Patriot Act Renewal Fight

[FuzzyLumpkins]

Federal court declared section 215 illegal.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/05/does-the-patriot-act-allow-bulk-surveillance/392651/

Public is overwhelmingly against the violations of civil liberties:

http://www.gallup.com/poll/5263/civil-liberties.aspx

It's splitting the senate and the GOP.

http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/242133-senate-leader-backed-into-corner-on-patriot-act-renewal

Rand is declaring he will filibuster and Cruz is proposing compromise legislation

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/04/ted-cruz-nsa-spying-117481.html

[Wild Cobra]

Revered Paul to the rescue!

[boutons_deux]

a charade to fool the citizenry.

Congress can't stop, other than on paper, the delusional, unrestrainable "Few Good Men" of the NSA/CIA/FBI/Heimat-Security police surveillance state.

And what about the multi-$B business of BigCorps (and secretive, black-money political orgs) collecting, owning, trading citizens' personal data? Anybody gonna fabricate even a charade of stopping that?

[boutons_deux]

NSA PLANNED TO HIJACK GOOGLE APP STORE TO HACK SMARTPHONES

The National Security Agency and its closest allies planned to hijack data links to Google and Samsung app stores to infect smartphones with spyware, a top-secret document reveals.

The surveillance project was launched by a joint electronic eavesdropping unit called the Network Tradecraft Advancement Team, which includes spies from each of the countries in the “Five Eyes” alliance — the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Australia.

The top-secret document, obtained from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, was published Wednesday by CBC News (http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/spy-agencies-target-mobile-phones-app-stores-to-implant-spyware-1.3076546) in collaboration with The Intercept. The document (https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2083944-uc-web-report-final-for-dc.html) outlines a series of tactics that the NSA and its counterparts in the Five Eyes were working on during workshops held in Australia and Canada between November 2011 and February 2012.

The main purpose of the workshops was to find new ways to exploit smartphone technology for surveillance.

The agencies used the Internet spying system XKEYSCORE (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/31/nsa-top-secret-program-online-data) to identify smartphone traffic flowing across Internet cables and then to track down smartphone connections to app marketplace servers operated by Samsung and Google. (Google declined to comment for this story. Samsung said it would not be commenting “at this time.”)

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/05/21/nsa-five-eyes-google-samsung-app-stores-spyware/

Bitch McConnell wants no restrictions on the Orwellian police surveillance state, wants the Patriot Act extended as is.

[boutons_deux]

For 7 Years, FBI Defied Law for Seeking a Person’s Records Under Patriot Act

A Justice Department inspector general’s report shows that for seven years the Federal Bureau of Investigation violated statutory law designed to restrict the agency’s surveillance power. During this period, the agency sought individuals’ records under the business records provision of the PATRIOT Act without adopting proper “minimization procedures” to protect privacy of US persons.

The FBI’s use of orders under Section 215 between 2007 and 2009 was examined by the inspector general. Whether the FBI complied with recommendations the inspector general made back in March 2008.

Section 215 makes it possible for the government to obtain “any tangible things,” such as books, records and other items from a business, organization or entity. They are supposed to be “relevant” to an “authorized investigation to obtain foreign intelligence information not concerning a US person or to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities.” But the standard for relevance is very low.

The Section 215 provision is set to expire on June 1, and, as Senator Rand Paul comprehensively outlined while he held the Senate floor for over ten hours (http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2015/may/21/nsa-surveillance-rand-paul-senate-live), there are many reasons to not reauthorize the provision. This report, which was completed eleven months ago but is dated May 2015, adds substantially to those reasons.

Under the PATRIOT Improvement and Reauthorization Act of 2005, the law required that certain “minimization procedures” be adopted to ensure the handling of US persons’ data was done appropriately. It was not until March 7, 2013, that the Attorney General and the Justice Department officially incorporated these procedures into requests for records. (Marcy Wheeler points out (https://www.emptywheel.net/2015/05/21/doj-ig-report-confirms-government-flouted-statutory-requirements-of-section-215-for-7-years/) the Justice Department did not actually fully comply with legally required procedures until after NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden disclosed information.)

