The official British report on the July bombings in London is about to be released. The four suicide bombers were not acting for al Qaeda. They were home grown terrorists who hatched a cheap plan via the Internet.

Ryan Singel at Wired News has the latest on the class action lawsuit against AT&T for turning over customer records to the feds in Bush's warrantless NSA surveillance program.

AT&T provided NSA eavesdroppers with full access to its customers' phone calls, and shunted its customers' internet traffic to data-mining equipment installed in a secret room in its San Francisco switching center, according to a former AT&T worker cooperating in the Electronic Frontier Foundation's lawsuit against the company.

Mark Klein, a retired AT&T communications technician, submitted an affidavit in support of the EFF's lawsuit this week. That class action lawsuit, filed in federal court in San Francisco last January, alleges that AT&T violated federal and state laws by surreptitiously allowing the government to monitor phone and internet communications of AT&T customers without warrants.

by Last Night in Little Rock

The U.S. State Department announced on Thursday that the U.S. would not be seeking membership on the UN's new Human Rights Council as reported on PaperChase.

Our government's press statement is a classic "read between the lines" document:

The Bush Administration may be running on empty when it comes to the warrantless NSA electronic surveillance program. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales testified Wednesday at a Senate subcommittee hearing on budget needs, and even Republicans like Sensenbrenner weren't buying it:

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales left open the possibility yesterday that President Bush could order warrantless wiretaps on telephone calls occurring solely within the United States -- a move that would dramatically expand the reach of a controversial National Security Agency surveillance program.

In response to a question from Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) during an appearance before the House Judiciary Committee, Gonzales suggested that the administration could decide it was legal to listen in on a domestic call without supervision if it were related to al-Qaeda.

"I'm not going to rule it out," Gonzales said.

Up until Wednesday, the Administration refused to address the question of authority to engage in warrantless eavesdroppoing of purely domestic calls.

Noah at Defense Tech has his first article up on Slate today:

Most of you have probably heard about the FBI's technology problems: The field offices that still aren't connected to the 'Net. The 8,000 employees who don't have fbi.gov e-mail addresses. The case management database that's straight out of the leisure suit era. But what's not as widely known is why the bureau is so behind the times. The big culprit is FBI culture, it turns out. Until very recently, being computer-savvy hasn't been considered much of an asset in the FBI, and clues were something you kept to yourself.

Reporter's Committee for a Free Press has posted the trial exhibits in the Zacarias Moussaoui trial which recently were ordered released. The debriefing of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed(pdf), now in custody in a secret overseas prison, describes not only Moussaoui's non-participation in September 11, but minute details of the planning of 9/11, the participants, the operational theories behind it and the unformed plan for a second wave of attacks. It was introduced into evidence at Moussaoui's trial.

Also among the documents are the many e-mails between FBI agent Harry Samit who believed Moussaoui was an imminent terrorist danger, and other FBI agents who thwarted his attempts for a FISA warrant. Personally, I don't believe the FBI would have connected the dots no matter what, but that's what the jury in the Moussaoui case now is deliberating.

Today's New York Times provides this analysis of the documents.

To me, the most fascinating document is the summary of debriefing of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. From his overseas secret prison where he has been debriefed numerous times, he provided a wealth of information that anyone interested in 9/11, not just Moussaoui, will want to read.

In January, criminal defense lawyer Terry Kindlon of Albany, NY filed the first motion to dismiss criminal charges in a terrorism case based on Bush's warrantless electronic surveillance program. His motion alleged:

"The government engaged in illegal electronic surveillance of thousands of U.S. persons, including Yassin Aref, then instigated a sting operation to attempt to entrap Mr. Aref into supporting a nonexistent terrorist plot, then dared to claim that the illegal NSA operation was justified because it was the only way to catch Mr. Aref," Kindlon's motion said.

On March 11, the Judge issued a one page order denying Terry's motion but refused to share his reasons -- he designated his order "classified."

Terry has now sought the intervention of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in a mandamus action, seeking an order compelling the Government to disclose whether his clients were the subjects of NSA surveillance. It is the first case about the NSA surveillance to reach a federal appeals court.

