Not Quite Dubya : Obama Tackles the NSA

[Nbadan]

Obama sets plans to improve privacy in NSA surveillance

President Obama announced a series of moves on Friday to improve privacy protections within National Security Agency surveillance programs and better explain to the public how they operate



Saying the nation deserves a "vigorous public debate guided by our Constitution," President Obama outlined plans Friday to improve privacy protections within National Security Agency surveillance programs and to better explain to the public how the NSA operates.

"It's not enough for me as president to have confidence in these programs," Obama told reporters at the White House. "The American people need to have confidence in them as well."

While defending the programs in general -- it's "an important tool in our effort to disrupt terrorist plots" -- Obama said he also understands concerns about possible abuses of privacy.

Opening a news conference with a prepared statement, Obama outlined "specific steps that we're going to be taking very shortly to move the debate forward."

They include:

-- New talks with Congress to revise Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which governs NSA collections of telephone data. The goal would be to clarify the legal authority of the NSA, improve oversight of its actions and tighten restrictions on the use of information obtained by the Agency, all with the aim of improving public confidence in the programs.

-- Appointment of a civil liberties and privacy advocate to argue cases and challenge the government's position before the court that oversees the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The advocate position is designed to push back on government applications for warrants on telephone and/or Internet communications.

Obama said he has confidence in the special court, but there is legitimate worry that it "only hears one side of the story." A new "independent voice, in appropriate cases," can insure that "the government's position is challenged by an adversary," he said.

-- Declassification of more NSA and FISA court documents to improve transparency. The Justice Department released a report on the legal rationale for NSA operations, while the NSA itself issued a statement detailing its authorities, how it collects information and what its restrictions are. Obama described these actions as something of a down payment on future transparency efforts, with the Justice Department and Director of National Intelligence working on disclosure reforms.

-- Appointment of a new high-level group of outside experts "to review our entire intelligence and communications technologies," Obama said. "We need new thinking for a new era."

The advisory group will release an interim report within 60 days and a full report by the end of the year, he said.

Obama said he welcomes the debate over NSA surveillance programs and that he is seeking the right balance between national security and privacy concerns.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2013/08/09/obama-privacy-nsa-surveillance/2635735/

Greenwald said this on national broadcast television — twice — as a weak and false excuse for why perhaps Snowden fled the country to Hong Kong and Russia. The longest sentence handed down in this “war on whistleblowers” was 30 months, which is currently being served by John Kiriakou who blew the whistle on CIA torture, and who was prosecuted for outing the names of CIA officers. Elsewhere, yes, Bradley Manning could face up to 90 years in prison, but he hasn’t been sentenced yet. Even if he received the maximum sentence, he would be the first and only leaker to be imprisoned “for decades.”

[Jacob1983]

Biden wrote the Patriot Act. What do you Obama lovers have to say about that?

[ElNono]

You know what Dan? Dog and pony show.

- Everything on that court is going to continue to be secret.
- Showing 'memos' describing the legal rationale means jackshit if they cannot be challenged (and they cannot, see: state secrets).
- This 'challenger' is simply going to be another 'independent' neocon. Same for "outside experts". Congress already has a "privacy" comittee and clearly they're ok with all this crap.

The solution to this is real easy and it's none of the things listed there: stop the dragnet surveillance. If they need to investigate an american, get a warrant, just like any other LE agency does, and investigate just that person.

This whole bootleg secret system of justice has to go, especially when it comes to Americans. It's a big fuck you to the Constitution (due process rights, privacy rights, etc).

[velik_m]

Obama sets plans to improve privacy in NSA surveillance

President Obama announced a series of moves on Friday to improve privacy protections within National Security Agency surveillance programs and better explain to the public how they operate




http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2013/08/09/obama-privacy-nsa-surveillance/2635735/

Greenwald said this on national broadcast television — twice — as a weak and false excuse for why perhaps Snowden fled the country to Hong Kong and Russia. The longest sentence handed down in this “war on whistleblowers” was 30 months, which is currently being served by John Kiriakou who blew the whistle on CIA torture, and who was prosecuted for outing the names of CIA officers. Elsewhere, yes, Bradley Manning could face up to 90 years in prison, but he hasn’t been sentenced yet. Even if he received the maximum sentence, he would be the first and only leaker to be imprisoned “for decades.”

So you're saying once Manning is sentenced two longest sentences for whistle blowing will be during Obama's administration? I think Snowden made the right choice. Actions speak louder than words, how is the closing of Gitmo coming along?

Fuck Obama and all you American entities that voted for him.

[The Reckoning]

lol at all the foreigners dancing in the streets when obama was elected and now turning on him.


:cry But he was African American. That made him better than all other potential candidates in the USA and earn the Nobel Prize :cry

[symple19]

lol nobel prize

ooooo, he's brown! He must be different! Hope and Change!

[ElNono]

tbh, it's just mind boggling how the GOP couldn't come up with a just "passable" candidate the last election. It was just there for the taking.

Not that they would've done anything different, but they really need to get their shit together, because if the Dems start sensing there's no opposition, shit can only get worse.

[Halberto]

Biden wrote the Patriot Act. What do you Obama lovers have to say about that?

Home run for the red team! Woooooooo

red team - 18
blue team -17

"middle class" Americans: 0

[DUNCANownsKOBE]

tbh, it's just mind boggling how the GOP couldn't come up with a just "passable" candidate the last election. It was just there for the taking.

Not that they would've done anything different, but they really need to get their shit together, because if the Dems start sensing there's no opposition, shit can only get worse.
I disagree, if the Dems sense there's no opposition, there's a small chance they might actually be liberals again rather than the middle-right wing Clinton Dems who care more about winning elections than helping 'Murica.

[boutons_deux]

"if the Dems sense there's no opposition"

:lol There's nothing BUT Repug obstructionism.

[Jacob1983]

Obama wants to revise the Patriot Act? Why not stop being a pussy and end the Patriot Act? Obama is a joke for liberals and civil liberties activists. Obama is a liberal Republican.

[ElNono]

Obama wants to revise the Patriot Act? Why not stop being a pussy and end the Patriot Act? Obama is a joke for liberals and civil liberties activists. Obama is a liberal Republican.

In all fairness, Barry can't end the Patriot Act... it's an act of Congress and it takes Congress to end it. But they won't.

[Winehole23]

...

[Winehole23]

You know what Dan? Dog and pony show.

- Everything on that court is going to continue to be secret.
- Showing 'memos' describing the legal rationale means jackshit if they cannot be challenged (and they cannot, see: state secrets).
- This 'challenger' is simply going to be another 'independent' neocon. Same for "outside experts". Congress already has a "privacy" comittee and clearly they're ok with all this crap.

The solution to this is real easy and it's none of the things listed there: stop the dragnet surveillance. If they need to investigate an american, get a warrant, just like any other LE agency does, and investigate just that person.

This whole bootleg secret system of justice has to go, especially when it comes to Americans. It's a big fuck you to the Constitution (due process rights, privacy rights, etc).:tu

[The Reckoning]

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/08/the-surveillance-speech-a-low-point-in-barack-obamas-presidency/278565/

[Winehole23]

Obama probably feels obliged to lie. Continuity, not change.

[Winehole23]

They'd never live it down if we found out what all they're done in the name of safety and protection. like a buddy of mine said earlier today, the main hope is that Congress will feel like they got pantsed. if the US Congress gets in a pique about it, some of the excesses could be rolled back. secret law, secret process and secret records mock the literal meaning of the word republic.

[Wild Cobra]

Obama probably feels obliged to lie. Continuity, not change.

HopeDupe and change the lie?

[Winehole23]

you pretend to be a libertarian now, but your defense of the policies of GWB was full-throated.

change your tune much?

[Nbadan]

Guess it comes down to siding with Jimmy Carter on one side...

http://now.msn.com/jimmy-carter-says-the-nsa-has-eliminated-a-functioning-democracy

and Darth Cheney on the other....

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57589521/dick-cheney-defends-nsa-surveillance-programs/

[Nbadan]

....and now, this...


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OQjR23LSMA#at=584

[Nbadan]

According to these statements, the administration provided key information to Congress that wasn't shared with all members.

Intelligence committee withheld key file before critical NSA vote, Amash claims


<...>

Justin Amash, the Michigan Republican whose effort to defund the NSA's mass phone-records collection exposed deep congressional discomfort with domestic spying, said the House intelligence committee never allowed legislators outside the panel to see a 2011 document that described the surveillance in vague terms.

The document, a classified summary of the bulk phone records collection effort justified under Section 215 of the Patriot Act, was declassified by the Obama administration in late July.

The Justice Department and intelligence agencies prepared it for Congress before a 2011 vote to reauthorize the Patriot Act, and left it for the intelligence committees in Congress to make the document available to their colleagues.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/12/intelligence-committee-nsa-vote-justin-amash '


On June 19, Grayson wrote to the House Intelligence Committee requesting several documents relating to media accounts about the NSA. Included among them were FISA court opinions directing the collection of telephone records for Americans, as well as documents relating to the PRISM program.

But just over four weeks later, the Chairman of the Committee, GOP Rep. Mike Rogers, wrote to Grayson informing him that his requests had been denied by a Committee "voice vote".

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/04/congress-nsa-denied-access

[Nbadan]

Over several decades, every real mass casualty "foreign" terrorist attack that has succeeded inside the US has been carried out by groups and individuals associated with CIA covert operations. In some of these, particularly 9/11, the NSA was conducting surveillance on some of the principal participants, but the FBI was prevented from accessing this data by another federal agency, the Central Intelligence Agency.

Consider this, for instance, about the hijackers who commandeered Flt. 77 on 9/11:\


Court records from the trial of convicted co-conspiractor Zakaria Moussaoui shows the FBI was aware of NSA intercepts of Midhar and and his partner Nawaf al-Hazmi in the months leading up to 9/11, who went on to hijack Flt. 77 that slammed into the Pentagon. The pair had also met with the other principal 9/11 hijackers at various locations inside the US. Based in part on NSA wiretaps that were later withheld and suppressed, FBI agents had, in fact, located the pair inside the US in mid-2001, but the investigating agents were ordered to close their files after CIA refused to cooperate and pressured the Bureau to shut down several lines of field investigation that were focusing on the plotters.

(FBI Director) Mueller's claims omit those key facts. The Director instead stated that Khalid al-Midhar was being monitored by intelligence agencies, but “they lost track of him,” Mueller said. http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2013/0613/Secret-NSA-program-could-have-derailed-9-11-attacks-FBI-director-says-video


In each major terrorist attack that occurred here during the last twenty years, one or more of the perpetrators was known directly to the CIA and identified as a terrorist, yet they somehow managed to enter the US and carry out attacks. This is true going back to WTC '93, and includes 9/11, the string of Anwar al-Awlaki-related incidents (which included 9/11 and the Underwear Bomber), and the Tsarnaev brothers. In other words, almost all real terrorism that has caused civilian casualties in America in recent times has been carried out by "our" terrorists, or more accurately, individuals known by the CIA to be part of terrorist groups.

