The New York Times has some new and very disturbing revelations in the NSA warrantless wiretapping controversy. The news may explain why the telecoms are fighting so hard for retroactivity immunity in the planned FISA law revision.

To detect narcotics trafficking, for example, the government has been collecting the phone records of thousands of Americans and others inside the United States who call people in Latin America, according to several government officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the program remains classified. But in 2004, one major phone carrier balked at turning over its customers’ records. Worried about possible privacy violations or public relations problems, company executives declined to help the operation, which has not been previously disclosed.

In a separate N.S.A. project, executives at a Denver phone carrier, Qwest, refused in early 2001 to give the agency access to their most localized communications switches, which primarily carry domestic calls, according to people aware of the request, which has not been previously reported. They say the arrangement could have permitted neighborhood-by-neighborhood surveillance of phone traffic without a court order, which alarmed them.

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The ACLU announces:

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) announced today that it will not make public orders and legal papers pertaining to the scope of the government's authority to engage in the secret wiretapping of Americans.

This is only the third time the FISC has issued an opinion publicly and the first time it has ruled on a substantive motion made by any party other than the government.

Here's today's FISA Court opinion and an AP article discussing it.

Out in California, menu mapping is now is place. Law Prof Eric Muller has the details.

This month, reports have surfaced about two controversial counterterrorism initiatives in California. In one, Congressional Quarterly's national security editor reported that the FBI had mined data from San Francisco grocery stores to look for spikes in sales of Middle Eastern food that, together with other data, might imply the presence of extremists. In the other, the Los Angeles Police Department is using census and other demographic data to map Muslim communities in order to pinpoint the neighborhoods of potential extremists.

Eric calls it "tahini mapping" and explains why this is the repeat of a 60 year old mistake that will inflame communities and not make us any safer.

As for the LAPD's neighborhood mapping: [More...]

Freedom loving:

Police fired tear gas and clubbed thousands of lawyers protesting President Gen. Pervez Musharraf's decision to impose emergency rule, as Western allies threatened to review aid to the troubled Muslim nation. Opposition groups put the number of arrests at 3,500, although the government reported half that.

Musharraf, who took power in a 1999 coup and is also head of Pakistan's army, suspended the constitution on Saturday ahead of a Supreme Court ruling on whether his recent re-election as president was legal. He ousted independent-minded judges, put a stranglehold on independent media and granted sweeping powers to authorities to crush dissent.

. . . Musharraf said Monday he would relinquish control of the military and return the country to "the same track as we were moving" but he gave no indication when the vote would take place.

"I am determined to remove my uniform once we correct these pillars — the judiciary, the executive, and the parliament," Musharraf was quoted by state-run Pakistan Television as telling foreign ambassadors Monday. . . .

They hate us for our freedoms. See also Devil's Tower's great post.

The San Francisco Chronicle today features the sad story of Kurdish-American auto mechanic Hamid Sayadi. It's an example of what happens when reason gets left behind in our post-9/11 world.

A witty and eloquent Kurdish-American in his 50s, Sayadi waved the flag of his adopted country and cheered its military for three decades — all to end up stripped to his underwear one day, in the boiler room of his workplace, he says, a ragged and sobbing husk of his former self.

The workplace was New United Motor Manufacturing, called NUMMI. It's the largest auto manufacturer in Fremont, Calif, building both GM and Toyota vehicles.

He was a passionate supporter of the US military when it invaded Iraq -- but to his co-workers at the plant, he says, he was just "Ali Baba" and a potential terrorist. The harassment got worse and worse until one day he snapped.

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The Center for Constitutional Rights and other human rights groups filed a complaint in Paris against Donald Rumsfeld last night alleging he ordered and authorized torture.

Rumsfeld is in Paris to give a talk on foreign policy.

“The filing of this French case against Rumsfeld demonstrates that we will not rest until those U.S. officials involved in the torture program are brought to justice. Rumsfeld must understand that he has no place to hide. A torturer is an enemy of all humankind,” said CCR President Michael Ratner.

