Kevin Shipp – Americans Not Ready for Coming Financial Calamity

Sara Carter Tells Sean Hannity FBI Director Wray Might Fire McCabe Over ...

NSA Says It Would Welcome Public Advocate At FISA Court

by
January 09, 2014 2:45 PM

Listen to the Story

 Morning Edition

8 min 57 sec

The National Security Agency headquarters building in Fort Meade, Md. Reuters/Landov

The National Security Agency "would welcome" the creation of a public advocate's position at the court that oversees its electronic surveillance programs, said its outgoing deputy director.

John C. "Chris" Inglis, who retires Friday after more than seven years as the NSA's No. 2, told Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep that "I would only put the caveat on there that it needs to be operationally efficient."



TRANSCRIPT

Click here to read a transcript of the entire conversation with John C. "Chris" Inglis.

"So, let's say that I'm authorized to target the head of al-Qaida worldwide and I'm actively doing that," he continued. "I'm trying to figure out what communication services — selectors — that person is using. If at every moment in time somebody had to authorize me to put the next selector on — 'He just changed his email address, can I put that on?' — if that's where the advocate stands in, that's operationally not terribly efficient.

"But if there's going to be some novel interpretation of the law — if there's going to be some authority that's going to be applied as an extension of the law [that] might say, 'I've got a different view,' we'd welcome that."

The NSA would also welcome a public advocate's presence in the room each time it seeks a warrant, Inglis said, if the process can be made "operationally efficient."

The creation of a public advocate position inside the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance — or FISA — court that oversees the NSA that the President's Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies has suggested. The recommendations followed former NSA contractor 's leaks about the agency's surveillance programs.

The idea is that the advocate could raise objections if it appears the NSA might be about to violate someone's civil or privacy rights.

President Obama has been meeting with congressional leaders and will talk with technology company executives on Friday as he considers the panel's recommendations. The president is expected to announce his decision on what changes, if any, will be made to U.S. surveillance programs later this month.

Snowden's revelations have lifted the veil on many secrets about the NSA's massive electronic surveillance efforts, which the agency says are aimed at the telephone and Internet communications of suspected terrorists overseas — but have also swept up data about the phone calls and emails of world leaders and average Americans.


NSA's John Inglis on why you need a haystack


In the NPR interview, Inglis did not dispute an estimate that the agency had examined electronic communications more than 44 million times in 2012. But he said that does not mean the NSA spied on 44 million people, since many targets of surveillance had multiple phone numbers or email accounts, which the agency examined multiple times.

"A particular terrorist might have dozens ... hundreds of these selectors," he said.

Inglis made the case for why the NSA needs to gather so much information. "If you're looking for a needle in a haystack, you need the haystack," he said.

He also said the NSA is open to another potential change that has been suggested — having the data it wants collected stored by phone companies and other tech firms, not by the agency itself, and only made available after warrants are issued by the FISA court. "We are considering that," he said, although the decision about such a change will be made by policymakers, not the agency.

 
NSA's John Inglis compares what Edward Snowden did to arson


During the conversation, Inglis also said that in hindsight, the NSA should have disclosed at least some details about its surveillance programs before Snowden's leaks hit front pages last June.

But Snowden did not do the NSA any favor by spilling its secrets and sparking a national debate, Inglis said. He likened what Snowden did to "somebody who burned my house down [and] has given me an opportunity to perhaps build it in a way that I would prefer."

Much more from the conversation with Inglis is scheduled for Friday's Morning Edition.


Source
.

Google denies giving NSA 'direct access' to user data

News - Friday, June 14, 2013




by Daniel DeBolt


National Security Agency documents leaked to the press say Mountain View's Google has been cooperating with the United States government to spy on citizens on an unprecedented scale, allowing direct access to the company's servers. Google executives deny that to be the case.

According to bombshell reports in the Guardian and Washington Post newspapers, an NSA program called PRISM allows the U.S. government to collect data directly from the servers of Google and others, including Facebook, Apple and Microsoft.

The revelation that the NSA apparently has such unchecked ability to spy on the American public's internet activities came from a slide show presentation about PRISM, leaked by whistle-blower and former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. He has fled to Hong Kong, leaving behind a $200,000-a-year job and a home in Hawaii with his girlfriend.