Let's look at the older Boston Bomber, Tamarlan Tsarnaev. Tamarlan was nominated by the CIA as a terrorist in the fall of 2011 after a Massachusetts triple-murder in which the older brother is now implicated in the killing of his closest friend. Nonetheless, while an active murder investigation was ongoing, Tamarlan was allowed to leave the country to travel to Russia and Chechnya where he met with Islamic militants, and then hastily returned when his local contact with the militants was killed by the Russian security forces. Yet, inexplicably, he was never stopped or questioned during these travels, despite being on three terrorist watch lists. Again, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was designated a terrorist at about the same time he is alleged to have been involved in a triple murder, but at the time whatever was known to the CIA was never turned over to Boston Police or the FBI. In addition, he was not stopped when he left or returned to the US, despite the fact that he is not a US Citizen and was listed on the watchlist: http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/04/27/17945669-boston-bombing-suspects-mother-was-in-us-terror-database?lite

[boutons_deux]

STEP 1: LIE TO CONGRESS ABOUT SURVEILLANCE (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/13/james-clapper_n_3748431.html)


http://i.huffpost.com/gen/1295762/thumbs/r-JAMES-CLAPPER-huge.jpg

STEP 2: LEAD REVIEW OF SURVEILLANCE (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/13/james-clapper_n_3748431.html)


Obama announced the creation of an "independent group" of "outside experts" to review privacy issues raised by the nation's surveillance programs during a Friday press conference. "We’re forming a high-level group of outside experts to review our entire intelligence and communications technologies," he said, adding that the group would "consider how we can maintain the trust of the people, how we can make sure that there absolutely is no abuse in terms of how these surveillance technologies are used."

A statement released by Clapper on Monday (http://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/press-releases/191-press-releases-2013/909-dni-clapper-announces-review-group-on-intelligence-and-communications-technologies) announcing the formation of the group does not discuss abuses, instead mentioning the risk of "unauthorized disclosure."


"The Review Group will assess whether, in light of advancements in communications technologies, the United States employs its technical collection capabilities in a manner that optimally protects our national security and advances our foreign policy while appropriately accounting for other policy considerations, such as the risk of unauthorized disclosure and our need to maintain the public trust," Clapper said.

Clapper recently apologized for making an "erroneous" statement (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/02/james-clapper-nsa_n_3536483.html) to Congress after saying in a congressional hearing that the National Security Agency does not collect data on Americans.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/13/james-clapper_n_3748431.html

:lol

[Spurminator]

http://www.eraisd.net/cms/lib/TX01000558/Centricity/Domain/22/cheerleader.jpg

[Jacob1983]

Obama could end the Patriot Act by threatening Congress or using an executive order. Obama won't end the Patriot Act because he's a bitch to the military industrial complex just like Bush. Obama loves the Patriot Act, NDAA, drones, illegal wiretaps and surveillance, and Gitmo. When he was candidate Obama, he hated those things and strongly opposed them. His supporters and sperm drinkers also opposed those things in 2008 but now blindly support them.

[Winehole23]

Obama could end the Patriot Act by threatening Congress or using an executive order.absurd. what makes you think so?

[Jacob1983]

Because I said so. But anyways, Obama is a joke on this stuff. Liberals should be ashamed of themselves for supporting this piece of shit.

[ElNono]

absurd. what makes you think so?


Because I said so.

Oh

[SA210]

Boutons beat me to it lol

https://fbcdn-sphotos-h-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn2/q71/s720x720/1150840_411489505627654_2088798099_n.jpg

[velik_m]

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.

Most of those incidents were unintended, involving either violations of standard operations or failures of due diligence. But others were more serious.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/08/15/remember-when-obama-said-the-nsa-wasnt-actually-abusing-its-powers-he-was-wrong/

[velik_m]

NSA broke privacy rules thousands of times per year, audit finds

...
James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, has acknowledged that the court found the NSA in breach of the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures, but the Obama administration has fought a Freedom of Information lawsuit that seeks the opinion.
...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-broke-privacy-rules-thousands-of-times-per-year-audit-finds/2013/08/15/3310e554-05ca-11e3-a07f-49ddc7417125_story.html

[The Reckoning]

Obama could end the Patriot Act by threatening Congress or using an executive order. Obama won't end the Patriot Act because he's a bitch to the military industrial complex just like Bush. Obama loves the Patriot Act, NDAA, drones, illegal wiretaps and surveillance, and Gitmo. When he was candidate Obama, he hated those things and strongly opposed them. His supporters and sperm drinkers also opposed those things in 2008 but now blindly support them.



http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/27/patriot-act-extension-signed-obama-autopen_n_867851.html

that's the moment i knew he was a liar. that's the only thing i wanted a candidate to "change" was our police state constitution. it didn't happen.

[Nbadan]

Why Would the NSA Want to Spy on Millions of Americans?


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fx3a-Hs4HJ4

[velik_m]

How to trap a whistleblower

Last week, President Obama misled the public when he told a comedian Jay Leno that protected legal channels exist that Edward Snowden could have used to challenge government misconduct:

I can tell you that there are ways, if you think that the government is abusing a program, of coming forward. In fact, I, through Executive Order, signed whistleblower protection for intelligence officers or people who are involved in the intelligence industry.

This message is false. And the President repeated it at his press conference a few days later. Obama is referring to Presidential Policy Directive #19. If the President had bothered to read his own Executive Order, he would have known that it was not implemented at all when Snowden blew the whistle on the National Security Agency. Further, it fails to provide protected legal channels to contractor positions such as Snowden’s.

...

http://www.salon.com/2013/08/16/how_to_trap_a_whistleblower/

[velik_m]

Glenn Greenwald's partner detained at Heathrow airport for nine hours

David Miranda, partner of Guardian interviewer of whistleblower Edward Snowden, questioned under Terrorism Act


http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/18/glenn-greenwald-guardian-partner-detained-heathrow

God save the queen and her fascist regime.

[velik_m]

Obama administration asks Supreme Court to allow warrantless cellphone searches
By Timothy B. Lee, Updated: August 19, 2013

If the police arrest you, do they need a warrant to rifle through your cellphone? Courts have been split on the question. Last week the Obama administration asked the Supreme Court to resolve the issue and rule that the Fourth Amendment allows warrantless cellphone searches.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/08/19/obama-administration-asks-supreme-court-to-allow-warrantless-cellphone-searches/?print=1

[DMC]

The entire presidency of Obama has been a dog and pony show. He feigns outrage and concern over things but nothing happens. He's not running again. He's just trying to get through this term alive. He's not going to go out of his way to do anything substantial. How shocking.

[DMC]

Should the 4th Amendment be limitless though?

[velik_m]

Obama sets plans to improve privacy in NSA surveillance

President Obama announced a series of moves on Friday to improve privacy protections within National Security Agency surveillance programs and better explain to the public how they operate




http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2013/08/09/obama-privacy-nsa-surveillance/2635735/

Greenwald said this on national broadcast television — twice — as a weak and false excuse for why perhaps Snowden fled the country to Hong Kong and Russia. The longest sentence handed down in this “war on whistleblowers” was 30 months, which is currently being served by John Kiriakou who blew the whistle on CIA torture, and who was prosecuted for outing the names of CIA officers. Elsewhere, yes, Bradley Manning could face up to 90 years in prison, but he hasn’t been sentenced yet. Even if he received the maximum sentence, he would be the first and only leaker to be imprisoned “for decades.”

It looks like "war on whistleblowers" is in full swing: new longest sentence: Bradley Manning sentenced to 35 years in Wikileaks case (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-23784288)

[cheguevara]

Boutons beat me to it lol

https://fbcdn-sphotos-h-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn2/q71/s720x720/1150840_411489505627654_2088798099_n.jpg

:lmao

like I said before, we are living in the twilight zone

[HI-FI]

:lmao

like I said before, we are living in the twilight zone
things might work out if media do their job, but i doubt it, like diet Pravda tbh. gotta give it up for the partisan hacks, still :downspin:shit.

[cheguevara]

things might work out if media do their job, but i doubt it, like diet Pravda tbh. gotta give it up for the partisan hacks, still :downspin:shit.

we are living in a farm. We are no more than cows/sheep/chickens. The mainstream media are the handlers. they direct us everywhich way is necessary.

we all need to face the reality that we are nothing but another type of farm animal, no we don't produce meat or eggs, we produce certain amount of labor(like an ox) but most importantly our most important product is 1 single vote each election and the ability to reproduce to create more votes.

[Nbadan]

Obama, Obama, Obama...I've already proven that the Intelligence Committee members knew about the NSA spy program and kept it from Congress too

Where is that outrage? And then there is this..


NSA has collected Verizon phone records since 2006, lawmakers say

http://www.tampabay.com/news/nation/nsa-has-collected-verizon-phone-records-since-2006-lawmakers-say/2125337


So why is the media going crazy over it now? The answer is simple. They want to drown Obama in fake scandals.

But don't let this 7-year-old story stop you from being outraged and dancing to the media's tune.

[Nbadan]

As far as Greenwald...anyone remember this?

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BMCpJsyCAAAXkNs.jpg

http://theobamadiary.com/2013/06/06/rise-and-shine-521/

Yes, all the usual suspects and those riding the gravy train.

[Nbadan]

Let's all just pretend 9/11 never happened,,,


"Is it just me or does the entire news media — as well as all the agitators and self-righteous bloviators on both sides of the aisle — not understand even the rudiments of electronic intercepts and the manner in which law enforcement actually uses such intercepts? It would seem so."

snip**

"The question is not should the resulting data exist. It does. And it forever will, to a greater and greater extent. And therefore, the present-day question can’t seriously be this: Should law enforcement in the legitimate pursuit of criminal activity pretend that such data does not exist. The question is more fundamental: Is government accessing the data for the legitimate public safety needs of the society, or are they accessing it in ways that abuse individual liberties and violate personal privacy — and in a manner that is unsupervised.

And to that, the Guardian and those who are wailing jeremiads about this pretend-discovery of U.S. big data collection are noticeably silent. We don’t know of any actual abuse. No known illegal wiretaps, no indications of FISA-court approved intercepts of innocent Americans that occurred because weak probable cause was acceptable. Mark you, that stuff may be happening. As happens the case with all law enforcement capability, it will certainly happen at some point, if it hasn’t already. Any data asset that can be properly and legally invoked, can also be misused — particularly without careful oversight. But that of course has always been the case with electronic surveillance of any kind.

http://davidsimon.com/we-are-shocked-shocked/

We wouldl have another 30 years of Republican rule if Obama shut down this program and then an attack occurred because the mantra would be 'Democrats are soft on terror!'

[Nbadan]

HELLO WORLD! George W. Bush illegally spied on American citizens. Read all about it.

AT&T Whistleblower: Telecom Immunity Is A Cover-Up
By Spencer Ackerman - Nov 7, 2007
http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/004662.php

NSA Monitors All Web Traffic, Says Ex-AT&T Employee
Tom Corelis (Blog) - Nov 10, 2007
http://www.dailytech.com/NSA+Monitors+All+Web+Traffic+Says+ExATT+Employee/article9620.htm

Judge Orders Telecommunications Companies to Preserve Evidence in Government Surveillance Cases
Ruling Advances EFF's Class-action Lawsuit Against AT&T
http://www.eff.org/press/archives/2007/11/06

PBS FRONTLINE: Spying on the Homefront
Get the story on Frontline: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/homefront

The laws as he inherited them

[Nbadan]

Should the 4th Amendment be limitless though?

