NSA Spying - FOIA Req. - Which agency is best targeted by a FOIA letter?

After reading this thread http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x5662808 about how the scandal puts pressure on the courts to release info to people who were spied on I have a few questions for the more legalese experienced DUers...

I have sent in FOIA requests before but never for something that was controversial. So I have a few questions:

1) Wouldn't it put additional pressure on them if more Americans asked if they were spied on?
2) Which agency / court is best targeted with the letter?
3) Any suggested verbage to make sure it passes legal muster?

Thanks in advance!

.. should file an FOIA request.

Sue

And filters out the ones that have certain words in them. Every call is monitored. Read the cuckoo's egg by clifford stoll.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0671726889/102-9298615-6696919?v=glance&n=283155


Or the Wiki entry

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON

ECHELON is a highly secretive world-wide signals intelligence and analysis network run by the UKUSA Community.

<1> ECHELON can capture radio and satellite communications, telephone calls, faxes and e-mails nearly anywhere in the world and includes computer automated analysis and sorting of intercepts.

<2> ECHELON is estimated to intercept up to 3 billion communications every day.
Contents

History

Reportedly created to monitor the military and diplomatic communications of the Soviet Union and its East Bloc allies, ECHELON is today believed to also search for hints of terrorist plots, drug-dealers' plans, and political and diplomatic intelligence. But some critics claim the system is also being used for large-scale commercial theft and invasion of privacy.

The members of the English-speaking alliance are part of the UKUSA intelligence alliance that has maintained ties in collecting and sharing intelligence since World War II. Various sources claim that these states have positioned electronic-intercept stations and space satellites to capture most radio, satellite, microwave, cellular and fiber-optic communications traffic. The captured signals are then processed through a series of supercomputers, known as dictionaries, that are programmed to search each communication for targeted addresses, words, phrases or even individual voices.

...

In May 2001, the European Parliament produced a report on ECHELON <4> which, amongst other things, recommended that citizens of member states routinely use cryptography in their communications to protect their privacy. In the UK, the government introduced the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act which gives authorities the power to demand that citizens hand over their encryption keys, without a judge-approved warrant. In April 2004, the European Union decided to spend 11 million EUR developing secure communication based on quantum cryptography — the SECOQC project — a system that would theoretically be unbreakable by ECHELON or any other espionage system.

ECHELON monitoring of mobile phones in Pakistan was reportedly used to track Khalid Shaikh Mohammed before he was arrested in Rawalpindi on March 1, 2003.

The limits of a large system such as ECHELON are defined by its very size. Though the system intercepts 3 billion communications daily, clients must know which intercepted communications to monitor before they can realize an intelligence advantage. For example, in the months before the September 11 attacks on the United States, signal intelligence produced by ECHELON developed considerable "chatter", or snippets of dialogue, that suggested some sort of attack was imminent. Analysts were unable to pin down the details of the attack, though, because operatives planning the attack relied largely on non-electronic communications. Even overt signals, such as a dramatic increase in trading activity of stock options on companies that were to be damaged in the attacks, failed to alert analysts, apparently because they did not know where within the daily deluge of electronic messages to look, much less how to connect the dots pointing to a specific attack.

Before the September 11, 2001 attacks and the legislation which followed it, US intelligence agencies were generally prohibited from spying on people inside the US and other western countries' intelligence services generally faced similar restrictions within their own countries. There are allegations, however, that ECHELON and the UKUSA alliance were used to circumvent these restrictions by, for example, having the UK facilities spy on people inside the US and the US facilites spy on people in the UK, with the agencies exchanging data (perhaps even automatically through the ECHELON system without human intervention).

The proposed US-only "Total Information Awareness" program relied on technology similar to ECHELON, and was to integrate the extensive sources it is legally permitted to survey domestically, with the "taps" already compiled by ECHELON. It was cancelled by the U.S. Congress in 2004.

It has been alleged that in 2002 the Bush Administration extended the ECHELON program to domestic surveillance. This controversy was the subject of the New York Times eavesdropping exposé of December, 2005.

real surveillance list. That was the reason they bypassed the court.

in any conceivable way to bring pressure on these thugs would get slightly more support...wouldn't you? I don't know about FOIA..only in concert with groups like the ACLU..and historians, but I hope you get an answer. It sounds like an excellent idea for maybe something we can sign on to, and defray the cost?

No list. Somethings being hidden.

I am anything but an expert on this. However, back before I retired last year I worked for the Federal Governemtn and Used to have to respond to FOIA requests a couple of times a year.

First thing, in your letter you must state that you are willing to pay the reasonable cost of finding and duplicating any materials you are successful in obtaining. You need to put an upper limit on the amount too, but you can ask that it all be waived. A lot of them I answered said something like this - I'd like the folling information (be very very specific), and then say I am willing to pay for finding and reproducing copies up to the amount of $25, if it will be more please notify me. However, being a private individual of megar means I am asking that your agency wave any fee for this request. For whatever its worth the place I worked at all those years never charged anyone for FOI requests no matter how much time it took or how much paper we sent them.

You have to be pretty specific on what you want. This isn't a shotgun, or at least it wasn't meant to be one. Ask for material created by specific individuals or operating units during specific time periods. Limit the search as much as you can.

Keep copies of absolutly everything and if you call take notes.

Go to the official DNC website.


Doug D.