Pentagon war funds need not urgent: Congress memo

Reuters
Pentagon war funds need not urgent: Congress memo
By Richard Cowan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Army has enough money on hand to finance the Iraq war through most of July, according to a congressional study that challenges President George W. Bush's assertions that an infusion of funds is needed more urgently.

According to a Congressional Research Service memo dated March 28 and sent to the Senate Budget Committee, "The Army could finance the O&M (operations and maintenance) of both its baseline and war program ... through most of July 2007" by shifting around money in existing accounts.

The memo said it based its projections "using Army and other data."

That assessment was at odds with Bush and some of his war managers, who have said that Congress could undermine U.S. troops and the war in Iraq if it did not approve approximately $100 billion within weeks.

"The Democrats are distorting and hiding behind a CRS memo on the eve of Congress' spring vacation to distract from their failure to send the President a responsible bill he can sign," said White House spokesman Tony Fratto. "It's time for the Democrats to send the president a bill that funds the troops without forcing retreat, handcuffing our commanders, or adding billions of dollars in pork spending."

Fratto warned that a delay in funding was already affecting troops.

"Yesterday, the Department of Defense notified Congress that in order to meet the force protection needs of the Marine Corps and the Army, we are borrowing funds from other important Marine and Army procurement programs," Fratto said.

Bush requested the emergency funds in early February and Congress is in the process of writing bills providing more money for the war than the president requested.

But Democrats have added conditions to the money, including setting timetables for withdrawing all combat troops from Iraq. Bush wants the money without the conditions and has threatened to veto either bill passed by the Senate or the House of Representatives.

Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a House panel on Thursday that after April 15, without emergency funding, the Army would have to begin curtailing some troop training, which "could over time delay their ability to go back into combat."

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has said that if the funds were not approved by May 15, the Army might have to extend some soldiers' tours, because other units would not be ready, and reduce equipment repair work, among other things.

TIME-CONSUMING PROCESS

If Congress sends Bush a bill that he vetoes, lawmakers would then have to go through a potentially time-consuming process of rewriting and passing a new war-funding bill.

The administration tried to turn up the pressure on Congress on Friday, when White House spokeswoman Dana Perino criticized lawmakers for taking a spring vacation without making adequate progress on the emergency war funds.

"Every day that the Congress fails to act on this request causes our military hardship and impacts readiness," Perino said.

But according to the memo, "the Army could finance its O&M expenses through the end of May by tapping $52.6 billion in O&M funding already provided by Congress."

Furthermore, with congressional approval, the Pentagon could temporarily transfer money out of other accounts, giving the Army "almost two additional months" to conduct its regular operations and the war.

Since invading Iraq in March 2003 to depose then President Saddam Hussein, the Bush administration has refused to include in annual budgets the full estimated cost of the war each year. Instead, it has submitted "emergency" requests that many lawmakers complained have made it difficult to do proper oversight of the war.

(Additional reporting by Kristin Roberts)

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TJX data breach: At 45.6M card numbers, it's the biggest ever

Computerworld
TJX data breach: At 45.6M card numbers, it's the biggest ever
Jaikumar Vijayan

March 29, 2007 (Computerworld) After more than two months of refusing to reveal the size and scope of its data breach, TJX Companies Inc. is finally offering more details about the extent of the compromise.

In filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission yesterday, the company said 45.6 million credit and debit card numbers were stolen from one of its systems over a period of more than 18 months by an unknown number of intruders. That number eclipses the 40 million records compromised in the mid-2005 breach at CardSystems Solutions and makes the TJX compromise the worst ever involving the loss of personal data.

In addition, personal data provided in connection with the return of merchandise without receipts by about 451,000 individuals in 2003 was also stolen. The company is in the process of contacting individuals affected by the breach, TJX said in its filings.

"Given the scale and geographic scope of our business and computer systems and the time frames involved in the computer intrusion, our investigation has required a substantial period of time to date and is not completed," the company said.

Framingham, Mass.-based TJX is the owner of a number of retail brands, including T.J.Maxx, Marshalls and Bob's Stores. In January, the company announced that someone had illegally accessed one of its payment systems and made off with card data belonging to an unspecified number of customers in the U.S., Canada, Puerto Rico and potentially the U.K. and Ireland.

At the time, TJX said it believed the intrusion took place in May 2006 but wasn't discovered until mid-December -- seven months later. A few weeks later, the company revised those dates and said that an investigation by IBM and General Dynamics, two companies it hired in the wake of the breach discovery, believed the intrusion may have taken place in July 2005.

Several banks and credit unions around the country and in the other affected regions had to block and reissue thousands of payment cards as a result of the breach.

In its filing, TJX confirmed that its systems were first accessed illegally in July 2005 and then on several occasions later in 2005, 2006 and even once in mid-January 2007 -- after the breach had already been discovered. However, no data appears to have been stolen after Dec. 18, when the intrusion was first noticed.

The systems that were broken into were based in Framingham and processed and stored information related to payment cards, checks and merchandise returned without receipts. The data breach affected customers of its T.J.Maxx, Marshalls, HomeGoods and A.J. Wright stores in the U.S. and Puerto Rico. Also affected were customers of its Winners and HomeSense stores in Canada and TK Maxx stores in the U.K.

It is hard to know exactly what kind of data was stolen because a lot of the information accessed by intruders was deleted by the company in the normal course of business. "In addition, the technology used by the intruder has, to date, made it impossible for us to determine the contents of most of the files we believe were stolen in 2006," the company said. It did not elaborate on the technology it was referring to.

Customer names and addresses were not included with any of the payment card data believed stolen from the Framingham systems, TJX said. Also, the company "generally" did not store Track 2 data from the magnetic stripe on the back of payment cards for transactions after September 2003, TJX said. Also by April 3, 2006, the company had begun to mask payment card PIN data and "some other portions of payment card transaction information" as well as check transaction information, the company said.

"We are continuing to try to identify information stolen in the computer intrusion through our investigation, but other than the information provided ... we believe that we may never be able to identify much of the information believed stolen," TJX said.

The company has so far spent about $5 million in connection with the breach, although it is hard to say what other costs may be incurred, the company warned. It cited several lawsuits that have been filed against it since the breach was announced. The company was sued recently by the Arkansas Carpenters Pension Fund, one of its shareholders, for its failure to divulge more details about the breach.

Avivan Litan, an analyst with Stamford,Conn.based Gartner Inc., expressed surprise at the scope of the breach. "I had heard rumors that it was bigger than CardSystems, but I was still somewhat shocked it was actually this big."

The number involved in the breach "makes this the biggest card heist ever," she said. "It proves there are still very sophisticated cybercriminals out there at large who have the potential to wreak havoc on pure-payment systems and who have already stolen millions of dollars from consumers and financial institutions," she said.

"If this isn't a wakeup call for stronger card and payment system security, I'm not sure what is," she said.

TJX's disclosure comes just days after six Florida residents were arrested for allegedly launching a multimillion-dollar statewide credit card fraud ring using information stolen from the company. Losses experienced by Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and other retailers because of the fraud have so far totaled at least $8 million.

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White House use of outside e-mail raises red flags

Computerworld
White House use of outside e-mail raises red flags
Todd R. Weiss

March 29, 2007 (Computerworld) For official government business, staff members in the Bush White House use government-issued e-mail accounts where all communications are then stored, archived and preserved for eventual inclusion in the National Archives.

But for several years, some high-ranking Bush staff members have also apparently been using outside e-mail accounts for nongovernmental, political communications. Those accounts, through the Republican National Committee (RNC) and the 2004 Bush-Cheney re-election campaign, allowed the officials to keep up with both their official and political responsibilities while not violating the Hatch Act. That law forbids many government officials from engaging in political activities from their workplaces.

While the focus of those particular incidents is on the White House, the issue is one that should be getting close scrutiny from businesses across the nation, experts said.

The concern is that if company communications are being conducted outside official corporate e-mail systems, there's no way to control their security, preservation or use, something that can leave companies vulnerable to a wide variety of legal problems and regulatory compliance issues.

In the White House case this week, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform sent letters Monday to the chairmen of the RNC and the former Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign committee, asking them to explain more about the use of the outside e-mail accounts. In the letters, Oversight Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) said his group wants to know what's been done to preserve the contents of the outside e-mail accounts used by government officials for possible review and to assure that "no e-mails involving official White House business have been destroyed or altered.

"Congressional investigations have revealed that White House officials have used nongovernmental e-mail accounts, including those maintained by the RNC, to conduct official White House business," the letters said. "The Committee has questions about who has access to these e-mail records and how the RNC protects them from destruction or tampering. The Committee also directs you to preserve all such records because of their potential relevance to congressional investigations. Such e-mails written in the conduct of White House business would appear to be govemmental records subject to preservation and eventual public disclosure."

