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Paul Merrell

Secret to Prism program: Even bigger data seizure - 0 views

bigstory.ap.org/...ccess-even-bigger-data-seizure

surveillance state NSA must-read

shared by Paul Merrell on 17 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • The revelation of Prism this month by the Washington Post and Guardian newspapers has touched off the latest round in a decade-long debate over what limits to impose on government eavesdropping, which the Obama administration says is essential to keep the nation safe. But interviews with more than a dozen current and former government and technology officials and outside experts show that, while Prism has attracted the recent attention, the program actually is a relatively small part of a much more expansive and intrusive eavesdropping effort. Americans who disapprove of the government reading their emails have more to worry about from a different and larger NSA effort that snatches data as it passes through the fiber optic cables that make up the Internet's backbone. That program, which has been known for years, copies Internet traffic as it enters and leaves the United States, then routes it to the NSA for analysis.
  • Whether by clever choice or coincidence, Prism appears to do what its name suggests. Like a triangular piece of glass, Prism takes large beams of data and helps the government find discrete, manageable strands of information. The fact that it is productive is not surprising; documents show it is one of the major sources for what ends up in the president's daily briefing. Prism makes sense of the cacophony of the Internet's raw feed. It provides the government with names, addresses, conversation histories and entire archives of email inboxes.
  • The NSA is prohibited from spying on Americans or anyone inside the United States. That's the FBI's job and it requires a warrant. Despite that prohibition, shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, President George W. Bush secretly authorized the NSA to plug into the fiber optic cables that enter and leave the United States, knowing it would give the government unprecedented, warrantless access to Americans' private conversations. Tapping into those cables allows the NSA access to monitor emails, telephone calls, video chats, websites, bank transactions and more. It takes powerful computers to decrypt, store and analyze all this information, but the information is all there, zipping by at the speed of light. "You have to assume everything is being collected," said Bruce Schneier, who has been studying and writing about cryptography and computer security for two decades. The New York Times disclosed the existence of this effort in 2005. In 2006, former AT&T technician Mark Klein revealed that the company had allowed the NSA to install a computer at its San Francisco switching center, a key hub for fiber optic cables.
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  • Many of the people interviewed for this report insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss a classified, continuing effort. But those interviews, along with public statements and the few public documents available, show there are two vital components to Prism's success. The first is how the government works closely with the companies that keep people perpetually connected to each other and the world. That story line has attracted the most attention so far. The second and far murkier one is how Prism fits into a larger U.S. wiretapping program in place for years.
  • The government has said it minimizes all conversations and emails involving Americans. Exactly what that means remains classified. But former U.S. officials familiar with the process say it allows the government to keep the information as long as it is labeled as belonging to an American and stored in a special, restricted part of a computer. That means Americans' personal emails can live in government computers, but analysts can't access, read or listen to them unless the emails become relevant to a national security investigation. The government doesn't automatically delete the data, officials said, because an email or phone conversation that seems innocuous today might be significant a year from now. What's unclear to the public is how long the government keeps the data. That is significant because the U.S. someday will have a new enemy. Two decades from now, the government could have a trove of American emails and phone records it can tap to investigative whatever Congress declares a threat to national security.
  • The Bush administration shut down its warrantless wiretapping program in 2007 but endorsed a new law, the Protect America Act, which allowed the wiretapping to continue with changes: The NSA generally would have to explain its techniques and targets to a secret court in Washington, but individual warrants would not be required. Congress approved it, with Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., in the midst of a campaign for president, voting against it.
  • That's one example of how emails belonging to Americans can become swept up in the hunt. In that way, Prism helps justify specific, potentially personal searches. But it's the broader operation on the Internet fiber optics cables that actually captures the data, experts agree. "I'm much more frightened and concerned about real-time monitoring on the Internet backbone," said Wolf Ruzicka, CEO of EastBanc Technologies, a Washington software company. "I cannot think of anything, outside of a face-to-face conversation, that they could not have access to."
  • When the Protect America Act made warrantless wiretapping legal, lawyers and executives at major technology companies knew what was about to happen.
  • For years, the companies had been handling requests from the FBI. Now Congress had given the NSA the authority to take information without warrants. Though the companies didn't know it, the passage of the Protect America Act gave birth to a top-secret NSA program, officially called US-98XN. It was known as Prism. Though many details are still unknown, it worked like this:
  • Facebook said it received between 9,000 and 10,000 requests for data from all government agencies in the second half of last year. The social media company said fewer than 19,000 users were targeted.
  • Every company involved denied the most sensational assertion in the Prism documents: that the NSA pulled data "directly from the servers" of Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, AOL and more. Technology experts and a former government official say that phrasing, taken from a PowerPoint slide describing the program, was likely meant to differentiate Prism's neatly organized, company-provided data from the unstructured information snatched out of the Internet's major pipelines. In slide made public by the newspapers, NSA analysts were encouraged to use data coming from both Prism and from the fiber-optic cables. Prism, as its name suggests, helps narrow and focus the stream. If eavesdroppers spot a suspicious email among the torrent of data pouring into the United States, analysts can use information from Internet companies to pinpoint the user. With Prism, the government gets a user's entire email inbox. Every email, including contacts with American citizens, becomes government property. Once the NSA has an inbox, it can search its huge archives for information about everyone with whom the target communicated. All those people can be investigated, too.
  • What followed was the most significant debate over domestic surveillance since the 1975 Church Committee, a special Senate committee led by Sen. Frank Church, D-Idaho, reined in the CIA and FBI for spying on Americans. Unlike the recent debate over Prism, however, there were no visual aids, no easy-to-follow charts explaining that the government was sweeping up millions of emails and listening to phone calls of people accused of no wrongdoing.
  • A few months after Obama took office in 2009, the surveillance debate reignited in Congress because the NSA had crossed the line. Eavesdroppers, it turned out, had been using their warrantless wiretap authority to intercept far more emails and phone calls of Americans than they were supposed to. Obama, no longer opposed to the wiretapping, made unspecified changes to the process. The government said the problems were fixed.
  • Schneier, the author and security expert, said it doesn't really matter how Prism works, technically. Just assume the government collects everything, he said. He said it doesn't matter what the government and the companies say, either. It's spycraft, after all. "Everyone is playing word games," he said. "No one is telling the truth."
  • Paul Merrell on 17 Jun 13
     
