Inside the NSA

[QueEx]

Congressional Leaders Suggest Earlier Snowden Link to Russia
​

The New York Times
By ERIC SCHMITT and
DAVID E. SANGER
Januiary 19, 2014


WASHINGTON — The heads of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees suggested on Sunday that Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor, may have been working for Russian spy services while he was employed at an agency facility in Hawaii last year and before he disclosed hundreds of thousands of classified government documents.

The lawmakers, Representative Mike Rogers, Republican of Michigan, and Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, offered no specific evidence that Mr. Snowden cooperated with Moscow. So far, there has been no public indication that the F.B.I.'s investigation into Mr. Snowden’s actions, bolstered by separate “damage assessment” investigations at the N.S.A. and the Pentagon, has uncovered evidence that Mr. Snowden received help from a foreign intelligence service.

But Mr. Rogers, in particular, referred to a recent classified report by the Defense Intelligence Agency that he has described in other interviews as concluding that Mr. Snowden stole approximately 1.7 million intelligence files that concern vital operations of the United States Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force. He said that it would cost billions of dollars to change operations because of the security breaches.

The defense intelligence report remains classified, though some members of Congress have been briefed on it in recent weeks.

“I believe there’s questions to be answered there,” Mr. Rogers said on the NBC program “Meet the Press.” “I don’t think it was a gee-whiz luck event that he ended up in Moscow under the handling of the F.S.B.,” he said, referring to the Federal Security Service, the Russian state security organization that succeeded the K.G.B.

Ben Wizner, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who advises Mr. Snowden, said in a telephone interview on Sunday that the accusation that Mr. Snowden had been recruited by Russian spy services before he left Hawaii was “not only false, it is silly.”

Mr. Wizner also criticized Mr. Rogers’ description of the defense agency report as “exaggerated national security claims.”

A senior official with access to the intelligence on Mr. Snowden said that American suspicions had been raised in part because of changes that have taken place in information that Mr. Snowden is believed to have stored since he left the United States. Investigators believe that data is being stored by an Internet cloud service, though it is unclear who has access to it. The United States is concerned that Russian agents may have access to the data while Mr. Snowden is in the country under temporary asylum, or in exchange for his asylum.

“Something more was going on there, and because of the nature of the information that was stolen,” Mr. Rogers said in a separate appearance on the CBS News program “Face the Nation,” adding that it had “nothing to do with Americans’ privacy, a lot to do with our operations overseas.”

Ms. Feinstein, when asked by David Gregory, the host of “Meet the Press,” whether she agreed with Mr. Rogers that Mr. Snowden may have had help from the Russians, was more tentative: “He may well have. We don’t know at this stage.”

Both lawmakers said their committees would continue to pursue these suspicions.

Mr. Snowden has been living in Russia since June. In an interview with The New York Times last October, Mr. Snowden said he did not take any secret N.S.A. documents with him to Russia when he fled there, ensuring that Russian intelligence officials could not get access to them.

​

SOURCE

 

[playahaitian]

thanks

 

[QueEx]

NSA phone data collection far more limited
than had been disclosed​

WASHINGTON — Although U.S. intelligence officials have indicated since last summer that the National Security Agency was vacuuming up nearly every American telephone record for counter-terrorism investigations, officials acknowledged Friday that the spy agency collects data from less than a third of U.S. calls because it can't keep pace with cell phone usage.

In a speech last month, President Barack Obama called the bulk collection of telephone records the most controversial part of the debate over security and privacy sparked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden's leaks of classified material. Obama announced plans to impose greater judicial review on the program and to limit how it can be used.

But the NSA operation now seems far less pervasive than it appeared, raising questions about whether it is as essential a terrorist-fighting tool as the NSA and its supporters have argued.

Rather than sweeping in all U.S. call records, officials said, the NSA is gathering toll records from most domestic land line calls, but is incapable of collecting those from most cell phone or Internet calls. The details were first disclosed by The Washington Post.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because much of the program remains classified, said they did not correct the public record because they did not want to tip off potential adversaries to obvious gaps in the coverage.

"We didn't want to tell the bad guys to go out and get a cell phone," one senior intelligence official said.


The NSA aims to build the technical capacity over the next few years to collect toll records from every domestic land line and cell phone call, assuming Congress extends authority for Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act after it expires in June 2015.

Once the capacity is available, the agency would seek court orders to require telecommunications companies that do not currently deliver their records to the NSA to do so. The records contain phone numbers, times and lengths of each call, but not the content or anyone's name.

Civil liberties activists said the new disclosure did not change their view that the NSA database of billions of domestic call records was unnecessary and could lead to government abuse.

"I don't find this revelation very reassuring," Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said in an e-mail. "To accept their legal reasoning is to accept that they will eventually collect everything, even if they're not doing so already. They're arguing that they have the right to collect it all."

The NSA declined to discuss the gap. "While we are not going to discuss specific intelligence collection methods, we are always evaluating our activities to ensure they are keeping pace with changes in technology," Vanee M. Vines, a spokeswoman, said in a statement.

Two of the most vocal congressional critics of the NSA program, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, D-Vt., who heads the Senate Judiciary Committee, had no comment Friday, according to their aides. Both of those committees were informed of the coverage gap, officials said.

Other senior officials apparently were not told, however, or did not understand the program's reach.

A federal judge in New York who ruled in December that the government's collection of customer records from telecommunications companies was legal, for example, indicated that he believed the NSA operation covered virtually every domestic call.

"The blunt tool only works because it collects everything," District Judge William H. Pauley wrote. He said the government had invoked legal authority to collect "virtually all call detail records."

And in written testimony to the House Judiciary Committee this week, David Medine, chairman of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, which received classified briefings on the NSA systems and issued a lengthy report to Obama last month, said the program involved "ongoing collection of virtually all telephone records of every American."

Medine did not respond to a request for comment Friday.

By contrast, a presidential task force that included former acting CIA Director Michael Morell and former White House counter-terrorism adviser Richard Clarke hinted at the collection gap in a line buried in its 303-page report on NSA surveillance operations.

