Obama administration defends 2nd mass surveillance project

[Winehole23]

NSA could afford such an investment. The 2013 “black budget” request, leaked as part of the Snowden cache, states that NSA has prioritized “investing in groundbreaking cryptanalytic capabilities to defeat adversarial cryptography and exploit internet traffic.” It shows that the agency’s budget is on the order of $10 billion a year, with over $1 billion dedicated to computer network exploitation, and several subprograms in the hundreds of millions a year.

[Winehole23]

NSA bulk surveillance of metadata to end at midnight tonight, White house says:

The U.S. National Security Agency will end its daily vacuuming of millions of Americans' phone records by Sunday and replace the practice with more tightly targeted surveillance methods, the Obama administration said on Friday.


As required by law, the NSA will end its wide-ranging surveillance program by 11:59 p.m. EST Saturday (4:59 a.m. GMT Sunday) and expects to have the new, scaled-back system in place by then, the White House said.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/...4d2OhlPuX0E.97

[Winehole23]

A presidential review committee concluded the surveillance regime did not lead to a single clear counter terrorism breakthrough that could be directly attributed to the program.


Metadata collected by the NSA over the past five years will be preserved for "data integrity purposes" through February 29, the White House said.


After that the NSA will purge all of its historic records once pending litigation is resolved.

Read more at Reutershttp://www.reuters.com/article/2015/11/27/us-usa-nsa-termination-idUSKBN0TG27120151127#DaW9qMMUlh4JpzlF.99

[Winehole23]

one work-around:

Instead analysts must now get a court order to ask telecommunications companies like Verizon Communications to enable monitoring of call records of specific people or groups for up to six months.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/...MMUlh4JpzlF.99

[Winehole23]

Judge Napolitano on erosion of the 4th Amendment:

The government was secretly gathering data on all of us and using warrants that were not based on probable cause and that did not specifically describe the place to be searched or the person or thing to be seized. When members of Congress realized that they, too, were being spied upon, the outrage grew. That outrage and anger metastasized into a new law enacted earlier this year, called the USA Freedom Act, which took effect this week. That law, its supporters have argued, will tame the National Security Agency into cons utional compliance and keep its 60,000 agents and contractors out of our private affairs. In fact, it is now worse.

The new law permitted the expiration of Section 215 of the Patriot Act – the section used by the NSA to justify its collection of undifferentiated bulk data about everyone. But it also requires the telecoms and Internet service providers to retain their records for five years, and it gives the NSA instant access to those records whenever it needs them.


How can the NSA get instant access to your emails and phone calls?


Quite easily. Both the Patriot Act and the USA Freedom Act uncons utionally do away with the probable cause requirement for warrants. Those two laws permit the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to issue warrants based on the standard of "governmental needs" rather than probable cause. This is a profoundly uncons utional standard, and one that has resulted in spying on all people all the time.

http://original.antiwar.com/andrew-p...s-who-ruin-us/

[boutons_deux]

Judge Napolitano on erosion of the 4th Amendment:

http://original.antiwar.com/andrew-p...s-who-ruin-us/

iow, America is ed by the military police/surveillance/spook state and is un able. No way the "no warrant" will ever get rolled back officially, but if it ever does, then police state will just keep on doing the snooping.

[Winehole23]

Obama to expand intra-governmental sharing of raw data hoovered up by the NSA:

The Obama administration is on the verge of permitting the National Security Agency to share more of the private communications it intercepts with other American intelligence agencies without first applying any privacy protections to them, according to officials familiar with the deliberations.

The change would relax longstanding restrictions on access to the contents of the phone calls and email the security agency vacuums up around the world, including bulk collection of satellite transmissions, communications between foreigners as they cross network switches in the United States, and messages acquired overseas or provided by allies.


The idea is to let more experts across American intelligence gain direct access to unprocessed information, increasing the chances that they will recognize any possible nuggets of value. That also means more officials will be looking at private messages — not only foreigners’ phone calls and emails that have not yet had irrelevant personal information screened out, but also communications to, from, or about Americans that the N.S.A.’s foreign intelligence programs swept in incidentally.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/26/us...ntercepts.html

[Winehole23]

The bulk e-mail metadata program group confirmed that even though the N.S.A. said it had turned off that program in late 2011, it did so only after it had figured out how to achieve similar results using data obtained in other ways. And the warrantless surveillance program group shed light on the role played by telecommunications providers in actively performing the sifting and filtering of data packets required for upstream Internet surveillance on behalf of the N.S.A. rather than passively turning over all the packets for the N.S.A. to hunt through itself.

http://www.charliesavage.com/?p=1325

[Winehole23]

One do ent among the bulk phone metadata program group — turned over to us in unredacted form by mistake — disclosed the iden ies of the participants in the bulk phone records program (AT&T, Sprint and Verizon)

[Winehole23]

We filed the second lawsuit yesterday against the Justice Department. Assigned to Judge Lewis Kaplan, it combines requests for several post-9/11 legal policy matters the department has handled:

• The first do ent it seeks is a May 4, 2005, memo signed by Pat Rowan, a national security lawyer in the Bush Justice Department, about the department’s discovery obligations when using evidence obtained or derived from the Stellarwind warrantless surveillance and bulk data collection program in court against a criminal defendant.
  
