Microsoft, Google sue US for right to reveal nature of surveillance requests

Microsoft, Google sue US for right to reveal nature of surveillance requests
Published time: August 31, 2013 02:20
http://rt.com/usa/microsoft-google-lawsuit-surveillance-241/

Microsoft and Google announced Friday they are going forward with a lawsuit against the US government for the right to reveal more information about official requests for customer data by American intelligence.

The companies originally filed suits in June following revelations provided by Edward Snowden of their relationship with the National Security Agency and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which oversees the government’s requests of the companies’ systems.

Microsoft’s general counsel Brad Smith announced the companies were following through with a suit, saying negotiations with the government since June have not yielded significant progress. The companies maintain they should be allowed to disclose the nature of their relationship with government spying -- via the program known as PRISM -- in the face of public criticism after the NSA stories were reported by The Guardian and The Washington Post.

“On six occasions in recent weeks we agreed with the Department of Justice to extend the Government’s deadline to reply to these lawsuits.  We hoped that these discussions would lead to an agreement acceptable to all.  While we appreciate the good faith and earnest efforts by the capable Government lawyers with whom we negotiated, we are disappointed that these negotiations ended in failure,” Smith wrote in a post entitled “Standing Together for Greater Transparency” on Microsoft’s corporate blog.

The companies deny PRISM allows the government direct access to their systems, but they are not legally able to disclose how often they have been asked to provide information on users.

"We believe we have a clear right under the US Constitution to share more information with the public," Smith wrote. "The purpose of our litigation is to uphold this right so that we can disclose additional data."

Though the US government has said it will reveal more details of the nature and scope of their requests of the companies in 2012, Smith said it’s not enough.

“We believe it is vital to publish information that clearly shows the number of national security demands for user content, such as the text of an email,” he wrote.

In 2012, the secret FISA court granted 1,856 government requests for customer data while rejecting none. 

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Drug Agents Use Vast Phone Trove, Eclipsing NSA’s

Drug Agents Use Vast Phone Trove, Eclipsing NSA’s
http://www.cryptogon.com/
September 2nd, 2013

Via: New York Times:

For at least six years, law enforcement officials working on a counternarcotics program have had routine access, using subpoenas, to an enormous AT&T database that contains the records of decades of Americans’ phone calls — parallel to but covering a far longer time than the National Security Agency’s hotly disputed collection of phone call logs.

The Hemisphere Project, a partnership between federal and local drug officials and AT&T that has not previously been reported, involves an extremely close association between the government and the telecommunications giant.

The government pays AT&T to place its employees in drug-fighting units around the country. Those employees sit alongside Drug Enforcement Administration agents and local detectives and supply them with the phone data from as far back as 1987.

The project comes to light at a time of vigorous public debate over the proper limits on government surveillance and on the relationship between government agencies and communications companies. It offers the most significant look to date at the use of such large-scale data for law enforcement, rather than for national security.

The scale and longevity of the data storage appears to be unmatched by other government programs, including the N.S.A.’s gathering of phone call logs under the Patriot Act. The N.S.A. stores the data for nearly all calls in the United States, including phone numbers and time and duration of calls, for five years.

Hemisphere covers every call that passes through an AT&T switch — not just those made by AT&T customers — and includes calls dating back 26 years, according to Hemisphere training slides bearing the logo of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. Some four billion call records are added to the database every day, the slides say; technical specialists say a single call may generate more than one record. Unlike the N.S.A. data, the Hemisphere data includes information on the locations of callers.

Related: U.S. COMMUNICATIONS INTELLIGENCE SECRETLY SHARED WITH LAW ENFORCEMENT FOR USE AGAINST AMERICANS IN CRIMINAL INVESTIGATIONS

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UK ordered Guardian to destroy hard drives in effort to stop Snowden revelations

UK ordered Guardian to destroy hard drives in effort to stop Snowden revelations
Published time: August 20, 2013 04:20
Edited time: August 20, 2013 10:32 Get short URL
http://rt.com/news/guardian-hard-drives-destroyed-697/

UK authorities reportedly raided the Guardian’s office in London to destroy hard drives in an effort to stop future publications of leaks from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. The action is unlikely to prevent new materials coming out.

Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger revealed in a Monday article posted on the British newspaper's website that intelligence officials from the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) told him that he would either have to hand over all the classified documents or have the newspaper’s hard drives destroyed.

After more talks, two "security experts" from GCHQ - the British version of the National Security Agency - visited the Guardian’s London offices.

Rusbridger wrote that the government officials then watched as computers, which contained classified information passed on by Snowden, were physically destroyed in one of the newspaper building’s basements.

"We can call off the black helicopters," Rusbridger said one of the officials joked.

Another source familiar with the event confirmed to Reuters that Guardian employees destroyed the computers as UK officials observed.


During negotiations with the government, Rusbridger said that the newspaper could not fulfill its journalistic duty if it satisfied the authorities’ requests.

But GCHQ reportedly responded by telling the Guardian that it had already sparked the debate, which was enough.

"You've had your debate. There's no need to write any more," Reuters quoted the unnamed official as saying.

In the article, Rusbridger explained that because of existing “international collaborations” between journalists, it was still possible to report the story and "take advantage of the most permissive legal environments."

“I explained to the man from Whitehall about the nature of international collaborations...Bluntly, we did not have to do our reporting from London. Already most of the NSA stories were being reported and edited out of New York. And had it occurred to him that [reporter Glenn] Greenwald lived in Brazil?” wrote Rusbridger.

“The man was unmoved. And so one of the more bizarre moments in the Guardian’s long history occurred – with two GCHQ security experts overseeing the destruction of hard drives in the Guardian’s basement just to make sure there was nothing in the mangled bits of metal which could possibly be of any interest to passing Chinese agents.”

Rusbridger pointed out that the whole incident felt like a “pointless piece of symbolism that understood nothing about the digital age.”

The news comes after Sunday’s international incident during which David Miranda, the partner of Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, was held at Heathrow airport under the UK Terrorism Act for the maximum time allowed before pressing charges. Greenwald was the reporter who exclusively broke the Snowden story.

The editor promised that the Guardian will “continue to do patient, painstaking reporting on the Snowden documents, we just won’t do it in London. The seizure of Miranda’s laptop, phones, hard drives and camera will similarly have no effect on Greenwald’s work.”

Another US security source told Reuters that Miranda’s detention was meant to send a message to those who received Snowden’s classified documents, about how serious the UK is in closing all the leaks in relation to the whistleblower’s revelations.

Greenwald, who first published secrets leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, responded by promising to release more documents. He added that the UK would be “sorry” for detaining his partner for nine hours.

Snowden, who has been granted asylum by Russia, gave Greenwald up to 20,000 documents with details about the US National Security Agency and the UK’s GCHQ surveillance operations.

‘US is the intellectual author behind detention of Miranda’

Lawyer Eva Golinger told RT that the UK has violated all concepts of freedom of the press. “We are talking about a media outlet. Journalists and their spouses and partners being detained and interrogated. So clearly there has been a decision made that everything related to Edward Snowden must be captured no matter what, violating anyone’s right under any country’s laws.”

Golinger believes that government's pressure on journalists could inspire some to cover the topic of government surveillance even more, instead of discouraging them to do so.

