TELECOM Digest     Mon, 7 Nov 2005 12:55:00 EST    Volume 24 : Issue 506

Inside This Issue:                            Editor: Patrick A. Townson

    An FBI Secret Letter and Order (Barton Gellman)
    Yahoo, Google to Launch Wireless Service (Reuters News Wire)
    Gooogle Offers Mapping Software (Associated Press News Wire)
    Online Movie Pirate Gets 3 Months in Jail (Reuters News Wire)
    CSL Launches Asia's First Commercial Video Sharing Service (Monty Solomon)
    Yahoo, TiVo Team Up on TV, Web Service (Monty Solomon)
    Increase DTMF Tones (frederic.willem@gmail.com)
    Cellular-News for Monday 7th November 2005 (Cellular-News)
    Re: Wabash Cannonball (Was: Old Chicago Numbering) (davidesan@gmail.com)

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We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we
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See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details
and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest.  

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: Barton Gellman <washpost@teleco-digest.org>
Subject: An FBI Secret Letter and Order
Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2005 10:12:53 -0600



[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Excerpts from a rather lengthy article
over the weekend in Washingon Post. See the newspaper's web site for
the entire article.  http://washingtonpost.com  And people think Joe
McCarthy was bad news ...   PAT]

The FBI's Secret Scrutiny
In Hunt for Terrorists, Bureau Examines Records of Ordinary Americans

By Barton Gellman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 6, 2005; A01

The FBI came calling in Windsor, Conn., this summer with a document
marked for delivery by hand. On Matianuk Avenue, across from the
tennis courts, two special agents found their man. They gave George
Christian the letter, which warned him to tell no one, ever, what it
said.

Under the shield and stars of the FBI crest, the letter directed
Christian to surrender "all subscriber information, billing
information and access logs of any person" who used a specific
computer at a library branch some distance away. Christian, who
manages digital records for three dozen Connecticut libraries, said in
an affidavit that he configures his system for privacy. But the
vendors of the software he operates said their databases can reveal
the Web sites that visitors browse, the e-mail accounts they open and
the books they borrow.

Christian refused to hand over those records, and his employer,
Library Connection Inc., filed suit for the right to protest the FBI
demand in public. The Washington Post established their identities --
still under seal in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit --
by comparing unsealed portions of the file with public records and
information gleaned from people who had no knowledge of the FBI
demand.

The Connecticut case affords a rare glimpse of an exponentially
growing practice of domestic surveillance under the USA Patriot Act,
which marked its fourth anniversary on Oct. 26. "National security
letters," created in the 1970s for espionage and terrorism
investigations, originated as narrow exceptions in consumer privacy
law, enabling the FBI to review in secret the customer records of
suspected foreign agents. The Patriot Act, and Bush administration
guidelines for its use, transformed those letters by permitting
clandestine scrutiny of U.S. residents and visitors who are not
alleged to be terrorists or spies.

The FBI now issues more than 30,000 national security letters a year,
according to government sources, a hundredfold increase over historic
norms.  The letters -- one of which can be used to sweep up the
records of many people -- are extending the bureau's reach as never
before into the telephone calls, correspondence and financial lives of
ordinary Americans.

Issued by FBI field supervisors, national security letters do not need
the imprimatur of a prosecutor, grand jury or judge. They receive no
review after the fact by the Justice Department or Congress. The
executive branch maintains only statistics, which are incomplete and
confined to classified reports. The Bush administration defeated
legislation and a lawsuit to require a public accounting, and has
offered no example in which the use of a national security letter
helped disrupt a terrorist plot.

The burgeoning use of national security letters coincides with an
unannounced decision to deposit all the information they yield into
government data banks -- and to share those private records widely, in
the federal government and beyond. In late 2003, the Bush
administration reversed a long-standing policy requiring agents to
destroy their files on innocent American citizens, companies and
residents when investigations closed. Late last month, President Bush
signed Executive Order 13388, expanding access to those files for
"state, local and tribal" governments and for "appropriate private
sector entities," which are not defined.

National security letters offer a case study of the impact of the
Patriot Act outside the spotlight of political debate. Drafted in
haste after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the law's 132 pages wrought
scores of changes in the landscape of intelligence and law
enforcement. Many received far more attention than the amendments to a
seemingly pedestrian power to review "transactional records." But few
if any other provisions touch as many ordinary Americans without their
knowledge.

Senior FBI officials acknowledged in interviews that the proliferation
of national security letters results primarily from the bureau's new
authority to collect intimate facts about people who are not suspected
of any wrongdoing. Criticized for failure to detect the Sept. 11 plot,
the bureau now casts a much wider net, using national security letters
to generate leads as well as to pursue them. Casual or unwitting
contact with a suspect -- a single telephone call, for example -- may
attract the attention of investigators and subject a person to
scrutiny about which he never learns.

A national security letter cannot be used to authorize eavesdropping
or to read the contents of e-mail. But it does permit investigators to
trace revealing paths through the private affairs of a modern digital
citizen. The records it yields describe where a person makes and
spends money, with whom he lives and lived before, how much he
gambles, what he buys online, what he pawns and borrows, where he
travels, how he invests, what he searches for and reads on the Web,
and who telephones or e-mails him at home and at work.

