Skip to main content

Home/ Socialism and the End of the American Dream/ Group items tagged FISA

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
Paul Merrell

Timeline of NSA Domestic Spying | Electronic Frontier Foundation - 1 views

www.eff.org/timeline

surveillance state NSA surveillance-history timeline

shared by Paul Merrell on 02 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • All of the evidence found in this timeline can also be found in the Summary of Evidence we submitted to the court in Jewel v. National Security Agency (NSA). It is intended to recall all the credible accounts and information of the NSA's domestic spying program found in the media, congressional testimony, books, and court actions. The timeline also includes documents leaked by the Guardian in June 2013 that confirmed the domestic spying by the NSA. The documents range from a Top Secret Court Order by the secret court overseeing the spying, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA Court), to a working draft of an NSA Inspector General report detailing the history of the program. The "NSA Inspectors General Reports" tab consists of one of three documents: a July 10, 2009 report written by Inspectors General of the Department of Justice (DOJ), NSA, Department of Defense (DOD), Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence; an internal working draft NSA Inspector General report leaked by the Guardian on June 27, 2013; and, an "End to End Review" of the Section 215 program conducted by the NSA for the FISA Court. For a short description of the people involved in the spying you can look at our Profiles page, which includes many of the key characters from the NSA Domestic Spying program.
  • Paul Merrell on 02 Aug 13
     
    This is definitely one to bookmark. Timeline traces the history of government electronic surveillance from adoption of the Fourth Amendment to present. This is a dancing sugar plum document with each entry expandable to show more detail and a link from each expansion to further information. 
  • Gary Edwards on 02 Aug 13
     
    Wow! You are so right Paul. What an incredible collection of NSA information. The EFF has created a wikipedia of illegal and un-Constitutional actions by the NSA and Federal Government. The JavaScript is awesome too.
Paul Merrell

Declassified Docs: NSA Misled Court (and Themselves) About Spying on Americans | Killer... - 1 views

killerapps.foreignpolicy.com/...lves_about_spying_on_americans

surveillance state NSA FBI FISA Court opinions privacy-violations

shared by Paul Merrell on 22 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • Paul Merrell on 22 Aug 13
     
    The infamous 2011 FISA Court opinion finding that NSA and the FBI were massively violating U.S. citizens' 4th Amendment rights is finally released in heavily redacted form. It is a shocker, repeatedly finding that the Feds had misrepresented facts to the court. 
Gary Edwards

When Government Looks for Witches - Judge Andrew Napolitano - 3 views

www.lewrockwell.com/...n-government-looks-for-witches

Judge-Andrew-Napolitano NSA-Patriot-Act-NDAA FiSA-Courts Banksters Federal-Reserve-Bankster-Cartel Globalist-Elites New-World-Order

shared by Gary Edwards on 03 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 03 Oct 13
     
    Another excellent commentary on NSA spying and the USA Constitution from libertarian icon, Judge Andrew Napolitano.  He has some very interesting arguments about the FiSA Courts and their legality under the Constitution.
Paul Merrell

NSA phone surveillance program likely unconstitutional, federal judge rules | World new... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...-likely-unconstitutional-judge

surveillance state NSA call-metadata litigation 4th Amendment constitutional law NSA-blowback

shared by Paul Merrell on 17 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • A federal judge in Washington ruled on Monday that the bulk collection of Americans’ telephone records by the National Security Agency is likely to violate the US constitution, in the most significant legal setback for the agency since the publication of the first surveillance disclosures by the whistleblower Edward Snowden. Judge Richard Leon declared that the mass collection of metadata probably violates the fourth amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures, and was "almost Orwellian" in its scope. In a judgment replete with literary swipes against the NSA, he said James Madison, the architect of the US constitution, would be "aghast" at the scope of the agency’s collection of Americans' communications data. The ruling, by the US district court for the District of Columbia, is a blow to the Obama administration, and sets up a legal battle that will drag on for months, almost certainly destined to end up in the supreme court. It was welcomed by campaigners pressing to rein in the NSA, and by Snowden, who issued a rare public statement saying it had vindicated his disclosures. It is also likely to influence other legal challenges to the NSA, currently working their way through federal courts.
  • In Monday’s ruling, the judge concluded that the pair's constitutional challenge was likely to be successful. In what was the only comfort to the NSA in a stinging judgment, Leon put the ruling on hold, pending an appeal by the government. Leon expressed doubt about the central rationale for the program cited by the NSA: that it is necessary for preventing terrorist attacks. “The government does not cite a single case in which analysis of the NSA’s bulk metadata collection actually stopped an imminent terrorist attack,” he wrote.
  • Leon’s opinion contained stern and repeated warnings that he was inclined to rule that the metadata collection performed by the NSA – and defended vigorously by the NSA director Keith Alexander on CBS on Sunday night – was unconstitutional. “Plaintiffs have a substantial likelihood of showing that their privacy interests outweigh the government’s interest in collecting and analysing bulk telephony metadata and therefore the NSA’s bulk collection program is indeed an unreasonable search under the fourth amendment,” he wrote. Leon said that the mass collection of phone metadata, revealed by the Guardian in June, was "indiscriminatory" and "arbitrary" in its scope. "The almost-Orwellian technology that enables the government to store and analyze the phone metadata of every telephone user in the United States is unlike anything that could have been conceived in 1979," he wrote, referring to the year in which the US supreme court ruled on a fourth amendment case upon which the NSA now relies to justify the bulk records program.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • In a statement, Snowden said the ruling justified his disclosures. “I acted on my belief that the NSA's mass surveillance programs would not withstand a constitutional challenge, and that the American public deserved a chance to see these issues determined by open courts," he said in comments released through Glenn Greenwald, the former Guardian journalist who received leaked documents from Snowden. "Today, a secret program authorised by a secret court was, when exposed to the light of day, found to violate Americans’ rights. It is the first of many.”
  • In his ruling, Judge Leon expressly rejected the government’s claim that the 1979 supreme court case, Smith v Maryland, which the NSA and the Obama administration often cite to argue that there is no reasonable expectation of privacy over metadata, applies in the NSA’s bulk-metadata collection. The mass surveillance program differs so much from the one-time request dealt with by the 1979 case that it was of “little value” in assessing whether the metadata dragnet constitutes a fourth amendment search.
  • In a decision likely to influence other federal courts hearing similar arguments from the ACLU, Leon wrote that the Guardian’s disclosure of the NSA’s bulk telephone records collection means that citizens now have standing to challenge it in court, since they can demonstrate for the first time that the government is collecting their phone data.
  • Leon also struck a blow for judicial review of government surveillance practices even when Congress explicitly restricts the ability of citizens to sue for relief. “While Congress has great latitude to create statutory schemes like Fisa,” he wrote, referring to the seminal 1978 surveillance law, “it may not hang a cloak of secrecy over the constitution.”
  • In his ruling on Monday, Judge Leon predicted the process would take six months. He urged the government to take that time to prepare for an eventual defeat. “I fully expect that during the appellate process, which will consume at least the next six months, the government will take whatever steps necessary to prepare itself to comply with this order when, and if, it is upheld,” wrote Leon in his opinion. “Suffice it to say, requesting further time to comply with this order months from now will not be well received and could result in collateral sanctions.”
  • Paul Merrell on 17 Dec 13
     
