Dr. Steven Miles

Former U.S. Sen. Mark Dayton insists his alcoholism (recurrent but treated) and depression (mild and controlled) aren’t debilitating. To a former DFL rival who’s also a physician, that sounds right. Dr. Steven Miles says the effects of both afflictions are overrated in politics.

“Depression is rarely disabling,” Miles tells the Minnesota Independent by email, adding that “only jackals would suggest that it alone renders him unfit for office compared to someone like [U.S. Rep.] Michele Bachmann who appears stone-cold sober.”

Miles concedes that “alcoholism can be disabling for some kinds of activities.” But he says “it is rarely disabling for effective political careers.” He cites as examples the late Minnesota Gov. Karl Rolvaag and “the extraordinary leadership of [the late U.S. Rep.] Wilbur Mills (who ushered in Medicare)”.

Indeed, many times it is alcoholism itself that gets abused — as an excuse for bad behavior.

“Today, when politicians get caught with their pants down, they reveal and blame alcoholism — exaggerating its impact and the corresponding public perception that it impaired their judgment,” Miles says. An early example is the late Sen. Joe McCarthy — “a mean SOB who happened to be an alcoholic.”

Miles is no automatic Dayton apologist. When Dayton and his wallet made a late entry in the 2000 U.S. Senate race, Miles told Minnesota Public Radio that a bank account doesn’t equal a political base, and that Dayton seemed to be running because he had nothing else to do.

But Miles has personal experience with bipolar disorder. His dealings with depression became public when he successfully fought to keep his mental health files out of the hands of the state Board of Medical Practice (pdf), and he remained open about his condition during his 2000 U.S. Senate run.

Miles was a runner-up that year, a second-place finisher in the first two ballots at the state party convention, behind former state Sen. Jerry Janezich, who went on to win endorsement after the ninth ballot but lost to Dayton in the DFL primary.

What were the chances that two people in the DFL’s 2000 field of Senate candidates would suffer from depression?

Actually, pretty good. According to Miles, the lifetime risk of depression is about 10–15 percent, and for alcoholism about 5 percent.

“The nation would lose enormous talent and productivity by sidelining these people,” Miles says.

In a Twitter message, Jonah Goldberg wrote:

?? Dems want a health system that says when you can knee surgery, but demand abortion coverage because women should control their bodies.

While its moral logic confounds liberals at Instaputz and Wonkette, Goldberg’s tweet could supply a slogan for former U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman’s political comeback.

Coleman himself underwent knee surgery just last spring — at his own option and, in all likelihood, at government expense.

So the Coleman for Governor in 2010 campaign might be built around the specter of”government knee panels” or the Constitutional protections of “a man’s right to choose.”

Sen. Patrick Leahy. Photo: WDCpix

Republicans and Democrats have been sniping about the USA Patriot Act ever since Congress passed the law in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks to try to forestall another such disaster. But now, it’s the Democrats who are sniping among themselves about it. While some lawmakers, like Sens. Russ Feingold and Dick Durbin, have insisted that Congress must amend the law to rein in the FBI’s powers to snoop into innocent private activities, other Democratic lawmakers, such as Senators Dianne Feinstein and Patrick Leahy, have resisted significant reforms.

Three provisions of the law will expire by the end of this year if they’re not renewed, and have been the subject of recent hearings. Those are: the “roving wiretap” provision, which allows the government to tap  phones and other electronic devices used by any person suspected of involvement in terrorism; section 215 of the Patriot Act, which allows the government to obtain a broad range of business records and other tangible things, including library records, subscription information and credit card statements, so long as the FBI shows these are “relevant” to some terrorist investigation; and the so-called “lone wolf” provision, which allows the government to wiretap any suspect believed to be involved in terrorism, even if that person has no connection to any known terrorist organization.

The other controversial provisions include the FBI’s authority to issue National Security Letters, or NSLs, which seek a broad range of information from businesses about their customers but do not require a warrant or any other court order; and the “sneak and peak law”, which allows the FBI to search a suspect’s home without informing the target that they’ve been searched.