I think we pretty much compromised all the Constitution when we renditioned and tortured innocent Afghan and Iraqi civilians and allowed illegal spying by Telcoms...



They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.

Sound familiar?

[velik_m]

Let's all just pretend 9/11 never happened,,,



http://davidsimon.com/we-are-shocked-shocked/

We would have another 30 years of Republican rule if Obama shut down this program and then an attack occurred because the mantra would be 'Democrats are soft on terror!'

So the only way Democrats can rule is if they behave exactly like Republicans? I mean i guess there is no way a Democrat would win campaigning on "change" from republican policy.

[velik_m]

HELLO WORLD! George W. Bush illegally spied on American citizens. Read all about it.

AT&T Whistleblower: Telecom Immunity Is A Cover-Up
By Spencer Ackerman - Nov 7, 2007
http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/004662.php

NSA Monitors All Web Traffic, Says Ex-AT&T Employee
Tom Corelis (Blog) - Nov 10, 2007
http://www.dailytech.com/NSA+Monitors+All+Web+Traffic+Says+ExATT+Employee/article9620.htm

Judge Orders Telecommunications Companies to Preserve Evidence in Government Surveillance Cases
Ruling Advances EFF's Class-action Lawsuit Against AT&T
http://www.eff.org/press/archives/2007/11/06

PBS FRONTLINE: Spying on the Homefront
Get the story on Frontline: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/homefront

The laws as he inherited them

Ah yes poor Obama. It's the laws he inherited from Bush or given by the congress, his hands are completely tied, there is no way he can do anything to change how they are executed. Just following the laws and the orders, like a good little nazi that he is.

But you know what, he can really stick it to the congress and pardon Manning! Or are his hands tied in this matter also?

Btw, how do you manage to type with Obama's cock in your mouth?

[Jacob1983]

Bush ain't president anymore. Obama is president and that means when something goes wrong in America, he gets the blame. No one put a gun to Obama's head and forced him to be president. He wanted to be president because he wanted the power, fame, control, and legacy.

[cheguevara]

all this proves is that Obama is completely inept and out of his league

so much for hope and change IMO

[DMC]

I think we pretty much compromised all the Constitution when we renditioned and tortured innocent Afghan and Iraqi civilians and allowed illegal spying by Telcoms...


Sound familiar?
I wasn't aware that "We the People" meant Iraqis and Afghans.

[Jacob1983]

There has never been "hope and change". It's been nope and more of the same old shit with Obama. It would be great for America if citizens would realize that. The man is a joke as president. He was supposed to be the anti-Bush? :lol

[boutons_deux]

There has never been "hope and change". It's been nope and more of the same old shit with Obama. It would be great for America if citizens would realize that. The man is a joke as president. He was supposed to be the anti-Bush? :lol

Agreed. He's been a huge disappointment.

But, then I ask myself what he or ANY president could do to beat back the wealth-sucking terrorism of the MIC, beat back the national security surveillance state, beat back the financial sector into being non-systemic-threatening, etc, etc.

So what do you think that Bishop Gecko would have done better or any President could do better, or at all, than Obama?

You people act like Presidential powers are dickhead's "unitary executive" where the President is unrestrained, autocratic dictator, beyond checks and balances.

[Jacob1983]

Not much because this current Congress is one of the worst in history of America. I don't really think Willard would have done that much better. I voted for bozo Gary Johnson mainly as a protest vote against Obomney. The only reason Willard as president would have been a plus is because he is white and no one would bitch about his skin color. Yes, it's true. When there is a white president in America, people don't bitch about the person's skin color or if the person was born on American soil. That's why I want the the next president to be a middle aged white guy from the Midwest. That way, liberals and neocons can't bitch about the guy's skin color and make his race an issue.

[boutons_deux]

NSA paid millions to cover Prism compliance costs for tech companies

• Top-secret files show first evidence of financial relationship
• Prism companies include Google and Yahoo, says NSA
• Costs were incurred after 2011 Fisa court ruling

The National Security Agency paid millions of dollars to cover the costs of major internet companies involved in the Prism (http://www.theguardian.com/world/prism) surveillance (http://www.theguardian.com/world/surveillance) program after a court ruled that some of the agency's activities were unconstitutional, according to top-secret material passed to the Guardian.

The technology companies, which the NSA (http://www.theguardian.com/world/nsa) says includes Google, Yahoo (http://www.theguardian.com/technology/yahoo),Microsoft (http://www.theguardian.com/technology/microsoft) and Facebook, incurred the costs to meet new certification demands in the wake of the ruling from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (Fisa) court.
The October 2011 judgment (http://www.scribd.com/doc/162016974/FISA-court-opinion-with-exemptions), which was declassified on Wednesday (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/21/nsa-illegally-collected-thousands-emails-court) by the Obama administration (http://www.theguardian.com/world/obama-administration), found that the NSA's inability to separate purely domestic communications from foreign traffic violated the fourth amendment.

While the ruling (http://www.scribd.com/doc/162016974/FISA-court-opinion-with-exemptions) did not concern the Prism program directly, documents passed to the Guardian by whistleblower Edward Snowden describe the problems the decision created for the agency and the efforts required to bring operations into compliance. The material provides the first evidence of a financial relationship between the tech companies and theNSA.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/23/nsa-prism-costs-tech-companies-paid

[velik_m]

Obama administration had restrictions on NSA reversed in 2011

The Obama administration secretly won permission from a surveillance court in 2011 to reverse restrictions on the National Security Agency’s use of intercepted phone calls and e-mails, permitting the agency to search deliberately for Americans’ communications in its massive databases, according to interviews with government officials and recently declassified material.

In addition, the court extended the length of time that the NSA is allowed to retain intercepted U.S. communications from five years to six years — and more under special circumstances, according to the documents, which include a recently released 2011 opinion by U.S. District Judge John D. Bates, then chief judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

What had not been previously acknowledged is that the court in 2008 imposed an explicit ban — at the government’s request — on those kinds of searches, that officials in 2011 got the court to lift the bar and that the search authority has been used.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/obama-administration-had-restrictions-on-nsa-reversed-in-2011/2013/09/07/c26ef658-0fe5-11e3-85b6-d27422650fd5_story.html

Lets see what the Obama cocksuckers have to say to this...

[Jacob1983]

Obama is a sneaky mofo. I will give him that. Trying desperately to not appear as Bush's clone but failing miserably. :lol

[Nbadan]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/obama-administration-had-restrictions-on-nsa-reversed-in-2011/2013/09/07/c26ef658-0fe5-11e3-85b6-d27422650fd5_story.html

Lets see what the Obama cocksuckers have to say to this...

:rolleyes

a spy and this..



Despite these doubts, concerns, and grounds for ambivalence, I had not abandoned my trust in the Bush administration. Between the president’s performance in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the swift removal of the Taliban in Afghanistan, and the fact that I wanted the president to succeed, because my loyalty is to my country and he was the leader of my country, I still gave the administration the benefit of the doubt. I believed then that the president was entitled to have his national security judgment deferred to, and to the extent that I was able to develop a definitive view, I accepted his judgment that American security really would be enhanced by the invasion of this sovereign country.

Greenwald in the lead-up to the invasion and illegal occupation on a sovereign county...

Yes, Greenwald is singing a different tune now that he has sided with a wanted spy...anyone surprised?

[velik_m]

:rolleyes

a spy and this..



So, you're saying this is not true? Or are you just using an ad hominem?

[Winehole23]

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/how-the-nsa-spies-on-smartphones-including-the-blackberry-a-921161.html

[Winehole23]

A leaked excerpt from the agency’s 2013 budget request (http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/09/05/us/documents-reveal-nsa-campaign-against-encryption.html?ref=us) talks about the NSA working with “US and foreign IT industries to covertly influence and/or overtly leverage their commercial products designs.” The document explicitly says: “These design changes make the systems in question exploitable.”

Daniel Castro, a senior analyst with the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, calls the latest leaks disturbing. “We went through this debate with the Clipper Chip, and it was clear where public opinion stood,” he says, referring to a backdoor technology the NSA wanted to install in all encryption two decades ago.


“If these claims are true, and the NSA introduced backdoors into global security standards, this seems like a clear perversion of democracy,” Castro added. “This just further erodes the competitiveness of U.S. tech companies. In particular, I think this enlarges the scope of companies that will suffer backlash since cryptographic standards are often embedded in hardware.”


Castro wrote a report last month predicting that Snowden’s PRISM revelations could cost the U.S. cloud-computing industry as much as $35 billion (http://www.itif.org/publications/how-much-will-prism-cost-us-cloud-computing-industry) over the next three years as companies shied away from U.S. internet service providers, which are said to be providing government access to their servers.


You’ll hear much the same from Dave Jevans, the founder of Marble Security (http://www.marblesecurity.com/), an enterprise mobile security provider and the former chief executive of IronKey, He says that it “would be extremely bad” for a tech company to give the government a backdoor.
“It may not be the death knell,” he added, referring to Crypto AG (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_AG), a Swiss encryption companies alleged to have rigged their machines for the NSA in the 1990s. ”They’re still around, but barely.”

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/09/tech-industry-tainted/

[boutons_deux]

if any laws in Congress are passed to restrict NSA/CIA/FBI, (and they probably won't pass), the NSA/CIA/FBI, who can't even keep their own secrets secret (Snowden, and probably 100s of other Snowdens), will simply ignore them.

[Winehole23]

The Obama administration secretly won permission from a surveillance court in 2011 to reverse restrictions on the National Security Agency’s use of intercepted phone calls and e-mails, permitting the agency to search deliberately for Americans’ communications in its massive databases, according to interviews with government officials and recently declassified material.

(http://www.dni.gov/files/documents/DNI%20Clapper%20Section%20702%20Declassification%2 0Cover%20Letter.pdf) In addition, the court extended the length of time that the NSA is allowed to retain intercepted U.S. communications from five years to six years — and more under special circumstances, according to the documents, which include a recently released 2011 opinion (http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/page/national/fisa-court-documents-on-illegal-nsa-e-mail-collection-program/409/)by U.S. District Judge John D. Bates, then chief judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/obama-administration-had-restrictions-on-nsa-reversed-in-2011/2013/09/07/c26ef658-0fe5-11e3-85b6-d27422650fd5_story.html

[boutons_deux]

"allowed to retain intercepted U.S. communications from five years to six years"

:lol they'll keep it effectively forever.

[Winehole23]

which apparently delights you

[boutons_deux]

which apparently delights you

it's hilarious that lying govt goes through all this silly dog-and-pony show about "restricting" the national security state, just fucking hilarious.

About as hilarious as you simple-minded fucks thinking things will get better or that Human-Americans can do anything about making it better, or that they even give flying fuck.

[Winehole23]

your hatred of people, their institutions and the possibility of change, shows

[boutons_deux]

your hatred of people, their institutions and the possibility of change, shows

straw man

the govt sucks because it's totally under control of the plutocracy, not Human-Americans.