"The total amount of data collected and retained in the hypothetical version of Section 215 is much greater than the total amount of data collected and retained in the actual version," it said, adding that the NSA collects "only a small percentage of the total telephony metadata held by service providers."

The task force concluded that the phone records program "has contributed to its efforts to prevent possible terrorist attacks" at home and abroad but "was not essential to preventing attacks."

"One of the things that convinced us that the program couldn't be all that useful was that they weren't doing much with it and they weren't spending much money on it," said a source familiar with the inquiry, who declined to be identified when discussing confidential briefings. "It never appeared to us as a program they had valued very highly."

When White House officials told board members that the phone records were useful in ruling out participation by Americans in international terrorism plots, the board members responded, "How could you possibly clear somebody based on a database that didn't include the majority of the phones in the country?" the source said.

The NSA program was begun without court or congressional approval after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. A former senior NSA official said the agency obtained nearly all domestic call records from late 2001 through at least 2006, when the program was brought under the supervision of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

But in recent years, the explosive growth of mobile devices outpaced the NSA's capacity to digest the data. And American use of land line phones has plummeted: Less than half of U.S. households have or use a land line, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In his Jan. 17 speech, Obama said the collection of phone records was "designed to map the communications of terrorists" operating in the United States.

Although he said no abuses had been found, Obama said he would order a transition to end the program as it currently exists to ease concerns of potential abuses. The changes already have begun.



As of Thursday, the NSA must get a judge's approval each time it queries the database, not just the approval of a senior NSA official, as in the past, unless an emergency is under way. In addition, NSA analysts can pursue only phone calls that are two steps removed from a terrorist organization instead of three.

But Obama has found it more difficult to move the database out of government hands, as he also called for.

Telephone companies don't want to hold the vast data cache for the government, and the use of government contractors raises privacy and security concerns. Obama has given the intelligence community and the Justice Department a March 28 deadline to come up with a plan.
​

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/02/09/217514/nsa-phone-data-collection-far.html#storylink=cpy

 

[muckraker10021]

NSA Creates Worldwide "Orwellian" Police State
- Who Will Check Them??? -




March 2014



William Binney speaking in the video above — is one of the best mathematicians and code breakers in the world and worked at the National Security Agency (NSA) - America's premier covert intelligence gathering organization for 32 years before resigning in late 2001 because he "could not stay after the NSA began purposefully and illegally violating the Constitution". According to Binney it was then V.P. Dick Cheney who instructed NSA staff to break U.S. laws that had been in place since 1974, and to violate the U.S. constitution.

Binney explains in the video above how the NSA is effectively collecting everyone's electronic data (text, email, browsing history, phone calls, video chat, etc.) and storing the data in a massive facility in Utah. Edward Snowden's revelations have exposed the details of how these massive surveillance programs work and who is being targeted; - Snowden's documents of which only a small fraction have been revealed according to the journalists who have seen them, so far reveal that the NSA goal was to try to spy on almost everyone on earth.

The most ominous application of NSA spying in conjunction with other police organizations (FBI, DEA, CIA) is their use of a tactic they call "Parallel Construction". Using NSA obtained metadata, a prosecutor can construct a bogus case against a defendant and not share (discovery) the so-called evidence with your defense attorney which is the law. The prosecutor can use peripheral information constructed using the NSA obtained metadata to fabricate a case against a defendant. This is Kafkaesque synthetic terrorism which gives the 'State' the power to concoct false charges against virtually anyone and jail them.

Binney's presentation above is at Oxford University in England on March 2014.





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[SPECTRE1]

COINTELPRO analysis:

I think Edward Snowden could be another right wing hack similar to James O'Keefe. A guy inspired by right wing ideologies similar to the Boston Marathon bombers that go to Al Qaeda websites and becomes inspired to launch attacks on their own.

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James O'Keefe directly attacks the credibility of ACORN, a group that registers millions of voters, costing them millions of dollars in funding from the government and private donors. By discrediting this non-profit group, it harms the Democrats ability to register persons that demographically would vote for them. In the same manner, Edward Snowden may be attempting the same thing with the government, hoping through fear that people will reject government doing anything, especially the ACA. The full implementation of this law may have been the last straw.

Edward Snowden had this information and could have released it back in 2008 when the executive branch was under Republican stewardship. He has given substantial money to libertarian candidates in the past. Clearly, he is attempting to help his political cause, I don't think this information would have came out if a Republican president was in office. This political calculation is something a whistleblower would not do, if they are concerned about doing the right thing. For example, if a police department is engaging in corrupt practices by selling drugs, do you wait until the next mayor comes into office to see if they will fix the problem?

Whenever he speaks he only attacks the government conducting surveillance and never discusses anything the private sector may or may not be doing. His motives are questionable, however, based on possible reforms enacted, it should limit the possibility of abuse in the future.

 

[SPECTRE1]

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Notice how President Carter says he types up or writes letters (not using a computer) and drops it in the mail. If a former president is not safe from these programs, an American citizen stands no chance.

 

[Greed]

Debate: Was Edward Snowden Justified?

Debate: Was Edward Snowden Justified? (VIDEO / AUDIO)
by NPR STAFF
February 18, 2014 12:32 PM ET

Many people fervently consider alleged NSA leaker Edward Snowden a whistleblower who did a great service by revealing information about the U.S. government's secret surveillance programs. His release of highly classified national security documents, they argue, has sparked an important public debate that could ultimately force a needed overhaul of the NSA's surveillance programs.

Others feel just as strongly that Snowden is a traitor who has revealed highly sensitive information to unfriendly countries and put national security at risk. He undermined the NSA's ability to track important developments within al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups and in countries like Iran and Russia, his critics argue, and deserves to be prosecuted.

Two teams recently faced off on the motion "Snowden was justified" in an Oxford-style debate for Intelligence Squared U.S. In these events, the team that sways the most people by the end of the debate is declared the winner.