    This is the case I thought was the weakest because of poor drafting in the complaint. The judge noted those issues in dismissing the plaintiffs' claims under the Administrative Procedures Act, but picked his way through what remained to find sufficient allegations to support the 4th Amendment challenge. Because he ruled for the plaintiffs on the 4th Amendment count, the judge did not reach the plaintiffs' arguments under the First and Fifth Amendments. This case is about cellphone call metadata, which the FISA Court has been ordering cell phone companies to provide every day, with the orders updated every 90 days. The judge's 68-page opinion is at https://ecf.dcd.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/show_public_doc?2013cv0881-40 (cleaner copy than the Guardian's, which was apparently faxed). Notably, the judge, Richard Leon, is a Bush II appointee and one of the plaintiffs is a prominent conservative civil libertarian lawyer. The other plaintiff is the father of an NSA cryptologist who worked closely with SEAL Team 6 and was killed along with members of that team when their helicopter crashed in Afghanistan. I'll add some more in a comment. But digital privacy is not yet dead.
  • Paul Merrell on 17 Dec 13
     
    Unfortunately, DRM is not dead yet either and the court's PDF file is locked. No easy copying of its content. If you want to jump directly to the discussion of 4th Amendment issues, go to page 35. That way, you can skip past all the dreary discussion of the Administrative Procedures Act claim and you won't miss much that's memorable. In ruling on the plaintiffs' standing to raise the 4th Amendment claim, Judge Leon postulated two possible search issues: [i] the bulk daily collection of metadata and its retention in the database for five years; and [ii] the analysis of that data through the NSA's querying process. The judge had no difficulty with the first issue; it definitely qualifies as a search. But the judge rejected the plaintiffs' argument on the second type (which was lame), demonstrating that at least one federal judge understands how computers work. The government's filings indicated that a "seed" telephone number or other identifier is used as the query string. Judge Leon figured out for himself from this fact that the NSA of necessity had to compare that number or identifier to every number or identifier in its database looking for a match. The judge concluded that the plaintiffs' metadata --- indeed everyone's metadata --- had to be searched for comparison purposes *every* time the NSA analysts ran any query against the database. See his incisive discussion at pp. 39-41. So having established that two searches were involved, one every time the NSA queried the database, the judge moved on to the next question, whether "the plaintiffs had a reasonable expectation of privacy that is violated when the Government indiscriminately collects their telephony metadata along with the metadata of hundreds of millions of other citizens without any particularized suspicion of wrongdoing, retains that metadata for five years, and then queries, analyzes, and investigates that data without prior judicial approval of the investigative targets." pg. 43. More later
Paul Merrell

NSA loophole allows warrantless search for US citizens' emails and phone calls | World ... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...rrantless-searches-email-calls

surveillance state NSA Wyden FISA-loophole must-read

shared by Paul Merrell on 17 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • The National Security Agency has a secret backdoor into its vast databases under a legal authority enabling it to search for US citizens' email and phone calls without a warrant, according to a top-secret document passed to the Guardian by Edward Snowden.The previously undisclosed rule change allows NSA operatives to hunt for individual Americans' communications using their name or other identifying information. Senator Ron Wyden told the Guardian that the law provides the NSA with a loophole potentially allowing "warrantless searches for the phone calls or emails of law-abiding Americans".The authority, approved in 2011, appears to contrast with repeated assurances from Barack Obama and senior intelligence officials to both Congress and the American public that the privacy of US citizens is protected from the NSA's dragnet surveillance programs.
  • The intelligence data is being gathered under Section 702 of the of the Fisa Amendments Act (FAA), which gives the NSA authority to target without warrant the communications of foreign targets, who must be non-US citizens and outside the US at the point of collection.The communications of Americans in direct contact with foreign targets can also be collected without a warrant, and the intelligence agencies acknowledge that purely domestic communications can also be inadvertently swept into its databases. That process is known as "incidental collection" in surveillance parlance.But this is the first evidence that the NSA has permission to search those databases for specific US individuals' communications.
  • A secret glossary document provided to operatives in the NSA's Special Source Operations division – which runs the Prism program and large-scale cable intercepts through corporate partnerships with technology companies – details an update to the "minimization" procedures that govern how the agency must handle the communications of US persons. That group is defined as both American citizens and foreigners located in the US."While the FAA 702 minimization procedures approved on 3 October 2011 now allow for use of certain United States person names and identifiers as query terms when reviewing collected FAA 702 data," the glossary states, "analysts may NOT/NOT [not repeat not] implement any USP [US persons] queries until an effective oversight process has been developed by NSA and agreed to by DOJ/ODNI [Office of the Director of National Intelligence]."The term "identifiers" is NSA jargon for information relating to an individual, such as telephone number, email address, IP address and username as well as their name.The document – which is undated, though metadata suggests this version was last updated in June 2012 – does not say whether the oversight process it mentions has been established or whether any searches against US person names have taken place.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Wyden, an Oregon Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, has obliquely warned for months that the NSA's retention of Americans' communications incidentally collected and its ability to search through it has been far more extensive than intelligence officials have stated publicly. Speaking this week, Wyden told the Guardian it amounts to a "backdoor search" through Americans' communications data."Section 702 was intended to give the government new authorities to collect the communications of individuals believed to be foreigners outside the US, but the intelligence community has been unable to tell Congress how many Americans have had their communications swept up in that collection," he said."Once Americans' communications are collected, a gap in the law that I call the 'back-door searches loophole' allows the government to potentially go through these communications and conduct warrantless searches for the phone calls or emails of law-abiding Americans."
  • Exclusive: Spy agency has secret backdoor permission to search databases for individual Americans' communications
Paul Merrell