Civil liberties advocates insist these provisions are all too broad as currently written, and allow the FBI to abuse its authority to conduct wide-scale “data mining” of the general population, searching innocent people’s records and personal information while the government tries to root out wrongdoing. Because in many cases it’s not clear how the government is using its broad authority and who gets access to the information, privacy advocates worry that the government could retain such information and use it in ways unconnected to terrorism investigations.

A 2007 report from the FBI Inspector General concluded that the FBI had issued almost 150,000 NSL requests between 2003 and 2005, often collecting information about people not even suspected of having done anything illegal. The Inspector General also found that the FBI’s record-keeping was so poor that it often didn’t know how many letters it has issued, and requested information it wasn’t entitled to receive.

Advocates worry that many sections of the Patriot Act allow similar abuses. “The concern is that the changes the Patriot Act made were such that so long as the FBI agent certifies that the information they’re seeking is relevant to a terror investigation, they can get it,” explained Farhana Khera, Executive Director of Muslim Advocates, which recently sued the government for more information about FBI surveillance practices. “We argue that’s way too broad. It should be tied to a suspected terrorist or terrorist activity.” The FBI’s current authority “has unleashed concerns about the FBI getting access to data on literally millions and millions of Americans,” she said.

Advocates for Muslim-Americans also worry that the laws are being used to target and harass law-abiding American muslims, landing them on no-fly lists, preventing them from getting hired for federal jobs, or deterring them from contributing to legal charitable organizations that assist needy Muslims in other countries.

To address these problems, in mid-September, Feingold and Durbin, both of whom have long expressed concerns about the Patriot Act, introduced the JUSTICE Act (Judiciously Using Surveillance Tools In Counterterrorism Efforts), which would renew section 215 and the roving wiretap provisions, but would require the government to provide more justification for using them, and to specify more clearly the targets of their investigation.

The bill would also rein in the FBI’s authority to issue National Security Letters by requiring the government to specify what it’s looking for and how the information is relevant to an ongoing national security investigation. Meanwhile, it would repeal the part of the FISA Amendments Act that immunized telecommunications companies such as AT&T that assisted the government in its warrantless wiretapping program.

But a week later, to the dismay of many civil libertarians, Sen. Leahy introduced the USA Patriot and Sunset Extension Act. Cosponsored by Sens. Benjamin Cardin (D-Md.) and Ted Kaufman (D-Del.), it would extend the expiring provisions with only minor modifications, and would leave the “lone wolf” and “roving wiretap” provisions intact. It also would not include any reforms to the FISA Amendments Act.

By the time of the Senate markup session last week, Sen. Leahy, the Judiciary Committee Chairman, had produced a substitute version of his bill, co-sponsored by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who chairs the Intelligence subcommittee. This bill became the basis for the markup, effectively destroying the chances for adoption of the JUSTICE bill, although pieces of it could still be introduced as amendments.

Civil liberties advocates quickly expressed their disappointment. The American Civil Liberties Union called it “a watered-down version” of the original Leahy bill. Kevin Bankston of Electronic Frontier Foundation similarly described it as having “even fewer PATRIOT reforms than the original Leahy bill.”  Although Feingold and Durbin offered amendments, the only one that succeeded was one amending the “sneak and peak” provision. The amendment would require the government to notify the subject of a search within seven days, instead of 30, as the law stands now. An amendment offered by Senator Durbin to narrow the broad Section 215 powers, which now allows the government to gain access to “any tangible thing,” failed.

Even Sen. Al Franken, who at the recent Senate Judiciary Committee hearing took the time to read the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to Justice Department official David Kris, voted to support the Leahy-Feinstein substitute bill, and against the Durbin and Feingold amendments.

Feingold has repeatedly expressed concern that the government is not providing enough information for the public to know how the Patriot Act is being used.

“I remain concerned that critical information about the implementation of the Patriot Act remains classified,” said Feingold at a recent hearing, noting that he believes that much of that classified information “would have a significant impact on the debate.” Although the Justice Department recently acknowledged that the “lone wolf” authority has never been used, said Feingold, “there also is information about the use of Section 215 orders that I believe Congress and the American people deserve to know.”