As it wrote the Patriot Act four years ago, Congress bought time and
leverage for oversight by placing an expiration date on 16
provisions. The changes involving national security letters were not
among them. In fact, as the Dec. 31 deadline approaches and Congress
prepares to renew or make permanent the expiring provisions, House and
Senate conferees are poised again to amplify the FBI's power to compel
the secret surrender of private records.

The House and Senate have voted to make noncompliance with a national
security letter a criminal offense. The House would also impose a
prison term for breach of secrecy.

Like many Patriot Act provisions, the ones involving national security
letters have been debated in largely abstract terms. The Justice
Department has offered Congress no concrete information, even in
classified form, save for a partial count of the number of letters
delivered. The statistics do not cover all forms of national security
letters or all U.S. agencies making use of them.

"The beef with the NSLs is that they don't have even a pretense of
judicial or impartial scrutiny," said former representative Robert
L. Barr Jr. (Ga.), who finds himself allied with the American Civil
Liberties Union after a career as prosecutor, CIA analyst and
conservative GOP stalwart. "There's no checks and balances whatever on
them. It is simply some bureaucrat's decision that they want
information, and they can basically just go and get it."

'A Routine Tool'

Career investigators and Bush administration officials emphasized, in
congressional testimony and interviews for this story, that national
security letters are for hunting terrorists, not fishing through the
private lives of the innocent. The distinction is not as clear in
practice.

Under the old legal test, the FBI had to have "specific and
articulable" reasons to believe the records it gathered in secret
belonged to a terrorist or a spy. Now the bureau needs only to certify
that the records are "sought for" or "relevant to" an investigation
"to protect against international terrorism or clandestine
intelligence activities."

That standard enables investigators to look for conspirators by
sifting the records of nearly anyone who crosses a suspect's path.

"If you have a list of, say, 20 telephone numbers that have come up
 ... on a bad guy's telephone," said Valerie E. Caproni, the FBI's
general counsel, "you want to find out who he's in contact with."
Investigators will say, " 'Okay, phone company, give us subscriber
information and toll records on these 20 telephone numbers,' and that
can easily be 100."

Bush administration officials compare national security letters to
grand jury subpoenas, which are also based on "relevance" to an
inquiry. There are differences. Grand juries tend to have a narrower
focus because they investigate past conduct, not the speculative
threat of unknown future attacks. Recipients of grand jury subpoenas
are generally free to discuss the subpoenas publicly. And there are
strict limits on sharing grand jury information with government
agencies.

Since the Patriot Act, the FBI has dispersed the authority to sign
national security letters to more than five dozen supervisors -- the
special agents in charge of field offices, the deputies in New York,
Los Angeles and Washington, and a few senior headquarters
officials. FBI rules established after the Patriot Act allow the
letters to be issued long before a case is judged substantial enough
for a "full field investigation." Agents commonly use the letters now
in "preliminary investigations" and in the "threat assessments" that
precede a decision whether to launch an investigation.

"Congress has given us this tool to obtain basic telephone data, basic
banking data, basic credit reports," said Caproni, who is among the
officials with signature authority. "The fact that a national security
letter is a routine tool used, that doesn't bother me."

If agents had to wait for grounds to suspect a person of ill intent,
said Joseph Billy Jr., the FBI's deputy assistant director for
counterterrorism, they would already know what they want to find out
with a national security letter. "It's all chicken and egg," he
said. "We're trying to determine if someone warrants scrutiny or
doesn't."

Billy said he understands that "merely being in a government or FBI
database ... gives everybody, you know, neck hair standing up."
Innocent Americans, he said, "should take comfort at least knowing
that it is done under a great deal of investigative care, oversight,
within the parameters of the law."

He added: "That's not going to satisfy a majority of people, but
 ... I've had people say, you know, 'Hey, I don't care, I've done
nothing to be concerned about. You can have me in your files and
that's that.' Some people take that approach."

'Don't Go Overboard'

In Room 7975 of the J. Edgar Hoover Building, around two corners from
the director's suite, the chief of the FBI's national security law
unit sat down at his keyboard about a month after the Patriot Act
became law. Michael J.  Woods had helped devise the FBI wish list for
surveillance powers. Now he offered a caution.

"NSLs are powerful investigative tools, in that they can compel the
production of substantial amounts of relevant information," he wrote
in a Nov. 28, 2001, "electronic communication" to the FBI's 56 field
offices.  "However, they must be used judiciously." Standing
guidelines, he wrote, "require that the FBI accomplish its
investigations through the 'least intrusive' means. The greater
availability of NSLs does not mean that they should be used in every
case."

Woods, who left government service in 2002, added a practical
consideration.  Legislators granted the new authority and could as
easily take it back. When making that decision, he wrote, "Congress
certainly will examine the manner in which the FBI exercised it."

Looking back last month, Woods was struck by how starkly he misjudged
the climate. The FBI disregarded his warning, and no one noticed.

"This is not something that should be automatically done because it's
easy," he said. "We need to be sure ... we don't go overboard."

One thing Woods did not anticipate was then-Attorney General John D.
Ashcroft's revision of Justice Department guidelines. On May 30, 2002,
and Oct. 31, 2003, Ashcroft rewrote the playbooks for investigations
of terrorist crimes and national security threats. He gave overriding
priority to preventing attacks by any means available.