"I'm willing to sacrifice all of that because I can't in good conscience allow the U.S. government to destroy privacy, internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they're secretly building," Snowden said in a video interview.

A slide in the leaked NSA presentation about data gathering described PRISM as "Collection directly from the servers of these US service providers: Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, Apple."

The report was met with strongly worded denial from Google executives in a June 7 blog post titled "What the...?" by CEO Larry Page and chief legal officer David Drummond.

"The U.S. government does not have direct access or a "back door" to the information stored in our data centers," the executives write. "We had not heard of a program called PRISM until yesterday."

The Google executives say they do provide the U.S. government with specific Google user data, but only when required by law, known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

"Our legal team reviews each and every request, and frequently pushes back when requests are overly broad or don't follow the correct process," the executives write. "Press reports that suggest that Google is providing open-ended access to our users' data are false, period. Until this week's reports, we had never heard of the broad type of order that Verizon received — an order that appears to have required them to hand over millions of users' call records. We were very surprised to learn that such broad orders exist. Any suggestion that Google is disclosing information about our users' Internet activity on such a scale is completely false."

Google's executives note that they have worked hard to be "transparent" about the data requests received, being the first internet company to publish a "Transparency Report" about government requests for data. The reports show a steadily increasing number of requests for user data, from 12,539 requests in last half of 2009 to 21,389 in the last half of 2012. Between 66 percent and 76 percent of the requests led Google to turn over some data, starting in 2011.

The executives also appear to oppose the laws that compel them to hand over user data, laws which apparently require a "level of secrecy" about the requests.

"We understand that the U.S. and other governments need to take action to protect their citizens' safety — including sometimes by using surveillance," the executives write. "But the level of secrecy around the current legal procedures undermines the freedoms we all cherish."

Google's chief architect Yonatan Zunger wrote his own response. "Owing to the nature of my work at Google over the past decade, it would have been challenging — not impossible, but definitely a major surprise — if something like this could have been done without my ever hearing of it."

He added his own concerns about the U.S. government's growing surveillance apparatus.

"I, personally, am by now disgusted with their conduct: the national security apparatus has convinced itself and the rest of the government that the only way it can do its job is to know everything about everyone. That's not how you protect a country. We didn't fight the Cold War just so we could rebuild the Stasi ourselves."

Source

.

No more spying on citizens who are not suspected of a crime

Obama in 2007: No more spying on citizens who are not suspected of a crime

John Sexton

Published on Jun 6, 2013


Excerpt from President Obama's speech at the Woodrow Wilson Center in August 2007.

This Administration also puts forward a false choice between the liberties we cherish and the security we demand. I will provide our intelligence and law enforcement agencies with the tools they need to track and take out the terrorists without undermining our Constitution and our freedom.

That means no more illegal wire-tapping of American citizens. No more national security letters to spy on citizens who are not suspected of a crime. No more tracking citizens who do nothing more than protest a misguided war. No more ignoring the law when it is inconvenient. That is not who we are. And it is not what is necessary to defeat the terrorists. The FISA court works. The separation of powers works. Our Constitution works. We will again set an example for the world that the law is not subject to the whims of stubborn rulers, and that justice is not arbitrary.

This Administration acts like violating civil liberties is the way to enhance our security. It is not.

Source clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEdpT...

.

Intelligence chief defends Internet spying program

LARA JAKES, Associated Press, By LARA JAKES and JIM KUHNHENN, Associated Press

Updated 5:19 pm, Saturday, June 8, 2013



President Barack Obama pauses while speaking in San Jose, Calif. , Friday, June 7, 2013. The president defended his government's secret surveillance, saying Congress has repeatedly authorized the collection of America's phone records and U.S. internet use. Photo: Evan Vucci










WASHINGTON (AP) — Eager to quell a domestic furor over U.S. spying, the nation's top intelligence official stressed Saturday that a previously undisclosed program for tapping into Internet usage is authorized by Congress, falls under strict supervision of a secret court and cannot intentionally target a U.S. citizen. He decried the revelation of that and another intelligence-gathering program as reckless.

For the second time in three days, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper took the rare step of declassifying some details of an intelligence program to respond to media reports about counterterrorism techniques employed by the government.

