Author Archives: Michael Froomkin

Every Cellphone a Walking Bug?

Posted on August 5, 2005 by Michael Froomkin

In what may not be tinfoil, Mark Odell reports in the Financial Times, a reliable newspaper, that in the UK at least, governments can turn cellphones into spy microphones,

If ordered to do so, mobile telephone operators can also tap any calls, but more significantly they can also remotely install a piece of software on to any handset, without the owner's knowledge, which will activate the microphone even when its owner is not making a call, giving security services the perfect bugging device. “We have inadvertently started carrying our own trackable ID card in the form of the mobile phone,” said Sandra Bell, head of the homeland security department at the Royal United Services Institute.

The source is “LONDON BOMB ATTACKS: Use of mobile helped police keep tabs on suspect and brother” (sub. req.) published Aug. 2, 2005. It is available on Westlaw (Westlaw acct. req.).

Posted in Law: Privacy | 20 Comments

August Means Tinfoil!

Posted on August 5, 2005 by Michael Froomkin

It's August, so the tinfoil is out.

Federal Whistle Blower Claims Chicago Grand Jury Indicted Bush And Others For Perjury and Obstruction Of Justice:

Sources close to the Chicago federal grand jury probe into perjury and obstruction charges against President Bush and others said indictments were handed down this week, but a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Northern District of Illinois refused to comment.

Uh-huh. I grant you that it fits with the grim seriousness with which the special prosecutor has been working, but even so…

Don't even hope for this: Another presidential indictment would be bad, even one for something that mattered, like outing a CIA agent. (Impeachment, and perhaps indictment, for lying to start a war is different; that at least would be about an offense of suitably major proportions. But while that's surely a 'High Crime' I don't know if it violates the US Code.) An indictment and the fury it would cause risks distracting from, maybe even aborting what looks like it would otherwise be a substantial Democratic gain in the upcoming national elections. Not to mention that there's no one in the line of succession who seems likely to be in any way an improvement over the current Grand Vizier, Dick Cheney.

Posted in Politics: Tinfoil | 5 Comments

14.9 Minutes Left

Posted on August 5, 2005 by Michael Froomkin

CNN interviewed me for more than 20 minutes. According to the transcript of 'Paula Zahn Now' this is what survived:

MESERVE: The prospect of more surveillance and interlocking systems puts privacy experts on edge. They worry about whether information and some of those intimate images will be recorded, archived, searched and shared.

A. MICHAEL FROOMKIN, UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI LAW SCHOOL: Are those tapes ever going to leak? How secure are they going to be? Are they going to be encrypted? Who's going to have access to the tapes? Are they going to be passing them around for office parties?

Could have been worse.

Posted in Law: Privacy, The Media | Comments Off on 14.9 Minutes Left

Fafblog Boils It Down to the Essentials

Posted on August 5, 2005 by Michael Froomkin

After a fallow period, Fafblog! is back in full fettle:

All of us love freedom, and all of us want to protect freedom, and surely to protect freedom it was necessary to tie Abed Hamed Mowhoush in a sleeping bag and an electrical cord, and surely to secure our basic liberties it was essential to beat him with a club and a length of rubber hose, and certainly it was vital to the preservation of our way of life to bludgeon him to death over a period of days in an interrogation room, just as it is critical to keep these and other methods of torture legal at all costs. But why, if the deed was just – and it can't not have been just – did the Army and the CIA cover up the murder, classify the autopsy, put out a whitewashed account for the press? Why do they continue to deny to this day what we know to be true, what the president's actions defend as the truth: that torture is the official policy of the United States?

Is it some foul act of self-sabotage or some perverse modesty that causes the Pentagon, the CIA and the White House to cravenly hide behind their underlings instead of triumphantly claiming the 2005 Golden Mengele for themselves? Whatever the explanation, George Bush and his administration are shortchanging themselves and the millions of Americans who deserve to know exactly how these men have been proudly protecting and defending their values. Don't be shy, gentlemen, Mr. Secretary, Mr. President. These corpses are all yours.

Posted in Torture | 3 Comments

DeFede’s Tale

Posted on August 4, 2005 by Michael Froomkin

Via Romanesko at Poynter, Jim DeFede writes about his final conversation with Art Teele, and his sudden firing by the Herald.

The article ran in the Miami Times, a local and rather ideosyncratic newspaper aimed at the black community.

(Unflattering June, 2005, Miami New Times article on the Miami Times.)

Posted in Miami | Comments Off on DeFede’s Tale

Another Soldier Who Deserves a Medal

Posted on August 4, 2005 by Michael Froomkin

More information about how the torture-murder of Iraqi Gen. Mowhoush came to light — and the context in which it ocurred. Utah GI exposed abuses at prison. His reports were brushed off until fellow Utahn stepped in:

The Army captain appeared confused. “You’re using ‘sledgehammer’ figuratively?” he asked the enlisted soldier sitting before him.

“No sir,” the soldier replied, lifting his hands about 15 inches apart. “The handle of a sledgehammer, about this big . . . to assault the detainees with.”

For Sgt. 1st Class Michael Pratt it would have been far easier to look away.

(spotted via Amygdala, How Sgt. 1ST Class Michael Pratt blew the whistle)

Continue reading →

Posted in Torture | 2 Comments