Anger swells after NSA phone records court order revelations

[Toppa]

The scale of America's surveillance state was laid bare on Thursday as senior politicians revealed that the US counter-terrorism effort had swept up swaths of personal data from the phone calls of millions of citizens for years.

After the revelation by the Guardian of a sweeping secret court order that authorised the FBI to seize all call records from a subsidiary of Verizon, the Obama administration sought to defuse mounting anger over what critics described as the broadest surveillance ruling ever issued.

A White House spokesman said that laws governing such orders "are something that have been in place for a number of years now" and were vital for protecting national security. Dianne Feinstein, the Democratic chairwoman of the Senate intelligence committee, said the Verizon court order had been in place for seven years. "People want the homeland kept safe," Feinstein said.

But as the implications of the blanket approval for obtaining phone data reverberated around Washington and beyond, anger grew among other politicians.

Intelligence committee member Mark Udall, who has previously warned in broad terms about the scale of government snooping, said: "This sort of widescale surveillance should concern all of us and is the kind of government overreach I've said Americans would find shocking." Former vice-president Al Gore described the "secret blanket surveillance" as "obscenely outrageous".

The Verizon order was made under the provisions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (Fisa) as amended by the Patriot Act of 2001, passed in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. But one of the authors of the Patriot Act, Republican congressman Jim Sensenbrenner, said he was troubled by the Guardian revelations. He said that he had written to the attorney general, Eric Holder, questioning whether "US constitutional rights were secure".

He said: "I do not believe the broadly drafted Fisa order is consistent with the requirements of the Patriot Act. Seizing phone records of millions of innocent people is excessive and un-American."

The White House sought to defend what it called "a critical tool in protecting the nation from terrorist threats". White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Fisa orders were used to "support important and highly sensitive intelligence collection operations" on which members of Congress were fully briefed.

"The intelligence community is conducting court-authorized intelligence activities pursuant to a public statute with the knowledge and oversight of Congress and the intelligence community in both houses of Congress," Earnest said.

He pointed out that the order only relates to the so-called metadata surrounding phone calls rather than the content of the calls themselves. "The order reprinted overnight does not allow the government to listen in on anyone's telephone calls," Earnest said.

"The information acquired does not include the content of any communications or the name of any subscriber. It relates exclusively to call details, such as a telephone number or the length of a telephone call."

But such metadata can provide authorities with vast knowledge about a caller's identity. Particularly when cross-checked against other public records, the metadata can reveal someone's name, address, driver's licence, credit history, social security number and more. Government analysts would be able to work out whether the relationship between two people was ongoing, occasional or a one-off.

The disclosure has reignited longstanding debates in the US over the proper extent of the government's domestic spying powers.

Ron Wyden of Oregon, a member of the Senate intelligence committee who, along with Udell, has expressed concern about the extent of US government surveillance, warned of "sweeping, dragnet surveillance". He said: "I am barred by Senate rules from commenting on some of the details at this time, However, I believe that when law-abiding Americans call their friends, who they call, when they call, and where they call from is private information.

"Collecting this data about every single phone call that every American makes every day would be a massive invasion of Americans' privacy."

'Beyond Orwellian'

Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director at the American Civil Liberties Union, said: "From a civil liberties perspective, the program could hardly be any more alarming. It's a program in which some untold number of innocent people have been put under the constant surveillance of government agents.

"It is beyond Orwellian, and it provides further evidence of the extent to which basic democratic rights are being surrendered in secret to the demands of unaccountable intelligence agencies."

Under the Bush administration, officials in security agencies had disclosed to reporters the large-scale collection of call records data by the NSA, but this is the first time significant and top-secret documents have revealed the continuation of the practice under President Obama.

The order names Verizon Business Services, a division of Verizon Communications. In its first-quarter earnings report, published in April, Verizon Communications listed about 10 million commercial lines out of a total of 121 million customers. The court order, which lasts for three months from 25 April, does not specify what type of lines are being tracked. It is not clear whether any additional orders exist to cover Verizon's wireless and residential customers, or those of other phone carriers.

Fisa court orders typically direct the production of records pertaining to a specific, named target suspected of being an agent of a terrorist group or foreign state, or a finite set of individually named targets. The unlimited nature of the records being handed over to the NSA is extremely unusual.

Feinstein said she believed the order had been in place for some time. She said: "As far as I know this is the exact three-month renewal of what has been the case for the past seven years. This renewal is carried out by the [foreign intelligence surveillance] court under the business records section of the Patriot Act. Therefore it is lawful. It has been briefed to Congress."

The Center for Constitutional Rights said in a statement that the secret court order was unprecedented. "As far as we know this order from the Fisa court is the broadest surveillance order to ever have been issued: it requires no level of suspicion and applies to all Verizon [business services] subscribers anywhere in the US.

"The Patriot Act's incredibly broad surveillance provision purportedly authorizes an order of this sort, though its constitutionality is in question and several senators have complained about it."

Russell Tice, a retired National Security Agency intelligence analyst and whistleblower, said: "What is going on is much larger and more systemic than anything anyone has ever suspected or imagined."

Although an anonymous senior Obama administration official said that "on its face" the court order revealed by the Guardian did not authorise the government to listen in on people's phone calls, Tice now believes the NSA has constructed such a capability.

"I figured it would probably be about 2015" before the NSA had "the computer capacity … to collect all digital communications word for word," Tice said. "But I think I'm wrong. I think they have it right now."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/06/obama-administration-nsa-verizon-records

[D.H.W]

I remember a last year i was telling Bakes about this. This has been going on for years. Look up Echelon, this going on long time. They recording email phone call anything electronic. Just flag a phrase or word.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON

[D.H.W]

Prism

NSA PRISM program taps in to user data of Facebook, Yahoo and others

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants-nsa-data

[Toppa]

I was just coming to post that article DHW - and for the benefit of those who don't like clicking on external links:

NSA PRISM program taps in to user data of Facebook, Yahoo and others
• Top secret PRISM program claims direct access to servers of firms including Google, Apple and Facebook
• Companies deny any knowledge of program in operation since 2007

The National Security Agency has obtained direct access to the systems of Google, Facebook, Apple and other US internet giants, according to a top secret document obtained by the Guardian.