Those debating were:

AGAINST THE MOTION

Andrew C. McCarthy, a contributing editor at National Review and a senior fellow at the National Review Institute, is a former top federal prosecutor. A former chief assistant U.S. attorney, he is best known for leading the prosecution against Omar Abdel Rahman and 11 others for waging a terrorist war against the U.S., including the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and a plot to bomb New York City landmarks. After the 9/11 attacks, he supervised the U.S. Attorney's command post near Ground Zero and later served as an adviser to the deputy secretary of defense. He retired from government in 2003 and is the author of Willful Blindness and The Grand Jihad.

Ambassador R. James Woolsey, a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, chairs the board of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and is a venture partner with Lux Capital Management. Previously, he served in the U.S. government on five different occasions, where he held presidential appointments in two Republican and two Democratic administrations. In addition to heading the CIA, Woolsey served as ambassador to the negotiation on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, Vienna; undersecretary of the Navy and general counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services. Woolsey was also a vice president and officer of Booz Allen Hamilton and a partner at the D.C. law firm of Shea & Gardner, now Goodwin Procter, where he is currently of counsel.

FOR THE MOTION

Daniel Ellsberg is a former U.S. military analyst who, in 1971, leaked the Pentagon Papers, which revealed how the U.S. public had been misled about the Vietnam War. After serving in the Marine Corps, he became in 1959 a strategic analyst at the RAND Corporation and consultant to the White House and Defense Department, which he joined before transferring to the State Department to serve in Saigon. On return to RAND in 1967, Ellsberg worked on the top-secret McNamara study of U.S. decision-making in Vietnam, 1945-68 —the study that later became known as the Pentagon Papers. Ellsberg's trial on 12 felony counts was dismissed on grounds of governmental misconduct against him. Ellsberg is the author of several books, including Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers. He is now a senior fellow of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

Ben Wizner, legal adviser to Edward Snowden, directs the ACLU's Speech, Privacy and Technology Project, which is dedicated to protecting and expanding the freedoms of expression, association, and inquiry; expanding the right to privacy and increasing the control that individuals have over their personal information; and ensuring that civil liberties are enhanced rather than compromised by new advances in science and technology. He has litigated numerous cases involving post-9/11 civil liberties abuses, including challenges to airport security policies, government watchlists, extraordinary rendition and torture. Ben is a graduate of Harvard College and New York University School of Law and was a law clerk to the Hon. Stephen Reinhardt of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit.

http://www.npr.org/2014/02/18/279151014/debate-was-edward-snowden-justified

 

[QueEx]

Re: Debate: Was Edward Snowden Justified?

“United States of Secrets” ​

Airing May 13 through May 20, 2014 on PBS​

Check local listings​

​

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[QueEx]

Re: Debate: Was Edward Snowden Justified?

Snowden Is The Kind of Guy I Used to Recruit—in Russia
At the CIA, we knew that narcissistic under-achievers were
the easiest to turn. Now he’s put our whole country in danger


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​

In his new book, No Place to Hide, Glenn Greenwald tells how Edward Snowden once confided to him, “with a hint of embarrassment,” how much he had learned from playing video games. In the black-and-white world of video games, “the protagonist is often an ordinary person, who finds himself faced with grave injustices from powerful forces and has the choice to flee in fear or to fight for his beliefs,” Greenwald writes.

But Edward Snowden’s video-game world is not the real world. I see Snowden in a very different light. My colleagues and I spent our careers in the CIA looking for people like him—on the other side, that is. We worked hard to locate the kind of person who could be persuaded to give up his country’s secrets: narcissistic, often delusional under-achievers whom we could hope to turn into loose-lipped sources in our enemies’ camps and other hostile locations. We understood just how valuable it was to every aspect of our foreign policy to know the plans and intentions of our enemies; the best way to do this was to look for a source and exploit people like Snowden, the National Security Agency leaker, * to target for this purpose.

The Russians weren’t slouches either in searching for sources of classified information. They were looking for their Snowdens too. You don’t have to go back too far to see their success in recruiting American spies with unique access – John Anthony Walker, Aldreich Ames, and Robert Hanssen – who did immense damage to our national security. Moreover, Ames and Hanssen’s compromises led to the death of many of our top Russian sources. Walker’s compromise, by contrast, allowed the Soviets to know the locations of U.S. submarines around the world. One shudders to think what more could have been done against us if they had had Snowden’s access to sensitive communications and his technical know-how on how to extract it from the system. Some people think of Snowden as a latter-day Daniel Ellsberg, a noble whistle-blower. Clearly I do not.

For those who believe that the United States should step back from its engagement from the world, toning down our robust national security and dramatically shrinking our defense and intelligence community, Greenwald’s rationale and Snowden’s behavior might appear to vaguely honorable. And in this next round of debate, the emphasis will once again be on the domestic side of Snowden’s disclosures, as opposed to the enormous international damage done to our country’s self-defense by his revelations.

The picture looks different for those who believe, as I do, that the world is still a very dangerous place and that America faces grave challenges from a range of threats as it plays its essential role as guarantor of global peace: terrorism and instability across the Middle East; China’s military muscle-flexing in Asia; and Putin’s imperial designs in Ukraine and potentially towards other neighbors. From this perspective, Snowden’s actions are deeply troubling in that they directly caused a serious loss of capability to understand the plans and intentions of current and future adversaries. Snowden single-handedly blinded us to critical targets and eliminated our ability to see what some of the key players on the international stage are up to. From first-hand experience, I can state unequivocally that the capability to do this comes at incredibly great cost in time, money and personal sacrifice.

As James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in January, Snowden’s disclosures constituted “the most massive and damaging theft of intelligence in our history.” He added that “we’ve lost critical foreign intelligence collection sources, including some shared with us by valued partners. … Terrorists and other adversaries of this country are going to school on U.S. intelligence sources, methods and tradecraft, and the insights they are gaining are making our job much, much harder.”

This is a very hard subject for government officials to talk about without compromising additional capabilities (even this article had to be approved by the CIA’s Publications Review Board). However, only a cursory reading of our history reveals just how important gaining access to the dispatches of our enemies has been in every war since the American Revolution. Moreover, this activity has been authorized by all of our presidents since George Washington. Protestations aside, every nation uses its technical collection capabilities to the maximum in the international arena, and will continue to do so as long as international conflicts are with us. No one should doubt that our adversaries and some of our fair-weather friends are cheering the loss caused by Snowden.


