[JackSpratts]

Surveillance

Bush Defends Spy Program and Denies Misleading Public
Eric Lichtblau

President Bush continued on Sunday to defend both the legality and the necessity of the National Security Agency's domestic eavesdropping program, and he denied that he misled the public last year when he insisted that any government wiretap required a court order.

"I think most Americans understand the need to find out what the enemy's thinking, and that's what we're doing," Mr. Bush told reporters in San Antonio as he visited wounded soldiers at the Brooke Army Medical Center.

"They attacked us before, they'll attack us again if they can," he said. "And we're going to do everything we can to stop them."

Mr. Bush's strong defense of the N.S.A. program, which he authorized in 2002 to allow some domestic eavesdropping without court warrants, came as a leading Democratic lawmaker called on the administration to make available current and former high-level officials to explain the evolution of the secret program.

Senator Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has already pledged to make hearings into the program one of his highest priorities.

In a letter to Mr. Specter on Sunday, Senator Charles E. Schumer, a New York Democrat who is also on the committee, said the panel should also explore "significant concern about the legality of the program even at the very highest levels of the Department of Justice."

The New York Times reported Sunday that James B. Comey, then deputy attorney general, refused to sign on to the recertification of the program in March 2004.

That prompted two of Mr. Bush's most senior aides - Andrew H. Card Jr., his chief of staff, and Alberto R. Gonzales, then the White House counsel and now the attorney general - to make an emergency hospital visit to John Ashcroft, then the attorney general, to try to persuade him to give his authorization, as required by White House procedures for the program.

Officials with knowledge of the events said that Mr. Ashcroft also appeared reluctant to sign on to the continued use of the program, and that the Justice Department's concerns appear to have led in part to the suspension of the program for several months. After a secret audit, new protocols were put in place at the N.S.A. to better determine how the agency established the targets of its eavesdropping operations, officials have said.

Asked Sunday about internal opposition, President Bush said: "This program has been reviewed, constantly reviewed, by people throughout my administration. And it still is reviewed.

"Not only has it been reviewed by Justice Department officials, it's been reviewed by members of the United States Congress," he said. "It's a vital, necessary program."

But Mr. Schumer, in an appearance on "Fox News Sunday," said the White House should have to explain the apparent internal dissent over the program.

"I hope the White House won't hide behind saying 'executive privilege, we can't discuss this,' " Mr. Schumer said. "That's the wrong attitude."

"A discussion, perhaps a change in the law," he said, "those are all legitimate. Unilaterally changing the law because the vice president or president thinks it's wrong, without discussing the change, that's not the American way."

But Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the second-ranking Republican in the Senate, said on the same television program that Mr. Bush had acted within the Constitution to protect the country from another terrorist attack. Mr. McConnell said the focus now should be on identifying who disclosed the existence of the classified operation.

The Justice Department said Friday that it had opened an investigation into the disclosure of the N.S.A. program, which was first reported by The Times on Dec. 15.

Mr. McConnell said of the disclosure, "This needs to be investigated, because whoever leaked this information has done the U.S. and its national security a great disservice."

As Mr. Bush continued to defend the program in San Antonio, he was asked about a remark he made in Buffalo in 2004 at an appearance in support of the antiterrorism law known as the USA Patriot Act, where he discussed government wiretaps.

"Any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap," Mr. Bush said in Buffalo, "a wiretap requires a court order."

He added: "Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so."

Democrats have seized on the remark, made more than two years after Mr. Bush authorized the N.S.A. to conduct wiretaps without warrants, in charging that the president had misled the public.

Asked about that charge on Sunday, Mr. Bush said: "I was talking about roving wiretaps, I believe, involved in the Patriot Act. This is different from the N.S.A. program.

"The N.S.A. program is a necessary program. I was elected to protect the American people from harm. And on Sept. 11, 2001, our nation was attacked. And after that day, I vowed to use all the resources at my disposal, within the law, to protect the American people, which is what I have been doing and will continue to do."

Mr. Bush also emphasized that the program was "limited" in nature and designed to intercept communications from known associates of Al Qaeda to the United States. He said several times that the eavesdropping was "limited to calls from outside the United States to calls within the United States."

This assertion was at odds with press accounts and public statements of his senior aides, who have said the authorization for the program required one end of a communication - either incoming or outgoing - to be outside the United States. The White House, clarifying the president's remarks after his appearance, said later that either end of the communication could in fact be outside the United States.

The Times has reported that despite a prohibition on eavesdropping on phone calls or e-mail messages that are regarded as purely domestic, the N.S.A. has accidentally intercepted what are thought to be a small number of communications in which each end was on American soil, due to technical confusion over what constitutes an "international" call.

Officials also say that the N.S.A., beyond eavesdropping on up to 500 phone numbers and e-mail addresses at any one time, has conducted much larger data-mining operations on vast volumes of communication within the United States to identify possible terror suspects. To accomplish this, the agency has reached agreements with major American telecommunications companies to gain access to some of the country's biggest "switches" carrying phone and e-mail traffic into and out of the country.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/02/politics/02spy.html





Cheney Strongly Backs Eavesdropping Operation
Patricia Wilson

Vice President Dick Cheney on Wednesday strongly defended a secret domestic eavesdropping operation and said that had it been in place before the September 11 attacks the Pentagon might have been spared.

Cheney insisted that the highly classified program, authorized by President George W. Bush after hijackers flew planes into the World Trade Center's twin towers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, had helped prevent potential terrorist attacks and did not violate civil liberties.

He said as the memory of September 11 faded, some politicians were "yielding to the temptation to downplay the ongoing threat to our country and to back away from the business at hand."

"The enemy that struck on 9/11 is weakened and fractured yet it is still lethal and planning to hit us again. Either we are serious about fighting this war or we are not," Cheney told the Heritage Foundation think tank.

Revelations that the National Security Agency was secretly monitoring phone calls between people in the United States and al Qaeda suspects abroad has sparked an outcry from Democrats and Republicans. Many questioned whether it violates the U.S. Constitution.

A 1978 law, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, forbids domestic spying on U.S. citizens without the approval of a special court. Bush secretly authorized the NSA to intercept communications without court approval.

The agency may have begun to broaden its eavesdropping even before Bush's authorization, according to a declassified letter released by Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, leader of the minority Democrats in the House of Representatives.

"There are no communications more important to the safety of the United States than those related to al Qaeda that have one end in the United States," Cheney said. "If we'd been able to do this before 9/11, we might have been able to pick up on two of the hijackers who flew a jet into the Pentagon."

"They were in the United States, communicating with al Qaeda associates overseas, but we didn't know they were here plotting until it was too late," he said.

Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin dismissed Cheney's argument as "the kind people like to make sometimes when they're trying to cover their tracks" and said before September 11, the government could, with court approval, have tried to intercept such conversations.

Civil Liberties

The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee wrote Bush to say she believed the White House had acted improperly in briefing only certain members of Congress on the secret eavesdropping program.

"I urge you to reconsider your position," said California Rep. Jane Harman. "In my view, failure to provide briefings to the full congressional intelligence committees is a continuing violation of the National Security Act."

Cheney said Bush was committed to protecting civil liberties and had made clear that "our duty to uphold the law of the land admits no exceptions in wartime."

Pointing out that four years and four months had passed without another attack in the United States, Cheney acknowledged a "natural impulse" to let down one's guard.

