small to include in those results. So don't try to figure it out that way.
Going straight to the source reveals a story more mundane but no less bizarre in how people like Gohmert have reacted to it. CAIR has a page dispelling the Internet nonsense flying around that Gohmert and Bachmann spew like it was fact. Here's what they say:
CAIR's work with law enforcement was highlighted by the Congressional Research Service, the non-partisan institution which works for the U.S Congress, in its 2010 report American Jihadist Terrorism: Combating a Complex Threat:
"The [2010] story of the five men from the Alexandria, Virginia area...became public when the Council on American-Islamic Relations got their families in touch with the FBI after the five left the United States without telling their families." [CAIR note: This case is cited in numerous sources as a core example of the American Muslim community working with law enforcement.]
"Posing as a new convert, Monteilh arrived at the Irvine Islamic Center in 2006 wearing robes and a long beard, using the name Farouk al-Aziz. Monteilh had a criminal record that included serving 16 months in state prison on two grand theft charges. Members of the Islamic Center of Irvine were reportedly alarmed about Monteilh and his talk of jihad and plans for a terrorist attack. The local chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations reported him to the Irvine police and obtained a three-year restraining order against him." [CAIR Note: It was later revealed the Monteilh was an FBI informant.]
CAIR has long worked to improve Muslim community relations with law enforcement, a CAIR press release issued in October of 1998 is the earliest record we have of CAIR meeting with FBI representatives. Despite this, in 2008, FBI offices contacted many CAIR chapters stating that they were suspending some ties between the Washington-based civil rights and advocacy group and FBI field offices.
The actions "laid to rest" relate to the trial of the founders of the Holy Land Foundation, originally based in Richardson, Texas. It was a funding stream for Hamas and other terrorist organizations, and the government named nearly every pro-Islam charity in the country as unindicted co-conspirators in 2007 as a trial tactic:
In August 2007 Newsweekreported, "According to one senior law-enforcement official (who asked not to be named talking about an ongoing case), the listing of ISNA, CAIR and other groups as 'unindicted co-conspirators' was largely a tactical move by the government." (Newsweek, 8/08/2007) A June 2008 ACLU press release also reports, "The prosecutor also acknowledged that the public labeling was simply a 'legal tactic' intended to allow the government to introduce hearsay evidence against HLF later at trial."
Those are facts which were litigated all the way up to the US Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, but that won't stop Moonbeam Gohmert and his sidekick Loonie Bachmann from saying something different in order to make us all afraid that the FBI is really a bunch of seekrit Moooslim terrorists ready to blow the whole damn country up.
A federal judge made the call to advise the Boston bombing suspect of his Miranda rights, even though investigators apparently still wanted to question him further under a public-safety exception.
[...] The judge first told the Justice Department on Saturday she intended to read Mr. Tsarnaev his rights on Monday. One U.S. official said the judge cited the intense television coverage of the capture as one reason for initiating the criminal prosecution.
Kudos to Judge Marianne Bowler for the courage to stand by the law.Meanwhile, the Members of Congress who learned about this yesterday were outraged Article II didn’t tell Article III to fuck off. Mike “Like he was J Edgar Hoover” Rogers even wrote Eric Holder about it (as if Holder had sway over Bowler).
House intelligence committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R., Mich.) said in an interview Thursday that Justice officials should have pushed back on the judge’s plans. He wrote to Attorney General Eric Holder late Wednesday to register his concerns. ”What I find shocking is that the judiciary proactively inserted itself into this circumstance and the Justice Department so readily acquiesced to the circumstance,” he said. “The court doing this proactively they may have jeopardized our ability to get public-safety information.”
[...] The revelation came late Wednesday at a briefing before the House intelligence committee. One lawmaker in the meeting asked FBI Deputy Director Sean Joyce why the FBI didn’t raise objections, according to another U.S. official.
Mr. Joyce said in essence it wasn’t the FBI’s role to object to such a determination, the official recounted.
The answer stunned many of the lawmakers in the room. “The whole tenor in the room changed,” the official said.
Remember, by the time Bowler read Dzhokhar his rights, multiple government witnesses were leaking publicly that the government was convinced there was no imminent threat, the entire point of the public safety exception. No one was even pretending this was about public safety anymore.
Nevertheless, the House Intelligence Committee is outraged — outraged!! — that a judge did her job.
Paul Kevin Curtis, the man suspected of sending ricin to President Obama, Senator Wicker and several other Mississippi politicians, was released from custody and all charges dropped on Tuesday after no evidence of ricin could be found anywhere on the premises of his home or vehicle.
When the news broke of his release, I wondered how the right wing would process it, given that they were reveling in the news that Curtis was a Democrat who sported a bumper sticker saying "Christian and a Democrat." It didn't take more than a few minutes for Gateway Pundit to unashamedly post this headline:
But now the plot thickens. Via TalkingPointsMemo, an emerging story of a frame by former GOP candidate J. Everett Dutschke:
On Monday, Curtis’ lawyer, Christi McCoy, said she believed Dutschke could have been responsible for mailing the letters noting he had argued with Curtis over email.