Bump and Update: Here is the Complaint (pdf) in the Oregon NSA surveillance lawsuit. Here is the Motion to Submit Material Under Seal (pdf). [Note: a gracious TL reader has blacked out the e-mail addresses of lawyers]

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A "mystery document" has surfaced in an Oregon lawsuit over Bush's warrantless NSA electronic surveillance program. It is so hot to handle that the Judge wouldn't let it remain at the U.S. courthouse or in the custody of the FBI, a defendant in the case. The case involves:

The lawsuit alleges that the National Security Agency illegally wiretapped electronic communications between a local chapter of the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation and Wendell Belew and Asim Ghafoor, both attorneys in Washington, D.C.

It contends the NSA did not follow procedures required by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, and failed to obtain a court order authorizing electronic surveillance of the charity and its attorneys. Lawyers for the plaintiffs have said they can't spell out the facts that support their suit because those details are classified.

The Department of Justice today sent its responses to questions about Bush's warrantless electronic surveillance program to members of Congress. The ACLU, in press release (no link yet, received by email) responds:

The Department of Justice continues to refuse to give honest answers to basic questions, such as how many Americans have had their phone calls and e-mails listened to or read by the NSA without a warrant. Congress and the American people are entitled to the truth. Knowing how many innocent Americans have had their privacy invaded by this lawless program is not an 'operational' secret--it's the very question a less partisan and more independent Congress asked and got answered in the 1970s. That's when Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to try to prevent warrantless spying on Americans from happening again.

"The administration continues to try to get away with stonewalling Congress and the American people. Congress should not reward presidential obstruction with legislation to whitewash this violation of the Fourth Amendment and federal law. The current era of 'trust us, we're the government' must end now. Congress is obligated to investigate this illegal program further and cannot allow the Justice Department and White House to continue to suppress the facts. The law has been broken, and the people have a right to know how that happened."

More over at Raw Story including this answer, which confirms that doctors and lawyers are at risk of having their conversations wiretapped.

U.S. News & World Report's article on secret, warrantless physical searches, which many in the blogosphere, us included, anxiously have been awaiting since MSNBC's Keith Olbermann reported on it last night is online here.

The lawyer who believes his office and home were surreptitiously searched is Thomas Nelson of Oregon. Nelson represents Soliman al-Buthe, indicted in 2004 on charges he illegally took al-Haramain charitable donations out of the country. The Government charged al-Haramain had al Qaeda connections.

Nelson's story begins on the second page of the article and is frightening. In essence, he believes the FBI conducted "black bag searches" on his home and office to retrieve classified documents it had given al-Buthe by mistake. Nelson also thinks the documents may establish that al-Buthe was one of those subjected to NSA warrantless surveillance.

The story so far: On March 11, the New York Times identified Ali Shalal Qaissi as the hooded detainee in this photograph and wrote a long article on how Qaissi became a prison rights' activist after his release from Abu Ghraib. (synopsis here.) Salon then challenged the identification.

Today the New York Timess issued a correction: Salon was right, it was wrong.

The Times did not adequately research Mr. Qaissi's insistence that he was the man in the photograph. Mr. Qaissi's account had already been broadcast and printed by other outlets, including PBS and Vanity Fair, without challenge. Lawyers for former prisoners at Abu Ghraib vouched for him. Human rights workers seemed to support his account. The Pentagon, asked for verification, declined to confirm or deny it.

U.S. News & World Report, according to its press release read on-air Friday night by MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, will report on its website Saturday night that Bush Administration lawyers advocated the President had the power to authorize warrantless physical searches two weeks after September 11, using the same arguments adopted by Bush for his NSA warrantless surveillance program.

Crooks and Liars has the Olbermann video. Raw Story has the text of the press release that Olbermann read on the air.

U.S. News reported in December, 2005, that the U.S. engaged in physical monitoring of mosques and homes without warrants. [Via Think Progress.]

In search of a terrorist nuclear bomb, the federal government since 9/11 has run a far-reaching, top secret program to monitor radiation levels at over a hundred Muslim sites in the Washington, D.C., area, including mosques, homes, businesses, and warehouses, plus similar sites in at least five other cities, U.S. News has learned. In numerous cases, the monitoring required investigators to go on to the property under surveillance, although no search warrants or court orders were ever obtained, according to those with knowledge of the program.