Ashcroft remained bound by Executive Order 12333, which requires the
use of the "least intrusive means" in domestic intelligence
investigations. But his new interpretation came close to upending the
mandate. Three times in the new guidelines, Ashcroft wrote that the
FBI "should consider ... less intrusive means" but "should not
hesitate to use any lawful techniques ... even if intrusive" when
investigators believe them to be more timely. "This point," he added,
"is to be particularly observed in investigations relating to
terrorist activities."

'Why Do You Want to Know?'

As the Justice Department prepared congressional testimony this year,
FBI headquarters searched for examples that would show how expanded
surveillance powers made a difference. Michael Mason, who runs the
Washington field office and has the rank of assistant FBI director,
found no ready answer.

"I'd love to have a made-for-Hollywood story, but I don't have one,"
Mason said. "I am not even sure such an example exists."

What national security letters give his agents, Mason said, is speed.

"I have 675 terrorism cases," he said. "Every one of these is a
potential threat. And anything I can do to get to the bottom of any
one of them more quickly gets me closer to neutralizing a potential
threat."

Because recipients are permanently barred from disclosing the letters,
outsiders can make no assessment of their relevance to Mason's task.

Woods, the former FBI lawyer, said secrecy is essential when an
investigation begins because "it would defeat the whole purpose" to
tip off a suspected terrorist or spy, but national security seldom
requires that the secret be kept forever. Even mobster "John Gotti
finds out eventually that he was wiretapped" in a criminal probe, said
Peter Swire, the federal government's chief privacy counselor until
2001. "Anyone caught up in an NSL investigation never gets notice."

To establish the "relevance" of the information they seek, agents face
a test so basic it is hard to come up with a plausible way to fail. A
model request for a supervisor's signature, according to internal FBI
guidelines, offers this one-sentence suggestion: "This subscriber
information is being requested to determine the individuals or
entities that the subject has been in contact with during the past six
months."

Edward L. Williams, the chief division counsel in Mason's office, said
that supervisors, in practice, "aren't afraid to ask ... 'Why do you
want to know?' " He would not say how many requests, if any, are
rejected.

'The Abuse Is in the Power Itself'

Those who favor the new rules maintain -- as Sen. Pat Roberts
(R-Kan.), chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, put
it in a prepared statement -- that "there has not been one
substantiated allegation of abuse of these lawful intelligence tools."

What the Bush administration means by abuse is unauthorized use of
surveillance data -- for example, to blackmail an enemy or track an
estranged spouse. Critics are focused elsewhere. What troubles them is
not unofficial abuse but the official and routine intrusion into
private lives.

To Jeffrey Breinholt, deputy chief of the Justice Department's
counterterrorism section, the civil liberties objections "are
eccentric."  Data collection on the innocent, he said, does no harm
unless "someone [decides] to act on the information, put you on a
no-fly list or something."  Only a serious error, he said, could lead
the government, based on nothing more than someone's bank or phone
records, "to freeze your assets or go after you criminally and you
suffer consequences that are irreparable." He added: "It's a pretty
small chance."

"I don't necessarily want somebody knowing what videos I rent or the
fact that I like cartoons," said Mason, the Washington field office
chief. But if those records "are never used against a person, if
they're never used to put him in jail, or deprive him of a vote, et
cetera, then what is the argument?"

Barr, the former congressman, said that "the abuse is in the power
itself."

"As a conservative," he said, "I really resent an administration that
calls itself conservative taking the position that the burden is on
the citizen to show the government has abused power, and otherwise
shut up and comply."

At the ACLU, staff attorney Jameel Jaffer spoke of "the profound
chilling effect" of this kind of surveillance: "If the government
monitors the Web sites that people visit and the books that they read,
people will stop visiting disfavored Web sites and stop reading
disfavored books. The FBI should not have unchecked authority to keep
track of who visits [al-Jazeera's Web site] or who visits the Web site
of the Federalist Society."

Links in a Chain

Ready access to national security letters allows investigators to
employ them routinely for "contact chaining."

"Starting with your bad guy and his telephone number and looking at
who he's calling, and [then] who they're calling," the number of
people surveilled "goes up exponentially," acknowledged Caproni, the
FBI's general counsel.

But Caproni said it would not be rational for the bureau to follow the
chain too far. "Everybody's connected" if investigators keep tracing
calls "far enough away from your targeted bad guy," she said. "What's
the point of that?"

One point is to fill government data banks for another investigative
technique. That one is called "link analysis," a practice Caproni
would neither confirm nor deny.

Two years ago, Ashcroft rescinded a 1995 guideline directing that
information obtained through a national security letter about a
U.S. citizen or resident "shall be destroyed by the FBI and not
further disseminated" if it proves "not relevant to the purposes for
which it was collected."  Ashcroft's new order was that "the FBI shall
retain" all records it collects and "may disseminate" them freely
among federal agencies.

The same order directed the FBI to develop "data mining" technology to
probe for hidden links among the people in its growing cache of
electronic files.  According to an FBI status report, the bureau's
office of intelligence began operating in January 2004 a new
Investigative Data Warehouse, based on the same Oracle technology used
by the CIA. The CIA is generally forbidden to keep such files on
Americans.