The NSA access is part of a previously undisclosed program called PRISM, which allows officials to collect material including search history, the content of emails, file transfers and live chats, the document says.

The Guardian has verified the authenticity of the document, a 41-slide PowerPoint presentation – classified as top secret with no distribution to foreign allies – which was apparently used to train intelligence operatives on the capabilities of the program. The document claims "collection directly from the servers" of major US service providers.

Although the presentation claims the program is run with the assistance of the companies, all those who responded to a Guardian request for comment on Thursday denied knowledge of any such program.

In a statement, Google said: "Google cares deeply about the security of our users' data. We disclose user data to government in accordance with the law, and we review all such requests carefully. From time to time, people allege that we have created a government 'back door' into our systems, but Google does not have a back door for the government to access private user data."

Several senior tech executives insisted that they had no knowledge of PRISM or of any similar scheme. They said they would never have been involved in such a program. "If they are doing this, they are doing it without our knowledge," one said.

An Apple spokesman said it had "never heard" of PRISM.

The NSA access was enabled by changes to US surveillance law introduced under President Bush and renewed under Obama in December 2012.

The program facilitates extensive, in-depth surveillance on live communications and stored information. The law allows for the targeting of any customers of participating firms who live outside the US, or those Americans whose communications include people outside the US.

It also opens the possibility of communications made entirely within the US being collected without warrants.

Disclosure of the PRISM program follows a leak to the Guardian on Wednesday of a top-secret court order compelling telecoms provider Verizon to turn over the telephone records of millions of US customers.

The participation of the internet companies in PRISM will add to the debate, ignited by the Verizon revelation, about the scale of surveillance by the intelligence services. Unlike the collection of those call records, this surveillance can include the content of communications and not just the metadata.

Some of the world's largest internet brands are claimed to be part of the information-sharing program since its introduction in 2007. Microsoft – which is currently running an advertising campaign with the slogan "Your privacy is our priority" – was the first, with collection beginning in December 2007.

It was followed by Yahoo in 2008; Google, Facebook and PalTalk in 2009; YouTube in 2010; Skype and AOL in 2011; and finally Apple, which joined the program in 2012. The program is continuing to expand, with other providers due to come online.

Collectively, the companies cover the vast majority of online email, search, video and communications networks.

The extent and nature of the data collected from each company varies.

Companies are legally obliged to comply with requests for users' communications under US law, but the PRISM program allows the intelligence services direct access to the companies' servers. The NSA document notes the operations have "assistance of communications providers in the US".

The revelation also supports concerns raised by several US senators during the renewal of the Fisa Amendments Act in December 2012, who warned about the scale of surveillance the law might enable, and shortcomings in the safeguards it introduces.

When the FAA was first enacted, defenders of the statute argued that a significant check on abuse would be the NSA's inability to obtain electronic communications without the consent of the telecom and internet companies that control the data. But the PRISM program renders that consent unnecessary, as it allows the agency to directly and unilaterally seize the communications off the companies' servers.

A chart prepared by the NSA, contained within the top-secret document obtained by the Guardian, underscores the breadth of the data it is able to obtain: email, video and voice chat, videos, photos, voice-over-IP (Skype, for example) chats, file transfers, social networking details, and more.

The document is recent, dating to April 2013. Such a leak is extremely rare in the history of the NSA, which prides itself on maintaining a high level of secrecy.

The PRISM program allows the NSA, the world's largest surveillance organisation, to obtain targeted communications without having to request them from the service providers and without having to obtain individual court orders.

With this program, the NSA is able to reach directly into the servers of the participating companies and obtain both stored communications as well as perform real-time collection on targeted users.

The presentation claims PRISM was introduced to overcome what the NSA regarded as shortcomings of Fisa warrants in tracking suspected foreign terrorists. It noted that the US has a "home-field advantage" due to housing much of the internet's architecture. But the presentation claimed "Fisa constraints restricted our home-field advantage" because Fisa required individual warrants and confirmations that both the sender and receiver of a communication were outside the US.

"Fisa was broken because it provided privacy protections to people who were not entitled to them," the presentation claimed. "It took a Fisa court order to collect on foreigners overseas who were communicating with other foreigners overseas simply because the government was collecting off a wire in the United States. There were too many email accounts to be practical to seek Fisas for all."

The new measures introduced in the FAA redefines "electronic surveillance" to exclude anyone "reasonably believed" to be outside the USA – a technical change which reduces the bar to initiating surveillance.

The act also gives the director of national intelligence and the attorney general power to permit obtaining intelligence information, and indemnifies internet companies against any actions arising as a result of co-operating with authorities' requests.

In short, where previously the NSA needed individual authorisations, and confirmation that all parties were outside the USA, they now need only reasonable suspicion that one of the parties was outside the country at the time of the records were collected by the NSA.

The document also shows the FBI acts as an intermediary between other agencies and the tech companies, and stresses its reliance on the participation of US internet firms, claiming "access is 100% dependent on ISP provisioning".

In the document, the NSA hails the PRISM program as "one of the most valuable, unique and productive accesses for NSA".

It boasts of what it calls "strong growth" in its use of the PRISM program to obtain communications. The document highlights the number of obtained communications increased in 2012 by 248% for Skype – leading the notes to remark there was "exponential growth in Skype reporting; looks like the word is getting out about our capability against Skype". There was also a 131% increase in requests for Facebook data, and 63% for Google.

The NSA document indicates that it is planning to add Dropbox as a PRISM provider. The agency also seeks, in its words, to "expand collection services from existing providers".

The revelations echo fears raised on the Senate floor last year during the expedited debate on the renewal of the FAA powers which underpin the PRISM program, which occurred just days before the act expired.

Senator Christopher Coons of Delaware specifically warned that the secrecy surrounding the various surveillance programs meant there was no way to know if safeguards within the act were working.

"The problem is: we here in the Senate and the citizens we represent don't know how well any of these safeguards actually work," he said.

