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Judge OKs FBI Keyboard Sniffing

The Justice Department can legally use a controversial electronic surveillance technique in its prosecution of an alleged mobster.

In the first case of its kind, a federal judge in Newark, New Jersey has ruled that evidence surreptitiously gathered by the FBI about Nicodemo S. Scarfo's reputed loan shark operation can be presented in a trial later this year.

U.S. District Judge Nicholas Politan said last week that it was perfectly acceptable for FBI agents armed with a court order to sneak into Scarfo's office, plant a keystroke sniffer in his PC and monitor its output.

 Source: Wired, Jan 4, 2002

Opinion of Judge Politan in Matter of FBI Keyboard Sniffing

Dear Counsel:
    This matter comes before the Court on Defendant Nicodemo S. Scarfo's (“Scarfo”) pretrial motion for discovery and suppression of evidence. The Court heard oral argument on July 30, 2001 and again on September 7, 2001. Co-defendant Frank Paolercio (“Paolercio”) joined in the motion. The government thereafter moved to invoke the Classified Information Procedures Act. For the following reasons, the Defendants' motion for discovery is granted in part and denied in part, and the motion to suppress evidence is denied.

BACKGROUND
    This case presents an interesting issue of first impression dealing with the ever-present tension between individual privacy and liberty rights and law enforcement's use of new and advanced technology to vigorously investigate criminal activity. It appears that no district court in the country has addressed a similar issue. Of course, the matter takes on added importance in light of recent events and potential national security implications.

Source: http://lawlibrary.rutgers.edu/ December 26, 2001

FBI keyboard tap raises cyber-age privacy issue

The courts may write new privacy law before Congress can get around to it, as fast-emerging technology provides law enforcement agencies with ever-powerful snooping tools. Experts say a New Jersey case, in which the FBI intercepted every keystroke made on a business computer, is likely to provoke the next big showdown.

At issue is how far federal agents should be allowed to go in using high-tech tools to gain evidence against suspects. Acting on a search warrant, FBI agents made surreptitious entry to the offices of New Jersey businessman Nicodemo S. Scarfo and placed a device in his computer keyboard, logging every keystroke. Agents took the action, according to court records, to learn passwords to encryption software, so they could read computer documents seized in an upcoming raid. Scarfo was targeted as a suspect in gambling and loan-sharking operations.

Source: Virtual New York, 8 December 2000

FBI Database Monitors Catholic Bishops and Pro-Life Groups

It has been rumored for years, but dismissed as nutty conspiracy theory, that the federal government has been assembling an extensive database on pro-life organizations under the auspices of tracking potential criminals involved with “domestic terrorism.” The Justice Department has admitted such a federal task force exists but has denied it tracks innocent civilians or groups.

       Then how to explain newly obtained internal Justice Department documents that lay out justification for “intrusive investigative activity” by the FBI, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the U.S. Postal Inspection and U.S. Marshals services and other federal law-enforcement agencies to compile dossiers on groups as divergent as the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, the National Rifle Association and the Women’s Coalition for Life?

Source: News World Communications, Insight on the News Online, News Alter, July 17, 2000

Uncle Sam is Monitoring Your Online Activities in a Big Way

While President Clinton has led an effort to crack down on corporate snooping and impose new regulations on business, privacy advocates say federal agencies still are collecting vast amounts of data on visitors to taxpayer-sponsored Web sites.

Source: Scripps Howard News Service, Capitol Hill Blue, June 24, 2000

Former Veep Mondale opens FBI file, talks about excesses

When the young Minnesota attorney general gave his speech at a civil rights rally in St. Paul, he didn't mean to make an entry in a long and not very sexy chronicle of his life in politics. In fact, he didn't know such a document existed.

The young politician was Walter Mondale. The year was 1963. The diarist was an FBI agent on a routine assignment to monitor yet another NAACP meeting. The journal was Mondale's FBI file.

Mondale said he was horrified to learn how the FBI in the 1960s tailed, wiretapped and slandered the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., "attempting to destroy his movement and his marriage."

The committee found that the FBI had sought to destroy King by, among other things, bugging hotel rooms in which he had extramarital sexual liaisons. Tapes and transcripts were then circulated to journalists, politicians and other opinion leaders to discredit King.