Data mining intensifies the impact of national security letters,
because anyone's personal files can be scrutinized again and again
without a fresh need to establish relevance.

"The composite picture of a person which emerges from transactional
information is more telling than the direct content of your speech,"
said Woods, the former FBI lawyer. "That's certainly not been lost on
the intelligence community and the FBI."

Ashcroft's new guidelines allowed the FBI for the first time to add to
government files consumer data from commercial providers such as
LexisNexis and ChoicePoint Inc. Previous attorneys general had decided
that such a move would violate the Privacy Act. In many field offices,
agents said, they now have access to ChoicePoint in their squad rooms.

What national security letters add to government data banks is
information that no commercial service can lawfully possess. Strict
privacy laws, for example, govern financial and communications
records. National security letters -- along with the more powerful but
much less frequently used secret subpoenas from the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Court -- override them.

'What Happens in Vegas'

The bureau displayed its ambition for data mining in an emergency
operation at the end of 2003.

The Department of Homeland Security declared an orange alert on
Dec. 21 of that year, in part because of intelligence that hinted at a
New Year's Eve attack in Las Vegas. The identities of the plotters
were unknown.

The FBI sent Gurvais Grigg, chief of the bureau's little-known
Proactive Data Exploitation Unit, in an audacious effort to assemble a
real-time census of every visitor in the nation's most-visited
city. An average of about 300,000 tourists a day stayed an average of
four days each, presenting Grigg's team with close to a million
potential suspects in the ensuing two weeks.

A former stockbroker with a degree in biochemistry, Grigg declined to
be interviewed. Government and private sector sources who followed the
operation described epic efforts to vacuum up information.

An interagency task force began pulling together the records of every
hotel guest, everyone who rented a car or truck, every lease on a
storage space, and every airplane passenger who landed in the
city. Grigg's unit filtered that population for leads. Any link to the
known terrorist universe -- a shared address or utility account, a
check deposited, a telephone call -- could give investigators a start.

"It was basically a manhunt, and in circumstances where there is a
manhunt, the most effective way of doing that was to scoop up a lot of
third party data and compare it to other data we were getting,"
Breinholt said.

Investigators began with emergency requests for help from the city's
sprawling hospitality industry. "A lot of it was done voluntary at
first," said Billy, the deputy assistant FBI director.

According to others directly involved, investigators turned to
national security letters and grand jury subpoenas when friendly
persuasion did not work.

Early in the operation, according to participants, the FBI gathered
casino executives and asked for guest lists. The MGM Mirage company,
followed by others, balked.

"Some casinos were saying no to consent [and said], 'You have to
produce a piece of paper,' " said Jeff Jonas, chief scientist at IBM
Entity Analytics, who previously built data management systems for
casino surveillance. "They don't just market 'What happens in Vegas
stays in Vegas.' They want it to be true."

The operation remained secret for about a week. Then casino sources
told Rod Smith, gaming editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, that
the FBI had served national security letters on them. In an interview
for this article, one former casino executive confirmed the use of a
national security letter.  Details remain elusive. Some law
enforcement officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity because
they had not been authorized to divulge particulars, said they relied
primarily on grand jury subpoenas. One said in an interview that
national security letters may eventually have been withdrawn. Agents
encouraged voluntary disclosures, he said, by raising the prospect
that the FBI would use the letters to gather something more sensitive:
the gambling profiles of casino guests. Caproni declined to confirm or
deny that account.

What happened in Vegas stayed in federal data banks. Under Ashcroft's
revised policy, none of the information has been purged. For every
visitor, Breinholt said, "the record of the Las Vegas hotel room would
still exist."

Grigg's operation found no suspect, and the orange alert ended on
Jan. 10, 2004."The whole thing washed out," one participant said.

'Of Interest to President Bush'

At around the time the FBI found George Christian in Connecticut,
agents from the bureau's Charlotte field office paid an urgent call on
the chemical engineering department at North Carolina State University
in Raleigh. They were looking for information about a former student
named Magdy Nashar, then suspected in the July 7 London subway bombing
but since cleared of suspicion.

University officials said in interviews late last month that the FBI
tried to use a national security letter to demand much more
information than the law allows.

David T. Drooz, the university's senior associate counsel, said
special authority is required for the surrender of records protected
by educational and medical privacy. The FBI's first request, a July 14
grand jury subpoena, did not appear to supply that authority, Drooz
said, and the university did not honor it. Referring to notes he took
that day, Drooz said Eric Davis, the FBI's top lawyer in Charlotte,
"was focused very much on the urgency" and "he even indicated the case
was of interest to President Bush."

The next day, July 15, FBI agents arrived with a national security
letter.  Drooz said it demanded all records of Nashar's admission,
housing, emergency contacts, use of health services and extracurricular 
activities. University lawyers "looked up what law we could on the
fly," he said. They discovered that the FBI was demanding files that
national security letters have no power to obtain. The statute the FBI
cited that day covers only telephone and Internet records.

"We're very eager to comply with the authorities in this regard, but
we needed to have what we felt was a legally valid procedure," said
Larry A.  Neilsen, the university provost.