Court gave NSA broad leeway in surveillance, documents show - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...3-8176-f2c941cf35f1_story.html

surveillance-state foreign-intelligence NSA-targets NSA-backdoors

shared by Paul Merrell on 01 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • Virtually no foreign government is off-limits for the National Security Agency, which has been authorized to intercept information “concerning” all but four countries, according to top-secret documents. The United States has long had broad no-spying arrangements with those four countries — Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand — in a group known collectively with the United States as the Five Eyes. But a classified 2010 legal certification and other documents indicate the NSA has been given a far more elastic authority than previously known, one that allows it to intercept through U.S. companies not just the communications of its overseas targets but any communications about its targets as well.
  • The certification — approved by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and included among a set of documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden — lists 193 countries that would be of valid interest for U.S. intelligence. The certification also permitted the agency to gather intelligence about entities including the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the European Union and the International Atomic Energy Agency. The NSA is not necessarily targeting all the countries or organizations identified in the certification, the affidavits and an accompanying exhibit; it has only been given authority to do so. Still, the privacy implications are far-reaching, civil liberties advocates say, because of the wide spectrum of people who might be engaged in communication about foreign governments and entities and whose communications might be of interest to the United States.
  • On Friday, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a transparency report stating that in 2013 the government targeted nearly 90,000 foreign individuals or organizations for foreign surveillance under the program. Some tech-industry lawyers say the number is relatively low, considering that several billion people use U.S. e-mail services.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • That language could allow for surveillance of academics, journalists and human rights researchers. A Swiss academic who has information on the German government’s position in the run-up to an international trade negotiation, for instance, could be targeted if the government has determined there is a foreign-intelligence need for that information. If a U.S. college professor e-mails the Swiss professor’s e-mail address or phone number to a colleague, the American’s e-mail could be collected as well, under the program’s court-approved rules
  • Still, some lawmakers are concerned that the potential for intrusions on Americans’ privacy has grown under the 2008 law because the government is intercepting not just communications of its targets but communications about its targets as well. The expansiveness of the foreign-powers certification increases that concern.
  • In a 2011 FISA court opinion, a judge using an NSA-provided sample estimated that the agency could be collecting as many as 46,000 wholly domestic e-mails a year that mentioned a particular target’s e-mail address or phone number, in what is referred to as “about” collection. “When Congress passed Section 702 back in 2008, most members of Congress had no idea that the government was collecting Americans’ communications simply because they contained a particular individual’s contact information,” Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who has co-sponsored ­legislation to narrow “about” collection authority, said in an e-mail to The Washington Post. “If ‘about the target’ collection were limited to genuine national security threats, there would be very little privacy impact. In fact, this collection is much broader than that, and it is scooping up huge amounts of Americans’ wholly domestic communications.”
  • The only reason the court has oversight of the NSA program is that Congress in 2008 gave the government a new authority to gather intelligence from U.S. companies that own the Internet cables running through the United States, former officials noted. Edgar, the former privacy officer at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, said ultimately he believes the authority should be narrowed. “There are valid privacy concerns with leaving these collection decisions entirely in the executive branch,” he said. “There shouldn’t be broad collection, using this authority, of foreign government information without any meaningful judicial role that defines the limits of what can be collected.”
Paul Merrell

Court asked to kill off NSA's 'zombie dragnet' of Americans' bulk phone data | US news ... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...-dragnet-bulk-phone-data-court

surveillance state NSA bulk bulk-collection telephone-metadata litigation 2nd-Circuit

shared by Paul Merrell on 16 Jul 15 - No Cached
  • The leading civil liberties group in the United States has requested a federal court to stop the National Security Agency from collecting Americans’ phone data in bulk through the end of the year.
  • While the surveillance dragnet was phased out by Congress and Barack Obama last month, an American Civil Liberties Union suit seeks to end a twilight, zombie period of the same US phone records collection, slated under the new law to last six months. “Today the government is continuing – after a brief suspension – to collect Americans’ call records in bulk on the purported authority of precisely the same statutory language this court has already concluded does not permit it,” the ACLU writes in a motion filed on Tuesday before the second circuit court of appeals.
  • The venue is significant. On 7 May, as Congress debated ending the domestic phone-records collection, the second circuit ruled the collection was illegal. Yet it did not order Obama’s administration to cease the bulk collection, writing that a preferable option would be to stay out of the unfolding legislative battle over the future scope of US surveillance. That debate ended on 2 June with the passage of the USA Freedom Act, which reinstated expired provisions of the Patriot Act that the government had since 2006 relied upon – erroneously, in the second circuit’s view – for the bulk collection. Yet it ended the NSA’s bulk US phone records collection and created a new mechanism for the NSA to gather “call data records” from telecoms pursuant to a court order.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Within hours of signing the bill, Obama requested that the secret surveillance panel known as the Fisa court reinstate the dragnet, relying on a provision permitting a six-month “transition” period. Judge Michael Mosman granted the request on 29 June. The ACLU, which was the plaintiff in the case the second circuit decided, has indicated since the Fisa court began considering resumption of the dragnet that it would seek an injunction. Its major contention in support of the requested injunction is that despite the Freedom Act’s provision for a transition period, the underlying law authorizing the bulk surveillance remains the same Patriot Act provisions that the second circuit held do not justify the NSA phone-records collection. “There is no sound reason to accord this language a different meaning now than the court accorded it in May. [The Patriot Act] did not authorize bulk collection in May, and it does not authorize it now,” reads the ACLU brief.
Paul Merrell