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Within five months of the leaks by Edward Snowden in June of last year, Recorded Future, a Cambridge, Mass., firm that specializes in web intelligence, says it observed an increased pace of innovation by radical groups, specifically new competing jihadist platforms and three major new encryption tools from three different organizations. | Recorded Future



But, to give the devil his due, let’s look at Snowden’s domestic revelations about U.S. citizens’ privacy, which have drawn most of the attention and concern from the American people. It is eminently clear that the intelligence community, Congress and the White House are struggling with the double-edged sword of privacy and national security, particularly as technology progresses at unprecedented speed. And I am reasonably optimistic that, despite the public hand-wringing, they will quickly come up with the right balance that protects our civil liberties and doesn’t cripple our intelligence collection against our enemies, who do, at times, operate in and cooperate with U.S. citizens. When the news cameras stop rolling, these officials all know just how vital these collection platforms are to our defense while at the same time truly appreciating the value of the law and the importance of protection of our citizens’ rights. Nevertheless, implementation won’t be an easy task, and it certainly won’t take place above the requisite Washington self-serving politics.

Debates about civil rights and national defense aside, it is worth talking about Snowden’s motivations before we determine, finally, if he is a sinner, saint or something in between. We must first appreciate just how critical protecting secrets is to our national security, a point that seems to be lost on many participants of this debate. As someone who spent an entire career in the intelligence community, what flashes through my mind first is old the World War II adage, “Loose Lips Sink Ships.” In those first days of the OSS, the predecessor to the CIA, no one had to explain to our people – not to mention our troops — how important secrecy was to operational success. Nor should it be necessary to explain it in the age of terrorism and permanent conflict. But it seems that, today, we do.

It is inconceivable that any country can last long without guarding its sensitive information and capabilities and washing people like Snowden out of the system. Once you accept this principle, it’s becomes imperative that our national security agencies and departments demand all government employees abide by the rules, and expect them to be held accountable when they don’t.

Clearly, Snowden and his supporters see it otherwise. But if Snowden felt the NSA was breaking the law or in violation of accepted human rights principles, he should have stood tall in his job and challenged his superiors verbally and in writing, and if necessary taken his concerns to the Inspector General or General Counsel. If he didn’t get satisfaction there, he should have requested that the Congressional Intelligence Oversight Committees hear him out. There is, in fact, a mechanism in place already to do this. He almost certainly would have gotten his hearing, and appropriate action would have been taken if his position had merit. He knew it didn’t, since each of those committees had in fact already been briefed on those programs, and there is no indication that he took any action whatsoever in this regard.

In that vein, and moreover, why did Snowden cut and run in the style of past defectors like Kim Philby to Russia in the 60’s and Philip Agee to Cuba in 70’s, not to mention the dozens of other traitors that defected on both sides of the Iron Curtain during the Cold War? There is no doubt in anyone’s mind, including Greenwald’s, that Snowden knew just how much destruction he had done with the information he stole about our national security. What’s more, he knew full well what he was doing when he put himself in the hands of the Russians. He is both naive and delusional if he believes they will keep him around once they have gotten what they want from him, both in terms of intelligence and propaganda value. It is then that he will learn, like the others before him that have fallen into this trap, that when he truly becomes a “man without a country, “ he will have to pay for his keep. He has set a course that will inevitably lead him to disillusionment, despair and guilt.

Like the video-game fanatic he appears to have been, Snowden has made black-and-white what is actually a very complex issue. For most of our history, it was relatively easy to draw a line between domestic and foreign intelligence. For years there were rigid policies set in place that rightly prohibited NSA, CIA, and FBI from collecting on American “persons” (including green-card holders), unless there was a court order demonstrating reasonable cause. The Snowden documents actually reveal the use of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to gain permission to collect very specific metadata on American citizens for the purposes of tracking suspected terrorists.

It does appear that, unfortunately, the court was overly friendly to the governments’ requests. Consequently, there are a few sensible reforms being put forward to improve the process, including the formation of an independent panel to oversee the activities of the FISC and the relocation of stored metadata outside the NSA. But again, there were ways for Snowden to achieve these ends without betraying his country.

And we must face the fact that it is never going to be easy again to draw that traditional line between domestic and foreign intelligence. The fact remains that with the truly universal explosion of technology, communications, and data movement, as well as connectivity and storage, the government and private sector will continue to struggle with how best to exploit the information available for the purposes of defense and security, while steering clear of unnecessary intrusions into our private lives.

If Snowden really believes in accountability, as he has espoused so often, he should let it start at home and put himself in the hands of the U.S. judicial system, the most impartial in the world, and certainly in contrast to Snowden’s new homeland. If he has a case, he will be exonerated, and if not, he will serve a very long jail sentence. As long as he stays in Russia, Snowden is telling the world that this is a risk he knows he can’t take.


Jack Devine is a former head of the CIA’s Directorate of Operations and president of the Arkin Group, a New York-based firm that specializes in crisis management. He is author of Good Hunting: An American Spymaster’s Story, which is scheduled to be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux next month.
​

Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/st...to-recruitin-russia-106648.html#ixzz31h5Pas1z

 

[SPECTRE1]

NSA Watchlists

I already know that am on some watchlist for awhile which sucks, forcing me to possibly leave the country. I have done nothing wrong. We need to have an international meeting and architect a new internet, I have a couple ideas regarding email to secure.

 

[SPECTRE1]

After Losing Billions, U.S. Companies Find Collaborating with the NSA is Costly

Future features that are coming to Email, after doing a new cost-benefit analysis that factors in millions of people dumping their service...

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/google-microsoft-yahoo-facebook-security,27410.html


We need End to End encryption to be a standard, not something that will cause you to be red flagged and put you under even worse suffocating surveillance, similar to what I have been experiencing.

This is an example of a cloud service advertising disadvantages to using services based in the US

 

[Greed]

U.S. Spy Agency Reports Improper Surveillance of Americans

U.S. Spy Agency Reports Improper Surveillance of Americans
By David Lerman
Dec 24, 2014 4:07 PM CT

The National Security Agency today released reports on intelligence collection that may have violated the law or U.S. policy over more than a decade, including unauthorized surveillance of Americans’ overseas communications.