Soon afterward, the FBI returned with a new subpoena. It was the same
as the first one, Drooz said, and the university still had doubts
about its legal sufficiency. This time, however, it came from New York
and summoned Drooz to appear personally. The tactic was "a bit
heavy-handed," Drooz said, "the implication being you're subject to
contempt of court." Drooz surrendered the records.

The FBI's Charlotte office referred questions to headquarters. A
high-ranking FBI official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity,
acknowledged that the field office erred in attempting to use a
national security letter. Investigators, he said, "were in a big hurry
for obvious reasons" and did not approach the university "in the exact
right way."

'Unreasonable' or 'Oppressive'

The electronic docket in the Connecticut case, as the New York Times
first reported, briefly titled the lawsuit Library Connection
Inc. v. Gonzales .  Because identifying details were not supposed to
be left in the public file, the court soon replaced the plaintiff's
name with "John Doe."

George Christian, Library Connection's executive director, is
identified in his affidavit as "John Doe 2." In that sworn statement,
he said people often come to libraries for information that is "highly
sensitive, embarrassing or personal." He wanted to fight the FBI but
feared calling a lawyer because the letter said he could not disclose
its existence to "any person." He consulted Peter Chase, vice
president of Library Connection and chairman of a state intellectual
freedom committee. Chase -- "John Doe 1" in his affidavit -- advised
Christian to call the ACLU. Reached by telephone at their homes, both
men declined to be interviewed.

U.S. District Judge Janet C. Hall ruled in September that the FBI gag
order violates Christian's, and Library Connection's, First Amendment
rights. A three-judge panel heard oral argument on Wednesday in the
government's appeal.

The central facts remain opaque, even to the judges, because the FBI
is not obliged to describe what it is looking for, or why. During oral
argument in open court on Aug. 31, Hall said one government
explanation was so vague that "if I were to say it out loud, I would
get quite a laugh here." After the government elaborated in a
classified brief delivered for her eyes only, she wrote in her
decision that it offered "nothing specific."

The Justice Department tried to conceal the existence of the first and
only other known lawsuit against a national security letter, also
brought by the ACLU's Jaffer and Ann Beeson. Government lawyers
opposed its entry into the public docket of a New York federal
judge. They have since tried to censor nearly all the contents of the
exhibits and briefs. They asked the judge, for example, to black out
every line of the affidavit that describes the delivery of the
national security letter to a New York Internet company, including, "I
am a Special Agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation ('FBI')."

U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero, in a ruling that is under appeal,
held that the law authorizing national security letters violates the
First and Fourth Amendments.

Resistance to national security letters is rare. Most of them are
served on large companies in highly regulated industries, with
business interests that favor cooperation. The in-house lawyers who
handle such cases, said Jim Dempsey, executive director of the Center
for Democracy and Technology, "are often former prosecutors --
instinctively pro-government but also instinctively by-the-books."
National security letters give them a shield against liability to
their customers.

Kenneth M. Breen, a partner at the New York law firm Fulbright &
Jaworski, held a seminar for corporate lawyers one recent evening to
explain the "significant risks for the non-compliant" in government
counterterrorism investigations. A former federal prosecutor, Breen
said failure to provide the required information could create "the
perception that your company didn't live up to its duty to fight
terrorism" and could invite class-action lawsuits from the families of
terrorism victims. In extreme cases, he said, a business could face
criminal prosecution, "a 'death sentence' for certain kinds of
companies."

The volume of government information demands, even so, has provoked a
backlash. Several major business groups, including the National
Association of Manufacturers and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce,
complained in an Oct. 4 letter to senators that customer records can
"too easily be obtained and disseminated" around the
government. National security letters, they wrote, have begun to
impose an "expensive and time-consuming burden" on business.

The House and Senate bills renewing the Patriot Act do not tighten
privacy protections, but they offer a concession to business
interests. In both bills, a judge may modify a national security
letter if it imposes an "unreasonable" or "oppressive" burden on the
company that is asked for information.

'A Legitimate Question'

As national security letters have grown in number and importance,
oversight has not kept up. In each house of Congress, jurisdiction is
divided between the judiciary and intelligence committees. None of the
four Republican chairmen agreed to be interviewed.

Roberts, the Senate intelligence chairman, said in a statement issued
through his staff that "the committee is well aware of the
intelligence value of the information that is lawfully collected under
these national security letter authorities," which he described as
"non-intrusive" and "crucial to tracking terrorist networks and
detecting clandestine intelligence activities." Senators receive
"valuable reporting by the FBI," he said, in "semi-annual reports
[that] provide the committee with the information necessary to conduct
effective oversight."

Roberts was referring to the Justice Department's classified
statistics, which in fact have been delivered three times in four
years. They include the following information: how many times the FBI
issued national security letters; whether the letters sought
financial, credit or communications records; and how many of the
targets were "U.S. persons." The statistics omit one whole category of
FBI national security letters and also do not count letters issued by
the Defense Department and other agencies.

Committee members have occasionally asked to see a sampling of
national security letters, a description of their fruits or examples
of their contribution to a particular case. The Justice Department has
not obliged.