The Oversight Committee first learned of the outside e-mail accounts during investigations of White House contacts with convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff, which found "that many of the e-mail exchanges between Jack Abramoff and White House officials were conducted via nongovernmental e-mail accounts. In at least one [incoming message to Abramoff], the e-mails indicate that these nonofficial accounts were being used because 'to put this stuff in writing in their [White House] e-mail system ... might actually limit what they can do to help us.'"

Waxman today sent a similar letter to White House Counsel Fred Fielding (download PDF), asking for "information and a briefing regarding the e-mail policies of the White House" next week.

White House records fall under the Presidential Records Act of 1978, which was established to govern and manage the collection and use of all presidential records.

White House spokesman David Almacy said the outside e-mail accounts were set up to allow legitimate political activities to be conducted by appropriate staff members without using White House accounts, which would be illegal under the Hatch Act. "It was specifically set up that way so that people weren't using their official accounts for political activities," he said. Only certain White House staff members have such outside accounts, including those who regularly communicate with outside political groups, he said.

The creation and use of the outside e-mail accounts has been reviewed by White House lawyers, he said.

Since 2004, e-mails to and from White House staff members sent through the RNC e-mail system are archived and saved, he said. White House staff members are not able to access other home or other personal e-mail accounts on their work-issued computers because access is blocked, he said. "The reason primarily is presidential records and security. We want to be able to control what people bring onto their [work] computers. From a presidential records perspective, this is something that we take very seriously," Almacy said.

The White House e-mail case should be a wake-up call for businesses that face similar situations, said John Alber, a technology lawyer at Bryan Cave LLP in St. Louis. The problem, he said, is that all business communications must be securely archived and stored in the event of lawsuits, government inquiries or other legal scenarios. When such records aren't tightly controlled, any large unsubstantiated gaps in the stored data can mean disaster in court, he said.

A major issue is that virtually every business is overwhelmed today by the volume of electronic records and communications, he said. His own law firm is experiencing 60% increases in e-mail storage requirements each year for its 800 attorneys and other staff members. "It is nowadays a de facto document repository," he said of the law firm's Microsoft Exchange server system. "It is often that [some legal documents] only exist in an e-mail repository right now in Exchange," which wasn't designed for the long-term storage and archiving of such documents.

"If companies aren't worried about this, they'd better get worried," Alber said. "It's truly important stuff. Everybody has this problem. It's simply because of the way we do business. Almost everybody's behind the curve."

Michele Lang, a staff attorney for legal discovery software vendor Kroll Ontrack Inc. in Eden Prairie, Minn., said "there are a whole bunch of lessons" for businesses to take away from the unfolding White House e-mail case.

"Corporate America is having this very same problem with employees using [free consumer e-mail accounts from] Google, Yahoo or Hotmail," Lang said. By doing so, those employees are often storing sensitive corporate information with free services that don't have the data security, compliance and archiving that companies should mandate, she said.

"That's a scary situation for corporate America. Definitely there are loads of landmines here for the government ... and for corporate America to navigate."

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Bedtime for Gonzo

Huffington Post
Paul Abrams
Bedtime for Gonzo

Although it may turn out that the US Attorney firings were "only" blatantly political, and not criminally corrupt, the lies are knee-jerk reactions of the Bush Administration, and its roots go deeply into the entire rightwing enterprise that has been created in the last 30 years. Why, one might ask, would they coverup "nothing"?

From their tin ear to the terrorism threat prior to 9/11, to the denial of the human contribution to global warming, and from the SwiftBoating of John Kerry to the "they will follow us home" claim for prolonging the war they lost in Iraq, the Bush Administration's addiction to lying (or, as his predecessor, Nixon, called it, "misspeaking") arises from two underlying contradictions in the radical rightwing playbook.

First, very much like Yasser Arafat who would say one thing in English for the world press, and another in Arabic for his constituents, the radical rightwing have one message for their own groups feeding their faithful the red meat of hatred of anything "foreign" or multilateral, scorn for anything scientific, and derision for anything that limits their vision of a unilaterally acting United States on the world stage or domestic policies that put the public interest over their private interests. Gingrich wanted to dismantle several US departments, and did cancel the Office of Technology Assessment whose role was to provide Congress the same factual understanding of technology as the Congressional Budget Office does for tax and budget policies. He also wanted social security and medicare to "wither on the vine". Bush et al. ignored Richard Clarke's warnings of a terrorist attack because taking that seriously would have meant dollars spent on personnel, and not on their big-technology purchases for Star Wars.

On the other hand, the American people want almost none of that, and the rightwing knows it. Every time the rightwing has tried to be honest about their intentions, they lose. As proof of that observation, note that when they came after Social Security and Medicare in the '90s, they called it "saving" those programs, whereas in fact their proposals gutted them. (Frank Luntz, their wordsmithing guru, taught them to say, "we are just decreasing the rate of increase", but the truth they were proposing absolute decreases). They passed very few of the 9/11 Commission recommendations---because to do so would cost their patrons money---but they have learned the refrain that they care about the safety of the American people. Or, just recall John Bolton explaining why someone (himself) who proclaimed that it would be fine if the UN Secretariat's top floors were demolished, stated at a rightwing belief tank to establish his bona fides, ought to be UN Ambassador, as he tried to do at his confirmation hearing.

So, living with two truths (actually, two lies) is second nature to the radical rightwing. They cannot do what they want to do straightforwardly, and so they become trained dissemblers. With enough practice, they can do it and likely pass a lie detector test. Belief helps---they believe their cause is so just that any means employed is justifiable. Valerie Plame was "fair game". Terry Schiavo's dignity was also fair game. Lying about the impact of medicare reductions on the elderly---fair game. Taking us into Iraq to (they thought) bolster their domestic political power---fair game.

Mr. Gonzales's kneejerk reaction to deny the political nature of the dismissals was right out of their playbook. There is a suggestion in the blogs (BradsBlog) that these attorneys were replaced in states where they could make mischief in the 2008 elections (e.g., Arkansas and Hillary Clinton; New Mexico and Bill Richardson). Oh, did I forget to mention the Florida 2000 vote? Fair game.

What they are discovering, but not admitting, is that their beliefs do not overcome reality. Iraq, Katrina, Global Warming. Scooter Libby had his comeuppance. This time, it is Bedtime for Gonzo.

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Suicide bombers kill 130 in Iraq

Reuters
Suicide bombers kill 130 in Iraq
By Ahmed Rasheed

BAGHDAD, Iraq (Reuters) - Suicide bombers killed nearly 130 people in a crowded market in a Shi'ite district of Baghdad and a mainly Shi'ite town on Thursday, one of the bloodiest days in Iraq in months.

The upsurge in sectarian violence threatens all-out civil war and Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, a Shi'ite, called for restraint and urged Iraqis to work with security forces to prevent the violence spiraling out of control. Bombs earlier this week in northern Iraq sparked mass reprisal killings.

Two suicide bombers wearing vests packed with explosives killed 76 people in a market in the Shaab district of northern Baghdad, police and medical sources said, in what appeared to be the latest of a string of attacks on Shi'ite districts and towns blamed on al Qaeda. More than 100 were wounded.

"It is impossible to tell the exact number of dead because we are basically counting body parts," said a Health Ministry official in Baghdad, who asked not to be named.

Most of the victims were women and children, who had been out shopping in the crowded market before the start of the nightly curfew, he said.

At about the same time, three suicide car bombs exploded within minutes of each other in Khalis, 80 km (50 miles) north of Baghdad, killing 53 people and wounding 103, police said.

There has been a spike in bloodshed, particularly outside the Iraqi capital, in recent days. Violence between majority Shi'ites and minority Sunnis has killed tens of thousands in the past year.

On Tuesday two truck bombs killed 85 people in a Shi'ite area of Tal Afar in northern Iraq. In the hours after those blasts Shi'ite gunmen, including police, shot dead up to 70 Sunni Arab men in reprisal.

The top U.S. commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, confirmed on Thursday police appeared to have carried out "retribution killings" after the bombings, which he blamed on al Qaeda. Iraq's Sunni vice-president urged the Shi'ite-led government to do more to purge the security forces of militias.

In Khalis, one car bomb exploded in a commercial area and a second at a police checkpoint leading to the police headquarters and court building, police said. A third bomber attacked police patrols rushing to the scene.

"It was a scene of horror. There were charred bodies and human remains scattered about," said one policeman who spoke on condition of anonymity.