"Disclosing information about the specific methods the government uses to collect communications can obviously give our enemies a 'playbook' of how to avoid detection," he said in a statement.

Clapper said the data collection under the program, first unveiled by the newspapers The Washington Post and The Guardian, was with the approval of the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Court and with the knowledge of Internet service providers. He emphasized that the government does not act unilaterally to obtain that data from the servers of those providers.

Clapper's reaction came a day after President Barack Obama defended the counterterrorism methods and said Americans need to "make some choices" in balancing privacy and security. But the president's response and Clapper's unusual public stance underscore the nerve touched by the disclosures and the sensitivity of the Obama administration to any suggestion that it is trampling on the civil liberties of Americans.

Late Thursday, Clapper declassified some details of a phone records collection program employed by the National Security Agency that aims to obtain from phone companies on an "ongoing, daily basis" the records of its customers' calls. Clapper said that under that court-supervised program, only a small fraction of the records collected ever get examined because most are unrelated to any inquiries into terrorism activities.

His statement and declassification Saturday addressed the Internet scouring program, code-named PRISM, that allowed the NSA and FBI to tap directly into the servers of major U.S. Internet companies such as Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook and AOL. Like the phone-records program, PRISM was approved by a judge in a secret court order. Unlike that program, however, PRISM allowed the government to seize actual conversations: emails, video chats, instant messages and more.

Clapper said the program, authorized in the USA Patriot Act, has been in place since 2008, the last year of the George W. Bush administration, and "has proven vital to keeping the nation and our allies safe.

"It continues to be one of our most important tools for the protection of the nation's security," he said.

Among the previously classified information about the Internet data collection that Clapper revealed:

—It is an internal government computer system that allows the government to collect foreign intelligence information from electronic communication service providers under court supervision.

—The government does not unilaterally obtain information from the servers of U.S. electronic communication service providers. It requires approval from a FISA Court judge and is conducted with the knowledge of the provider and service providers supply information when they are legally required to do so.

—The program seeks foreign intelligence information concerning foreign targets located outside the United States.

—The government cannot target anyone under the program unless there is an "appropriate, and documented, foreign intelligence purpose" for the acquisition. Those purposes include prevention of terrorism, hostile cyber activities or nuclear proliferation. The foreign target must be reasonably believed to be outside the United States. It cannot intentionally target any U.S. citizen or any person known to be in the U.S.



Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/news/politics/article/Intelligence-chief-defends-Internet-spying-program-4588451.php#ixzz2Vg7dV6sa

.

P.S. 

I want to comment on a statement made by James Clapper the Director of National Intelligence:

the nation's top intelligence official stressed Saturday that a previously undisclosed program for tapping into Internet usage is authorized by Congress, falls under strict supervision of a secret court and cannot intentionally target a U.S citizen.

There are aspects of the statements above that I disagree with, but I will focus on the SECRET COURT. 

A secret court can covertly justify the wanton monitoring of an American, yet a known terrorist (according to this administration) should be tried in public in a New York City Court?  That is really a bizarre logic that makes no kind of sense to me. 

And frankly, any one with a limited intelligence can see this blatant double standard from a mile away.

A.L.

.

.

Documents: U.S. mining data from 9 leading Internet firms; companies deny knowledge

Video: Members of Congress and The White House are defending a top secret NSA program that continues to collect data from millions of phone records, but civil liberties supporters remain skeptical. The Post’s Ellen Nakashima explains.




By Barton Gellman and Laura Poitras, Updated: Thursday, June 6, 9:09 PM


The National Security Agency and the FBI are tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies, extracting audio and video chats, photographs, e-mails, documents, and connection logs that enable analysts to track one target or trace a whole network of associates, according to a top-secret document obtained by The Washington Post.

The program, code-named PRISM, has not been made public until now. It may be the first of its kind. The NSA prides itself on stealing secrets and breaking codes, and it is accustomed to corporate partnerships that help it divert data traffic or sidestep barriers. But there has never been a Google or Facebook before, and it is unlikely that there are richer troves of valuable intelligence than the ones in Silicon Valley.