“France is under the obligation to investigate and prosecute Rumsfeld’s accountability for crimes of torture in Guantanamo and Iraq. France has no choice but to open an investigation if an alleged torturer is on its territory. I hope that the fight against impunity will not be sacrificed in the name of politics. We call on France to refuse to be a safe haven for criminals.” said FIDH President Souhayr Belhassen.

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The Bush administration would like you to live in fear of terrorism. Shouldn't you be more fearful of this story?

Three senior officers have been relieved of command for their roles in mistakenly allowing a B-52 bomber to fly from North Dakota to Louisiana carrying armed nuclear warheads, top Air Force officials said. .. The bomber took off from Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota on Aug. 30 with the nuclear-armed cruise missiles under one wing. The mistake wasn't discovered until after the plane landed later that day at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana.

Murray Waas continues to break new ground in reporting on Justice Department investigations.

Today he reports that DOJ wanted guilty pleas from two New York Times sources over the December, 2005 article disclosing the NSA warrantless wiretapping program.

The sources refused and Murray says government investigators in the case concede the evidence against them was weak. Now comes the next step: DOJ will subpoena the Times reporters to get to the sources.

Unable to obtain guilty pleas, the federal prosecutor in charge of the leak case has now informally recommended that the Justice Department move forward to compel testimony from the Times. He has argued that it will be difficult to bring criminal charges without such testimony.

As a result, one of the first major decisions likely to be made by Attorney General-designate Michael Mukasey, if confirmed by the Senate, will be whether to subpoena reporters for the Times to testify.

My bet: He'll authorize the subpoenas. That's what top cops do.

Murray Waas has a new article at HuffPo about Alberto Gonzales receiving information about subordinates at the Justice Department during the NSA leak probe and its impropriety, given that he himself was a subject of the various probes and these same employees might be called to testify against him.

Senior federal law enforcement privately question the propriety of Gonzales receiving such sensitive information about subordinates being scrutinized in one inquiry when those same individuals were likely to be witnesses about alleged misconduct by Gonzales for the other investigations.

This is a long article that covers a lot of ground, I recommend reading all of it.

The phone companies have responded to the request by the House Committee on Energy and Commerce for information about their participation in the NSA warrantless wiretapping program.

Verizon admits it supplied hundreds of its customers' records to the agency without a court order.

Verizon also disclosed that the FBI, using administrative subpoenas, sought information identifying not just a person making a call, but all the people that customer called, as well as the people those people called. Verizon does not keep data on this "two-generation community of interest" for customers, but the request highlights the broad reach of the government's quest for data.

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The ACLU has obtained a new set of documents showing the military's expanded role since the passage of the Patriot Act in obtaining national security letters.

New documents uncovered as a result of an American Civil Liberties Union and New York Civil Liberties Union lawsuit reveal that the Department of Defense secretly issued hundreds of national security letters (NSLs) to obtain private and sensitive records of people within the United States without court approval. A comprehensive analysis of 455 NSLs issued after 9/11 shows that the Defense Department seems to have collaborated with the FBI to circumvent the law, may have overstepped its legal authority to obtain financial and credit records, provided misleading information to Congress, and silenced NSL recipients from speaking out about the records requests, according to the ACLU.

The new documents are available here. Many are blacked out (redacted.) The documents include e-mail correspondence between DOD officials responding to the disclosure of the NSL's in the New York Times. I've extracted one e-mail here (pdf).

Also extracted:

• DOD memo (pdf)on its authority to issue NSL letters apart from the FBI
• DOD Guidance (pdf)on obtaining information from financial institutions

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Via Marcy at Next Hurrah and ScoutPrime at First Draft:

A Vermont law firm with overseas clients, including one at Guantanamo Bay, believes the Feds are wiretapping their telephone calls. In a letter to their clients, the firm wrote:

“Although our investigation is not complete, we are quite confident that it is the United States government that has been doing the phone tapping and computer hacking,” said the letter, dated Oct. 2.

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