The NSA, responding to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit from the American Civil Liberties Union, released a series of required quarterly and annual reports to the President’s Intelligence Oversight Board that cover the period from the fourth quarter of 2001 to the second quarter of 2013.

The heavily-redacted reports include examples of data on Americans being e-mailed to unauthorized recipients, stored in unsecured computers and retained after it was supposed to be destroyed, according to the documents. They were posted on the NSA’s website at around 1:30 p.m. on Christmas Eve.

In a 2012 case, for example, an NSA analyst “searched her spouse’s personal telephone directory without his knowledge to obtain names and telephone numbers for targeting,” according to one report. The analyst “has been advised to cease her activities,” it said.

Other unauthorized cases were a matter of human error, not intentional misconduct.

Last year, an analyst “mistakenly requested” surveillance “of his own personal identifier instead of the selector associated with a foreign intelligence target,” according to another report.

Unauthorized Surveillance

In 2012, an analyst conducted surveillance “on a U.S. organization in a raw traffic database without formal authorization because the analyst incorrectly believed that he was authorized to query due to a potential threat,” according to the fourth-quarter report from 2012. The surveillance yielded nothing.

The NSA’s intensified communications surveillance programs initiated after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington unleashed an international uproar after they were disclosed in classified documents leaked by fugitive former contractor Edward Snowden last year.

No New Legislation

Congress has considered but not passed new legislation to curb the NSA’s collection of bulk telephone calling and other electronic data.

The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, created by lawmakers under post-Sept. 11 anti-terrorism laws, issued a 238-page report in January urging the abolition of the bulk collection of Americans’ phone records. The five-member board said the program has provided only “minimal” help in thwarting terrorist attacks.

The ACLU, which filed a lawsuit to access the reports, said the documents shed light on how the surveillance policies of NSA impact Americans and how information has sometimes been misused.

“The government conducts sweeping surveillance under this authority -— surveillance that increasingly puts Americans’ data in the hands of the NSA,” Patrick C. Toomey, staff attorney with the ACLU’s National Security Project, said in an e-mail.

No Oversight

“Despite that fact, this spying is conducted almost entirely in secret and without legislative or judicial oversight,” he said.

The reports show greater oversight by all three branches of government is needed, Toomey added.

The ACLU filed suit to turn a spotlight on an executive order governing intelligence activities that was first issued by President Ronald Reagan in 1981 and has been modified many times since then.

The order allows the NSA to conduct surveillance outside the U.S. While the NSA by law can’t deliberately intercept messages from Americans, it can collect messages that get vacuumed up inadvertently as part of its surveillance of foreigners overseas.

Masking Identities

After foreign intelligence is acquired, “it must be analyzed to remove or mask certain protected categories of information, including U.S. person information, unless specific exceptions apply,” the NSA said in a statement before posting the documents.

The extent of that collection has never been clear.

The agency said today it has multiple layers of checks in place to prevent further errors in intelligence gathering and retention.

“The vast majority of compliance incidents involve unintentional technical or human error,” NSA said in its executive summary. “NSA goes to great lengths to ensure compliance with the Constitution, laws and regulations.”

Report Violations

The intelligence community is required to report potential violations to the oversight board, as well as the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

In some cases, surveillance of foreign targets continued even when those targets were in the U.S., although such “non-compliant data” were later purged, according to the reports released today.

Some analysts sent intelligence information to other analysts who weren’t authorized to receive it, according to the documents. That information was deleted from recipients’ files when discovered.

Because of the extensive redactions, the publicly available documents don’t make clear how many violations occurred and how many were unlawful. While the reports contain no names or details of specific cases, they show how intelligence analysts sometimes have violated policy to conduct unauthorized surveillance work.

‘Intentional Misuse’

The NSA’s inspector general last year detailed 12 cases of “intentional misuse” of intelligence authorities from 2003 to 2013 in a letter to Senator Charles Grassley, of Iowa, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Those cases included a member of a U.S. military intelligence unit who violated policy by obtaining the communications of his wife, who was stationed in another country. After a military proceeding, the violator was punished by a reduction in rank, 45 days of extra duty and forfeiture of half of his pay for two months, according to the letter.

In a 2003 case, a civilian employee ordered intelligence collection “of the telephone number of his foreign-national girlfriend without an authorized purpose for approximately one month” to determine whether she was being faithful to him, according to the letter. The employee retired before an investigation could be completed.

Ignoring Restrictions

The NSA acknowledged last year that some of its analysts deliberately ignored restrictions on their authority to spy on Americans multiple times in the past decade.

“Over the past decade, very rare instances of willful violations of NSA’s authorities have been found,” the agency said in a statement to Bloomberg News in August 2013. “NSA takes very seriously allegations of misconduct, and cooperates fully with any investigations -- responding as appropriate.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-...-reports-documenting-surveillance-errors.html

 

[Greed]

NSA chief declines comment on spyware reports, says programs lawful

NSA chief declines comment on spyware reports, says programs lawful
Reuters
By Warren StrobelFebruary 23, 2015

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The head of the National Security Agency refused to comment on Monday on reports that the U.S. government implants spyware on computer hard drives for surveillance purposes, saying "we fully comply with the law."

U.S. Navy Admiral Michael Rogers was responding to reports that the NSA had embedded spyware in computers on a vast scale and that along with its British counterpart, had hacked into the world's biggest manufacturer of cellphone SIM cards.

"Clearly I'm not going to get into the specifics of allegations. But the point I would make is, we fully comply with the law," Rogers said at a Washington forum sponsored by the New America think-tank.

The Moscow-based security software maker Kaspersky Lab said last week that spies had figured out how to embed spy software deep within hard drives by Western Digital, Seagate, Toshiba and other top manufacturers, giving the agency the means to eavesdrop on a majority of the world's computers. Former NSA operatives told Reuters the agency was behind the campaign.