“The more principled the people reporting are, the more they will continue to pursue that work in the face of threat. Such cheap threats and intimidation give people even more reasons to continue doing what they are doing because it shows that those in power are clearly frightened of the information that is being put out,” she explained.

“At the same time it could certainly intimidate other journalists and create the environment of self-censorship, where many would be unwilling to take the risks that are involved with national security reporting, particularly when it comes to the US.”

Golinger argued that US is the “intellectual author behind the detainment of Miranda.”

“We are talking about a search and capture that is going on for Edward Snowden and it is the US that is leading that effort. It is not the UK or other European nations, they are merely abiding by the wishes of the US…What I believe is that Washington has simply put out a request to all of its allies that anyone related to Edward Snowden must be detained if they come into your territory and the UK abided by that and did their duty.”

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The Guardian: Glenn Greenwald: detaining my partner was a failed attempt at intimidation

Glenn Greenwald: detaining my partner was a failed attempt at intimidation

The detention of my partner, David Miranda, by UK authorities will have the opposite effect of the one intended
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/18/david-miranda-detained-uk-nsaGlenn Greenwald

The Guardian, Sunday 18 August 2013

At 6:30 am this morning my time - 5:30 am on the East Coast of the US - I received a telephone call from someone who identified himself as a "security official at Heathrow airport." He told me that my partner, David Miranda, had been "detained" at the London airport "under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act of 2000."

David had spent the last week in Berlin, where he stayed with Laura Poitras, the US filmmaker who has worked with me extensively on the NSA stories. A Brazilian citizen, he was returning to our home in Rio de Janeiro this morning on British Airways, flying first to London and then on to Rio. When he arrived in London this morning, he was detained.

At the time the "security official" called me, David had been detained for 3 hours. The security official told me that they had the right to detain him for up to 9 hours in order to question him, at which point they could either arrest and charge him or ask a court to extend the question time. The official - who refused to give his name but would only identify himself by his number: 203654 - said David was not allowed to have a lawyer present, nor would they allow me to talk to him.

I immediately contacted the Guardian, which sent lawyers to the airport, as well various Brazilian officials I know. Within the hour, several senior Brazilian officials were engaged and expressing indignation over what was being done. The Guardian has the full story here.

Despite all that, five more hours went by and neither the Guardian's lawyers nor Brazilian officials, including the Ambassador to the UK in London, were able to obtain any information about David. We spent most of that time contemplating the charges he would likely face once the 9-hour period elapsed.

According to a document published by the UK government about Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act, "fewer than 3 people in every 10,000 are examined as they pass through UK borders" (David was not entering the UK but only transiting through to Rio). Moreover, "most examinations, over 97%, last under an hour." An appendix to that document states that only .06% of all people detained are kept for more than 6 hours.

The stated purpose of this law, as the name suggests, is to question people about terrorism. The detention power, claims the UK government, is used "to determine whether that person is or has been involved in the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism."

But they obviously had zero suspicion that David was associated with a terrorist organization or involved in any terrorist plot. Instead, they spent their time interrogating him about the NSA reporting which Laura Poitras, the Guardian and I are doing, as well the content of the electronic products he was carrying. They completely abused their own terrorism law for reasons having nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism: a potent reminder of how often governments lie when they claim that they need powers to stop "the terrorists", and how dangerous it is to vest unchecked power with political officials in its name.

Worse, they kept David detained right up until the last minute: for the full 9 hours, something they very rarely do. Only at the last minute did they finally release him. We spent all day - as every hour passed - worried that he would be arrested and charged under a terrorism statute. This was obviously designed to send a message of intimidation to those of us working journalistically on reporting on the NSA and its British counterpart, the GCHQ.

Before letting him go, they seized numerous possessions of his, including his laptop, his cellphone, various video game consoles, DVDs, USB sticks, and other materials. They did not say when they would return any of it, or if they would.

This is obviously a rather profound escalation of their attacks on the news-gathering process and journalism. It's bad enough to prosecute and imprison sources. It's worse still to imprison journalists who report the truth. But to start detaining the family members and loved ones of journalists is simply despotic. Even the Mafia had ethical rules against targeting the family members of people they felt threatened by. But the UK puppets and their owners in the US national security state obviously are unconstrained by even those minimal scruples.

If the UK and US governments believe that tactics like this are going to deter or intimidate us in any way from continuing to report aggressively on what these documents reveal, they are beyond deluded. If anything, it will have only the opposite effect: to embolden us even further. Beyond that, every time the US and UK governments show their true character to the world - when they prevent the Bolivian President's plane from flying safely home, when they threaten journalists with prosecution, when they engage in behavior like what they did today - all they do is helpfully underscore why it's so dangerous to allow them to exercise vast, unchecked spying power in the dark.

David was unable to call me because his phone and laptop are now with UK authorities. So I don't yet know what they told him. But the Guardian's lawyer was able to speak with him immediately upon his release, and told me that, while a bit distressed from the ordeal, he was in very good spirits and quite defiant, and he asked the lawyer to convey that defiance to me. I already share it, as I'm certain US and UK authorities will soon see.

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Obama Administration Releases Previously Secret Legal Opinion on NSA's Associational Tracking Program

AUGUST 9, 2013 | BY CINDY COHN
Obama Administration Releases Previously Secret Legal Opinion on NSA's Associational Tracking Program
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/08/administration-white-paper-associational-tracking-program

Congress Does Not Hide Elephants in Mouse Holes

The Administration released a White Paper on Friday that summarized its claimed legal basis for the bulk collection of telephony metadata, also known as the Associational Tracking Program under section 215 of the Patriot Act, codified as 50 U.S.C. section 1861. While we’ll certainly be saying more about this analysis in the future, the paper makes one central point clear:

There is no direct authorization for the Associational Tracking Program in section Patriot Act section 215.

Nowhere does the statute say that the NSA may conduct bulk collection and analysis of the phone records of nonsuspect, nontargeted Americans on an ongoing basis, including requiring the production of records that haven’t even been produced yet.

It could, of course. Congress could have said that bulk collection is allowed and a properly drafted statute would also define “bulk” collection in a way that everyone can understand and isn't full of word games.  That statute would not have been constitutional (since the program isn't constitutional), but would at least say what the the Administration wishes section 215 did.

The plain meaning of the statute fails to reach their breathtaking and unprecedented activities and it isn't even ambiguous about it. So this leaves the Administration to try to do some fancy legal dancing -- stretching terms like “tangible things” and “relevance” beyond recognition and claiming that they get prospective associational information (as opposed to already stored information) about every American, 24 hours per day, 7 days per week and keep it for five years not because Congress expressly allowed it, but because “nothing in the text” says that they cannot.  Really.

This kind of argument is best addressed in a comment by Justice Scalia in a 2001 Supreme Court case called Whitman v. American Trucking: “Congress does not hide elephants in mouse holes.”

Even the author of the Patriot Act, Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI) says the executive branch has grossly distorted the Patriot Act’s intent. He has said he is “extremely disturbed” by the administration’s interpretation and does “not believe the released FISA order is consistent with the requirement of the Patriot Act.” He added: “How could the phone records of so many innocent Americans be relevant to an authorized investigation as required by the Act?”

