FISA Amendments Act: “Targeting” and “Querying” and “Searching” Are Different Things

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Steven Aftergood suggests there’s disagreement among Senate Intelligence Committee members about whether or not the FISA Amendments Act allows the government to get US person content without a warrant.

The dispute was presented but not resolved in a new Senate Intelligence Committee report on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Amendments Act (FAA) Sunsets Extension Act, which would renew the provisions of the FISA Amendments Act through June 2017.

“We have concluded… that section 702 [of the Act] currently contains a loophole that could be used to circumvent traditional warrant protections and search for the communications of a potentially large number of American citizens,” wrote Senators Ron Wyden and Mark Udall.

But Senator Dianne Feinstein, the Committee chair, denied the existence of a loophole.  Based on the assurances of the Department of Justice and the Intelligence Community, she said that the Section 702 provisions “do not provide a means to circumvent the general requirement to obtain a court order before targeting a U.S. person under FISA.”

I don’t think there is a conflict. Rather, I think DiFi simply responded to Wyden and Udall’s assertions with the same spin the government has used for some time. That’s because DiFi is talking about “targeting” and Wyden and Udall are talking about “searching” US person communications.

DiFi quotes much of the language from Section 702 earlier in her statement on FAA, repeating, repeating the word “target” three times.

In enacting this amendment to FISA, Congress ensured there would be important protections and oversight measures to safeguard the privacy and civil liberties of U.S. persons, including specific prohibitions against using Section 702 authority to: “intentionally target any person known at the time of acquisition to be located in the United States;” “intentionally target a person reasonably believed to be located outside the United States if the purpose of such acquisition is to target a particular, known person reasonably believed to be in the United States;” “intentionally target a United States person reasonably believed to be located outside the United States;” or “intentionally acquire any communication as to which the sender and all intended recipients are known at the time of the acquisition to be located in the United States.” As an additional measure the law also requires that an acquisition under Section 702 “shall be conducted in a manner consistent with the fourth amendment to the Constitution of the United States.” [my emphasis]

Her specific retort to the problem Wyden and Udall differentiates clearly between “querying information collected under Section 702 to find communications of a particular United States person” and “conduct[ing] queries to analyze data already in its possession” and “targeting.”

Finally, on a related matter, the Committee considered whether querying information collected under Section 702 to find communications of a particular United States person should be prohibited or more robustly constrained. As already noted, the Intelligence Community is strictly prohibited from using Section 702 to target a U.S. person, which must at all times be carried out pursuant to an individualized court order based upon probable cause. Read more →

30 Ways to Shrink Intelligence Oversight

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Correction: I misunderstood a few things about this. First, this is the request from DNI, not what the Intelligence Committees have agreed to. And the House–which has taken up this request–did not accept all these requests (including the clearances audit). This post has been altered accordingly.

The DNI released their 2013 Intelligence Authorization request yesterday. Almost 10 pages of the 24 page document describe reporting that these “oversight” committees will no long require from the Intelligence Community. The bill starts by putting a default 3 year expiration on any new reporting requirements. And then it includes a list of 27 reports that the bill will eliminate and another 3 that it will modify.

And while some of the reports may well be redundant or outdated (the justification given for most of the changes), some seem really troubling. For example, the bill would eliminate a requirement–passed just three years ago–that the Administration audit and report (partially in unclassified form) the total number of security clearances and how long it takes to approve and reapprove those clearances. Here’s how the bill justifies eliminating such a report:

Justification: Section 506H includes two enduring reporting requirements. The requirement for a quadrennial audit of positions requiring security clearances should be repealed because the National Counterintelligence Executive, in partnership with other agencies with similar responsibilities, examines the manner in which security clearance requirements are determined more frequently than once every four years. Rather than submit a report regarding a quadrennial activity, the executive branch can provide more frequent briefings, as requested, if congressional interest persists.
With regard to the annual reporting requirement on security clearance determinations, the Executive Branch as a whole has made significant progress in expediting and streamlining the security clearance process since the passage of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act, thus reducing the saliency of this report. This reporting requirement should be replaced by briefings, as requested, if congressional interest persists.

What this effectively does is eliminate one way for citizens to see at least the outlines and scope of our secret government. Rather than a partially unclassified report, instead, the intelligence community will brief Congress, rendering it not only secret, but eliminating some of the paperwork that can be FOIAed or archived.

