The militarization of the “homeland.” Though a rah-rah piece supplied by the military, that first sentence sends chills down ye old scribe’s spine.

The National Guard Bureau chief got a look this week at how the forward operating base concept used for U.S. military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere around the world can work for domestic missions, too.

Army Lt. Gen. H Steven Blum toured Forward Operating Base Border Wolf, a new support base within this border town’s industrial park, during his week-long visit to California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas to observe Operation Jump Start. The base provides housing and other support services for almost 200 Army and Air National Guard troops from around the country supporting the mission. They’re among about 6,000 Guard members serving in support of the U.S. Border Patrol. The mission is expected to last for about two years as the Border Patrol recruits and trains more agents. Article

A case study of the inherent perils of overarching governmental authority and the use of “secret” evidence.

A federal judge on Wednesday declared the end of the government’s four-year case against a Denver Pakistani-American family once targeted by the FBI as terrorists.

Family members whose lives were turned upside down simply wept. “We’ve lost everything,” longtime Colorado restaurateur Abdul Qayyum said.

Chief U.S. District Judge Lewis Babcock accepted plea deals with federal prosecutors who dropped and reduced immigration charges they pursued after their terrorism case fizzled against Qayyum, his daughter Saima Saima, wife Chris Warren and nephew Irfan Kamran.

Now only Haroon Rashid, Saima’s husband, is jailed. Federal prosecutors dropped all charges against him, too. But Rashid, jailed for more than two years, still faces deportation after a misdemeanor assault on a gang member who hassled his family.

A federal appeals court on Nov. 20 temporarily blocked Rashid’s deportation pending an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

FBI agents targeted this family of naturalized U.S. citizens from the Pakistan-Afghanistan borderlands based on secret evidence after the 9/11 attacks. U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft trumpeted the case as aggressive action against terrorists.

[snip]

Federal prosecutors defended their actions.

“I don’t know if there was any excess in this case. It was done just like any other case would be,” Assistant U.S. Attorney David Gaouette said. Article

Now you know.

The surveillance technique came to light in an opinion published this week by U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan. He ruled that the “roving bug” was legal because federal wiretapping law is broad enough to permit eavesdropping even of conversations that take place near a suspect’s cell phone.

[snip]

The U.S. Commerce Department’s security office warns that “a cellular telephone can be turned into a microphone and transmitter for the purpose of listening to conversations in the vicinity of the phone.” An article in the Financial Times last year said mobile providers can “remotely install a piece of software on to any handset, without the owner’s knowledge, which will activate the microphone even when its owner is not making a call.”

Nextel and Samsung handsets and the Motorola Razr are especially vulnerable to software downloads that activate their microphones, said James Atkinson, a counter-surveillance consultant who has worked closely with government agencies. “They can be remotely accessed and made to transmit room audio all the time,” he said. “You can do that without having physical access to the phone.”

Because modern handsets are miniature computers, downloaded software could modify the usual interface that always displays when a call is in progress. The spyware could then place a call to the FBI and activate the microphone–all without the owner knowing it happened. (The FBI declined to comment on Friday.)

[snip]

Surreptitious activation of built-in microphones by the FBI has been done before. A 2003 lawsuit revealed that the FBI was able to surreptitiously turn on the built-in microphones in automotive systems like General Motors’ OnStar to snoop on passengers’ conversations.

When FBI agents remotely activated the system and were listening in, passengers in the vehicle could not tell that their conversations were being monitored. Article

Ostesibly apolitical and legally required free-handed government oversight and audits, including ferretng out and investigations fraud and waste, is now “terrorism”, according to the new head of the GSA.