There’s much that could be said about the legal analysis in the paper, both statutory and constitutional, and we look forward to saying it in our new case challenging the Associational Tracking Program, First Unitarian Church v. NSA, as well as in our Jewel v. NSA case, pending since 2008.  But any analysis of the government’s legalistic parsing of the legislative language has to start with the fact that, to believe the government, you have to believe that Congress intended to allow NSA to collect of all of the phone records of all Americans by hiding it in, at best, extremely strained interpretations of the statute that otherwise simply does not authorize bulk collection.

We don’t think the government’s statutory interpretations are even remotely correct. But now that the government has finally put its legal rationales on the table (seven years after we started trying to get them to), we hope to finally be able to fight this out in the place where competing interpretations of federal statutes should be decided: in the public federal courts where more than one side gets to argue.

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Germans furious over intel sharing with NSA

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Feds tell Web firms to turn over user account passwords

(Credit: Photo illustration by James Martin/CNET)

Feds tell Web firms to turn over user account passwords
Secret demands mark escalation in Internet surveillance by the federal government through gaining access to user passwords, which are typically stored in encrypted form.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57595529-38/feds-tell-web-firms-to-turn-over-user-account-passwords/

The U.S. government has demanded that major Internet companies divulge users' stored passwords, according to two industry sources familiar with these orders, which represent an escalation in surveillance techniques that has not previously been disclosed.

If the government is able to determine a person's password, which is typically stored in encrypted form, the credential could be used to log in to an account to peruse confidential correspondence or even impersonate the user. Obtaining it also would aid in deciphering encrypted devices in situations where passwords are reused.

"I've certainly seen them ask for passwords," said one Internet industry source who spoke on condition of anonymity. "We push back."

A second person who has worked at a large Silicon Valley company confirmed that it received legal requests from the federal government for stored passwords. Companies "really heavily scrutinize" these requests, the person said. "There's a lot of 'over my dead body.'"

Some of the government orders demand not only a user's password but also the encryption algorithm and the so-called salt, according to a person familiar with the requests. A salt is a random string of letters or numbers used to make it more difficult to reverse the encryption process and determine the original password. Other orders demand the secret question codes often associated with user accounts.

"This is one of those unanswered legal questions: Is there any circumstance under which they could get password information?" --Jennifer Granick, Stanford University

A Microsoft spokesperson would not say whether the company has received such requests from the government. But when asked whether Microsoft would divulge passwords, salts, or algorithms, the spokesperson replied: "No, we don't, and we can't see a circumstance in which we would provide it."
Google also declined to disclose whether it had received requests for those types of data. But a spokesperson said the company has "never" turned over a user's encrypted password, and that it has a legal team that frequently pushes back against requests that are fishing expeditions or are otherwise problematic. "We take the privacy and security of our users very seriously," the spokesperson said.
A Yahoo spokeswoman would not say whether the company had received such requests. The spokeswoman said: "If we receive a request from law enforcement for a user's password, we deny such requests on the grounds that they would allow overly broad access to our users' private information. If we are required to provide information, we do so only in the strictest interpretation of what is required by law."

Apple, Facebook, AOL, Verizon, AT&T, Time Warner Cable, and Comcast did not respond to queries about whether they have received requests for users' passwords and how they would respond to them.

Richard Lovejoy, a director of the Opera Software subsidiary that operates FastMail, said he doesn't recall receiving any such requests but that the company still has a relatively small number of users compared with its larger rivals. Because of that, he said, "we don't get a high volume" of U.S. government demands.

The FBI declined to comment.

Some details remain unclear, including when the requests began and whether the government demands are always targeted at individuals or seek entire password database dumps. The Patriot Act has been used to demand entire database dumps of phone call logs, and critics have suggested its use is broader. "The authority of the government is essentially limitless" under that law, Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat who serves on the Senate Intelligence committee, said at a Washington event this week.

Large Internet companies have resisted the government's requests by arguing that "you don't have the right to operate the account as a person," according to a person familiar with the issue. "I don't know what happens when the government goes to smaller providers and demands user passwords," the person said.

An attorney who represents Internet companies said he has not fielded government password requests, but "we've certainly had reset requests -- if you have the device in your possession, than a password reset is the easier way."

Source code to a C implementation of bcrypt, 

a popular algorithm used for password hashing.

(Credit: Photo by Declan McCullagh)

Cracking the codes
Even if the National Security Agency or the FBI successfully obtains an encrypted password, salt, and details about the algorithm used, unearthing a user's original password is hardly guaranteed. The odds of success depend in large part on two factors: the type of algorithm and the complexity of the password.

Algorithms, known as hash functions, that are viewed as suitable for scrambling stored passwords are designed to be difficult to reverse. One popular hash function called MD5, for instance, transforms the phrase "National Security Agency" into this string of seemingly random characters: 84bd1c27b26f7be85b2742817bb8d43b. Computer scientists believe that, if a hash function is well-designed, the original phrase cannot be derived from the output.

But modern computers, especially ones equipped with high-performance video cards, can test passwords scrambled with MD5 and other well-known hash algorithms at the rate of billions a second. One system using 25 Radeon-powered GPUs that was demonstrated at a conference last December tested 348 billion hashes per second, meaning it would crack a 14-character Windows XP password in six minutes.

The best practice among Silicon Valley companies is to adopt far slower hash algorithms -- designed to take a large fraction of a second to scramble a password -- that have been intentionally crafted to make it more difficult and expensive for the NSA and other attackers to test every possible combination.

One popular algorithm, used by Twitter and LinkedIn, is called bcrypt. A 2009 paper (PDF) by computer scientist Colin Percival estimated that it would cost a mere $4 to crack, in an average of one year, an 8-character bcrypt password composed only of letters. To do it in an average of one day, the hardware cost would jump to approximately $1,500.

But if a password of the same length included numbers, asterisks, punctuation marks, and other special characters, the cost-per-year leaps to $130,000. Increasing the length to any 10 characters, Percival estimated in 2009, brings the estimated cracking cost to a staggering $1.2 billion.

As computers have become more powerful, the cost of cracking bcrypt passwords has decreased. "I'd say as a rough ballpark, the current cost would be around 1/20th of the numbers I have in my paper," said Percival, who founded a company called Tarsnap Backup, which offers "online backups for the truly paranoid." Percival added that a government agency would likely use ASICs -- application-specific integrated circuits -- for password cracking because it's "the most cost-efficient -- at large scale -- approach."

While developing Tarsnap, Percival devised an algorithm called scrypt, which he estimates can make the "cost of a hardware brute-force attack" against a hashed password as much as 4,000 times greater than bcrypt.

Bcrypt was introduced (PDF) at a 1999 Usenix conference by Niels Provos, currently a distinguished engineer in Google's infrastructure group, and David Mazières, an associate professor of computer science at Stanford University.

With the computers available today, "bcrypt won't pipeline very well in hardware," Mazières said, so it would "still be very expensive to do widespread cracking."

Even if "the NSA is asking for access to hashed bcrypt passwords," Mazières said, "that doesn't necessarily mean they are cracking them." Easier approaches, he said, include an order to extract them from the server or network when the user logs in -- which has been done before -- or installing a keylogger at the client.

Sen. Ron Wyden, who warned this week that "the

 authority of the government is essentially limitless"

 under the Patriot Act's business records provision.

(Credit: Getty Images)

Questions of law
Whether the National Security Agency or FBI has the legal authority to demand that an Internet company divulge a hashed password, salt, and algorithm remains murky.

