Spokane judge orders CIA interrogation lawsuit to trial

SEATTLE — A federal judge in Spokane on Monday officially denied a request to throw out a lawsuit against two psychologists who helped design the CIA’s harsh interrogation program used in the war on terror.

In his written order, U.S. District Judge Justin Quackenbush said a jury will hear the lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of three former detainees against James Mitchell and John “Bruce” Jessen, who were under contract with the federal government following the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

The lawsuit claims the psychologists “designed, implemented, and personally administered an experimental torture program for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.” Under the program, detainees were subjected to physical assaults and sleep deprivation, forced to stand for days in diapers with their arms chained overhead, doused with icy water and stuffed into boxes, the ACLU said.

Quackenbush heard arguments from both sides on July 28 and issued a partial ruling in which he said he would consider whether all three detainees, Suleiman Abdullah Salim, Mohamed Ahmed Ben Soud and the estate of Gul Rahman, who died in custody, should be included the lawsuit.

http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/judge-orders-cia-interrogation-lawsuit-to-trial/

We have data on deaths by vending machine but not by cops. Why?

CIA Psychologists Sue CIA For Documents To Prove Torture Program Wasn’t Their Idea

WASHINGTON ― The two CIA-contracted psychologists accused of crafting the spy agency’s so-called “enhanced interrogation program” want the U.S. government to turn over documents they hope will show the torture program wasn’t their fault.

The motion to compel the documents, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on Monday, alleged that the CIA and Justice Department had been uncooperative in supplying James Elmer Mitchell and John “Bruce” Jessen with “documents critical to their defense.”

Their request is related to a separate ongoing lawsuit in Spokane, Washington, where the American Civil Liberties Union, on behalf of three former CIA detainees, is suing Jessen and Mitchell for their alleged role in creating and implementing an interrogation program that used techniques now considered to be torture.

The pair was hired by the CIA as contractors in 2002, as the agency was rounding up individuals suspected of having ties to al Qaeda and the Taliban and interrogating them in secret black sites around the world. Jessen and Mitchell’s company ultimately collected $81 million for their work...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/cia-psychologists-sue-torture_us_57bcd359e4b03d51368b9167

Spokane-based psychologists admit harsh treatment of CIA prisoners but deny torture

SPOKANE — Two former Air Force psychologists who helped design the CIA’s enhanced interrogation techniques for terrorism suspects acknowledge using waterboarding and other harsh tactics but deny allegations of torture and war crimes leveled by a civil-liberties group, according to new court records.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sued consultants James E. Mitchell and John “Bruce” Jessen of Washington state last October on behalf of three former CIA prisoners, including one who died, creating a closely watched case that will likely include classified information.

In response, the pair’s attorneys filed documents this week in which Mitchell and Jessen acknowledge using waterboarding, loud music, confinement, slapping and other harsh methods but refute that they were torture.

“Defendants deny that they committed torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, nonconsensual human experimentation and/or war crimes,” their lawyers wrote, asking a federal judge in Spokane to throw out the lawsuit and award them court costs.

The records don’t say why Mitchell and Jessen don’t consider the techniques to be torture. They declined to respond to many of the ACLU’s allegations, saying much of the information is classified.

“This is historic,” ACLU attorney Dror Ladin said Wednesday, whose group also has sued the CIA and its former Director George Tenet over a program that has since been discontinued and widely discredited. “Until now, no one responsible for the CIA torture program has ever been forced to admit their actions in court...”

http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/psychologists-behind-cia-interrogation-tactics-deny-torture/

Here the Rain Never Finishes

CIA Releases New and Gruesome Details on Its Torture Program

The CIA released 50 new documents yesterday relating to its post-9/11 torture and rendition program. Despite the many disclosures that have come in the course of our decade-long fight to reveal the details of the program, the new revelations still have the capacity to shock.

The documents, released in response to an ACLU Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, vividly depict the brutality of torture, and further expose the fiction that this abuse is a scientific method for extracting information from victims. The documents also reveal how hard the CIA worked to bury the evidence of its crimes — including by seeking to silence its victims.