Equally unusual is the way the NSA extracts what it wants, according to the document: “Collection directly from the servers of these U.S. Service Providers: Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, Apple.”

PRISM was launched from the ashes of President George W. Bush’s secret program of warrantless domestic surveillance in 2007, after news media disclosures, lawsuits and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court forced the president to look for new authority.

Congress obliged with the Protect America Act in 2007 and the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, which immunized private companies that cooperated voluntarily with U.S. intelligence collection. PRISM recruited its first partner, Microsoft, and began six years of rapidly growing data collection beneath the surface of a roiling national debate on surveillance and privacy. Late last year, when critics in Congress sought changes in the FISA Amendments Act, the only lawmakers who knew about PRISM were bound by oaths of office to hold their tongues.

The court-approved program is focused on foreign communications traffic, which often flows through U.S. servers even when sent from one overseas location to another. Between 2004 and 2007, Bush administration lawyers persuaded federal FISA judges to issue surveillance orders in a fundamentally new form. Until then the government had to show probable cause that a particular “target” and “facility” were both connected to terrorism or espionage.

In four new orders, which remain classified, the court defined massive data sets as “facilities” and agreed to occasionally certify that the government had reasonable procedures in place to minimize collection of “U.S. persons” data without a warrant.

Several companies contacted by The Post said they had no knowledge of the program and responded only to individual requests for information.

“We do not provide any government organization with direct access to Facebook servers,” said Joe Sullivan, chief security officer for Facebook. “When Facebook is asked for data or information about specific individuals, we carefully scrutinize any such request for compliance with all applicable laws, and provide information only to the extent required by law.”

Read more

.

Not just Verizon? Secret NSA effort to gather phone data is years old

Source: http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-nsa-telephone-surveillance-revelation-20130606,0,2415540.story



The National Security Agency is reportedly keeping track of the telephone records of millions of American Verizon customers.

By Richard A. Serrano and Kathleen Hennessey

June 6, 2013, 8:54 a.m.


WASHINGTON -- The massive National Security Agency collection of telephone records disclosed Wednesday was part of a continuing program that has been in effect nonstop since 2006, according to the two top leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

“As far as I know, this is the exact three-month renewal of what has been in place for the past seven years," Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) told reporters Thursday. The surveillance “is lawful” and Congress has been fully briefed on the practice, she added.

Her Republican counterpart, Saxby Chambliss, concurred: "This is nothing new. This has been going on for seven years,” he said. “Every member of the United States Senate has been advised of this. To my knowledge there has not been any citizen who has registered a complaint. It has proved meritorious because we have collected significant information on bad guys, but only on bad guys, over the years."

Obama administration defends collecting Verizon phone data

Same-sex marriage 'inevitable,' most Americans say

Obama shakes up national security team



The statements by the two senators, whose committee positions give them wide access to classified data, appeared to rule out the possibility that the court order directing Verizon to turn over telephone records was related to the Boston Marathon bombings. The order was effective as of April 19, shortly after the bombings, which had sparked speculation about a link.

Instead, the surveillance, which was revealed Wednesday by Britain’s Guardian newspaper, appears to have been of far longer duration. Although the senators did not specify the scope of the surveillance, the fact that it has been in place since 2006 also suggests that it is not limited to any one phone carrier.

The Obama administration defended the program Thursday, saying the data collection “has been a critical tool in protecting the nation from terrorist threats to the United States.”

A senior administration official released a statement which did not confirm the existence of the court order authorizing the surveillance, which, according to the copy released by the Guardian, is marked "Top Secret." It was issued in late April by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, a secret court that meets in Washington, and allowed the government to collect the bulk data until July 19.

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

The court order was authorized under a provision of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that allows the government to collect business records in bulk if its requests are approved by the court.

The official said telephone data allow "counterterrorism personnel to discover whether known or suspected terrorists have been in contact with other persons who may be engaged in terrorist activities, particularly people located inside the United States.”

The official requested anonymity to discuss the counterterrorism program.

In defending the data collection program, the administration official sought to spread responsibility, noting that “all three branches” of government were tasked with review and oversight of surveillance.

"There is a robust legal regime in place governing all activities conducted pursuant to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act," the official said. He said that involves oversight by the Department of Justice, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the FISA court.