Dutschke denied any involvement in the ricin case in an interview with a local newspaper, though he admitted he spoke with FBI agents on Thursday and allowed them to search his home. TPM spoke with Dutschke Tuesday shortly after the news of Curtis’ release.
“I’m alive,” Dutschke said when asked how he was.
Dutschke expressed disbelief when told of Curtis’ release.
“What did you just say?” he asked.
We repeated that Curtis had been released.
“You’re kidding me,” said Dutschke. “For what?”
We told him we were unsure and asked whether he knew if officials were still investigating him in the case.“I really can’t answer that question at this exact second,” he said.
Dutschke then said he had to go. Subsequent attempts to speak with him were unsuccessful. Less than an hour later FBI agents arrived at Dutschke’s house and he told local reporters on the scene they were there to question him.
Jeff Bauman (pictured in wheelchair) lost both his legs in the explosion.
Nicole Belle and I were just talking about this yesterday - that it was likely some of the victims would be able to identify the bombers. Looks like Jeff Bauman gave detailed information to the authorities:
Minutes before the bombs blew up in Boston, Jeff Bauman looked into the eyes of the man who tried to kill him.
Just before 3 p.m. on April 15, Bauman was waiting among the crowd for his girlfriend to cross the finish line at the Boston Marathon. A man wearing a cap, sunglasses and a black jacket over a hooded sweatshirt looked at Jeff, 27, and dropped a bag at his feet, his brother, Chris Bauman, said in an interview.
Two and a half minutes later, the bag exploded, tearing Jeff’s legs apart. A picture of him in a wheelchair, bloodied and ashen, was broadcast around the world as he was rushed to Boston Medical Center. He lost both legs below the knee.
“He woke up under so much drugs, asked for a paper and pen and wrote, ‘bag, saw the guy, looked right at me,’” Chris Bauman said yesterday in an interview.
Those words may help crack the mystery of who perpetrated one of the highest-profile acts of terror in the U.S. since the 2001 assault on New York City and the Washington area, one that killed three people and wounded scores.
While still in intensive care, Jeff Bauman gave the FBI a description of the man he saw, his brother said. Bauman’s information helped investigators narrow down whom to look for in hours of video of the attack, he said.
The bureau released video images of two men yesterday. Both men have on hooded sweatshirts under dark jackets; one is wearing a light-colored baseball cap turned backward on his head, while the other is wearing a dark baseball cap facing forward. Both are carrying large backpacks.
“I’ve had many times alone with him, and yes, he told me every single detail,” Chris Bauman said.
Paul Bresson, a spokesman for the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Washington, declined to comment on specific tips in the continuing investigation. Two FBI agents interviewed at the Boston office declined to confirm or deny the account.
The FBI has arrested for men for allegedly plotting to join al-Qaeda and the Taliban, the bureau announced Monday. The FBI's Los Angeles field office arrested 34-year-old Sohiel Omar Kabir, 23-year-old Ralph Deleon, 21-year-old Miguel Alejandro Santana Vidriales and 21-year-old Arifeen David Gojali on Friday but the arrests were only made public late Monday night.
According to the 77-page complaint, Kabir, a naturalized citizen who immigrated from Afghanistan, was the primary recruiter of the other three. Between late 2010 through September 2012, Kabir used Facebook to post audio of Anwar al-Awlaki and other extremists while engaging the other three via shared links and other information.
According to the FBI agent in the affidavit, these Facebook postings were public, as were the "likes" given various articles and audio files. Over the course of several months, a confidential informant infiltrated the group, traveling with them to conferences in May and June of this year. From the conversations quoted in the affidavit, it appears they were trying to recruit the informant as well.
At the heart of things, this is a story of three young men who were so disconnected and alienated from their society that the message brought to them by the fourth of "absolute truth" and finding meaning to their lives through carrying out violence against others resonated deeply. Santana in particular said that he believed Islam would open the door for him to "fit in and actually be able to fight for something that's right."
From August through November they planned and trained at paintball facilities and shooting ranges. They all had a vision for the glory they would be covered in once they reached Afghanistan and actually joined the battle. At one point or another, they admitted they would be willing to return to the United States and commit acts of violence here in the name of jihad, too.
By last week, they had secured their passports and the money for airplane tickets. They had concocted a story about attending their friend Kabir's wedding in Kabul as the cover story for their family. Late Friday afternoon they were arrested just before leaving for the airport.
All of the recruits came from the Inland Empire -- Riverside and Chino. That area is extremely diverse and extremely conservative. Clearly they were alienated from their community and even their families in some cases. That, combined with Kabir's message of purpose and meaning through violent jihad seems to have resonated enough that they would trade away their citizenship here for a violent life elsewhere.
I'm sure there will be more on this, but the affidavit is a fascinating look at how this particular plot was infiltrated and stopped, as well as some of the factors leading into it.
