DHS seeks to spy on Americans just like the NSA

The drive for an expanded DHS role in domestic spying, however, has been picking up steam. CISPA was reintroduced in the House of Representatives in February and passed in April. Although the bill stalled in the Senate, one of its most troubling portions remains intact: a provision granting private companies immunity from “any provision of the law” if they break privacy agreements between themselves and their customers to share private information with the federal government.

Michigan Republican Rep. Justin Amash opposed this provision in a debate with House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers in April, but failed to earn his colleagues’ support. The provision remained intact when the House approved CISPA in April.

Democrats also appear to be rethinking their positions about cyber-spying powers.

President Obama signed an executive order on February 12 establishing DHS’s role in securing the nation’s cybersecurity. Later, the federal government expanded a cybersecurity program “that scans Internet traffic headed into and out of defense contractors to include far more of the country’s private, civilian-run infrastructure,” according to a Reuters report.

DHS would receive cyber threat intelligence from other intelligence agencies — including NSA — and share it with telecom companies. In turn, telecom companies could voluntarily share aggregate threat statistics with DHS.

“By using DHS as the middleman, the Obama administration hopes to bring the formidable overseas intelligence-gathering of the NSA closer to ordinary U.S. residents without triggering an outcry from privacy advocates who have long been leery of the spy agency’s eavesdropping,” Reuters reported.

The DHS’ expanded role even earned the support of NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander, who has been vocal about his belief in finding the right balance to preserving civil liberties while protecting the nation.

Technically, private communications companies share information voluntarily with the DHS, but the potential repercussions of failing to cooperate with the federal government make it unclear how much room there is to refuse.

Former Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio told a court in 2007 that Qwest was denied lucrative multimillion dollar contracts with the NSA after he refused to involve Qwest in the agency’s warrantless surveillance program. Nacchio’s disclosure was part of an appeal to an insider trading conviction, for which he is currently serving a six year prison sentence.

“If a company is already being compelled to give one government agency information, it is probably easier for another government agency to go to that company and ask for that information,” Berin Szoka, president of TechFreedom told The Daily Caller.

Calls for increased information sharing between the public and private sectors have also increased as it becomes more apparent that private companies are on the front lines of a covert world war being waged among the world’s major nations in cyberspace. The rise of Big Data, cloud computing, and increased mobile Internet adoption have also fueled the push for greater collaboration between the highest levels of government and the private sector.

Under current Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, the DHS targeted law-abiding Americans for their political beliefs, most strikingly in a 2009 report (pdf)  on “extremists” that warned of the dangers posed by pro-life advocates, critics of same-sex marriage and groups concerned with abiding by the U.S. Constitution.

 DHS is not subject to the kind of oversight the NSA is from courts established under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Although the actual oversight of FISA courts is debatable — the courts apparently approve all but .03 percent of surveillance requests — the DHS, with its access to police departments all over the country and its involvement in broad areas of American life not related to national security or law enforcement, potentially has a greater capacity to overstep its bounds.
http://dailycaller.com/2013/06/18/dhs-hopes-get-same-cyber-spying-powers-as-nsa/