MARKET BLAST

A survivor of the Shaab market blast in Baghdad, Wissam Hashim Ali, 27, told Reuters the market had been "very, very crowded" at the time of the blasts.

"I saw heads separated from the bodies and legs blown off," he said in hospital, where he was receiving treatment for his wounds.

Maliki's office said in a statement the prime minister condemned the bombs and called on Iraqis "not to let evil-doers have their way and to cooperate with security forces, who are determined to cleanse Iraq of terrorism".

New U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker told his swearing-in ceremony that "terrorists, insurgents and militias continue to threaten security in Baghdad and around the country" and called Iraq America's "most critical foreign policy challenge".

The U.S. Senate, following the House of Representatives, passed a war-funding bill on Thursday that sets a goal of withdrawing all U.S. combat soldiers from Iraq within a year.

President George W. Bush, who has vowed to veto the measure, is sending up to 30,000 additional troops to Iraq, most of them to support a major security crackdown under way in Baghdad, epicenter of the violence.

While this crackdown has succeeded in reducing the number of deaths in the capital, violence has surged elsewhere.

(Additional reporting by Dean Yates and Claudia Parsons in Baghdad)

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Ex-aide disputes Gonzales statements on firings

Reuters
Ex-aide disputes Gonzales statements on firings
By Thomas Ferraro

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales wrongly claimed he was not involved in the firing of federal prosecutors, his former chief of staff told Congress on Thursday.

Kyle Sampson also said he shared vital information with Justice Department colleagues about the dismissal of eight of the nation's 93 U.S. attorneys last year, despite assertions to the contrary by the attorney general.

"I never sought to conceal or withhold any material fact on this matter from anyone," Sampson, who helped orchestrate the ousters, told the Senate Judiciary Committee.

"Others in the department knew what I knew about the origins and timing of this enterprise," Sampson said.

The dismissals have triggered a firestorm, fanned by charges the firings may have been politically motivated, and calls for Gonzales to resign.

The administration contends the dismissals were justified, based largely on performance or policy differences. Newly disclosed documents also show loyalty was a factor.

While Sampson defended the firings overall, he voiced regret near the end of the all-day hearing about the ouster of one of the prosecutors, David Iglesias of New Mexico.

"In hindsight, I wish that the department hadn't gotten down this road at all," Sampson said. "That's one of the reasons I resigned" this month.

Iglesias was ousted largely for what now appear to be questionable complaints he inadequately pursued election fraud.

His dismissal came after Iglesias resisted what he described as pressure from two U.S. Republican lawmakers to bring charges in a probe involving New Mexico Democrats. The two lawmakers deny it.

GONZALES TO TESTIFY NEXT MONTH

Gonzales, in what could be a make-or-break bid to keep his job, is to appear before the committee next month.

President George W. Bush has voiced support for Gonzales, but also told him to go to Capitol Hill to ease concerns.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino, after Sampson's testimony was completed, said, "The president continues to have confidence in the attorney general and believes he can overcome these challenges."

The investigation is part of a drive by the new Democratic-led Congress to increase oversight over how the administration operates.

At a March 13 news conference, Gonzales said, "The mistake that occurred here was that information that he (Sampson) had was not shared with individuals within the department who were then going to be providing testimony and information to the Congress."

Gonzales also had said he was not involved in discussions about the firings. But he sought to clarify his position after the recent disclosure of an internal document showed otherwise.

Subsequently, Gonzales said he was not involved in deliberations over which prosecutors should go, only getting involved at the end. U.S. attorneys serve at the pleasure of the president.

Sampson said, "I don't think the attorney general's statement that he was not involved in any discussions about U.S. attorney removals is accurate."

He testified that Gonzales "was aware of this process from the beginning in early 2005. ... Ultimately he approved both the list and the notion of going forward and asking for these resignations." He said both Gonzales and former White House counsel Harriet Miers were directly involved in at least one of the reviews.

Congressional subpoenas have been authorized for Miers, Bush political adviser Karl Rove and other White House aides. The president has vowed to oppose any attempt to compel sworn testimony from them.

(Additional reporting by Tabassum Zakaria and James Vicini)

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Arab leaders urge Israel to take peace offer

Reuters
Arab leaders urge Israel to take peace offer
By Wafa Amr and Andrew Hammond

RIYADH (Reuters) - Arab leaders on Thursday endorsed a 5-year-old peace plan to end conflict with Israel, and the Israeli prime minister said he saw a "revolutionary change" in the Arab world.

The endorsement at a two-day Arab summit came amid a U.S. push to restart the Middle East peace process, and Washington described it as "very positive".

The Palestinian president warned of more violence if the "hand of peace" was rejected and the prime minister of Israel, which turned down the plan in 2002, described the summit as "a serious affair".

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Saudi Arabia, which hosted the summit, was the Arab country that would "eventually determine the Arabs' ability to reach a compromise with Israel", Israeli media quoted him as saying.

"This process has brought the influential countries in the Arab world to begin to realize that Israel is not the biggest of all their troubles. This is a revolutionary change in their perception."

Speaking at the end of the summit, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas urged Israel not to waste the chance for peace.

"I reiterate the sincerity of the Palestinian will in extending the hand of peace to the Israeli people ... We should not waste more chances in the history of this long and painful cause," Abbas told the closing ceremony in Riyadh.

The plan, endorsed in a general communique read at the end of the summit, offers Israel normal ties with Arab states in return for withdrawal from land seized in the 1967 war and the creation of a Palestinian state.

The summit also agreed to set up an Arab committee to follow up the initiative, headed by Saudi Arabia.

"The willingness of the Saudis to lead, to intervene is certainly interesting," Olmert said.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the Arabs should use the plan "as a point of active diplomacy and as a way of energizing the push for peace in the Middle East".

"UNPREDICTABLE REPERCUSSIONS"

Rejected by Israel when it was originally proposed at a Beirut summit in 2002, the plan faces important hurdles.

Israel objects to key points, including a return to 1967 borders, the inclusion of Arab East Jerusalem in a Palestinian state and the potential return of Palestinian refugees to what is now Israel.

But Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal said Israel was subjecting "not only the region but itself to dangers with unpredictable repercussions" if it ignored peace offers.

The summit came against a tense regional backdrop, amid a standoff between Iran and the west over Tehran's nuclear program.

The United States and other western countries accuse Iran of using its nuclear program, which Tehran says is designed only to produce electricity, as a cover for making nuclear bombs.

The summit warned of the danger of a nuclear arms race in the region, though it also stressed the right of every country to possess nuclear energy for peaceful uses.

(Additional reporting by Souhail Karam)

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Senate approves '08 goal to bring troops home

Reuters
Senate approves '08 goal to bring troops home
By Richard Cowan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate on Thursday defied a veto threat by President George W. Bush and joined with the House of Representatives in backing a timetable for withdrawing American combat troops from Iraq.

In a mostly party-line 51-47 vote, the Democratic-controlled Senate told Bush to start withdrawing the troops this year with the goal of getting all combat soldiers out by March 31, 2008.

"The ball is in the president's court. We have done what we needed to do" by passing a bill with even more money for the troops and veterans than Bush requested, said House Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino called the deadline legislation "well outside the mainstream." But she added, "If they want to compromise -- and I understand that the (House) speaker and the (Senate) majority leader said that they do -- then we're willing to talk to them on ways that their bills can be changed in order to get to the president's desk so that it doesn't meet his veto."

Democrats took control of Congress in January, after elections that largely focused on Republicans' handling of a war that has now claimed more than 3,200 American lives and at least 65,000 Iraqi soldiers and civilians.

The Senate vote marked progress for anti-war Democrats, who just two weeks ago mustered only 48 votes in a failed attempt to set identical deadlines.

Bush has argued that setting a deadline encourages the enemy to wait it out and hurts military commanders' flexibility. He has promised to veto any legislation that sets withdrawal timetables, which Democrats have attached to about $100 billion in war funds for the next six months.

COMPROMISE

Now, House and Senate negotiators will try to work out a compromise from their two bills. Their most notable difference is that the House bill contains a mandatory September 1, 2008, deadline for redeploying combat troops. The Senate's shorter timetable is a goal, not a requirement on Bush and is designed to win the support of centrist Democrats.

The House bill also requires Bush to certify that troops are properly trained, equipped and rested before being sent into combat. Democrats insist they are enforcing existing standards at a time when the military is stressed after four years of fighting. Republicans accuse them of trying to micromanage and choke off the war.

Democrats' moves to end the war through legislation kicked off another round of accusations from the White House and Congress over which would be to blame if money is not quickly delivered to the troops.

Speaking to reporters after meeting with House Republican leaders, Bush said, "We stand united in saying loud and clear that when we've got a troop in harm's way, we expect that troop to be fully funded."

