They Never Quit

The Senate Judiciary Committee summoned a handful of cybersecurity, privacy, and national security experts on Tuesday to lay out the pros and cons of reauthorizing the law the NSA says authorizes it to collect hundreds of millions of online communications from providers like Facebook and Google as well as straight off the internet’s backbone [spying programs PRISM and Upstream].

[...]

Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Amendments Act of 2008, the authority cited for the programs, will sunset in December 2017. That gives privacy advocates the same kind of leverage they had in 2015, when the sunset of some Patriot Act provisions led Congress to end bulk collection of domestic phone records.

That was the first and only legislative response by Congress to the wide-ranging revelations from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden in 2013. Reforming 702 collection would be the second.

The House Judiciary Committee has already hosted preliminary hearings on the same topic — in secret.

  The Intercept

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Drip, Drip, Drip

The National Security Agency has secretly broken into the main communications links that connect Yahoo and Google data centers around the world, according to documents obtained from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden and interviews with knowledgeable officials.

By tapping those links, the agency has positioned itself to collect at will from hundreds of millions of user accounts, many of them belonging to Americans.

[...]

The NSA’s principal tool to exploit the data links is a project called MUSCULAR, operated jointly with the agency’s British counterpart, the Government Communications Headquarters . From undisclosed interception points, the NSA and the GCHQ are copying entire data flows across fiber-optic cables that carry information between the data centers of the Silicon Valley giants.

[...]

Tapping the Google and Yahoo clouds allows the NSA to intercept communications in real time and to take “a retrospective look at target activity,” according to one internal NSA document.

[...]

The infiltration is especially striking because the NSA, under a separate program known as PRISM, has front-door access to Google and Yahoo user accounts through a court-approved process.

[...]

In 2011, when FISC learned that the NSA was using similar methods to collect and analyze data streams — on a much smaller scale — from cables on U.S. territory, Judge John D. Bates ruled that the program was illegal under FISA and inconsistent with the requirements of the Fourth Amendment.

  WaPo

Constitution? What’s that?

National Security Agency Director Keith Alexander on Wednesday denied knowledge of an agency program that reportedly tapped Google and Yahoo data centers around the world without the companies' knowledge.

  TPM

Drip, Drip, Drip

The National Security Agency paid millions of dollars to cover the costs of major internet companies involved in the Prism surveillance program after a court ruled that some of the agency's activities were unconstitutional, according to top-secret material passed to the Guardian.

The technology companies, which the NSA says includes Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Facebook, incurred the costs to meet new certification demands in the wake of the ruling from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (Fisa) court.

[...]

The material provides the first evidence of a financial relationship between the tech companies and the NSA.

[...]

The disclosure that taxpayers' money was used to cover the companies' compliance costs raises new questions over the relationship between Silicon Valley and the NSA. Since the existence of the program was first revealed by the Guardian and the Washington Post on June 6, the companies have repeatedly denied all knowledge of it and insisted they only hand over user data in response to specific legal requests from the authorities.

An earlier newsletter, which is undated, states that the Prism providers were all given new certifications within days of the Fisa court ruling. "All Prism providers, except Yahoo and Google, were successfully transitioned to the new certifications. We expect Yahoo and Google to complete transitioning by Friday 6 October."

[...]

A Yahoo spokesperson said: "Federal law requires the US government to reimburse providers for costs incurred to respond to compulsory legal process imposed by the government. We have requested reimbursement consistent with this law."

Asked about the reimbursement of costs relating to compliance with Fisa court certifications, Facebook responded by saying it had "never received any compensation in connection with responding to a government data request".

Google did not answer any of the specific questions put to it, and provided only a general statement denying it had joined Prism or any other surveillance program. It added: "We await the US government's response to our petition to publish more national security request data, which will show that our compliance with American national security laws falls far short of the wild claims still being made in the press today."

Microsoft declined to give a response on the record.

[...]

The Guardian informed the White House, the NSA and the office of the director of national intelligence that it planned to publish the documents and asked whether the spy agency routinely covered all the costs of the Prism providers and what the annual cost was to the US.

The NSA declined to comment beyond requesting the redaction of the name of an individual staffer in one of the documents.