Another report, based on documents provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden and published by the Intercept site, said the U.S. agency and its British counterpart hacked into Gemalto, which produces SIM cards. That would potentially allow intelligence agencies to monitor the calls, texts and emails of billions of people, the report said.

Rogers, whose agency has come under intense scrutiny since 2013 when Snowden exposed details of its widespread surveillance programs, said: "I am not going to chase every allegation out there. I don't have time."

Even as he declined comment on the reports of aggressive NSA operations, Rogers argued that U.S. intelligence, along with law enforcement agencies, needs the legal means to break strong encryption increasingly built into operating systems such as those of Apple or Google.

"Most of the debate that I've seen has been, 'It's all or nothing. It's either total encryption or no encryption at all,'" Rogers said.

If a specific phone is being used to commit a crime or threaten national security, "can't there be a legal framework for how we access that?" he asked.

https://www.yahoo.com/tech/s/nsa-chief-declines-spyware-reports-says-program-lawful-165151585.html

 

[QueEx]

Inside the NSA, or

One shot dead at Fort Meade
after trying to ram NSA gate​

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4WvWp3yc6Sk" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

​

Two people tried to ram the main gate to enter the headquarters of the National Security Agency at Fort Meade, Maryland on Monday, according to a federal law enforcement official briefed on the investigation. An NSA police officer shot one of the people dead and seriously injured the second.

A law enforcement official had previously reported that both of the people involved were men. Aerial shots show two vehicles at an intersection that appear to be damaged.

The FBI said Monday morning that it was conducting an investigation with NSA police and other law enforcement agencies, and interviewing witnesses on the scene. The incident took place near one of the gates to the complex, far from the main buildings. The FBI said they did not think terrorism was related to the incident.

"We are working with the US Attorney's Office in Maryland to determine if federal charges are warranted," the FBI said in a statement.​

http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/30/us/fort-meade-nsa-incident/

 

[SPECTRE1]

The Stasi was taken down by the citizens storming the buildings, a direct frontal assault may be the only way to shut this unconstitutional program down. We need to put some fear in the government, you can see that fear in Egypt - after the government getting tossed twice. The government in the U.S. is flippant, arrogant, and corrupt.

We need to take the people inside and hood them up, put them in orange jumpsuits.

Berlin. At 5 P.M., the first demonstrators climbed the gate. Under pressure from the masses, the police opened the steel entry gate to the headquarters of the former Office of State Security in Berlin. Tens of thousands stormed the entrances on Rusche and Normannen streets. On banners and in chants they expressed their indignation at the hesitant dissolution of the state security service in Berlin, crying “Stasi to the mines,” “Down with the Stasi,” and “No pardon for the Stasi or there’ll be trouble.”

The New Forum had called for a peaceful “demonstration against Stasi and Nasi*” last Thursday during a demonstration at the*Volkskammer. But as events progressed on Monday, the organizers gradually lost control.

The first to enter charged to House 18, a block of offices and supply rooms. Stones smashed the glass entrance, clearing the way into the building. A large, howling crowd stormed the multistory building. Papers and furniture flew to the pavement from shattered windows. Rioters destroyed the rooms and plundered anything not tied down in offices, the cafeteria, a book store, and a theater box office.

Appeals for non-violence and calm remained unheeded for a long time. Equally ineffective at first were pleas from members of a citizens’ committee who, in a security partnership with the*Volkspolizei*and the military prosecutor’s office, had already begun to take charge of rooms in the large complex that afternoon. Committee members profited from experience already gained in dissolving offices in their home districts. Members of the citizens’ committee appealed repeatedly for maintenance of the security partnership. They said they intended to have the buildings occupied around the clock by Wednesday.

In House 18, organizers and demonstrators who felt the destruction had gone too far attempted to restore order. They insisted over and over that people leave the building, and stopped the rioters. They confiscated plundered inventory such as books, computer disks, telephones, uniform parts, documents, etc. Those who behaved calmly in this way were subjected to insults such as “Are you the new Stasi?” and “They persecuted us for forty years, now we can smash all this.” Others had smeared the walls with oil paint and spray cans. There were also slogans on the outer walls and windows. Side by side on House 21: “We don’t need anyone listening in on us” and “The VEB Steremat urgently needs lathe operators. Telephone 27 14/221.” Symbolic walls were set up in the inner courtyard and outside both entrances.

 

[SPECTRE1]

<iframe width="853" height="480" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/I6UuWrVzys4" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

I am crowdfunding orange jumpsuits and building realistic looking military bases and government buildings so that we can train taking these facilities down, that are being used for mass surveillance.

Just as they are training at replica buildings that look like American towns.

<iframe width="853" height="480" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/zE9yO2QcGXc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

 

[SPECTRE1]

Unless the government owns the fiber optic cable, any information they obtain requires a court order for any internet traffic seized domestically on American soil. Once the international comingles with domestic, the international traffic get 4th Amendment. It would be similar to an illegal alien on American soil living with American citizens, the government has to provide Constitutional rights and due process. Once the government intercepts any traffic on American soil, they are accessing business records without a court order, even if that person is living in another country.

I would also say that any domestic traffic anywhere precludes the government from intercepting anything on the internet.

They can't attach equipment prospectively to intercept traffic as shown above. It would be similar to the government installing listening devices in every house or car in the event that a person commits a crime.

Finally, businesses can't be forced to retain records so that the government can get them to charge you with a crime.

The Patriot Act and some of the activities of the NSA have been violations of the law for years.


Based on my observation, I don't think the US will not lose a step in spying on people, it will be classified as illegal. Being illegal won't stop these assholes, the DOJ won't look into it.

The standards for who gets this information is low, any piece of garbage that knows the right people can spy on other people.

 

[SPECTRE1]

I looked over the bill, it looks like bulk collection of internet traffic and emails will continue. It does not specially address this type of data.

Your phone call metadata will require a court order but who gives a fuck?

I would avoid all U.S. based companies, I have switched my emails to an overseas company.