Some representatives in the House, where they’re also debating changes to the Patriot Act and will eventually put forward their own bill, feel the same way. Earlier this week, Reps. John Conyers (D-Mich.), Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), and Bobby Scott (D-Va.) wrote a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder asking for more information about how Section 215 orders have been used to help inform the House debate. (Eventually, the House and Senate bills to amend the Patriot Act will have to be reconciled before they go to the President for his signature.)

Although Feinstein has cited classified information as her reason for supporting the re-authorization of section 215 as is, Feingold disagrees. The Feingold amendment would have limited what kinds of records could be obtained under section 215, and required that the government show that those records are related either to terrorist activities, or to people in contact with a terrorist.

Interestingly, notes Michelle Richardson, legislative consultant to the ACLU, during the Patriot Act reauthorization process in 2005, “Democrats and Republicans supported amendments to section 215 to limit it to terrorist activities,” she said. “But now they don’t.”

The problem with reauthorizing many of these provisions, says Richardson, is that “we don’t know what information they’re getting, how much, and who has access,” she said. “But we believe that anytime you get the information, it’s a violation. These are principles over 200 years old in this country, that government should not be getting this information about you unless they have reason to believe you’ve done something wrong.”

That principle is increasingly being discarded. Attorney General Guidelines issued at the end of the Bush administration, for example, eliminated the requirement that the FBI must have reason to believe the target of an investigation has committed a crime before initiating that investigation.

“Who knows if the information comes back to haunt you,” said Richardson. “If you apply for federal student aid, for a federal job, or end up on a no-fly list. We don’t know who has access to the information, and where it’s supposed to go. That’s not how things are supposed to work in this country.”

On Thursday, the markup session will continue in the Senate Judiciary Committee, as specifics on the bill get hammered out. Much of the critical information necessary to determine how it’s working, though, will remain secret.

Diaz wrote that Ellison faces a review by the Ethics Committee for his “decision to keep the trip’s costs under wraps — even though it was paid for by a local Islamic nonprofit and typically would be reported as a gift to a public official.”

Yesterday, the Minnesota GOP cited the paper’s report in a letter to the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, concluding:

Rep. Ellison’s actions and stonewalling are clearly wrong and he should apologize to the people of Minnesota. Taxpayer money intended for students must never be used for a politician’s personal travel. To avoid the appearance of inappropriate use of taxpayer funds, we also believe he should reimburse the state for any and all expenses incurred during this travel immediately.

In his letter to the editor Thursday, Ellison said the Strib story’s “opinions and spurious connections… do not stand up in light of the actual facts. The Star Tribune’s account must be corrected.” He says he submitted the invitation from the Muslim nonprofit to the House Ethics Committee, where it was approved.

“The Star Tribune knows that I followed the spirit and the letter of the House rules, as communicated to me by House ethics lawyers, at every step of the process,” he wrote, adding that the ethics review is a standard procedure in the House, sparked by the newspaper’s inquiry.

Ellison, Congress’ first Muslim member, said that despite his public stature he deserves a private life.

“Privacy is not undiscovered dishonesty,” he wrote. “Some things are private. For example, family and religion. My trip, which was not at taxpayer expense, and paid for by a nonprofit organization that does not lobby, was handled according to the House rules, which balance disclosure and privacy.”

He couldn’t find out quite everything about her: whether she is selling agricultural products in her home, the state of her mental health, how much she is spending on fuel, or her ancestry.

Bachmann’s office disputed the accuracy of some of Third Coast’s answers, but wouldn’t say which information was wrong. 

See Third Coast’s handiwork for yourself at this pdf.

The occasion: a bill designed to overhaul policies for handling criminal intelligence information by making it easier for law enforcement agencies to keep and share information about citizens.

Under the proposed legislation, intelligence data collected on individuals by law enforcement officers could be kept secret for a year. The information would then be made available to the target of the probe unless it meets a series of criteria related to the prosecution of potential crimes.

The legislation would also authorize law enforcement agencies to share intelligence data with other government officials — not limited to police officers — when necessary to protect the public.

The bill was drafted by the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension and is sponsored by St. Paul DFLer Rep. John Lesch (pictured). (A companion bill has been introduced by Sen. Don Betzold, DFL-Fridley.)

In introducing the measure, Lesch acknowledged concerns about civil liberties but argued that some form of legislation is necessary to regulate the sharing of such data.