Wake up and smell the pile of dogshit America The Beautiful has become

And please do tell us how you plan to actualize "the possibility of (govt) change".

[boutons_deux]

NSA Spied on Brazilian Oil-Giant Petrobras
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/brazil-tv-to-release-nsa-documents-that-show-us-spied-on-petrobras/2013/09/08/8c4cdaf6-18d0-11e3-a628-7e6dde8f889d_story.html?hpid=z4

[Winehole23]

straw man

the govt sucks because it's totally under control of the plutocracy, not Human-Americans.

Wake up and smell the pile of dogshit America The Beautiful has become

And please do tell us how you plan to actualize "the possibility of (govt) change".I've no such plan but even if I did, change will happen. That you think people have no input/influence on that is ridiculous on its face.

[Winehole23]

FLYING PIG: The NSA Is Running Man In The Middle Attacks Imitating Google's Serversfrom the doubtful-that-google-is-happy-about-that dept Glyn mentioned this in his post yesterday about the NSA leaks showing direct economic espionage (http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130909/04383424450/latest-leak-shows-nsa-engaging-economic-espionage-not-fighting-terrorism.shtml), but with so many other important points in that story, it got a little buried. One of the key revelations was about a program called "FLYING PIG" which is the first time I can recall it being clearly stated that the NSA has been running man-in-the-middle attacks (http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/09/09/shifting_shadow_stormbrew_flying_pig_new_snowden_d ocuments_show_nsa_deemed.html) on internet services like Google. This slide makes it quite clear that the NSA impersonates Google servers (https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/785152-166819124-mitm-google.html):
Zoom




p. 1











There have been rumors of the NSA and others using those kinds of MITM attacks, but to have it confirmed that they're doing them against the likes of Google, Yahoo and Microsoft is a big deal -- and something I would imagine does not make any of those three companies particularly happy.
in some cases GCHQ and the NSA appear to have taken a more aggressive and controversial route—on at least one occasion bypassing the need to approach Google directly by performing a man-in-the-middle attack to impersonate Google security certificates. One document published by Fantastico, apparently taken from an NSA presentation that also contains some GCHQ slides, describes “how the attack was done” to apparently snoop on SSL traffic. The document illustrates with a diagram how one of the agencies appears to have hacked into a target’s Internet router and covertly redirected targeted Google traffic using a fake security certificate so it could intercept the information in unencrypted format.

Documents from GCHQ’s “network exploitation” unit show that it operates a program called “FLYING PIG” that was started up in response to an increasing use of SSL encryption by email providers like Yahoo, Google, and Hotmail. The FLYING PIG system appears to allow it to identify information related to use of the anonymity browser Tor (it has the option to query “Tor events”) and also allows spies to collect information about specific SSL encryption certificates. While some may not be surprised by this, it's yet more confirmation as to how far the NSA is going and how the tech companies aren't always "willing participants" in the NSA's efforts here. Of course, the real question now is how the NSA is impersonating the security certificates to make these attacks work.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130910/10470024468/flying-pig-nsa-is-running-man-middle-attacks-imitating-googles-servers.shtml

[boutons_deux]

I've no such plan but even if I did, change will happen. That you think people have no input/influence on that is ridiculous on its face.

:lol

what's your plan, and that of all the millions of your like minded voters, to "have input/influence", at level where it overcomes the $Bs the corps/1% have to buy politicians, even to finance candidates? :lol

[Nbadan]

So, you're saying this is not true? Or are you just using an ad hominem?

I'm saying that it had been going on for years before Obama,,,I've proven it with links....telcoms, internet providers...cell phone providers...not only where they spying on American communications...they demanded and received compensation from the government for doing it...

[Nbadan]

If anything, Obama deserves credit for putting out there....so we can debate about it today...

[velik_m]

If anything, Obama deserves credit for putting out there....so we can debate about it today...

:lmao Obama deserves credit for Snowden releasing those files to the media? Good god, do you really believe what you're writing? Are you really that stupid and blinded or are you just on the party paycheck?

Pathetic, just pathetic... Obama deserves credit :lol

[Nbadan]

:lmao Obama deserves credit for Snowden releasing those files to the media? Good god, do you really believe what you're writing? Are you really that stupid and blinded or are you just on the party paycheck?

Pathetic, just pathetic... Obama deserves credit :lol

So you agree that the Bush Administration was listening in on domestic phone calls way before Obama came along....thank you.

[velik_m]

So you agree that the Bush Administration was listening in on domestic phone calls way before Obama came along....thank you.

Yes, I agree Obama is quite as bad as Bush was.

[Winehole23]

worse, tbh

[Winehole23]

Marissa Mayer, the CEO of Yahoo (http://www.theguardian.com/technology/yahoo), and Mark Zuckerberg (http://www.theguardian.com/technology/mark-zuckerberg) of Facebook struck back on Wednesday at critics who have charged tech companies with doing too little to fight off NSA (http://www.theguardian.com/world/nsa) surveillance (http://www.theguardian.com/world/surveillance). Mayer said executives faced jail if they revealed government secrets.


Yahoo and Facebook, along with other tech firms, are pushing for the right to be allowed to publish the number of requests they receive from the spy agency. Companies are forbidden by law to disclose how much data they provide.
During an interview at the Techcrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco, Mayer was asked why tech companies had not simply decided to tell the public more about what the US surveillance industry was up to. "Releasing classified information is treason and you are incarcerated," she said.


Mayer said she was "proud to be part of an organisation that from the beginning, in 2007, has been sceptical of – and has been scrutinizing – those requests [from the NSA]."
Yahoo has previously unsuccessfully sued the foreign intelligence surveillance (Fisa) court, which provides the legal framework for NSA surveillance. In 2007 it asked to be allowed to publish details of requests it receives from the spy agency. "When you lose and you don't comply, it's treason," said Mayer. "We think it make more sense to work within the system," she said.


Zuckerberg said the government had done a "bad job" of balancing people's privacy (http://www.theguardian.com/world/privacy) and its duty to protect. "Frankly I think the government blew it," he said.

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/sep/11/yahoo-ceo-mayer-jail-nsa-surveillance

[boutons_deux]

Secret Deal Allows NSA to Share Americans' Data With Israel

The National Security Agency routinely shares raw intelligence data with Israel (http://www.theguardian.com/world/israel) without first sifting it to remove information about US citizens, a top-secret document provided to the Guardian (http://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2013/sep/11/nsa-israel-intelligence-memorandum-understanding-document) by whistleblower Edward Snowden reveals.

Details of the intelligence-sharing agreement are laid out in a memorandum of understanding between the NSA (http://www.theguardian.com/world/nsa) and its Israeli counterpart that shows the US government handed over intercepted communications likely to contain phone calls and emails of American citizens. The agreement places no legally binding limits on the use of the data by the Israelis.

The disclosure that the NSA agreed to provide raw intelligence data to a foreign country contrasts with assurances from the Obama administration (http://www.theguardian.com/world/obama-administration) that there are rigorous safeguards to protect the privacy (http://www.theguardian.com/world/privacy)of US citizens caught in the dragnet. The intelligence community calls this process "minimization", but the memorandum makes clear that the information shared with the Israelis would be in its pre-minimized state.

The deal was reached in principle in March 2009, according to the undated memorandum (http://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2013/sep/11/nsa-israel-intelligence-memorandum-understanding-document), which lays out the ground rules for the intelligence sharing.

...

http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/secret-deal-allows-nsa-share-americans-data-israel?akid=10916.187590.dS2en2&rd=1&src=newsletter895403&t=12

[Nbadan]

worse, tbh

:lol worse

Where are the 100K's of dead Iranians and Syrians....that..... is the Legacy of George Bush...,

[Winehole23]

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/11/nsa-americans-personal-data-israel-documents

[Winehole23]

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/09/freedom-hosting-fbi/?mbid=social11912014

[Winehole23]

:lol worse

Where are the 100K's of dead Iranians and Syrians....that..... is the Legacy of George Bush...,please try to stay on topic. we're talking about surveilling Americans, civil liberties and the like. Obama puts GWB in the shade.

[boutons_deux]

your tax dollars hard at work for the amusement of NSA trekkie space cowboy

Inside the mind of NSA chief Gen Keith Alexander

http://readersupportednews.org/images/stories/article_imgs10/010514-gen-alexander-061213.jpg

It has been previously reported (http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jul/15/crux-nsa-collect-it-all) that the mentality of NSA (http://www.theguardian.com/world/nsa) chief Gen. Keith Alexander is captured by his motto "Collect it All". It's a get-everything approach he pioneered first when aimed at an enemy population in the middle of a war zone in Iraq, one he has now imported onto US soil, aimed at the domestic population and everyone else.

But a perhaps even more disturbing and revealing vignette into the spy chief's mind comes from a new Foreign Policy article (http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/09/08/the_cowboy_of_the_nsa_keith_alexander?page=full) describing what the journal calls his "all-out, barely-legal drive to build the ultimate spy machine". The article describes how even his NSA peers see him as a "cowboy" willing to play fast and loose with legal limits in order to construct a system of ubiquitous surveillance.

But the personality driving all of this - not just Alexander's but much of Washington's - is perhaps best captured by this one passage, highlighted by PBS' News Hour in a post entitled (http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2013/09/nsa-director-modelled-war-room-after-star-treks-enterprise.html): "NSA director modeled war room after Star Trek's Enterprise". The room was christened as part of the "Information Dominance Center":

"When he was running the Army's Intelligence and Security Command, Alexander brought many of his future allies down to Fort Belvoir for a tour of his base of operations, a facility known as the Information Dominance Center. It had been designed by a Hollywood set designer to mimic the bridge of the starship Enterprise from Star Trek, complete with chrome panels, computer stations, a huge TV monitor on the forward wall, and doors that made a 'whoosh' sound when they slid open and closed. Lawmakers and other important officials took turns sitting in a leather 'captain's chair' in the center of the room and watched as Alexander, a lover of science-fiction movies, showed off his data tools on the big screen.

"'Everybody wanted to sit in the chair at least once to pretend he was Jean-Luc Picard,' says a retired officer in charge of VIP visits."

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/15/nsa-mind-keith-alexander-star-trek


As Snowden could say since he "won" the electronic gaming contest: "All Your Secrets Are Belong To Us"

[Winehole23]

A judge on the nation’s intelligence court directed the government on Friday to review for possible public release the court’s classified opinions on the National Security Agency (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/n/national_security_agency/index.html?inline=nyt-org)’s practice of collecting logs of Americans’ phone calls.



Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV issued the opinion in a response to a motion filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/a/american_civil_liberties_union/index.html?inline=nyt-org), saying such a move would add to “an informed debate” about privacy and might even improve the reputation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on which he sits.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/14/us/judge-urges-us-to-consider-releasing-nsa-data-on-calls.html?src=recg

[Winehole23]

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/13/nsa-behemoth-trampling-rights

[Winehole23]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/09/15/former-nsa-and-cia-director-says-terrorists-love-using-gmail/

[boutons_deux]

Hayden: All Your Internets Are Belong to Us.

Asked whether the United States's promiscuous surveillance was setting a harmful example for other nations, Hayden suggested that the Internet's origins in the United States partially justifies the NSA's conduct.