However, he said, "America has been protected not by luck, but by sensible policy decisions, by decisive action at home and abroad, and by round-the-clock efforts on the part of people in law enforcement, intelligence, the military and homeland security."

Pelosi's letter, written four years ago, said that Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden, who was then NSA director, informed the House intelligence committee of a change in the scope of the agency's activities at an October 1, 2001, briefing.

"I am concerned whether, and to what extent, the National Security Agency has received specific presidential authorization for the operations you are conducting," said Pelosi, then the intelligence committee's ranking Democrat.

Pelosi's office also released a heavily edited October 18, 2001, reply from Hayden which said: "In my briefing, I was attempting to emphasize that I used my authorities to adjust NSA's collection and reporting."
http://today.reuters.com/News/newsAr...ITY-CHENEY.xml





Bush, Cheney Fight for Patriot Act Renewal
Deb Riechmann

President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney will team up Wednesday to lobby Congress for a permanent extension of the terror-fighting Patriot Act.

Bush and Cheney will press their case that the law is a crucial tool in the war on terror before supportive audiences — the president at the Pentagon and the vice president at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington think tank.

Cheney will accuse lawmakers who thwarted the Patriot Act of "yielding to the temptation to downplay the ongoing threat to our country," according to excerpts of his remarks released by the White House.

Cheney is expected to sat that the renewal of the law is vital to protecting Americans from suffering additional attacks like those on Sept. 11, 2001.

Many key provisions of the Patriot Act had been set to expire Dec. 31. Amid a debate over whether the act sufficiently protects civil liberties, most Senate Democrats and a few Republicans united against legislation that would have made several of the expiring provisions permanent while extending others for four years.

In a move the White House adamantly opposed but later accepted, lawmakers rushing toward a holiday recess merely approved a one-month extension of the law in its current form. That set the stage for the contentious debate to continue when Congress reassembles later this month. The new measure expires Feb. 3.

"Obviously no one can guarantee that we won't be hit again," the vice president will say, according to advance excerpts of his remarks. "But neither should anyone say that the relative safety of the last four years came as an accident. America has been protected not by luck, but by sensible policy decisions, by decisive action at home and abroad and by round-the-clock efforts on the part of people in law enforcement, intelligence, the military and homeland security."

Cheney will also defend the president's authorization of warrentless domestic surveillance after the 2001 attacks. Bush has allowed the National Security Agency to eavesdrop — without warrants — on international calls and e-mails of Americans and others inside the United States with suspected ties to al- Qaida or its affiliates.

The program has come under fire as possibly illegal and in violation of civil liberties after its existence was reported by the New York Times last month and confirmed by the president. The revelation intensified the debate over the Patriot Act.

But Cheney will say the NSA surveillance is "fully consistent with the constitutional responsibilities and legal authority of the president and with the civil liberties of the American people."

Cheney will tell the Heritage Foundation audience that Bush "has made clear from the outset, both publicly and privately, that our duty to uphold the law of the land admits no exceptions in wartime."

Cheney will remind lawmakers that terrorists still plot to harm Americans.

"As we get further away from September 11th, 2001, some in Washington are yielding to the temptation to downplay the ongoing threat to our country and to back away from the business at hand," he is expected to say. "Either we are serious about fighting this war or we are not."

Bush pressed for the Patriot Act's renewal on Tuesday at the White House, gathering more than dozen federal prosecutors to help argue that the law has been crucial in their efforts to fight terrorism on American soil. He said lawmakers are allowing political considerations to get in the way.

"When it came time to renew the act, for partisan reasons, in my mind, people have not stepped up" to renew the act, he said.

Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., said Bush should spend more time negotiating about the Patriot Act with Democrats and others on Capitol Hill and less on "staged meetings with hand-picked participants."

Among the provisions the renewal would make permanent are those that allow roving wiretaps so that investigators can listen in on any telephone and tap any computer they think a terrorist might use.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...w082431S45.DTL





Agency First Acted on Its Own to Broaden Spying, Files Show
Eric Lichtblau and Scott Shane

The National Security Agency acted on its own authority, without a formal directive from President Bush, to expand its domestic surveillance operations in the weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, according to declassified documents released Tuesday.

The N.S.A. operation prompted questions from a leading Democrat, Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, who said in an Oct. 11, 2001 letter to a top intelligence official that she was concerned about the agency's legal authority to expand its domestic operations, the documents showed.

Ms. Pelosi's letter, which was declassified at her request, showed much earlier concerns among lawmakers about the agency's domestic surveillance operations than had been previously known. Similar objections were expressed by Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, Democrat of West Virginia, in a secret letter to Vice President Cheney nearly two years later.

The letter from Ms. Pelosi, the House minority leader, also suggested that the National Security Agency, whose mission is to eavesdrop on foreign communications, moved immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks to identify terror suspects at home by loosening restrictions on domestic eavesdropping.

The congresswoman wrote to Lt. Gen. Michael V. Hayden, then head of the N.S.A., to express her concerns after she and other members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees received a classified briefing from General Hayden on Oct. 1, 2001 about the agency's operations.

Ms. Pelosi, then the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said, "I am concerned whether, and to what extent, the National Security Agency has received specific presidential authorization for the operations you are conducting."

The answer, General Hayden suggested in his response to Ms. Pelosi a week later, was that it had not.

"In my briefing," the general wrote, "I was attempting to emphasize that I used my authorities to adjust N.S.A.'s collection and reporting."

Bush administration officials said on Tuesday that General Hayden, now the country's second-ranking intelligence official, had acted on the authority previously granted to the N.S.A., relying on a 1981 intelligence directive known as Executive Order 12333, which governs intelligence activities, including those of the N.S.A.

"He had authority under E.O. 12333 that had been given to him, and he briefed Congress on what he did under those authorities," said Judith A. Emmel, a spokeswoman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. "Beyond that, we can't get into details of what was done."

In 2002, President Bush signed a new executive order specifically authorizing the National Security Agency to eavesdrop without warrants on the international communications of Americans inside the United States who the agency believed were connected to Al Qaeda. The disclosure of the domestic spying program last month provoked an outcry in Washington, where Congressional hearings are planned.

General Hayden's October 2001 briefing was one of the first glimpses into the expanded but largely hidden role that the N.S.A. would assume in combating terrorism over the last four years.

In the briefing, Ms. Pelosi wrote to General Hayden, "you indicated that you had been operating since the Sept. 11 attacks with an expansive view of your authorities" with respect to electronic surveillance and intelligence-gathering operations.

"You seemed to be inviting expressions of concern from us, if there were any," Ms. Pelosi wrote, but she said that the lack of specific information about the agency's operations made her concerned about the legal rationale used to justify it.

One step that the agency took immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks, Ms. Pelosi wrote in her letter, was to begin forwarding information from foreign intelligence intercepts to the F.B.I. for investigation without first receiving a specific request from the bureau for "identifying information."

In the past, under so-called minimization procedures intended to guard Americans' privacy, the agency's standard practice had been to require a written request from a government official who wanted to know the name of an American citizen or a person in the United States who was mentioned or overheard in a wiretap.

It is not clear whether General Hayden referred at the October 2001 briefing to the idea of warrantless eavesdropping. Parts of the letters from Ms. Pelosi and General Hayden concerning other specific aspects of the spy agency's domestic operation were blacked out because they remain classified. But officials familiar with the uncensored letters said they referred to other aspects of the domestic eavesdropping program.