"The law doesn't forbid purely domestic information from being collected. We know that at least one Fisa court has ruled that the surveillance program violated the law. Why? Those who know can't say and average Americans can't know."

Other senators also raised concerns. Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon attempted, without success, to find out any information on how many phone calls or emails had been intercepted under the program.

When the law was enacted, defenders of the FAA argued that a significant check on abuse would be the NSA's inability to obtain electronic communications without the consent of the telecom and internet companies that control the data. But the PRISM program renders that consent unnecessary, as it allows the agency to directly and unilaterally seize the communications off the companies' servers.

When the NSA reviews a communication it believes merits further investigation, it issues what it calls a "report". According to the NSA, "over 2,000 PRISM-based reports" are now issued every month. There were 24,005 in 2012, a 27% increase on the previous year.

In total, more than 77,000 intelligence reports have cited the PRISM program.

Jameel Jaffer, director of the ACLU's Center for Democracy, that it was astonishing the NSA would even ask technology companies to grant direct access to user data.

"It's shocking enough just that the NSA is asking companies to do this," he said. "The NSA is part of the military. The military has been granted unprecedented access to civilian communications.

"This is unprecedented militarisation of domestic communications infrastructure. That's profoundly troubling to anyone who is concerned about that separation."

A senior administration official said in a statement: "The Guardian and Washington Post articles refer to collection of communications pursuant to Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. This law does not allow the targeting of any US citizen or of any person located within the United States.

"The program is subject to oversight by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the Executive Branch, and Congress. It involves extensive procedures, specifically approved by the court, to ensure that only non-US persons outside the US are targeted, and that minimize the acquisition, retention and dissemination of incidentally acquired information about US persons.

"This program was recently reauthorized by Congress after extensive hearings and debate.

"Information collected under this program is among the most important and valuable intelligence information we collect, and is used to protect our nation from a wide variety of threats.

"The Government may only use Section 702 to acquire foreign intelligence information, which is specifically, and narrowly, defined in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. This requirement applies across the board, regardless of the nationality of the target."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants-nsa-data

[Bakes]

Much ado about nothing.  There is no evidence that "personal data" is being collected. These programs are supervised by Congress and done pursuant to lawfully applied for and court issued warrants. The email program doesn't even apply to US Citizens or residents and the phone program doesn't collect information on any person, merely numbers and times. Don't buy into the media's vindictive hype over this.

[Toppa]

Much ado about nothing.  There is no evidence that "personal data" is being collected. These programs are supervised by Congress and done pursuant to lawfully applied for and court issued warrants. The email program doesn't even apply to US Citizens or residents and the phone program doesn't collect information on any person, merely numbers and times. Don't buy into the media's vindictive hype over this.

Why would the media be vindictive?

[Cantona007]

Much ado about nothing.  There is no evidence that "personal data" is being collected. These programs are supervised by Congress and done pursuant to lawfully applied for and court issued warrants. The email program doesn't even apply to US Citizens or residents and the phone program doesn't collect information on any person, merely numbers and times. Don't buy into the media's vindictive hype over this.

No. metadata can be use for data mining and analysis (patterns, location data etc.). It is trivial to use the metadata to trace to individuals.

[kounty]

Much ado about nothing.  There is no evidence that "personal data" is being collected. These programs are supervised by Congress and done pursuant to lawfully applied for and court issued warrants. The email program doesn't even apply to US Citizens or residents and the phone program doesn't collect information on any person, merely numbers and times. Don't buy into the media's vindictive hype over this.

Why would the media be vindictive?

fret not sista. Big brother Bakes and OUR boy Barry can be trusted. Everything is okay.

[D.H.W]

Yes we all know the US government always abides by the law. Heh

[Deeks]

Whenever the Republicans come back in power, I dare them to reply it. If a man blow up ah piece ah carbide in a cocoa pan, Everybody and the media go bawl why the authorities did not have intelligence on the man. But them is the same media that complaining about mining intelligence. Policing a society is not cut and dry as you see on TV. Bad man and good man does wine and dine together. Multiple shades of gray. So would they have complain if before the bombing they had intelligence on these 2 brothers. Erase it.

[Bakes]

Why would the media be vindictive?

I take it you're not a regular reader of Glen Greenwald's column.  Have we also forgotten the AP controversy from just a few weeks ago?  The media is presenting this as yet another incursion into personal liberties... in this case, privacy.  This doesn't affect individual liberties, and doesn't really infringe on our privacy the way the issue was first presented.  To believe Greenwald's article, the Government has spontaneous real-time access to the servers of nine global tech companies, that allow for surveillance of individual activity of anyone, including US citizens.  Those nine companies have denied the existence of such an agreement, and of such a surveillance program.  The access to server information (emails) only applies to non-US citizens, and even then would likely be triggered only by some independently suspicious behavior meriting further inquiry.  Nothing different than I've stated before.  Of course we could all bawl about the sky falling and claim that US government will ignore the law (as DHW done doing already), but fact is that we have no proof of them doing so.  Hypothetically speaking, we could worry about anything... including the government secretly kidnapping people and selling them to aliens.

Much ado about nothing.  There is no evidence that "personal data" is being collected. These programs are supervised by Congress and done pursuant to lawfully applied for and court issued warrants. The email program doesn't even apply to US Citizens or residents and the phone program doesn't collect information on any person, merely numbers and times. Don't buy into the media's vindictive hype over this.

No. metadata can be use for data mining and analysis (patterns, location data etc.). It is trivial to use the metadata to trace to individuals.

I'm puzzled by your use of "no" here... that implies disagreement, when in fact you state nothing that's different in substance from what I stated.  The metadata can be used to show all calls to a particular number or from that number, dates, times... not sure that it can show locations... where the calls were placed from (especially in the case of cell phones).  Once the system flags a number for suspicious activity, a court order is necessary before officials could look into who was called and what time, where the calls were placed from etc.

[Toppa]

What do you mean by it doesn't "really" infringe on privacy in the way it was initially presented?

Does it infringe on one's privacy or not?

