Glenn Greenwald:

A new report to be released this week by the IG, as confirmed yesterday by FBI Director Robert Mueller, details that these abuses continued unabated throughout 2006 as well. It seems there are a few brand new lessons that we can perhaps draw from these revelations:

(1) If unchecked power is vested in government officials, they’re going to abuse that power;

(2) If government officials exercise power without real oversight from other branches, they’re going to break the law and then lie about it, falsely denying that they’re done so, insisting instead that they’re only using their powers to Protect Us;

(3) Allowing government officials to engage in surveillance on American citizens with no warrant requirement ensures that surveillance will be used for improper ends, against innocent Americans.

Who could have guessed? How come nobody warned us about the dangers of “unchecked government power” and the need for checks and balances?

Indeed.

The story I posted earlier today about the FBI having a direct line into all information about telephone customers is another example of what happens when executive power goes unchecked. What is truly sickening is that the people elected to Congress, filling roles that are structurally and constitutionally design to check executive power, have repeatedly chosen to do nothing or, worse, facilitate an expansion of executive powers.

Kevin Poulsen at Threat Level reports on yet another disturbing instance of a telecom company partnering with the federal government to allow unfettered access to their customers voice and data traffic:

A U.S. government office in Quantico, Virginia, has direct, high-speed access to a major wireless carrier’s systems, exposing customers’ voice calls, data packets and physical movements to uncontrolled surveillance, according to a computer security consultant who says he worked for the carrier in late 2003.

“What I thought was alarming is how this carrier ended up essentially allowing a third party outside their organization to have unfettered access to their environment,” Babak Pasdar, now CEO of New York-based Bat Blue told Threat Level. “I wanted to put some access controls around it; they vehemently denied it. And when I wanted to put some logging around it, they denied that.”

Pasdar won’t name the wireless carrier in question, but his claims are nearly identical to unsourced allegations made in a federal lawsuit filed in 2006 against four phone companies and the U.S. government for alleged privacy violations. That suit names Verizon Wireless as the culprit.

…

According to his affidavit, Pasdar tumbled to the surveillance superhighway in September 2003, when he led a “Rapid Deployment” team hired to revamp security on the carrier’s internal network. He noticed that the carrier’s officials got squirrelly when he asked about a mysterious “Quantico Circuit” — a 45 megabit/second DS-3 line linking its most sensitive network to an unnamed third party.

Quantico, Virginia, is home to a Marine base. But perhaps more relevantly, it’s also the center of the FBI’s electronic surveillance operations.

“The circuit was tied to the organization’s core network,” Pasdar writes in his affidavit. “It had access to the billing system, text messaging, fraud detection, web site, and pretty much all the systems in the data center without apparent restrictions.” [Emphasis added]

This is as frightening a development as any other in the already widespread documentation of telecom companies partnering with the Bush administration to give intelligence and military agencies unprecedented, unregulated access to information about Americans. The surveillance described above is not regulated by warrant. It is not targeted. There is no indication that it is minimized. And the nature of the circuit means that the government has the ability to track the physical location of this telecom company’s customers, as well as their financial records, voice, text, and data transmissions.

Equally troubling is that this telecom resisted all efforts by Pasdar to not only limit the government’s access to this massive stream of information, but keep track of what is being transmitted through the circuit.

Two general principles make themselves crystal clear in this story. The Bush administration has sought and achieved unprecedented capacities to spy on Americans without warrant and without regard to duly passed, long standing laws regarding domestic surveillance. The big telecom companies have been willing partners in this process at almost every step. The big telecom companies have been willing partners in this process at almost every step. These companies and this administration must be held accountable for their lawlessness and their repeated, systemic violations of Americans’ civil liberties.

***

Cross posted at the CREDO Action Blog.

Yesterday ThinkProgress highlighted a story about Boston College Law School deciding to not honor Attorney General Michael Mukasey as planned when he speaks at their commencement this spring. Mukasey’s selection as the commencement speaker has been the subject of criticism because of his stance on torture.

Dan Roth, a 2004 Law School graduate, said that while he was pleased by yesterday’s announcement, he believes that the school should have rescinded Mukasey’s invitation altogether, because his position on waterboarding conflicts with the university’s Jesuit mission.

“It’s not the time to give someone who has taken that position the platform and the honor,” Roth said.

Eagleionline, the BC Law Blog, includes this quote from my former co-blogger at Emboldened, Austin Evers.

Austin Evers ‘09, who currently serves as the President of the Boston College Law School chapter of the American Constitution Society (ACS), said, “This is good news. It is dangerous to conflate an invitation to speak with an endorsement of the speaker’s views by the institution. Attorney General Mukasey is still very controversial but I think this goes a long way to clarifying BC’s position on the matter.”

Evers is currently working with the administration to host an event on waterboarding and other issues surrounding the Attorney General’s invitations. He is also Managing Editor of Eagleionline.

I think we’re going to continue to see Bush administration officials have their speeches and awards protested and, hopefully, canceled thanks to student and alumni pressure on their schools.  In January students at Choate Rosemary Hall, a prep school in Connecticut, successfully protested the selection of Karl Rove as their commencement speaker. When Rove’s speech was rescheduled, students showed up and challenged not just his presence, but his damaging political views. Hopefully the Choate model will play out at BC and Mukasey will eventually be canceled as this year’s commencement speaker. But if he does end up speaking, I would expect students to continue to protest his presence on campus as representative of an administration that holds views contrary to the rule of law and their school’s mission.