The bill also would eliminate a requirement for the Director of National Intelligence and CIA Director to each provide an annual list of any advisory committees they’ve created, their subject, and their members. I’m guessing the proposed substitution–regular Congressional notifications and briefings–is probably not going to include the same level of detail. And given ODNI’s inadequate response to Electronic Frontier Foundation on an advisory committee as important as the Intelligence Oversight Board, I’m not all that confident it will provide adequate notice on more obscure advisory committees. Moreover, there is a history of advisory board members obtaining great influence and advantages from their position. Lists of members should be on paper somewhere.

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SCOTUS Cert Grant In Clapper Takes Key 9th Circuit Cases Hostage

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Marcy noted briefly Monday morning, the Supreme Court granted certiorari in Clapper v. Amnesty International:

SCOTUS did, however, grant cert to Clapper v. Amnesty, which I wrote about here and here. On its face, Clapper is just about the FISA Amendments Act. But it also has implications for wiretap exceptions–and, I’ve argued–data mining exceptions to the Fourth Amendment. In any case, SCOTUS seems interested in reversing the 2nd Circuit opinion, which had granted standing to people whose work had been chilled by the passage of the FAA. Also, as I hope to note further today, SCOTUS’ Clapper decision may also impact the Hedges v. Obama ruling from last week.

As Marcy indicated, there is nothing good afoot from SCOTUS taking cert in Clapper; if they wanted to leave the very nice decision of the 2nd Circuit intact, they simply leave it intact and don’t grant review. Oh, and, yes, Marcy is quite right, it’s a very safe bet that Clapper will “impact” the also very nice recent decision in Hedges, which is, itself, headed with a bullet to the 2nd Circuit.

There was, of course, much discussion of the significance of the Clapper cert grant yesterday on Twitter; one of the best of which was between Marcy, Lawfare’s Steve Vladeck and, to a lesser extent, me. To make a long story a little shorter, I said (here and here):

See, and I HATE saying this, I think Kennedy will do just that+then same 5 will kill al-Haramain once it gets to SCOTUS and then they will have capped the Bush wiretapping well completely and closed off standing significantly for the future.

Yikes, I did not contemplate just how true this statement was; the Clapper cert grant has already had a far deeper and more pernicious effect than even I suspected. This morning, in a move I do not believe anybody else has caught on to yet, the 9th Circuit quietly removed both al-Haramain and the CCR case encaptioned In Re: NSA Telecommunications Litigation/CCR v. Obama from the oral argument calendar that has long been set for June 1 in the old 9th Circuit Pasadena courthouse. The orders for both al-Haramain and CCR are identical, here is the language from the al-Haramain one:

Argument in this case scheduled for June 1, 2012 in Pasadena, California, is vacated pending the Supreme Court’s decision in Clapper v. Amnesty Int’l, No. 11- 1025. The court may order supplemental briefing following the Supreme Court’s decision. Oral argument will be rescheduled.

Whoa. This is extremely significant, and extremely unfortunate. Also fairly inexplicable. Entering the order for CCR makes some sense, since it involves the same “fear of surveillance” standing issue as is at issue in Clapper; but doing it for al-Haramain makes no sense whatsoever, because al-Haramain is an “actual” surveillance standing case.

There simply is no issue of the claimed, putative, standing concern that permeates Clapper and CCR. Well, not unless the 9th Circuit panel thinks the Supreme Court might speak more broadly, and expand the parameters wildly, in Clapper just as they did in Citizens United. That would be a pretty ugly path for the Supreme beings to follow; but, apparently, not just a cynical bet on my part, but also a bet the 9th Circuit immediately placed as well.

To be fair, even positive forward thinking players, like Steve Vladeck, thought the lower courts might be copacetic, or that the Supremes might comply. Maybe not so much. I know, shocking. Here is a glimpse, through Vladeck, of the situation:

But at a more fundamental level, there’s one more point worth making: Readers are likely familiar with Alex Bickel’s Passive Virtues, and his thesis that, especially on such sensitive questions where constitutional rights intersect with national security, courts might do best to rely on justiciability doctrines to duck the issue—and to thereby avoid passing upon the merits one way or the other. [Think Joshua at the end of WarGames: “The only winning move is not to play.”] And at first blush, this looks like the perfect case for Bickel’s thesis, given the implications in either direction on the merits: recognizing a foreign intelligence surveillance exception and thereby endorsing such sweeping, warrantless interceptions of previously protected communications vs. removing this particular club from the government’s bag…