  Guardian

Et Tu España?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Big Brother - the Next Installment

“The NSA has trillions of telephone calls and email in their databases. What these programs are are very simple screens, like the ones that supermarket clerks or shipping and receiving clerks use, where all an analyst has to do is enter an email address or an IP address, and it does two things: it searches that database and lets them listen to the calls or read the emails of everything that the NSA has stored, or look at the browsing histories or Google search terms that you’ve entered; and it also alerts them to any further activity that people connected to that email address or connected to that IP address do in the future. And it’s all done with no need to go to a court, with no need to even get supervisor approval on the part of the analyst.”

[...]

Following up on Edward Snowden’s earlier claim that he could wiretap anybody as a low-level defense contractor—a claim denied by NSA officials and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers—Glenn Greenwald appeared on This Week With George Stephanopoulos and claimed that his forthcoming reporting would prove exactly that. “It’s an incredibly powerful and invasive tool,” Greenwald said of the program Snowden used, “exactly the type that Mr. Snowden described. NSA officials are going to be testifying before the Senate on Wednesday, and I defy them to deny that these programs work exactly as I’ve just said.”

  Mediaite

NSA Leaks Interview with Glenn Greenwald

By far, in my opinion, the best and most thorough Greenwald interview on the Snowden leaks to date. Although there have been some good ones, this one is very thoughtful and enlightening about the significance and why the leaks were made, as well as Greenwald's processes in vetting them and Snowden, and his reactions and thoughts on why they have made the impact they are making.

This is a YouTube video, and the video portion is ridiculous - the interviewer sits in front of a mike silently while playing the 40-minute recorded interview. If you don't watch the introductory seven minutes and go straight to the recorded interview (begins at 07:30), and then close your eyes, you'll be doing yourself a favor.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21fBTgCOBDs

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Acute Observation

Of Course It Was

The first major legislative challenge to the National Security Agency's bulk collection of phone records from millions of Americans was defeated by only a narrow margin on Wednesday, sending a clear signal to the Obama administration that congressional anger about the extent of domestic surveillance is growing.

  UK Guardian

Oh sure.

 It was defeated. I think that’s all he needs to know.

White House Equivalent of Scrambling Jets

The Obama administration has forcefully urged the defeat of a legislative measure to curb its wide-ranging collection of Americans' phone records, setting up a showdown with the House of Representatives over domestic surveillance.

[...]

The White House urged House members to vote against a measure from Representative Justin Amash, a Michigan Republican, that would stop the NSA siphoning up the telephone records of millions of Americans without suspicion of a crime.

"This blunt approach is not the product of an informed, open or deliberative process," said the statement emailed from the White House.

  UK Guardian

Do you suppose they are smug bastards or clueless irony-deficient idiots?

Wyden noted during his speech at the administration-aligned thinktank that he thought the administration had agreed with him when it first came to office about the problems of maintaining widespread secrecy over surveillance.

"In the summer of 2009 I received a written commitment from the justice department and the office of the director of national intelligence that a process would be created to start redacting and declassifying Fisa court opinions so that the American people could have some idea of what the government believes the law allows it to do," Wyden said. "In the last four years exactly zero opinions have been released."

Yes, and we’ve heard SO much about Mr. Wyden’s repeated attempts in those four years to get those opinions released, haven’t we?

The White House – which did not release much information about the secret bulk surveillance efforts it has maintained after inheriting the regime from the Bush administration – portrayed itself on Tuesday as open to a continuing dialogue about the proper limits of surveillance. It framed Amash's amendment as rashly ending the bulk surveillance of phone records, while the administration was committed thoughtfully reforming it, although it has yet to publicly announce any reforms.

"In light of the recent unauthorised disclosures the president has said that he welcomes a debate about how best to simultaneously safeguard both our national security and the privacy of our citizens," said the statement attributed to Carney.

"We look forward to continuing to discuss these critical issues with the American people and the Congress."

Suppose Anything Will Come of It?

The House Judiciary Committee's hearing on the government's unconstitutional spying provided the Obama Administration with a marvelous opportunity to answer Congress’s questions about abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act.