    Associated Press is now doing its job with a masterful overview of NSA capabilities, discussing how NSA scoops up all "backbone" telecommunications, then uses PRISM to narrow down the specific communications they decide to look at. This one is a "must read" article if you're interested in the NSA scandal. It ties a lot of the pieces together.  
Paul Merrell

Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Skype & Yahoo Hit With Prism Data Protection Complaints In ... - 0 views

techcrunch.com/...europe-v-prism

surveillance state NSA EU PRISM investigation Facebook Apple Microsoft Skype Yahoo!

shared by Paul Merrell on 26 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • The European data protection activists behind the Europe v Facebook (evf) campaign group, that has long been a thorn in Facebook’s side in Europe, have filed new complaints under regional data protection law targeting Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Skype and Yahoo for their alleged collaboration with the NSA’s Prism data collection program. The student activist organisation is targeting the European subsidiaries of these five U.S. companies, arguing that their corporate structure means they fall fully under European privacy laws despite being U.S. headquartered companies. And yet, being as they are U.S. companies, they are required to comply with U.S. surveillance laws — putting them in the “tricky” situation of having to comply with potentially conflicting legal requirements. It’s that legal conflict evf is now probing.
  • Evf takes the view that the law needs clarifying — and it using these new data protection complaints as the vehicle to obtain clarification from the various regional data protection agencies. Facebook and Apple; Microsoft and Skype; and Yahoo have subsidiaries in Ireland, Luxembourg and Germany respectively. ”We want a clear statement by the authorities if a European company may simply give foreign intelligence agencies access to its customer data. If this turns out to be legal, then we might have to change the laws,” noted evf speaker, Max Schrems, in a statement. The key question, as evf sees it, is whether “mass transfer” of personal data from to a foreign intelligence agency is legal under European law.  ”Many journalists have asked us in recent weeks if PRISM is legal from a EU perspective. We have looked at that a little closer. The result was – after consulting with legal experts – that it is very likely illegal under EU data protection laws, because of the corporate structure of the companies,” added Schrems. Google and YouTube have not been included in this first round of evf complaints being as they have a different corporate structure that does not include European subsidiaries. However it notes they do have datacenters in European countries, which will give evf a route to filing Prism-related data protection complaints against both at a later date.
  • Writing in a press notice announcing its new action, evf added: If a European subsidiary sends user data to the American parent company, this is considered an “export” of personal data. Under EU law, an export of data is only allowed if the European subsidiary can ensure an “adequate level or protection” in the foreign country. After the recent disclosures on the “PRISM” program such trust in an “adequate level of protection” by the involved companies can hardly be upheld. There can in no way be an adequate level of protection if they cooperate with the NSA on the other end of the line. Right now an export of data to the US must be seen as illegal if the involved companies cannot disprove the reports on the PRISM program. According to evf, the subsidiaries being targeted by these complaints have “the burden of proof” — to either “credibly assure” that the Prism program is a hoax, or “explain how mass access by a foreign intelligence agency interplays with EU data protection laws”. Evf cites a 2006 case precedent involving payment processor SWIFT which had forwarded transaction details to U.S. authorities. In that case it says a group of EU data protection authorities decided that such a mass data transfer is illegal under EU law, leading to SWIFT to move European data to a server in Switzerland. The case also led to an agreement between the U.S. and the EU on the use of payment data to combat crime.
Gary Edwards

A Graphic Designer Remade The Shoddy PRISM Slideshow - Business Insider - 1 views

www.businessinsider.com/-shoddy-prism-slideshow-2013-6

Prism Edward-Snowden NSA-Patriot-Act-NDAA

shared by Gary Edwards on 12 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 12 Jun 13
     
    Excellent do over of the NSA Prism world wide wiretapping and eavesdropping-spy program. "The leaked PowerPoint presentation detailing a classified program called PRISM - which appears to acquire information from the servers of nine of the biggest internet companies - got shredded for how shoddy the slides are.  Emiland De Cubber, a freelance presentation designer, has published this slideshow with the message: "Dear NSA, You can do whatever you want with my data. But not with my eyes.""
Gary Edwards

The Empire Takes a Hit: NSA Update - 2 views

........................................................................................ NSA Conversation with retired lawyer and Open Source legal expert, "Marbux". ...........................