And yet, the foreign intelligence surveillance exception only exists because it has already been recognized by a circuit-level federal court, to wit, the FISA Court of Review. Whether the passive virtues might otherwise justify judicial sidestepping in such a contentious case, the fact of the matter is that this is a problem largely (albeit not entirely, thanks to the FISA Amendments Act) of the courts‘ making. To duck at this stage would be to let the FISA Court of Review—the judges of which are selected by the Chief Justice—have the last word on such a momentous question of constitutional law. In my view, at least, that would be unfortunate, and it’s certainly not what Bickel meant…

Back to al-Haramain and the effects in the 9th Circuit. Here is the latest, taken from the Motion for Reconsideration filed late yesterday by al-Haramain, Wendell Belew and Asim Ghafoor:

The question presented in Clapper is thus wholly unrelated to the issues presented on the defendants’ appeal in the present case. The Supreme Court’s decision in Clapper will have no effect on the disposition of the present case. Thus, there is no reason to delay the adjudication of this appeal pending the decision in Clapper, which would only add another year or more to the six-plus years that this case has been in litigation.

It makes sense for the Court to have vacated the oral argument date for Center for Constitutional Rights v. Obama, No. 11-15956, which involves theories of Article III standing similar to those in Clapper. It does not, however, make sense in the present case, where Article III standing is based on proof of actual past surveillance rather than the fear of future surveillance and expenditures to protect communications asserted in Clapper.

Yes, that is exactly correct.

And, therein, resides the problem with Vladeck’s interpretation of what is going on with the Clapper case. Steve undersold, severely, just how problematic Clapper is. Both the discussion herein, and the knee jerk action of the 9th Circuit, the alleged liberal scourge of Democratic Federal Appellate Courts, demonstrate how critical this all is and why Clapper is so important.

Clapper has not only consumed its own oxygen, it has consumed that of independent, and important, nee critical, elements of the only reductive cases there are left in the United States judicial system in regards to these ends. That would be, at an irreducible minimum, al-Haramain in the 9th Circuit.

If you have forgotten about al-Haramain, and the proceedings that took place in the inestimable Vaughn Walker’s, court, here it is. Of all the attempts to attack the Bush/Cheney wiretapping crimes, al-Haramain is the only court case that, due to its unique circumstances, has been successful. It alone stands for the proposition that mass crimes were, in fact, committed. al-Haramain had a tough enough road ahead of it on its own, the road has become all the more treacherous now because of Clapper.

The 9th Circuit should grant the motion for reconsideration and reinstate al-Haramain on the oral argument calendar, but that is quite likely a longshot at this point. Expect the DOJ to file a very aggressive response, they are undoubtedly jumping for joy at this stroke of good fortune and will strive to protect it.

SCOTUS Grants Clapper Cert, Stalls on Detainee Cases

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SCOTUS has just listed orders from last week’s conference, where they had been discussing the handful of Gitmo cases that had petitions for cert pending. It has relisted the detainee cases, which suggests they may need a week or more to sort through their decision.

SCOTUS did, however, grant cert to Clapper v. Amnesty, which I wrote about here and here. On its face, Clapper is just about the FISA Amendments Act. But it also has implications for wiretap exceptions–and, I’ve argued–data mining exceptions to the Fourth Amendment. In any case, SCOTUS seems interested in reversing the 2nd Circuit opinion, which had granted standing to people whose work had been chilled by the passage of the FAA. Also, as I hope to note further today, SCOTUS’ Clapper decision may also impact the Hedges v. Obama ruling from last week.

Confessions of an Orwellian Oppenheimer

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Drunken Predator has one of the smartest descriptions of what I agree are two of the biggest reasons to oppose drones. On one side, he describes “Oppenheimers” who oppose some international uses of drones out of concern for the way they expand the Imperial Presidency.

I’ll call the first group “Oppenheimers,” after a guy who got a good look at a new kind of warfare and spent the rest of his life championing international institutions to make sure it never took place. They feel that remotely-piloted aircraft represent a qualitative shift in the ability of a nation, and a chief executive, to use force. And not a shift for the better.

Oppenheimers think drones will usher in an Imperial presidency. The capitalization there is important, because we’re talking Imperial as in Palpatine at the helm of the Galactic Empire. They fear that through technical means, drones are reducing or eliminating the political impediments to war, and blurring the line about what kind of conflict constitutes war in the first place. (Nobody puts a flag over drone wreckage, let alone puts it on the nightly news.) Oppenheimers also deplore the role that drones play in the larger framework of the Authorization for Use of Military Force, or AUMF, which the Obama administration interprets as giving them clearance to use force (whether under Titles 10 or 50) against al-Qaeda or its affiliates anywhere on the planet.

