Internet Privacy? Not If the Government Has Its Way

by Kevin Mathews

The Senate will consider a new bill that threatens Internet privacy rights on Thursday, November 29, reports Yahoo and CNET. If the bill passes, government agencies will no longer need a warrant to have total access to citizens’ email accounts and other forms of electronic communication.

Thus far, the bill has not received too much attention, in part because it has played out as a bit of a bait and switch. Initially, the bill was written explicitly to strengthen email privacy by necessitating that police have probable cause and a search warrant to access citizens’ email. However, law enforcement agencies objected to the content of the bill and it was consequently postponed from its initial review date in September.

In the interim, Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy has rewritten and completely overhauled the bill. The potential legislation would now counter its original intent and give the government unprecedented access to private Internet accounts.

Government agents would no longer need a judge to approve searches of private Internet content. This legislation would not only apply to emails. Facebook, Twitter, Google Docs, and just about any form of electronic messaging, would also be subject to Big Brother’s watchful eye.

If the bill passes, over 22 government agencies would achieve easy access to American’s Internet accounts, including the Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Reserve, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Communications Commission, the National Labor Relations Board, and the Postal Regulatory Commission. State and local police would be granted similar advantages.

One provision even stipulates that if service providers such as Google, Facebook, or Twitter want to inform specific users that law enforcement is monitoring their content, they must first tell the agencies that they intend to do so. Internet users will not be notified for about two weeks after it occurs, although agencies can delay the report from being released for as much as a year. In other words, the government expects a little privacy while invading the privacy of its citizens.

Another provision states that all existing laws and practices can essentially be ignored if enforcement agencies feel the situation is an “emergency.”

Critics of the bill find it alarming that a bill designed to protect privacy is now promoting the precise opposite. “There is no good legal reason why federal regulatory agencies such as the NLRB, OSHA, SEC, or FTC need to access customer information with a mere subpoena,” argues Markham Erickson, a Washington D.C. attorney.

Middle East in high suspense for Gaza operation sequels

While Israel’s Pillar of Cloud was still in full spate over the Gaza Strip and southern Israel, the United States, Russia, Iran, Israel and Turkey were each respectively putting their next moves in place in a broader radius,DEBKAfile reports.
Saturday, Nov. 17, America acted to shore up its naval and Marine forces in the region. Washington gave its approval for NATO to post Patriot anti-missile batteries in Turkey opposite the Syrian border together with advanced AWACs electronic warning aircraft. Both weapons systems are to be manned by US military crews. Next, the USS Iwo Jima Amphibious Ready Group took up position opposite the Israeli and Syrian shores, adding another section to the menacing ring forming around Syria.

Moscow, Iran and Damascus, for their part, decided that the same coalition that laid a trail of disaster for its allies in the Gaza Strip, Hamas and Jihad Islami, were now about to pounce on Iran’s best friend, Bashar Assad, by moves to enforce protected asylums and no-fly zones in Syria.
In Tehran and Moscow, the Gaza offensive was not perceived as a lone Israeli operation but rather as the ground-breaker for a broader offensive by the US, Turkey and Qatar and the product of their combined intelligence brains rather than of military war planners.
Iran had been systematically building up the Gaza Strip as its “southern front” to fight enemies who attacked its nuclear facilities. The obliteration of a large portion of the military infrastructure Hamas and Jihad Islam had accumulated left this plan in shambles. Moscow and Tehran fully expect Washington to next turn the attention of the intelligence team which engineered the dashing of Iran’s hopes in Gaza to Syria and Hizballah, exploiting Tehran’s momentary weakness.
Moscow reacted by posting the Russian Black Sea Fleet’s naval task force opposition the Gaza, i.e. Israeli coast Friday, Nov. 11, purportedly to rescue distressed Russian citizens “should the Israeli-Palestinian fighting worsen in Gaza.”

 Their arrival was announced Nov. 23, two days after a ceasefire went into effect in Gaza.
The Russian task force includes the missile cruiser Moskva, the destroyer Smetlivy, the large landing ships Novocherkassk and Saratov, the tugboat MB-304 and the large oil tanker Ivan Bubnov.

DEBKAfile’s military sources say its real mission concerns forthcoming events in Syria rather than a worsening of hostilities in Gaza. Indeed it has been stationed facing the USS Iwo Jimawhich is in position opposite the Israeli and Syrian coasts.
As for Tehran, Saturday, Nov. 24, President Mahmud Ahmadinejad phoned the Hamas Prime Minister of the Gaza Strip, Ismail Haniya, and Jihad Islami leaders to assure them that Iran will continue to supply them with munitions as before and refill their depleted arsenals within weeks.
This assurance was widely publicized by Tehran as deterrence for the US-Egyptian-Israeli plan to shut down Iran’s arms smuggling routes through Sinai to the Gaza Strip. The promise by US President Barack Obama to send US troops to Sinai for this mission finally persuaded Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to suspend Israel’s operation in the Gaza Strip last Thursday, Nov. 21 after eight days and accept a ceasefire.
The week ahead holds three major events, DEBKAfile’s military sources report.
1.  Iran is not expected to let its Gaza debacle go by without response – probably by some act of military or terrorist violence. Israeli intelligence closely watched Iranian parliamentary speaker Ali Larijani putting his head together on how to go about  punishing Israel with Bashar Assad in Damascus on Friday, Nov. 23, and with Hizballah’s Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut the next day.
2.  A fresh war escalation is on the cards in Syria in response to the deployment of US-manned Patriots and AWACs on Turkey’s border with Syria. Syria may decide to vent its ire against Israel.
3.  Egypt’s pro-democracy, liberal and anti-Muslim Brotherhood forces are arrayed for a major battle against President Mohamed Morsi for his assumption of extraordinary powers. This contest has the potential for undoing the fragile ceasefire reached between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Part of the deal was for Morsi to personally monitor and arbitrate the implementation of the secret understandings for Gaza and Sinai that were negotiated between the US, Egypt and Israel in order to open the door to the ceasefire

