Surveillance State: The Missing Piece of Obama’s Terrorist “Kill Memo” Still Haunts America

The lack of adversarial opinion for a 2011 drone strike on Anwar Al Awlaki could presage the killing of U.S. citizens in America

When U.S. Pres. Barack Obama considered the unprecedented step of intentionally killing an American citizen without judicial process, he asked for a legal opinion that would provide legal cover in case he was accused of a war crime.

Unfortunately, he did not ask for two opinions, one providing authority for killing a citizen and the other why it would be illegal, or at least we have no evidence for an opposing legal position. His request raises an interesting question — under what circumstances is it legal to kill an American citizen without due process?

Virtually all jurisdictions define “murder” as the “unlawful killing of a human being.” The operative word here is “unlawful.” If someone goes into a building on a shooting spree, no time exists for a warrant, a hearing or a trial.

Killing someone on a shooting spree would be a lawful killing because no time exists for a constitutionally-mandated legal process. Under these conditions, killing the shooter, regardless of his or her citizenship, is legal.

Obama’s request was for a similar legal justification. In this case, that killing radical preacher Anwar Al Awlaki would be a lawful killing. Then Attorney General Eric Holder supplied the 97-page legal memorandum, generated 14 months prior to the successful September 2011 assassination of Awlaki, who the U.S. government accused of being a key figure in Al Qaeda’s recruitment efforts.

The legal memorandum was designed to satisfy the president that killing Awlaki without a trial, without judicial process, and with the only “due process” coming from a handful of bureaucrats from the executive branch, would make it legal. In the process, Obama violated one of the fundamental premises in the Anglo-American legal system, one honed by centuries of precedent — the belief that through adversarial proceedings, the truth will emerge.

Obama did not ask for a rebuttal memorandum (or if he did, he never shared it), one offering countervailing considerations and containing opposing points of view — a memorandum that would indicate he had been fully briefed from all perspectives, an opinion that might have made him reach a different conclusion.

Since Obama appears to have asked for only one point of view, he did not have the benefit of hearing a contrarian legal perspective. So here is a non-lawyer’s attempt to show why he should not have killed Awlaki.

Read the Remainder at War is Boring

The Surveillance State: Twitter Lawsuit and FISC Court Updates

A federal judge delivered a blow Monday to Twitter’s drive to release more details on surveillance orders it receives, but the tech firm won a chance to try to reformulate its case.

U.S. District Court Judge Yvonne Rogers said the government has the power to prohibit the release of classified information, barring claims Twitter made in a lawsuit filed two years ago challenging as unconstitutional the limits federal officials have placed on publication of some statistics about surveillance demands.

“The First Amendment does not permit a person subject to secrecy obligations to disclose classified national security information,” Rogers wrote, citing a 1980 Supreme Court case about a former CIA analyst publishing the names of CIA personnel overseas. “Twitter has conceded that the aggregate data is classified. In the absence of a challenge to the decisions classifying that information, Twitter’s Constitutional challenges simply do not allege viable claims.”

However, the Oakland, California-based judge’s order went on to essentially invite Twitter to re-file its case, incorporating a claim that government has not “properly classified” the statistics at issue.

Read the Remainder at Politico

U.S. spy court rejected zero surveillance orders in 2015

The secretive U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court did not deny a single government request in 2015 for electronic surveillance orders granted for foreign intelligence purposes, continuing a longstanding trend, a Justice Department document showed.

The court received 1,457 requests last year on behalf of the National Security Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation for authority to intercept communications, including email and phone calls, according to a Justice Department memo sent to leaders of relevant congressional committees on Friday and seen by Reuters. The court did not reject any of the applications in whole or in part, the memo showed.

The total represented a slight uptick from 2014, when the court received 1,379 applications and rejected none.

The court, which acts behind closed doors, was established in 1978 to handle applications for surveillance warrants against foreign suspects by U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies and grew more controversial after 2013 leaks by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

Read The Remainder at Reuters

Think Before You Post: The Future of Social Media Monitoring In the United States

This may have occurred in Scotland, but it is just a dark foreshadowing of the kind of “monitoring” and “regulations” coming to Social media here in America. So For all you poor souls out there addicted to Social Media, Good Luck with all that. -SF

Glasgow police are warning people not to post unnecessary things on social media or else they might “receive a visit” from the police.

In a tweet Friday morning, Greater Glasgow Police wrote, “Think before you post or you may receive a visit from us this weekend. Use the internet safely.”

They also included a graphic of what people should “think” about before they post:

According to the graphic, people are encouraged to “#thinkbeforeyoupost” anything that is not deemed “necessary” or else they will receive “a visit from us this weekend.”

The tweet by the Greater Glasgow Police Department comes as Police Scotland issued a statement regarding social media comments made by an imam at Glasgow Central Mosque.

The statement from Superintendent Jim Baird of Police Scotland’s Safer Communities Department reads, “Officers have reviewed all comments as reported to Police Scotland, and whilst it is appreciated that individuals raise issues that concern them, on this occasion no criminality has been established.”

Perhaps if the imam had posted something unnecessary on social media as opposed to simply praising a terrorist on social media, the police would have visited him.

Read the Original at MRCTV

Espionage Files: Watch Thy Neighbor

To prevent whistleblowing, U.S. intelligence agencies are instructing staff to spy on their colleagues.

Elham Khorasani was sitting in her car at a stoplight in Northern Virginia when she got the call. It was April 16, 2013. “I’m with the FBI,” a man on the line said, “and we’re at your home executing a search warrant.”

Khorasani was flummoxed. (A pseudonym is being used to protect her privacy.) The Iran native, a U.S. citizen since the 1990s, had worked as a Farsi and Dari language analyst at the National Security Agency (NSA) going on eight years. She had recently been selected for a second tour at Menwith Hill station, the NSA’s mammoth listening post in northern England. Minutes before the FBI called, she’d left a meeting at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI).

“When he said, ‘FBI,’ my mind was going all over the place,” Khorasani says, adding that the most illegal thing she has ever done is get an occasional parking ticket. Yet the agent gave her no information, only instructing her to return to her apartment immediately.

Khorasani describes her life after that day as a nightmare. “They suspended my clearances without giving me any reason,” she remembers. She wasn’t allowed at work, and for two years, the NSA made her “call every day like a criminal, checking in every morning before 8.” Khorasani went to the agency only for interrogations, she says: eight or nine sessions that ran at least five hours each. She was asked about her family, her travel, and her contacts.

Read the Remainder at Foreign Policy