"This is one of those unanswered legal questions: Is there any circumstance under which they could get password information?" said Jennifer Granick, director of civil liberties at Stanford University's Center for Internet and Society. "I don't know."

Granick said she's not aware of any precedent for an Internet company "to provide passwords, encrypted or otherwise, or password algorithms to the government -- for the government to crack passwords and use them unsupervised." If the password will be used to log in to the account, she said, that's "prospective surveillance," which would require a wiretap order or Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act order.

If the government can subsequently determine the password, "there's a concern that the provider is enabling unauthorized access to the user's account if they do that," Granick said. That could, she said, raise legal issues under the Stored Communications Act and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

The Justice Department has argued in court proceedings before that it has broad legal authority to obtain passwords. In 2011, for instance, federal prosecutors sent a grand jury subpoena demanding the password that would unlock files encrypted with the TrueCrypt utility.

The Florida man who received the subpoena claimed the Fifth Amendment, which protects his right to avoid self-incrimination, allowed him to refuse the prosecutors' demand. In February 2012, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit agreed, saying that because prosecutors could bring a criminal prosecution against him based on the contents of the decrypted files, the man "could not be compelled to decrypt the drives."

In January 2012, a federal district judge in Colorado reached the opposite conclusion, ruling that a criminal defendant could be compelled under the All Writs Act to type in the password that would unlock a Toshiba Satellite laptop.

Both of those cases, however, deal with criminal proceedings when the password holder is the target of an investigation -- and don't address when a hashed password is stored on the servers of a company that's an innocent third party.

"If you can figure out someone's password, you have the ability to reuse the account," which raises significant privacy concerns, said Seth Schoen, a senior staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Last updated at 8:00 p.m. PT with comment from Yahoo, which responded after this article was published.

Disclosure: McCullagh is married to a Google employee not involved with this issue.

Declan McCullagh is the chief political correspondent for CNET. Declan previously was a reporter for Time and the Washington bureau chief for Wired and wrote the Taking Liberties section and Other People's Money column for CBS News' Web site.

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Bachmann defends NSA spying on Americans

Bachmann defends NSA spying on Americans

(Credit: AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

You have to wonder what she thinks is private? -AK

WEDNESDAY, JUL 24, 2013 12:38 PM PDT
Bachmann defends NSA spying on Americans
"There’s no Fourth Amendment expectation of privacy" for phone records, Bachmann argued
BY JILLIAN RAYFIELD

http://www.salon.com/2013/07/24/amash_vs_bachmann_on_nsa_bill/Republican Reps. Justin

Amash and Michele Bachmann sparred over the NSA’s phone surveillance program, with Bachmann saying she is opposing Amash’s bill to defund it because “I believe that we need to win the War on Terror.”

The two were speaking during a monthly Conversation with Conservatives event, and Bachmann began by defending the program from arguments that it violates the Fourth Amendment.

“Individuals do not own the records, the records belong to the company,” she said. “The records are in their possession, they belong to the phone companies, they’re not the individual’s. So there’s no Fourth Amendment expectation of privacy or right to the business-record exception.”

“That’s like saying our e-mails are the property of Google,” Amash said later. “We have a problem if that’s going to be our interpretation of the Fourth Amendment.”

“All you have to do is go home to your constituents and ask them whether they think they have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their phone records or any of their other records that are stored by any third party, and they will tell you yes,” he continued.

Bachmann also argued that defunding the program will hurt America’s counter-terrorism efforts: “If we take this program and remove from the United States the distinct advantage that we have versus any other country,” Bachmann said, according to the National Review, ”it will be those who are seeking to achieve the goals of Islamic jihad who will benefit by putting the United States at risk, and it will be the United States which will be at risk.”

Terrorism is such a useful tool for the police state isn't it?  -AK

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ANONYMOUS: Senator Dianne Feinstein has received over $698,244 from NSA affiliates in political donations, since the formation of PRISM in 2007

Anonymous Operation NSA's first target: Californian Senator Dianne Feinstein. She has taken over $698,000 in bribes from security and defense contractors to vote in favor of them and against you. - See more at: 

http://xrepublic.tv/node/4463

Video transcript:

Greetings Californian State Senator Dianne Feinstein. We are Anonymous.
Did you think that your actions against the citizens of this country would go unnoticed?

Did you think that we the people, would not respond to your gruesome dishonesty?

We have been watching.

In accordance with phase II of #Op NSA we have found you, Senator Feinstein, GUILTY Of supporting unconstitutional acts carried out by the Government and its agencies.


Although the opinion of the FISA court that oversees the National Security Agency's operations is often not released to the public, we are now making it known to the public.

While the public may have been kept in the dark; you, Senator Feinstein were fully aware  of the FISA court's two thousand and eleven opinion. Eighty pages detailing how the National Security Agency's surveillance conduct is in direct violation of the fourth amendment of the United States Constitution as well as in excess of the limitations imposed by the statute:  The FISA amendments act of two thousand and eight.

When you told the American people that you have no knowledge of the National Security Agency's surveillance program, PRISM, of violating anyone's civil liberties or freedoms:
You were lying.

Today the first strand of the virus has been identified.  Here is the information you, the people need to know to address the system failure.

Californian State Senator Dianne Feinstein has received over $698,244 from NSA affiliates in political donations, since the formation of PRISM in 2007.
These relationships go back much longer than that however, and will continue to do so.

These donations come from organizations such as BAE Systems, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, SAIC, Raytheon, General Dynamics, QualComm, L-3 Communications, Palantir and Lockheed Martin.

She also voted in favor of the PATRIOT act in two thousand and eleven and sits on various committees as Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

Member of the Subcommittee on Department of Defense,

Member of the Subcommittee on Department of the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies and a Member of the Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law amongst many others.

Lastly let us not forget Senator Feinstein firmly stands by her wishes to see NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden tried for treason, punished to the fullest extent of the law.

We are Anonymous.
We are Legion.
We do NOT forgive.
We do NOT forget.
You should have expected us.

http://xrepublic.tv/node/4463

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Congresssional Judiciary Committee Hearing on NSA Wiretaps 7-17-2013

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Der Spiegel: Jimmy Carter Supports Snowden; Admits to Press: "America Has No Functioning Democracy"

President Jimmy Carter

This was posted at Brian Kelly's Blog -AK

http://briankellysblog.blogspot.com/2013/07/jimmy-carter-supports-snowden-admits-to.html

Jimmy Carter Supports Snowden; Admits to Press: "America Has No Functioning Democracy"
July 18, 2013

Found this in one of Germany's biggest newspapers; Spiegel. Of course we won't hear about Carter's comments in any American Press. To say "America has no functioning Democracy," is quite the statement by a former President.

A direct link to that article, using google translate, can be found here.
Ex-President Carter: "The invasion of privacy has gone too far"

The Obama administration tried to placate Europe's anger over spying programs. Not as ex-President Jimmy Carter: The Democrat attacked the U.S. intelligence sharp. The disclosure by whistleblowers Snowden was "useful."

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter was in the wake of the NSA Spähskandals criticized the American political system. "America has no functioning democracy," Carter said Tuesday at a meeting of the "Atlantic Bridge" in Atlanta.

Previously, the Democrat had been very critical of the practices of U.S. intelligence. "I think the invasion of privacy has gone too far," Carter told CNN. "And I think that is why the secrecy was excessive."Overlooking the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden said Carter, whose revelations were long "likely to be useful because they inform the public."