In the weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, the agency began monitoring telephone calls and e-mail messages between the United States and Afghanistan to track possible terror suspects. That program led to the broader eavesdropping operation on other international communications, officials have said.

The agency has also tapped into some of the nation's main telecommunications arteries to trace and analyze large volumes of phone and e-mail traffic to look for patterns of possible terrorist activity.

Marc Rotenberg, director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said the new documents, along with previous reports of objections to the program from Senator Rockefeller and James B. Comey, the former deputy attorney general, underscore the need for a comprehensive investigation.

"There's an increasing picture of concern, if not outright opposition, within the government," Mr. Rotenberg said. "But we can't second-guess anyone's actions on a document-by-document basis," particularly if the documents are released only in part, he added.

The way in which the agency's role has been expanded has prompted concern even from some of its former leaders, like Bobby R. Inman, a retired admiral who served as N.S.A. director from 1977 to 1981. Admiral Inman said that while he supported the decision to step up eavesdropping against potential terrorists immediately after the 2001 attacks, the Bush administration should have tried to change the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to provide explicit legal authorization for what N.S.A. was doing.

"What I don't understand is why when you're proposing the Patriot Act, you don't set up an oversight mechanism for this?" Admiral Inman said in an interview. " I would have preferred an approach to try to gain legislation to try to operate with new technology and with an audit of how this technology was used."

Admiral Inman called the uproar over the warrantless eavesdropping "sad, if not a tragedy, for the agency." Though the N.S.A. program operated under an executive order from President Bush, he said, many Americans believed the agency was " somehow acting illegally to spy on Americans."
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/04/po... ner=homepage





Muslim Scholars Were Paid to Aid U.S. Propaganda
David S. Cloud and Jeff Gerth

A Pentagon contractor that paid Iraqi newspapers to print positive articles written by American soldiers has also been compensating Sunni religious scholars in Iraq in return for assistance with its propaganda work, according to current and former employees.

The Lincoln Group, a Washington-based public relations company, was told early in 2005 by the Pentagon to identify religious leaders who could help produce messages that would persuade Sunnis in violence-ridden Anbar Province to participate in national elections and reject the insurgency, according to a former employee.

Since then, the company has retained three or four Sunni religious scholars to offer advice and write reports for military commanders on the content of propaganda campaigns, the former employee said. But documents and Lincoln executives say the company's ties to religious leaders and dozens of other prominent Iraqis is aimed also at enabling it to exercise influence in Iraqi communities on behalf of clients, including the military.

"We do reach out to clerics," Paige Craig, a Lincoln executive vice president, said in an interview. "We meet with local government officials and with local businessmen. We need to have relationships that are broad enough and deep enough that we can touch all the various aspects of society." He declined to discuss specific projects the company has with the military or commercial clients.

"We have on staff people who are experts in religious and cultural matters," Mr. Craig said. "We meet with a wide variety of people to get their input. Most of the people we meet with overseas don't want or need compensation, they want a dialogue."

Internal company financial records show that Lincoln spent about $144,000 on the program from May to September. It is unclear how much of this money, if any, went to the religious scholars, whose identities could not be learned. The amount is a tiny portion of the contracts, worth tens of millions, that Lincoln has received from the military for "information operations," but the effort is especially sensitive.

Sunni religious scholars are considered highly influential within the country's minority Sunni population. Sunnis form the core of the insurgency.

Each of the religious scholars underwent vetting before being brought into the program to ensure that they were not involved in the insurgency, said a former employee, who spoke on condition of anonymity because Lincoln's Pentagon contract prohibits workers from discussing their activities. The identities of the Sunni scholars have been kept secret to prevent insurgent reprisals, and they were never taken to Camp Victory, the American base outside Baghdad where Lincoln employees work with military personnel.

Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, a spokesman for the American military in Baghdad, declined to comment.

After the disclosure in November that the military used Lincoln to plant articles written by American troops in Iraqi newspapers, the Pentagon ordered an investigation, led by Navy Rear Adm. Scott Van Buskirk.

Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top commander in Iraq, said that a preliminary assessment made shortly after the military's information campaign was disclosed concluded that the Army was "operating within our authorities and the appropriate legal procedures."

Admiral Van Buskirk has finished his investigation, several Pentagon officials said, but it has not been made public.

Lincoln recently sought approval from the military to make Sunni religious leaders one of several "target audiences" of the propaganda effort in Iraq. A Lincoln plan titled "Divide and Prosper" presented in October to the Special Operations Command in Tampa, which oversees information operations, suggested that reaching religious leaders was vital for reducing Sunni support for the insurgency.

"Clerics exercise a great deal of influence over the people in their communities and oftentimes it is the religious leaders who incite people to violence and to support the insurgent cause," the company said in the proposal, a copy of which was reviewed by The New York Times.

In some cases, "insurgent groups may provide Sunni leaders with financial compensation in return for that cleric's loyalty and support," the proposal said, adding that religious leaders are motivated by "a need to retain patronage" and a "desire to maintain religious and moral authority."

Unlike in many other Middle Eastern countries, sermons by Iraqi imams are not subject to government control, enabling them to speak "without fear of repercussions," the document said.

The Special Operations Command said in a statement that it did not adopt the Lincoln plan, choosing another contractor's proposal instead. When the Lincoln Group was incorporated in 2004, using the name Iraqex, its stated purpose was to provide support services for business development, trade and investment in Iraq.

But the company soon shifted to information warfare and psychological operations, two former employees said. The company was awarded three new Pentagon contracts, worth tens of millions of dollars, they said.

Payments to the scholars were originally part of Lincoln's contract to aid the military with information warfare in Anbar Province. Known as the "Western Missions" contract, it also called for producing radio and television advertisements, Web sites, posters, and for placing advertisements and opinion articles in Iraqi publications. In October, Lincoln was awarded a new contract by the Pentagon for work in Iraq, including continued contact with Muslim scholars.

Lincoln has also turned to American scholars and political consultants for advice on the content of the propaganda campaign in Iraq, records indicate. Michael Rubin, a Middle East scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington research organization, said he had reviewed materials produced by the company during two trips to Iraq within the past two years.

"I visited Camp Victory and looked over some of their proposals or products and commented on their ideas," Mr. Rubin said in an e-mailed response to questions about his links to Lincoln. "I am not nor have I been an employee of the Lincoln Group. I do not receive a salary from them."

He added: "Normally, when I travel, I receive reimbursement of expenses including a per diem and/or honorarium." But Mr. Rubin would not comment further on how much in such payments he may have received from Lincoln.

Mr. Rubin was quoted last month in The New York Times about Lincoln's work for the Pentagon placing articles in Iraqi publications: "I'm not surprised this goes on," he said, without disclosing his work for Lincoln. "Especially in an atmosphere where terrorists and insurgents - replete with oil boom cash - do the same. We need an even playing field, but cannot fight with both hands tied behind our backs."

Richard A. Oppel Jr. contributed reporting from Baghdad, Iraq, for this article.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/02/po...ropaganda.html





Court Allows Terror Suspect Padilla's Transfer
James Vicini

The U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way on Wednesday for the Bush administration to transfer "enemy combatant" Jose Padilla from U.S. military custody to federal authorities in Florida to face criminal charges.