• 
  
  • Discussion: A big issue regarding the N.S.A.’s warrantless surveillance program, both before and after Congress legalized it, is whether and when criminal defendants who face evidence obtained or derived from it should get notice from prosecutors about where that evidence came from. This is important because they have legal standing to challenge the lawfulness of the surveillance that gathered the evidence. To date, the government has successfully prevented a definitive examination of the merits of Stellarwind; in 2006, a district court judge ruled that it was illegal, but an appeals court vacated that ruling on the technical grounds that the plaintiffs did not have standing. No criminal defendant was ever notified that some evidence came from the program, and the Obama administration, in a previous FOIA lawsuit we brought for a Justice Department inspector general report about Stellarwind, redacted much of a lengthy portion about possible Brady violations – that is, instances in which prosecutors may have unlawfully withheld evidence from the defense that could have helped it – regarding the program. But that report included an unredacted sentence referring to the existence of this memo.
    
  
  
  
• The second do ent is the “Standard Minimization Procedures for FBI Electronic Surveillance and Physical Search Conducted Under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act” that were approved by the Attorney General on October 22, 2008 and later submitted to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
  
• 
  
  • Discussion: The FBI’s minimization procedures for FISA information are its rules for sharing and disseminating information gathered under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act — and, since 2007, the warrantless surveillance program governed by the Protect America and the FISA Amendments Act. The government has issued later versions of these procedures, but not this set, which should help show how the practice of “backdoor searching,” or government agents looking at private communications previously collected without a warrant for Americans who have become the subject of their su ions, began. See this post for more discussion of what we already know about how this got going.
  
  

[Winehole23]

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archiv...od_essays.html

[Winehole23]

The FISA Amendments Act of 2008 (FAA) — the statute the government uses to engage in warrantless surveillance of Americans’ international communications — is scheduled to expire in December 2017. In anticipation of the coming legislative debate over reauthorization, Congress has already begun to hold hearings. While Congress must address many problems with the government’s use of this law to surveil and investigate Americans, the government’s use of “Upstream” surveillance to search Internet traffic deserves special attention. Indeed, Congress has never engaged in a meaningful public debate about Upstream surveillance — but it should.


First disclosed as part of the Snowden revelations, Upstream surveillance involves the NSA’s bulk interception and searching of Americans’ international Internet communications — including emails, chats, and web-browsing traffic — as their communications travel the spine of the Internet between sender and receiver. If you send emails to friends abroad, message family members overseas, or browse websites hosted outside of the United States, the NSA has almost certainly searched through the contents of your communications — and it has done so without a warrant.


The executive branch contends that Upstream surveillance was authorized by the FAA; however, as others have noted, neither the text of the statute nor the legislative history support that claim. Moreover, as former Assistant Attorney General for National Security David Kris recently explained, Upstream raises “challenging” legal questions about the su ionless searching of Americans’ Internet communications — questions that Congress must address before reauthorizing the FAA.

[Winehole23]

Despite what many lawmakers appear to believe, counterterrorism and national security are not the only permitted justifications for surveillance under section 702. Surveillance can occur for any foreign intelligence purpose, including the collection of information about a foreign power or territory that is related to “the conduct of the foreign affairs of the United States.” Such broadly worded language permits surveillance far beyond that related to counterterrorism. For example, when protesters gather as part of the Arab Spring or to protest a government policy, the reasons for their complaints “relate” to US foreign affairs. Information about other countries’ economic policies, which could affect global markets, “relates” to US foreign affairs, as well. In 2015 alone, there were an estimated 94,368 targets under section 702, and the public does not know what fraction of those targets, many of whom communicate with Americans, were actually targeted for counterterrorism-related purposes.


Moreover, foreign intelligence need not even be the main purpose of section 702 collection. Collection under section 702 is valid so long as a “significant purpose” of the collection is to obtain foreign intelligence information. The primary purpose of the collection can be for another purpose entirely, such as investigating alleged tax evasion. The “significant purpose” loophole could also enable the FBI to use section 702 to direct warrantless surveillance for criminal investigations (although only the NSA can make actual targeting decisions, the FBI is permitted to “nominate” surveillance targets of its own).