Carter has repeatedly warned that the United States sharply declined due to excessive restriction of civil rights, their moral authority. Last year he wrote in an article in the "New York Times", new U.S. laws "never before seen breach our privacy by the government" allowed the.

Carter was the 39th President of the United States, who ruled from 1977 until 1981. During his tenure, he tried to align U.S. foreign policy that is more about human rights - after his retirement from active politics for his humanitarian work, he received the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize .

In Atlanta, he also expressed his overall pessimistic about the global situation. There is currently no reason for him to be optimistic, Carter said, referring to the situation in Egypt, which had fallen into a military dictatorship. He also lamented the growing political divide in the United States, the excessive influence of money in U.S. election campaigns and the confusing American election rules. The ex-president whose "Carter Center" operates worldwide including election monitoring, announced skeptical whether the United States, the standard that applies when reviewing the Center of elections might be fulfilled.

As a bright spot, however, Carter called the triumph of modern technology that would have caused some of the countries of the Arab Spring of democratic progress. Exactly these developments but are endangered by the NSA Spähskandal as major U.S. Internet platforms such as Google or Facebook lose credibility worldwide.
Posted by Brian Kelly at 9:49 AM 

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Obama administration drowning in lawsuits filed over NSA surveillance

AFP Photo / DPA / Angelika Warmuth / Germany out

Obama administration drowning in lawsuits filed over NSA surveillance
Get short URL Published time: July 16, 2013 17:39
Edited time: July 17, 2013 10:26
http://rt.com/usa/snowden-leaks-surveillance-suits-174/

Attorneys for the Electronic Frontier Foundation have sued the Obama administration and are demanding the White House stop the dragnet surveillance programs operated by the National Security Agency.

Both the White House and Congress have weighed in on the case of Edward Snowden and the revelations he’s made by leaking National Security Agency documents. Now the courts are having their turn to opine, and with opportunities aplenty.

Day by day, new lawsuits waged against the United States government are being filed in federal court, and with the same regularity President Barack Obama and the preceding administration are being charged with vast constitutional violations alleged to have occurred through the NSA spy programs exposed by Mr. Snowden.

The recent disclosures made by Snowden have generated commotion in Congress and the White House alike. The Department of Justice has asked for the 30-year-old former Booz Allen Hamilton worker to be extradited to the US to face charges of espionage, and members of both the House and Senate have already held their share of emergency hearings in the wake of Snowden’s series of disclosures detailing the vast surveillance programs waged by the US in utmost secrecy. But with the executive and legislative branches left worrying about how to handle the source of the leaks — and if the policies publicized should have existed in the first place — the courts could soon settle some disputes that stand to shape the way the US conducts surveillance of its own citizens.

Both longstanding arguments and just-filed claims have garnered the attention of the judicial branch in the weeks since the Guardian newspaper first began publishing leaked NSA documents attributed to Snowden on June 6. But while the courts have relied previously on stalling or stifling cases that challenge Uncle Sam’s spy efforts, civil liberties experts say the time may be near for some highly anticipated arguments to finally be heard. Now on the heels of lawsuits filed by the likes of the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Privacy Information Center, groups are coming out of the woodwork to wage a legal battle against the White House.


The most recent example came this week when a coalition of various organizations filed suit together against the Obama administration by challenging “an illegal and unconstitutional program of dragnet electronic surveillance, specifically the bulk acquisition, collection, storage, retention and searching of telephone communications information.” Represented by attorneys from the EFF and others, the plaintiffs in the latest case filed Tuesday in San Francisco federal court include an array of groups, such as: First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles; Bill of Rights Defense Committee; Calguns Foundation; California Association of Federal Firearms Licensees; Council on Islamic Relations; Franklin Armory; Free Press; Free Software Foundation; Greenpeace; Human Rights Watch; Media Alliance; National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws; Open Technology Institute; People for the American Way, Public Knowledge; Students for Sensible Drug Policy; TechFreedom; and Unitarian Universalist Service Committee.

Cindy Cohn, the legal director of the EFF, told the Washington Post that the NSA leaks credited to Snowden have been a “tremendous boon” to the plaintiffs in recently filed court cases challenging the surveillance state. The courts are currently pondering at least five important cases, Cohn told the Post, which could for once and for all bring some other issues up for discussion.

Since June 6, the American Civil Liberties Union, a Verizon Wireless customer and the founder of conservative group Judicial Watch have all filed federal lawsuits against the government’s collection of telephony metadata, a practice that puts basic call records into the government’s hands without a specific warrant ever required and reported to the media by Mr. Snowden. Larry Klayman of Judicial Watch has also sued over another revelation made by Snowden — the PRISM Internet eavesdropping program — and the Electronic Privacy Information Center, or EPIC, has asked the Supreme Court to vacate the order compelling Verizon Business Network Services to send metadata to the feds.

Perhaps most important, however, is a California federal court’s recent decision to shutdown the government’s request to stop the case of Jewel vs. NSA from proceeding. That debate first began in 2008 when Jewel, a former AT&T customer, challenged the government’s "illegal and unconstitutional program of dragnet communications surveillance” as exposed by a whistleblower at the telecom company. That case has seen roadblock after roadblock during the last five years, but all that changed earlier this month.  The government long argued that Jewel v. NSA can’t go up for discussion because the issues at hand are privileged as ‘state secrets’ and can’t be brought into the public realm.

“[T]he disclosure of sensitive intelligence sources and methods . . . reasonably could be expected to cause exceptionally grave harm to national security,” the government wrote in one earlier filing. "The very purpose of these cases is to put at issue whether the NSA undertook certain alleged activities under presidential authorization after 9/11, and whether those activities continue today. At every stage, from standing to the merits, highly classified and properly privileged intelligence sources and methods are at risk of disclosure. The law is clear, however, that where litigation risks or requires the disclosure of information that reasonably could be expected to harm national security, dismissal is required."

Following Snowden’s recent disclosures, though, Judge Jeffrey White of the Northern District of California ruled on July 8 that there’s a way for those cases to still be heard.

"The court rightly found that the traditional legal system can determine the legality of the mass, dragnet surveillance of innocent Americans and rejected the government's invocation of the state secrets privilege to have the case dismissed," the EFF’s Cohn, who is working on the case, said in a statement issued at the time of the ruling. "Over the last month, we came face-to-face with new details of mass, untargeted collection of phone and Internet records, substantially confirmed by the Director of National Intelligence. Today's decision sets the stage for finally getting a ruling that can stop the dragnet surveillance and restore Americans' constitutional rights."

Sen. Ron Wyden (Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images / AFP)

Weighing in weeks later to the Post, Cohn said that outcome could have more of an impact than many might imagine. “It’s tremendous, because anything that allows these cases to proceed is important,” she said.

Speaking to the New York Times this week, American Civil Liberties Union attorney Jameel Jaffer said that until now the government has operated a “shell game” to shield it’s surveillance programs from litigation. “[T]he statute has been shielded from judicial review, and controversial and far-reaching surveillance authorities have been placed beyond the reach of the Constitution,” he said.

Should Cohn’s prediction come true, though, the courts could decide to weigh in and reshape the way the government currently conducts surveillance.

According to University of Pittsburgh law professor Jules Lobel, a victory there could come in more than one way. “There is a broader function to these lawsuits than simply winning in court,” he told the Post. “The government has to respond, and forcing them to go before a court might make them want to change aspects of the programs.”