Separately, the Justice Department released a letter defending the administration’s handling of the FISA law that they had sent in 2011 to two senators who had objected to it.

“We do not believe the Executive Branch is operating pursuant to ‘secret law’ or ‘secret opinions of the Department of Justice,’ “ said the letter, signed by Assistant Atty. Gen. Ronald Weich. The “Intelligence Community is conducting court-authorized intelligence activities pursuant to a public statute, with the knowledge and oversight of Congress and the Intelligence Communities of both Houses.”

“Many other collection activities are classified,” Weich added, saying that “this is necessary because public disclosure of the activities they discuss would harm national security and impede the effectiveness of the intelligence tools that Congress has approved.”

Weich further defended the program by saying intelligence officials have “determined that public disclosure of the classified use” of the law “would expose sensitive sources and methods to our adversaries and therefore harm national security.”

He said collection of records, as now underway with Verizon phone logs, was different than material obtained through grand jury subpoenas. Grand jury subpoenas, he said, can be obtained by prosecutors without court approval. In contrast, he said, the intelligence collections can be done only with approval from a federal judge sitting on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

Most importantly, he noted that FISA courts require a showing by officials that the records sought “are relevant to an authorized national security investigation.”

The Weich letter was sent to Sen. Ron Wyden (D-0re.).

Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. is testifying Thursday morning before the Senate Appropriations Committee, and is expected to address the matter further.

Source: http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-nsa-telephone-surveillance-revelation-20130606,0,2415540.story
.

.

U.S. Is Secretly Collecting Records of Verizon Calls

By CHARLIE SAVAGE and EDWARD WYATT
Published: June 5, 2013


WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is secretly carrying out a domestic surveillance program under which it is collecting business communications records involving Americans under a hotly debated section of the Patriot Act, according to a highly classified court order disclosed on Wednesday night.

The order, signed by Judge Roger Vinson of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in April, directs a Verizon Communications subsidiary, Verizon Business Network Services, to turn over “on an ongoing daily basis” to the National Security Agency all call logs “between the United States and abroad” or “wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls.”

The order does not apply to the content of the communications.

Verizon Business Network Services is one of the nation’s largest telecommunications and Internet providers for corporations. It is not clear whether similar orders have gone to other parts of Verizon, like its residential or cellphone services, or to other telecommunications carriers. The order prohibits its recipient from discussing its existence, and representatives of both Verizon and AT&T declined to comment Wednesday evening.

The four-page order was disclosed Wednesday evening by the newspaper The Guardian. Obama administration officials at the F.B.I. and the White House also declined to comment on it Wednesday evening, but did not deny the report, and a person familiar with the order confirmed its authenticity. “We will respond as soon as we can,” said Marci Green Miller, a National Security Agency spokeswoman, in an e-mail.

The order was sought by the Federal Bureau of Investigation under a section of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the 1978 law that regulates domestic surveillance for national security purposes, including “tangible things” like a business’s customer records. The provision was expanded by Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which Congress enacted after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

The order was marked “TOP SECRET//SI//NOFORN,” referring to communications-related intelligence information that may not be released to noncitizens. That would make it among the most closely held secrets in the federal government, and its disclosure comes amid a furor over the Obama administration’s aggressive tactics in its investigations of leaks.

The collection of call logs is set to expire in July unless the court extends it.

The collection of communications logs — or calling “metadata” — is believed to be a major component of the Bush administration’s program of surveillance that took place without court orders. The newly disclosed order raised the question of whether the government continued that type of information collection by bringing it under the Patriot Act.

The disclosure late Wednesday seemed likely to inspire further controversy over the scope of government surveillance. Kate Martin of the Center for National Security Studies, a civil liberties advocacy group, said that “absent some explanation I haven’t thought of, this looks like the largest assault on privacy since the N.S.A. wiretapped Americans in clear violation of the law” under the Bush administration. “On what possible basis has the government refused to tell us that it believes that the law authorizes this kind of request?” she said.

For several years, two Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon and Senator Mark Udall of Colorado, have been cryptically warning that the government was interpreting its surveillance powers under that section of the Patriot Act in a way that would be alarming to the public if it knew about it.