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article35198.htm - 0 views

www.informationclearinghouse.info/article35198.htm

surveillance state prism NSA social media

shared by Paul Merrell on 08 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • According to a new report in The Wall Street Journal, the scope of the NSA phone monitoring includes customers of all three major phone networks—Verizon, AT&T and Sprint—as well as records from Internet service providers and purchase information from credit card providers.
  • GLENN GREENWALD: Right. Well, first of all, after our story was published, and The Washington Post published more or less simultaneously a similar story, several news outlets, including NBC News, confirmed with government officials that they in fact have exactly the access to the data that we describe. The director of national intelligence confirmed to The New York Times, by name, that the program we identify and the capabilities that we described actually exist. So, you have a situation where somebody seems to be lying. The NSA claims that these companies voluntarily allow them the access; the companies say that they never did.
  • on Thursday, Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Dianne Feinstein told reporters in the Senate gallery that the government’s top-secret court order to obtain phone records on millions of Americans is, quote, "lawful." SEN. DIANNE FEINSTEIN: As far as I know, this is the exact three-month renewal of what has been the case for the past seven years. This renewal is carried out by the FISA court under the business records section of the PATRIOT Act, therefore it is lawful.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • On Thursday, Glenn, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said he stood by what he told Democratic Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon in March, when he said that the National Security Agency does "not wittingly" collect data on millions of Americans. Let’s go to that exchange. SEN. RON WYDEN: Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans? JAMES CLAPPER: No, sir. SEN. RON WYDEN: It does not? JAMES CLAPPER: Not wittingly. There are cases where they could inadvertently, perhaps, collect, but not wittingly.
  • AMY GOODMAN: That’s the questioning of the head of the national intelligence, James Clapper, by Democratic Senator Ron Wyden. Glenn Greenwald? GLENN GREENWALD: OK. So, we know that to be a lie, not a misleading statement, not something that was sort of parsed in a way that really was a little bit deceitful, but an outright lie. They collect—they collect data and records about the communications activities and other behavioral activities of millions of Americans all the time. That’s what that program is that we exposed on Wednesday. They go to the FISA court every three months, and they get an order compelling telephone companies to turn over the records, that he just denied they collect, with regard to the conversations of every single American who uses these companies to communicate with one another. The same is true for what they’re doing on the Internet with the PRISM program. The same is true for what the NSA does in all sorts of ways. We are going to do a story, coming up very shortly, about the scope of the NSA’s spying activities domestically, and I think it’s going to shock a lot of people, because the NSA likes to portray itself as interested only in foreign intelligence gathering and only in targeting people who they believe are guilty of terrorism, and yet the opposite is true. It is a massive surveillance state of exactly the kind that the Church Committee warned was being constructed 35 years ago. And we intend to make all those facts available so people can see just how vast it is and how false those kind of statements are.
Gary Edwards

We Call a Top NSA Whistleblower … And Get the REAL SCOOP on Spying | Washingt... - 0 views

www.washingtonsblog.com/...ope-of-the-spying-program.html

William-Binney NSA-Whistleblower NSA-Patriot-Act NARUS Verint

shared by Gary Edwards on 10 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 10 Jun 13
     
    "NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake corroborated Klein's assertions, testifying that while the NSA is using Israeli-made NARUS hardware to "seize and save all personal electronic communications." ..................... I then asked the NSA veteran Binney if the government's claim that it is only spying on metadata - and not content - was correct. We have extensively documented that the government is likely recording content as well. (And the government has previously admitted to "accidentally" collecting more information on Americans than was legal, and then gagged the judges so they couldn't disclose the nature or extent of the violations.) Binney said that was not true; the government is gathering everything, including content. Binney explained - as he has many times before - that the government is storing everything, and creating a searchable database … to be used whenever it wants, for any purpose it wants (even just going after someone it doesn't like). ..................... Binney said that former FBI counter-terrorism agent Tim Clemente is correct when he says that no digital data is safe (Clemente says that all digital communications are being recorded). Both Verint and Narus were founded in Israel in the 1990s. *** Binney next confirmed the statement of the author of the Patriot Act - Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner - that the NSA spying programs violate the Patriot Act. After all, the Patriot Act is focused on spying on external threats … not on Americans. Binney asked rhetorically: "How can an American court [FISA or otherwise] tell telecoms to cough up all domestic data?!" Update: Binney sent the following clarifying email about content collection: It's clear to me that they are collecting most e-mail in full plus other text type data on the web. As for phone calls, I don't think they would record/transcribe the approximately 3 billion US-to-US calls every day. It's more likely that they are reco
Paul Merrell

Boundless Informant: the NSA's secret tool to track global surveillance data | World ne... - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...ss-informant-global-datamining

security state NSA digital surveillance perjury

shared by Paul Merrell on 11 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • The National Security Agency has developed a powerful tool for recording and analysing where its intelligence comes from, raising questions about its repeated assurances to Congress that it cannot keep track of all the surveillance it performs on American communications. The Guardian has acquired top-secret documents about the NSA datamining tool, called Boundless Informant, that details and even maps by country the voluminous amount of information it collects from computer and telephone networks.
  • The focus of the internal NSA tool is on counting and categorizing the records of communications, known as metadata, rather than the content of an email or instant message. The Boundless Informant documents show the agency collecting almost 3 billion pieces of intelligence from US computer networks over a 30-day period ending in March 2013. One document says it is designed to give NSA officials answers to questions like, "What type of coverage do we have on country X" in "near real-time by asking the SIGINT [signals intelligence] infrastructure."An NSA factsheet about the program, acquired by the Guardian, says: "The tool allows users to select a country on a map and view the metadata volume and select details about the collections against that country."
  • A snapshot of the Boundless Informant data, contained in a top secret NSA "global heat map" seen by the Guardian, shows that in March 2013 the agency collected 97bn pieces of intelligence from computer networks worldwide.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • The heatmap gives each nation a color code based on how extensively it is subjected to NSA surveillance. The color scheme ranges from green (least subjected to surveillance) through yellow and orange to red (most surveillance).The disclosure of the internal Boundless Informant system comes amid a struggle between the NSA and its overseers in the Senate over whether it can track the intelligence it collects on American communications. The NSA's position is that it is not technologically feasible to do so.
  • At a hearing of the Senate intelligence committee In March this year, Democratic senator Ron Wyden asked James Clapper, the director of national intelligence: "Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?" "No sir," replied Clapper.
  • Other documents seen by the Guardian further demonstrate that the NSA does in fact break down its surveillance intercepts which could allow the agency to determine how many of them are from the US. The level of detail includes individual IP addresses.
  • Senators have expressed their frustration at the NSA's refusal to supply statistics. In a letter to NSA director General Keith Alexander in October last year, senator Wyden and his Democratic colleague on the Senate intelligence committee, Mark Udall, noted that "the intelligence community has stated repeatedly that it is not possible to provide even a rough estimate of how many American communications have been collected under the Fisa Amendments Act, and has even declined to estimate the scale of this collection."At a congressional hearing in March last year, Alexander denied point-blank that the agency had the figures on how many Americans had their electronic communications collected or reviewed. Asked if he had the capability to get them, Alexander said: "No. No. We do not have the technical insights in the United States." He added that "nor do we do have the equipment in the United States to actually collect that kind of information".
  • Paul Merrell on 11 Jun 13
     