Reid countered that Democrats were following through on voters' demands last November for better oversight of the war. He said if Bush vetoes whatever compromise the House and Senate craft, "I don't know if you can find any president who has done more to undermine the troops."

The House and Senate hope to negotiate a compromise bill by the week of April 16 and quickly pass it and send it on to Bush.

If Bush does veto the bill, Democrats are not expected to have the two-thirds support in the House and Senate to overturn him.

As a result, Congress quickly would have to come up with a new war-spending bill, with Democrats in a high-stakes gamble over whether to send Bush another bill with conditions on the duration of U.S. troops fighting in Iraq.

(Additional reporting by Caren Bohan and Susan Cornwell)

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The Politics of Attacking Al Gore

ABC News
The Politics of Attacking Al Gore
Column: Gore Goes to Washington to Speak on Warming; Capitol Quibbles While Ice Sheets Melt
By MATT CRENSON
The Associated Press

NEW YORK - Al Gore has taken some heat lately for spreading the word about global warming.

First there were the allegations by a conservative group, the day after Gore collected an Oscar for his movie "An Inconvenient Truth," that his Nashville mansion consumes more than 20 times as much electricity as the average American household. Then there were charges that zinc mining on Tennessee property owned by Gore tarnished his environmentalist credentials.

By the time he arrived on Capitol Hill this past week to testify about his signature issue, the barbs Gore's congressional adversaries hurled at him sounded relatively benign.

"It seems that everything is blamed on global warming," Republican Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma complained. "How come you guys never seem to notice when it gets cold?"

He then confronted Gore with the number of record cold temperatures measured at U.S. weather stations during the month of January. (This would be the same January that was part of the warmest Northern Hemisphere winter on record.)

"We need to be deliberative and careful when we talk about so-called scientific facts," Republican Rep. Joe Barton of Texas lectured, before enumerating a list of things he believed Gore got wrong in the award-winning documentary.

One of the problems Gore, environmentalists and the scientific community have in conveying the seriousness of global warming is that its most severe effects to date have been felt in the polar regions, far from the places where most politicians and their constituents live.

As Gore mentioned on Capitol Hill, in just the last few months a number of scientific studies have documented alarming environmental changes at both poles. The sea ice layer on the Arctic Ocean has shrunk so dramatically that scientists expect it to disappear completely during the summer months by mid-century. Scientists have seen glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica suddenly accelerate, increasing the rate at which they dump icebergs into the sea and contributing to the rise of the world's seas.

As part of an effort to draw attention to the poles, on March 1 the world's scientific community kicked off the International Polar Year, an intensive research effort and public awareness campaign focused on the Arctic and Antarctic.

"We're seeing the poles change faster than we had anticipated, than we as scientists could have imagined," said Robin Bell, a Columbia University geophysicist who chaired the U.S. national committee for the International Polar Year.

A few years ago scientists felt pretty confident that if anything, the polar ice sheets covering Greenland and Antarctica would grow due to global warming. Their calculations indicated that any melting would be more than offset by a warming-induced increase in snowfall over the South Pole.

Minds started changing in February 2002, when scientists watched in amazement as a Rhode Island-sized chunk of floating ice on Antarctica's coast disintegrated into icebergs and simply drifted away. Around the same time they noticed that Greenland's already growing output of ice into the North Atlantic had increased dramatically, doubling over the decade that ended in 2005.

"We were much more optimistic about the ice sheets a few years ago than we are now," said Penn State glaciologist Richard B. Alley.

Research is starting to help scientists understand what's going on with surging glaciers. One recent study used images from a NASA satellite to track gigantic sub-glacial lakes in Antarctica as they filled with water and then drained. The pools of liquid water presumably act as lubrication between the ice and the land underneath, making the glaciers above them flow much more quickly than they otherwise would. But exactly how remains a mystery.

"We can't predict what this ice stream is going to do based on these measurements, but this is a major step in that direction," said Robert Bindschadler, a NASA scientist who worked on the project.

In "An Inconvenient Truth," Gore dramatically illustrated what the cities of Miami, Calcutta, Shanghai, Beijing and New York might look like in 2100 if the Greenland ice sheet were to melt, raising sea level by 20 feet.

He capped that section of his presentation with a chilling thought: "Think of the impact of a couple hundred thousand refugees," Gore says in the film, conjuring images of New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. "And then imagine 100 million."

Gore's political adversaries have criticized him for evoking such a catastrophic future.

"Nearly every significant statement that Vice President Gore makes regarding climate science and climate policy is either one-sided, misleading, exaggerated, speculative or wrong," said Marlo Lewis, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute who holds degrees in government and political science.

Lewis contends that there is no scientific evidence to support the notion that melting glaciers could raise sea levels by 20 feet during our lives or those of our children.

That's true, strictly speaking. The U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recently projected a sea-level rise of between 7 and 23 inches by 2100 a far cry from 20 feet. But those projections explicitly omit any consideration of melting in Antarctica and Greenland, citing the lack of reliable scientific knowledge on the topic.

Yes, it's true: There are some things about global warming that scientists don't understand. But Alley, who has a doctoral degree is in geology, was willing to offer some educated speculation.

"I don't think anyone has come up with anything that would allow you to lose a whole ice sheet in decades," he said.

But, he added, global temperatures could easily be warm enough by 2100 to make the collapse of one or both ice caps an inevitability at some point after that.

So while its true that our children needn't worry about catastrophic sea level rise, our grandchildren and great-grandchildren may not be so lucky.

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My National Security Letter Gag Order

washingtonpost.com
My National Security Letter Gag Order

It is the policy of The Washington Post not to publish anonymous pieces. In this case, an exception has been made because the author -- who would have preferred to be named -- is legally prohibited from disclosing his or her identity in connection with receipt of a national security letter. The Post confirmed the legitimacy of this submission by verifying it with the author's attorney and by reviewing publicly available court documents.

The Justice Department's inspector general revealed on March 9 that the FBI has been systematically abusing one of the most controversial provisions of the USA Patriot Act: the expanded power to issue "national security letters." It no doubt surprised most Americans to learn that between 2003 and 2005 the FBI issued more than 140,000 specific demands under this provision -- demands issued without a showing of probable cause or prior judicial approval -- to obtain potentially sensitive information about U.S. citizens and residents. It did not, however, come as any surprise to me.

Three years ago, I received a national security letter (NSL) in my capacity as the president of a small Internet access and consulting business. The letter ordered me to provide sensitive information about one of my clients. There was no indication that a judge had reviewed or approved the letter, and it turned out that none had. The letter came with a gag provision that prohibited me from telling anyone, including my client, that the FBI was seeking this information. Based on the context of the demand -- a context that the FBI still won't let me discuss publicly -- I suspected that the FBI was abusing its power and that the letter sought information to which the FBI was not entitled.

Rather than turn over the information, I contacted lawyers at the American Civil Liberties Union, and in April 2004 I filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the NSL power. I never released the information the FBI sought, and last November the FBI decided that it no longer needs the information anyway. But the FBI still hasn't abandoned the gag order that prevents me from disclosing my experience and concerns with the law or the national security letter that was served on my company. In fact, the government will return to court in the next few weeks to defend the gag orders that are imposed on recipients of these letters.

Living under the gag order has been stressful and surreal. Under the threat of criminal prosecution, I must hide all aspects of my involvement in the case -- including the mere fact that I received an NSL -- from my colleagues, my family and my friends. When I meet with my attorneys I cannot tell my girlfriend where I am going or where I have been. I hide any papers related to the case in a place where she will not look. When clients and friends ask me whether I am the one challenging the constitutionality of the NSL statute, I have no choice but to look them in the eye and lie.

I resent being conscripted as a secret informer for the government and being made to mislead those who are close to me, especially because I have doubts about the legitimacy of the underlying investigation.

The inspector general's report makes clear that NSL gag orders have had even more pernicious effects. Without the gag orders issued on recipients of the letters, it is doubtful that the FBI would have been able to abuse the NSL power the way that it did. Some recipients would have spoken out about perceived abuses, and the FBI's actions would have been subject to some degree of public scrutiny. To be sure, not all recipients would have spoken out; the inspector general's report suggests that large telecom companies have been all too willing to share sensitive data with the agency -- in at least one case, a telecom company gave the FBI even more information than it asked for. But some recipients would have called attention to abuses, and some abuse would have been deterred.