The order reversed a ruling by a U.S. appeals court in Richmond, Virginia, that had rejected the Justice Department's request to approve Padilla's transfer while his appeal of his military detention remained pending before the Supreme Court.

The high court's action does not resolve the key question in the case on whether President George W. Bush in the war on terrorism has the power to order American citizens captured in this country held in military jails as an enemy combatant.

Solicitor General Paul Clement of the Justice Department last month asked for approval to transfer Padilla so he can stand trial on charges of being part of a support cell providing money and recruits for militants overseas.

The request was filed with Chief Justice John Roberts and he referred the matter to the full court, which approved the transfer. A Justice Department spokesman said he did not know when Padilla's transfer would take place.

Padilla was indicted in November in Florida for conspiracy to murder and aiding terrorists abroad but the charges make no reference to accusations made by U.S. officials after his arrest in May 2002 that he plotted with al Qaeda to set off a radioactive "dirty bomb" in the United States.

The indictment also makes no reference to later accusations by U.S. officials that Padilla plotted with al Qaeda leaders to blow up U.S. apartment buildings by using natural gas.

In a stinging rebuke for the administration, the appeals court had said the government's decision to bring criminal charges against Padilla after he had been held by the U.S. military for more than three years gave the impression the government was trying to avoid high court review of the case.

The government brought the criminal case against Padilla after his lawyers appealed to the Supreme Court over a ruling by the same appeals court in September that Bush had the power to detain Padilla in military custody as an enemy combatant.

The Supreme Court said in its order on Wednesday that it will consider Padilla's appeal challenging his military detention "in due course." The case is scheduled to be considered by the court at the end of next week.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has said the enemy combatant issue before the Supreme Court should be moot since Padilla has now been charged in civilian court.

Padilla's lawyers argued that the court still should decide the issue. They argued that Bush does not have the power to seize American citizens on U.S. soil and subject them to indefinite military detention without criminal charge or trial. (Additional reporting by Deborah Charles)
http://today.reuters.com/News/newsAr...TY-PADILLA.xml





Justice Dept. Probes Domestic Spying Leak
Toni Locy

The Justice Department has opened another investigation into leaks of classified information, this time to determine who divulged the existence of President Bush ‘s secret domestic spying program.

The newspaper recently revealed the existence of the program in a front-page story that also acknowledged that the news had been withheld from publication for a year, partly at the request of the administration and partly because the newspaper wanted more time to confirm various aspects of the program.

"The leaking of classified information is a serious issue. The fact is that al- Qaida‘s playbook is not printed on Page One and when America‘s is, it has serious ramifications," Duffy told reporters in Crawford, Texas, where Bush was spending the holidays.

Disclosure of the secret spying program two weeks ago unleashed a firestorm of criticism of the administration. Some critics accused the president of breaking the law by authorizing intercepts of conversations — without prior court approval or oversight — of people inside the United States and abroad who had suspected ties to al-Qaida or its affiliates.

The inquiry launched Friday is only the most recent effort by the Bush administration to determine who is disclosing information to journalists.

Two years ago, a special counsel was named to investigate who inside the White House gave reporters the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame, an effort that led to perjury and obstruction of justice charges against Vice President Dick Cheney ‘s top aide, Lewis I. "Scooter" Libby.

The NSA leak probe was launched after the Justice Department received a request from the spy agency.

For the past two weeks, Gonzales also has been one of the administration‘s point men in arguing that the president has the constitutional authority to conduct the spying.

"It‘s pretty stunning that, rather than focus on whether the president broke his oath of office and broke federal law, they are going after the whistleblowers," said Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union .

Duke University law professor Scott Silliman agreed that the Justice Department is taking the wrong approach.

Douglas Kmiec, a Pepperdine University law professor, said the Justice probe is the next logical step because the NSA is alleging a violation of a law that prohibits disclosure of classified information.

"The Department of Justice has the general obligation to investigate suspected violations of the law," Kmiec said. "It would be extraordinary for the department not to take up this matter."

The NSA probe likely will result in a repeat of last summer‘s events in Washington, where reporters were subpoenaed to testify about who in the administration told them about Plame‘s work at the CIA. New York Times reporter Judith Miller spent 85 days in jail for refusing to reveal her sources.

Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said the Plame investigation was about "political gamesmanship." But, she said, the NSA leak probe is frightening.

"In this case, there is no question that the public needed to know what the New York Times reported," she said. "It‘s much more of a classic whistleblower situation. The public needs to know when the government is engaged in things that may well be unconstitutional."

The surveillance program bypassed a nearly 30-year-old secret court established to oversee highly sensitive investigations involving espionage and terrorism.

Administration officials insisted that Bush has the power to conduct warrantless surveillance under the Constitution‘s war powers provision. They argued that Congress also gave Bush the power when it authorized the use of military force against terrorists in a resolution adopted within days of the Sept. 11 attacks.
http://www.heraldnewsdaily.com/stori...-00118728.html





Justice Deputy Resisted Parts of Spy Program
Eric Lichtblau and James Risen

A top Justice Department official objected in 2004 to aspects of the National Security Agency's domestic surveillance program and refused to sign on to its continued use amid concerns about its legality and oversight, according to officials with knowledge of the tense internal debate. The concerns appear to have played a part in the temporary suspension of the secret program.

The concerns prompted two of President Bush's most senior aides - Andrew H. Card Jr., his chief of staff, and Alberto R. Gonzales, then White House counsel and now attorney general - to make an emergency visit to a Washington hospital in March 2004 to discuss the program's future and try to win the needed approval from Attorney General John Ashcroft, who was hospitalized for gallbladder surgery, the officials said.

The unusual meeting was prompted because Mr. Ashcroft's top deputy, James B. Comey, who was acting as attorney general in his absence, had indicated he was unwilling to give his approval to certifying central aspects of the program, as required under the White House procedures set up to oversee it.

With Mr. Comey unwilling to sign off on the program, the White House went to Mr. Ashcroft - who had been in the intensive care unit at George Washington University Hospital with pancreatitis and was housed under unusually tight security - because "they needed him for certification," according to an official briefed on the episode. The official, like others who discussed the issue, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the classified nature of the program.

Mr. Comey declined to comment, and Mr. Gonzales could not be reached.

Accounts differed as to exactly what was said at the hospital meeting between Mr. Ashcroft and the White House advisers. But some officials said that Mr. Ashcroft, like his deputy, appeared reluctant to give Mr. Card and Mr. Gonzales his authorization to continue with aspects of the program in light of concerns among some senior government officials about whether the proper oversight was in place at the security agency and whether the president had the legal and constitutional authority to conduct such an operation.

It is unclear whether the White House ultimately persuaded Mr. Ashcroft to give his approval to the program after the meeting or moved ahead without it.

The White House and Mr. Ashcroft, through a spokeswoman, declined to comment Saturday on the hospital meeting. A White House spokeswoman, Jeannie Mamo, said she could not discuss any aspect of the meeting or the internal debate surrounding it, but said: "As the president has stated, the intelligence activities that have been under way to prevent future terrorist attacks have been approved at the highest levels of the Justice Department."

The domestic eavesdropping program was publicly disclosed in mid-December by The New York Times. President Bush, in acknowledging the existence of the program in a televised appearance two weeks ago, said that tight controls had been imposed over the surveillance operation and that the program was reviewed every 45 days by top government officials, including at the Justice Department.