“A version of this will happen in future years, if not this year,” he said. “I think it’s important that this discussion be had.”

But the proposed legislation has raised alarm bells among peace activists and civil liberties advocates. They fear that the bill is overly broad and would lead to widespread spying on law-abiding citizens.

Teresa Nelson, an attorney with the Minnesota chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, argued that the legislation would allow law enforcement agencies to keep “political dossiers” on citizens, while only creating an “illusion of security.”

Bernie Hesse, an organizer with United Food and Commercial Workers Local 789, expressed a concern that labor unions would be targeted for engaging in nonviolent acts of civil disobedience, like walking picket lines.

“We’re afraid that we might be labeled as a criminal organization,” he said. “We’re very conscious of and appreciate the work that law enforcement agencies do, but we also don’t want to be restricted in some of the things that we have to do to bring about economic justice for workers.”

Retired FBI agent and veteran peace activist Coleen Rowley said that since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the government has been obsessed with collecting intelligence data.

“One of the false notions since 9/11 that leads to this massive intelligence collection has been the idea that we did not have enough dots,” she said. “The failure to connect the dots was the problem, not that there was not enough dots.”

The concerns are exacerbated because of prosecutions stemming from Republican National Convention, which was held in September. Law enforcement relied extensively on undercover informants to infiltrate activist groups and build criminal cases. The most notorious example is the case of the RNC Eight, who are charged with criminally conspiring to disrupt the four-day gathering.

For now the legislation isn’t going anywhere. Lesch acknowledged the concerns about the bill, and moved that it be laid over for further consideration. That motion was adopted unanimously.

Richards' appearance on The Rachel Maddow Show last week

Hacker. Unprofessional. Immoral. A “black hat” villain. For her role in finding Norm Coleman’s unsecured donor database in January, IT consultant Adria Richards has been the target of anger from Coleman supporters, including some who had their personal information revealed in the Web site breach. She received a phone call on Friday from one such man. The caller was irate, offering the vague threat, “I live less than a mile away from you!” She later calmed him down.

Despite the vitriol aimed her way, what Richards did wasn’t illegal, nor were the actions of the Web site Wikileaks.org, which received the database and shared its contents with the world — at least not if similar cases and the word of a top digital-rights lawyer, are any indicator.

Jennifer Granick is the civil liberties director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the country’s leading digital-rights advocacy group. She immediately dismissed the term “hacker” to describe anyone — whether Richards, who spotted and shared info about the unprotected database, or Wikileaks.org — in this case.

“It’s not a term I use,” she said. “It’s not a legal term and it doesn’t answer the question whether it’s unlawful.”

She looks to the federal law, particularly the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which deals with accessing sensitive data by unauthorized individuals for the purpose of defrauding others, aiding in criminal activity or causing damage to the contents of a “protected computer.”

Based on her knowledge of this case, as well as the law, Granick said it was legal for Richards to view the Web directory on which Coleman’s donor list resided.

“There has to be some kind of indication that information is locked away,” she said.

For comparison, she offered a similar story of politics and unprotected online information. In the 2006 gubernatorial election in California, aides to Democratic candidate Phil Angelides found personal audio files on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Web site through “backward browsing”–shortening the URL for a page of the governor’s speeches to find a directory of files. The captured conversations, from a speech-writing session, included Schwarzenegger opining about a Latina city official’s “hot” temperament: “I mean, they [Cubans and Puerto Ricans] are all very hot…they have the, you know, part of the black blood in them and part of the Latino blood in them and together that makes it.”

Like Coleman’s donor list up until late on Jan. 28, the Schwarzenegger files were on an open directory: Users seeking to download the files were not asked to enter a password.

The California governor asked the California Highway Patrol (CHP), the agency in charge of protecting state property, to investigate the case. After a four-month study, they chose not to file charges, finding that Angelides’ staffers broke no law in downloading the audio files, and advised the governor’s office to improve the “overall security of their computer network.”

Civil courts have interpreted the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act in differing ways, though, said Granick. Some cases have tried to argue that the intent of the Web site’s creator should be considered. In Coleman’s case, the database’s listing of supporters’ credit card numbers and three-digit security codes could suggest that the site operator intended this information to be protected.

