Wiretap suits OKd against U.S., not telecoms

sfgate.com

The nation's telecommunications companies can't be sued for cooperating with the Bush administration's secret surveillance program, but their customers can sue the government for allegedly intercepting their phone calls and e-mails without a warrant, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday.
In a pair of decisions, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco upheld a 2008 law immunizing AT&T and other companies for their roles in wiretapping calls to alleged foreign terrorists, but revived a suit that accused the government of illegally intercepting millions of messages from U.S. residents.
That lawsuit was partly based on testimony in 2003 by former AT&T technician Mark Klein about equipment in the company's office on Folsom Street in San Francisco that allowed Internet traffic to be routed to the government.

'Dragnet' surveillance

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy-rights organization representing AT&T customers, claimed the company had similar installations in other cities and used them for "dragnet" surveillance of everyday e-mails and phone calls, which the National Security Agency purportedly screened electronically for connections to terrorism.
"We look forward to proving the program is an unconstitutional and illegal violation of the rights of millions of ordinary Americans," said Cindy Cohn, the foundation's legal director.
Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd declined comment.

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Suspicious wife causes bomb scare after bugging husband's car

Note: Don't try this at home...;-)  ~JDL

 nzherald.co.nz
 A suspicious wife's attempt to prove her husband was having an affair backfired spectacularly when a tracking device fitted to his car was mistaken for a bomb.
Diletta Bianchini had employed a private detective after her husband William Sachiti began working unusual hours.
Unbeknown to her the investigator fixed a tracker, roughly the size of a cigarette packet, to the petrol tank of Mr Sachiti's £40,000 silver Lexus using magnets.
And when the husband - a security consultant and entrepreneur - spotted the device flashing he feared the worst.
He rushed to alert police, who blocked off a busy high street, evacuated a coffee shop and scrambled the bomb squad, fire engines and ambulances.
Mr Sachiti, who as an entrepreneur once appeared on BBC programme Dragons' Den, said: "When I first saw the device it was after I had my car washed. It was in Morrisons' car park. At first I didn't know what to do.
"I called a friend and they were concerned it could be something dangerous.

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Devices That Can Listen In on Cellphone Traffic, Control Your Phone

wsj.com

Law enforcement and military officials are increasingly using secret devices sometimes called “stingrays” to locate people via their cellphones, even when the phones aren’t in use, the Wall Street Journal reported recently. But finding people isn’t all that this type of gear can do.

These types of machines mimic a cell tower and cause your phone to connect to the machine instead of a real cellular site. Once that happens, there’s a lot that can be done to your phone.

For starters, “they can be set up to do wiretapping of the actual content,” said Matt Blaze, a computer science professor at the University of Pennsylvania and a former researcher at AT&T Labs.

Such devices also can jam phones, fake calls and text messages and drain the phone’s battery, according to documents available online for companies such as Advanced German Technology that sell these types of devices.

Other gadgets can listen to calls “passively,” meaning that instead of forcing the phone to connect to a fake base station, they simply grab signals transmitted between the mobile phone and the cellular network, allowing the operator to capture conversations.

One such device, available on the helpfully named spyshops.com, claims to be able to monitor a radius of up to about 3 miles and intercept 100 conversations simultaneously, according to the site. The device is “completely STEALTH – invisible and non-detectable, high performance and upgradeable,” the site says.

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Illinois Wiretapping Law Reaching A Boiling Point

pixiq.com

Illinois police officers have to be the most smug cops in the nation knowing they have the power to arrest citizens on felony charges for recording them in public while they themselves have every right to record citizens.

That smugness is very evident in the latest case to emerge from the Land of Lincoln.

Watch the below video, and read more here...

Appeals Court OKs Challenge to Warrantless Electronic Spying

wired

A legal challenge questioning the constitutionality of a federal law authorizing warrantless electronic surveillance of Americans inched a step closer Wednesday toward resolution.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, for the second time, rejected the Obama administration’s contention that it should toss a lawsuit challenging the 2008 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Amendments Act. Among other things, the government said the plaintiffs — Global Fund for Women, Global Rights, Human Rights Watch, International Criminal Defence Attorneys Association, The Nation magazine, PEN American Center, Service Employees International Union and others — don’t have standing to bring a constitutional challenge because they cannot demonstrate that they were subject to the eavesdropping or suffered hardships because of it.

The lawsuit, backed by the American Civil Liberties Union, was lodged within hours of the FISA Amendments Act (.pdf) being signed into law by President George W. Bush in July 2008. The legislation is being challenged because it allows the National Security Agency to electronically eavesdrop on Americans without a probable-cause warrant if one of the parties to the communication resides outside the United States and is suspected of a link to terrorism.

“It is the glory of our system that even our elected leaders must defend the legality of their conduct when challenged,” (.pdf) Judge Gerard Lynch wrote.

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