<div class="vox-cardstack"><a href="http://www.vox.com/cards/nsa-and-ed-snowden">The NSA spying debate, explained</a></div>
<script src="//embed.vox.com/cardstack.js"></script>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)

The documents identified several technology companies as participants in the PRISM program, including Microsoft in 2007, Yahoo! in 2008, Google in 2009, Facebook in 2009, Paltalk in 2009, YouTube in 2010, AOL in 2011, Skype in 2011 and Apple in 2012.[23] The speaker's notes in the briefing document reviewed by The Washington Post indicated that "98 percent of PRISM production is based on Yahoo, Google and Microsoft"


Does the NSA have other controversial powers besides those in the Patriot Act?

In the last two years, most of the public debate over NSA legislation has focused on the Patriot Act, and specifically Section 215. That's the legal provision the government cites to justify its controversial collection of Americans' phone calling records. But the Patriot Act isn't the only legal power that has raised concerns among civil libertarians.

Another controversial power comes from the 2008 FISA Amendments Act. Section 702 of that legislation allows certain forms of warrantless surveillance inside the United States. While that law doesn't allow the government to "target" Americans, the agency is allowed to collect communications to which an American is a party.

In 2013, we learned that the government has used this authority to create PRISM, a program that allows the NSA to gain warrantless access to private user data on popular online services. According to a document that Ed Snowden provided to the Washington Post and the Guardian, the NSA can use the system to obtain private data from users of Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, and Apple services.

Some critics argue that Section 702 violates the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, which requires a warrant based on individualized suspicion before the government can spy on Americans. But the Supreme Court has not ruled on the question so far.

A third controversial spying power comes from a presidential decree known as Executive Order 12,333. Little is known about what programs this executive order authorizes or how many Americans have their personal information collected under these programs. But at least one government whistleblower has argued that "Americans should be even more concerned about the collection and storage of their communications under Executive Order 12333 than under Section 215."

The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a freedom-of-information lawsuit seeking more details about how Executive Order 12,333 has been used.

 

[SPECTRE1]

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/...-celebrate-what-we-mourn-and-where-we-go-here

The USA Freedom Act shows that the digital rights community has leveled up. We’ve gone from just killing bad bills to passing bills that protect people’s rights.

We’re going to need those skills as we turn to our larger mission: ending overbroad surveillance of our digital lives. EFF has been in legal battles to stop the NSA’s mass Internet surveillance since January 2006. While the USA Freedom Act may have neutered the phone records surveillance program and provided much needed transparency to the secretive FISA Court overseeing the spying, it didn’t solve the broader digital surveillance problem. That’s still firmly on our agenda.

Certain provisions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Amendments Act are scheduled to sunset in 2017, including Section 702, one of the main legal authorities the government relies on to engage in mass surveillance of people’s online communications. We’re going to campaign for the reform—or expiration—of Section 702 in the next year and a half, using the resources, communities, networks, and many of the strategies we developed in the battle around the USA Freedom Act.

We’ve also been speaking out publicly against Executive Order 12333, an executive order that the NSA relies on for most of its digital surveillance of people worldwide. We’ll be launching a big campaign to attack this Executive Order, putting pressure on President Obama. Our goal is to get the president to address the biggest problems with EO 12333 with a new executive order before he leaves office.

Above all, we’re taking aim at the problem of overclassification. The government has used secrecy and the claim of national security interests to ward off public oversight. No reform can be effective unless we bring more sunlight into how the government is interpreting the law and the surveillance programs it is turning against law-abiding citizens. This necessitates an overhauling of the classification system, reforms to the security clearance process, strong protections for whistleblowers, even more transparency to the FISA Court, and addressing the abuses of the state secrets privilege.

The USA Freedom Act will likely affect EFF’s ongoing litigation against the NSA, including Smith v. Obama, First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles v. NSA, and Jewel v. NSA cases, all of which include claims against phone records surveillance. It will also affect several cases in which we serve as amicus (including Klayman v Obama and ACLU v. Clapper). How we proceed in each of these cases will play out in the coming weeks and months. But whatever happens, we will continue fighting in the courts to ensure that the government does not exceed its statutory authority to spy or violate our constitutional rights.

We fought hard to get to this moment in history. Our long-term goals are ambitious—the end of overbroad surveillance of all digital communications, a recognition of the privacy rights of people outside the United States, and strong accountability and oversight for surveillance practices. Today’s Senate vote did not accomplish these things, but it did move us a bit closer. It also demonstrated the political will and organization of the digital rights community, which we know will continue to fight for stronger reforms. It will also hopefully embolden Congress to feel that they can bring a sensible balance to surveillance policy and practice. We extend our thanks to all of our supporters across the globe who fought so hard to bring us to this historic moment, and we look forward to working alongside you as we continue to curb abuses by the surveillance state in the years to come.

This is to divert our attention before elections, make it look like reform has taken place, put Rand Paul in a good spotlight, a presidential hopeful. This other bulk digital surveillance such as PRISM will continue. The media tried to portray this as real reform when it is nothing. It all looked synchronize, no coverage discussing bulk internet surveillance, DPRK like. Digital surveillance and human intelligence is what drives the government to look at your phone records. Once the elections take place, the other section will remain.

You can't do anything with phone records anyway until somebody does something online or human imtelligence.

This type of deception and depravity is consistent, No wonder we have pedophiles as speaker of the house. Osama Bin Laden terrorist act on 9/11 would be similar to a suicide bomber going into a NAMBLA meeting with pedophiles, unknown to this person. You are appalled but you are not going out your way to protect them in the future, it was a non event. Here we need to go back to minimum wage airport security, removing the equipment that can see you naked, open cockpit doors, and repealing the Patriot act. When Al Qaeda targets a bus of farm workers or other hard working Americans than we should have taken action and gone to war.



His target was politicians(directly) and Wall Street(indirectly), people that would cut your food stamps while increasing the military budget, raise the retirement age, not provide housing for everybody while voting for tax breaks for the rich, give you a toxic mortgage wiping you out causing suicide/homelessness for families, sell you on trade deals that would cause millions to lose their jobs to get campaign funding. The WTC would have been the Mecca of subprime loans.

All this shit (wars, surveillance) is to protect these depraved individuals and is not my problem. Just like a pedophile in prison, we need to ignore their pleas for help when they get assaulted or shanked.