“But without any indication of any kind of blocking of information, it’s hard for a user to know what the owner wants,” Granick said. “The statute is really designed to protect the integrity of a computer system, not to protect the desires” of the site’s owner.

While Richards only pointed out that the security breach existed, Wikileaks.org published some of the database’s contents.

“I don’t think Wikileaks is in any danger here,” said Granick. “I’m not aware of something that prevents you from publishing information that you obtained legally as long as that publication isn’t part of a conspiracy or attempt at identity theft or crime.”

Regardless of how Wikileaks obtained the database — as long as the site was an “innocent receiver” of the information and didn’t solicit the data — there’s legal precedent protecting it. Granick said it’s part of a “long journalistic tradition,” including, most notably, the Supreme Court case ruling on the Pentagon Papers, a classified report on 20 years of U.S. political and military actions in Vietnam that was leaked in 1971.

“The law could not stop The New York Times from publishing it. And that’s national security information,” said Granick. “Wikileaks benefits from that tradition… Once it’s out, we let history decide if it’s better kept secret or not.”

“American law tries to be extremely narrow about what speech we prohibit,” she added. “It’s dangerous to punish the republication of information, especially if the publisher obtained the information legally. Even if you have info that was taken improperly, it may be of public concern.”

Some have questioned Richards’ motives as well as those of others who’ve reported on this story. Bob Collins at Minnesota Public Radio, for instance, questioned the ethics of crunching the numbers obtained from the Wikileaked spreadsheets. Before raising the topic with Smart Politics’ Eric Ostermeier, who looked at where Coleman’s funders live and what they do, he pondered whether there’s a “compelling public interest” in Wikileaks’ releasing partial information from the database.

Granick pondered these questions.

“It’s a really serious privacy concern… because many people perhaps contributed to the campaign anonymously or confidentially,” she said, referencing FEC rules that require candidates to disclose donors’ identities only after they they give more than $200 per election cycle. “That’s protected political speech. The First Amendment has long supported the right to this kind of speech.”

“But if the information’s up there and it’s published, people are going to want to check it and see if they’re in the database… There’s a legitimate reason for people to want to look at it.”

Norm Coleman’s attorney, Fritz Knaak, stated Thursday that the campaign had “a high degree of confidence” that the late-January exposure of its unprotected donor database didn’t result in the loss of sensitive data. A day earlier, Knaak initially leveled the claim, noting that Secret  Service investigators looking into the database breach “did not discover that any individual had been able to obtain confidential, personal financial information.”

But this week’s news that Wikileaks.org had obtained the 4.3 gigabyte database casts doubt on that statement — and so does Bruce Schneier, the Twin Cities-based technology expert dubbed a “security guru” by The Economist. Reached by phone at a Washington, D.C., technology conference late Thursday, Schneier characterized the campaign’s claim as “complete and utter bullshit.”

“It’s impossible to make that claim,” he said. “Either they misunderstood what the [Secret Service] said or they’re out-and-out lying. How can you determine the absence of something happening?”

The Secret Service has confirmed for the Minnesota Independent that an investigation is under way but said it couldn’t comment on ongoing cases.

Schneier said he didn’t know that IT professional Adria Richards had uncovered the security flaw with no advanced tools, but after learning it from the Minnesota Independent, he said of the Coleman campaign’s tech security: “It sounds like they didn’t have any, if what you’re saying is true. That seems pretty sloppy.”

He noted that it’s correct to call the exposure of the database a “breach,” as the campaign has done. “When someone who’s not authorized does it, we’d consider it a breach.”

But he wouldn’t call what Richards did — find and take a screen capture of an unprotected public Web directory — hacking.

“It’s not like it’s skilled hacking,” he said. “If I walk into an open door and steal a purse, am I cat burglar? … It’s not in the fine tradition of hacking because it took not a lot of skill. I wouldn’t use the term, but others might.”

He acknowledged that the law surrounding online security is “squirrely.” For instance, he said he’s unclear on whether viewing the unprotected Web directory where, for a few hours on Jan. 28, the directory existed could be considered a criminal act or whether this reporter could be prosecuted for clicking a direct link to the database that was left in comments in January at Minnesota Independent. (For the record, I didn’t download the file.)