[Toppa]

Facebook and Google insist they did not know of Prism surveillance program

Larry Page and Mark Zuckerberg sharply deny knowledge of Prism until Thursday even as Obama confirms program's existence


America's tech giants continued to deny any knowledge of a giant government surveillance programme called Prism, even as president Barack Obama confirmed the scheme's existence Friday.

In a blogpost titled 'What the…?' Google co-founder Larry Page and chief legal officer David Drummond said the "level of secrecy" around US surveillance procedures was undermining "freedoms we all cherish."

"First, we have not joined any program that would give the US government – or any other government – direct access to our servers. Indeed, the US government does not have direct access or a "back door" to the information stored in our data centers. We had not heard of a program called Prism until yesterday," they wrote.

"Second, we provide user data to governments only in accordance with the law. Our legal team reviews each and every request, and frequently pushes back when requests are overly broad or don't follow the correct process."

The Google executives said they were also "very surprised" to learn of the government order made to obtain data from Verizon, first disclosed by the Guardian. "Any suggestion that Google is disclosing information about our users' internet activity on such a scale is completely false," they wrote.

Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO of Facebook, described the press reports about Prism as "outrageous". He insisted that the Facebook was not part of any program to give the US government direct access to its servers. "We hadn't even heard of Prism before yesterday," he said.

Zuckerberg also called for greater transparency.

The statement came as other tech firms reiterated their positions that they had never heard of Prism until they were contacted by the Guardian. A leaked National Security Agency (NSA) document claims Prism operates with the "assistance of communications providers in the US".

The document names AOL, Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, PalTalk and Yahoo and gives dates when they "joined" the scheme, aimed at intercepting data from people outside the US.'' The presentation talks of "legally compelled collection" of data.

All the companies involved have now denied knowledge of the scheme to the Guardian.

In one slide, the presentation identifies two types of data collection: Upstream and Prism. Upstream involves the collection of communications on "fibre cables and infrastructure as data flows past." Prism involves: "Collection directly from the servers of these US service providers: Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, Apple."

Obama confirmed the existence of the scheme Friday and said Congress was "fully apprised" of the situation and that it was being conducted legally with a "whole range of safeguards involved".

But despite Obama's acknowledgment, senior figures said they remained puzzled and surprised by the news. Speaking off the record one said their company regularly complied with subpoenas for information but had never allowed "collection directly" from their servers.

Some speculated that the wording of the document was incorrect or that the author had over-hyped the scheme.

Security experts and civil liberty figures were less convinced. "I was assuming that these tech companies were just lying," said security guru Bruce Schneier. "That's the most obvious explanation."

"Could it possibly be that there's a department within these companies that hides this from the executives? Maybe," he said. "I don't know, we don't know. This points to the problem here. There's so much freaking secrecy that we don't know enough to even know what is going on."

He said he was not surprised by the news. "There are no surprises here. We all knew what was going on and now they have finally admitted it."

"The NSA would not have done this surreptitiously, they want the tech companies on their side," said Jameel Jaffer, director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). "I can't make sense of their statements at all."

He said it was clear that tech companies in general were more than happy to co-operate with the US authorities and said he was puzzled why there seemed to be such a gap between the two sides' story.

Ali Reza Manouchehri, CEO and co-founder of MetroStar Systems, an IT consultant that works closely with government agencies, said: "There are situations that come up where they have to communicate with the security agencies. At the end of the day they are working in the interest of national security."

"I can't comment on what's going on inside the company. It's hard for me to believe that Google doesn't know," he said. "It is either transparent or it is surreptitious. It is hard for me to believe that at this level, at this volume it is surreptitious." He said if the companies really did not know then "we have some serious issues."

The news has sparked widespread concern in the US. Nearly 20,000 people have signed a petition at Progressive Change Campaign Committee calling on Congress to hold investigations.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/07/google-facebook-prism-surveillance-program

[Bakes]

June 6, 2013

Sounding the Alarm, but With a Muted Bell
By JONATHAN WEISMAN

WASHINGTON — When the Senate was dragooned back to the Capitol in the final days of 2012 to vote on a last-minute deal to avert a sudden tax increase, most senators bristled at the inconvenience. Senator Ron Wyden, an earnest and wonky Democrat from Oregon, instead saw opportunity to again sound his cryptic but insistent warning about the alarming scope of government surveillance.

For hours before a C-SPAN camera and a mostly empty chamber, he expounded about his concerns over the nine-year renewal of a broad Bush-era surveillance law, loading his remarks with references to Ben Franklin, colonialists and obscure semiannual intelligence reports.

“I do not take a back seat to any member of this body in terms of protecting the sources and methods of those in the intelligence community,” Mr. Wyden said. But he warned that those efforts “should never be a secret from the American people.”

Late Wednesday, the secret was exposed, bringing to light the scale of government collection of communication information in the name of national security that Mr. Wyden and another serious-minded Western Democrat — Mark Udall of Colorado — have been hinting at for years.

“The intelligence community can target individuals who have no connection to terrorist organizations,” Mr. Udall warned back in May 2011. “They can collect business records on law-abiding Americans.”

Yet shackled by strict rules on the discussion of classified information, Mr. Wyden and Mr. Udall, members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence could not — and still cannot — offer much more than an intimation about their concerns. They had to be content to sit in a special sealed room, soak in information that they said appalled and frightened them, then offer veiled messages that were largely ignored.

But after the disclosure of an April court order directing a subsidiary of the phone giant Verizon to turn over to the National Security Agency logs of virtually every business phone communication “between the United States and abroad” or “wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls,” Mr. Wyden acknowledged that the surveillance effort outlined “is one that I have been concerned about for years.”

Still for Senators Wyden and Udall, their “I told you so” moment was as frustrating on Thursday as all of the lonely floor speeches and legislative proposals that have gone nowhere, since they still cannot publicly explain the workings of the program that has set them to worrying.

Mr. Udall was almost rueful he had not done more.

“I acted in every possible way short of leaking classified information,” he said. “I’m not going to do that.” He added, “I only wish the administration had been the first to tell the American people about this program.”

Mr. Wyden turned his palms to the air. “It’s against the Senate rules to get into the details,” he said. “Complying with those rules is what gives me an opportunity to be a watchdog for striking the balance between security and liberty.”