“The government does things to avoid embarrassment,’’ he added, “and lawsuits are a key pressure point.’’

Interviews to the Post and the Times come just days after Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon), a long-time member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he thought the revelations made by Snowden may influence the White House to reconsider their surveillance practices before the courts can even have their chance.

“I have a feeling that the administration is getting concerned about the bulk phone records collection, and that they are thinking about whether to move administratively to stop it,” Sen. Wyden told the Times.

“I think we are making a comeback,” he said.

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Statement by Edward Snowden to human rights groups at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport

Statement by Edward Snowden to human rights groups at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport
Friday July 12, 15:00 UTC

Edward Joseph Snowden delivered a statement to human rights organizations and individuals at Sheremetyevo airport at 5pm Moscow time today, Friday 12th July. The meeting lasted 45 minutes. The human rights organizations included Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch and were given the opportunity afterwards to ask Mr Snowden questions. The Human Rights Watch representative used this opportunity to tell Mr Snowden that on her way to the airport she had received a call from the US Ambassador to Russia, who asked her to relay to Mr Snowden that the US Government does not categorise Mr Snowden as a whistleblower and that he has broken United States law. This further proves the United States Government’s persecution of Mr Snowden and therefore that his right to seek and accept asylum should be upheld. Seated to the left of Mr. Snowden was Sarah Harrison, a legal advisor in this matter from WikiLeaks and to Mr. Snowden’s right, a translator.

Transcript of Edward Joseph Snowden statement, given at 5pm Moscow time on Friday 12th July 2013. (Transcript corrected to delivery)

Hello. My name is Ed Snowden. A little over one month ago, I had family, a home in paradise, and I lived in great comfort. I also had the capability without any warrant to search for, seize, and read your communications. Anyone’s communications at any time. That is the power to change people’s fates.

It is also a serious violation of the law. The 4th and 5th Amendments to the Constitution of my country, Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and numerous statutes and treaties forbid such systems of massive, pervasive surveillance. While the US Constitution marks these programs as illegal, my government argues that secret court rulings, which the world is not permitted to see, somehow legitimize an illegal affair. These rulings simply corrupt the most basic notion of justice – that it must be seen to be done. The immoral cannot be made moral through the use of secret law.

I believe in the principle declared at Nuremberg in 1945: "Individuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience. Therefore individual citizens have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity from occurring."

Accordingly, I did what I believed right and began a campaign to correct this wrongdoing. I did not seek to enrich myself. I did not seek to sell US secrets. I did not partner with any foreign government to guarantee my safety. Instead, I took what I knew to the public, so what affects all of us can be discussed by all of us in the light of day, and I asked the world for justice.

That moral decision to tell the public about spying that affects all of us has been costly, but it was the right thing to do and I have no regrets.

Since that time, the government and intelligence services of the United States of America have attempted to make an example of me, a warning to all others who might speak out as I have. I have been made stateless and hounded for my act of political expression. The United States Government has placed me on no-fly lists. It demanded Hong Kong return me outside of the framework of its laws, in direct violation of the principle of non-refoulement – the Law of Nations. It has threatened with sanctions countries who would stand up for my human rights and the UN asylum system. It has even taken the unprecedented step of ordering military allies to ground a Latin American president’s plane in search for a political refugee. These dangerous escalations represent a threat not just to the dignity of Latin America, but to the basic rights shared by every person, every nation, to live free from persecution, and to seek and enjoy asylum.

Yet even in the face of this historically disproportionate aggression, countries around the world have offered support and asylum. These nations, including Russia, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Ecuador have my gratitude and respect for being the first to stand against human rights violations carried out by the powerful rather than the powerless. By refusing to compromise their principles in the face of intimidation, they have earned the respect of the world. It is my intention to travel to each of these countries to extend my personal thanks to their people and leaders.

I announce today my formal acceptance of all offers of support or asylum I have been extended and all others that may be offered in the future. With, for example, the grant of asylum provided by Venezuela’s President Maduro, my asylee status is now formal, and no state has a basis by which to limit or interfere with my right to enjoy that asylum. As we have seen, however, some governments in Western European and North American states have demonstrated a willingness to act outside the law, and this behavior persists today. This unlawful threat makes it impossible for me to travel to Latin America and enjoy the asylum granted there in accordance with our shared rights.

This willingness by powerful states to act extra-legally represents a threat to all of us, and must not be allowed to succeed. Accordingly, I ask for your assistance in requesting guarantees of safe passage from the relevant nations in securing my travel to Latin America, as well as requesting asylum in Russia until such time as these states accede to law and my legal travel is permitted. I will be submitting my request to Russia today, and hope it will be accepted favorably.

If you have any questions, I will answer what I can.

Thank you.

http://wikileaks.org/Statement-by-Edward-Snowden-to.html

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NSA Wire Taps and Telcom's Profit From It...

By American Kabuki

I saw this on the Wealth Channel on my cable TV today.  Wealth TV is a channel for the ultra-rich, it showcases homes and vacations most of us could never dream of having.  The TV network is based here in San Diego, and its news shows, with feeds from Reuters and AP are really pretty good by current American news standards.

The news segment says the average wiretap (which often run months or years in duration) is $50,000. Verizon receives 250,000 wire tap orders a year from the government, at an average of cost to the government of $50,000 per wire tap that comes out to $12,500,000,000 ($12.5 Billion) in wiretap income for Verizon alone....

You think the telecom companies are going to stand up for your privacy rights with that kind of income stream?

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NYT: In Secret, Court Vastly Broadens Powers of N.S.A.

In Secret, Court Vastly Broadens Powers of N.S.A.
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
Published: July 6, 2013 864 Comments


WASHINGTON — In more than a dozen classified rulings, the nation’s surveillance court has created a secret body of law giving the National Security Agency the power to amass vast collections of data on Americans while pursuing not only terrorism suspects, but also people possibly involved in nuclear proliferation, espionage and cyberattacks, officials say.

The rulings, some nearly 100 pages long, reveal that the court has taken on a much more expansive role by regularly assessing broad constitutional questions and establishing important judicial precedents, with almost no public scrutiny, according to current and former officials familiar with the court’s classified decisions.

The 11-member Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, known as the FISA court, was once mostly focused on approving case-by-case wiretapping orders. But since major changes in legislation and greater judicial oversight of intelligence operations were instituted six years ago, it has quietly become almost a parallel Supreme Court, serving as the ultimate arbiter on surveillance issues and delivering opinions that will most likely shape intelligence practices for years to come, the officials said.

Last month, a former National Security Agency contractor, Edward J. Snowden, leaked a classified order from the FISA court, which authorized the collection of all phone-tracing data from Verizon business customers. But the court’s still-secret decisions go far beyond any single surveillance order, the officials said.

“We’ve seen a growing body of law from the court,” a former intelligence official said. “What you have is a common law that develops where the court is issuing orders involving particular types of surveillance, particular types of targets.”


In one of the court’s most important decisions, the judges have expanded the use in terrorism cases of a legal principle known as the “special needs” doctrine and carved out an exception to the Fourth Amendment’s requirement of a warrant for searches and seizures, the officials said.