Federal-Reserve-Bankster-Cartel NSA

started by Gary Edwards on 15 Jun 13 no follow-up yet
Paul Merrell

How Congress unknowingly legalized PRISM in 2007 - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...wingly-legalized-prism-in-2007

surveillance state NSA social media congress prism

shared by Paul Merrell on 08 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • On Sept. 11, 2007, the National Security Agency signed up Microsoft as its first partner for PRISM, a massive domestic surveillance program whose existence was reported by the Washington Post today. That’s barely a month after Congress passed, and President George W. Bush signed, the Protect America Act.
  • The Bush Administration portrayed the PAA as a technical fix designed to close a gap in America’s surveillance capabilities that had been opened by a then-recent ruling of the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC). It proved to be much more than that. While the details are still classified, reports suggested that the FISC had ruled that it was illegal for the government to intercept communications between two foreign endpoints if the communications happened to pass through the United States. Warning that the U.S. would suddenly lose the ability to continue its surveillance of terrorists, the administration pushed the PAA through Congress in a matter of days.
  • In reality, the PAA represented a sweeping change to American surveillance law. Before conducting surveillance, the PAA only required executive branch officials to “certify” that there were “reasonable procedures” in place for ensuring that surveillance “concerns” persons located outside the United States and that the foreign intelligence is a “significant purpose” of the program. A single certification could cover a broad program intercepting the communications of numerous individuals. And there was no requirement for judicial review of individual surveillance targets within a “certified” program.
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  • Today’s report suggests that the moment the PAA was the law of the land, the NSA started using it to obtain unfettered access to the servers of the nation’s leading online services. To comply with the requirement that the government not target Americans, PRISM searches are reportedly “designed to produce at least 51 percent confidence in a target’s ‘foreignness’” — the lowest conceivable standard. PRISM training materials reportedly instruct users that if searches happen to turn up the private information of Americans, “it’s nothing to worry about.”
  • Retroactive immunity for telecom companies dominated the 2008 debate, overshadowing the more important issue of the sweeping new powers that Congress had just granted to the executive branch. When Congress finally passed the FISA Amendments Act in July 2008, it included both immunity and a four-year extension of the government’s warrantless spying powers. But few members of Congress realized the breadth of the surveillance powers they were effectively approving.
Paul Merrell

Facebook Could Face Investigation In Ireland Over PRISM Data - 0 views

www.techweekeurope.co.uk/...ireland-over-prism-data-130250

surveillance state NSA Facebook Ireland litigation NSA-blowback

shared by Paul Merrell on 25 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • The Irish High Court has ordered a review of the decision by the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner (ODPC) not to investigate Facebook’s links To PRISM and the US National Security Agency (NSA), after it was contested by a group of law students from Austria. The group calling itself ‘Europe-v-Facebook’ had previously demanded a full investigation into the relationship between Internet companies and the US intelligence agency as it accuses Facebook of breaking the law in supplying NSA with personal information about its European users.
  • The Irish High Court has ordered a review of the decision by the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner (ODPC) not to investigate Facebook’s links To PRISM and the US National Security Agency (NSA), after it was contested by a group of law students from Austria. The group calling itself ‘Europe-v-Facebook’ had previously demanded a full investigation into the relationship between Internet companies and the US intelligence agency as it accuses Facebook of breaking the law in supplying NSA with personal information about its European users.
  • The Irish High Court has ordered a review of the decision by the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner (ODPC) not to investigate Facebook’s links To PRISM and the US National Security Agency (NSA), after it was contested by a group of law students from Austria. The group calling itself ‘Europe-v-Facebook’ had previously demanded a full investigation into the relationship between Internet companies and the US intelligence agency as it accuses Facebook of breaking the law in supplying NSA with personal information about its European users.
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  • According to the classified documents published by Snowden in June, the NSA collected data from services run by Apple, Google, Facebook and Microsoft. Facebook’s European headquarters are located in Ireland, where the corporate tax is among the lowest in the EU. However, the local privacy watchdog had refused to investigate the company’s links to PRISM, classifying the student complaint as “frivolous or vexatious”. This week, after a long campaign by Europe-v-Facebook funded by donations, the High Court has granted an application for judicial review of this decision. In other words, if ODPC still thinks it has no grounds for an investigation, it will have to defend this position in court. “The DPC simply wanted to get this hot potato off his table instead of doing his job. But when it comes to the fundamental rights of millions of users and the biggest surveillance scandal in years, he will have to take responsibility and do something about it,” said the leader of the student group Max Schrems. Schrems also said that in the event the case does go to court, he hopes for a ruling in the next six months.
  • Paul Merrell on 25 Oct 13
     
    Perhaps moving corporate HQ to a tax haven in the E.U. wasn't Mark Zuckerberg's brightest move. Digital privacy rights are much stronger there.
Paul Merrell

PRISM: Google and Facebook DID allow NSA access to data and were in talks to set up 'sp... - 0 views

www.dailymail.co.uk/...age-controversial-project.html

security state NSA digital surveillance Google Facebook

shared by Paul Merrell on 10 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • Mark Zuckerberg and Larry Page both issued blustery statements over recent media reports they gave the National Security Agency officials access to their troves of user informationNow sources say both tech giants were in discussion about specific ways to give U.S. officials access to their data using virtual classified information reading roomsCompanies are all compelled by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to hand over any information requested under the law, but they're not required to make access easier
  • PRISM data-mining program was launched in 2007 with approval from special federal judgesApple, Facebook, Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, YouTube, Skype, AOL and PalTalk are involved in spying program The UK has had access to the PRISM data since at least 2010Details of data collection were outlined in classified 41-slide PowerPoint presentation that was leaked by intelligence officer 
  • Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Larry Page of Google both strongly denied giving unfettered access to user data to U.S. officials, but it turns out both companies have, in fact, cooperated with governments requests.Zuckerberg denied his company's link to secret government data-sharing scheme PRISM on Friday in a blustery posted message that described allegations that Facebook gave 'US or any other government direct access to our servers' as 'outrageous.'Now, sources tell the New York Times that both Facebook and Google discussed plans to create secure portals for the government 'like a digital version of the secure physical rooms that have long existed for classified information' with U.S. officials.
Gary Edwards