France to Vote in Favor of Palestinians’ U.N. Bid

 Support in Europe for a heightenedPalestinian profile at the United Nations grew on Tuesday when the French government said it would vote in favor of the Palestinians’ bid for nonmember observer status, embracing a move that Israel and the United States have opposed.
The announcement byFrance, a permanent member of theUnited Nations Security Council, is the most significant boost to date for the Palestinians’ hopes to be granted the enhanced status in the world forum, and with that greater international recognition. Russia and China, two other permanent members, have also thrown their weight behind the Palestinian bid.

The backing of France and other countries appeared calculated to provide diplomatic ballast to thePalestinian Authority’s president,Mahmoud Abbas, a moderate whose Fatah party governs in parts of the West Bank. The effort came after the militant group Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, saw its credibility and standing with Palestinians rise after eight days of fighting with Israel.

But the French announcement was also a blow to Israel, whose diplomats have been working feverishly to try to ensure what they call a “moral majority” in the United Nations vote, meaning that even if a majority of nations voted in favor of the Palestinian bid, the major world powers would not.

The Palestinians said Tuesday that at least 12 European Union countries had confirmed that they were behind the Palestinian bid. With that support widening in Europe, Israeli officials acknowledged that the effort to gain a “moral majority” was crumbling.

Countries in the European Union are “slowly drifting toward support or abstention,” said Yigal Palmor, a spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry.

Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius of France, speaking before the lower house of Parliament on Tuesday, said that on “Thursday or Friday, when the question is asked, France will reply, ‘Yes.’ ”

Though recognition at the United Nations would be viewed by many as an implicit recognition of statehood, the “concrete expression of a Palestinian state” can come only through negotiations “without conditions” between Palestinians and Israel, Mr. Fabius added.

Israeli officials also said they were not surprised by the French announcement. Ilana Stein, a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, said, “Of course, we remain in our opinion that this is a very harmful initiative by the Palestinians; our opinion has not changed.”

Muhammad Shtayyeh, the Palestinian special envoy for the United Nations bid, issued a statement from New York saying: “We are very thankful to France, and we call upon other European governments to announce their support for Palestinian freedom. This is long overdue.” The two other permanent members of the Security Council are the United States and Britain.

The vote on enhanced status is fraught with symbolism, and some analysts see it staying that way. It will fall on Nov. 29, the 65th anniversary of the United Nations decision to partition the territory of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states.

If approved, it will do nothing to relieve the unresolved issues at the heart of the Palestinian-Israeli disagreements.

“There is one basic reality,” said Robert M. Danin, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a former State Department official. “The Palestinians still control less than half of the West Bank and will control less than half of the West Bank tomorrow and the day after until the Israelis decide otherwise.”

Last year, the Palestinians submitted an application to the Security Council to become a full member state of the United Nations, but the effort went nowhere; the United States made it clear it would veto the request.

The Palestinians still believe that broader recognition of their presence in the United Nations is a crucial step to a two-state solution. The draft resolution for the vote on status “reaffirms the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination and to independence in their state of Palestine on the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967.”

The Israelis are concerned that the Palestinians could use enhanced status to try to join other bodies, like the International Criminal Court, where they could pursue legal claims against Israel. Israeli officials also view the Palestinian bid for enhanced status as a nonmember state as a violation of previous accords.

“This is in stark contrast to their commitment to resolve issues through negotiations,” said Mark Regev, an Israeli government spokesman.

While any vote supporting greater Palestinian status at the United Nations could help Mr. Abbas, a moderate, Mr. Danin said the bid, if voted in, could lead to heightened tension with Israel.

“For the Palestinian Authority and President Abbas it is a symbolic victory that I think he feels he badly needs right now, particularly in the wake of the recent violence in Gaza, but more generally as well,” he said. “Originally he posited this as a tool in a strategy leading to renewed negotiations. In the short term it will have the opposite effect.”

Also on Tuesday, the remains of Yasir Arafat, the longtime Palestinian leader, were exhumed in Ramallah as part of an inquiry into whether he had been poisoned. The atmosphere was subdued, with his people more fractured and less certain of their future than when he was alive.

Meanwhile, responding to unconfirmed reports that Washington and Israel were pressing the Palestinians to include a clause in the resolution pledging not to seek membership in the International Criminal Court, Palestinian officials said they would accept no limits on their statehood.

One Palestinian official denied the reports and said that the American pressure had been directed more generally at getting the Palestinians to drop the whole process. He said that the Palestinians had invited the Americans and the Israelis to be involved in the drafting of the resolution several months ago, but that they refused.

Mr. Regev said only that there were “ongoing talks” between the Americans and the Israelis.

Malta, Luxembourg, Switzerland and Portugal have said they will vote for the measure, while Germany and the Czech Republic are among the countries that have opposed the bid, news agencies reported.