    Have NSA and other Administration officials perjured themselves in testimony to Congress? It look that way. Next question: will they be prosecuted?  See also related article at and the leaked FAQ on BoundlessInformant itself at . 
Paul Merrell

Lawmaker Says There More To NSA Spying - Business Insider - 0 views

www.businessinsider.com/here-more-to-nsa-spying-2013-6

surveillance state NSA future-disclosures

shared by Paul Merrell on 04 Jul 13 - No Cached
  • A House Democrat said information revealed about the National Security Agency's secret surveillance programs are "the tip of the iceberg," Daniel Strauss of The Hill reports. "I think it's just broader than most people even realize, and I think that's, in one way, what astounded most of us, too," Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Calif.) told C-SPAN's "Washington Journal" after a classified briefing with national security officials. Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), who also attended the meeting, said that the NSA "violated the spirit of the law when it started collecting data from everyone in the country just because technology now makes that possible.” Barton added that "in America ... You don’t target everyone and violate their 4th Amendment rights just because of a handful of threats. But that is exactly what is happening at the NSA ... it is wrong and it needs to stop now.” More from Sanchez: "I don't know if there are other leaks, if there's more information somewhere, if somebody else is going to step up, but I will tell you that I believe it's the tip of the iceberg."
  • A House Democrat said information revealed about the National Security Agency's secret surveillance programs are "the tip of the iceberg," Daniel Strauss of The Hill reports. "I think it's just broader than most people even realize, and I think that's, in one way, what astounded most of us, too," Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Calif.) told C-SPAN's "Washington Journal" after a classified briefing with national security officials. Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), who also attended the meeting, said that the NSA "violated the spirit of the law when it started collecting data from everyone in the country just because technology now makes that possible.” Barton added that "in America ... You don’t target everyone and violate their 4th Amendment rights just because of a handful of threats. But that is exactly what is happening at the NSA ... it is wrong and it needs to stop now.”
  • Glenn Greenwald of the Guardian, who has served as a conduit for Snowden's leaks, recently said that there will me many more "significant revelations that have not yet been heard." Greenwald told The New York Times that he received “thousands” of classified documents — “dozens” of which are newsworthy — from the the 29-year-old ex-Booz Allen employee who was contracted by the NSA. Sanchez said that what lawmakers learned "is significantly more than what is out in the media today," which is interesting when considering previous reports by journalists and whistleblowers.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Here's a rundown of the reports and the allegations: In 2006 NSA insiders told Leslie Cauley of USA Today that the NSA has been collecting almost all U.S. phone records since shortly after 9/11. In 2010 Dana Priest and William Arkin of The Washington Post reported that "collection systems at the [NSA] intercept and store 1.7 billion emails, phone calls, and other types of communications" every day. According to a 2007 lawsuit, Verizon built a fiber optic cable to give the "access to all communications flowing through the carrier’s operations center." In April 2012 Wired's James Bamford reported how the U.S. government hired two secretive Israeli companies to wiretap AT&T. AT&T engineer Mark Klein discovered the "secret room" at AT&T central office in San Francisco, through which the NSA actively "vacuumed up Internet and phone-call data from ordinary Americans with the cooperation of AT&T" through the wiretapping rooms, emphasizing that "much of the data sent through AT&T to the NSA was purely domestic." Former NSA executive and whistleblower Thomas Drake testified that the NSA is using Israeli-made hardware to "seize and save all personal electronic communications."
  • A classified program called Prism, leaked by Snowden, appears to acquire information from the servers of nine of the biggest internet companies. The Washington Post reported that the government's orders "serve as one-time blanket approvals for data acquisition and surveillance on selected foreign targets for periods of as long as a year." NSA Whistleblower William Binney that the NSA began using the program he built (i.e. ThinThread) to use communications data for creating, in real time, profiles of nearly all Americans so that the government is "able to monitor what people are doing" and who they are doing it with. In July the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), established to "hear applications for and grant orders approving electronic surveillance," found that the NSA violated the Fourth Amendment's restriction against unreasonable searches and seizures "on at least one occasion." BONUS: In March CIA Chief Technology Officer Ira "Gus" Hunt said: "It is really very nearly within our grasp to be able to compute on all human generated information." If there is "significantly more" to the NSA's domestic snooping, then we're all ears and eyes.
Paul Merrell

James Comey remained at Justice Department as monitoring went on | World news | guardia... - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...ice-department-data-monitoring

surveillance state NSA FBI Comey Obama confirmation

shared by Paul Merrell on 04 Jul 13 - No Cached
  • James Comey famously threatened to resign from the Justice Department in 2004 over the warrantless surveillance of Americans' internet records. But once Justice Department and National Security Agency lawyers found a novel legal theory to cover the surveillance, the man Barack Obama tapped last week to lead the FBI stayed on as deputy attorney general for another year as the monitoring continued.Comey was the acting attorney general in March 2004, when long-simmering legal tensions over the online "metadata" surveillance pitted the Justice Department and FBI against the Bush White House and NSA. That incident, dramatically recounted by Comey to the Senate in May 2007, earned the 6ft 8in former federal prosecutor a reputation for integrity that has become central to his persona.
  • President Obama directly referred to that reputation when he nominated Comey to take over the FBI on June 21. Hovering over the announcement were the Guardian and Washington Post's revelations of wide-ranging surveillance efforts."To know Jim Comey is also to know his fierce independence and his deep integrity," Obama said. "He was prepared to give up a job he loved rather than be part of something he felt was fundamentally wrong."Except that a classified report recounting the incident, acquired by the Guardian, complicates that view. Comey threatened to resign over the perceived illegality of one aspect of the surveillance. But he remained at the Justice Department for another year as that effort, operating under a new legal theory, continued nearly unchanged.
  • Comey would later testify to the Senate that the episode was "the most difficult of my professional career."But "immediately," the NSA IG report shows, lawyers from the NSA and Comey's Justice Department "began efforts to recreate this authority." They found it in what the document nebulously refers to as a Pen Register/Trap and Trace Order – a reference to devices traditionally used by surveillance officials to record the incoming and outgoing calls made and received by a telephone.The Fisa court, the secret court that oversees NSA surveillance, approved the first such order for NSA to again collect and analyze large volumes of internet records from Americans on July 14 2004, barely three months after Comey's rebellion.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • "Although NSA lost access to the bulk metadata from 26 March 2004 until the order was signed, the order essentially gave NSA the same authority to collect bulk internet metadata that it had" previously, the NSA IG report reads, "except that it specified the datalinks from which NSA could collect, and it limited the number of people that could access the data."The surveillance Comey and his colleagues – including Mueller, the FBI director he is nominated to replace – objected to had merely been paused and rerouted under a new legal basis. Comey remained at the Justice Department as deputy attorney general until August 15, 2005.
  • Paul Merrell on 04 Jul 13
     