[...]

]Rep. John Conyers said:] "We never—at any point during this debate—approved the type of unchecked, sweeping surveillance of United States citizens." […He]concluded saying, in his view, the witnesses "already violated the law" by using Section 215 to obtain such an enormous amount of call records.

Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, one of the authors of Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act, agreed. In the hearing he said the law has "got to be changed,” threatening: "You’ve got to change how you operate 215…or you’re not going to have it anymore." Rep. Zoe Lofgren also voiced her concerns demanding reform of Section. Currently, the bills introduced in Congress fail to fix the spying and we encourage members to draft tougher legislation. Throughout the hearing, witnesses were adamant the records were needed to pursue terrorists organizations, and to serve as a type of grand jury subpoena for investigations.

[...]

Rep. Nadler pointedly asked James Cole of the Justice Department for any example of a grand jury subpoena, issued at any time in U.S. history, that is remotely similar to collecting every American's calling information. Cole conceded that he could not provide an example. When Rep. Nadler asked him to answer the question in writing after the hearing, Cole hid behind secrecy: he stated he would try to respond, but cited that grand jury proceedings can't be released and are secret.

[...]

Time and time again, Representatives pressed the witnesses to reconcile the dragnet, suspicionless collection of call records by the NSA with the Fourth Amendment.

  EFF

Rabbits at the NSA

As an aside during testimony on Capitol Hill today, a National Security Agency representative rather casually indicated that the government looks at data from a universe of far, far more people than previously indicated. Chris Inglis, the agency's deputy director, was one of several government representatives—including from the FBI and the office of the Director of National Intelligence—testifying before the House Judiciary Committee this morning.

[...]

Analysts look "two or three hops" from terror suspects when evaluating terror activity, Inglis revealed. Previously, the limit of how surveillance was extended had been described as two hops. This meant that if the NSA were following a phone metadata or web trail from a terror suspect, it could also look at the calls from the people that suspect has spoken with—one hop. And then, the calls that second person had also spoken with—two hops. Terror suspect to person two to person three. Two hops. And now: A third hop.

[...]

[A suspected terrorist’s] friends' friends' friends, whoever they happen to be, are that third hop. That's a massive group of people that the NSA apparently considers fair game.

  The Atlantic

Tomorrow’s revelation: four hops…oh, what the heck, six. Isn’t everybody related by at most six degrees of separation?

For a sense of scale, researchers at the University of Milan found in 2011 that everyone on the Internet was, on average, 4.74 steps away from anyone else.

Then we only need five.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

They Hate Us for Our Freedom, Right?

The real measure of how free a society is isn’t how its good, obedient servants are treated; it’s how dissidents are treated. And if you go and do any kind of investigative journalism and talk to whistleblowers, or talk to people who are dissenting or are otherwise engaged in activism against the government, or journalists who do that, you find this incredibly disturbing, intense climate of fear. Nobody will talk unless they’re using very sophisticated encryption technologies. [...F]or people who are engaged in actual critical thinking and opposition to those in power, surveillance is menacing. It intimidates people out of engaging in real dissent. That’s its principal danger.

[...]

A society in which people feel like they’re always being watched is one that breeds conformity, because people will avoid doing anything that can prompt judgment or condemnation. This is a crucial part of why a surveillance state is so damaging — it’s why all tyrannies know that watching people is the key to keeping them in line. Because only when you’re not being watched can you really be a free individual.

[...]

I still haven’t gone through all of [the material Edward Snowden gave me], but even though I had been writing for the past four years about how the NSA was building this completely unaccountable and sprawling surveillance system, seeing the truth of it — the hardcore reality of it in their documents — was kind of shocking, I have to say. And I really believe that the most significant revelations are yet to come. I don’t want to keep previewing that — we’re going to take our time vetting it and reporting it and figuring it all out — but the stuff that has shocked me the most is the stuff we haven’t even written about.

  Glenn Greenwald in Harpers

Snowden Updates

Email exchange between Edward Snowden and former GOP Senator Gordon Humphrey



And check out this Q&A with the State Department.

Excerpt:

QUESTION: Well, is the United States Government now in the business of trying to discourage people or governments from facilitating people having – meeting with human rights activists? I don’t get it.