"The review includes approval by our nation's top legal officials, including the attorney general and the counsel to the president," Mr. Bush said, adding that he had personally reauthorized the program's use more than 30 times since it began. He gave no indication of any internal dissent over the reauthorization.

Questions about the surveillance operation are likely to be central to a Congressional hearing planned by Senator Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican who heads the Judiciary Committee. Mr. Specter, like some other Republicans and many Democrats in Congress, has voiced deep concerns about the program and Mr. Bush's legal authority to bypass the courts to order domestic wiretaps without warrants.

What is known is that in early 2004, about the time of the hospital visit, the White House suspended parts of the program for several months and moved ahead with more stringent requirements on the security agency on how the program was used, in part to guard against abuses.

The concerns within the Justice Department appear to have led, at least in part, to the decision to suspend and revamp the program, officials said. The Justice Department then oversaw a secret audit of the surveillance program.

The audit examined a selection of cases to see how the security agency was running the program. Among other things, it looked at how agency officials went about determining that they had probable cause to believe that people in the United States, including American citizens, had sufficient ties to Al Qaeda to justify eavesdropping on their phone calls and e-mail messages without a court warrant. That review is not known to have found any instances of abuses.

The warrantless domestic eavesdropping program was first authorized by President Bush in the months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, officials said. Initially, it was focused on communications into and out of Afghanistan, including calls between Afghanistan and the United States, people familiar with the operation said. But the program quickly expanded.

Several senior government officials have said that when the special operation first began, there were few controls on it. Some agency officials wanted nothing to do with it, apparently fearful of participating in an illegal operation, officials have said.

At its outset in 2002, the surveillance operation was so highly classified that even Larry Thompson, the deputy attorney general to Mr. Ashcroft, who was active in most of the government's most classified counterterrorism operations, was not given access to the program.

That led to uncertainties about the chain of command in overseeing law enforcement activities connected to the program, officials said, and it appears to have spurred concerns within the Justice Department over its use. Mr. Thompson's successor, Mr. Comey, was eventually authorized to take part in the program and to review intelligence material that grew out of it, and officials said he played a part in overseeing the reforms that were put in place in 2004.

But even after the imposition of the new restrictions last year, the agency maintained the authority to choose its eavesdropping targets and did not have to get specific approval from the Justice Department or other Bush officials before it began surveillance on phone calls or e-mail messages. The decision on whether someone is believed to be linked to Al Qaeda and should be monitored is left to a shift supervisor at the agency, the White House has said.

The White House has vigorously defended the legality and value of the domestic surveillance program, saying it has saved many American lives by allowing the government to respond more quickly and flexibly to threats. The Justice Department, meanwhile, said Friday that it had opened a criminal investigation into the unauthorized disclosure of the existence of the program.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/01/po... ner=homepage





What Are You Lookin' At?
John Schwartz

WHAT does it take to get Americans riled about invasions of privacy?

Every week seems to bring reports of a new breach of the computer networks that contain our most intimate personal information. Scores of companies - including Bank of America, MasterCard, ChoicePoint and Marriott International - have admitted to security lapses that exposed millions of people's financial information to potential abuse by identity thieves. For the most part, however, Americans have reacted with a collective shrug, many privacy experts said.

"They feel they can't do anything about it, anyway," said Lawrence Ponemon, the founder of a privacy consulting company, the Ponemon Institute. "They move on with their lives."

Has something fundamental changed in Americans' attitude toward privacy? Conditioned by the convenience of the Internet and the fear of terrorism, has the public incrementally redefined what belongs exclusively to the individual, and now feels less urgency about privacy?

Mr. Ponemon says this may be the case with young people, who post the most personal information about their lives and loves on blogs that can be read by millions.

New light may be shed on how Americans think about privacy - and the differences they see between commercial and government realms - in the reaction to news that President Bush signed a presidential order in 2002 allowing the National Security Agency to conduct domestic surveillance on individuals without the warrants required by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Does the public reaction suggest that complacency has its limits?

Orin S. Kerr, an associate professor of law at George Washington University and a former trial lawyer for computer crime cases in the Justice Department, said it was too soon to tell about the impact of the N.S.A. disclosures.

"There's a mixed set of reactions," Mr. Kerr said. "Some people think it's bad because there was a privacy violation. Some people think it's a good thing, even though it may be illegal. They're all over the map."

But a poll conducted for Mr. Ponemon last month may show that people hold different views on commercial and government privacy issues. Conducted after The New York Times revealed the N.S.A. surveillance, it suggested great concern. Of those polled, 88 percent expressed concern, and 54 percent said they were "very concerned," he said.

"It was, 'Wow,' " Mr. Ponemon said. The 88 percent figure was more than twice the level of concern of past studies he had seen of public attitudes toward commercial privacy breaches.

The reaction to the president's program could be cumulative, said Bob Barr, a former Republican congressman from Georgia who speaks out on civil liberties issues in alliance with conservative libertarian groups and the American Civil Liberties Union. When the privacy violations on the business side and those on the government side are taken into account, he said, "you get a truly frightening picture."

The issue of government abuse of privacy in the name of security has been growing since the 9/11 attacks, said Alan F. Westin, a privacy expert and consultant who is a professor emeritus of public law and government at Columbia University. He has been tracking consumer attitudes about domestic security issues with telephone surveys since 2001, and has found a growing concern that the checks on government surveillance might be weakening.

Support for expanded government monitoring of cellphones and e-mail messages dropped from 54 percent in September 2001 to 37 percent in June 2005. Those who said they were "very confident" that expanded surveillance powers would be used in a "proper way" dropped from 34 percent in 2001 to 23 percent in 2004, the last year that that specific question was asked. Those who were "somewhat" confident in the government's conduct of surveillance stood at 53 percent in 2004, unchanged from 2001.

"The essence really is a majority of the public does not believe the administration should be given a blank check," Mr. Westin said.

Most people, he argued, accept that liberties might be curtailed under special circumstances like war - an idea expressed by the Latin epigram "Inter armes, silent leges," meaning, "In war, the law is silent."

But historically, he said, the restrictions of wartime have been understood to be temporary. "Now we're in a permanent war" against terrorism, Mr. Westin said. "The administration says again and again that this is a permanent problem."

The idea that the pendulum of liberties and restrictions might not swing back could be disquieting to many people, Mr. Westin said, adding "the new surveillance revelations about what the Bush administration has been doing puts those questions to the front."

Historians tend to say that modern concept of rights against government snooping are a relatively recent phenomenon, and trace its legal roots to a famous 1890 law review article by Louis D. Brandeis and his law partner, Samuel D. Warren.

But Mr. Westin disagrees and argues that respect for personal privacy has been a consistent thread in societies that emphasized liberty.

"On the other hand," he said, autocratic governments have always "had active programs to suppress or deny privacy."

Democratic Athens provided far more protection for privacy than authoritarian Sparta. "Pericles, in his famous funeral oration, said Athens does not attempt to control people in their private lives," Mr. Westin said.

America's founders saw Athens as their model, and individual rights in the United States are prized more highly than those of the community. This is in contrast to Continental Europe, where private property is less than sacrosanct, and where the American zeal for individual rights has often been regarded with suspicion. So it is striking that the Europeans, as opposed to Americans, have sought protections to keep personal data from being shared online, a battle that Americans supposedly gave up without much of a fight.