    Here's hoping that the Senate has the sense to reject James Comey as the new FBI Director. The FBI needs a Director and Comey's active assistance  in unconstitutional NSA surveillance, even if not an absolute disqualifier, cannot possibly be sorted out  during the foreseeable future.   Hey, Mr. President, how about a real civil libertarian instead?
Gary Edwards

As Natural News predicted: NSA has been blackmailing Supreme Court judges, members of C... - 0 views

www.naturalnews.com/g_blackmail_Supreme_Court.html

NSA-Patriot-Act-NDAA Blackmail

shared by Gary Edwards on 25 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 25 Jun 13
     
    Blackmail! excerpt: "Ten days ago, I publicly stated my belief that the NSA had used its spy apparatus to gather dirt on Supreme Court Justice John Roberts, then used that leverage to force him to change his vote on Obamacare. See the original article here. Five days later, I also predicted the NSA was using its spy powers to surveil members of Congress and the U.S. Senate. In an article published on June 16, 2013, I wrote, "There could already be countless cases of the NSA using its god-like powers to blackmail people in key positions in the U.S. Senate (which is full of pedophiles and perverts), the House of Representatives, the State Department or even the US Supreme Court. There are virtually no limits to the abuses of this power." Suddenly, new revelations prove this to be true. Russ Tice, a Bush-era NSA analyst-turned-whistleblower has sounded the alarm on the true depth of the NSA's surveillance abuses. In an interview on the Boiling Frogs Podcast, Tice stated: They went after -- and I know this because I had my hands literally on the paperwork for these sort of things -- they went after high-ranking military officers; they went after members of Congress, both Senate and the House, especially on the intelligence committees and on the armed services committees and some of the -- and judicial... They went after lawyers and law firms. All kinds of -- heaps of lawyers and law firms. They went after judges. One of the judges is now sitting on the Supreme Court that I had his wiretap information in my hand. Two are former FISA court judges. They went after State Department officials. They went after people in the executive service that were part of the White House -- their own people.
Gary Edwards

The Ruling Class Consensus On Domestic Spying | Online Library of Law and Liberty - 0 views

www.libertylawsite.org/...s-consensus-on-domestic-spying

Angelo-Codevilla ruling-class-elites

shared by Gary Edwards on 25 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • This means that the US government’s vast apparatus is almost completely useless against serious terrorists or criminals, and useful primarily to do whatever the government might choose to innocent persons.
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 25 Jun 13
       
      Bold statement, but then how did the Fort Hood massacre and Boston Marathon massacre occur?  Plenty of email and phone call evidence in both cases.  Yet the government was caught totally unaware.  I guess it really depends on who the watchers are watching.  Proof is slowly being gathered that the watchers are watching those whom the government elites seek to destroy through blackmail, intimidation (IRS anyone?), and breach of Constitutional rights (take your pick of any three letter government agency acronym you like).
  • Ever since the 1970s, the art of code-making has surpassed the art of code-breaking – period.
  • Hence, on the high end, anyone can purchase voice and internet communications software that are beyond the capacity of anyone to access without an electronic key.
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • If collection is universal, the collectors don’t have to explain to others (or even to themselves) why they are targeting this person or group and not another. Possessing the data in secret, they can then decide in secret who they are really interested in.
  • That flight from responsibility is also why, in 1978, the intelligence agencies pressed Congress to pass the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), under which the agencies submit their requests for detailed targeting, in secret, to a court that decides ex parte and in secret.
  • the FISA court. But that court acts not just in secret, but ex parte – hearing only one side.
  • The relevant question about the uses of the NSA programs, then, is simply “against whom, in the broad American public, is the US government likely to turn its animus?
  • Alas, the ruling class has shown itself all too able to treat domestic opponents as public enemies. But that is another story.
  • In the words of General Keith Alexander, director of NSA, this surveillance has “helped to prevent” “dozens of terrorist events.”
  • From Barack Obama to Karl Rove, the ruling class is in unison: The NSA’s collection of data on virtually all Americans is essential to preventing you from “being blown to smithereens on your morning commute”
  • Another, PRISM, gives access to all records of email, chat, photos, videos and file transfers from the servers of leading US internet companies.
  • Here are the facts.
  • These programs stand between Americans and terrorists. Worries that they will be misused are misplaced or downright kooky.
  • Project Constant Informant, which tracks essentially all American phone calls, allows matching the account holder’s identity with each call’s precise location in time and place.
  • anyone who has followed telecommunication technology and intelligence during the past three decades can only scoff at the claim that universal collection of telephone externals and access to internet traffic can thwart serious criminals or terrorists.
  • In fact, the expansion of the US government’s capacity to intrude on innocent communications happened just as technology enabled competent persons who intend to hide their communications to do so without fail.
Gary Edwards

Obama gives himself control of all communication systems in America - RT - 0 views

rt.com/...ident-order-communications-770

Obammunism executive-orders

shared by Gary Edwards on 10 Jul 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 10 Jul 12
     