The special needs doctrine was originally established in 1989 by the Supreme Court in a ruling allowing the drug testing of railway workers, finding that a minimal intrusion on privacy was justified by the government’s need to combat an overriding public danger. Applying that concept more broadly, the FISA judges have ruled that the N.S.A.’s collection and examination of Americans’ communications data to track possible terrorists does not run afoul of the Fourth Amendment, the officials said.

That legal interpretation is significant, several outside legal experts said, because it uses a relatively narrow area of the law — used to justify airport screenings, for instance, or drunken-driving checkpoints — and applies it much more broadly, in secret, to the wholesale collection of communications in pursuit of terrorism suspects. “It seems like a legal stretch,” William C. Banks, a national security law expert at Syracuse University, said in response to a description of the decision. “It’s another way of tilting the scales toward the government in its access to all this data.”

While President Obama and his intelligence advisers have spoken of the surveillance programs leaked by Mr. Snowden mainly in terms of combating terrorism, the court has also interpreted the law in ways that extend into other national security concerns. In one recent case, for instance, intelligence officials were able to get access to an e-mail attachment sent within the United States because they said they were worried that the e-mail contained a schematic drawing or a diagram possibly connected to Iran’s nuclear program.

In the past, that probably would have required a court warrant because the suspicious e-mail involved American communications. In this case, however, a little-noticed provision in a 2008 law, expanding the definition of “foreign intelligence” to include “weapons of mass destruction,” was used to justify access to the message.

The court’s use of that language has allowed intelligence officials to get wider access to data and communications that they believe may be linked to nuclear proliferation, the officials said. They added that other secret findings had eased access to data on espionage, cyberattacks and other possible threats connected to foreign intelligence.

“The definition of ‘foreign intelligence’ is very broad,” another former intelligence official said in an interview. “An espionage target, a nuclear proliferation target, that all falls within FISA, and the court has signed off on that.”

The official, like a half-dozen other current and former national security officials, discussed the court’s rulings and the general trends they have established on the condition of anonymity because they are classified. Judges on the FISA court refused to comment on the scope and volume of their decisions.

Unlike the Supreme Court, the FISA court hears from only one side in the case — the government — and its findings are almost never made public. A Court of Review is empaneled to hear appeals, but that is known to have happened only a handful of times in the court’s history, and no case has ever been taken to the Supreme Court. In fact, it is not clear in all circumstances whether Internet and phone companies that are turning over the reams of data even have the right to appear before the FISA court.

Created by Congress in 1978 as a check against wiretapping abuses by the government, the court meets in a secure, nondescript room in the federal courthouse in Washington. All of the current 11 judges, who serve seven-year terms, were appointed to the special court by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., and 10 of them were nominated to the bench by Republican presidents. Most hail from districts outside the capital and come in rotating shifts to hear surveillance applications; a single judge signs most surveillance orders, which totaled nearly 1,800 last year. None of the requests from the intelligence agencies was denied, according to the court.

Beyond broader legal rulings, the judges have had to resolve questions about newer types of technology, like video conferencing, and how and when the government can get access to them, the officials said.

The judges have also had to intervene repeatedly when private Internet and phone companies, which provide much of the data to the N.S.A., have raised concerns that the government is overreaching in its demands for records or when the government itself reports that it has inadvertently collected more data than was authorized, the officials said. In such cases, the court has repeatedly ordered the N.S.A. to destroy the Internet or phone data that was improperly collected, the officials said.

The officials said one central concept connects a number of the court’s opinions. The judges have concluded that the mere collection of enormous volumes of “metadata” — facts like the time of phone calls and the numbers dialed, but not the content of conversations — does not violate the Fourth Amendment, as long as the government establishes a valid reason under national security regulations before taking the next step of actually examining the contents of an American’s communications.

This concept is rooted partly in the “special needs” provision the court has embraced. “The basic idea is that it’s O.K. to create this huge pond of data,” a third official said, “but you have to establish a reason to stick your pole in the water and start fishing.”

Under the new procedures passed by Congress in 2008 in the FISA Amendments Act, even the collection of metadata must be considered “relevant” to a terrorism investigation or other intelligence activities.

The court has indicated that while individual pieces of data may not appear “relevant” to a terrorism investigation, the total picture that the bits of data create may in fact be relevant, according to the officials with knowledge of the decisions.

Geoffrey R. Stone, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Chicago, said he was troubled by the idea that the court is creating a significant body of law without hearing from anyone outside the government, forgoing the adversarial system that is a staple of the American justice system. “That whole notion is missing in this process,” he said.

The FISA judges have bristled at criticism that they are a rubber stamp for the government, occasionally speaking out to say they apply rigor in their scrutiny of government requests. Most of the surveillance operations involve the N.S.A., an eavesdropping behemoth that has listening posts around the world. Its role in gathering intelligence within the United States has grown enormously since the Sept. 11 attacks.

Soon after, President George W. Bush, under a secret wiretapping program that circumvented the FISA court, authorized the N.S.A. to collect metadata and in some cases listen in on foreign calls to or from the United States. After a heated debate, the essential elements of the Bush program were put into law by Congress in 2007, but with greater involvement by the FISA court.

Even before the leaks by Mr. Snowden, members of Congress and civil liberties advocates had been pressing for declassifying and publicly releasing court decisions, perhaps in summary form.

Reggie B. Walton, the FISA court’s presiding judge, wrote in March that he recognized the “potential benefit of better informing the public” about the court’s decisions. But, he said, there are “serious obstacles” to doing so because of the potential for misunderstanding caused by omitting classified details.

Gen. Keith B. Alexander, the N.S.A. director, was noncommital when he was pressed at a Senate hearing in June to put out some version of the court’s decisions.

While he pledged to try to make more decisions public, he said, “I don’t want to jeopardize the security of Americans by making a mistake in saying, ‘Yes, we’re going to do all that.’ ”

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Tap It: The NSA Slow Jam (featuring @goremy)

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HIDDEN NSA CIVILIAN LISTENING CENTER IN LOS ANGELES

HIDDEN NSA CIVILIAN LISTENING CENTER IN LOS ANGELES

by American Kabuki

I received this set of images from an anonymous source about a purported civilian listening center in Los Angeles that has been in operation for a number of a decades.  The contact claims to have had a relative who worked at this location.  

They further claim its also a covert thermonuclear missile silo complex in mid Los Angeles.  

The site is Ascot Hills in Los Angeles, its disguised (apparently) on Google  maps as reservoir, but the site clearly has satellite dishes and apparently Google-style cargo-containerized server farm on premises.

Purported NSA Listening Center in Ascot Hills Los Angeles (click image to enlarge)

Close-up of Purported NSA Listening Center in Ascot Hills Los Angeles (click image to enlarge)

Purported NSA Listening Center in Ascot Hills Los Angeles (click image to enlarge)

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University of Wisconsin Students Challenge NSA Recruiters on Campus

Published on Jul 3, 2013

When NSA recruiters went to the University of Wisconsin earlier this week to pitch language students on working for the agency, they got more than they bargained for.

The informed students turned the question-and-answer session into a hearing. On trial were the NSA's lies, their legality, and how they define "adversary".

The students recorded audio of the exchange on an iPhone proving that the language-analyst NSA recruiters were left tongue-tied.

"I'm surprised that for language analysts you're incredibly imprecise with your language," grad student Madiha Tahir charged when they failed to define what constitutes an adversary.