But some experts say Americans are deeply concerned about an erosion of their privacy. Marc Rotenberg, the executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said that public complacency is overstated, and could reflect a tendency among business consultants to issue findings that play down public concerns about corporate excesses.

"Do consumers care about privacy? The answer is that they clearly do," Mr. Rotenberg said, whether the threat is from business or the government.

Even tell-all bloggers have privacy concerns, he said. They may describe their dates online, but if they lose cellphones full of contact information or if someone gains access to their instant message "buddy lists," then "they care just as much about privacy as their parents and grandparents," Mr. Rotenberg said.

"We like to control who knows what about us," he added.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/01/we...1schwartz.html





Wilkinson, Defiant Figure of Red Scare, Dies at 91
Rick Lyman

Frank Wilkinson, a Los Angeles housing official who lost his job in the Red Scare of the early 1950's and later became one of the last two people jailed for refusing to tell the House Un-American Activities Committee whether he was a Communist, died Monday in Los Angeles. He was 91.

Mr. Wilkinson, whose experiences inspired a half-century campaign against government spying, had been ill for several months and was recovering from surgery and a fall, said Donna Wilkinson, his wife of 40 years. "It was just the complications of old age, " Mrs. Wilkinson said.

In 1952, when Mr. Wilkinson was head of the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles, he spearheaded a project to replace the sprawling Mexican-American neighborhood of Chavez Ravine, home to 300 families and roamed by goats and other livestock, with thousands of public-housing units.

Real estate interests that viewed public housing as a form of socialism accused Mr. Wilkinson of being a Communist. When asked about this, under oath, he declined to answer, causing a furor.

After a City Council hearing, in which Mayor Fletcher Bowron punched a man in the audience who had called him a "servant of Stalin," Mr. Wilkinson was questioned by the California Anti-Subversive Committee. Mr. Wilkinson was fired along with four other housing officials and five schools employees, including his first wife, Jean.

The housing project was scuttled and much of the land eventually turned over to the city, after which it became the site of Dodger Stadium, new home to the former Brooklyn Dodgers.

The entire episode has inspired books, documentaries, a play and even a recently released album by Ry Cooder called "Chavez Ravine." "Every church has its prophets and its elders," one song goes. "God will love you if you just play ball."

Mr. Wilkinson consistently refused to testify about his political beliefs. He had, in fact, joined the Communist Party in 1942, according to "First Amendment Felon," a 2005 biography by Robert Sherrill. He left the party in 1975.

Mr. Wilkinson continued his antipoverty activities and, in 1955, was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee, which wanted to know whether he was a Communist. This time, Mr. Wilkinson used what he believed was a novel approach. Instead of claiming his Fifth Amendment right against compelled self- incrimination, he refused to answer on First Amendment grounds, saying the committee had no right to ask him.

The committee requested that Congress cite Mr. Wilkinson for contempt, but it was not until 1958 that he and a co-worker, Carl Braden, became the last men ordered to prison at the committee's behest. Mr. Wilkinson fought the contempt citation in the courts, but the Supreme Court, by a vote of 5 to 4, affirmed it.

At a press conference after the decision, Mr. Wilkinson said: "We will not save free speech if we are not prepared to go to jail in its defense. I am prepared to pay that price."

In 1961, the year construction began on Dodger Stadium, Mr. Wilkinson spent nine months at the federal prison in Lewisburg, Pa. He came out of prison, he said, determined to fight for the committee's abolition. For the next decade, he traveled the country, speaking and protesting, largely through his National Committee Against Repressive Legislation, based in Los Angeles.

On Jan. 14, 1975, when the committee was finally abolished, Representative Robert F. Drinan, Democrat of Massachusetts, paid tribute to Mr. Wilkinson, saying, "No account of the demise of the House Un-American Activities Committee would be complete without a notation of the extraordinary work done by the National Committee Against Repressive Legislation."

But Mr. Wilkinson was not finished with the federal government. When he discovered, in 1986, that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had been compiling files on him, he filed a Freedom of Information Act request for their release.

He was sent 4,500 documents. But he sued for more, and the next year the F.B.I. released an additional 30,000 documents, and then 70,000 two years later. Eventually, there were 132,000 documents covering 38 years of surveillance, including detailed reports of Mr. Wilkinson's travel arrangements and speaking schedules, and vague and mysterious accusations of an assassination attempt against Mr. Wilkinson in 1964.

A federal judge ordered the F.B.I. to stop spying on Mr. Wilkinson and to never do it again.

He is survived by his first wife, Jean, of Oakland, Calif.; their three children, Jeffry Wilkinson, of Albany, Calif., Tony Wilkinson, of Berkeley, Calif., and Jo Wilkinson of Tucson; and by his second wife, Donna; her three children from a previous marriage, John, William and Robert Childers; 19 grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren.

Frank Wilkinson was born Aug. 16, 1914, in a cottage behind his family's lakeside retreat in Charlevoix, Mich. His father, a doctor, came from a family that had lived in America since colonial days. His mother was French Canadian. Mr. Wilkinson was the youngest of four children.

Mr. Wilkinson's father fell in love with Arizona while posted there in World War I and moved the family to Douglas, Ariz., after the war. The family lived there until Frank was 10, then moved to Hollywood for two years while their permanent home was being built in Beverly Hills.

They were a devout Methodist family and firm Republicans. "Every morning of my life, we had Bible readings and prayers at the breakfast table," Mr. Wilkinson once said.

He attended Beverly Hills High School and then the University of California, Los Angeles, graduating in 1936. He was active in the Methodist Youth Movement, president of the Hollywood Young People's chapter of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union and an organizer for Youth for Herbert Hoover.

After college, considering a career in the ministry, he decided to tour the Holy Land. On the way, along Maxwell Street in Chicago, the Bowery in New York and later in the Middle East, he had his first glimpse at wrenching poverty, and he described it as a life-altering experience.

Mr. Wilkinson lost his faith and found himself adrift. "What do you do if you have no religion?" he said. "What is the basis of your ethics?" He chose to become active in efforts to eradicate the kind of poverty he had seen in his travels.

In later years, he would spend months on the road, speaking to whatever group would listen to him, usually telling his own story and answering questions.

In 1999, he received a lifetime achievement award from the American Civil Liberties Union. Four years earlier, the City of Los Angeles, which had once fired him, issued a citation praising Mr. Wilkinson for his "lifetime commitment to civil liberties and for making this community a better place in which to live."
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/04/na...rtner=homepage





Terror-Bytes...
Jeffrey R. Harrow

You (or someone you designate) probably (hopefully) spends a fair amount of time worrying about the viruses and worms and adware and malware that terrorize our PCs. It's definitely worth musing about this for both your home and your business, given that these terror-bytes do hold the very real, all-to-often demonstrated threat of compromising the privacy and security of your personal and business information.

Protection Overview: Without going into detail here, EVERY PC should, at a minimum, implement these defenses: a software firewall such as ZoneAlarm; a good antivirus program that is automatically updated on a frequent schedule such as AVG Anti-Virus; and one or more programs to identify and remove adware and malware such as AdAware and Spybot Search and Destroy. Without such a multi- layered defensive screen you are truly at risk. How much at risk? If you connect a newly-minted Windows XP PC to the Internet and DO NOTHING, the average time-to-infection has been measured at 16 minutes!)