“We believe most Americans would be stunned to learn the details of how these secret court opinions have interpreted Section 215 of the Patriot Act,” they wrote last year in a letter to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.

They added: “As we see it, there is now a significant gap between what most Americans think the law allows and what the government secretly claims the law allows. This is a problem, because it is impossible to have an informed public debate about what the law should say when the public doesn’t know what its government thinks the law says.”

A spokesman for Senator Wyden did not respond Wednesday to a request for comment on the Verizon order.

The senators were angry because the Obama administration described Section 215 orders as being similar to a grand jury subpoena for obtaining business records, like a suspect’s hotel or credit card records, in the course of an ordinary criminal investigation. The senators said the secret interpretation of the law was nothing like that.

Section 215 of the Patriot Act made it easier to get an order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to obtain business records so long as they were merely deemed “relevant” to a national-security investigation.

The Justice Department has denied being misleading about the Patriot Act. Department officials have acknowledged since 2009 that a secret, sensitive intelligence program is based on the law and have insisted that their statements about the matter have been accurate.

The New York Times filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit in 2011 for a report describing the government’s interpretation of its surveillance powers under the Patriot Act. But the Obama administration withheld the report, and a judge dismissed the case.


A version of this article appeared in print on June 6, 2013, on page A16 of the New York edition with the headline: U.S. Secretly Collecting Logs of Business Calls.

 .

Source
.

What the FBI Doesn't Want You To Know About Its "Secret" Surveillance Techniques

Photo (Courtesy) http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2012/07/police-surveillance-cellphones-skyrocketing/54309/

.

JANUARY 17, 2013 | BY PARKER HIGGINS AND TREVOR TIMM



The FBI had to rewrite the book on its domestic surveillance activities in the wake of last January’s landmark Supreme Court decision in United States v. Jones. In Jones, a unanimous court held that federal agents must get a warrant to attach a GPS device to a car to track a suspect for long periods of time. But if you want to see the two memos describing how the FBI has reacted to Jones — and the new surveillance techniques the FBI is using beyond GPS trackers — you’re out of luck. The FBI says that information is “private and confidential.”

Yes, now that the Supreme Court ruled the government must get a warrant to use its previous go-to surveillance technique, it has now apparently decided that it’s easier to just keep everything secret. The ACLU requested the memos under the Freedom of Information Act — which you can see FBI General Counsel Andrew Weissmann waving around in public here — and the FBI redacted them almost entirely.

Though the FBI won’t release the memos, we do have some information from other sources on the surveillance techniques federal agents are already using. And for the most part the FBI contends they do not need a warrant, and one wonders, given the public nature of this information, why they are officially claiming its "secret."

Cell Phone Data Requests

Tellingly, in U.S. v. Jones, after the US government lost its case in the Supreme Court with the GPS device, it went right back to the district court and asserted it could get Jones’ cell phone site location data without a warrant. EFF has long argued cell location data, which can map your precise location for days or weeks at a time, is highly personal, and should require a warrant from a judge.

In July 2012, the New York Times reported that federal, state, and local law enforcement officials had requested all kinds of cell phone data, including mappings of suspects’ locations, a staggering 1.3 million times in the previous year. Worse, the real number was “almost certainly much higher" given they often request multiple people’s data with one request. The FBI also employs highly controversial “tower dumps” where they get the location information on everyone within a particular radius, potentially violating the privacy of thousands of innocent people with one request.

Stingray Interceptors

In late 2012, we reported on the secretive new device the FBI has been increasingly using for surveillance known as a IMSI catcher, or “Stingray.” A Stingray acts as a fake cell phone tower and locks onto all devices in a certain area to find a cell phone’s location, or perhaps even intercept phone calls and texts. Given it potentially sucks up thousands of innocent persons’ data, we called it an “unconstitutional, all you can eat data buffet.”

The FBI has gone to great lengths to keep this technology secret, even going as far as refusing to tell judges its full range of capabilities. Recently, documents obtained by EPIC Privacy through a FOIA request shed more light on the devices.

License Plate Readers

In cities across the country, local police departments and other law enforcement agencies are installing automated license plate readers that create databases of location information about individual cars (and their drivers). These readers can be mounted by the side of a busy road, scanning every car that rolls by, or on the dash of a police car, allowing officers to drive through and scan all the plates in a parking lot.