The first part of his description–the way drones used outside of war zones change the way we wage war–gets at part of what I was trying to describe in my two posts on drones and sovereignty and the nation-state. Drones not only degrade the sovereignty of and therefore the ability to govern in states like Pakistan in dangerous ways, but they shift the relationship between us and our own government, allowing it to wage war relatively free of political limits, which in turn appears to be accompanying and related to fundamental changes in the social compact between the government and the governed.

I’d add two things to DP’s description, though. First, drones are not changing warfare alone. So are our expanded use of special forces (which, so long as they don’t fight in uniforms and fight in countries we’re not at war with, resemble the unprivileged enemy combatants and tactics this war started by targeting) and mercenaries. Those developments all work together to support the same changes in warfare; drones just happen to be the most visible evidence of those developments.

Also, this is not just about the AUMF. As I noted on Twitter, there are reasons to believe some of our drone strikes (and some of our paramilitary activities) are operating at least partially under the September 17, 2001 “Gloves Come Off” Memorandum of Notification, not the AUMF (or, as Stephen Preston suggested recently, an AUMF would be separate and independent from authorities that derived from Article II authority covered in a Finding). At this point, the distinction between Title 10 (military) and Title 50 (intelligence) authorities appears to have become a shell game, giving Presidents two different ways to authorize and approve various activities based on the buy-in from Congress, international sensitivities, the actual targets, and skill sets available. This–plus an urge toward “flexibility” in law enforcement and data sharing in intelligence generally–has made it easy to use tools justified for one target (like al Qaeda) to fight another target (like non-AQ terrorists or drug cartels or leakers).

The blurring between Title 10 and 50 and domestic intelligence and law enforcement is important when we get to DP’s second group, “Orwells,” who oppose drones because of concern about drones used in domestic surveillance.

Their primary concern about drones is domestic. They see the technological potential for drone surveillance, the interest from law enforcement and government agencies, and the massive aerospace industry primed to meet the demand. While there are often noises made about UAV safety, the primary gripe of Orwells- who can point to an actual passage in 1984 which describes small unmanned aircraft peering through people’s windows- is that drones are vanguards of a pervasive surveillance culture. The police watch you outside with robots, corporations like Facebook and Google parse your user data to better bombard you with ads, and the NSA hoovers up your phone and email communications to feed through a secret counter-terrorism algorithm.

Before I look at two characteristics of DP’s discussion of domestic drones, here’s where he goes with this discussion: he suggests, first of all, that drone opponents use the same stock photos because they most effectively–but inaccurately–generate support for both arguments.

It’s a lot easier to make people uneasy over privacy concerns when you pair the article with pictures of a targeted-killing machine. Same way it’s easier to make people care about collateral damage in Yemen or the Phillipines by being able to say with a straight face, “You may be next.” This line-blurring is inaccurate, widespread, and actively harmful to an informed debate.

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Defying the Rules of Gravity, Obama Directs Sanctions Solely against Israel’s Enemies

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In conjunction with his speech at the Holocaust Museum yesterday and announcement of the Atrocities Prevention Board, President Obama also rolled out sanctions against those who use IT to repress human rights. The Treasury Department named the sanctions GRAHVITY (I think they get it from “GRAve Human rights abuses Via Information TechnologY” or some such Orwellian acronym).

There’s a problem with that. We are all subject to gravity.

But only Israel’s enemies–Iran and Syria–are subject to GRAHVITY.

This exclusive application was set up in yesterday’s speech when Elie Wiesel suggested the point of remembering the Holocaust was to guarantee the strength of Israel and ensure its enemies–in this case, Syria and Iran–are removed from office (and deprived of the same weapons Israel stockpiles against them).

Have you learned anything from it? If so, how is it that Assad is still in power? How is it that the Holocaust Number 1 denier, Ahmadinejad, is still a President, he who threatens to use nuclear weapons–to use nuclear weapons–to destroy the Jewish state?

[snip]

Now, I hope you understand, in this place [the Museum], why Israel is so important, not only to the Jew that I am and the Jewish people, but to the world. Israel cannot not remember. And because it remembers, it must be strong, just to defend its own survival and its own destiny.