“The Attorney General’s and the [Justice] Department’s actions came 7 years after such procedures were required by the Reauthorization Act and 5 years after we concluded the interim procedures in 2006 were deficient,” the inspector general’s report

http://firedoglake.com/2015/05/21/fbi-defied-law-for-business-records-collection-under-patriot-act-for-7-years/

the police surveillance state is unrestrainable, unstoppable, any political moves to do so are pure charades of unenforceability.

[Galileo]

Rand Paul's filibustered the Patriot Act for 10 1/2 hours. The Patriot Act is dead.

[DarrinS]

200 million+ of our fellow citizens with mobile devices ready to film and upload, but the Patriot Act...

[Galileo]

Pressure is mounting from all sides on Congress to reform the Patriot Act

[Galileo]

Rand Paul's Sexy American Flag Bikini Filibuster Buddy

Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky has a ton of young libertarian fans, but this American flag wearing, bikini-clad liberty lover just might be the hottest we’ve ever seen.

MORE:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=25&v=SgVgdiexLhU

[boutons_deux]

FBI Director Claims That The World's Most Knowledgeable Cybersecurity Experts Are Not 'Fair Minded' About Encryption Backdoors

Earlier this week, we noted that a huge list of companies, non-profits and cybersecurity experts had signed a letter (https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150518/21180031044/pretty-much-anyone-with-any-understanding-crypto-tells-president-obama-that-backdooring-crypto-is-monumentally-stupid.shtml) to the White House about the stupidity and danger of trying to order backdoors into encryption (disclaimer: we signed the letter as well). While many in the press focused on the companies that had signed onto the letter (including Google, Apple, Cisco, Microsoft, Twitter and Facebook), as we noted, what was much more interesting was the long list of cybersecurity/encryption experts who signed onto the letter. Just in case you don't feel like searching it out, I'll post the entire list of those experts after this post.

It's a who's who of the brightest minds in encryption and cryptography. Whitfield Diffie inventedpublic key cryptography. Phil Zimmermann created PGP. Ron Rivest is the "R" in "RSA." Peter Neumann has been working on these issues for decades before I was even born. And many more on the list are just as impressive.

So how do you think FBI director James Comey -- who has been leading the charge (https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20141019/07115528878/everybody-knows-fbi-director-james-comey-is-wrong-about-encryption-even-fbi.shtml) on backdooring encryption -- responded to these experts?
By calling them uninformed (http://justsecurity.org/23120/transcript-comey-authors-encryption-letter-uninformed-fair-minded/).

I wish I was joking.

A group of tech companies and some prominent folks wrote a letter to the President yesterday that I frankly found depressing. Because their letter contains no acknowledgment that there are societal costs to universal encryption. Look, I recognize the challenges facing our tech companies. Competitive challenges, regulatory challenges overseas, all kinds of challenges. I recognize the benefits of encryption, but I think fair-minded people also have to recognize the costs associated with that. And I read this letter and I think, “Either these folks don’t see what I see or they’re not fair-minded.” And either one of those things is depressing to me. So I’ve just got to continue to have the conversation.

First of all, it's kind of hilarious for the FBI director to be arguing that the people who signed that letter haven't done a cost-benefit analysis, since we've noted that the intelligence and law enforcement communities almost never (https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130807/01194124092/cost-benefit-analysis-nsa-surveillance-says-its-simply-not-worth-it.shtml) do such an analysis.

They always insist "more surveillance" must be better, without considering the costs involved.

And then there's this, showing that Comey still doesn't understand the letter at all:

We’ve got to have a conversation long before the logic of strong encryption takes us to that place. And smart people, reasonable people will disagree mightily. Technical people will say it’s too hard. My reaction to that is: Really? Too hard? Too hard for the people we have in this country to figure something out? I’m not that pessimistic. I think we ought to have a conversation.

Hey, Comey! No one is saying it's "too hard."

They're saying it's IMPOSSIBLE to do this without weakening everyone's security. Impossible. It's not a "hard" problem, it's an impossible problem.

Because if you weaken security to let the FBI in, by definition you are weakening the security to let others in as well. That's the point that was being made.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150521/18021531082/fbi-director-claims-that-worlds-most-knowledgeable-cybersecurity-experts-are-not-fair-minded-about-encryption-backdoors.shtml