If the Web lasts another 500 years, he said, it may be the thing the United States is remembered for "the way the Romans are remembered for their roads."

"We built it here, and it was quintessentially American," he said, adding that partially due to that, much of traffic goes through American servers where the government "takes a picture of it for intelligence purposes."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/09/15/former-nsa-and-cia-director-says-terrorists-love-using-gmail/

[Jacob1983]

Obama is a clone of Bush so I would say that he is very much like Bush. Obama's foreign policy is basically the same as Bush's foreign policy but on steroids.

[Winehole23]

Hayden: All Your Internets Are Belong to Us.

Asked whether the United States's promiscuous surveillance was setting a harmful example for other nations, Hayden suggested that the Internet's origins in the United States partially justifies the NSA's conduct.

If the Web lasts another 500 years, he said, it may be the thing the United States is remembered for "the way the Romans are remembered for their roads."

"We built it here, and it was quintessentially American," he said, adding that partially due to that, much of traffic goes through American servers where the government "takes a picture of it for intelligence purposes."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/09/15/former-nsa-and-cia-director-says-terrorists-love-using-gmail/

sloppy seconds is a pattern with you. see post #90.

fucking bot.

[Winehole23]

you should try reading sometime. couldn't possibly hurt.

[boutons_deux]

please try to stay on topic. we're talking about surveilling Americans, civil liberties and the like. Obama puts GWB in the shade.

so you think Obama is pesonally responsible, personally ordered the national security state to crank up even beyond its unstoppable, pervasive, invasive, illegal growth?

[Winehole23]

for everything done since January, 2009? undoubtedly.

[Jacob1983]

Obama is definitely responsible. He has attempted to increase his power as president as much as possible. He doesn't give a shit about civil liberties but some liberals don't care about civil liberties anymore.

[Winehole23]

Obama has done nothing to dial it back, that's for sure. his lawyers still argue for broader powers.

[boutons_deux]

sloppy seconds is a pattern with you. see post #90.

fucking bot.

fucking asshole. I was quoting an especially egregious part OUT OF YOUR LINK because nobody reads links

[Winehole23]

fair enough

[boutons_deux]

'Follow the Money': NSA Spies on International Payments

The National Security Agency (NSA) widely monitors international payments, banking and credit card transactions, according to documents seen by SPIEGEL.

The information from the American foreign intelligence agency, acquired by former NSA contractor and whistleblower Edward Snowden, show that the spying is conducted by a branch called "Follow the Money" (FTM). The collected information then flows into the NSA's own financial databank, called "Tracfin," which in 2011 contained 180 million records. Some 84 percent of the data is from credit card transactions.

Further NSA documents from 2010 show that the NSA also targets the transactions of customers of large credit card companies like VISA for surveillance. NSA analysts at an internal conference that year described in detail how they had apparently successfully searched through the US company's complex transaction network for tapping possibilities.

Their aim was to gain access to transactions by VISA customers in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, according to one presentation. The goal was to "collect, parse and ingest transactional data for priority credit card associations, focusing on priority geographic regions."

In response to a SPIEGEL inquiry, however, VISA issued a statement in which it said, "We are not aware of any unauthorized access to our network. Visa takes data security seriously and, in response to any attempted intrusion, we would pursue all available remedies to the fullest extent of the law. Further, its Visa's policy to only provide transaction information in response to a subpoena or other valid legal process."

The NSA's Tracfin data bank also contained data from the Brussels-based Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), a network used by thousands of banks to send transaction information securely. SWIFT was named as a "target," according to the documents, which also show that the NSA spied on the organization on several levels, involving, among others, the agency's "tailored access operations" division. One of the ways the agency accessed the data included reading "SWIFT printer traffic from numerous banks," the documents show.


But even intelligence agency employees are somewhat concerned about spying on the world finance system, according to one document from the UK's intelligence agency GCHQ concerning the legal perspectives on "financial data" and the agency's own cooperations with the NSA in this area. The collection, storage and sharing of politically sensitive data is a deep invasion of privacy, and involved "bulk data" full of "rich personal information," much of which "is not about our targets," the document says.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/spiegel-exclusive-nsa-spies-on-international-bank-transactions-a-922276.html

:lol NSA is twerking to The Great Boutons' "one note" tune of follow the money.

Now if only DoJ/IRS could "follow" the 1% and corporate $Ts through Bahamas, Puerto Rico, US VI, Cayman Islands, Luxembourg, Switzerland, etc, etc to catch criminal tax evaders like Mutt "rich dog" Romney, aka, Most Holy Bishop Gecko.

[Winehole23]

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130910/10470024468/flying-pig-nsa-is-running-man-middle-attacks-imitating-googles-servers.shtml

Between 15,000 to 15,999 Microsoft-user accounts were the subject of FISA court orders requesting content during the first six months of 2013, the company said.

Still, Smith cited media reports - based on Snowden's leaked documents - that the government may have intercepted user information without tech companies' knowledge or cooperation, by tapping into communications cables that link Google and Yahoo datacenters.

"Despite the President's reform efforts and our ability to publish more information, there has not yet been any public commitment by either the U.S. or other governments to renounce the attempted hacking of Internet companies," he said on Microsoft's blog. "We believe the Constitution requires that our government seek information from American companies within the rule of law."http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/02/03/us-internet-nsa-idUSBREA121H920140203

[boutons_deux]

for everything done since January, 2009? undoubtedly.

As if the explosion of post-9/11 spying bureaurcracy was retired totally on 19 Jan, and Obama started his own 20 Jan.

[Winehole23]

Tory Obama, caretaker of power. Obama chose what he'd be.

[Winehole23]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUokM5d1qic

[Winehole23]

Today, an Oklahoma state House committee voted 9-3 to pass a bill designed to thwart warrantless surveillance programs of the National Security Agency (NSA), while a New Hampshire house committee voted 12-1 to approve a bill blocking some practical effects of federal spying.

The Oklahoma Privacy Protection Act (HB2808) was introduced by Rep. Lewis Moore last month. It would prohibit state material support or assistance to the spy agency. It reads, in part:


“It is the public policy of this state to refuse material support, participation or assistance to any federal agency which claims the power to authorize, or with any federal law, rule, regulation or order which purports to authorize, the collection of electronic data or metadata of any person pursuant to any action not based on a warrant that particularly describes the person, place or thing to be searched or seized.”


The bill faced its first hurdle today, with an important hearing and vote in the House Committee on States Rights. It needed a majority vote to move forward.


The legislation would ban Oklahoma from providing material support or resources to the operation of any federal facilities engaged in the warrantless surveillance of people in the Sooner state. While the NSA does not operate a physical facility in the state, the prohibition of material support sends an important message to the spy agency by pulling up the welcome mat.


“We know the NSA is aggressively expanding its physical locations around the country from Utah to Texas and elsewhere,” Trejo said. “Since the NSA rarely tells us its plans in advance, it is absolutely essential to make sure that states pass this legislation to cut them off at the pass. Our plan is to box them in and do everything we can to stop them.”


The legislation also bans the use of warrantless data in state courts. A Reuters report (http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/05/us-dea-sod-idUSBRE97409R20130805) last year revealed that the NSA shares data with state and local law enforcement through a secret outfit called the Special Operation Division (SOD). The federal government also shares data mined by its agencies, including the NSA, through “fusion centers.


Reports in the Washington Post and USA Today last fall documented how “the FBI and most other investigative bodies in the federal government” are regularly using a mobile device known as a “stingray” to intercept and collect electronic data without a warrant. Local and state police “have access through sharing agreements.”


“What we’re trying to prevent is the unlawful sending of data in an investigation where there was no warrant…in violation of your Fourth Amendment rights,” Moore said.

http://nullifynsa.com/?p=783

[Winehole23]

more proposed anti-NSA legislation
Oregon joins the growing list of states considering legislation to protect private data and end some of the practical effects of NSA spying.

Sen. Larry George (R-Sherwood), Sen. Chip Shields (D-Portland), Rep. John Huffman (R-the Dalles) and Rep. Jennifer Williamson (D-Portland) together introduced SB1583 (https://olis.leg.state.or.us/liz/2014R1/Measures/Overview/SB1583) earlier this month. The legislation would prohibit any public body in Oregon from obtaining personal electronic data or cell phone location data without a warrant with only a few exceptions. The proposed law would allow for collection of data without a warrant with the individual’s consent, with an employer’s consent if the employer owns the device searched, if probable cause that a person committed a crime and exigent circumstances exist, if the data is necessary to prevent death or injury, or if it is necessary to locate a missing person.

http://nullifynsa.com/?p=778

[boutons_deux]

"it's only metadata" :lol

MetaPhone: The Sensitivity of Telephone Metadata (http://webpolicy.org/2014/03/12/metaphone-the-sensitivity-of-telephone-metadata/)


We used crowdsourced data to arrive at empirical answers. Since November, we have been conducting a study (https://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2013/11/what%27s-in-your-metadata) of phone metadata privacy. Participants run the MetaPhone app (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=edu.stanford.seclab.metadata) on their Android smartphone; it submits device logs and social network information for analysis. In previous posts, we have used the MetaPhone dataset to spot relationships (http://webpolicy.org/2013/11/27/metaphone-seeing-someone/), understand call graph interconnectivity (http://webpolicy.org/2013/12/09/metaphone-the-nsa-three-hop/), and estimate the identifiability of phone numbers (http://webpolicy.org/2013/12/23/metaphone-the-nsas-got-your-number/).

At the outset of this study, we shared the same hypothesis as our computer science colleagues—we thought phone metadata could be very sensitive. We did not anticipate finding much evidence one way or the other, however, since the MetaPhone participant population is small and participants only provide a few months of phone activity on average.

We were wrong. We found that phone metadata is unambiguously sensitive, even in a small population and over a short time window. We were able to infer medical conditions, firearm ownership, and more, using solely phone metadata.

Pattern Results

A pattern of calls will often, of course, reveal more than individual call records. During our analysis, we encountered a number of patterns that were highly indicative of sensitive activities or traits. The following examples are drawn directly from our dataset, using number identification through public resources. Though most MetaPhone participants consented to having their identity disclosed, we use pseudonyms in this report to protect participant privacy.



Participant A communicated with multiple local neurology groups, a specialty pharmacy, a rare condition management service, and a hotline for a pharmaceutical used solely to treat relapsing multiple sclerosis.
Participant B spoke at length with cardiologists at a major medical center, talked briefly with a medical laboratory, received calls from a pharmacy, and placed short calls to a home reporting hotline for a medical device used to monitor cardiac arrhythmia.
Participant C made a number of calls to a firearm store that specializes in the AR semiautomatic rifle platform. They also spoke at length with customer service for a firearm manufacturer that produces an AR line.
In a span of three weeks, Participant D contacted a home improvement store, locksmiths, a hydroponics dealer, and a head shop.
Participant E had a long, early morning call with her sister. Two days later, she placed a series of calls to the local Planned Parenthood location. She placed brief additional calls two weeks later, and made a final call a month after.


We were able to corroborate Participant B’s medical condition and Participant C’s firearm ownership using public information sources. Owing to the sensitivity of these matters, we elected to not contact Participants A, D, or E for confirmation.