» 21 Facts About NSA Snooping That Every American Should Know Alex Jones' Inf... - 0 views

www.infowars.com/hat-every-american-should-know

NSA-Patriot-Act-NDAA NSA-Whistleblower PRISM Echelon-SIGINT

shared by Gary Edwards on 18 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 18 Jun 13
     
    NSA-PRISM-Echelon in a nutshell.  The list below is a short sample.  Each fact is documented, and well worth the time reading. "The following are 21 facts about NSA snooping that every American should know…" #1 According to CNET, the NSA told Congress during a recent classified briefing that it does not need court authorization to listen to domestic phone calls… #2 According to U.S. Representative Loretta Sanchez, members of Congress learned "significantly more than what is out in the media today" about NSA snooping during that classified briefing. #3 The content of all of our phone calls is being recorded and stored.  The following is a from a transcript of an exchange between Erin Burnett of CNN and former FBI counterterrorism agent Tim Clemente which took place just last month… #4 The chief technology officer at the CIA, Gus Hunt, made the following statement back in March… "We fundamentally try to collect everything and hang onto it forever." #5 During a Senate Judiciary Oversight Committee hearing in March 2011, FBI Director Robert Mueller admitted that the intelligence community has the ability to access emails "as they come in"… #6 Back in 2007, Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell told Congress that the president has the "constitutional authority" to authorize domestic spying without warrants no matter when the law says. #7 The Director Of National Intelligence James Clapper recently told Congress that the NSA was not collecting any information about American citizens.  When the media confronted him about his lie, he explained that he "responded in what I thought was the most truthful, or least untruthful manner". #8 The Washington Post is reporting that the NSA has four primary data collection systems… MAINWAY, MARINA, METADATA, PRISM #9 The NSA knows pretty much everything that you are doing on the Internet.  The following is a short excerpt from a recent Yahoo article… #10 The NSA is suppose
Paul Merrell

Back Door Access? Tech Giants Deny Knowledge of PRISM Spy Operation - 0 views

gawker.com/knowledge-of-prism-s-511858539

surveillance state NSA prism social media Verizon

shared by Paul Merrell on 08 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • As the dust settles on yesterday evening's revelation that the U.S. government has been mining data from most of Silicon Valley's largest companies in a program called "PRISM," one question stands out: How did the NSA get access? Apple, Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft, the largest companies involved in PRISM, the existence of which was revealed last night in a simultaneous Washington Post and Guardian scoop, have categorically denied knowledge of or participation in the program in a series of statements, while acknowledging that they do provide targeted access to the government when required to do so by law, generally according to court orders.
  • So what gives? Does the government have backdoor access so secret that not even their targets are aware? Are the tech companies lying? Or are they forbidden—as Verizon allegedly is with its NSA arrangement—from acknowledging its existence to an absurd extent?
Paul Merrell

Report: France data gathering program compared to PRISM - 0 views

www.usatoday.com/...2490453

surveillance state France

shared by Paul Merrell on 05 Jul 13 - No Cached
  • PARIS (AP) — A leading French newspaper says France's intelligence services have put in place a giant electronic surveillance gathering network.Citing no sources, the Le Monde daily says France's Direction Generale de la Securite Exterieure, the country's foreign intelligence agency, systematically collects information about all electronic data sent by computers and telephones in France, as well as communications between France and abroad.
  • According to Le Monde, data on "all e-mails, SMSs, telephone calls, Facebook and Twitter posts" are collected and stored in a massive three-floor underground bunker at the DGSE's headquarters in Paris. The paper specified that it is the communications' metadata — such as when was call was made and where an author was when she sent an email — that is being archived, not their content.Officials at the DGSE did not answer phone calls or emails seeking comment Thursday.The vast archive, which Le Monde says amounts to tens of millions of gigabytes, is accessible to France's other spy agencies, including military intelligence, domestic intelligence, Paris police and a special financial crimes task force.
  • Le Monde compared the French digital dragnet to PRISM, the U.S. National Security Agency program which has most caught the imagination of Internet users. But PRISM appears aimed at allowing U.S. spies to peel data off the servers of Silicon Valley firms — whereas the program described in Le Monde appears to be fed through the mass interception of electronic data bouncing across the world.Also, PRISM can apparently be used to collect content, not just metadata.Le Monde said the French surveillance program relies on spy satellites, listening stations in French overseas territories or former colonies such as Mayotte or Djibouti, and information harvested from undersea cables — all three of which are methods long familiar to the NSA.A French lawmaker played down the report, saying France's surveillance gathering system is not comparable with the NSA's.Patricia Adam, a lawmaker who until last year headed parliament's intelligence committee, said French spies "are line fishing, not trawling" the vast oceans of data thrown up by mobile phones, emails and Internet communication.
Paul Merrell