In 2004, the conference report attached to the intelligence
authorization bill asked the attorney general to "include in his next
semiannual report" a description of "the scope of such letters" and
the "process and standards for approving" them. More than a year has
passed without a Justice Department reply.

"The committee chairman has the power to issue subpoenas" for
information from the executive branch, said Rep. Zoe Lofgren
(D-Calif.), a House Judiciary Committee member. "The minority has no
power to compel, and ... Republicans are not going to push for
oversight of the Republicans. That's the story of this Congress."

In the executive branch, no FBI or Justice Department official audits
the use of national security letters to assess whether they are
appropriately targeted, lawfully applied or contribute important facts
to an investigation.

Justice Department officials noted frequently this year that Inspector
General Glenn A. Fine reports twice a year on abuses of the Patriot
Act and has yet to substantiate any complaint. (One investigation is
pending.) Fine advertises his role, but there is a puzzle built into
the mandate. Under what scenario could a person protest a search of
his personal records if he is never notified?

"We do rely upon complaints coming in," Fine said in House testimony
in May.  He added: "To the extent that people do not know of anything
happening to them, there is an issue about whether they can
complain. So, I think that's a legitimate question."

Asked more recently whether Fine's office has conducted an independent
examination of national security letters, Deputy Inspector General
Paul K.  Martin said in an interview: "We have not initiated a
broad-based review that examines the use of specific provisions of the
Patriot Act."

At the FBI, senior officials said the most important check on their
power is that Congress is watching.

"People have to depend on their elected representatives to do the job of
oversight they were elected to do," Caproni said. "And we think they do a
fine job of it."

Researcher Julie Tate and research editor Lucy Shackelford contributed to
this report.

Copyright 2005 The Washington Post Company

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articles daily.

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------------------------------

From: Reuters News Wire <reuters@telecom-digest.org> 
Subject: Yahoo, Google to Launch Wireless Services
Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2005 10:24:06 -0600


Yahoo Inc. and Google Inc. are set to roll out new wireless services,
taking advantage of advanced networks and cellphones to provide
features similar to those available on computers, the Wall Street
Journal reported on Monday.

Yahoo soon will introduce a cellphone it will sell through a
partnership with SBC Communications, according to SBC executives. The
phone will take Yahoo a step closer to linking music, photos and email
with consumers' existing online accounts, address books and
preferences, the paper said.

Google is tailoring some Internet services for use on wireless
devices.  Starting Monday, consumers using some types of cellphones
will be able to access satellite maps wirelessly as they can on the
Google Maps service, the paper said.

The moves will mark a further step in the evolution of cellphones from
communications devices to minicomputers that can be used for email,
Web browsing, music downloading and even watching TV, in addition to
calls.  Handset manufacturers have already started to produce single
devices that combine cellphones, Web surfing, wireless email and MP3
players.

SBC and Yahoo have had a partnership since 2001 and have steadily
expanded it beyond traditional telecom and online services to merge
video, wireless and phone services. SBC executives said the SBC-Yahoo
phone, which will be manufactured by Nokia, is expected to be
available as soon as early next year and will cost $200 to $300.

Operating on the Cingular Wireless network, which is co-owned by SBC
and BellSouth Corp., the phone will also be an MP3 player, a 1.3
megapixel camera and will have a removable memory card.

Last year, Google began letting U.S. consumers get search results by
sending text messages from their cellphones.

Starting Monday, many consumers whose phones support Java software
will be able to download the Google Local application. From there,
they can conduct searches for businesses or services in a specific
geographical location and view the search results plotted on a map.

Copyright 2005 Reuters Limited.

NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the
daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at
http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new
articles daily.

------------------------------

From: Associated Press News Wire <ap@telecom-digest.org> 
Subject: Google Offers Software for Mapping Service
Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2005 10:25:05 -0600


Google Inc. is introducing software Monday designed to make its local
search and mapping service easier to navigate on mobile phones,
continuing the Internet search engine leader's effort to extend its
reach beyond personal computers.

Consumers who download and install the new software will be able to
skip some of the steps that had been required since Google began
offering a mobile version of its maps nearly seven months ago.

For instance, users won't have to type in their location before
getting directions to a specific location, as long as their phone has
Global Positioning System, or GPS, capabilities, said Deep Nishar, a
director of Google's mobile products.

Google has been exploring ways to pinpoint the location of its users
in order to better target ads from nearby merchants. But Nishar said
that goal isn't driving the mobile upgrade: Google doesn't plan to
display ads alongside its mobile maps.

Ads generate virtually all of Google's revenue, which totaled $4.2
billion through the first nine months of this year. The Mountain
View-based company recorded a $1.1 billion profit during that time,
continuing an exceptional streak of prosperity that has propelled its
market value above $100 billion just seven years after its inception.

Emboldened by its success, Google has been busily expanding beyond its
once-austere search engine. With the push, Google is becoming
increasingly involved in telecommunications, television and
publishing.

Using Google's new mobile mapping software requires Java-enabled
phones.  Most subscribers with wireless service from Cingular,
T-Mobile and Sprint should be able to use the software, Nishar
said. The service won't work with Verizon phones, Blackberry devices
or Palm devices.


Copyright 2005 The Associated Press.

NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the
daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at
http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new
articles daily.

For more news from Associated Press please go to:
http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html  (audio and reading, or)
http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html

------------------------------

From: Reuters News Wire <reuters@telecom-digest.org> 
Subject: Online Movie Pirate Gets 3 Months in Jail
Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2005 10:30:05 -0600


A Hong Kong court sentenced a local man to three months in jail on Monday
for trying to illegally distribute movies using BitTorrent software.

Chan Nai-ming was convicted last month for trying to distribute three
Hollywood blockbusters -- Daredevil, Red Planet and Miss Congeniality
 -- on the Internet without licences. He pleaded not guilty.

"He was sentenced to three months for each count but they will run
concurrently," a court clerk said. Chan filed an appeal and was freed
on HK$5,000 (US$645) bail.

It is believed to be the world's first intellectual piracy case
involving the file-sharing technology.

BitTorrent, created by programer Bram Cohen, distributes large files
quickly by breaking them into many pieces, sharing the pieces among a
large number of users, and reassembling them upon delivery.

It is widely used to trade copyrighted materials like movies and
television shows. It also has many non-infringing uses.

The Hong Kong government has said the case was the first successful
enforcement action against peer-to-peer file sharing. The maximum
penalty is four years' jail and a hefty fine.

(US$=HK$7.8)

Copyright 2005 Reuters Limited.

NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the
daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at
http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new
articles daily.

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2005 03:30:35 -0500
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
Subject: CSL Launches Asia's First Commercial Video Sharing Service


     CSL Launches Asia's First Commercial Video Sharing Service With
     Nokia IMS
     - Nov 7, 2005 02:50 AM (PR Newswire)

HONG KONG, China, November 7 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Mobile operator
CSL and Nokia today jointly announced the commercial launch of Asia's
first video sharing service in Hong Kong enabled by Nokia IP
Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) and systems integration services. At a
press conference, CSL and Nokia demonstrated video sharing service
using the Nokia N70, the 3G Series 60 smartphone with 2 megapixel
camera and a full set of Nokia Nseries features.

The service launch affirms CSL and Nokia's leading position in
bringing innovative mobile services to the end-users. This milestone
service also demonstrates Nokia's end-to-end capability in enabling
operators to differentiate and offer a variety of services on the
fiercely competitive Hong Kong telecommunication market.

Video sharing is a multimedia service that allows users to view live
or prerecorded video during a normal voice call on their mobile
phones. Both the caller and the receiver can watch the same video and
discuss it, and then end the video sharing without ending the voice
call. Video sharing is based on standardized 3GPP IMS and IETF
technologies, and its specifications are available at Forum Nokia.

     - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=52910516

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2005 09:19:21 -0500
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
Subject: Yahoo, TiVo Team Up on TV, Web Service


By MAY WONG Associated Press Writer

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) -- Yahoo Inc. and TiVo Inc. are teaming up to
blend some of their services, a move that further fades the lines
between offices and living rooms, TVs and PCs.

Under a partnership announced Monday, the two will collaborate to
offer Yahoo's Internet-based content and services through TiVo's
digital video recording devices.

Users of Yahoo's TV page will be able to click on a record-to-TiVo
button directly from a television program listing to remotely schedule
recordings.

And in the coming months, possibly before the end of the year, Yahoo's
traffic and weather content, as well as its users' photos will be
viewable on televisions via TiVo's broadband service and easy-to-use
screen menu.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Edward Lichty, TiVo's vice
president of corporate strategy, said TiVo hopes the collaboration
will set the foundation for a long-term relationship.

TiVo subscribers already have the ability to remotely schedule
recordings from the TiVo Web site, but this will give the DVR pioneer
a way to potentially tap Yahoo's large user base and gain some
much-needed new customers.

      - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=52916081

------------------------------

From: frederic.willem@gmail.com
Subject: Increase DTMF Tones
Date: 7 Nov 2005 03:06:22 -0800
Organization: http://groups.google.com


Hi all,

I would like to increase the duration of the DTMF tones of my incoming
calls on the PABX.  I know that there is equipment making it possible
to parameterize this kind of things but I do not find anything in the
groups nor on Google.  If somebody among you knows this kind of
apparatus, can it leave me a reference?

Thanks in advance,

Eric Willem

------------------------------

Subject: Cellular-News for Monday 7th November 2005
Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2005 07:46:57 -0600
From: Cellular-News <dailydigest@cellular-news-mail.com>


Cellular-News - http://www.cellular-news.com

Top 10 Selling Handsets in October
http://www.cellular-news.com/story/14710.php

The Swedish manufacturer of carrying cases for portable electronics,
Krusell, has released their "Top 10"-list for October 2005. The list
is based upon the number of pieces of model specific mobile phone
cases that has been ordered from Krusell durin...

Romanian Mobile Call Volumes Jump 45%
http://www.cellular-news.com/story/14709.php

The number of mobile telephony users in Romania reached 11.37 million
in June 2005, increasing by more than 10% (1.16 million) as compared
to end-2004, according to the final report on the electronic
communications sector for the period January 1st -...