Conclusion

The dataset that we analyzed in this report spanned hundreds of users over several months. Phone records held by the NSA and telecoms span millions of Americans over multiple years. Reasonable minds can disagree about the policy and legal constraints that should be imposed on those databases. The science, however, is clear: phone metadata is highly sensitive.

http://webpolicy.org/2014/03/12/metaphone-the-sensitivity-of-telephone-metadata/

[Winehole23]

inside baseball, competing NSA reform bills:


Congressional critics of the bulk collection of telephone records by the National Security Agency fear that its allies are circumventing them in the House of Representatives.

The House parliamentarian, who oversees procedural matters, has determined that a new bill that substantially modifies the seminal 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act will go through the intelligence committee rather than the judiciary committee, a move that two congressional aides consider “highly unusual.”


Seemingly an arcane parliamentary issue, the jurisdiction question reveals a subterranean and intense fight within the House about the future course of US surveillance in the post-Edward Snowden era. The fight does not align with partisan divides, with both sides claiming both Republican and Democratic support.


The bill, authored by Republican Mike Rogers of Michigan and Democrat Dutch Ruppersberger of Maryland, would largely get the NSA out of the business of collecting US phone data in bulk. Rogers and Ruppersberger, both staunch advocates of the NSA and until now just as staunch defenders of bulk collection, are the leaders of the intelligence committee.


Yet the House judiciary committee thought it was the natural choice for primary legislative jurisdiction over the Fisa Transparency and Modernization Act, introduced on Tuesday (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/25/obama-us-nsa-data-collection-trust). While the intelligence committee oversees US spy activities, the judiciary committee has oversight responsibilities over surveillance law.


The judiciary committee is also a stronghold of support for a rival bill, the USA Freedom Act, two of whose principal sponsors are its top Democrat and a former GOP chairman. The Freedom Act also ends NSA bulk collection, but includes more civil libertarian provisions, such as the prior approval of a judge to force phone companies to turn over customer data and a threshold requirement of relevance to an ongoing investigation to secure such approval.


Ruppersberger, in a press conference on Tuesday, blasted the USA Freedom Act, saying it would make Americans “less safe.”http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/26/nsa-critics-house-reform-bill-switch

[Winehole23]

USG undermining its own bona fides:
Security industry pioneer RSA adopted not just one but two encryption tools (http://www.reuters.com/sectors/industries/overview?industryCode=79&lc=int_mb_1001) developed by the U.S. National Security Agency, greatly increasing the spy agency's ability to eavesdrop on some Internet communications, according to a team of academic researchers.

Reuters reported in December that the NSA had paid RSA $10 million to make a now-discredited cryptography system the default in software (http://www.reuters.com/sectors/industries/overview?industryCode=174&lc=int_mb_1001) used by a wide range of Internet and computer security programs. The system, called Dual Elliptic Curve, was a random number generator, but it had a deliberate flaw - or "back door" - that allowed the NSA to crack the encryption.


A group of professors from Johns Hopkins, the University of Wisconsin, the University of Illinois and elsewhere now say they have discovered that a second NSA tool exacerbated the RSA software's vulnerability.


The professors found that the tool, known as the "Extended Random" extension for secure websites, could help crack a version of RSA's Dual Elliptic Curve software (http://www.reuters.com/sectors/industries/overview?industryCode=174&lc=int_mb_1001) tens of thousands of times faster, according to an advance copy of their research shared with Reuters.
While Extended Random was not widely adopted, the new research sheds light on how the NSA extended the reach of its surveillance under cover of advising companies on protection.


RSA, now owned by EMC Corp (http://www.reuters.com/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=EMC&lc=int_mb_1001), did not dispute the research when contacted by Reuters for comment. The company said it had not intentionally weakened security on any product and noted that Extended Random did not prove popular and had been removed from RSA's protection software in the last six months.


"We could have been more skeptical of NSA's intentions," RSA Chief Technologist Sam Curry told Reuters. "We trusted them because they are charged with security for the U.S. government and U.S. critical infrastructure."

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/31/us-usa-security-nsa-rsa-idUSBREA2U0TY20140331?irpc=932

[Winehole23]

Clapper confirms backdoor surveillance against "US persons":


US intelligence chiefs have confirmed that the National Security Agency has used a "backdoor" in surveillance law to perform warrantless searches on Americans’ communications.


The NSA's collection programs are ostensibly targeted at foreigners, but in August the Guardian revealed (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/09/nsa-loophole-warrantless-searches-email-calls) a secret rule change allowing NSA analysts to search for Americans' details within the databases.


Now, in a letter to Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat on the intelligence committee, the director of national intelligence, James Clapper, has confirmed for the first time this backdoor had been used in practice to search for data related to “US persons”.


“There have been queries, using US person identifiers, of communications lawfully acquired to obtain foreign intelligence targeting non-US persons reasonably believed to be located outside the United States,” Clapper wrote in the letter, which has been obtained by the Guardian.


“These queries were performed pursuant to minimization procedures approved by the Fisa court and consistent with the statute and the fourth amendment.”


The legal authority to perform the searches, revealed in top-secret NSA documents provided to the Guardian by Edward Snowden (http://www.theguardian.com/world/the-nsa-files), was denounced by Wyden as a “backdoor search loophole.”
Clapper did not disclose how many such searches had been performed by the NSA.


At a recent hearing of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, administration lawyers defended their latitude to perform such searches. The board is scheduled to deliver a report on the legal authority under which the communications are collected, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (Fisa), passed in 2008.


In December 2012, Wyden and Colorado Democrat Mark Udall failed to persuade their fellow Senate intelligence committee members to prevent such warrantless searches during the re-authorisation of the 2008 Fisa Amendments Act, which wrote Section 702 into law.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/01/nsa-surveillance-loophole-americans-data

[boutons_deux]

New Leaks Show NSA, GCHQ Infiltrating Private German Companies


http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140331/07443526745/new-leaks-show-nsa-gchq-infiltrating-private-german-companies.shtml

[Winehole23]

Clapper criminalizes lower level IC press contact relating to unclassified information:


The Director of National Intelligence has forbidden most intelligence community employees from discussing “intelligence-related information” with a reporter unless they have specific authorization to do so, according to an Intelligence Community Directive that was issued last month.


“IC employees… must obtain authorization for contacts with the media” on intelligence-related matters, and “must also report… unplanned or unintentional contact with the media on covered matters,” the Directive (http://www.fas.org/irp/dni/icd/icd-119.pdf) stated.


The new Directive reflects — and escalates — tensions between the government and the press over leaks of classified information. It is intended “to mitigate risks of unauthorized disclosures of intelligence-related matters that may result from such contacts.” See Intelligence Community Directive 119, Media Contacts (http://www.fas.org/irp/dni/icd/icd-119.pdf), March 20, 2014.


Significantly, however, the new prohibition does not distinguish between classified and unclassified intelligence information. The “covered matters” that require prior authorization before an employee may discuss them with a reporter extend to any topic that is “related” to intelligence, irrespective of its classification status.


The Directive prohibits unauthorized “contact with the media about intelligence-related information, including intelligence sources, methods, activities, and judgments (hereafter, ‘covered matters’).”


If an employee’s contact with the media involves an unauthorized disclosure of classified information, then he could be subject to criminal prosecution. But even if classified information were not communicated to the reporter, the Directive indicates, violation of the new policy “at a minimum… will be handled in the same manner as a security violation.”

http://blogs.fas.org/secrecy/2014/04/media-contacts/

[Winehole23]

NSA spying continues to hurt US companies:

http://www.itworld.com/networking/424818/reports-german-government-drop-verizon-because-us-spying
http://www.sfgate.com/business/technology/article/After-Verizon-Germany-mulls-axing-foreign-tech-5584139.php

[Jacob1983]

Obama is Bush on steroids when it comes to this shit. Obama's administration is sneaky as fuck on this shit.

[boutons_deux]

Obama is Bush on steroids when it comes to this shit. Obama's administration is sneaky as fuck on this shit.

The national security/police state is a country, a govt unto itself, A Few Good Men think they are manning the ramparts, totally out of control, beyond the reach of ANY politicians.

btw, the financial sector is exactly the same, an out-of-control, self-enriching, wealth-sucking, totally corrupt, predatory activity the politicians won't touch.

[Winehole23]

if you click the link, you might make the list too:


NSA Targets the Privacy-Conscious for Surveillance Jake Appelbaum et. al, are reporting (http://daserste.ndr.de/panorama/aktuell/nsa230_page-1.html) on XKEYSCORE selection rules that target users -- and people who just visit the websites of -- Tor, Tails, and other sites. This isn't just metadata; this is "full take" content that's stored forever.



This code demonstrates the ease with which an XKeyscore rule can analyze the full content of intercepted connections. The fingerprint first checks every message using the "email_address" function to see if the message is to or from "[email protected]". Next, if the address matched, it uses the "email_body" function to search the full content of the email for a particular piece of text - in this case, "https://bridges.torproject.org/". If the "email_body" function finds what it is looking for, it passes the full email text to a C++ program which extracts the bridge addresses and stores them in a database.


[...]
It is interesting to note that this rule specifically avoids fingerprinting users believed to be located in Five Eyes countries, while other rules make no such distinction. For instance, the following fingerprint targets users visiting the Tails and Linux Journal websites, or performing certain web searches related to Tails, and makes no distinction about the country of the user.


[...]
There are also rules that target users of numerous other privacy-focused internet services, including HotSpotShield, FreeNet, Centurian, FreeProxies.org, MegaProxy, privacy.li and an anonymous email service called MixMinion as well as its predecessor MixMaster. The appid rule for MixMinion is extremely broad as it matches all traffic to or from the IP address 128.31.0.34, a server located on the MIT campus.


It's hard to tell how extensive this is. It's possible that anyone who clicked on this link -- with the embedded torproject.org URL above -- is currently being monitored by the NSA. It's possible that this only will happen to people who receive the link in e-mail, which will mean every Crypto-Gram subscriber in a couple of weeks. And I don't know what else the NSA harvests about people who it selects in this manner.


Whatever the case, this is very disturbing.


EDITED TO ADD (7/3): The BoingBoing story (http://boingboing.net/2014/07/03/if-you-read-boing-boing-the-n.html) says that this was first published on Tagesschau (http://www.tagesschau.de/inland/nsa-xkeyscore-100.html). Can someone who can read German please figure out where this originated.


And, since Cory said it, I do not believe that this came from the Snowden documents. I also don't believe the TAO catalog (http://leaksource.info/2013/12/30/nsas-ant-division-catalog-of-exploits-for-nearly-every-major-software-hardware-firmware/) came from the Snowden documents. I think there's a second leaker out there.


EDITED TO ADD (7/3): More news (https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140703/02494927769/nsas-xkeyscore-source-code-leaked-shows-tor-users-classified-as-extremists.shtml) stories (https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140703/02494927769/nsas-xkeyscore-source-code-leaked-shows-tor-users-classified-as-extremists.shtml). Thread on Reddit (http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/29qml4/xkeyscore_exposed_how_nsa_tracks_all_german_tor/). I don't expect this to get much coverage in the US mainstream media.