MS. PSAKI: Matt, this is not a universal position of the United States. This is an individual --

QUESTION: So it’s just in this one case.

MS. PSAKI: -- who has been accused of three – of felony charges.

QUESTION: But surely – Jen --

MS. PSAKI: This is not a unique --

QUESTION: Okay. He’s been accused. Do you remember the old line that we’re supposed to all know – he has not been convicted of anything yet.

MS. PSAKI: And he can return to the United States and face the charges.

QUESTION: But he can also surely – people who are accused of crimes are allowed their right of free speech, are they not?

MS. PSAKI: Matt, I think we’ve gone the round on this.

QUESTION: No, I mean, it’s a legitimate question. I mean, you talk about even in Russia that journalists have been persecuted and political activists have been persecuted and you call for free speech around the world. But you’re not saying that Mr. Snowden has the right of free speech?

MS. PSAKI: That’s not at all what I was saying. We believe, of course, broadly in free speech. Our concern here was that this was – there was obvious facilitation by the Russians in this case. We’ve conveyed that. We’ve conveyed our concerns. I’m saying them publicly.

QUESTION: So you’re upset – you’re not upset about the press conference; you’re upset that the Russians facilitated it.

MS. PSAKI: We certainly are upset that there was a platform for an individual who’s been accused of felony crimes.

QUESTION: But what does that matter, really? I mean, people that are in jail or are on trial in the United States, they give press conferences or they speak out all the time. I mean, it sounds to me like what you’re not really upset with the act that he spoke; you’re upset with the fact that the Russians did something on his behalf.

MS. PSAKI: I think I’ve expressed what we’re upset about.

[...]

QUESTION: Is it this building’s role, then, to formally request a denial of asylum? I mean, what is the communication here? If the issue of him being a fugitive is handled through Justice, what is it that State is doing?

Quite obviously pursuing a political crusade against an American citizen. Political persecution - surely that technically and legally requires another country to grant asylum. I think the Russians can figure that out.

UPDATE: Here's video of the State Dept. Q&A:

Collect It All

[ In late 2005,] more than 100 teams of U.S. analysts were scouring Iraq for snippets of electronic data that might lead to the bomb-makers and their hidden factories. But the NSA director, Gen. Keith B. Alexander, wanted more than mere snippets. He wanted everything: Every Iraqi text message, phone call and e-mail that could be vacuumed up by the agency’s powerful computers.

“Rather than look for a single needle in the haystack, his approach was, ‘Let’s collect the whole haystack,’ ” said one former senior U.S. intelligence official who tracked the plan’s implementation. “Collect it all, tag it, store it. . . . And whatever it is you want, you go searching for it.”

  WaPo

Numerous NSA documents we've already published demonstrate that the NSA's goal is to collect, monitor and store every telephone and internet communication that takes place inside the US and on the earth. It already collects billions of calls and emails every single day.

[...]

The NSA is constantly seeking to expand its capabilities without limits. They're currently storing so much, and preparing to store so much more, that they have to build a massive, sprawling new facility in Utah just to hold all the communications from inside the US and around the world that they are collecting - communications they then have the physical ability to invade any time they .

[...]

That is the definition of a ubiquitous surveillance state - and it's been built in the dark, without the knowledge of the American people or people around the world, even though it's aimed at them.

[...]

“[NSA chief General Keith Alexander] is the only man in the land that can promote a problem by virtue of his intelligence hat and then promote a solution by virtue of his military hat,” said one former Pentagon official, voicing a concern that the lines governing the two authorities are not clearly demarcated and that Alexander can evade effective public oversight as a result.

[...]

Alexander maintained in a speech last month that he is mindful to “do everything you can to protect civil liberties and privacy.”

He then added a warning: “Everyone also understands,” he said, “that if we give up a capability that is critical to the defense of this nation, people will die.”

[...]

t a private meeting with financial industry officials a few years ago, Alexander spoke about the proliferation of computer malware aimed at siphoning data from networks, including those of banks.

[...]

His proposed solution: Private companies should give the government access to their networks so it could screen out the harmful software.