MMS Is A Huge Success In Norway
http://www.cellular-news.com/story/14708.php

Strand Reports has noted that it would not have been completely
misleading, if SMS had been the abbreviation for "Surprising Messaging
Success" -- as the success of SMS messages took the mobile operators
completely by surprise. Currently mobile operat...

Taiwanese Mobile Phone Industry Gains from Low-Cost Handsets
http://www.cellular-news.com/story/14707.php

Riding the wave of new handset demand running through emerging markets
as well as healthy replacement demand in mature markets, global mobile
phone shipments continued the strong pace. Registering an estimated
200 million units in the third quarter, ...

Orange Launches Three New Windows Mobile 5.0 Products
http://www.cellular-news.com/story/14706.php

Orange is expanding the SPV range in the business customer
sector. Orange says that it is the first mobile telephony supplier in
Switzerland to offer three new devices with the new Windows Mobile 5.0
operating system. The new flagship is the SPV M500...

39 hours - The World Record for the Longest Phone Conversation
http://www.cellular-news.com/story/14705.php

On November 1 at 11:15 a.m., Sandra Kobel (28) from Berne and Stephan
Hafner (29) from Wettingen embarked on the first-ever world-record
attempt at the longest phone conversation over the Internet. Both
participants demonstrated their enormous commun...

Cheap Voice Bundles Drive 3G Mobile Services
http://www.cellular-news.com/story/14704.php

New research suggests that 3G mobile services are now beginning to
take off, however instead of supposedly new "killer applications" or
high speed data services driving sales as many pundits predicted, it
is the promise of cheaper voice and text bund...

NEC Makes HSDPA Kit Available
http://www.cellular-news.com/story/14703.php

NEC Corporation has announced that its High Speed Download Packet
Access (HSDPA) solution is ready to be delivered for use in commercial
networks worldwide. The successful field network operation trial for
NEC's HSDPA was carried out this summer thro...

Western European Enterprises Still Slow to Adopt Mobile Solutions
http://www.cellular-news.com/story/14702.php

Enterprises in Western Europe have been slow to adopt mobile solutions
in the past 12 months, according to IDC's 2005 Enterprise Mobility
Survey. Although there is now more awareness of and interest in mobile
technologies and applications, adoption h...

TDC Launches 3G in Denmark
http://www.cellular-news.com/story/14701.php

Denmark's TDC Mobile has opened its 3G network for residential
customers today. Already on October 3, TDC Mobile's business customers
got access to the higher speeds via the mobile broadband card....

Mobile television: Swisscom launches DVB-H trial
http://www.cellular-news.com/story/14700.php

Around 100 people are currently testing a new mobile television
technology. Between now and the end of the year, Switzerland's
Swisscom Broadcast and Swisscom Mobile will be carrying out a
technical trial of the new digital standard DVB-H....

USA Trailing Rest of World in Embracing Music on Cell Phones
http://www.cellular-news.com/story/14699.php

Almost one in five (19%) of all mobile phone owners worldwide now
listen to music on their phones, according to a new study by
TNS. Amongst this global group, some 16% of all music they listen to
daily is on their phones, compared with 15% on a stere...

T-Mobile Netherlands: 3G turbo gets test run
http://www.cellular-news.com/story/14698.php

After having demonstrated High-Speed Download Packet Access (HSDPA) to
corporate customers in August this year, T-Mobile Netherlands last
week became the first Dutch provider to have established a HSDPA
connection on a live network. Employees from Pl...

Telefonica Argentina Head Sees New Phone Contract Soon
http://www.cellular-news.com/story/14697.php

The head of Telefonica SA's Argentina unit said Friday he expects to
shortly finish a long-delayed renegotiation of the company's telephone
services contracts with the Argentine government. ...

Madrid Court Dismisses Case Against Telefonica Chairman -Source
http://www.cellular-news.com/story/14696.php

A Madrid court has dismissed a case against Telefonica SA Chairman
Cesar Alierta, ruling that the statute of limitations for the insider
trading charges brought against him had expired, a judicial source
said Friday. ...

Ericsson To Test HSDPA With Vodafone K.K.'s Tokyo Network
http://www.cellular-news.com/story/14695.php

Swedish telecommunications equipment maker Telefon AB LM Ericsson
Friday said it has successfully upgraded Vodafone K.K.'s commercial
network in central parts of Tokyo with high speed downlink packet
access, or HSDPA, to test the technology on the mo...

New Zealand Telecom 1Q Net NZ$199 Million Vs NZ$203 Million
http://www.cellular-news.com/story/14694.php

Telecom Corp. of New Zealand Ltd. Friday reported a first quarter net
profit of NZ$199 million, down 2% from the previous year's NZ$203
million, which was adjusted to comply with international accounting
standards. ...

UTStarcom Incurs Loss On Writedown
http://www.cellular-news.com/story/14693.php

UTStarcom Inc. on Thursday posted a large third-quarter loss as the
company wrote down the value of assets and struggled with declining
revenue. ...

------------------------------

From: davidesan@gmail.com
Subject: Re: Wabash Cannonball (Was: Old Chicago Numbering)
Date: 7 Nov 2005 07:32:05 -0800
Organization: http://groups.google.com


Let's not forget that the Wabsh Cannonball was sung often by Dizzy
Dean during baseball broadcasts.

------------------------------


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