I'll call these and similar assaults "electronic terrorism."

But there's far more at stake here than just individual PCs.

Law Enforcement As Target.

In a Dec. 8, 2005 CNN.com article, FBI Assistant Director Louis Reigle, the head of their Cyber Division, stated that,

"There's nothing on my desk today or the director's desk that would cause any concern today."

In that same vein, FBI Computer Intrusion head Peter Trahon states that,

"We're not aware of any plan to attack U.S. infrastructure."

Assuming their intelligence is correct (and I have no reason to suggest otherwise), I believe that it certainly remains feasible for Internet- based "warfare" to either engage in an economic attack on a country, or to complicate more conventional warfare. Even if an attacker could not gain direct access to the target country's critical civilian or military infrastructure, imagine if an electronic attack "only" disabled a country's segments of the Internet and their business and personal PCs. Even such an indirect attack could, in effect, bring a country to its economic knees.

(By way of an "indirect" infrastructure attack, consider that the Sober computer worm recently sent out a vast number of SPAM emails. They were doctored so that their "From" address was that of the FBI (although that was not the case.) When these bogus messages then hit the Internet mail servers of the millions of random recipients (most of which did not represent valid Email accounts), those mail servers (correctly) "bounced" a message back to the assumed sender - in this case the FBI.

The FBI Email servers received over 200,000 "bounce" messages per hour which, according to Reigel, "...almost killed our system." Note that it's already been demonstrated, too many times, that Email and Web servers can indeed be brought to their virtual knees through various Internet-based attacks.)

While I have to believe that the FBI's public Email server is not a mission-critical component of their law enforcement operations, I also have to believe that in this age of the pervasive use of Email, law enforcement agencies, like businesses, have become increasingly dependent on public Email for much of their non-internal/non-critical business. Similarly, especially poignant around the holiday season when many retail businesses make a significant percentage of their annual sales, a disruption of their online divisions' shopping systems could make a serious economic dent in their bottom lines, and hence in the GNP.

Such issues deserve careful study and appropriate protections.

But on a somewhat lighter note, it's not just traditional Internet-based servers and services that are at risk.

Entertainment Terrorism.

Consider, for example, a new product that "fights with light" to attack local TV sets!

Called the "TV-B-Gone", this car-remote-control sized "fob" has a single button. When pushed, it rapidly beams out the various infrared light codes, one right after another, that cause most TVs to turn themselves off!

TVs in bars, store windows, classrooms, kiosks, businesses, in fact in virtually any setting, can now be easily silenced with no one being the wiser as to who is perpetrating this public entertainment terrorism.

This ability to control various infrared devices is hardly new -- anyone seriously interested in affecting a particular TV only needs to purchase an inexpensive "universal" remote control that can be programmed on the fly to work with a given TV. There are also programs that will turn a PDA into a remote. There are even wristwatches costing as little as $30, such as the Midas, that provide similar universal remote capabilities.

Happily, most of these devices work with one TV's codes at a time; they don't send out every model's "turn-off" codes at once like the TV- B-Gone.

There are certainly times when I'd appreciate having a disruptive TV turned off, but as with other forms of vigilantism, a TV Turn Off device could easily result in entertainment chaos.

The Broader Issue Is NOT Trivial!

Silencing TVs may seem to be (and usually is) a trivial issue in the grand scheme of things. But if we look forward to a time when virtually everything might be remotely controllable, either locally via infrared or radio signals, or over the Internet (as is already the case for TiVo digital video recorders, some home security systems, and far more), then enhanced forms of electronic terrorism might expand in some very uncomfortable directions.

Today, a small piece of opaque tape placed over a TV remote control receiver window will cure the problem (although it will also preventing legitimate remote control by its owner). But countermeasure will not be so simple in the future.

Perhaps this might be an opportune time for remote controllable device manufacturers, as well as for relevant standards bodies, to begin setting the stage for more protected, perhaps encrypted and authenticated remote control schemes similar to those already being used in garage door openers and higher-end car remote controls. But the need for these precautions is not limited to TVs -- it extends to virtually every remote controlled device including those that reach out and touch the Internet.

Don't give in to electronic terrorism! It would be a shame -- and potentially a huge tragedy -- for a country's infrastructure to be at the mercy of both local and remote control by the disaffected, or by unfriendly governments.

Now is the time to make Internet security job one.

Don't Blink!

http://www.futurebrief.com/jeffharrowterror024.asp





White Noise
Jonathan Duffy

While veteran rocker Pete Townshend blames his hearing loss on a lifetime spent using headphones, experts say today's iPod Generation is storing up trouble for the future by listening to music at high volumes. Is this a crisis in the making?

With the notable exception of Morrissey, who enjoyed a phase of appearing with his band the Smiths sporting a hearing aid, deafness has never been very rock and roll.

But all those years of turning the volume up to 11 are coming home to roost for the rock idols of yesteryear.

As lead guitarist with the Who, Pete Townshend often seemed dedicated to the art of aural recklessness, smashing his guitars to smithereens while revelling in the ear-splitting shrieks of feedback.

The Who also hit the record books in 1976 as the loudest pop group ever, after a concert which tipped the monitoring equipment at 120 decibels - the equivalent of a pneumatic drill - 50 metres away from the sound system.

Today Townshend is struggling with irreparable hearing loss. But rather than blaming the group's on-stage antics he believes it's down to his years of wearing studio headphones during recording sessions.


MEASURING IN DECIBELS

The decibel (dB) has been called the 'most misunderstood measurement since the cubit'
The scale is not linear, but logarithmic
So it increases exponentially, although the human ear may not perceive this
A continuous sound at 80dB is 100 times as intense as one at 60dB

The guitarist, 60, says he fears for the "iPod generation" - his intuition tells him "there is terrible trouble ahead".

Others in the music world have also witnessed premature hearing problems. Phil Collins, Neil Young, Sting, Mick Fleetwood and the Beatles producer George Martin have all talked about their hearing problems.

There's even an organisation in the US called Hearing Education and Awareness for Rockers.

In the classical world, a third of orchestral musicians suffer hearing loss.

But a far broader concern is not for the hearing of ripened musicians, but, as Townshend himself suggests, the legions of earphone wearing converts to music on the move.

So should we be worried?

Such warnings have an air of familiarity about them for anyone who remembers the first incarnation of the portable music player - the humble old Walkman.

Unveiled by Sony in 1979, the Walkman spawned a host of imitators, and health warnings.

The advent of digital music players, with their capacity to hold thousands of songs and play for hours on end, has only increased the lure of listening to music on the go.

Sales of MP3 players soared by 200% in 2005 and the market for headphone entertainment continues to grow with portable video players and handheld games consoles.

But the trend has prompted concern from Britain's leading hearing loss charity, the Royal National Institute for the Deaf (RNID). It found 39% of 18 to 24-year-olds listened to personal music players for at least an hour every day and 42% admitted they thought they had the volume too high.

One post-graduate student who complained of ringing in his ears after four years of heavy gig-going and Walkman-abuse was told by his university doctor he wasn't surprised - they were the biggest group of new cases of tinnitus he had seen in the past decade.

"Bin the headphones and listen to gentle things like BBC Radio Four," he was told.

The risk is further heightened when using headphones in a noisy environment - busy High Streets or clattering trains for example - because listeners tend to crank up the volume to drown out extraneous sounds.