Source: Scripps Howard News Service, June 4, 2000

FCC Grants FBI Surveillance Standards Request

In a decision released on August 31, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) largely adopted technical standards proposed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) that would re-design the nation's telecommunications networks to facilitate electronic surveillance. The ruling could result in a significant increase in government interception of digital communications. Included is a requirement that cellular telephone networks must provide police the ability to track the physical location of cell phone users.

Source: Electronic Privacy Information Center, 1 September 1999

Odd Coalition Would Curb Civil Forfeitures

In February, 1998, Federal agents confiscated the Red Carpet Motel in Houston, Texas, even though the owners were not charged with any crimes.  The U.S. attorney in Houston announced that the motel owners "had "tacitly approved" of drug activity by their guests by failing to implement police security recommendations. One of those recommendations was to raise their room rates."

Similar confiscations by federal agents have helped unite a bipartisan coalition in Congress to pass the Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act, a bill, that if passed, would make it harder for the federal government to seize private property without filing criminal charges.

Source:  The Washington Post (online), June 23, 1999

Clinton's IRS Gestapo

In a very real way, the IRS has been Clinton's secret police agency -- the go-to guys when no other punishment will do.

Source: WorldNetDaily, March 19, 1999

Sleepers alarmed by helicopter-borne commandos

In the black of a peaceful winter night in the Beaver County countryside, the first mean machines came chop-chop-chopping low and loud over Don and Phyllis Wilfong's house at 3:27 a.m. yesterday, rattling the windows and obliterating any hope of sleep."

Source: Post-Gazett.com, March 19, 1999

Questions loom over DNA databases

"Of the last 100 arrests for rape and sodomy (in New York City), 14 had records (for sex offenses)," says New York City police Commissioner Howard Safir, who has proposed testing everyone arrested. "But 75 had arrest records for all kinds of smaller stuff. Think how many more could have been gotten (with a DNA database of everyone arrested).'

But legal problems loom. The Constitution's Fourth Amendment protects against unreasonable searches and seizures. Testing everyone arrested, says defense lawyer and former Manhattan prosecutor Harlan Levy, is the sort of "blunderbuss approach" the Constitution frowns on.

Source: USA Today

Reno urges study of broad DNA testing

Attorney General Janet Reno has asked a federal commission to study the legality of taking DNA samples from everyone arrested instead of just the convicted sex offenders and violent felons currently permitted by law.

Such widespread testing would hugely expand government's reach by placing the genetic fingerprints of millions of Americans into state crime databases even if they never were convicted of a crime.

Source: USA Today

FBI Proposes Electronic Survelance of People

The FBI proposals would -- among other things -- enable law enforcement to determine the location of individuals using cellular telephones. Also at issue is the surveillance of "packet-mode" communications such as those that form the core of the Internet. The comments were filed as part of the FCC's proceeding on implementation of the controversial Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA).

Source: Electronic Privacy Information Center, December 17, 1998

Robots may soon be harder to shake off than a bloodhound

Big Brother may not only be watching you, he may be following you too. Researchers in California have developed a robot called an Autonomous Observer (AO) that could lead to surveillance systems that follow people wherever they go.

Other systems can't follow moving objects that are trying to evade detection. If an object disappears from view, the tracking system loses it. To overcome this, computer scientist Jean-Claude Latombe at Stanford University has developed small mobile robots that not only watch targets but also work out their potential escape routes. The robots can then position themselves for an optimum view.

Source: New Scientist, 17 October 1998

Inside view of Night Stalkers

The use of live fire in civilian areas during secret military training exercises is not that uncommon, according to a former Night Stalker. Such exercises are conducted in cities that give permission, and in others that have not been consulted in advance.

Residents, who were not warned of the event, were reported to be extremely frightened. A retirement home only a few hundred feet from the exercise, reported many elderly people were fearful that the world was coming to an end and were under beds crying. The sound of machine gun fire and explosives continued for two hours.

Night Stalkers often are sent on missions directly into cities to see how far they can get before someone calls 911. They monitor police frequencies and listen for when a complaint comes in. When they are reported to local police they abort the mission.