I found it particularly difficult to be silent about my concerns while Congress was debating the reauthorization of the Patriot Act in 2005 and early 2006. If I hadn't been under a gag order, I would have contacted members of Congress to discuss my experiences and to advocate changes in the law. The inspector general's report confirms that Congress lacked a complete picture of the problem during a critical time: Even though the NSL statute requires the director of the FBI to fully inform members of the House and Senate about all requests issued under the statute, the FBI significantly underrepresented the number of NSL requests in 2003, 2004 and 2005, according to the report.

I recognize that there may sometimes be a need for secrecy in certain national security investigations. But I've now been under a broad gag order for three years, and other NSL recipients have been silenced for even longer. At some point -- a point we passed long ago -- the secrecy itself becomes a threat to our democracy. In the wake of the recent revelations, I believe more strongly than ever that the secrecy surrounding the government's use of the national security letters power is unwarranted and dangerous. I hope that Congress will at last recognize the same thing.

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Documents show Gonzales approved firings

Yahoo! News
Documents show Gonzales approved firings
By LARA JAKES JORDAN, Associated Press Writer

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales approved plans to fire several U.S. attorneys in an hourlong meeting last fall, according to documents released Friday that indicate he was more involved in the dismissals than he has claimed.

Last week, Gonzales said he "was not involved in any discussions about what was going on" in the firings of eight prosecutors that has since led to a political firestorm and calls for his ouster.

A Nov. 27 meeting, in which the attorney general and at least five top Justice Department officials participated, focused on a five-step plan for carrying out the firings of the prosecutors, Gonzales' aides said late Friday.

There, Gonzales signed off on the plan, which was drafted by his chief of staff, Kyle Sampson. Sampson resigned last week. Another Justice aide closely involved in the dismissals, White House liaison Monica Goodling, has also taken a leave of absence, two officials said.

The five-step plan approved by Gonzales involved notifying Republican home-state senators of the impending dismissals, preparing for potential political upheaval, naming replacements and submitting them to the Senate for confirmation.

Six of the eight prosecutors who were ultimately ordered to resign are named in the plan.

The department released more than 280 documents Friday night, including e-mails, calendar pages and memos to try to satisfy Congress' demands for details on how the firings were handled — and whether they were politically motivated. There are no other meetings on the calendar pages released between that Nov. 27 and Dec. 7, when the attorneys were fired, to indicate Gonzales participated in other discussions on the matter, Justice spokeswoman Tasia Scolinos said.

Scolinos said it was not immediately clear whether Gonzales gave his final approval to begin the firings at that meeting. Scolinos also said Gonzales was not involved in the process of selecting which prosecutors would be asked to resign.

On March 13, in explaining the firings, Gonzales told reporters he was aware that some of the dismissals were being discussed but was not involved in them.

"I knew my chief of staff was involved in the process of determining who were the weak performers — where were the districts around the country where we could do better for the people in that district, and that's what I knew," Gonzales said last week. "But that is in essence what I knew about the process; was not involved in seeing any memos, was not involved in any discussions about what was going on. That's basically what I knew as the attorney general."

Later, he added: "I accept responsibility for everything that happens here within this department. But when you have 110,000 people working in the department, obviously there are going to be decisions that I'm not aware of in real time. Many decisions are delegated."

The documents were released Friday night, a few hours after Sampson agreed to testify at a Senate inquiry next week into the firings of eight U.S. attorneys last year.

Asked to explain the difference between Gonzales' comments and his schedule, Justice spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said the attorney general had relied on Sampson to draw up the plans on the firings.

"The attorney general has made clear that he charged Mr. Sampson with directing a plan to replace U.S. attorneys where for one reason or another the department believed that we could do better," Roehrkasse said. "He was not, however, involved at the levels of selecting the particular U.S. attorneys who would be replaced."

Gonzales this week directed the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility to investigate the circumstances of the firings, officials said. The department's inspector general also will participate in that investigation.

Nonetheless Democrats pounced late Friday.

"Clearly the attorney general was not telling the whole truth, but what is he trying to hide?" said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (news, bio, voting record), D-Nev.

"If the facts bear out that Attorney General Gonzales knew much more about the plan than he has previously admitted, then he can no longer serve as Attorney General," said Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, who is heading the Senate's investigation into the firings.

Added House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (news, bio, voting record):

"This puts the Attorney General front and center in these matters, contrary to information that had previously been provided to the public and Congress."

Presidential spokesman Trey Bohn referred questions to the Justice Department, saying White House officials had not seen the documents.

The developments were not what Republicans, skittish about new revelations, had hoped.

Earlier Friday, a staunch White House ally, Sen. John Cornyn (news, bio, voting record), summoned White House counsel Fred Fielding to Capitol Hill and told him he wanted "no surprises."

"I told him, 'Everything you can release, please release. We need to know what the facts are,'" Cornyn said.

Sampson will appear Thursday at a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee, his attorney said. "We trust that his decision to do so will satisfy the need of the Congress to obtain information from him concerning the requested resignations of the United States attorneys," Sampson attorney Brad Berenson wrote in a letter to the leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee that oversees the Justice Department.

New e-mails released Friday indicate that some of Gonzales' most trusted advisers were kept out of the loop in the firings. Scolinos apparently learned about the plans to dismiss attorneys on Nov. 17, 2006 — nearly two years after Sampson and the White House first began talking about replacing prosecutors.

In an e-mail to White House aide Cathie Martin, who first raised the issue of the firings with Scolinos, the Justice spokeswoman said she didn't believe they would become a big story.

"I think most will resign quietly — they don't get anything out of making it public they were asked to leave in terms of future job prospects," Scolinos wrote.

Democrats question whether the eight were selected because they were not seen as, in Sampson's words, "loyal Bushies."

___

Associated Press writer Laurie Kellman contributed to this report.

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Paging Rose Mary Woods: '18-Day Gap' in Release of Latest Emails in 'AttorneyGate'

Editor & Publish
Paging Rose Mary Woods: '18-Day Gap' in Release of Latest Emails in 'AttorneyGate'

NEW YORK As each day passes, the phrase "shades of Watergate" appears more and more often in the press regarding the conflict surrounding the recent firing of eight U.S. attorneys. There was the hiring of former Nixon legal adviser Fred Fielding (he was once rumored to be Deep Throat) by President Bush, the selective release of documents, the threat to oppose subpoenas -- and now something reminiscent of the famous "18 1/2 minute gap."

Mike Allen writes for The Politico, "In DOJ documents that were publicly posted by the House Judiciary Committee, there is a gap from mid-November to early December in e-mails and other memos, which was a critical period as the White House and Justice Department reviewed, then approved, which U.S. attorneys would be fired while also developing a political and communications strategy for countering any fallout from the firings."

The blog Talking Points Memo, which has followed this scandal closest for the longest time, did the math and found out that the gap is 18 days, and promptly compared it to the "18 1/2 minute gap" from Watergate -- when a key part of a Nixon tape suddenly went blank.

Nixon blamed it on his secretary Rose Mary Woods, while others suspected the president himself. The missing information was erased. That may not be true in the current conflict.

Asked about the gap today, Tony Snow, White House spokesman said, "I've been led to believe that there's a good response for it, and I'm going to let you ask them (DOJ) because they're going to have an answer."

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FBI Violations May Number 3,000, Official Says

Washington Post
FBI Violations May Number 3,000, Official Says
By R. Jeffrey Smith

The Justice Department's inspector general told a committee of angry House members yesterday that the FBI may have violated the law or government policies as many as 3,000 times since 2003 as agents secretly collected the telephone, bank and credit card records of U.S. citizens and foreign nationals residing here.

Inspector General Glenn A. Fine said that according to the FBI's own estimate, as many as 600 of these violations could be "cases of serious misconduct" involving the improper use of "national security letters" to compel telephone companies, banks and credit institutions to produce records.

National security letters are comparable to subpoenas but are issued directly by the bureau without court review. They largely target records of transactions rather than personal documents or conversations. An FBI tally showed that the bureau made an average of 916 such requests each week from 2003 to 2005, but Fine told the House Judiciary Committee that FBI recordkeeping has been chaotic and "significantly understates" the actual use of that tool.

Fine, amplifying the criticisms he made in a March 9 report, attributed the FBI's "troubling" abuse of the letters to "mistakes, carelessness, confusion, sloppiness, lack of training, lack of adequate guidance and lack of adequate oversight."

His account evoked heated criticism of the bureau from Republicans and Democrats alike, including a comment from Rep. Dan Lungren (R-Calif.) that it "sounds like a report about a first- or second-grade class."

Testifying with Fine, FBI General Counsel Valerie E. Caproni attributed the shortcomings to poor controls instead of deliberate misconduct and offered profuse apologies. Asked by Rep. Melvin Watt (D-N.C.) whether the public should "be concerned about that kind of disregard of the law and internal process," Caproni replied: "I think the public should be concerned. We're concerned. And we're going to fix it."