NSA spied on Indian embassy and UN mission, Edward Snowden files reveal | World news | ... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...ance-indian-embassy-un-mission

surveillance state NSA NSA-blowback India lies

shared by Paul Merrell on 26 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • The US National Security Agency may have accessed computers within the Indian embassy in Washington and mission at the United Nations in New York as part of a huge clandestine effort to mine electronic data held by its south Asian ally.Documents released by the US whistleblower Edward Snowden also reveal the extent and aggressive nature of other NSA datamining exercises targeting India as recently as March of this year.The latest revelations – published in the Hindu newspaper – came as Manmohan Singh, the Indian prime minister, flew to Europe on his way to the US, where he will meet President Barack Obama.The NSA operation targeting India used two datamining tools, Boundless Informant and Prism, a system allowing the agency easy access to the personal information of non-US nationals from the databases of some of the world's biggest tech companies, including Apple, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo.
  • The largest amount of intelligence was gathered from Iran, with more than 14bn reports in that period, followed by 13.5bn from Pakistan. Jordan, one of America's closest Arab allies, came third with 12.7bn, Egypt fourth with 7.6bn and India fifth with 6.3bn.
  • According to one document obtained by the Hindu, the US agency used the Prism programme to gather information on India's domestic politics and the country's strategic and commercial interests, specifically categories designated as nuclear, space and politics.
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  • A further NSA document obtained by the Hindu suggests the agency selected the office of India's mission at the UN in New York and the country's Washington embassy as "location targets" where records of Internet traffic, emails, telephone and office conversations – and even official documents stored digitally – could potentially be accessed after programs had been clandestinely inserted into computers.In March 2013, the NSA collected 6.3bn pieces of information from internet networks in India and 6.2bn pieces of information from the country's telephone networks during the same period, the Hindu said.After the Guardian reported in June that Pm program allowed the NSA "to obtain targeted communications without having to request them from the service providers and without having to obtain individual court orders", both US and Indian officials claimed no content was being taken from the country's networks and that the programs were intended to aid "counter-terrorism".
  • A home ministry official told the newspaper the government had been "rattled" to discover the extent of the the programme's interest in India. "It's not just violation of our sovereignty, it's a complete intrusion into our decision-making process," the official said.
  • The Hindu argued that "the targeting of India's politics and space programme by the NSA busts the myth of close strategic partnership between India and US", pointing out that the other countries targeted in the same way as India "are generally seen as adversarial" by Washington.
  • Paul Merrell on 26 Sep 13
     
    An important bit of proof that NSA digital surveillance involves far more than counter-terrorism. 
Paul Merrell

Mozilla-backed Stop Watching Us blows past 100,000 signatures to fight NSA surveillance... - 0 views

thenextweb.com/...corches-past-100000-signatures

surveillance state NSA petition

shared by Paul Merrell on 14 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • The legal battle over PRISM and the NSA’s phone records program is only getting under way, but advocacy groups are striking while the issue is hot. Stop Watching Us, a website that encourages citizens to digitally sign a letter that will be emailed to their elected representatives, today passed the 100,000 signature mark. That milestone, passed this morning, comes less than 48 hours after the start of the program. Currently Stop Watching Us has collected 112,279 total signatures.
  • Stop Watching Us is more than concerned individuals. It’s publicly backed by dozens of companies, privacy advocates, and legal groups. At a minimum, people opposed to the NSA’s activities will be noticed.
  • The legal battle over PRISM and the NSA’s phone records program is only getting under way, but advocacy groups are striking while the issue is hot. Stop Watching Us, a website that encourages citizens to digitally sign a letter that will be emailed to their elected representatives, today passed the 100,000 signature mark. That milestone, passed this morning, comes less than 48 hours after the start of the program. Currently Stop Watching Us has collected 112,279 total signatures
Paul Merrell

E.U. Official Pushes U.S. to Explain Its Surveillance - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-explain-its-surveillance.html