Such behaviour could lead to noise-induced hearing loss, say some experts.

The potential problem lies in the cochlea of the ear, which contains more than 15,000 specialised cells, sometimes called hair cells, that respond to sound vibrations and send signals to the brain.


EARLY SIGNS OF HEARING LOSS

Tinnitus - a ringing in the ear - can be an early indicator of noise-induced hearing loss
So is loss of hearing at high frequencies
Many sufferers first notice something wrong when they can't distinguish conversation amid background noise

"Each cell is tuned to respond to a different frequency in the sound spectrum," explains audiologist Angela King.

"These can be damaged by high volumes so that initially noises at higher frequencies sound smeary, then you can't hear them at all, and eventually the same happens at lower frequencies."

Under European rules digital music players are limited to a volume of 104 decibels. But that is significantly higher [see fact box above] than the 85- decibel workplace limit, which will shortly be reduced to 80 decibels.

Of course people tend to spend longer at work than listening to their iPods. But the RNID's Susan Duncan says the 85dB limit is a good guide.

"If it's uncomfortable to listen to or you can't hear someone talking at normal volume over the music, then you're listening too loudly," she says. The RNID is running an on-going campaign, called Don't Lose the Music, to highlight the risks.

Part of the problem with noise-induced hearing loss is that the effects may not become apparent for some years. Audiologists agree that despite concerns about personal stereo use in the early 80s, they are not yet seeing patients with such problems.

"It's a bit too early yet," says Angela King, who thinks the noise damage of loud discos and pubs is more of danger to young people than headphone use.

So what are the warning signs to look out for?

Anyone who has been to a nightclub or noisy concert will know the ear-ringing effect that can last for some time afterwards. It's known as a "temporary threshold shift" and, once in a while, is ok, says Jonathan Parsons, of the British Academy of Audiology.

But if the ears aren't allowed to rest between such bouts, the result could be a loss of hearing in years to come.

And just as technology has created such problems, so it may offer a solution.

This week headphone maker Sennheiser joins the ranks of those offering "sound isolating" earphones for everyday consumers. Derived from the earphones that many performers wear on stage today, they block out extraneous sound so that music can played through them at quieter levels.

Unfortunately, those train passengers responsible for the relentless tinny overspill from their pounding headphones won't be able to hear their fellow passengers' collective sigh of relief. Add your comments on this story, using the form below.






Having endured the boom, boom, boom from headphone users on trains, I always wondered why they had them turned up so loud. The same is true on aeroplanes - you cannot hear the dialogue in the in-flight films without turning the volume right up. The way round this is the noise cancelling headphones. Try these on a train or plane and you can hear crystal clear music without having to turn the volume right up.
Andrew , Newton Le Willows

Just as a factual point, ringing in the ears is not the same thing as a threshold shift, although both can occur temporarily after concerts. Ringing in the ears is called tinnitus. A temporary threshold shift is the effect where sounds seem temporarily dulled, muffled or quieter than normal (the "threshold" in the name is how loud something has to be before you can hear it).
Dr Richard Lanyon, London, UK

Isn't this the same point raised when Walkmans/Discmans etc were so popular? Many European MP3 players have built in artificial volume limits in the software - the US models do not. Presumably US ears are not built stronger?
Dave A, Cheshire

I have listened to Walkmans since my first Mel and Kim album on tape a 'few years' ago. Now at 30 I have trouble hearing speech in noisy places, and cannot hear some higher frequencies. I believe that the high volumes I listened to my music at without any warning on the long term effects was the cause of this damage.
Alastair, UK

Thank you for issuing this as I can now forward it to my two teenage daughters who do have their iPods too high but wont listen to mother - hopefully they will listen to this.
Michelle Nokes, Manchester England

I have worked in a noisy aviation environment for many years and now with hearing problems make a special point to younger people 'It does not matter what the noise comes from - Take care of your ears - do not expose them to loud noises'
Andrew Logan, Exeter

Twenty years of going to heavy metal concerts has affected my hearing. I have a constant ringing sound in my ears which means I can never hear "nothing". There is always a ringing/whistle. Now when I go to see Motorhead I wear earplugs - it is the best mime show in the world!!
Nic McCartney, Fareham, UK

The Who were doing a session, I think in the late 60's, when Keith Moon put too many explosives in his drum kit. When it exploded, just behind Pete, this probably did more damage to his hearing than studio headphones!
Mark Olsen, Exeter

The news didn't surprise me. As part of the conscription process all men in Norway are called in for medical tests, including hearing tests, in their late teens. Time series analysis of the result of these tests shows a marked deterioration in score from the hearing tests a few years after the Walkman hit the market. A medical officer in the navy also once told me that since the appearance of the Walkman are have had noticeably fewer candidates to chose from as sonar operators, as there had been an increase of people with hearing deficiencies at certain specific frequencies. Could be a statistical coincidence but I suspect not.
Sindre Ottesen, London, UK

I work in deafness research, and for a project recently I ended up recording the sound levels produced by my band - the short term peak came out at something close to 130dB, though the more reliable figures gave 199.5. Somewhat worrying as the whole band thought it was fairly quiet!
Hugh, Cambridge, UK

Being a subtitler, working in an international multimedia translation company, I work with my headphones on all day. Are there any studies about people that loose their hearing due to work restrictions...? Should these people have some kind of insurance? Is there a specific kind of headphones that would decrease the risks of hearing loss?
Nathalie, London - Hammersmith

As a daily commuter on the Underground system, and an iPod user, music is often drowned out by the squeal of brakes, wheels on the track and general mechanical noise way in excess of music volume. We don't seem to be too worried about this daily attack on our hearing.
Harry S, London

I was a rave MC years back, right up by the bass bins all night. It was great fun but I am paying for it now. The RNID are running a hearing test thing at the moment you do on the phone, I did that and it confirmed that I had hearing loss, which I reckon is from my rave days. It's no joke believe me.
MC NiteShift, London

I'm 20 & have been listening to Various MP3, CD and Tape players for years, always on full volume. I have noticed that after a while my hearing does start to get effected. The effect usually subsides after a while when I stop listening. However I have noticed an increase in the amount of time it takes to stop the longer I listen.
Tom Griffiths, Rugby

Having spent 10 years producing underground dance music in mainly headphones while leaning over a drum machine, and including seven years DJing in the London and Los Angeles club scenes which had an extremely loud and quite often 'poorly set up' distorted monitoring speakers, I think that one of the main reasons for bad ear health is due to the quality of the ear piece. This is because you don't need to have the headphones as loud in order to get the same overall frequency response than you do with cheaper standard headphones. To refine that, "people like bass and you don't get that with cheap headphones" such as the iPod's without cranking them up to the extent in which they are distorting.
Jess Jackson, London England

I've been listening to Walkman's etc for the past 10 years now. I've noticed my ears ringing on a nearly daily basis, I'm 26. I've started to set the volume to a given level and not increase it when walking through areas of loud background noise. I hope that I haven't done too much damage.
Brendan, Belfast
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/h...ne/4580718.stm
















Until next week,

- js.

















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Recent WiRs -

December 31st, December 24th, December 17th, December 10th

Jack Spratts' Week In Review is published every Friday. Please submit letters, articles, and press releases in plain text English to jackspratts (at) lycos (dot) com. Include contact info. Submission deadlines are Wednesdays @ 1700 UTC.


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