Becoming leading voices against federal power is not a role one might expect for two lawmakers not known as headline-grabbing prophets against government abuse of power. But they have been dogged if restrained on the issue.

“They are doing exactly the right thing,” said Russ Feingold, a Democratic former senator from Wisconsin who was also among those warning of potential abuses of the surveillance programs before losing his re-election bid in 2010. “They were trying to warn the American people.”

During his long Christmas week speech on the Senate floor in 2012, Mr. Wyden offered an amendment that would have forced public disclosure of the impact of secret surveillance on the privacy of ordinary citizens. The amendment failed 43-52, with five senators not bothering to vote.

“I have felt occasionally like I was on a mountaintop shouting across to another mountaintop at Senator Wyden,” Mr. Udall said, “but we have been persistent.”

To some colleagues, the news of the surveillance program was vindication for the two senators. Senator Bernard Sanders, an independent from Vermont and perhaps the Senate’s most liberal member, was almost grudging in his commendation.

“People like Ron Wyden and Mark Udall have been doing their best to try to talk about it,” Mr. Sanders said. “They’ve been talking about it as best they could.”

But Senators Wyden and Udall are no Bernie Sanders, nor are they Senator Rand Paul, the Kentucky Republican who has made his name railing against all manner of national security intrusions. Mr. Rand called the surveillance revelation “an astounding assault on the Constitution.”

Mr. Wyden is a policy iconoclast who infuriated his party last year by joining with Representative Paul D. Ryan, Republican of Wisconsin, on a sweeping Medicare proposal that took some of the sting out of Democratic attacks on Republican Medicare plans during the 2012 elections.

Mr. Udall has made a name for himself by climbing some of the largest peaks in the world and joining with Republicans on proposals that have gotten little traction, like his effort with Senator Susan Collins of Maine to give all agencies more flexibility to deal with the automatic budget cuts known as sequestration.

But just because their moment on national security may have come does not mean changes to the surveillance program are inevitable. The most senior voices on Capitol Hill on Thursday were either silent or defended the telephone dragnet.

“We’re always open to changes, but that doesn’t mean that there will be any,” said Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, chairwoman of the Intelligence Committee. She was the senator who went to the Senate floor in December to slap Mr. Wyden’s last effort down.

Kitty Bennett contributed research.


The bolded part is about the only thing that I would agree in criticizing the administration on.  As I said earlier today on FB, the administration should be more proactive in engaging the public on some of these more controversial programs, rather than trying to put out brush fires after the fact.  As for Kounty's idiotic statement about the President... it should be noted that this program isn't Obama's creation, and isn't just within the control of the Executive, but has bipartisan Legislative oversight as well as independent judicial oversight as well.  Having such broad support (as unprecedented as it is) may not be an absolute buffer against abuse, but it certainly mitigates the potential for abuse.

[Toppa]

US government invokes special privilege to stop scrutiny of data mining
Officials use little-known 'military and state secrets privilege' as civil liberties lawyers try to hold administration to account

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/07/us-government-special-privilege-scrutiny-data

The Obama administration is invoking an obscure legal privilege to avoid judicial scrutiny of its secret collection of the communications of potentially millions of Americans.

Civil liberties lawyers trying to hold the administration to account through the courts for its surveillance of phone calls and emails of American citizens have been repeatedly stymied by the government's recourse to the "military and state secrets privilege". The precedent, rarely used but devastating in its legal impact, allows the government to claim that it cannot be submitted to judicial oversight because to do so it would have to compromise national security.

The government has cited the privilege in two active lawsuits being heard by a federal court in the northern district of California – Virginia v Barack Obama et al, and Carolyn Jewel v the National Security Agency. In both cases, the Obama administration has called for the cases to be dismissed on the grounds that the government's secret activities must remain secret.

The claim comes amid a billowing furore over US surveillance on the mass communications of Americans following disclosures by the Guardian of a massive NSA monitoring programme of Verizon phone records and internet communications.

The director of national intelligence, James Clapper, has written in court filings that "after careful and actual personal consideration of the matter, based upon my own knowledge and information obtained in the course of my official duties, I have determined that the disclosure of certain information would cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security of the United States. Thus, as to this information, I formally assert the state secrets privilege."

The use of the privilege has been personally approved by President Obama and several of the administration's most senior officials: in addition to Clapper, they include the director of the NSA Keith Alexander and Eric Holder, the attorney general. "The attorney general has personally reviewed and approved the government's privilege assertion in these cases," legal documents state.

In comments on Friday about the surveillance controversy, Obama insisted that the secret programmes were subjected "not only to congressional oversight but judicial oversight". He said federal judges were "looking over our shoulders".

But civil liberties lawyers say that the use of the privilege to shut down legal challenges was making a mockery of such "judicial oversight". Though classified information was shown to judges in camera, the citing of the precedent in the name of national security cowed judges into submission.

"The administration is saying that even if they are violating the constitution or committing a federal crime no court can stop them because it would compromise national security. That's a very dangerous argument," said Ilann Maazel, a lawyer with the New York-based Emery Celli firm who acts as lead counsel in the Shubert case.

"This has been legally frustrating and personally upsetting," Maazel added. "We have asked the government time after time what is the limit to the state secrets privilege, whether there's anything the government can't do and keep it secret, and every time the answer is: no."

Virginia Shubert, a housing expert from Brooklyn who is the first named plaintiff in the case, said she joined it because she considered the vast monitoring of telecommunications and emails in the wake of 9/11 to be an erosion of her rights. She called the use of the state secret privilege in blocking the action "absurd. When the government faces allegations that it has violated the constitution, it cannot hide behind state secrets to avoid accountability."

The Shubert lawsuit, first lodged with the courts in May 2006, alleges that the US government has operated a massive dragnet of private citizens' communications across the country. Drawing on the testimony of several whistleblowers, the suit accuses the Bush and then Obama administration of having broken the fourth amendment of the US constitution that guards against unwarranted searches and seizures by intercepting "en masse the communications of millions of ordinary Americans".

