carapace – Not your father's america

Jason Leopold

President Bush and other top officials in his administration used the National Security Agency to secretly wiretap the home and office telephones and monitor private email accounts of members of the United Nations Security Council in early 2003 to determine how foreign delegates would vote on a U.N. resolution that paved the way for the U.S.-led war in Iraq, NSA documents show.

Two former NSA officials familiar with the agency’s campaign to spy on U.N. members say then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice authorized the plan at the request of President Bush, who wanted to know how delegates were going to vote. Rice did not immediately return a call for comment.

The former officials said Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld also participated in discussions about the plan, which involved “stepping up” efforts to eavesdrop on diplomats.

A spokeswoman at the White House who refused to give her name also would not comment, and pointed to a March 3, 2003 press briefing by former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer when questions about U.N. spying were first raised.

“As a matter of long-standing policy, the administration never comments on anything involving any people involved in intelligence,” Fleischer said. “So I’m not saying yes and I’m not saying no.”

Disclosure of the wiretaps and the monitoring of U.N. members’ email came on the eve of the Iraq war in the British-based Observer. The leak — which the paper acquired in the form of an email via a British translator — came amid a U.S. push urging U.N. members to vote in favor of a resolution that said Iraq was in violation of U.N. resolution 1441, asserting that it had failed to rid the country of weapons of mass destruction.

Complete article at:

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/After_domestic_spying_reports_U.S._spying_1227.html

Friday, December 30, 2005

By HUBERT G. LOCKE
P-I COLUMNIST

We’ve reached year’s end — and we’re half a decade into a new century. The excitement six years ago that marked the transition to the year 2000 is a faded memory. Few of us, unless prodded, remember how the world held its collective breath on New Year’s Eve 1999, fearing what was being heralded as the Y2K disaster — the possibility that a huge global network of computers would crash and the entire planet would come to a screeching halt. That didn’t happen, and those of us fortunate enough to live in parts of the world where our incomes are greater than a dollar a day began to anticipate the pleasures and possibilities of a new century and a new millennium.

Six years ago, no one would have dreamed that our nation would find itself in the mess the United States is in today. Abroad, we are seen — even by our allies — as a superpower that has run amok. At home, countless millions of Americans consider our national government to be out of control. It has thumbed its nose at the reality of global warming, leaving most of the rest of the world aghast at our disdain for what scientists warn is a looming disaster. It has built concentration camps in Eastern Europe and North Africa, to which it has dispatched detainees of all sorts; claiming that their status as “enemy combatants” entitles the United States, in defiance of every convention of international law, to keep them incarcerated without either bringing charges or holding trials. Here at home, this government has spied on its own citizens — all this in the name of fighting terrorism, as though anything done in that pursuit is clearly and completely justifiable.

Six years ago, we held our collective breath, fearful of a gigantic computer glitch. Today, we hold our breath fearing some new White House atrocity will be uncovered that will add to our growing national disgrace. Increasingly, in fact, we are coming to live in fear of this administration and what it might do next.

Complete article at: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/253917_locke30.html

Hubert G. Locke, Seattle, is a retired professor and former dean of the Daniel J. Evans Graduate School of Public Affairs at the University of Washington.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/25/AR2005122500659_pf.html

“The military has paid money to try to place favorable coverage on television stations in three Iraqi cities.” The military gave one station “about $35,000 in equipment,” is “building a new facility for $300,000,” and pays $1000 to $2400 a month “for a weekly program that focuses positively on U.S. efforts.” An Army National Guard commander confirmed his officers “suggest” stories for the weekly program and review it, before it is aired. The payments are not
disclosed to viewers. At least two bloggers have been embedded with U.S. military units; Michael Yon with the Army in Mosul and Bill Roggio (who was credentialed by the American Enterprise Institute) with the Marines in Anbar province. Insurgent propaganda has included “rifle-toting guerrillas” in Ramadi telling reporters “to publish accounts claiming the city had been taken over,” and “erroneous tips from insurgents to reporters,” including video purporting to be of a December 3 attack in Fallujah.

SOURCE: Washington Post, December 26, 2005
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:

http://www.prwatch.org/node/4328

http://cbs4boston.com/topstories/topstories_story_363001828.html

From: Poacnewsletter

“The National Security Agency got caught with its hand in the cookie jar, literally, on Wednesday. The NSA, which functions as the United States’ information systems watchdog, admitted it has been posting cookies on the computers of visitors to its web site, despite federal rules banning such activity. Cookies are small files placed on computers by web programs residing on sites visited by those computers. They were originally designed to hold identifying information to make web surfing easier and faster. Today cookies are used to store all kinds of information,
including the content of a web surfer’s electronic shopping cart. Many web surfers are concerned about the lack of privacy involved in the surreptitious placement of cookies on their computer hard drives.”

Learn more in Red Herring.

http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=15085&hed=NSA+Caught+Serving+Cookies

From: Future Brief

Access this story and related links online:

http://www.kaisernetwork.org/daily_reports/rep_index.cfm?DR_ID=34487

San Jose Mercury News: Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) in the “dead of the night Sunday” attached liability protections for vaccine manufacturers to the defense appropriations bill, a Mercury News editorial states, adding, “Merry Fristmas, drug manufacturers.” According to the editorial, the U.S. “should offer suitable financial incentives for drug manufacturers to ensure enough long-term profitability that they will begin ramping up vaccine production to meet the nation’s future needs. And the Senate should work next year on an immunization against viruses attached to future defense appropriation bills” (San Jose Mercury News, 12/21).