[...]

The group of financial industry officials, sitting around a table at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, were stunned, immediately grasping the privacy implications of what Alexander was politely but urgently suggesting. As a group, they demurred.

  Glenn Greenwald

As though that would stop him from collecting their information if he wanted.

And in all this, let us not forget that the US has been using their spying capabilities to pick up information on other governments’ trade secrets. That’s got nothing to do with terrorism and keeping us safe.

Nice Poster

Seen at Economist.com

German Fallout

"Disaster," "complete failure," "a flop": the German opposition parties have been unsparing in criticizing Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich for what they call his failure to bring back answers from a trip to Washington for talks on the National Security Agency (NSA) Internet surveillance scandal. Friedrich promised more information ahead of his visit, which included meetings with US Vice President Joe Biden and Attorney General Eric Holder on the NSA's online spying activities.

Konstantin von Notz, a member of the Greens and an expert on domestic affairs, told DW that Friedrich's meeting with US politicians cured nothing, offering a placebo instead: "It was an attempt at making it seem like something was being done."

  DW

Well, of course it was. And had the opposition party been in power, they probably would have done the same thing. But as far as the German people go, this may signal the beginning of the end for Angela Merkel.

More Detail About the NSA Documents

These three articles are too pithy for me to take anything out for quotes. You should just read them all if you're interested in what is still happening and yet to come in the revelations Edward Snowden has brought about, and the breadth and depth of our government's global stranglehold and disregard for civil liberties, privacy, and national sovereignty of other countries shown not only by those documents but by the US government's reactions to them being leaked.

Q&A with Glenn Greenwald

Greenwald: Snowden’s Files Are Out There if ‘Anything Happens’ to Him

The latest effort to distract attention from the NSA revelations is more absurd than most

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

As Always, Expect More of the Same

James Comey, Jr., who served as U.S. Deputy Attorney General during the George W. Bush administration, after having served as one of Bush's U.S. Attorneys, has been nominated by Obama to become the next Director of the FBI. He will, in theory, serve ten years if confirmed by the U.S. Senate and will be the first FBI Director appointed after 9/11.

[...]

Director of the ACLU's Washington Legislative office, Laura Murphy, cautions that "Comey...also approved or defended some of the worst abuses of the Bush administration during his time as deputy attorney general. Those included torture, warrantless wiretapping, and indefinite detention."

[...]

During the three-hour Senate [confirmation hearing this week], Comey admitted to having given his approval, during his time as Deputy AG in the Bush Administration, for programs that he felt included torture. Waterboarding, he said on Tuesday, "is torture".

When asked again by the U.S. Senate Judiciary Chair Patrick Leahy (D-VT), "Do you agree that waterboarding is torture and is illegal?," Comey answered directly: "Yes."

Would Comey, as Director of the FBI, investigate and prosecute those who carried out such illegal policies while he reportedly authorized some of them during his years serving in the Bush Administration? It's unclear that anybody asked Comey that question, or that he volunteered as much.

  Brad Friedman

I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest no one did or is going to ask him that question.  And further out to say that if they did, his answer would be no.  Don't worry about me.  It's a very long limb.

"Do you believe the bulk collection of metadata for domestic telephone or emails is appropriate," asked Leahy, "even when the majority of individuals with whom the calls or emails are associated are law-abiding Americans?"

"Senator, I'm not familiar with the details of the current programs," Comey responded. "Obviously, I haven't been cleared for anything like that and I've been out of government for eight years. I do know, as a general matter, that the collection of metadata and analysis of metadata is a valuable tool in counter-terrorism."

Meanwhile, Typewriter Sales Are Up

If true...

A Russian state service in charge of safeguarding Kremlin communications is looking to purchase an array of old-fashioned typewriters to prevent leaks from computer hardware, sources said Thursday.

The throwback to the paper-strewn days of Soviet bureaucracy has reportedly been prompted by the publication of secret documents by anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks and the revelations leaked by former US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden.

  Raw Story

Yet Another Pip Squeaks

Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto indicated that if allegations were proven that the United States had spied on its southern neighbor, it would be "totally unacceptable."

  RT

But, accept it, they would.