In the course of protracted legal argument the government has invoked the military and state secrets privilege no fewer than three times. The privilege was originally laid down in 1953 in a case in which the widows of Air Force personnel involved in a secret test run of a B-29 bomber that crashed sued to see a copy of the accident investigation report and were rebuffed under a claim of privilege that disclosure of the document would "expose military matters … in the interest of national security".

In court motions, the Obama administration has set out the information that it claims is exempt from legal scrutiny under the privilege, including "information that may tend to confirm or deny whether the plaintiffs have been subject to any alleged NSA intelligence activity" and "any information concerning NSA intelligence activities, sources, or methods that may relate to or be necessary to adjudicate plaintiffs' allegations."

The government goes further and says that the state secrets privilege also covers "allegations that the NSA, with the assistance of telecommunications carriers such as AT&T and Verizon, indiscriminately intercepts the content of communications and also collects the communication records of millions of Americans."

The second case, Jewel versus National Security Agency, was lodged in 2008 following the disclosures of an AT&T whistleblower, Mark Klein. He revealed in 2006 that the telecoms firm had set up a secret NSA room within its San Francisco office in which all phone calls from the region were passing through a splitter cabinet that sent a copy to the NSA.

Mark Rumold, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation working on Jewel, said that this week's disclosures by the Guardian would make it increasingly difficult for the administration to claim the state secrets privilege.

"The Guardian's disclosures may fundamentally alter the government's approach as they are going to have a tough time convincing a judge that this stuff is secret," he said.

[Bakes]

What do you mean by it doesn't "really" infringe on privacy in the way it was initially presented?

Does it infringe on one's privacy or not?

My statement was actually pretty self-explanatory.  The way Greenwald presented the case you would think that

... the Government has spontaneous real-time access to the servers of nine global tech companies, that allow for surveillance of individual activity of anyone, including US citizens.

That of course is not the case.  That only applies to activities by foreign nationals... even then, it's not any and every foreign national, but only those who would be engaged in some kind of activity that then triggers "some independently suspicious behavior meriting further inquiry."  "Suspicious activity" such as contact with some individual or group suspected of engaging in terrorism.  Does it infringe on our privacy? Absolutely, but there are always situations where government are permitted to infringe on our privacy... eavesdropping or searching with a warrant for instance.  So yes it infringes on our privacy, but not in the haphazard, unchecked, whimsical manner suggested by Greenwald's article.

[Bakes]

The use of the privilege has been personally approved by President Obama and several of the administration's most senior officials: in addition to Clapper, they include the director of the NSA Keith Alexander and Eric Holder, the attorney general. "The attorney general has personally reviewed and approved the government's privilege assertion in these cases," legal documents state.

In comments on Friday about the surveillance controversy, Obama insisted that the secret programmes were subjected "not only to congressional oversight but judicial oversight". He said federal judges were "looking over our shoulders".

But civil liberties lawyers say that the use of the privilege to shut down legal challenges was making a mockery of such "judicial oversight". Though classified information was shown to judges in camera, the citing of the precedent in the name of national security cowed judges into submission.

I have a hard time taking these people serious.  For one thing the FISA court is the "judicial oversight" that Obama spoke of... not just "regular" judges in some civil proceeding.  Next the "civil liberties lawyers" claim that even though the "regular" judges were shown the information in camera... that they were being cowed into submission.  lol... okay. 

[Bakes]

Comparing the two programs...

I'd copy and paste but the way the NYT presents the information it lays out a nice side-by-side analysis of the programs, including who has oversight of them.

[Toppa]

And the plot thickens.

 http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/06/08/technology/tech-companies-bristling-concede-to-government-surveillance-efforts.html

[Bakes]

And the plot thickens.

 http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/06/08/technology/tech-companies-bristling-concede-to-government-surveillance-efforts.html

How so?

Details on the discussions help explain the disparity between initial descriptions of the government program and the companies’ responses.

Each of the nine companies said it had no knowledge of a government program providing officials with access to its servers, and drew a bright line between giving the government wholesale access to its servers to collect user data and giving them specific data in response to individual court orders. Each said it did not provide the government with full, indiscriminate access to its servers.

[Toppa]

Interview with the NSA Whistleblower.

 http://m.guardiannews.com/world/2013/jun/09/edward-snowden-nsa-whistleblower-surveillance

[D.H.W]

[Bakes]

He's no "whistleblower"... he's a leak, and he'll be lucky if he isn't prosecuted like Daniel Manning, especially since Republicans are already calling for him to be extradicted from Hong Kong.  A whistleblower is someone who discloses illegal activity... that's not the case here.  While I personally don't think he harbored any malice in disclosing this information, he strikes me as idealistic and naive. 

As I've been saying all along, there's a fine line to be struck between vigilance and privacy.  No one want's for another 9-11 to happen... or another Boston for that matter.  People criticize the government after the fact for not doing enough, but when the government tries to be proactive there's criticism of creeping tyranny and all of that.  Those concerns are legitimate, and I think worthy of preserving... but we need to be realistic as well... we have to be willing to giver up a little bit of our individual liberty and privacy if we really want the government to be as proactive as we claim to want it to be.

[asylumseeker]

He's no "whistleblower"... he's a leak, and he'll be lucky if he isn't prosecuted like Daniel Manning, especially since Republicans are already calling for him to be extradicted from Hong Kong.  A whistleblower is someone who discloses illegal activity... that's not the case here. While I personally don't think he harbored any malice in disclosing this information, he strikes me as idealistic and naive.

As I've been saying all along, there's a fine line to be struck between vigilance and privacy.  No one want's for another 9-11 to happen... or another Boston for that matter.  People criticize the government after the fact for not doing enough, but when the government tries to be proactive there's criticism of creeping tyranny and all of that.  Those concerns are legitimate, and I think worthy of preserving... but we need to be realistic as well... we have to be willing to giver up a little bit of our individual liberty and privacy if we really want the government to be as proactive as we claim to want it to be.

iPhone submission?

Haven't got down into the weeds on this issue, but seemingly valid points.

