Wired: Bush Bill Rewrites Spy Laws

[Owen Blacker]

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From: Owen Blacker [mailto:owen.blacker@wheel.co.uk] 
Sent: Thursday, September 20, 2001 5:58 PM
To: Mark Thomas [GBnet]
Cc: Anoraks [YahooGroup]
Subject: [anoraks] Wired: Bush Bill Rewrites Spy Laws

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http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,46953,00.html

| Bush Bill Rewrites Spy Laws
| By Declan McCullagh <declan@wired.com>
| 2:00 a.m. Sep. 19, 2001 PDT
|
| WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration will ask for more power to
| eavesdrop on phone calls, the Internet and voicemail messages,
| according to an outline of a bill obtained by Wired News.
|
| In response to last week's catastrophic terrorist attacks, President
| Bush plans to ask Congress to approve far-reaching legislation that
| rewrites US laws dealing with electronic surveillance, immigration
| and support for terrorists.
|
| "We will call upon the Congress of the United States to enact these
| important anti-terrorism measures this week," Attorney General John
| Ashcroft said Monday. "We need these tools to fight the terrorism
| threat which exists in the United States, and we must meet that
| growing threat."
|
| According to the two-page outline -- which lacks key details and
| could change before it's sent to Capitol Hill -- police would be
| able to conduct more wiretaps and use the Carnivore surveillance
| system in more situations without court orders. That section of the
| bill appears to mirror an amendment the Senate approved last
| Thursday evening.
|
| No restrictions on encryption products, a prospect feared by some
| civil libertarians, appear in the outline.
|
| The bill hands prosecutors a courtroom edge, saying that accused
| terrorists should stay in jail by default, that detention of
| suspected terrorists is "mandatory", and that the Immigration and
| Naturalization Service <http://www.ins.gov/graphics/index.htm> will
| have more authority to kick immigrants suspected of being terrorists
| out of the United States.
|
| "This illustrates what's wrong with the process right now," says
| Mike Godwin, a policy fellow at the Center for Democracy and
| Technology. <http://www.cdt.org/>  "You're getting this hardly
| public legislation and there's a call to rush it through Congress.
| That's not how we do things in this country."
|
| Also included in the outline is a section titled "DNA identification
| of terrorists," with no further explanation, a prohibition against
| harboring terrorists, and restrictions on "laundering the proceeds
| of terrorism."
|
| The outline suggests that the bill expands the Foreign Intelligence
| Surveillance Act <http://www.tscm.com/USC18_121.html> to extend the
| duration of electronic surveillance and permit additional sharing of
| information with friendly foreign governments.
|
| "We would like to change the law so that one wiretap approval can be
| obtained for all jurisdictions working on an investigation,
| particularly given the mobility of individuals and the capacity of
| individuals who are mobile to communicate," Ashcroft said on Monday.
| "This is a reasonable upgrade in our opportunity to help us curtail
| and combat the threat."
|
| The bill, which will be considered when Congress reconvenes
| Thursday, is being drafted as the FBI is organizing the largest
| manhunt in the bureau's history, and as the mood on Capitol Hill has
| turned from privacy-protective to security-focused.
|
| Last week, the Senate adopted an amendment proposed by Orrin Hatch
| (R-Utah) and Dianne Feinstein (D-California), that says any US
| attorney or state attorney general can order the temporary, limited
| installation of the FBI's Carnivore surveillance system. Previously,
| there were stiffer restrictions on Carnivore and other Internet
| surveillance techniques.
|
| During the floor debate, the legislation's sponsors argued that such
| a law was necessary to thwart terrorism. "It is essential that we
| give our law enforcement authorities every possible tool to search
| out and bring to justice those individuals who have brought such
| indiscriminate death into our backyard," Hatch said.
|
| Copyright (c) 1994-2001 Wired Digital Inc. All rights reserved.
| <http://hotwired.lycos.com/home/copyright.html>

- -- 
Owen Blacker
Senior Internet Software Developer / Information Security Consultant
See http://www.owens-place.org.uk/pgp.html -- more about my PGP keys
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Opinions are mine.  My employer and their clients can get their own!
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