She attributed the "F report card" from Fine partly to the bureau's inexperience in conducting its national security work in secrecy, away from a judicial system that threatens to expose any flaws. "That imposes upon us a far higher obligation to make sure we have a vigorous compliance system," she said. She noted, for example, that the FBI never told its agents to retain signed copies of the national security letters used.

"This was an example of the incredibly sloppy practice that was unacceptable," Fine interjected. His report also noted that some lawyers at FBI field offices -- who work for the special agents in charge, rather than for legal officials at FBI headquarters -- felt pressured to go along with requests for letters that they knew were not adequately documented.

Fine's estimate of the incidence of serious abuses was extrapolated from his investigators' scrutiny of 293 national security letters, out of 44,000 letters -- containing 143,074 data requests -- that the FBI has reported issuing during the three-year period he reviewed. Of those letters studied, he found "about seven where there were illegal uses" to obtain information the FBI was not entitled to have. Caproni questioned the validity of the extrapolation but acknowledged that 1 percent of the letters examined by Fine were tainted by "unquestionably serious violations."

Fine said, however, that he found no evidence that FBI agents "intended to go out and obtain information that they knew they could not obtain and said, 'We're going to do it anyway.' I think what they did was complete carelessness" prompted partly by a desire to take "shortcuts."

Fine's extrapolated tally of 3,000 likely illegal or improper letters did not include three other categories of wrongdoing disclosed in his report: One was a headquarters unit's use of 739 "exigent circumstances" letters to obtain telephone records from AT&T, Verizon and MCI on an emergency basis using false statements or improper documentation. The second was an improper use of 300 national security letters to obtain information for a single classified project. And the third was the FBI's use of improper letters to obtain the financial records of 244 people from banks.

Although the FBI's policy is to hold such records for at least 20 years, even if the target of the data collection proves not to have any terrorist connections, Caproni said that if no legal authority can be found during an audit now underway, the records will be destroyed.

Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) expressed surprise at how widespread the use of national security letters had become, asking: "Do we have that many potential terrorists running around the country? If so, I'm really worried." He said the inspector general's report shows that "the FBI has had a gross overreach," and added that its officials "can't get away with this and expect to maintain public support for the tools that they need to combat terrorism."

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Inside The FBI's Cybercrime Survey

Newsweek.com
Tech: Inside The FBI's Cybercrime Survey
Auction fraud, Nigerian scam letters and identity theft, oh my! The FBI's latest survey of Internet crime concludes that 2006 was a record year for cyberswindlers.
By Brian Braiker
Newsweek

March 21, 2007 - Ever receive a “Dear friend” e-mail from a “West African widow” you’ve never met? Did this person claim to have access to millions of dollars in “leftover funds” and want to transfer them to a “foreign partner” such as yourself for safekeeping, for which you would be handsomely compensated?

Did you, even for just one second, consider replying to that e-mail?

If you did, you’re not alone. Gullible greedies laid out, on average, $5,100 a pop in response to such "419" e-mail scams (named for the section of Nigerian criminal code they violate), according to the recently released FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) annual survey. The IC3 reports that during 2006, consumers filed 207,492 complaints, down 10 percent from the year before. There may have been fewer complaints, but victims say they lost more than ever online—$198.4 million, the highest total in the six years the FBI has released the report. The highest average losses per victim were among those snookered by the Nigerian 419 letter fraud. But of all Internet crime complaints, online auction fraud was the by far the most reported, accounting for nearly half (44.9 percent) of all complaints.

NEWSWEEK’s Brian Braiker recently spoke with James E. Finch, assistant director of the FBI Cyber Division, about the survey and why, if an online offer looks too good to be true, it probably is. Excerpts:

NEWSWEEK: Nearly half of all complaints last year were about auction fraud [primarily people collecting money on bids without delivering the promised items]. Does it surprise you that it’s such a large piece of the pie?
James E. Finch: It is surprising to me, but then again you look at the number of people who use the online auctions who have very little computer-security skill. Online auctions are really a way for a lot of people to make money, and that naturally attracts many people—trained and untrained—to the auctions. Based on the number of online auctions, I would think those numbers would probably continue to go up.

Losses were highest among victims of the Nigerian letter scam. Is it astonishing to you how gullible some people still are? This thing has been around for years.
If you look at the delivery method, the Internet has allowed the Nigerian letter fraud scam to be—I wouldn’t say perfected—but certainly reach a lot more potential victims. In many cases with the postal services, you didn’t have that broad reach. With the Internet you can reach thousands with the push of a keystroke. This is a scam that is reaching people who have never been touched before by it.

It predates the Internet?
Oh, yeah. This plagued the postal service for many years. Now, every year you get a new batch of potential victims. There are so many different twists to that fraud. People see this as a something-for-nothing type deal. I’m seeing variations of the Nigerian letter fraud, but for the most part it’s the same thing that’s been going on for years.

This survey tallies allegations of fraud that have been reported. There must be countless other people who feel they’ve been victims that don’t come forward.
We have no way to accurately gauge underreporting. It would be merely a guess. Certainly I agree there is probably a lot. There are those who have not realized they were scammed or were victims of a scam. Some don’t report due to embarrassment—there are numerous reasons. But as the scams become more perfected, people start to lose more money, certainly they believe there is more recourse. We are starting to see more litigation where people are following through and seeing successes.

But the number of complaints has gone down over last year.
Yeah, they have. It could be due to perpetrators going after larger targets—that’s difficult to prove. It could be the result of other things. I would not say we have any reason to believe that is going to be the case for ‘07 that they go down even further.

Are you noticing any trends in these numbers? Anything about, say, child pornography, phishing or identity theft?
What we’ve actually seen is that the skill set of the perpetrators is getting better. Are the tools to counter that improved skill set available? I believe the tools are out there. However, some people do not avail themselves of those tools. That’s why we're not seeing a downtrend. The hackers are getting better, and we’re getting new people online every day, new potential victims on a regular basis. I suspect at some point online auctions will probably provide a different type of security to counter the vulnerabilities that actually allow auction frauds.

So we’ll see a correction in the marketplace?
If it negatively impacts the bottom line, they correct. I expect to see the online auctions change to meet the increased skills of the hackers, the perpetrators of online frauds.

I’ve noticed that just over the course of this year I’ve been getting more spam than ever. Why is that?
I do see spam being more focused. And a lot of spammers are putting their services out for hire. There are a lot more sites available to those who would like to spam. There is easier access to tools necessary to spam. So you are seeing more people do it who didn’t have the ability before.

Symantec, the Internet-security software company, recently reported that cybercriminals are consolidating much in the same way IT vendors are.
Without a doubt. You have entire groups who have never physically met who come together as an organization with different assignments in the organization to perpetrate organized crime online.

Any tips for people who may not be the savviest users of the Web?
Certainly all of the security tips continue to be good ones: antivirus software, spyware software, software that looks for rootkits. Many of the suites out there are certainly useful for online- or cybersecurity. Using wireless connectivity, they should certainly change the default of the SSID number—people buy routers with default passwords and they never change them, so right away someone owns your system because you didn’t change the password. Users should certainly avail themselves of encryptions. Many people don’t, and as a result, they are putting their information at great risk, especially personal identification information.

A lot of the perpetrators are from out of the country. Romania ranks fifth on your list.
We’ve seen them from all over the world. I don’t think Romania has the market cornered on organized online crime. I think what you can probably surmise is that the same countries that were involved in mail fraud, in insurance scams, are taking advantage of the Internet, taking advantage of the anonymity and speedy delivery.

Does their being abroad make it harder for the FBI to combat?
Working closely with our international law-enforcement partners is an absolute must in combating cybercrime. It’s not unusual for me to deploy one of our Cyber Action Teams to a country to assist them. And in most cases we’re going after organized groups. But because the Internet has no boundaries, it has forced us to forge those relationships overseas. That includes an international child-pornography task force, the Innocent Images International Task Force, where officers [abroad] commit to working six months along[side] our agents to combat child porn facilitated by the Internet, so it’s worked out well.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17722976/site/newsweek/?from=rss

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Drones could defend airports

USA TODAY
Drones could defend airports
By Mimi Hall

The Homeland Security Department and the military this summer will test whether drones flying 65,000 feet above the nation's busiest airports could be used to protect planes from being shot down by terrorists with shoulder-fired missiles.

Dubbed "Project Chloe" after a character on Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff's favorite TV show, 24, the anti-missile strategy is the latest to be explored by government leaders looking to thwart potential missile threats at commercial airports. Other methods are being considered, but Homeland Security officials say they may be too costly or impractical.