[Winehole23]

Delete your Yahoo account:

https://theintercept.com/2016/10/04/...yahoo-account/

[Winehole23]

Asked whether Twitter had ever received such a directive aimed at its messaging system, Nu Wexler, the company’s public policy communications chief, replied that “Federal law prohibits us from answering your question, and we’re currently suing the Justice Department for the ability to disclose more information about government requests.” Twitter filed the lawsuit in 2014.

[ducks]

Jake tapper CNN
The night belonged to pence

[Winehole23]

So much for CNN being in the tank for Hilary

[Winehole23]

mass surveillance is big business. our government doesn't do it all on its own. ISPs and various telecom companies have helped.

this article focuses on a NZ company, Endace:

Do ents from the National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden, previously disclosed by The Intercept, have shown how GCHQ dramatically expanded its online surveillance between 2009 and 2012. The newly obtained Endace do ents add to those revelations, shining light for the first time on the vital role played by the private sector in enabling the spying.

https://theintercept.com/2016/10/23/...q-governments/

[Winehole23]

thanks to the US Senate, FBI warrants to hack your computer are no longer limited by jurisdiction:

The amendments to Rule 41 are now law, thanks to Sen. John Cornyn, who prevented bills opposing the immediate adoption of the changes from being debated.

Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Steve Daines (R-Mont.) and Chris Coons (D-Del) took to the floor and unsuccessfully asked for unanimous consent to either pass or formally vote on three bills to delay or prevent updates to the process used by law enforcement to get a warrant to hack suspects' computers.

“We simply can’t give unlimited power for unlimited hacking,” Daines argued.

But the bid to prevent the imminent changes to Rule 41 ended quickly. After Wyden spoke, Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas) immediately objected to all three bills, without waiting to hear from Coons and Daines.

But Cornyn alone can't be blamed for this outcome. A vast majority of senators did nothing to prevent the proposed changes from becoming law -- even though the decision has been in their hands since the Supreme Court's approval in April.

The FBI and others will be able to take advantage of the removal of jurisdictional limits to search computers anywhere in the world using a single warrant issued by a magistrate judge. It will also be granted the same power for use in the disruption of botnets -- in essence, searches/seizures of devices owned by US citizens suspected of no wrongdoing.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20...come-law.shtml

[Winehole23]

In an effort to address concerns, U.S. Assistant Attorney General Leslie Caldwell wrote a blog post this week arguing that the benefits given to authorities from the rule changes outweighed any potential for "unintended harm."

[Winehole23]

US courts undercounting wiretaps?

Albert Gidari of Just Security/Center for Internet and Society has been looking into the US Courts' wiretap reports for 2014 and 2015. The problem with these reports is that nothing adds up. As he wrote for Just Security last year, there's a huge discrepancy between the numbers reported by the US Courts Administrative Office and those reported by the service providers complying with the orders.


These numbers should be much closer than they are. If a wiretap is issued by a court, then the recipient service provider should report being served with one wiretap order. But that's not what has happened. The US Courts AO reported 3,554 federal and state wiretap orders in 2014. Service providers, however, reported receiving 10,712 wiretap orders for that same year.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20...-to-grow.shtml

[Winehole23]

Once again, it seems a reporting process ordered by Congress but left to another agency to enforce (with zero consequences for noncompliance) is resulting in discrepancies between the "official" numbers and those reported by the private sector. It looks and feels just like the FBI's collection of officer-involved shootings: incomplete, inaccurate, and wholly dependent on government en ies self-reporting data they'd rather not make public.

[Winehole23]

one last kick in the pants from Obama:

However, under the rules, if analysts stumble across evidence that an American has committed any crime, they will send it to the Justice Department.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/12/u...nications.html

[Winehole23]

more secret domestic spying

The CIA released a series of redacted recommendations about the program issued by an oversight panel known as the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. According to the do ent, a pop-up box warns CIA analysts using the program that seeking any information about U.S. citizens or others covered by privacy laws requires a foreign intelligence purpose.

“However, analysts are not required to memorialize the justification for their queries,” the board said.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...e3c_story.html

[Winehole23]

According to Wyden and Heinrich’s letter, the CIA’s bulk collection program operates outside of laws passed and reformed by Congress, but under the authority of Executive Order 12333, the do ent that broadly governs intelligence community activity and was first signed by President Ronald Reagan in 1981.



“It is critical that Congress not legislate without awareness of a ... CIA program, and that the American public not be misled into believe that the reforms in any reauthorization legislation fully cover the IC’s collection of their records,” the senators wrote in their letter. There was a redaction in the letter before “CIA program.”