EDITED TO ADD (7/3): Here (http://daserste.ndr.de/panorama/xkeyscorerules100.txt) is the code. In part:


// START_DEFINITION /* These variables define terms and websites relating to the TAILs (The Amnesic Incognito Live System) software program, a comsec mechanism advocated by extremists on extremist forums. */
$TAILS_terms=word('tails' or 'Amnesiac Incognito Live System') and
word('linux'
or ' USB ' or ' CD ' or 'secure desktop' or ' IRC ' or 'truecrypt' or '
tor ');
$TAILS_websites=('tails.boum.org/') or ('linuxjournal.com/content/linux*');
// END_DEFINITION
// START_DEFINITION
/*
This fingerprint identifies users searching for the TAILs (The Amnesic
Incognito Live System) software program, viewing documents relating to
TAILs,
or viewing websites that detail TAILs.
*/
fingerprint('ct_mo/TAILS')=
fingerprint('documents/comsec/tails_doc') or web_search($TAILS_terms) or
url($TAILS_websites) or html_title($TAILS_websites);
// END_DEFINITION
Hacker News (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7983124) and Slashdot (http://yro.slashdot.org/story/14/07/03/1846215/nsa-considers-linux-journal-readers-tor-and-linux-users-extremists) threads. ArsTechnica (http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/07/report-rare-leaked-nsa-source-code-reveals-tor-servers-targeted/) and Wired (http://www.wired.com/2014/07/nsa-targets-users-of-privacy-services/) articles.

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2014/07/nsa_targets_pri.html#c6673566

[Winehole23]

Ordinary Internet users, American and non-American alike, far outnumber legally targeted foreigners in the communications intercepted by the National Security Agency (http://www.washingtonpost.com/nsa-secrets) from U.S. digital networks, according to a four-month investigation by The Washington Post.


Nine of 10 account holders found in a large cache of intercepted conversations, which former NSA contractor Edward Snowden (http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/edward-snowden-after-months-of-nsa-revelations-says-his-missions-accomplished/2013/12/23/49fc36de-6c1c-11e3-a523-fe73f0ff6b8d_story.html) provided in full to The Post, were not the intended surveillance targets but were caught in a net the agency had cast for somebody else.


Many of them were Americans. Nearly half of the surveillance files, a strikingly high proportion, contained names, e-mail addresses or other details that the NSA marked as belonging to U.S. citizens or residents. NSA analysts masked, or “minimized,” more than 65,000 such references to protect Americans’ privacy, but The Post found nearly 900 additional e-mail addresses, unmasked in the files, that could be strongly linked to U.S. citizens or U.S.residents.


The surveillance files highlight a policy dilemma that has been aired only abstractly in public. There are discoveries of considerable intelligence value in the intercepted messages — and collateral harm to privacy on a scale that the Obama administration has not been willing to address.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/in-nsa-intercepted-data-those-not-targeted-far-outnumber-the-foreigners-who-are/2014/07/05/8139adf8-045a-11e4-8572-4b1b969b6322_story.html?wpisrc=al_national

[Winehole23]

so much for the OP:



The material spans President Obama’s first term, from 2009 to 2012, a period of exponential growth for the NSA’s domestic collection.


Taken together, the files offer an unprecedented vantage point on the changes wrought by Section 702 of the FISA amendments (http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/court-gave-nsa-broad-leeway-in-surveillance-documents-show/2014/06/30/32b872ec-fae4-11e3-8176-f2c941cf35f1_story.html), which enabled the NSA to make freer use of methods that for 30 years had required probable cause and a warrant from a judge. One program, code-named PRISM (http://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/us-intelligence-mining-data-from-nine-us-internet-companies-in-broad-secret-program/2013/06/06/3a0c0da8-cebf-11e2-8845-d970ccb04497_story.html), extracts content stored in user accounts at Yahoo, Microsoft, Facebook, Google and five other leading Internet companies. Another, known inside the NSA as Upstream, intercepts data on the move as it crosses the U.S. junctions of global voice and data networks.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/in-nsa-intercepted-data-those-not-targeted-far-outnumber-the-foreigners-who-are/2014/07/05/8139adf8-045a-11e4-8572-4b1b969b6322_story.html?wpisrc=al_national

[boutons_deux]

Been tellin' you naive Pollyannas.

It doesn't matter who or what party in the WH or in majority in Congress, the NSA/CIA/FBI/militarized-police planetary imperial security apparatus is beyond the reach of civilians.

[Clipper Nation]

Been tellin' you naive Pollyannas.

It doesn't matter who or what party in the WH or in majority in Congress, the NSA/CIA/FBI/militarized-police planetary imperial security apparatus is beyond the reach of civilians.
....until a "Repug" is elected, at which point it immediately becomes his fault :lol

[boutons_deux]

but somehow, the NSA can't catch Americans evading taxes in offshore accounts.

[boutons_deux]

....until a "Repug" is elected, at which point it immediately becomes his fault :lol

You Lie

and you dream if you think McLiar or Bishop Gecko would have reined in the NSA and friends.

[Winehole23]

Almost a year since former NSA contractor Edward Snowden's leaked information was first revealed to the world, US officials today confirmed to CNN (http://www.kspr.com/news/politics/urgent-us-new-leaker/21051736_27322552) a new leaker is responsible for providing additional secret documents to The Intercept (https://firstlook.org/theintercept/article/2014/08/05/watch-commander/). The Intercept is an investigative website cofounded by Glenn Greenwald, the reporter to whom Snowden entrusted the bulk of his documents, and it has recently been publishing a series on the inner workings of the US government's terror watch list. Just today, The Intercept published a new article (https://firstlook.org/theintercept/article/2014/08/05/watch-commander/) based on leaked information indicating that 40 percent of the 680,000 total people listed on the watch list have "no recognized terrorist group affiliation."http://www.theverge.com/2014/8/5/5972137/us-terror-watch-list-numbers-leaked-to-the-intercept

[Winehole23]

The National Security Agency secretly tried to delete part of a public court transcript after believing one of its lawyers may have accidentally revealed classified information in a court case over alleged illegal surveillance.


Following a recent hearing in the ongoing Jewel v. NSA case, in which the Electronic Frontier Foundation is challenging NSA’s ability to surveil foreign citizen’s U.S.-based email and social media accounts, the government informed U.S. District Court Judge Jeffrey White it believed one of its attorneys mistakenly revealed classified information.


The government then requested that the select portion of the hearing’s public transcript be secretly deleted without alerting the public to the alteration. According to the EFF, the open courtroom case — which has been steadily picking up media coverage following NSA leaker Edward Snowden’s bulk surveillance revelations — was “widely covered by the press” and “even on the local TV news on two stations.”


“We rightly considered this an outrageous request and vigorously opposed it,” senior staff attorney for the EFF David Greene said in a statement (https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/08/unsealed-us-sought-permission-change-historical-record-public-court-proceeding). “The public has a First Amendment right not only to attend the hearing but to have an accurate transcript of it. Moreover, the federal law governing court reporting requires that ‘each session of the court’ be ‘recorded verbatim’ and that the transcript be certified by the court reporter as ‘a correct statement of the testimony taken and the proceedings had.’”


The government made no attempt to close the courtroom prior to the hearing, and one week after, sent a letter to Judge White asking to review the transcript, and at the request of NSA, delete any part of the transcript revealing information the signals intelligence agency deemed classified without alerting the public, plaintiffs, or their lawyers.

http://dailycaller.com/2014/08/08/nsa-tried-to-delete-court-transcript-in-lawsuit-over-deleting-evidence/#ixzz3A8KQjYKm

[Winehole23]

related:


A federal judge has ordered the government to stop destroying National Security Agency surveillance records that could be used to challenge the legality of its spying programs in court.


U.S. District Court Judge Jeffrey White’s ruling came at the request of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is in the midst of a case challenging NSA’s ability to surveil foreign citizen’s U.S.-based email and social media accounts.



Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2014/06/06/judge-orders-nsa-to-stop-destroying-evidence-for-the-third-time/#ixzz3A8L6wgVU

[boutons_deux]

The Surveillance Engine: How the NSA Built Its Own Secret Google

http://readersupportednews.org/images/stories/alphabet/rsn-T.jpghe National Security Agency is secretly providing data to nearly two dozen U.S. government agencies with a “Google-like” search engine built to share more than 850 billion records about phone calls, emails, cellphone locations, and internet chats, according to classified documents obtained by The Intercept.

The documents provide the first definitive evidence that the NSA has for years made massive amounts of surveillance data directly accessible to domestic law enforcement agencies. Planning documents for ICREACH, as the search engine is called, cite the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Drug Enforcement Administration as key participants.

ICREACH contains information on the private communications of foreigners and, it appears, millions of records on American citizens who have not been accused of any wrongdoing. Details about its existence are contained in the archive of materials provided to The Intercept by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

Earlier revelations sourced to the Snowden documents have exposed a multitude of NSA programs for collecting large volumes of communications. The NSA has acknowledged that it shares some of its collected data with domestic agencies like the FBI, but details about the method and scope of its sharing have remained shrouded in secrecy.

ICREACH has been accessible to more than 1,000 analysts at 23 U.S. government agencies that perform intelligence work, according to a 2010 memo (https://firstlook.org/theintercept/document/2014/08/25/cia-colleagues-enthusiastically-welcome-nsa-training). A planning document (https://firstlook.org/theintercept/document/2014/08/25/sharing-communications-metadata-across-u-s-intelligence-community) from 2007 lists the DEA, FBI, Central Intelligence Agency, and the Defense Intelligence Agency as core members. Information shared through ICREACH can be used to track people’s movements, map out their networks of associates, help predict future actions, and potentially reveal religious affiliations or political beliefs.

The creation of ICREACH represented a landmark moment in the history of classified U.S. government surveillance, according to the NSA documents.

“The ICREACH team delivered the first-ever wholesale sharing of communications metadata within the U.S. Intelligence Community,” noted a top-secret memo (https://firstlook.org/theintercept/document/2014/08/25/icreach-wholesale-sharing-2007) dated December 2007. “This team began over two years ago with a basic concept compelled by the IC’s increasing need for communications metadata and NSA’s ability to collect, process and store vast amounts of communications metadata related to worldwide intelligence targets.”

The search tool was designed to be the largest system for internally sharing secret surveillance records in the United States, capable of handling two to five billion new records every day, including more than 30 different kinds of metadata on emails, phone calls, faxes, internet chats, and text messages, as well as location information collected from cellphones. Metadata reveals information about a communication—such as the “to” and “from” parts of an email, and the time and date it was sent, or the phone numbers someone called and when they called—but not the content of the message or audio of the call.

ICREACH does not appear to have a direct relationship to the large NSA database, previouslyreported by The Guardian (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/nsa-phone-records-verizon-court-order), that stores information on millions of ordinary Americans’ phone calls under Section 215 of the Patriot Act. Unlike the 215 database, which is accessible to a small number of NSA employees and can be searched only in terrorism-related investigations, ICREACH grants access to a vast pool of data that can be mined by analysts from across the intelligence community for “foreign intelligence”—a vague term that is far broader than counterterrorism.
http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/25548-the-surveillance-engine-how-the-nsa-built-its-own-secret-google

But NSA just can't seem to catch Romney-type tax evaders and their offshore criminal tax-evading dealings.