 

[SPECTRE1]

COINTELPRO analysis:

These faux reforms may have been attempts to lull Edward Snowden back to the United States where he would have been put in 24 hour solitary confinement and tortured. Edward Snowden, believing that he was vindicated would have left Russia for the U.S. thinking that he would get a fair trial and believing Congress was on his side.

The U.S. has attempted to intimidate Russia through their actions with Ukraine, force them to abandon Snowden. The U.S. will create an unrelated issue with something else, but it is due to their actions to provide political asylum. This did not work and they have gone to Plan B which is fooling Snowden into believing the political climate has changed and that he has the support of Congress and the Courts.

This did not work and Russia has stood tall, in the face of mounting pressure from the U.S. We should commend their actions, in the face of unwarranted and unjustified pressure.

 

[QueEx]

COINTELPRO analysis:

These faux reforms may have been attempts to lull Edward Snowden back to the United States where he would have been put in 24 hour solitary confinement and tortured. Edward Snowden, believing that he was vindicated would have left Russia for the U.S. thinking that he would get a fair trial and believing Congress was on his side.

Damn. Too bad it didn't work. I'd like to see him stand trial.

 

[thoughtone]

source: The Hill

Sanders wants privacy panel in defense bill

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) wants to create a panel to investigate the impact of modern technology on privacy as part of an annual defense bill.

Sanders, who is running for the Democratic presidential nomination, has filed an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) to establish a "commission on privacy rights in the digital age."

The panel would study how the government, as well as private companies, collect data on Americans and how the data is used, and make recommendations on any changes needed to protect privacy.

"Innovations in technology have led to the exponential expansion of data collection by both the public and private sectors," according to the amendment.

Sanders voted against the USA Freedom Act, which reforms the National Security Agency's collection of bulk phone metadata.

He suggested at the time the legislation doesn't go far enough to protect Americans' privacy.

“Technology has significantly outpaced public policy," he said in a statement earlier this week. "There is a huge amount of information being collected on our individual lives ranging from where we go to the books we buy and the magazines we read. We need to have a discussion about that.”

The two-year panel, which would have subpoena power, would also investigate how data collection has changed and any implications on areas including surveillance and hiring practices.

 

[SPECTRE1]

We need a high level federal agency with statutory authority to enforce privacy laws in the private sector and government. Too much info is getting into the hands of the wrong people who abuse it to terrorize reporters, whistleblowers, and citizens like me.

I find the US is unlivable with people spouting off your bank balance, car stalking and tracking, and internet surveillance. I get to the point sometimes when I just want to blow people heads off with a gun, especially white trash and police that follow me around everywhere.

I should not have to go back to the 1980 technology to regain my life.

 

[Mrfreddygoodbud]

the govt is full of shit just proves


whould good are checks and balances,


if nothing gets checked or balanced..


just proves everybody is watching us,


and NOBODY watching wall street and

the top one percent


why isnt nsa investigating those bastards


we have zero Idea, who the real enemies

and terrorist are..


and if we do, what are w gonna do..


nothing


because we are stupid sheep that rather fight

each other all day..

 

[Mrfreddygoodbud]

Damn. Too bad it didn't work. I'd like to see him stand trial.

you are one of the really good sheep..


you set the standard.....


you have no idea who the real terrorist are

do you?

you reallly think you have a govt dont you???

 

[SPECTRE1]

We need to create a caste system where politicians, pedophiles, and Wall Street are at the bottom or untouchable (No. 16) and the rest of us are above them. That way people plotting another attack will know who is important and who is inconsequential.

 

[KingAddies]

Does this work (Freezing credit reporting)
Colin Rating 2/5 stars
http://krebsonsecurity.com/2015/06/...g-and-embrace-the-security-freeze/#more-31191

first few paragraphs:


How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Embrace the Security Freeze

If you’ve been paying attention in recent years, you might have noticed that just about everyone is losing your personal data. Even if you haven’t noticed (or maybe you just haven’t actually received a breach notice), I’m here to tell you that if you’re an American, your basic personal data is already for sale. What follows is a primer on what you can do to avoid becoming a victim of identity theft as a result of all this data (s)pillage.
Click here for a primer on identity theft protection services.

Click here for a primer on identity theft protection services.

A seemingly never-ending stream of breaches at banks, healthcare providers, insurance companies and data brokers has created a robust market for thieves who sell identity data. Even without the help of mega breaches like the 80 million identities leaked in the Anthem compromise or last week’s news about 4 million records from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management gone missing, crooks already have access to the information needed to open new lines of credit or file phony tax refund requests in your name.

If your response to this breachapalooza is to do what each of the breached organizations suggest — to take them up on one or two years’ worth of free credit monitoring services — you might sleep better at night but you will probably not be any more protected against crooks stealing your identity. As I discussed at length in this primer, credit monitoring services aren’t really built to prevent ID theft. The most you can hope for from a credit monitoring service is that they give you a heads up when ID theft does happen, and then help you through the often labyrinthine process of getting the credit bureaus and/or creditors to remove the fraudulent activity and to fix your credit score.

In short, if you have already been victimized by identity theft (fraud involving existing credit or debit cards is not identity theft), it might be worth paying for these credit monitoring and repair services (although more than likely, you are already eligible for free coverage thanks to a recent breach at any one of dozens of companies that have lost your information over the past year). Otherwise, I’d strongly advise you to consider freezing your credit file at the major credit bureaus.

There is shockingly little public knowledge or education about the benefits of a security freeze, also known as a “credit freeze.” I routinely do public speaking engagements in front of bankers and other experts in the financial industry, and I’m amazed at how often I hear from people in this community who are puzzled to learn that there is even such a thing as a security freeze (to be fair, most of these people are in the business of opening new lines of credit, not blocking such activity).

Also, there is a great deal of misinformation and/or bad information about security freezes available online. As such, I thought it best to approach this subject in the form of a Q&A, which is the most direct method I know how to impart knowledge about a subject in way that is easy for readers to digest.

click the link for the rest
http://krebsonsecurity.com/2015/06/...g-and-embrace-the-security-freeze/#more-31191