Obama’s focus was broader. In his speech, he listed Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, Darfur, Côte d’Ivoire, Libya (with no mention of the civilian casualties NATO caused), the Lords Resistance Army.

But Obama, too, focuses primarily on Syria.

In this speech, the sole reason to ensure internet freedom, according to Obama, is to bring about regime change in Syria.

And when innocents suffer, it tears at our conscience. Elie alluded to what we feel as we see the Syrian people subjected to unspeakable violence, simply for demanding their universal rights. And we have to do everything we can. And as we do, we have to remember that despite all the tanks and all the snipers, all the torture and brutality unleashed against them, the Syrian people still brave the streets. They still demand to be heard. They still seek their dignity. The Syrian people have not given up, which is why we cannot give up.

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Episode Three of Who Rules Your World? Begins: The Leak Retribution Event

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Episode one of Who Rules Your World?, pitting Barack Obama against Rupert Murdoch, passed mostly under the radar. The “privatize education” event ended in an early draw when the darling of both contestants, Michelle Rhee, resigned in disgrace for a cheating scandal. Though in truth, Murdoch’s loss of a big NY state contract (the contract opportunity arose out of Obama’s Race to the Top program) and Obama’s determination to continue his reforms using executive orders tips the balance to the President.

Episode two of Who Rules the World?, the illegal wiretap cover-up, has thus far been a clear Obama win. Within weeks after taking office, Obama reaffirmed the state secrets invocations of his predecessor. And while al-Haramain still fights to impose penalties in its successful case against the government, Obama has otherwise succeeded in shielding the government for any accountability for illegal wiretapping. Crucially, John Brennan, who had a role in the illegal wiretap program, has suffered no consequences for his role in the scandal.

Rupert’s son James has not enjoyed the same luck Brennan has. He had to resign from BSkyB to prevent News Corp’s hacking scandal from endangering the rest of the corporation’s business plans. Add in the substantial fines News Corp has already paid and the likelihood that a number of people involved in its illegal wiretap program will do jail time, and it’s clear that Obama has won the illegal wiretap coverup hands down.

Episode Three of Who Rules Your World?, leak retribution, might be more interesting. Sure, the retribution against Jeff Sterling for his employment dispute with John Brennan and John Kiriakou for revealing members of the torture squads (a program Brennan also had ties to) are ongoing. But the case against Thomas Drake for exposing the graft involved in NSA’s illegal wiretap contracts blew up in spectacular fashion; plus, the failure of the retribution against Drake has led to more revelations about the illegal wiretap program.

Meanwhile, we’re just beginning to see how News Corp will respond to the efforts of Fox Mole, now exposed as Joe Muto, for passing embarrassing videos to Gawker. It will be particularly interesting to see how Fox balances retribution with a desire to prevent any more embarrassing revelations. Though of course, Fox is hampered because unlike Obama, he can’t make Fox Mole unemployable by withdrawing his security clearance. Unlike national security whistleblowers, Muto’s employment prospects probably just got a lot rosier, as other news outlets scramble to add to News Corp’s discomfort.

It’s probably just as well that Obama is winning Who Rules Your World? by such margins at this point. I wouldn’t want Rupert to get smart ideas about trying to compete in the assassinations category.

CIA General Counsel: If the President Authorizes It, It’s Legal

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I do hope the Harvard students who listened to this speech from CIA General Counsel Stephen Preston–in which he purported to explain what a law-abiding agency the CIA is and which appears to be the CIA’s effort to prove that the Anwar al-Awlaki killing was legal–are sophisticated enough to realize he, like all spooks, was peddling deceit. I’ll get to those details below.

But first I want to focus on how he bookends his claim that CIA’s “activities are subject to strict internal and external scrutiny.”

He starts by admitting that courts and citizens are not part of this “external scrutiny.”

It is true that a lot of what the CIA does is shielded from public view, and for good reason: much of what the CIA does is a secret! Secrecy is absolutely essential to a functioning intelligence service, and a functioning intelligence service is absolutely essential to national security, today no less than in the past. This is not lost on the federal judiciary. The courts have long recognized the state secrets privilege and have consistently upheld its proper invocation to protect intelligence sources and methods from disclosure. Moreover, federal judges have dismissed cases on justiciability or political question grounds, acknowledging that the courts are, at times, institutionally ill-equipped and constitutionally incapable of reviewing national security decisions committed to the President and the political branches.