"What you're selling us is untrue" she added. "We also know that the NSA took down brochures and fact sheets after the Snowden revelations because those fact sheets had severe inaccuracies and untruths in them -- so how are we supposed to believe what you're saying?"

Another student directly challenged the NSA's morality for using the "globe as their playground" and then partying at the office with co-workers. She then challenges them to become whistleblowers because the truth will ultimately prevail.

"Given the fact that we have been lied to as Americans, given the fact that fact sheets have been pulled down because they clearly had untruths in them, given the fact that Clapper and Alexander lied to Congress...Is being a good liar a qualification to be in the NSA?" Tahir asks.

These young students forced the NSA recruiters to claim, in a seemingly desperate defense, that they were not actually there "representing the NSA as an agency."

Clearly the people have questions that aren't being addressed by their representatives, and a much larger debate is needed. However, it'd be much more productive if these kids get to question the NSA leadership instead of our blackmailed politicians.

---

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The Guardian: The cyber-intelligence complex and its useful idiots

J Edgar Hoover (right, with President Richard Nixon)
 ran the FBI's illegal Cointelpro domestic political
surveillance scheme. Photograph: Bettmann/Corbis

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jul/01/cyber-intelligence-complex-useful-idiots

The cyber-intelligence complex and its useful idiots
Those who tell us to trust the US's secret, privatised surveillance schemes should recall the criminality of J Edgar Hoover's FBI

Barrett Brown
guardian.co.uk, Monday 1 July 2013 11.21 EDT

It's a fine thing to see mainstream American media outlets finally sparing some of their attention toward the cyber-industrial complex – that unprecedented conglomeration of state, military and corporate interests that together exercise growing power over the flow of information. It would be even more heartening if so many of the nation's most influential voices, from senator to pundits, were not clearly intent on killing off even this belated scrutiny into the invisible empire that so thoroughly scrutinizes us – at our own expense and to unknown ends.

Summing up the position of those who worry less over secret government powers than they do over the whistleblowers who reveal such things, we have New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, who argues that we can trust small cadres of unaccountable spies with broad powers over our communications. We must all wish Friedman luck with this prediction. Other proclamations of his – including that Vladimir Putin would bring transparency and liberal democracy to Russia, and that the Chinese regime would not seek to limit its citizens' free access to the internet – have not aged especially well.

An unkind person might dismiss Friedman as the incompetent harbinger of a dying republic. Being polite, I will merely suggest that Friedman's faith in government is as misplaced as faith in the just and benevolent God that we know not to exist – Friedman having been the winner of several of the world's most-coveted Pulitzer Prizes.

If Friedman is, indeed, too quick to trust the powerful, it's a trait he shares with the just over half of Americans, who tell pollsters they're fine with the NSA programs that were until recently hidden from their view. Why, our countrymen wonder, ought we to be disturbed by our state's desire to know everything that everyone does? Given the possibility that this surveillance could perhaps prevent deaths in the form of terrorist attacks, most Americans are willing to forgo some abstract notion of privacy in favor of the more concrete benefits of security.

Besides, the government to which we're ceding these broad new powers is a democracy, overseen by real, live Americans. And it's hard to imagine American government officials abusing their powers – or at least, it would be, had such officials not already abused similar but more limited powers through repeated campaigns of disinformation, intimidation and airtight crimes directed at the American public over the last five decades. Cointelpro, Operation Mockingbird, Ultra and Chaos are among the now-acknowledged CIA, FBI and NSA programs by which those agencies managed to subvert American democracy with impunity. Supporters of mass surveillance conducted under the very same agencies have yet to address how such abuses can be insured against in the context of powers far greater than anything J Edgar Hoover could command.



Many have never heard of these programs; the sort of people who trust states with secret authority tend not to know what such things have led to in the recent past. Those who do know of such things may perhaps contend that these practices would never be repeated today. But it was just two years ago that the late Michael Hastings revealed that US army officials in Afghanistan were conducting psy-ops against visiting US senators in order to sway them towards continued funding for that unsuccessful war. If military and intelligence officials have so little respect for the civilian leadership, one can guess how they feel about mere civilians.

Not that anyone need merely guess. Discussing the desirability of such "information operations" in his 2001 book, retired USAF Lt Col George Crawford noted that voters tend to view these sorts of programs with suspicion. "Consequently," he concludes, "these efforts must take place away from public eyes."

And so they do. If we want to learn a thing or two about the latest round of such programs – that is, if we are willing to disregard the Thomas Friedmans of this world – we must look not just towards the three letter agencies that have routinely betrayed us in the past, but also to the untold number of private intelligence contracting firms that have sprung up lately in order to betray us in a more efficient and market-oriented manner. Our lieutenant colonel, scourge of "public eyes", is among the many ex-military and intelligence officials who have left public service, or public obfuscation – or whatever we're calling it now – to work in the expanding sphere of private spookery, to which is outsourced information operations by the Pentagon, spy agencies, and even other corporations who need an edge over some enemy (in Crawford's case, the mysterious Archimedes Global).

So, how trustworthy is this privatized segment of the invisible empire? We would know almost nothing of their operations were it not for a chance turn of events that prompted Anonymous-affiliated hackers to seize 70,000 emails from one typical firm back in early 2011. From this more-or-less random sampling of contractor activity, we find a consortium of these firms plotting to intimidate, attack and discredit WikiLeaks and those identified as its key supporters, including the (then Salon, now Guardian) journalist Glenn Greenwald – a potentially illegal conspiracy concocted on behalf of corporate giant Bank of America, which feared exposure by WikiLeaks, and organized under the auspices of the Department of Justice itself.

We find several of the same firms – which collectively referred to themselves as Team Themis – involved in another scheme to deploy sophisticated software-based fake people across social networks in order to infiltrate and mislead. For instance, Themis proposes sending two of these "personas" to pose online as members of an organization opposed to the US Chamber of Commerce, another prospective Themis client, in order to discredit the group from within. Yet another revelation involves a massive cross-platform military program of disinformation and surveillance directed at the Arab world; still another relates how one NSA-inked firm can monitor and attack online infrastructure throughout the world, including western Europe, and will rent these capabilities out to those with a few million dollars to spend on such things.

And Booz Allen Hamilton, which has received some belated scrutiny as the eminently powerful employer of NSA leaker Edward Snowden, was apparently in talks with Themis participant HBGary Federal regarding its own still-secret "project" involving, again, WikiLeaks. These are simply a few of the revelations stemming from a portion of the email correspondence among a handful of major contracting firms – a tiny, serendipitous sampling of what such firms are doing for their government and corporate clients as they compete for contracts.

Hundred of these sorts of companies have come about in the last few years, operating in close partnerships with the state, yet existing beyond the view of Congress, the media and "public eyes". Even in the unlikely instance when their activities come to light, potentially illegal behavior goes unpunished; even calls by congressmen to investigate the sordid Themis conspiracy were ignored by the Department of Justice, which, of course, set the whole thing in motion to begin with through its recommendation.

This, then, is the environment in which public officials and Beltway insiders like Friedman are asking us to trust the intelligence community and its private partner firms with increasing power over information. It's an age in which even the limited rules in place can be broken with impunity by the powerful – even as journalists and activists who cross them are targeted for destruction by state-corporate alliances armed with increasingly sophisticated cyber weapons, propaganda techniques and surveillance authority.

This is the world we accept if we continue to avert our eyes. And it promises to get much worse.

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