Saturday, September 08, 2007

FBI cast wide net in data mining

FBI cast wide net in data mining

Telecom firms asked to provide data on suspects’ ‘community of interest’
The Associated Press
Updated: 11:44 p.m. ET Sept. 8, 2007

WASHINGTON - FBI demands to telecommunications companies went beyond requesting phone records of customers under suspicion to include analyses of their broader patterns of communication with others as well, newly obtained documents show.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation used national security letters to request information on the wider “community of interest” linked to individuals under suspicion, according to the documents.

The data-mining technique can lay bare phone and e-mail links that tie together otherwise indiscernible networks of individuals. Law enforcement officials value that sort of data as a means of identifying a suspect’s potential conspirators. Privacy advocates say it can ensnare people with no tie to illegal or suspicious activity.

The “community of interest” requests were included in more than 2,500 pages of FBI documents the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a watchdog group, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. The New York Times first reported on the requests in a story posted to its Web site Saturday.

FBI discontinues practice
The FBI letters use boilerplate language to request companies provide calling records for redacted lists of telephone numbers, citing “exigent circumstances.” An Aug. 9, 2005, letter and others from that year also include the following: “Additionally, please provide a community of interest for the telephone numbers in the attached list.”

Earlier this year, the Justice Department’s inspector general uncovered 700 cases in which FBI agents obtained telephone records through such “exigent letters,” which asserted that grand jury subpoenas had been requested for the data when in fact such subpoenas never had been sought. The FBI eliminated use of the letters earlier this year.

The FBI recently stopped asking for “community of interest” data, amid broader questions about the bureau’s aggressive use of national security letters, government officials told The Times.

A federal judge struck down a key part of the USA Patriot Act on Thursday, saying the FBI must justify to a court the need for secrecy if the orders to hand over phone and e-mail records will last longer than a reasonable and brief period of time.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20665317/


© 2007 MSNBC.com

CIA chief defends secret prisons

CIA chief defends secret prisons

Hayden: Fewer than 100 detainees held in secret facilities since 2002
The Associated Press
Updated: 4:07 p.m. ET Sept. 7, 2007

WASHINGTON - Most of the information in a July intelligence report on the terrorist threat to America came from the U.S. government's much-criticized program of detaining and interrogating prisoners, CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden said Friday in defending the policy.

The CIA has detained fewer than 100 people at secret facilities abroad since the capture of Abu Zubaydah in 2002, Hayden told the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City, according to an advance copy of his speech.

He staunchly defended the program, saying even fewer prisoners have been rendered to or from foreign governments.

The CIA director said 70 percent of the information contained in the National Intelligence Estimate on the terrorist threat, which was released in July, came from the interrogation of detainees.

Hayden: Rendition claims misleading
Hayden said claims by the European Parliament that at least 1,245 CIA flights transited European airspace or airports are misleading because they implied that most of those flights were rendition flights.

"The actual number of rendition flights ever flown by CIA is a tiny fraction of that. And the suggestion that even a substantial number of those 1,245 flights were carrying detainees is absurd on its face," he said.

Hayden said many flights carried equipment, documents and people, including himself, and had nothing to do with the extraordinary rendition program.

The use of extraordinary rendition for terror suspects — some of whom were later released, apparently because they were innocent — was revealed by news media in 2005.

Extraordinary rendition refers to the interrogation policy involving the secret transfer of prisoners from U.S. control into the hands of foreign governments, some of which have a history of torture. The United States government says it does so only after it is assured that transferred prisoners will not be subjected to torture.

The renditions have been "conducted lawfully, responsibly, and with a clear and simple purpose: to get terrorists off the streets and gain intelligence on those still at large," Hayden said.

Hayden: Leaks harm national security
He said Friday that such leaks to news organizations harm national security.

Hayden said that in one case, news leaks gave a foreign government information that allowed it to prosecute and jail one of the CIA's sources.

"The revelations had an immediate, chilling effect on our ability to collect against a top-priority target," he said.

Hayden said other media reports "cost us several promising counterterrorism and counterproliferation assets" because CIA sources stopped cooperating out of fear they would be exposed.

He said "more than one" foreign government's intelligence services have withheld intelligence that they otherwise would have shared with the U.S. government because they feared it would be leaked.

"That gap in information puts Americans at risk," Hayden said, according to the written remarks.

He said "a lot" of what has been reported about CIA interrogations has been false.

Hayden said that journalists should stick to "exposing al-Qaida and its adherents for what they are."

"Revelations of sources and methods — and an impulse to drag anything CIA does to the darkest corner of the room — can make it very difficult for us to do our vital work," he said.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20643790/

Calif. diocese to settle sex claims

Calif. diocese to settle sex claims

San Diego Catholics reach deal to settle 144 clergy abuse claims
The Associated Press
Updated: 6:05 p.m. ET Sept. 7, 2007

SAN DIEGO - The Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego said Friday it has agreed to pay $198.1 million to settle 144 claims of sexual abuse by clergy, the second-largest payment since the U.S. abuse scandal erupted in 2002.

The agreement caps more than four years of negotiations in state and federal courts.

The diocese this year abruptly filed for bankruptcy protection just hours before trial was scheduled to begin on 42 lawsuits alleging sexual abuse. Bankruptcy could shield the diocese’s assets, but a judge recently threatened to throw out the bankruptcy case if church officials didn’t reach an agreement with the plaintiffs.

The San Diego diocese initially offered about $95 million to settle the claims. The victims were seeking about $200 million.

“The diocese has always been committed to resolving this litigation in a way that fairly compensates these victims of abuse and would still preserve the ongoing ministries and programs of the church,” Bishop Robert Brom said in a press release Friday.

“We pray that this settlement will bring some closure and healing to the years of suffering experienced by these victims.”

Relief, anger from plaintiffs
Plaintiffs expressed relief that a settlement was reached — and anger that it took so long.

“We shouldn’t have had to go through all this,” Betty Schneider, 62, of Temecula told reporters in front of the federal courthouse. She said she was molested as a 10-year-old member of her church choir.

“I have grandkids the same age I was, and I hope all this helps kids to be protected better than we were protected,” she said.

Michael Bang of Atlanta said no settlement could be considered fair.

“They knew all along that I’d been molested, so to put me through this is unconscionable,” he said.

Other settlements
In the largest payment yet in the scandal, the Los Angeles Archdiocese settled 508 cases for $660 million in July, two days before jury selection was scheduled to begin in the first of 15 trials involving 172 abuse claimants there.

The Diocese of Orange agreed in 2004 to settle 90 claims for $100 million after a judge promised to set trial dates and begin the discovery process if settlement talks collapsed. Bishop Tod D. Brown later said he couldn’t risk a trial in a state where a jury once awarded $30 million to two people who claimed they were sexually abused by clergy.

The Diocese of San Diego, with nearly 1 million Catholics and holdings throughout San Diego County, is by far the largest and wealthiest of the five U.S. dioceses to have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection under the shadow of civil claims over sexual abuse.

Dioceses in Spokane, Wash., Portland, Ore., and Tucson, Ariz., have already emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The Davenport, Iowa, diocese, which faces claims from more than 150 people, is still in proceedings.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20644097/