A few of the many new findings include:

CIA pressure to “break” detainees was deadly. A newly released CIA inspector general report about the death of detainee Gul Rahman concluded that he was singled out for especially harsh torture because of “pressure” to “break him.” We learned that he was kept nude or in a diaper for most of his detention, “solely for humiliation.” When they ran out of diapers, the guards would use “a handcrafted diaper secured by duct tape.” CIA torturers kept Rahman naked in “cold conditions with minimal food or sleep” and kept questioning him even when he “appeared incoherent.” When they decided he wasn’t sufficiently “broken,” CIA personnel brutalized, starved, and froze him to death — and then lied about it.

We also learned just why the CIA and Bruce Jessen, one of the psychologists who designed the program, considered Rahman “resistant,” leading to torture so extreme that it resulted in his death. Based on pseudoscientific theories of torture and “resistance,” they assessed Rahman to have a “sophisticated level of resistance training,” because — among other reasons — he “complained about poor treatment” and said he couldn’t “think due to conditions (cold).” No one has yet been held accountable for Mr. Rahman’s death, but the ACLU represents Mr. Rahman’s family in suing Jensen and James Mitchell, the other psychologist who collaborated with the CIA in designing and overseeing the torture program...

https://www.aclu.org/blog/speak-freely/cia-releases-new-and-gruesome-details-its-torture-program

Snowden lawyer: Bill of Rights was meant to make government’s job “more difficult”

DAVIS, Calif.—Ben Wizner, a top attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union, is probably best known for being one of the lawyers representing Ed Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor.

On Tuesday, he told Ars that representing the world's most famous whistleblower has consumed a substantial portion of his professional life over the last 2.5 years. But he framed his passion for civil liberties and fighting surveillance as part of a larger struggle that continues to play out as to the proper balance between not only surveillance and privacy but also between surveillance and democracy itself.

Wizner was in this college town outside Sacramento to speak at the University of California, Davis law school as part of an ongoing public lecture series on surveillance. (Full disclosure: yours truly spoke as part of the same series last year.) In a 30-minute talk followed by questions from an audience primarily made up of law students, Wizner outlined a history of surveillance in America, going back to the 1971 Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI and extending through to the Snowden-era NSA.

"This, to me, is what's so frustrating about the current debate between civil liberties and state security," Wizner said during the lecture. "It's become standard to approach the debate as if our challenge is to set the dial at precisely the right place that most efficiently maximizes both values. But that ignores that the framers of the Constitution already put their thumbs on the scale. And for good reason. There's a good reason why, in the 4th Amendment, suspicion of wrongdoing comes before search. And it's not only because of the presumption that we should generally be left alone—but because of the danger that a government, with enough data about any of us, can find some basis for being suspicious. 'Show me the man, and I will show you the crime,' said Stalin's secret police chief."

Ars had a chance to sit down with him prior to the talk and touch on a range of surveillance-related topics, including the ongoing case in San Bernardino, Snowden, and the best way to think about future dystopias. What follows is the transcript of our conversation that has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity...

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/02/snowden-lawyer-bill-of-rights-was-meant-to-make-governments-job-more-difficult/

Police Using Planes Equipped with Dirtbox to Spy on your Cell Phones

The Anaheim Police Department of California — Home of Disneyland — admitted that they used special Cell Phone surveillance technology, known as DirtBox, mounted on aircraft to track millions of mobile users activities.

More than 400 pages of new documents [PDF] published Wednesday revealed that Local Police and federal authorities are using, DRTBox, an advanced version of Dirtbox developed by Digital Receiver Technology (Boeing's Maryland-based subsidiary).

DRTBox — Spies in the Sky

DRTBox is a military surveillance technology that has capabilities of both Stingray as well as Dirtbox, allowing the police to track, intercept thousands of cellphone calls and quietly eavesdrop on conversations, emails, and text messages.

According to the report, DRTBox model is also capable of simultaneously breaking the encryption hundreds of cellphone communications at once, helping Anaheim Police Department track criminals while recording innocent citizens' information.