    Awful stuff.  Another Obama executive order suspending the Constitution and terminating the Bill of Rights. Revoking the right of habeas corpus is unconstitutional. So is declaring a national emergency without congressional approval. The Constitution declares, "The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it." While Congress has passed many an unConstitutional Law regarding "National Emergency Powers", there is nothing in the Constitution granting any branch of the Federal government to tear up the Constitution and Bill of Rights.  Atrocities like FiSA, The Military Commissions Act, NSP51, HSPD20, the John Warner Defense Authorization Act, the National Emergencies Act, and the Patriot Act are un Constitutional to the core.   Only the American people, through their representatives in Congress, can declare a national emergency.  With the exception of the habeas corpus clause, the Constitution makes no allowance for the suspension of any of its provisions during a national emergency.  Many statist seeking to breach the Constitution and Bill of Rights argue that the granting of emergency powers by Congress is implicit in its Article I, section 8 authority to "provide for the common Defense and general Welfare," the commerce clause, its war, armed forces, and militia powers, and the "necessary and proper" clause empowering it to make such laws as are required to fulfill the executions of "the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof." But this issue of "implied" powers defies an actual reading of the Constitution, and seeks to breach the meaning of that most basic of all Madisonian  Constitutional concepts embedded into the framework of limited government: "enumerated powers".  The United States is a government of enumerated powers.  N
Paul Merrell

PCLOB - 0 views

www.pclob.gov

surveillance state NSA Privacy-Oversight-Board 215 unlawful

shared by Paul Merrell on 24 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • ​​​​​​​​​​​​PRIVACY AND CIVIL LIBERTIES OVERSIGHT BOARD
  • PCLOB ISSUES REPORTReport on the Telephone Records Program Conducted under Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act and on the Operations of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court
  • Paul Merrell on 24 Jan 14
     
    There are four grounds upon which we find that the telephone records program fails to comply with Section 215. First, the telephone records acquired under the program have no connection to any specific FBI investigation at the time of their collection. Second, because the records are collected in bulk - potentially encompassing all telephone calling records across the nation - they cannot be regarded as "relevant" to any FBI investigation as required by the statute without redefining the word relevant in a manner that is circular, unlimited in scope, and out of step with the case law from analogous legal contexts involving the production of records. Third, the program operates by putting telephone companies under an obligation to furnish new calling records on a daily basis as they are generated (instead of turning over records already in their possession) - an approach lacking foundation in the statute and one that is inconsistent with FISA as a whole. Fourth, the statute permits only the FBI to obtain items for use in its investigations; it does not authorize the NSA to collect anything.  In addition, we conclude that the program violates the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. That statute prohibits telephone companies from sharing customer records with the government except in response to specific enumerated circumstances, which do not include Section 215 orders. Finally, we do not agree that the program can be considered statutorily authorized because Congress twice delayed the expiration of Section 215 during the operation of the program without amending the statute. The "reenactment doctrine," under which Congress is presumed to have adopted settled administrative or judicial interpretations of a statute, does not trump the plain meaning of a law, and cannot save an administrative or judicial interpretation that contradicts the statute itself. Moreover, the circumstances presented here differ in pivotal ways from any in which the reenact
Paul Merrell

Remember when Obama said the NSA wasn't "actually abusing" its powers? He was wrong. - 1 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...busing-its-powers-he-was-wrong

surveillance state NSA Obama lies

shared by Paul Merrell on 06 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • At a news conference Friday, President Obama insisted that the threat of NSA abuses was mostly theoretical: If you look at the reports, even the disclosures that Mr. Snowden’s put forward, all the stories that have been written, what you’re not reading about is the government actually abusing these programs and, you know, listening in on people’s phone calls or inappropriately reading people’s e-mails. What you’re hearing about is the prospect that these could be abused. Now part of the reason they’re not abused is because they’re — these checks are in place, and those abuses would be against the law and would be against the orders of the FISC [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court]. Today our colleague Barton Gellman released new documents that contradicted Obama’s claims. Gellman obtained an audit of the NSA’s compliance record from NSA leaker Snowden earlier this summer. The audit, dated May 2012, counted 2,776 incidents in the preceding 12 months where the agency engaged in “unauthorized collection, storage, access to or distribution of legally protected communications.” The audit only covered issues at NSA facilities in the D.C. and Fort Meade areas.
  • Obama said that wasn’t supposed to happen because it would be “against the orders of the FISC.” So why didn’t the judges on the court catch these abuses? In another story broken by The Post today, the chief of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Court admits he doesn’t actually have the capability to investigate the compliance record of NSA surveillance programs:
  • Under the FISA regime, the government doesn’t have to seek permission for individual surveillance targets. Instead, it seeks FISC approval for broad schemes of surveillance like PRISM and the phone records program. But that makes it extremely difficult for the FISC to check the court’s work, since the NSA can — and, apparently, did — hide misconduct from the court that’s supposedly supervising its activities.
Paul Merrell

Republican Party Calls For End To NSA Domestic Phone Records Program | TIME.com - 0 views