Source: WorldNetDaily

Stop terrifying small-town "invasions," Libertarians demand of U.S. military

How would you like the U.S. military to 'invade' your town?

That's what happened -- complete with swooping attack helicopters, live weapons fire, flashbang grenades, and buildings burnt to the ground -- without warning in at least five towns in Texas and Louisiana over the past several weeks.

Source: Libertarian Party Press Release

IRS Admits 'Sins' in Seizing Property

The Internal Revenue Service admitted on Friday [July 10, 1998] that it improperly seized property from taxpayers in more than one in four cases studied, including an attempt to force a dying man, his wife and two school-age children from their home.

Source: Deseret News, Salt Lake City, Saturday, July 11, 1998, pp. A1, A3.

No vacancy for drug dealers: Feds seize hotel

The complaint seeks forfeiture of a commercial enterprise -- the Red Carpet Inn at 6868 Hornwood -- not financially tied to narcotics trafficking, a broader interpretation of drug forfeiture laws usually used to confiscate property purchased with drug money.

The hotel's owners, GWJ Enterprises, are accused of giving "tacit consent" to illegal activity by failing to act to stop it after being notified by police and city officials.

Source: HoustonChronicle.com, 2/17/1998

Clinton's 12 'National Emergencies'

President Clinton has all the authority he needs to place this country under a dictatorship with the stroke of the pen.

He could do it at any time. Congress has given him the power. The laws are in the statute books. And the courts have already refused to say "no."

Source: WorldNetDaily, January 26, 1999

Moving Toward a Police State

Executive orders ... national emergencies ... a domestic "commander-in-chief" ... the threat of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. ....

An impeached president is leading America ever closer toward the reality of a police state, and there's been hardly a peep from the civil liberties establishment. In fact, those who dare address such issues are quickly denounced as paranoid "extremists."

Source: WorldNetDaily, January 26, 1999

FBI Trys To Trick Richard Jewell

The decision by FBI agents to trick Richard Jewell into giving up his right to a lawyer endangered the investigation of last year's bombing at the Atlanta Olympic Games, the Justice Department said Monday

Source: NY Times

Additional stories about Marine killing student

Sources: Houston Chronicle (online), 1997

Officials offer sympathy, but back border shooting

Senior federal and military officials Thursday offered their sympathy to the family of a U.S. citizen shot by Marines on an anti-drug operation near the border, but stood by their claim that the soldiers had no choice but to kill the 18-year-old when he allegedly shot at them twice while tending his family's goats.

Source: Houston Chronicle (online), May 22, 1997

Marine on anti-drug duty shoots, kills student

A Marine on an anti-drug operation along the border near Big Bend National Park shot and killed an 18-year-old high school student who authorities said had opened fire.

Source: Houston Chronicle (online), May 21, 1997

FBI Crime Laboratory

The US Inspector General issued a report that criticized the [FBI's crime] laboratory, and the criticisms included the following points.

• Agents "working on such big cases as the World Trade Center and Oklahoma City bombings produced flawed scientific reports and slanted their findings to favor the prosecution."
  
   
• At least one instance is known where "an agency supervisor allowed such evidence to be presented to the court, even when he know the scientific evidence did not support the findings."
  
  
• "Even more disturbing, the FBI assigned someone who was known to have produced flawed reports to the Oklahoma City bombing case."
  
   
• "When the people we entrust to enforce our laws start bending the truth - particularly scientific evidence that few of us can afford to test on our own - none of us is safe."

The author, Robert E. Precht, is director of the Office of Public Service at the University of Michigan Law School.

Source: Deseret News (Utah), April 19, 1997

CIA Attempts To Assassinate Fidel Castro

The Associated Press reported that according to a CIA document recently declassified, the CIA in the early 1960s tried to have Fidel Castro assassinated. They contacted the Mafia and offered $150,000 for the "hit". At least one other attempt by the CIA was made to murder Castro. Detailed knowledge of these attempts was kept from the White House, although President Kennedy and his brother Robert, the Attorney General, told the CIA to 'Do what ever it takes to get rid of Castro.'

Source: The Salt Lake Tribune (Utah) July 2, 1997