[Toppa]

He's no "whistleblower"... he's a leak, and he'll be lucky if he isn't prosecuted like Daniel Manning, especially since Republicans are already calling for him to be extradicted from Hong Kong.  A whistleblower is someone who discloses illegal activity... that's not the case here.  While I personally don't think he harbored any malice in disclosing this information, he strikes me as idealistic and naive. 

As I've been saying all along, there's a fine line to be struck between vigilance and privacy.  No one want's for another 9-11 to happen... or another Boston for that matter.  People criticize the government after the fact for not doing enough, but when the government tries to be proactive there's criticism of creeping tyranny and all of that.  Those concerns are legitimate, and I think worthy of preserving... but we need to be realistic as well... we have to be willing to giver up a little bit of our individual liberty and privacy if we really want the government to be as proactive as we claim to want it to be.

But it doesn't appear to be just 'a bit' of privacy being given up - it appears to be very sweeping and arbitrary in its reach.

What parameters are in place to ensure that these privileges they've endowed themselves with aren't abused? Is the public just supposed to take it for granted?

[D.H.W]

USA has been guilty of so many things in the past. Not for once do i trust them with this info.

[Toppa]

Edward Snowden Q&A:

Q: Why did you decide to become a whistleblower?

A: "The NSA has built an infrastructure that allows it to intercept almost everything. With this capability, the vast majority of human communications are automatically ingested without targeting. If I wanted to see your emails or your wife's phone, all I have to do is use intercepts. I can get your emails, passwords, phone records, credit cards.

"I don't want to live in a society that does these sort of things … I do not want to live in a world where everything I do and say is recorded. That is not something I am willing to support or live under."

Q: But isn't there a need for surveillance to try to reduce the chances of terrorist attacks such as Boston?

A: "We have to decide why terrorism is a new threat. There has always been terrorism. Boston was a criminal act. It was not about surveillance but good, old-fashioned police work. The police are very good at what they do."

Q: Do you see yourself as another Bradley Manning?

A: "Manning was a classic whistleblower. He was inspired by the public good."

Q: Do you think what you have done is a crime?

A: "We have seen enough criminality on the part of government. It is hypocritical to make this allegation against me. They have narrowed the public sphere of influence."

Q: What do you think is going to happen to you?

A: "Nothing good."

Q: Why Hong Kong?

A: "I think it is really tragic that an American has to move to a place that has a reputation for less freedom. Still, Hong Kong has a reputation for freedom in spite of the People's Republic of China. It has a strong tradition of free speech."

Q: What do the leaked documents reveal?

A: "That the NSA routinely lies in response to congressional inquiries about the scope of surveillance in America. I believe that when [senator Ron] Wyden and [senator Mark] Udall asked about the scale of this, they [the NSA] said it did not have the tools to provide an answer. We do have the tools and I have maps showing where people have been scrutinised most. We collect more digital communications from America than we do from the Russians."

Q: What about the Obama administration's protests about hacking by China?

A: "We hack everyone everywhere. We like to make a distinction between us and the others. But we are in almost every country in the world. We are not at war with these countries."

Q: Is it possible to put security in place to protect against state surveillance?

A: "You are not even aware of what is possible. The extent of their capabilities is horrifying. We can plant bugs in machines. Once you go on the network, I can identify your machine. You will never be safe whatever protections you put in place."

Q: Does your family know you are planning this?

A: "No. My family does not know what is happening … My primary fear is that they will come after my family, my friends, my partner. Anyone I have a relationship with …

I will have to live with that for the rest of my life. I am not going to be able to communicate with them. They [the authorities] will act aggressively against anyone who has known me. That keeps me up at night."

Q: When did you decide to leak the documents?

A: "You see things that may be disturbing. When you see everything you realise that some of these things are abusive. The awareness of wrong-doing builds up. There was not one morning when I woke up [and decided this is it]. It was a natural process.

"A lot of people in 2008 voted for Obama. I did not vote for him. I voted for a third party. But I believed in Obama's promises. I was going to disclose it [but waited because of his election]. He continued with the policies of his predecessor."

Q: What is your reaction to Obama denouncing the leaks on Friday while welcoming a debate on the balance between security and openness?

A: "My immediate reaction was he was having difficulty in defending it himself. He was trying to defend the unjustifiable and he knew it."

Q: What about the response in general to the disclosures?

A: "I have been surprised and pleased to see the public has reacted so strongly in defence of these rights that are being suppressed in the name of security. It is not like Occupy Wall Street but there is a grassroots movement to take to the streets on July 4 in defence of the Fourth Amendment called Restore The Fourth Amendment and it grew out of Reddit. The response over the internet has been huge and supportive."

Q: Washington-based foreign affairs analyst Steve Clemons said he overheard at the capital's Dulles airport four men discussing an intelligence conference they had just attended. Speaking about the leaks, one of them said, according to Clemons, that both the reporter and leaker should be "disappeared". How do you feel about that?

A: "Someone responding to the story said 'real spies do not speak like that'. Well, I am a spy and that is how they talk. Whenever we had a debate in the office on how to handle crimes, they do not defend due process – they defend decisive action. They say it is better to kick someone out of a plane than let these people have a day in court. It is an authoritarian mindset in general."

Q: Do you have a plan in place?

A: "The only thing I can do is sit here and hope the Hong Kong government does not deport me … My predisposition is to seek asylum in a country with shared values. The nation that most encompasses this is Iceland. They stood up for people over internet freedom. I have no idea what my future is going to be.

"They could put out an Interpol note. But I don't think I have committed a crime outside the domain of the US. I think it will be clearly shown to be political in nature."

Q: Do you think you are probably going to end up in prison?

A: "I could not do this without accepting the risk of prison. You can't come up against the world's most powerful intelligence agencies and not accept the risk. If they want to get you, over time they will."

Q: How to you feel now, almost a week after the first leak?

A: "I think the sense of outrage that has been expressed is justified. It has given me hope that, no matter what happens to me, the outcome will be positive for America. I do not expect to see home again, though that is what I want."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/09/nsa-whistleblower-edward-snowden-why?guni=Network%20front:network-front%20full-width-1%20bento-box:Bento%20box:Position4

[Bakes]

But it doesn't appear to be just 'a bit' of privacy being given up - it appears to be very sweeping and arbitrary in its reach.