The drones, to be tested over the Patuxent River Naval Air Station outside Washington, would be outfitted with missile-warning systems and possibly anti-missile lasers that could send plane-bound missiles veering off course, says Kerry Wilson, a deputy administrator of Homeland Security's anti-missile program.

An unmanned plane's warning indicators could pick up the ultraviolet plume from a missile's rocket booster and trigger an anti-missile laser, which could be shot from the drone or from a site on the ground. That laser would lock on to the missile, essentially blinding it.

The tests follow four years of research on anti-missile laser systems that could be mounted on the bellies of planes for $1 million or more per plane.

Those systems, regularly used by the military, are being tested on nine Federal Express cargo planes to see how well they hold up. Early military tests showed they broke down after 300-400 hours of use, a failure rate that's problematic for commercial use.

Concerns about those systems prompted officials to look for a less expensive, more reliable solution, and using unmanned aerial vehicles "is an idea worth looking at," Wilson said.

Project Chloe has critics in Congress and in private industry.

Rep. Steve Israel, D-N.Y., says the government should share the cost of installation and maintenance of the more expensive systems with the airline industry. "It's been four years of trying to figure out how to get this cheaper," he says. "But it's just a matter of time before a shoulder-fired missile becomes the biggest blow to our economy."

Aviation groups have expressed concerns about drones in civilian airspace. Chris Dancy of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association says there would be no problem with drones flying at 65,000 feet, well above the altitude of commercial jets. He said he was concerned, however, about how airspace would be restricted when the drones take off and land.

Inexpensive, widely available shoulder-fired missiles have been used against passenger and cargo planes overseas. Although no one has tried to take down a plane in the USA, Homeland Security is concerned about the possibility.

Find this article at:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-03-22-unmanned-drones_N.htm?csp=34

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Prosecutor Says Bush Appointees Interfered With Tobacco Case

washingtonpost.com
Prosecutor Says Bush Appointees Interfered With Tobacco Case
By Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writer

The leader of the Justice Department team that prosecuted a landmark lawsuit against tobacco companies said yesterday that Bush administration political appointees repeatedly ordered her to take steps that weakened the government's racketeering case.

Sharon Y. Eubanks said Bush loyalists in Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales's office began micromanaging the team's strategy in the final weeks of the 2005 trial, to the detriment of the government's claim that the industry had conspired to lie to U.S. smokers.

She said a supervisor demanded that she and her trial team drop recommendations that tobacco executives be removed from their corporate positions as a possible penalty. He and two others instructed her to tell key witnesses to change their testimony. And they ordered Eubanks to read verbatim a closing argument they had rewritten for her, she said.

"The political people were pushing the buttons and ordering us to say what we said," Eubanks said. "And because of that, we failed to zealously represent the interests of the American public."

Eubanks, who served for 22 years as a lawyer at Justice, said three political appointees were responsible for the last-minute shifts in the government's tobacco case in June 2005: then-Associate Attorney General Robert D. McCallum, then-Assistant Attorney General Peter Keisler and Keisler's deputy at the time, Dan Meron.

News reports on the strategy changes at the time caused an uproar in Congress and sparked an inquiry by the Justice Department. Government witnesses said they had been asked to change testimony, and one expert withdrew from the case. Government lawyers also announced that they were scaling back a proposed penalty against the industry from $130 billion to $10 billion.

High-ranking Justice Department officials said there was no political meddling in the case, and the department's Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) concurred after an investigation.

Yesterday was the first time that any of the government lawyers on the case spoke at length publicly about what they considered high-level interference by Justice officials.

Eubanks, who retired from Justice in December 2005, said she is coming forward now because she is concerned about what she called the "overwhelming politicization" of the department demonstrated by the controversy over the firing of eight U.S. attorneys. Lawyers from Justice's civil rights division have made similar claims about being overruled by supervisors in the past.

Eubanks said Congress should not limit its investigation to the dismissal of the U.S. attorneys.

"Political interference is happening at Justice across the department," she said. "When decisions are made now in the Bush attorney general's office, politics is the primary consideration. . . . The rule of law goes out the window."

McCallum, who is now the U.S. ambassador to Australia, said in an interview yesterday that congressional claims of political interference were rejected by the OPR investigation, for which Eubanks was questioned. He said that there was a legitimate disagreement between Eubanks and some career lawyers in the racketeering division about key strategy and that his final decision to reduce the proposed penalty to pay for smoking-cessation programs was vindicated by the judge's ruling that she could not order such a penalty.

"Her claims are totally false in terms of [us] trying to weaken the case," McCallum said. "Her claims were looked into by the Office of Professional Responsibility and were found to be groundless."

In June 2006, the OPR cleared McCallum, concluding that his "actions in seeking and directing changes in the remedies sought were not influenced by any political considerations, but rather were based on good faith efforts to obtain remedies from the district court that would be sustainable on appeal."

Keisler and Meron did not return telephone calls seeking comment.

U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler ruled last August that tobacco companies violated civil racketeering laws by conspiring for decades to deceive the public about the dangers of their product. She ordered the companies to make major changes in the way cigarettes are marketed. But she said she could not order the monetary penalty proposed by the government.

The Clinton Justice Department brought the unprecedented civil suit against the country's five largest tobacco companies in 1999. President Bush disparaged the tobacco case while campaigning in 2000. After Bush took office, some officials expressed initial doubts about the government's ability to fund the prosecution, Justice's largest.

Eubanks said McCallum, Keisler and Meron largely ignored the case until it became clear that the government might win. She recalled that "things began to get really tense" after McCallum read news reports in April 2005 that one government expert, professor Max H. Bazerman of Harvard Business School, would argue that tobacco officials who engaged in fraud could be removed from their corporate posts. Eubanks said she received an angry call from McCallum on the day the news broke.

"How could you put that in there?" she recalled him saying. "We're not going to be pursuing that."

Afterward, McCallum, Keisler and Meron told Eubanks to approach other witnesses about softening their testimony, Eubanks said.

Matthew Myers of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids was one of the witnesses whom Eubanks asked to change his testimony. Yesterday, he said he found her account to be "the only reasonable explanation" for what transpired.

Two weeks before closing arguments in June, McCallum called for a meeting with Eubanks and her deputy, Stephen Brody, to discuss what McCallum described as "getting the number down" for the $130 billion penalty to create smoking-cessation programs. Brody declined to comment yesterday on the legal team's deliberations, saying that they were private.

During several tense late-night meetings, McCallum repeatedly refused to suggest a figure, Eubanks said, or give clear reasons for the reduction. Brody refused to lower the amount. Finally, on the morning the government was to propose the penalty in court, she said, McCallum ordered it cut to $10 billion.

The most stressful moment, Eubanks said, came when the three appointees ordered her to read word for word a closing argument they had rewritten. The statement explained the validity of seeking a $10 billion penalty.

"I couldn't even look at the judge," she said.

Staff writer Dan Eggen contributed to this report.

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Federal Election Commission: Bush Violated Spending Limits in 2004 Campaign

washingtonpost.com
FEC Democrats Say Bush Violated Limits
By Matthew Mosk
Washington Post Staff Writer

The three Democrats on the Federal Election Commission revealed yesterday that they strongly believe President Bush exceeded legal spending limits during the 2004 presidential contest and that his campaign owes the government $40 million.

Their concerns spilled out during a vote to approve an audit of the Bush campaign's finances, which is conducted to make sure the campaign adhered to spending rules after accepting $74.6 million in public money for the 2004 general election.

Republican commissioners defended the way the Bush campaign billed the cost of more than $80 million in television ads, which were the source of the dispute.

The commission by statute comprises three Democrats and three Republicans. Commissioner Michael E. Toner, a Republican, resigned March 14, but the vote was taken before his departure. Because of the deadlock, the objections were recorded in a footnote to the audit but will not result in any sanctions or repayment.

"We had a disagreement on this audit, and it was a doozy," said one of the Democrats, Commissioner Ellen L. Weintraub.

The dispute centered on the use of what the commissioners called "hybrid" ads, which were intended to promote both the president and Republican members of Congress. The Bush campaign argued that it should not bear the full cost of these ads, so it split the tab with the Republican Party.

As a result, only half of the cost would count toward spending limits imposed on the campaign when it agreed to take public funds. Weintraub said the spending limit is an essential part of the agreement candidates make to accept public financing. "Bush-Cheney 2004 took the $74 million, and then they broke the bargain," she said.

Commissioner Hans A. von Spakovsky, a Republican, strongly disagreed. "There was no broken bargain," he said. "There was no violation of the law."