"This cell phone spying program – which potentially affects the privacy of everyone from Orange County’s 3 million residents to the 16 million people who visit Disneyland every year – shows the dangers of allowing law enforcement to secretly acquire surveillance technology," said Matt Cagle, technology and civil liberties policy attorney for ACLU-NC.

Besides Dirtbox, the police also purchased multiple Stingray devices, including one that can monitor LTE (Long Term Evolution) networks.

How does DRTBox Work?...

http://thehackernews.com/2016/01/drtbox-cellphone-interception.html

ACLU SUES PSYCHOLOGISTS WHO DESIGNED AND RAN CIA TORTURE PROGRAM

LAWSUIT FILED ON BEHALF OF THREE VICTIMS OF CIA TORTURE, ALLEGES WAR CRIMES AND UNLAWFUL HUMAN EXPERIMENTATION

October 13, 2015

SPOKANE, Wash. — Three former Central Intelligence Agency prisoners represented by the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit today against the two psychologists who designed and implemented the CIA’s torture program.

The CIA-contracted psychologists, James Mitchell and John “Bruce” Jessen, helped convince the agency to adopt torture as official policy, making millions of dollars in the process. The two men, who had previously worked for the U.S. military, designed the torture methods and performed illegal human experimentation on CIA prisoners to test and refine the program. They personally took part in torture sessions and oversaw the program’s implementation for the CIA.

The lawsuit was brought on behalf of three men — Gul Rahman, Suleiman Abdullah Salim, and Mohamed Ahmed Ben Soud — who were tortured using methods developed by Mitchell and Jessen, as detailed in the Senate Intelligence Committee’s landmark report on CIA torture. The U.S. has never charged or accused the victims of any crime. One of them was tortured to death, and the other two are now free...

https://www.aclu.org/news/aclu-sues-psychologists-who-designed-and-ran-cia-torture-program

NYPD has super-secret X-ray vans

Police Commissioner Bill Bratton won’t let the NYCLU — or anyone else — bully him for details on the NYPD’s super-secret X-ray vans.

The top cop was asked Tuesday about the counter-terror vehicles, called Z Backscatter Vans, in light of the NYCLU’s request to file an amicus brief arguing that the NYPD should have to release records about the X-ray vans.

“They’re not used to scan people for weapons,” Bratton insisted. “The devices we have, the vehicles if you will, are all used lawfully and if the ACLU and others don’t think that’s the case, we’ll see them in court — where they’ll lose! At this time and the nature of what’s going on in the world, that concern of theirs is unfounded.”

He declined to give more specific details about the devices themselves.

“Those are issues I’d prefer not to divulge to the public at this time,” Bratton said. “I will not talk about anything at all about this — it falls into the range of security and counter-terrorism activity that we engage in.”

The website ProPublica filed suit against the NYPD three years ago after an investigative journalist’s requests for police reports, training materials and health tests related to the X-rays were denied.

Federal Court Invalidates 11-Year-old FBI gag order on National Security Letter recipient Nicholas Merrill

Court Rules There Is “No Good Reason” To Prohibit Merrill from Describing the Array of Private Information that the FBI Sweeps Up Using NSLs

NEW HAVEN, CT – A federal district court has ordered the FBI to lift an eleven-year- old gag order imposed on Nicholas Merrill forbidding him from speaking about a National Security Letter (“NSL”) that the FBI served on him in 2004. The ruling marks the first time that an NSL gag order has been lifted in full since the PATRIOT Act vastly expanded the scope of the FBI’s NSL authority in 2001. Mr. Merrill, the executive director of the Calyx Institute, is represented by law students and supervising attorneys of the Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic, a program of Yale Law School’s Abrams Institute for Freedom of Expression and Information Society Project.

For more than a decade, the government has refused to allow Mr. Merrill and other NSL recipients to tell the public just how broadly the FBI has interpreted its authority to surveil individuals’ digital lives in secret using NSLs. Tens of thousands of NSLs are issued by FBI officers every year without a warrant or judicial oversight of any kind.