NSA EU Obama

shared by Paul Merrell on 13 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • BRUSSELS — Amid a growing outcry over American snooping on foreigners that threatens to cloud European-U.S. trade talks and President Barack Obama’s visit to Berlin, the European Union’s top justice official has demanded in unusually sharp terms that the United States reveal what its intelligence is doing with personal information of Europeans gathered under the Prism surveillance program revealed last week.
  • Viviane Reding, the Union’s combative commissioner of justice, told Attorney General Eric Holder in a letter sent on Monday evening that individual citizens of European countries had the right to know whether their personal information had been part of intelligence gathering “on a large scale.” In the letter, seen Tuesday by the International Herald Tribune, she also asked what avenues were available to Europeans to find out whether they had been spied on, and whether they would be treated similarly to U.S. citizens in such cases. “Given the gravity of the situation and the serious concerns expressed in public opinion on this side of the Atlantic, you will understand that I will expect swift and concrete answers,” Mrs. Reding wrote.
  • Speaking for a continent where snooping carries ghastly echoes of fascist or communist regimes, Mrs. Reding challenged Mr. Holder to answer a list of detailed questions by Friday, when they are expected to speak face-to-face in Dublin at a ministerial meeting scheduled before the Prism spy operation came to light. In Berlin, where Mr. Obama will speak next week before the Brandenburg Gate, privacy is a highly sensitive political issue and the Prism revelations have stirred a furor. “You can be sure that this will be one of the things the chancellor addresses when President Obama is in Germany,” said Steffen Seibert, spokesman for Angela Merkel, who grew up in the former Communist East.
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  • Mrs. Reding — who has irked U.S. authorities in the past by threatening companies like Google for overstepping E.U. privacy standards — suggested Mr. Holder’s responses could shape the outcome of important trans-Atlantic initiatives like trade talks. Europe has been a frequent critic of the United States in recent years for jeopardizing individual liberties by filtering vast volumes of information on European bank transfers and in airline passenger records to fight terror plots. Mrs. Reding’s letter is another sign that the growth of government surveillance that began under the Bush administration after Sept. 11, 2001, and has expanded under the Obama administration, continues to touch raw nerves far beyond the United States.
  • The revelations have prompted members of the European Parliament, a directly elected body of representatives from across the Union that meets in Brussels and Strasbourg, to demand that data protection be included in upcoming U.S.-European talks on a long sought trade pact. Any “trade pact will have to fully ensure the highest standards of data privacy for all citizens,” and an ongoing reform of Europe’s data protection law “must guarantee these standards for E.U. citizens when using U.S.-based Internet companies,” Hannes Swoboda, an Austrian member of the parliament who is president of the Socialists & Democrats group, said in a statement on Tuesday. “It is no good the E.U. having strict regulation on data protection if those standards are not guaranteed when using U.S.-based Internet companies,” he said.
  • The talks are expected to be conducted by Mrs. Reding's colleague, Karel De Gucht, the E.U. trade commissioner — but the Parliament would have a final say over any such deal under its right, in force since 2009, to veto treaties with third countries. In the strongest demonstration against U.S. policy, the Parliament in 2010 blocked an agreement allowing U.S. authorities access to European banking data from a cooperative responsible for routing trillions of dollars daily among banks, brokerage houses, stock exchanges and other institutions.
  • In a thinly veiled warning to Mr. Holder about the trade pact, Ms. Reding said relations between the United States and Europe could be undermined by concerns about privacy, which many in Europe regard as an inviolable right. In her letter, Mrs. Reding said she “is accountable before the European Parliament, which is likely to assess the overall trans-Atlantic relationship also in the light of your responses.” In nine detailed questions, Ms. Reding asked Mr. Holder how much data-sifting the United States is conducting, whether those activities target individuals, and whether the surveillance involves issues beyond national security. Mrs. Reding also pushed Mr. Holder to tell her “what avenues” are available to citizens of countries in the European Union to obtain information about whether their personal information has been examined under the Prism program and other programs, and whether Europeans have similar access to that information as Americans.
  • For Mrs. Reding, the chance to push back against Washington is a welcome opportunity. Two years ago, she was forced to soften her initial proposals for data privacy rules in order to accommodate U.S. intelligence gathering. That followed intense pressure on the European Commission, the E.U.’s governing body, from the Obama administration.
  • Paul Merrell on 13 Jun 13
     
    Article includes more detail on individual EU nations' objections, Germany, Ireland, and Italy.  
Paul Merrell

NSA surveillance may be legal - but it's unconstitutional - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...2-a73e-826d299ff459_print.html