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Obama flip flops on funding the Iraq war

ABC News
Obama Changed Position on War Funding
Democratic Presidential Contender Opposed War Funding in 2003 but Has Voted Four Times for Funding in Senate
By JAKE TAPPER and JONATHAN GREENBERGER

March 21, 2007— - In a conference call with reporters Wednesday, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., said that his votes to fund the war in Iraq do not contradict his opposition to the war.

"Once we were in, we were going to have some responsibility to try to make it work as best we can," the presidential candidate said. "More importantly, you make sure the troops are supported. I don't think there's any contradiction there whatsoever. We should not get in; once we were in, we had to make the best of a bad situation."

There isn't necessarily a contradiction in this position; other opponents of the war vote to fund the troops so as to ensure they're as safe as possible. But there certainly seems a contradiction between this view of war funding and Obama's view just a few years ago, after the war in Iraq had been raging for more than six months.

Obama Opposed War Funding in 2003

In video obtained by ABC News of a Winnetka, Ill., Democratic event from Sunday, Nov. 16, 2003, then-state senator Obama told a cheering crowd that it was wrong to vote to fund the war.

"Just this week, when I was asked, would I have voted for the $87 billion dollars, I said 'No,'" Obama said to applause as he referred to a bill to fund troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"I said no unequivocally because, at a certain point, we have to say 'No' to George Bush," Obama said. "If we keep on getting steamrolled, we are not going to stand a chance."

Obama's campaign says that he opposed the $87 billion war supplement because a portion of the funds were to be directed toward reconstruction of Iraq, which he feared would be distributed inappropriately.

"He was against this $20 billion in no-bid contracts that was forced into the bill for reconstruction for the country of Iraq with no accountability," said Obama spokesman Bill Burton.

In a questionnaire he completed for the liberal group Council for a Livable World and in a 2003 press release he issued as a state senator, Obama suggested the Congress delay the $87 billion in funding "until the president provides a specific plan and timetable for ending the U.S. occupation, justifies each and every dollar to ensure it is not going to reward Bush political friends and contributors, and provides 'investment in our own schools, health care, economic development and job creation that is at least comparable' to what is going to Iraq."

But at the time, Obama's public statements suggested he opposed voting for the supplement as a way of opposing the president's overall strategy in Iraq, and not just the reconstruction funds.

Obama told the Chicago Sun Times in November 2003 that he opposed the funding because it "enables the Bush administration to continue on a flawed policy without being accountable to the American people."

And in that Council for a Livable World questionnaire he completed while a Senate candidate in September 2003, Obama wrote that he wanted to delay approving the additional funds until President Bush provided a timetable for withdrawal, although the Obama campaign notes that he also wrote he was concerned about the reconstruction money going to political friends of the White House.

Clinton Camp Counters Obama's Iraq War Stance

The Clinton campaign has aggressively tried to point out or poke holes in how consistent Obama's anti-war stance has been.

Earlier this week at a forum at Harvard University, Clinton pollster Mark Penn said, ''When they got to the Senate, Sen. Obama's votes were exactly the same [as Clinton's votes].

Members of the Clinton campaign -- most notably former President Clinton -- have also tried to fuzz the record as to whether Obama would have hypothetically voted against the war had he been in the Senate in October 2002, though Obama's public comments at the time on the subject are consistently opposed to the war.

Read: "Words of War: Clinton Camp Muddies Obama's Anti-War Stance but Record Is Clear"

Regardless of the reason for his initial opposition to funding the war, since taking office two years ago, Obama has voted four times for a war appropriations bill, which together add up to more than $300 billion.

On the Ed Shultz radio show earlier this month, Obama said, "There's a possibility, given how obstinate this administration is" that attempts to cut off funding would result in Bush deciding to "play chicken, and say, 'You know what, I'm going to leave these folks here and you guys do whatever you want.'"

Obama continued to explain to the liberal talk show host, "And then suddenly we've got a situation where these folks, they don't have body armor, they don't have the kinds of equipment that they need to have a shot of coming home in one piece. You're already seeing deployments of National Guard units that have not been adequately trained, that's been acknowledged by the armed forces, and, so, it's a real concern."

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Reconstruction in Iraq criticised

BBC NEWS
Reconstruction in Iraq criticised
Vanessa Heaney
BBC News, Washington

The US reconstruction programme in Iraq has been described as chaotic and badly managed, in an official report by the US special inspector general for Iraq.

Stuart Bowen said tension and a lack of co-ordination between the Pentagon and the State Department led to disarray.

Mr Bowen presented his report to the Senate Homeland Security committee.

The panel's chairman, Joseph Liebermann, said billions of dollars had been wasted and the overall mission in Iraq had been undermined.

'Little accountability'

The US Defense Department never had a proper plan to manage the post-war reconstruction of Iraq, according to the man charged with investigating the efforts.

Stuart Bowen found numerous problems, from a lack of strategy to poor communication between the Pentagon and State department.

"Anyone who has spent appreciative time in the Iraq reconstructive effort understands the tension that exists between the two," he said.

Money flowed into projects, before training and staff were fully in place.

Only three contracting officers were initially sent to the capital, Baghdad, to oversee the spending of the reconstruction money.

There was little oversight for the Iraqi companies hired to do the work. The result was a lack of clearly defined authority and little financial accountability.

The report was not intended to lay blame with any one agency, but it recommended that government departments work together more closely in the future.

Unless things change, the same mistakes could be repeated.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/6482887.stm

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Bong Hits 4 Jesus and the First Amendment

Huffington Post
Bong Hits 4 Jesus and the First Amendment
Byron Williams

What should we make of a nonsensical statement on a 14-foot banner, held by a high school student, combining religion and drug use? Suspension? Does it warrant revocation of his First Amendment rights?

These are the questions raised as the Supreme Court this week debated how restrictive schools could be in limiting a student's right to free speech.

In 2002, Joseph Frederick, then an 18-year-old senior in Juneau Alaska, along with several other students held the 14-foot banner that read, "Bong Hits 4 Jesus." when the torch for the Winter Olympics was scheduled to pass in front of the high school. Frederick was standing on a public street as the TV cameras came into range.

The school's principal, Deborah Morse, took the banner away from the students and sent Frederick to the office. He was suspended for 10 days. A federal judge rejected his claim, but the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled for the student and said the principal could be forced to pay damages.

According to the 9th Circuit ruling, the student had a right to express himself as long as he didn't disrupt the school or its educational mission. Citing the 1969 ruling Tinker v. Des Moines decision, the court declared that a school district was "not entitled to suppress speech that undermines whatever mission it defines for itself." Under Tinker, student speech is protected unless it is disruptive or invades the rights of other students.

"A school cannot censor or punish students' speech merely because the students advocate a position contrary to government policy," Judge Andrew Kleinfeld said in the 3-0 ruling last year.

I would not be thrilled if, as a parent, I received a call from school stating that my son was holding a "Bong Hits for Jesus" banner as a parade passed. But does that warrant suspension from school, especially if he is not on school property?

I would, however, be extremely upset with the school, if learning that he attempted to justify his position by quoting Thomas Jefferson and the First Amendment, only to have his suspension increased from 5 days to 10, as was the case with Frederick.

I must admit a prejudice for any student that spends his free time reading Voltaire, but I am even more persuaded by anyone, regardless of age, who still takes the Constitution seriously. When is it the mission of the school to regulate speech on public property?

But Ken Starr, the same Ken Starr that prosecuted the Monica Lewinsky affair, argued that schools should be given special deference in the area of drugs to move against pro-drug speech -- even messages like Frederick's banner, which are open to varying interpretations.

If Starr is right, could a pro-choice principal limit the speech of pro-life students who wish to pass out leaflets supporting their position? If "Bong hits for Jesus " is wrong it also raises the question: why would civil disobedience be protected under the Constitution?

On its surface, it is easy find this issue as having little value beyond those who are directly involved--one need only be against drugs and for Jesus. But this case is but another example of how our civil liberties have come under attack in recent years with very little public outcry.

Far more people were upset when gas prices escalated than when the attorney general, under oath, questioned the Constitutional relevance of habeas corpus.

However the court decides, I fear that our collective lack of civic understanding is what's on trial. What is required to be an American far outweighs the ability to proclaim it on a bumper sticker or wear a flag on a lapel. Without an accompanying understanding that is rooted in the Constitution, such outwardly displays are but perverted forms of idolatry.

As Village Voice columnist Nat Hentoff said to me this week, "The most disadvantaged people in our society are the ones who don't know what the country stands for."

Byron Williams is an Oakland pastor and syndicated columnist. E-mail him at byron@byronspeaks.com or leave a message at (510) 208-6417.

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