In Washington, D.C., nearly every block is captured by one of the more than 250 cameras scanning over 1,800 images per minute. In Los Angeles, more than two dozen different law enforcement agencies operate license plate readers to collect over 160 million data points. This surveillance is untargeted, recording the movements of any car passes by. In cities that have become partners in the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, or have entered into another data-sharing agreement, this location information is at the fingertips of those federal agents.

Drone Authorization

On top of all this, the FBI is one of just a few dozen public agencies that has an authorization to fly a drone in the U.S. There is no evidence at this time that they are actively pursuing or using a specific device. But we do know that other branches of the federal government, namely the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), are conducting drone surveillance along the U.S. border, and have at least occasionally loaned these capabilities to other departments. EFF has sued DHS for more information about that program, but in the meantime, as with the redacted documents, information about their use in surveillance remains frustratingly opaque.

Secret Law

This is just the latest example of the Obama administration trying to interpret public laws in secret without adequately informing its citizens. Currently, EFF is suing the government for its secret interpretation of the Patriot Act Section 215, and for secret FISA court opinions that could shed light on the NSA warrantless wiretapping program. In addition, the ACLU has sued the Obama administration for its legal opinion stating it can kill US citizens overseas, away from the battlefield.

Of course, law enforcement needs the ability to conduct investigations. But explaining to the public how it generally conducts surveillance puts no one in danger, and compromises no investigations. After all, criminals have known the FBI has been able to wiretap phones with a warrant for decades and it hasn’t stopped them from using wiretaps to catch them.

This information is vital to know if law enforcement is complying with the law and constitution. As we’ve seen with GPS devices, and we are now seeing with cell phone tracking and the use of Stingrays, law enforcement will push the limits of their authority — and sometimes overstep it — if they are not kept in check by an informed public.

Source

.

Congress Extends FISA Wiretapping Act To 2017; Awaits Obama's Signature

by BILL CHAPPELL

December 28, 2012 5:45 PM





National Intelligence Director James Clapper leaves the Capitol after briefing members of Congress earlier this month. The Senate voted Friday to extend the FISA Amendments Act to 2017, granting federal agencies wide surveillance powers.J. Scott Applewhite/AP

The FISA Amendments Act has been approved for another five years, as the Senate voted to renew the law that grants the government wide surveillance authority. President Obama has said he intends to sign the measure, which senators approved by a 73-23 margin Friday morning. It had already won approval in the House.

The controversial bill, which allows federal agencies to eavesdrop on communications and review email without following an open and public warrant process, has long been a target for privacy and rights groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union, which is involved in a Supreme Court case over FISA.

The original Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act dates back to 1978; it was expanded during the Bush administration in 2008, to allow both foreign and domestic surveillance without a warrant, as long as the intent is to gather foreign intelligence.

When it was amended in 2008, FISA also provided "retroactive immunity to the telecom companies that assisted the Bush administration in its warrantless wiretapping program," as Open Congress notes in its summary.

Before Friday's vote, the 2012 FISA extension faced several attempts to amend it, including one made by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who sought to require the director of national intelligence to share information about telephone and email surveillance —how many Americans have been monitored, for instance, or whether communications between Americans is reviewed.

The Wyden amendment was rejected by a 52-43 vote, an indication of the contentiousness surrounding the bill's granting of intelligence-gathering powers. The amendment had bipartisan support that included Democratic Sens. Al Franken and Patty Murray and Republican Sens. Dean Heller and Pat Toomey, among others.

But the measure also faced bipartisan opposition. Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), the ranking members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, spoke against the Wyden amendment, with Feinstein saying it would expose "information about a very effective intelligence collection program that is currently classified." She added that the Senate Intelligence and Judiciary Committees already review all of the material.


A similar measure, introduced by Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), sought to require the Attorney General to disclose some of the decisions and orders issued by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, whose records are generally not available to the public. The Merkley measure failed by a 54-37 margin.

Another amendment, offered by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), sought "to ensure adequate protection of the rights under the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States" — the portion of the Bill of Rights that protects citizens from unreasonable search and seizure. Paul's amendment was defeated, 79-12.

Source


,,,

.