surveillance state NSA constitutional law law

shared by Paul Merrell on 22 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • Laura K. Donohue is a professor at Georgetown University Law Center and director of Georgetown’s Center on National Security and the Law. The National Security Agency’s recently revealed surveillance programs undermine the purpose of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which was established to prevent this kind of overreach. They violate the Fourth Amendment’s guarantee against unreasonable search and seizure. And they underscore the dangers of growing executive power.
  • Another program, PRISM, disclosed by the Guardian and The Washington Post, allows the NSA and the FBI to obtain online data including e-mails, photographs, documents and connection logs. The information that can be assembledabout any one person — much less organizations, social networks and entire communities — is staggering: What we do, think and believe.The government defends the programs’ legality, saying they comply with FISA and its amendments. It may be right, but only because FISA has ceased to provide a meaningful constraint.Under the traditional FISA, if the government wants to conduct electronic surveillance, it must make a classified application to a special court, identitying or describing the target. It must demonstrate probable cause that the target is a foreign power or an agent thereof, and that the facilities to be monitored will be used by the target.In 2008, Congress added section 702 to the statute, allowing the government to use electronic surveillance to collect foreign intelligence on non-U.S. persons it reasonably believes are abroad, without a court order for each target. A U.S. citizen may not intentionally be targeted.To the extent that the FISC sanctioned PRISM, it may be consistent with the law. But it is disingenuous to suggest that millions of Americans’ e-mails, photographs and documents are “incidental” to an investigation targeting foreigners overseas.
  • Another program, PRISM, disclosed by the Guardian and The Washington Post, allows the NSA and the FBI to obtain online data including e-mails, photographs, documents and connection logs. The information that can be assembledabout any one person — much less organizations, social networks and entire communities — is staggering: What we do, think and believe.The government defends the programs’ legality, saying they comply with FISA and its amendments. It may be right, but only because FISA has ceased to provide a meaningful constraint.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Under the traditional FISA, if the government wants to conduct electronic surveillance, it must make a classified application to a special court, identitying or describing the target. It must demonstrate probable cause that the target is a foreign power or an agent thereof, and that the facilities to be monitored will be used by the target.In 2008, Congress added section 702 to the statute, allowing the government to use electronic surveillance to collect foreign intelligence on non-U.S. persons it reasonably believes are abroad, without a court order for each target. A U.S. citizen may not intentionally be targeted.To the extent that the FISC sanctioned PRISM, it may be consistent with the law. But it is disingenuous to suggest that millions of Americans’ e-mails, photographs and documents are “incidental” to an investigation targeting foreigners overseas.The telephony metadata program raises similar concerns. FISA did not originally envision the government accessing records. Following the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, Congress allowed applications for obtaining records from certain kinds of businesses. In 2001, lawmakers further expanded FISA to give the government access to any business or personal records. Under section 215 of the Patriot Act, the government no longer has to prove that the target is a foreign power. It need only state that the records are sought as part of an investigation to protect against terrorism or clandestine intelligence.
  • The telephony metadata program raises similar concerns. FISA did not originally envision the government accessing records. Following the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, Congress allowed applications for obtaining records from certain kinds of businesses. In 2001, lawmakers further expanded FISA to give the government access to any business or personal records. Under section 215 of the Patriot Act, the government no longer has to prove that the target is a foreign power. It need only state that the records are sought as part of an investigation to protect against terrorism or clandestine intelligence.This means that FISA can now be used to gather records concerning individuals who are neither the target of any investigation nor an agent of a foreign power. Entire databases — such as telephony metadata — can be obtained, as long as an authorized investigation exists.Congress didn’t pass Section 215 to allow for the wholesale collection of information. As Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.), who helped draft the statute, wrote in the Guardian: “Congress intended to allow the intelligence communities to access targeted information for specific investigations. How can every call that every American makes or receives be relevant to a specific investigation?”As a constitutional matter, the Supreme Court has long held that, where an individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy, search and seizure may occur only once the government has obtained a warrant, supported by probable cause and issued by a judge. The warrant must specify the places to be searched and items to be seized.
  • There are exceptions to the warrant requirement. In 1979 the court held that the use of a pen register to record numbers dialed from someone’s home was not a search. The court suggested that people who disclose their communications to others assume the risk that law enforcement may obtain the information.More than three decades later, digitization and the explosion of social-network technology have changed the calculus. In the ordinary course of life, third parties obtain massive amounts of information about us that, when analyzed, have much deeper implications for our privacy than before.As for Section 702 of FISA, the Supreme Court has held that the Fourth Amendment does not protect foreigners from searches conducted abroad. But it has never recognized a foreign intelligence exception to the warrant requirement when foreign-targeted searches result in the collection of vast stores of citizens’ communications.Americans reasonably expect that their movements, communications and decisions will not be recorded and analyzed by the government. A majority of the Supreme Court seems to agree. Last year, the court considered a case involving 28-day GPS surveillance. Justice Samuel Alito suggested that in most criminal investigations, long-term monitoring “impinges on expectations of privacy.” Justice Sonia Sotomayor recognized that following a person’s movements “reflects a wealth of detail about her familial, political, professional, religious, and sexual associations.”The FISC is supposed to operate as a check. But it is a secret court, notorious for its low rate of denial. From 1979 to 2002, it did not reject a single application. Over the past five years, out of nearly 8,600 applications, only two have been denied.
Paul Merrell

NSA slides explain the PRISM data-collection program - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...prism-collection-documents

surveillance state NSA mass-wiretapping Slides

shared by Paul Merrell on 21 Jul 13 - No Cached
  • Paul Merrell on 21 Jul 13
     
    Washington Post page of all slides disclosed thus far regarding the Prism database, and more. 
Paul Merrell

US gov't threatened Yahoo with $250K daily fine if it didn't use PRISM | Ars Technica - 0 views

arstechnica.com/...ily-fine-if-it-didnt-use-prism

surveillance-state Yahoo NSA litigation FISC

shared by Paul Merrell on 13 Sep 14 - No Cached
  • Yahoo reports that it is on the verge of releasing 1,500 pages of documents related to a long court battle over its participation in the PRISM program, a National Security Agency program revealed last summer as part of the Snowden leaks. A leaked top-secret slide about PRISM shows that Yahoo was one of the first participants, having begun contributing to the database in March of 2008. It did so under severe duress. Company executives believed the government's demand for data was "unconstitutional and overbroad" and fought it in court.
  • "Our challenge, and a later appeal in the case, did not succeed," explained Yahoo General Counsel Ron Bell in a blog post published today. "The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC)... ordered us to give the U.S. Government the user data it sought in the matter." After it lost, Yahoo was threatened with $250,000 per day fines if it didn't comply with the program. Not only that, but the government got permission to share the ruling with other companies in order to put pressure on them as well, according to a just-published story by The Washington Post.
Paul Merrell

Former Justice attorney seeks $23 billion in damages for NSA surveillance programs - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...-for-nsa-surveillance-programs

surveillance state NSA class action

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  • A former Reagan-era Justice Department prosecutor who runs a right-leaning political-advocacy group is suing the federal government over its controversial electronic-surveillance programs. Activist attorney Larry Klayman filed two class-action lawsuits this week in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, seeking a combined $23 billion in damages. Klayman, who founded the political advocacy group Freedom Watch, claims the National Security Administration surveillance programs that monitor phone data and Internet communications violate citizens’ reasonable expectation of privacy, as well as their rights to free speech and freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures.
  • Klayman named the NSA, the Justice Deparment, President Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder and 12 communications and Internet companies as defendants in a class-action lawsuit he filed on Wednesday. In that case, he seeks $20 billion in damages, as well as orders to stop the surveillance programs and eliminate any records collected through them. Earlier in the week, Klayman filed a separate lawsuit against Verizon and the Obama administration, requesting the same orders in addition to $3 billion in damages.
  • A former Reagan-era Justice Department prosecutor who runs a right-leaning political-advocacy group is suing the federal government over its controversial electronic-surveillance programs. Activist attorney Larry Klayman filed two class-action lawsuits this week in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, seeking a combined $23 billion in damages. Klayman, who founded the political advocacy group Freedom Watch, claims the National Security Administration surveillance programs that monitor phone data and Internet communications violate citizens’ reasonable expectation of privacy, as well as their rights to free speech and freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures.
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