The letters demand disclosure of user information and are almost always accompanied by complete gag orders. Today’s decision will finally allow Mr. Merrill to speak about all aspects of the NSL and, specifically, to inform the public about the categories of personal information that the FBI believes it can obtain using an NSL...

FEDS ADMIT STINGRAYS CAN DISRUPT CELL SERVICE OF BYSTANDERS

FOR YEARS THE government has kept mum about its use of a powerful phone surveillance technology known as a stingray.

The Justice Department and local law enforcement agencies insist that the only reason for their secrecy is to prevent suspects from learning how the devices work and devising methods to thwart them.

But a court filing recently uncovered by the ACLU suggests another reason for the secrecy: the fact that stingrays can disrupt cellular service for any phone in their vicinity—not just targeted phones—as well as any other mobile devices that use the same cellular network for connectivity as the targeted phone.

Civil liberties groups have long asserted that stingrays are too invasive because they can sweep up data about every phone in their vicinity, not just targeted phones, and can interfere with their calls. Justice Department and local law enforcement agencies, however, have refused to confirm this or answer other questions about the tools.

But in the newly uncovered document (.pdf)—a warrant application requesting approval to use a stingray—FBI Special Agent Michael A. Scimeca disclosed the disruptive capability to a judge.

“Because of the way, the Mobile Equipment sometimes operates,” Scimeca wrote in his application, “its use has the potential to intermittently disrupt cellular service to a small fraction of Sprint’s wireless customers within its immediate vicinity. Any potential service disruption will be brief and minimized by reasonably limiting the scope and duration of the use of the Mobile Equipment...”

http://www.wired.com/2015/03/feds-admit-stingrays-can-disrupt-cell-service-bystanders/

In Guantánamo Death Penalty Case, Torture Matters

I spent much of last week at the Post Theater in Fort Meade, watching the closed-circuit feed of the pre-trial military commissions hearings in the case of Abd al-Rahim Hussayn Muhammed al-Nashiri, who faces the death penalty for his alleged role in the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole.

The CIA's torture of Mr. Nashiri, and what impact it will have on the proceeding going forward, dominated this round of hearings, both on screen and off.

"I believe Mr. al Nashiri has suffered torture, physical, psychological and sexual torture," Dr. Sondra Crosby, an expert in treating victims of torture, testified onscreen. Dr. Crosby was called by the defense to provide an opinion on whether Mr. Nashiri is receiving appropriate medical care at the Guantánamo prison for the post-traumatic stress disorder he still suffers today as a result of his time in the CIA's torture program...

https://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security-human-rights/guantanamo-death-penalty-case-torture-matters

THE NSA ARCHIVE

The ACLU and others have long suspected that the National Security Agency has gone far beyond its mandate of gathering information for counterterrorism and foreign intelligence purposes, implementing a massive spying system to conduct bulk surveillance of hundreds of millions of innocent Americans. Those suspicions were confirmed when, on June 5, 2013, The Guardian released the first in a series of documents provided by Edward Snowden detailing the NSA's unlawful spying activities. All of the documents released since that day -- both by the media and the government -- are housed in this database. Together, they have triggered a remarkable and long-overdue public debate about the legality and propriety of the government's surveillance practices.

You can search the text of the documents using the Keyword box to the right, and you can filter the documents using the tags below that box...

https://www.aclu.org/nsa-documents-search

ACLU COURT COMPLAINT SEEKING CIA TORTURE REPORT

http://cryptocomb.org/?p=148

Civil Rights Groups Sue LAPD Over Automatic License Plate Readers

LOS ANGELES (CBS/AP) — Two privacy rights groups sued the Los Angeles Police Department and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Monday after both agencies allegedly failed to provide more information about how it uses automatic license plate readers.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California claim they filed requests for records on ALPR policy and training, along with a week’s worth of ALPR data, eight months ago under the California Public Records Act.

The LAPD and the sheriff’s department, however, allegedly refused to hand over the requested documents, according to the complaint...

http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2013/05/06/civil-rights-groups-sue-lapd-la-county-sheriffs-department-over-automatic-license-plate-readers/