swampland.time.com/...nvestigation-into-nsa-snooping

surveillance state NSA NSA-blowback RNC-resolution

shared by Paul Merrell on 26 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • In the latest indication of a growing libertarian wing of the GOP, the Republican National Committee passed a resolution Friday calling for an investigation into the “gross infringement” of Americans’ rights by National Security Agency programs that were revealed by Edward Snowden. The resolution also calls on on Republican members of Congress to enact amendments to the Section 215 law that currently allows the spy agency to collect records of almost every domestic telephone call. The amendment should make clear that “blanket surveillance of the Internet activity, phone records and correspondence — electronic, physical, and otherwise — of any person residing in the U.S. is prohibited by law and that violations can be reviewed in adversarial proceedings before a public court,” the resolution reads.
  • The measure, the “Resolution to Renounce the National Security Agency’s Surveillance Program,” passed by an “overwhelming majority” by voice vote, along with resolutions calling for the repeal of the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act and reaffirming the party’s pro-life stance, according to Reince Priebus, the RNC chairman. Among other points, the resolution declares “the mass collection and retention of personal data is in itself contrary to the right of privacy protected by the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution,” a claim embraced by civil libertarians of both parties. The revelation of the NSA programs has caused deepened a rift within the Republican Party between national security hawks and libertarians, but at the meeting, no RNC member rose to speak against the resolution.
  • WHEREAS, the mass collection and retention of personal data is in itself contrary to the right of privacy protected by the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution, which guarantees the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures, that warrants shall issue only upon probable cause, and generally prevents the American government from issuing modern-day writs of assistance; WHEREAS, unwarranted government surveillance is an intrusion on basic human rights that threatens the very foundations of a democratic society and this program represents a gross infringement of the freedom of association and the right to privacy and goes far beyond even the permissive limits set by the Patriot Act; and WHEREAS, Republican House Representative Jim Sensenbrenner, an author of the Patriot Act and Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee at the time of Section 215′s passage, called the Section 215 surveillance program “an abuse of that law,” writing that, “based on the scope of the released order, both the administration and the FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) court are relying on an unbounded interpretation of the act that Congress never intended,” therefore be it
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • The full text of the resolution as given to TIME follows below: Resolution to Renounce the National Security Agency’s Surveillance Program WHEREAS, the secret surveillance program called PRISM targets, among other things, the surveillance of U.S. citizens on a vast scale and monitors searching habits of virtually every American on the internet; WHEREAS, this dragnet program is, as far as we know, the largest surveillance effort ever launched by a democratic government against its own citizens, consisting of the mass acquisition of Americans’ call details encompassing all wireless and landline subscribers of the country’s three largest phone companies; WHEREAS, every time an American citizen makes a phone call, the NSA gets a record of the location, the number called, the time of the call and the length of the conversation, all of which are an invasion into the personal lives of American citizens that violates the right of free speech and association afforded by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution;
  • RESOLVED, the Republican National Committee encourages Republican lawmakers to enact legislation to amend Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act, the state secrets privilege, and the FISA Amendments Act to make it clear that blanket surveillance of the Internet activity, phone records and correspondence — electronic, physical, and otherwise — of any person residing in the U.S. is prohibited by law and that violations can be reviewed in adversarial proceedings before a public court; RESOLVED, the Republican National Committee encourages Republican lawmakers to call for a special committee to investigate, report, and reveal to the public the extent of this domestic spying and the committee should create specific recommendations for legal and regulatory reform ot end unconstitutional surveillance as well as hold accountable those public officials who are found to be responsible for this unconstitutional surveillance; and
  • RESOLVED, the Republican National Committee encourages Republican lawmakers to immediately take action to halt current unconstitutional surveillance programs and provide a full public accounting of the NSA’s data collection programs.
  • Paul Merrell on 26 Jan 14
     
    That's more like it! Notice that the call is for a "special committee to investigate," etc., not the House Intelligence Committee chaired by Mike Rogers.  Note also the call for heads to roll.
  • Paul Merrell on 26 Jan 14
     
    Something messed up in the quoting of the resolution. Please go to the linked web site for the resolution's full text.
Paul Merrell

Tech giants reach White House deal on NSA surveillance of customer data | World news | ... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...eal-surveillance-customer-data

surveillance state NSA litigation settlement public-disclosure FISA-Court

shared by Paul Merrell on 29 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • The Obama administration has reached a deal with a number of technology giants, allowing the companies to disclose more information on customer data they are compelled to share with the government.Announced on Monday, the transparency arrangement ends months of legal wrangling between the companies and US intelligence agencies before a secret surveillance court, to compel the disclosures.The disclosures are to be nonspecific, listed by the thousand and subject in some cases to a six-month delay – speaking to the large quantities of data that the government still plans on collecting from its technology partners. In order to be more specific about the amount of data turned over, the companies must be less specific about the type of data it is.The deal also explicitly points to a delay of up to two years on revealing information on data collected under surveillance programs the National Security Agency may yet develop.
  • But the deal also purports to shed far more light than ever on a question the intelligence agencies have been extremely reluctant to address – the number of people affected by NSA surveillance.The Justice Department said the transparency deal also applies to phone companies that turn over, on a daily basis, the records of every phone call made in the US. The phone companies have not exhibited the same agitation for transparency in the wake of the Edward Snowden revelations as have tech firms.
  • The new arrangement addresses a major grievance held by Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Facebook and LinkedIn, which all joined a coalition called Reform Government Surveillance in order to pressure the administration into reassuring their customers about the propriety and legality of giving vast amounts of data to the NSA, FBI and other government agencies. It does not curtail the amount of data demanded, which is another demand of the coalition. 
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Additionally, once the NSA or other government agency develops a surveillance effort on “a platform, product or service (whether developed or acquired) for which the company has not previously received such an order”, the firms must wait two years before disclosure of its existence. Such “new capability orders” would subsequently be subject to the same biannual reporting requirements after the two-year period expires.
  • The five firms that were party to the Fisa court transparency suit agreed to drop their case, according to a document released by the court on Monday. Civil libertarians were optimistic about the deal. 
Paul Merrell

Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts - New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...16program.html

surveillance state NSA Bush-II spying-history must-read

shared by Paul Merrell on 10 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • Months after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials. Under a presidential order signed in 2002, the intelligence agency has monitored the international telephone calls and international e-mail messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people inside the United States without warrants over the past three years in an effort to track possible "dirty numbers" linked to Al Qaeda, the officials said. The agency, they said, still seeks warrants to monitor entirely domestic communications. The previously undisclosed decision to permit some eavesdropping inside the country without court approval was a major shift in American intelligence-gathering practices, particularly for the National Security Agency, whose mission is to spy on communications abroad. As a result, some officials familiar with the continuing operation have questioned whether the surveillance has stretched, if not crossed, constitutional limits on legal searches.
  • Paul Merrell on 10 Feb 14
     
    This is the 2005 article that alerted the nation to the fact that the Bush II Administration had, shortly after 9-11-2001, authorized the NSA to conduct warrantless electronic eavesdropping on Americans. It would later emerge that veteran NSA intelligence analyst Russell Tice, the first NSA whistleblower, was a key source for the article. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russ_Tice Post-Snowden disclosures, Tice went public with even more detail, disclosing that the NSA has also wiretapped top officials in all three branches of government, as well as non-government targets in the U.S. http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/06/nsa-whistleblower-nsa-spying-on-and-blackmailing-high-level-government-officials-and-military-officers.html (for the quoted portions, begin listening at about 44 minutes into the podcast). The third from last paragraph in the article discusses a 2002 Justice Department brief in which DoJ argued that "the Constitution vests in the President inherent authority to conduct warrantless intelligence surveillance (electronic or otherwise) of foreign powers or their agents, and Congress cannot by statute extinguish that constitutional authority." That brief is archived at the FAS web site. https://www.fas.org/irp/agency/doj/fisa/092502sup.html (it's an amazingly arrogant document). 
« First ‹ Previous 41 - 60 of 131 Next › Last »
Showing 20▼ items per page