[boutons_deux]

posse comitatus? :lol

Child Pornography Case Spurs Debate on Military’s Role in Law Enforcement

In a field office near Brunswick, Ga., a federal agent working as an undercover cybersleuth signed on to a large file-sharing network sometimes used by traders in child pornography.

Using a law-enforcement computer program called RoundUp, (http://www.unh.edu/ccrc/pdf/Wolak_Liberatore_Levine_2013.pdf) the agent, Stephen D. Logan, scanned computer activity by the network’s members in the state of Washington. He located a computer offering illegal photos and videos, and downloaded three files as evidence.

Local police took it from there, obtaining a warrant based on the distant search. The owner of the computer was convicted of possessing and distributing child pornography, and is now serving an 18-year sentence at a federal prison in Texas.

Had Mr. Logan worked for the F.B.I., his work on the case might have seemed routine. But Mr. Logan worked for the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (http://www.ncis.navy.mil/Pages/publicdefault.aspx), and his mission that day in April 2011, he would later testify, had been to look for military service members trading in child pornography in Washington, the location of several naval bases.

Mr. Logan’s computer surveillance could not distinguish military users from others, and the man he helped catch, Michael A. Dreyer, was a civilian. Now the case has sparked sharp debate (http://justsecurity.org/14986/posse-comitatus-exclusionary-rule/) over how much the military’s formidable investigative powers can legally contribute to civilian law enforcement.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/09/22/us/child-porn-case-leads-to-questions-of-militarys-role-in-law-enforcement.html?_r=0

[boutons_deux]

This and the next post explain how and why the natsec/police-state/MIC is not in any way a Dem or Repug issue


http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/nation/tsa/images/title-tsa.gif


A hidden world, growing beyond control

http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/articles/a-hidden-world-growing-beyond-control/

[boutons_deux]

Essay: Anatomy of the Deep State

There is the visible government situated around the Mall in Washington, and then there is another, more shadowy, more indefinable government that is not explained in Civics 101 or observable to tourists at the White House or the Capitol. The former is traditional Washington partisan politics: the tip of the iceberg that a public watching C-SPAN sees daily and which is theoretically controllable via elections. The subsurface part of the iceberg I shall call the Deep State, which operates according to its own compass heading regardless of who is formally in power.

Yes, there is another government concealed behind the one that is visible at either end of Pennsylvania Avenue, a hybrid entity of public and private institutions ruling the country according to consistent patterns in season and out, connected to, but only intermittently controlled by, the visible state whose leaders we choose. My analysis of this phenomenon is not an exposé of a secret, conspiratorial cabal; the state within a state is hiding mostly in plain sight, and its operators mainly act in the light of day.

Nor can this other government be accurately termed an “establishment.” All complex societies have an establishment, a social network committed to its own enrichment and perpetuation. In terms of its scope, financial resources and sheer global reach, the American hybrid state, the Deep State, is in a class by itself. That said, it is neither omniscient nor invincible. The institution is not so much sinister (although it has highly sinister aspects) as it is relentlessly well entrenched. Far from being invincible, its failures, such as those in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, are routine enough that it is only the Deep State’s protectiveness towards its higher-ranking personnel that allows them to escape the consequences of their frequent ineptitude.

http://billmoyers.com/2014/02/21/anatomy-of-the-deep-state/

[boutons_deux]

The ‘Primary Source’ Of NSA’s Spying Power Is A 33-Year-Old Executive Order By Ronald Reagan (http://thinkprogress.org/world/2014/09/30/3573647/reagan-nsa-order/)

Newly released documents (https://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/new-documents-shed-light-one-nsas-most-powerful-tools) prove the U.S. National Security Agency’s spying power overseas primarily comes from a 33-year-old executive order signed by then President Ronald Reagan.

The American Civil Liberties Union obtained a series of internal papers from intelligence agencies including the NSA and Defense Intelligence Agency detailing how integral Reagan’s 1981 order is to the NSA’s current surveillance program. The order broadly allows the government to collect data from any company that is believed to have ties to foreign organizations. It also complicates the path forward for intelligence reforms in Congress.

Previous reports acknowledge the order’s use as a foundation for some of the NSA’s surveillance programs such as gaining backdoor access (http://thinkprogress.org/world/2014/07/06/3456733/snowden-emails-report/) to tech companies’ data centers. But the new documents, which were released as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit (https://www.aclu.org/national-security-technology-and-liberty/executive-order-12333-foia-lawsuit)the ACLU and other civil liberties advocates filed just before Edward Snowden’s leaks to the media, show Executive Order 12333 (http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/codification/executive-order/12333.html) is the “primary source” authority when it comes to the NSA’s foreign spy programs.

“Because the executive branch issued and now implements the executive order all on its own, the programs operating under the order are subject to essentially no oversight from Congress or the courts,” Alex Abdo, a staff attorney for the ACLU wrote in a blog post (https://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/new-documents-shed-light-one-nsas-most-powerful-tools).

Compared to section 215 of the Patriot Act, which would let intelligence agencies gather lists of incoming and outgoing calls from telecommunication companies, Reagan’s order has lax constraints (http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/meet-executive-order-12333-the-reagan-rule-that-lets-the-nsa-spy-on-americans/2014/07/18/93d2ac22-0b93-11e4-b8e5-d0de80767fc2_story.html) on bulk data collection on U.S. citizens.

As long as the communications data is stored internationally, the NSA can collect it.

Federal law enforcement agencies (http://thinkprogress.org/world/2014/07/31/3466427/microsoft-overseas-emails-district-ruling/) can also get data stored overseas but first need a search warrant.

After Snowden leaked details of the government’s intricate spy program in 2013, the Obama administration ended the agency’s bulk data collection program under Section 215, and Congress is drafting a new version of the USA Freedom Act. But the proposed bill, which passed the House and awaiting a vote by the Senate, offers little protections for U.S. citizens and still gives intelligence agencies leeway (http://thinkprogress.org/world/2014/07/28/3464943/privacy-advocates-leahy-nsa/) to collect chunks of data. The reforms also won’t address the executive order, the ACLU pointed out (https://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/new-documents-shed-light-one-nsas-most-powerful-tools).

The order is the main reason the government has been able to spy on web traffic between American companies with data centers abroad, such as Google and Yahoo.

Now, those companies are feeling the heat from users in the U.S. and abroad. Foreign governments have been cracking down on American companies as a result of the surveillance revelations, as well as beefing up their own spy programs (http://thinkprogress.org/world/2014/09/25/3572142/australia-government-surveillance-laws/). The European Union is currently weighing (http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/06/18/us-facebook-privacy-idUSKBN0ET11X20140618) whether or not companies like Facebook should be held accountable for their role in NSA spying. If Facebook loses the case, it could mean that any company that gave the NSA backdoor access would be bound to stringent privacy protections to continue operating on European soil.

http://thinkprogress.org/world/2014/09/30/3573647/reagan-nsa-order/

Thanks, Repugs and your Useful Idiot St Ronnie. The shit Repugs do to USA and the Constitution lasts for decades.

[DarrinS]

The ‘Primary Source’ Of NSA’s Spying Power Is A 33-Year-Old Executive Order By Ronald Reagan (http://thinkprogress.org/world/2014/09/30/3573647/reagan-nsa-order/)


http://thinkprogress.org/world/2014/09/30/3573647/reagan-nsa-order/





thinkprogress, therefore, did not read

[DarrinS]

How's that whole "tackling the NSA" thing going?

[velik_m]

How's that whole "tackling the NSA" thing going?

It turned out it wasn't so much a tackle, it was more of a cuddle, but he cuddled the NSA real hard.

[boutons_deux]

the NSA is beyond civilian control

eg: NSA officials Clapper, Brennan blatantly lying to Congress, breaking into the Senate's compters, and nobody punished. NSA is accountable to no one but itself.

And St Ronnie "twelve triple3" got that shitball rolling, like so many other shitballs he and his adminstration got rolling, and roll on today.

[TeyshaBlue]

:lmao:lmao:lmao

[DarrinS]

It turned out it wasn't so much a tackle, it was more of a cuddle, but he cuddled the NSA real hard.

:lol

[boutons_deux]

but but but ... President Bishop Gecko or President McLiar would have emasculated the NSA, right?

Their DoJ and Repug Congress would have prosecuted Clapper and Brennan for lying to Congres.

[Nbadan]

Esidentpray Eisenhowerway iedtray otay arnway usway....ethay
ANSAY isway uperincumbentsay

[Winehole23]

ACLU and others sue to stop dragnet surveillance of international communications:

https://www.aclu.org/files/assets/wikimedia_v2c_nsa_-_complaint.pdf

[Winehole23]

Ex-Yahoo employees have spoken anonymously to Motherboard about the news that Yahoo had built an "email scanner" (http://boingboing.net/2016/10/04/yahoo-secretly-built-a-tool-to.html) for a US security agency, likely the Founded the alarm, only to have the company executives tell them that the US government had installed the tool.BI or the NSA. These sources -- at least one of whom worked on the security team -- say that in actuality, the NSA or FBI had secretly installed a "rootkit" on Yahoo's mail servers and that this was discovered by the Yahoo security team (who had not been apprised of it), who, believing the company had been hacked, s


The sources in the article say that the "rootkit" was "buggy" and "poorly designed."
http://boingboing.net/2016/10/07/yahoo-didnt-install-an-nsa-e.html

[Winehole23]

mass surveillance makes us less secure:


Alex Stamos, Yahoo’s former information security chief who Reuters reported left the company after finding out about its cooperation with the U.S. government’s scanning mandate, is said to have taken particular issue with how poorly the scanning tool was installed. “He was especially offended that he was not looped in on the decision,” said the ex-Yahoo source. “The program that was installed for interception was very carelessly implemented, in a way that if someone like an outside hacker got control of it, they could have basically read everyone’s Yahoo mail,” something the source attributed to “the fact that it was installed without any security review.”

[Winehole23]

interesting interview about TOR:

https://surveillancevalley.net/blog/interview-in-german-magazine-konkret-about-tor-and-the-cult-of-crypto

[pgardn]

interesting interview about TOR:

https://surveillancevalley.net/blog/interview-in-german-magazine-konkret-about-tor-and-the-cult-of-crypto

This is very interesting and quite muddy complex. Thanks for this.

I read a bit about Applebaum's childhood and the guy definitely has the prerequisites to have become a bit twisted. There really is quite a complex relationship between the tech companies that do the footwork on gathering information for business purposes and the government. Both play it off like they battle each other but that's really way too easy based on what the above states.

The layers of the types of cooperation and conflict between the giant gatherers and government is so ambiguous and tenuous it seems. Unexpected Issues arise that seem to constantly change the relationship.

NoNo should like this article quite a bit I should think.

This really highlights the necessity of trying to keep up. There is so much intrigue. I really feel inadequate concerning the actual mechanisms of gathering and hiding information.

[ElNono]

Thanks for sharing, interesting read. As much of the surveillance and counter-surveillance apparatus goes, it's always difficult to know who to believe. This is no exception.

Fortunately, what gives you privacy/freedom is crypto itself, not the characters that try to portray it or their stories, fictional or not.