What parameters are in place to ensure that these privileges they've endowed themselves with aren't abused? Is the public just supposed to take it for granted?

It IS just a bit.  I find it ironic that the Guardian is leading the charge in making the US out to be such a despotic state, surveilling citizens every activity... when in the UK there are cameras on every street corner and nobody complains about that.  The merits of such a real-time surveillance notwithstanding, even though it's monitoring activities in public, that would have a hard time flying in the US.

That bit of irony aside... no one is monitoring anyone's phone calls under this program.  Stuff that the phone company already has is being accessed.  Aggregate data is analyzed by computers to look for patterns of communication between the US and terrorism hotspots.  If a particular pattern draws scrutiny, or a particular person for that matter, then a court order (warrant) is sought from a federal judge.

What parameters are in place?  Just what I described.  The same parameters that are in place if the authorities want to come into your home or want to eavesdrop on your conversation... they need a warrant from a magistrate/judge.  There are no foolproof safeguards against abuse, police violate people's rights all the time, searching them without probable cause/warrants etc.  That doesn't mean that we should take away the police's power to search and arrest.  You put people in positions of authority and trust them to uphold the oaths they swear.  That obviously doesn't work all the time... hence why we end up with glory-seekers like Manning and now Snowden.

[Toppa]

But it doesn't appear to be just 'a bit' of privacy being given up - it appears to be very sweeping and arbitrary in its reach.

What parameters are in place to ensure that these privileges they've endowed themselves with aren't abused? Is the public just supposed to take it for granted?

It IS just a bit.  I find it ironic that the Guardian is leading the charge in making the US out to be such a despotic state, surveilling citizens every activity... when in the UK there are cameras on every street corner and nobody complains about that.  The merits of such a real-time surveillance notwithstanding, even though it's monitoring activities in public, that would have a hard time flying in the US.

That bit of irony aside... no one is monitoring anyone's phone calls under this program.  Stuff that the phone company already has is being accessed.  Aggregate data is analyzed by computers to look for patterns of communication between the US and terrorism hotspots.  If a particular pattern draws scrutiny, or a particular person for that matter, then a court order (warrant) is sought from a federal judge.

What parameters are in place?  Just what I described.  The same parameters that are in place if the authorities want to come into your home or want to eavesdrop on your conversation... they need a warrant from a magistrate/judge.  There are no foolproof safeguards against abuse, police violate people's rights all the time, searching them without probable cause/warrants etc.  That doesn't mean that we should take away the police's power to search and arrest.  You put people in positions of authority and trust them to uphold the oaths they swear.  That obviously doesn't work all the time... hence why we end up with glory-seekers like Manning and now Snowden.

Meh - I'll wait to see how this thing plays out. I idea that this level of surveillance was taking place with the public unbeknownst is what most people (probably) take ire with. I agree with what you said about the UK and their CCTV - I find it ridiculous but yet they seem to have a way of justifying it. And I know the Guardian was the first or one of the first to break the story, but they're usually always very in-depth so their coverage of this isn't out of the ordinary.

[Bakes]

Edward Snowden Q&A:

---------

Q: But isn't there a need for surveillance to try to reduce the chances of terrorist attacks such as Boston?

A: "We have to decide why terrorism is a new threat. There has always been terrorism. Boston was a criminal act. It was not about surveillance but good, old-fashioned police work. The police are very good at what they do."

Q: Do you see yourself as another Bradley Manning?

A: "Manning was a classic whistleblower. He was inspired by the public good."

Q: Do you think what you have done is a crime?

A: "We have seen enough criminality on the part of government. It is hypocritical to make this allegation against me. They have narrowed the public sphere of influence."

So his assertion is that Boston wasn't an act of terrorism, but rather a "criminal act"... the evidence notwithstanding? 

Had the CIA/FBI any reason to be suspicious of Tamerlan Tsarnaev the next step would have been to monitor his phone activity... what nonsense he really talking?  Tsarnaev was just able to avoid detection, otherwise someone like him is precisely who this program is designed to identify.

Then he calling Manning a "whistleblower" who was concerned about the public good.  How... by leaking diplomatic files that do nothing but embarrass the US government by showing them talking bad in private about the very people they feteing in public?  By disclosing information about, including the identities of undercover assets around the world?  How is that even remotely "inspired by the public good"?

And then he tries to justify his (in the least borderline) criminal behavior by saying that the US government engages in criminal behavior too... I suppose he's never heard that two wrongs don't make a right.

----------------------

Q: What do the leaked documents reveal?

A: "That the NSA routinely lies in response to congressional inquiries about the scope of surveillance in America. I believe that when [senator Ron] Wyden and [senator Mark] Udall asked about the scale of this, they [the NSA] said it did not have the tools to provide an answer. We do have the tools and I have maps showing where people have been scrutinised most. We collect more digital communications from America than we do from the Russians."

Of course we would collect more digital communications from America than from the Russians... we're not concerned with terrorist attacks emanating from Russia.  Now with new threats apparently emerging from places such as Dagestan that might change, but all of these terrorists need internal agents, so despite the email program being designed to chiefly monitor foreign parties, there will be some domestic monitoring as well.

Q: What about the Obama administration's protests about hacking by China?

A: "We hack everyone everywhere. We like to make a distinction between us and the others. But we are in almost every country in the world. We are not at war with these countries."

This cunniehole... this isn't merely about hacking... there's a difference between hacking and cyber attacks.  There have not been any cyber attacks against any foreign interests from the US because the US government aggressively prosecutes such actions. Meanwhile in the past year alone US entities, be it government agencies or private sector companies have been under withering attack from Iran and of late China.  How can you say "we hack everybody so we can't complain now"... what a deluded jackass.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/09/nsa-whistleblower-edward-snowden-why?guni=Network%20front:network-front%20full-width-1%20bento-box:Bento%20box:Position4

The more this dude opens his mouth the more I wish they extradite and prosecute his ass.  Just like Assange he has notions of some fictitious utopia in his head where terrorism doesn't exist and where there's no need for proactivity in countering it.  I hope he finds it in Iceland.