“This law is still evolving, and some of it is really stupid,” he said. “People have been convicted for this. … It’s possible you would’ve been prosecuted.”

The exposure of the donor information, which included credit card numbers and three-digit security codes for them, is big news, he said, mainly because it involves a former U.S. senator who’s now locked in a political battle to regain his seat.

But he says such breaches — and mistakes about security for sensitive information — happen all the time.

“Companies do this, governments do this again and again and again,” he said. “While they definitely should know better, we’ve learned repeatedly that organizations don’t know better. It’s not, ‘Oh, God, look what they’ve done!’ It’s more: ‘Oh. It happened again.’”

“This couldn’ve happened to anybody – and it does.”

Photo by The Consumerist

The campaign of former Sen. Norm Coleman has alerted donors that a database containing personal data, including credit card numbers, has been circulating on the Internet.

Minnesota has a number of consumer protection laws that govern the use of personal information, which has raised questions about whether the Coleman campaign has violated state law.

Coleman attorney Fritz Knaak told AP yesterday that he’s confident the campaign complied with the law. But concerns have surfaced particularly about when the campaign notified those whose data had been exposed and what credit card information it kept on its database.

According to the Coleman’s campaign’s newly posted FAQ about the database breach, the campaign knew or at least suspected that the data had been exposed in January.

“We had reason to believe that someone had illegally accessed our website in late January,” the FAQ states. “At that time we immediately notified the Secret Service. They conducted an initial forensics review of our server and concluded that there was no evidence that any private or confidential information had been downloaded.”

Minnesota statute says that when “unencrypted personal information was, or is reasonably believed to have been, acquired by an unauthorized person,” it must be disclosed “in the most expedient time possible and without unreasonable delay” to the people whose data was acquired.

Hamline University law professor David Schultz says not alerting the donors in January could have been illegal.

“[Coleman's] campaign potentially violated state law by not promptly notifying card holders of the disclosure of their card info,” Schultz told Talking Points Memo. “Assume the campaign did suffer a breach in security, his campaign faces fines under state law and it is possible a card holder could sue the campaign for any damages. It would be hard for the donors to sue Coleman personally and prevail.”

Coleman’s campaign also retained to the verification codes listed on the backs of donors’ credit cards, according to the databases. The FAQ also notes, “The only information … made public so far [from the leaked version of the database] are the last four digits of individual’s cards and the security code on the card.” Under a law passed in 2007, retaining those numbers is prohibited:

“No person or entity conducting business in Minnesota… shall retain the card security code data, the PIN verification code data, or the full contents of any track of magnetic stripe data,” says state statute 325E.64. “A person or entity is in violation of this section if its service provider retains such data subsequent to the authorization of the transaction.”

Jay Lim, a spokesman for Wikileaks, told the AP yesterday, “Coleman should not have kept this information” and that “his team should not have released the information out onto the open Internet for anyone to download.”

“[Coleman] should have informed those concerned,” Lim said. “We shouldn’t have had to do it for him.”

This morning in the Pioneer Press, Dave Orrick contrasts Coleman’s statement that the Jan. 28 breach was an “attack on this campaign” with quotes from Web and banking experts who blame the campaign. Banking security professional Kelly McShane, who sent $100 Coleman’s way, called the breach “so irresponsible that I can’t believe it.” (Contacted by MnIndy’s Chris Steller yesterday, McShane said she felt “extreme anger” at having her personal data revealed by the campaign.) Eric Schultze, chief technology officer for Roseville’s Shavlik Technologies, faulted the campaign for not encrypting the credit card numbers, adding that credit industry standards dictate that credit card information never be on the same server as a Web site. He called the failure to encrypt card info “a big ‘oops’ on the part of the Web site administrator … I’d be surprised if that person still had a job.”

MPR’s Mark Zdechlik interviewed Adria Richards, an IT professional who weighed in at MnIndy on the security flaws she found back in January, who said she didn’t hack into the site. She echoed Schultze’s sentiments about the error of storing sensitive data on the web server: “It’s like putting your filing cabinet outside of your house.“