Let’s unpack the logic of this: first, CIA operations are subject to strict “external scrutiny.” But because–“national security”–such external scrutiny is not possible.

Next, Preston claims that the courts have been in the business of consistently upholding the “proper invocation” of state secrets “to protect intelligence sources and methods.” Of course, just about every invocation of state secrets has been subsequently or contemporaneously shown to be an effort to protect–at best–misconduct and, in most cases, illegal activities: things like kidnapping, illegal wiretapping, and torture. So when he describes this “proper invocation” of states secrets, he is effectively saying that when lawsuits threatened to expose CIA’s law-breaking, courts have willingly dismissed those cases in the name of sources and methods.

And even before it gets to that stage, courts will bow to the Executive Branch’s claim that only Congress and the Executive can decide what forms of law-breaking by the CIA will be tolerated; courts are “ill-equipped” to judge the legality of illegal actions if those illegal actions are committed by the CIA.

So to prove that CIA’s ops are subject to “external scrutiny,” Preston starts by admitting that two of the most important agents of external scrutiny–citizens and courts–don’t actually exercise any scrutiny, particularly in cases where the government is willing to invoke state secrets to shield illegal activities.

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Data Mining Adoptive Parents along with Suspected Terrorists

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I’m a sucker for groups of adoptive kids. Like the time when a group of Michigan families with adopted Ethiopian kids had a rambunctious reunion at my favorite Ethiopian restaurant, with the owner catering to the kids like a grandparent. Or the time I shared a restaurant in Guangzhou with a bunch of French families who had just picked up their baby daughters; they somehow expected these girls who had lived in Chinese orphanages to immediately understand how to act like proper French kids.

There’s a lot that can be abusive in international adoptions, but when I see joyful gatherings like these, I’m awestruck by the faith such parents have in our common humanity.

Which is why I’ve been obsessing by one of the implications of this post. As I noted, DHS’s Inspector General helpfully explained that among all the other people in DHS’ IDENT database are the American citizens who had adopted internationally.

Individuals with fingerprints in IDENT include persons with an immigration history, such as aliens who have been removed but have reentered the country, immigration visa applicants, legal permanent residents, naturalized citizens, and some U.S. citizens.
IDENT includes two categories of U.S. citizens:

  • Citizens who have adopted a child from abroad (which involves U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services), participated in a trusted traveler program, or may have been fingerprinted by immigration officials for smuggling aliens or drugs across U.S. borders;
  • Individuals who were not citizens at the time that their fingerprints were collected, but subsequently became citizens through naturalization, legal permanent residency, or immigration.[my emphasis]

Now, we can be pretty sure that when NCTC decided it needed to acquire US agency databases and data mine them with their existing terrorism databases, complete with the US person data they included, the IDENT database–the primary purpose of which is to track people who’ve come through the immigration system–was one of the first databases they went after.

Which is another way of saying the US persons in the IDENT database should assume they’ll also be in NCTC’s databases for five years. Including those parents who adopted children from China or Ethiopia or Guatemala or Romania.

“Well, if they’ve done nothing wrong they don’t have anything to be worried about.”

Perhaps. Except that the kind of people who adopt kids internationally may also tend to have reason for a significant number of international connections, whether because of religious faith, an effort to establish some tie to their child’s native country, or a comfort with international travel.

There are a lot of people whose biometric data shouldn’t be mined along with a bunch of terrorist suspects. At the top of that list, though, are families whose primary interaction with Bureau of Customs and Immigration Services entailed adopting a baby from another country.

Gareth Williams Inquest to be Secret Tribunal

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I’ve been blogging about British efforts to expands the use of closed material proceedings so it won’t reveal embarrassing details about its cooperation in American torture in the future.

Which makes it interesting that Britain’s Foreign Secretary, William Hague, has ordered that the inquest into the death of GCHQ scientist Gareth Williams will be secret. Williams is the GCHQ-on-loan-to-MI6 sometimes-on-loan-to-NSA scientist whose body was found in a gym duffel in his flat a few years ago.

All sorts of cover stories have been leaked about his death: that it was some sort of gay bondage gone bad, that the Russian mafia took him out.

I’ve been most intrigued by the detail that Williams was working with NSA at the time when the US blew up the British planes investigation.

Whatever the reason, we’re not likely to find out, at least not immediately, because of the secrecy surrounding the inquest.

I’m not surprised the Brits don’t want their spy stories told in public, mind you.

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