EU votes to support suspending U.S. data sharing agreements, including passenger flight... - 0 views

www.zdnet.com/ssenger-flight-data-7000017677

surveillance state NSA blowback EU

shared by Paul Merrell on 06 Jul 13 - No Cached
  • The European Parliament on Thursday adopted a joint, cross-party resolution to begin investigations into widespread surveillance of Europeans by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA). Read this EU to vote to suspend U.S. data sharing agreements, passenger records amid NSA spying scandal Read more In the vote, 483 voted for the resolution, 98 against, and 65 abstained on a vote that called on the U.S. to suspend and review any laws and surveillance programs that "violate the fundamental right of EU citizens to privacy and data protection," as well as Europe's "sovereignty and jurisdiction." The vote also gave backing to the suspension of data sharing deals between the two continents, should the European Commission take action against its U.S. ally.
  • The U.S. government faces continued criticism and pressure from its international allies following news that its intelligence agencies spied on foreign nationals under its so-called PRISM program. The U.K. government was also embroiled in the NSA spying saga, after its signals intelligence intercepting station GCHQ tapped submarine fiber optic cables under its own secret program, code named Tempora. Reuters reported on Wednesday that the Commission is examining whether the U.K. broke EU law, which could lead to fines imposed by the highest court in Europe.
  • Should the Commission decide it necessary to suspend the data sharing agreement of passenger details — including personal and sensitive individual data — it could ultimately lead to the grounding of flights between the EU and the U.S. Dutch MEP Sophie in 't Veld said in a statement after the vote: "We must consider now if the PNR and SWIFT agreements are still tenable in the circumstances." Critics say PNR data has never helped catch a suspected criminal or terrorist before. SWIFT data sharing, which provides U.S. authorities with secure banking details in a bid to crack down on terrorist financing, could also be suspended. A spokesperson for the D66 delegation in Brussels confirmed by email that the English version of the joint motion is "the right one and is leading," despite claims that there were "translation error[s]" between the different versions of the joint resolution.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) in a plenary session in Strasbourg voted in favor of a section of the resolution that called on the Commission to "give consideration to all the instruments at their disposal in discussions and negotiations with the U.S. [...] including the possible suspension of the passenger name record (PNR) and terrorist finance tracking program (TFTP) agreements."
  • An EU source familiar with proceedings confirmed that the Commission now has the authority from the Parliament to suspend PNR and TFTP, but it falls at the Commission's discretion. Resolutions passed by the Parliament are not legally binding, but give backing to the Commission should the executive body wish to enact measures against a foreign power or entity. A Commission spokesperson confirmed that there are "no deadlines" on deciding whether it will follow up on the Parliament's resolution.
  • The Parliament's Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs committee was given the authority by Thursday's vote to set up an inquiry to gather evidence from both U.S. and EU sources to assess the impact of the surveillance activities on EU citizens' fundamental right to privacy and data protection.
Paul Merrell

Former NSA and CIA director says terrorists love using Gmail - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...ys-terrorists-love-using-gmail

surveillance state NSA Hayden Gmail

shared by Paul Merrell on 16 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • Former NSA and CIA director Michael Hayden stood on the pulpit of a church across from the White House on Sunday and declared Gmail the preferred online service of terrorists. As part of an adult education forum at St. John’s Episcopal Church, Hayden gave a wide ranging speech on "the tension between security and liberty." During the speech, he specifically defended Section 702 of the Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Act (FISA), which provides the legal basis for the PRISM program. In doing so, Hayden claimed "Gmail is the preferred Internet service provider of terrorists worldwide," presumably meaning online service rather than the actual provider of Internet service. He added: "I don't think you're going to see that in a Google commercial, but it's free, it's ubiquitous, so of course it is."
  • Paul Merrell on 16 Sep 13
     
    I wonder if he was just shooting from the hip, or if not, whether his analysis ignored some important factors, e.g., -- Qualitative factors, e.g., is he talking about run-of-the-mill terrorists or tech-savvy "terrorists." One might reasonably suspect that the tech-savvy would avoid Gmail like the plague particularly since Edward Snowden's disclosures began to appear. -- Likewise, are the NSA's foreign language Email scanning abilities as good as their English scanning abilities? One might reasonably suspect that the tech-savvy "terrorists" communicate using fairly obscure foreign human languages that NSA's scanners do less than a good job of comprehending. Remember the "Wind Talkers" of World War II who communicated using the Navajo language, a "code" the Japanese never decoded.  -- There's also the selection factor. We now know that NSA gets daily doses of email metadata from Google and Yahoo! but hasn't yet set up similar listening posts for most email services on the globe. Are we to believe that the availability of the metadata  for the big two email services has no effect on detection of "terrorist" emails? I doubt that NSA would be fighting so hard to keep PRISM were that true.
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