- C.I.A. Tells of Bush's Directive on the Handling of Detainees - Holt renews call for e-voting law - Open-source intelligence moving to the fore Patrice McDermott, Director OpenTheGovernment.org 202-332-OPEN (6736) www.openthegovernment.org - C.I.A. TELLS OF BUSH'S DIRECTIVE ON THE HANDLING OF DETAINEES http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/15/washington/15intel.html November 15, 2006 By DAVID JOHNSTON WASHINGTON, Nov. 14 - The Central Intelligence Agency has acknowledged for the first time the existence of two classified documents, including a directive signed by President Bush, that have guided the agency's interrogation and detention of terror suspects. The C.I.A. referred to the documents in a letter sent Friday from the agency's associate general counsel, John L. McPherson, to lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union. The contents of the documents were not revealed, but one of them is "a directive signed by President Bush granting the C.I.A. the authority to set up detention facilities outside the United States and outlining interrogation methods that may be used against detainees," the A.C.L.U. said, based on its review of published accounts. The second document, according to the group, is a Justice Department legal analysis "specifying interrogation methods that the C.I.A. may use against top Al Qaeda members." [..] ... The group added that the agency had said national security would be jeopardized if it were compelled to disclose in any way its involvement in interrogations. In the C.I.A. letter, Mr. McPherson confirmed the existence of the documents but declined to release them, saying that essentially all of their contents were exempt from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act because release would damage national security and violate attorney-client privilege. [...] The November 10 CIA letter is online at: www.aclu.org/safefree/torture/27365lgl20061109.html (Note: the CIA letter refers to the documents by numbers. For a list of corresponding documents go to www.aclu.org/safefree/torture/27380lgl20061114.html) To date, more than 100,000 pages of government documents have been released in response to the ACLU's Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit. The ACLU has been posting these documents online at: www.aclu.org/torturefoia. *** - HOLT RENEWS CALL FOR E-VOTING LAW http://www.fcw.com/article96837-11-15-06-Web BY Michael Hardy Published on Nov. 15, 2006 As the dust settles from Election Day earlier this month, Rep. Rush Holt (D-N.J.) is urging Congress to pass his Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act, a bill that would, among other things, require electronic voting systems to generate a paper record for audits and recounts. The electronic systems used in the latest election malfunctioned in some jurisdictions, throwing the counts for some vote tallies into doubt. At least one House race in Florida remains undecided because machines made by ES&S did not record votes for 18,000 voters in a race in which only about 400 votes separate the two candidates. According to published accounts, the 18,000 votes not recorded in Sarasota County, Fla., represent about a 13 percent undervote rate. Normally, undervotes mean voters did not cast a ballot in the race, but only about 2.5 percent of the voters who voted via absentee ballot chose not to vote in the race between Democrat Christine Jennings and Republican Vernon Buchanan. Many voters had complained to elections officials that they had trouble getting their votes to record on the machines, according to reports. Officials are investigating. [...] If passed, the bill would, among other things: . Require that voters have the opportunity to verify the accuracy of an archival copy of their recorded votes. . Require that all voting systems produce a voter-verified paper record for use in manual audits, and provide as much as $150 million to help states meet the cost. . Ban the use of undisclosed software and all wireless and concealed communications devices in voting systems, and forbid the connection of any voting machine component to the Internet. . Require random, unannounced, hand-count audits of the voter-verified paper records in 2 percent of all precincts, including at least one precinct per county, with authorization to provide the funding necessary to cover the cost. *** - OPEN-SOURCE INTELLIGENCE MOVING TO THE FORE http://www.gcn.com/online/vol1_no1/42604-1.html?topic=technology-policy 11/16/06 -- 10:48 AM By Patience Wait [...] The OSC was established just a year ago, incorporating as its foundation the Foreign Broadcast Information Service, a division of the CIA. Its mission is to mine "the world's unguarded knowledge," from all the channels available - the Internet, print, broadcast media, podcasts, anything that contains information, in any language, from any country - and glean all the data contained there. The data is archived, and OSC analysts can then draw upon it in response to queries from all levels of government; Naquin said that in addition to the intelligence community, the center fields requests from the Defense Department, civilian agencies and state and local law enforcement. [...] Historically, the intelligence community has not been that interested in publicly available information; the emphasis has been on developing covert information. But "there just might be relatively - relatively - fewer secrets today," Naquin said. The advent of information channels such as blogs and YouTube increases the likelihood that something once considered secret will make its way into the public discourse, he said. The center also has taken pains to establish metrics to validate its usefulness, Naquin said. For instance, he set a target for this year that 25 percent of all the analysts trained in using open source should come from outside the CIA. "On Sept. 30 we met our target," he said. [...]
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