Why The Appeals Court Ruling Against NSA Domestic Spying Programs Comes At a Key Moment for Patriot Act

The tide seems to be turning against the U.S. National Security Agency's domestic surveillance programs, two years after Edward Snowden leaked controversial details on the agency's digital spying practices.

This week, ahead of various attempts in the U.S. Congress to either reauthorize, reform, or completely abolish the legal underpinnings of the NSA's digital surveillance programs, a federal appeals court dealt a big blow to the agency's domestic spying activities. 

Appeals Court: Patriot Act 'Does Not Authorize' Metadata Collection

On Thursday, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that NSA's bulk metadata (phone records) collection program -- one of the less controversial aspects of the NSA's domestic surveillance initiatives -- is illegal under the current law.

Read more @ http://www.latinpost.com/articles/52155/20150509/appeals-court-rules-against-nsa-domestic-spying-programs-weeks-before-patriot-act-sunset.htm

 

GOP candidates divided over renewing USA Patriot Act

Republican senators eyeing the presidency split over the renewal of the USA Patriot Act surveillance law, with civil libertarians at odds with traditional defense hawks who back tough spying powers in the fight against terrorism.

The political divide will be on stark display this month as Congress debates reauthorization of the post-Sept. 11 law ahead of a June 1 deadline. The broader question of privacy rights has gained attention since a former National Security Agency systems administrator, Edward Snowden, disclosed in 2013 that the NSA had been collecting and storing data on nearly every American's phone calls for years.

Read more @ http://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article20572374.html

 

Here’s What’s Wrong With the USA Freedom Act

It would constrain some of the worst excesses of the Patriot Act, but it doesn’t go nearly far enough.

UPDATE—Thursday, May 7: The day after we posted this article, the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York declared the NSA’s domestic phone metadata program illegal, on the ground that the USA Patriot Act provision on which the NSA program had rested did not in fact authorize bulk collection of every American’s phone records. In other words, the NSA’s domestic phone-records program was illegal from the outset, and never should have been created. The court’s unanimous and well-reasoned decision, noting the profound privacy interests we all have in our phone records, and the unprecedented scope of the NSA program, should inform the upcoming legislative debate on the USA Freedom Act. It underscores the crying need for NSA reform. But as the article below argues, passing the USA Freedom Act will only be a first step on that path.

Read more @ http://www.thenation.com/article/206497/heres-whats-wrong-usa-freedom-act

I cannot see how a program with such sweeping power to collect all info could be forgotten….No way!  

Lawyer: Clapper Didn't Lie About NSA Program, He Just Forgot About It

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper didn't lie when he told a Senate committee that the government doesn't "wittingly" sweep up Americans' personal information, an agency attorney said Friday: He forgot that the program even existed.

Robert Litt, who serves as DNI general counsel, told of the memory lapse while speaking at a panel discussion Friday being held by the Advisory Committee on Transparency and aired on C-SPAN.

The error came in an exchange several months before former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden leaked materials about the NSA's spy program, said Litt.

"It was perfectly clear that he had absolutely forgotten the existence of the 215 program," Litt said Friday. "This is not an untruth or falsehood; this was a mistake on his part. We all make mistakes."

Read more @ http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/clapper-nsa-forgot-about/2015/05/09/id/643687/

ACLU v. Clapper

In June 2013, The Guardian published a classified document leaked by former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden detailing how the NSA is vacuuming up call data from the Verizon phone network under the auspices of Section 215 of the Patriot Act. Within days, the ACLU filed a lawsuit against the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper to defend Americans' rights to privacy, due process, and free speech.

EFF is separately litigating multiple cases over NSA spying, but EFF has also filed amici briefs to support the ACLU's lawsuit. At the district court level, EFF represented Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, one of the original authors of the Patriot Act, who told the court that the NSA's mass telephone records collection program was not what Congress intended when it passed the legislation. At the appellate level, EFF represented 17 computer scientists and professors, who explained that telephone call metadata can reveal behavioral patterns of innocent Americans, including their political and religious affiliations. 

On May 7, 2015, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled in favor of the ACLU, finding that "the telephone metadata program exceeds the scope of what Congress has authorized and therefore violates [Section 215]." 

Read more @ https://www.eff.org/cases/aclu-v-clapper

White House urges passage of Lee’s anti-spying bill after NSA ruling

Washington • The White House on Thursday urged passage of legislation co-sponsored by Sen. Mike Lee that would prohibit collection of Americans' phone records without cause, a move that comes hours after a federal appellate court ruled such action unconstitutional.

The USA Freedom Act, sponsored by Lee, R-Utah, and Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., would end bulk collection of Americans' telephone metadata while also providing more oversight, transparency and accountability, according to the senators.

Thursday's ruling by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the government had stretched the legal authority under the Patriot Act to gather such data domestically. It was the first appellate court to weigh in on the metadata collection, which had been approved by a secret court and made public only through leaks from former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.

Read more @ http://www.sltrib.com/news/2488321-155/white-house-urges-passage-of-lees

 

Capitol Hill Buzz: Utah's Lee fundraises off NSA spying

Sen. Mike Lee is raising money off his opposition to the National Security Agency's surveillance programs.

And he's hoping the NSA will spy on him and find out all about it.

The Utah Republican, who is up for re-election next year, is asking supporters to donate to his campaign and sign a petition backing his legislative efforts to end the NSA's collection and storage of Americans' phone records.

"Eavesdropping or not, let's send the NSA a message they can't HELP but hear!" Lee wrote in the email Thursday night. "We may not be able to duplicate the NSA's complex spider web, but we can get the honest, hardworking people of America to join us in the cause of ending government-sanctioned spying on its citizens."

"And as for this email, the NSA can read it all they want. we WANT them to see this one!" Lee added.

Read more @ http://www.kansascity.com/news/government-politics/article20537643.html

 

Republicans Make Dubious Claims in Defense of NSA Surveillance

Mitch McConnell and his cohort of security hawks are stopping at nothing to renew the spy agency’s phone dragnet. But how fair is their defense?

May 8, 2015 One by one, several powerful Republican senators took to the floor Thursday morning to offer one of the most full-throated defenses of the National Security Agency's bulk collection of billions of U.S. phone records since Edward Snowden exposed the program nearly two years ago.

The crux of their argument is unmistakable: The NSA's expansive surveillance powers need to remain intact and unchanged to keep Americans safe from potential terrorist threats—and if these powers existed before Sept. 11, 2001, they may have assisted in preventing the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

But some of the talking points used by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and his allies appear to rely heavily on assertions that are either dubious in their veracity or elide important contextual details.

Here is a review of some of their declarations:

Claim: "Not only have these tools kept us safe, there has not been a single incident, not one, of intentional abuse of them."—McConnell

McConnell may have been referring specifically to the phone records program here, but the NSA does not, as he implies, have a spotless record.

According to a 2013 inspector general report, NSA analysts intentionally misused foreign surveillance authorities at least a dozen times in the past decade, sometimes for the purpose of spying on their romantic interests. So-called "loveint"—short for "love intelligence"—was revealed by the inspector general in response to a letter sent from Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley, who this year renewed a call for the Justice Department to provide an update on how it was handling its investigation into the alleged willful abuses and to "appropriate accountability for those few who violate the trust placed in them."

Additionally, a 2012 internal audit obtained by The Washington Post found that the NSA has violated privacy restrictions set in place for its surveillance programs thousands of times each year since 2008. The audit found that most—though not all—infractions were unintended.

Read more @ http://www.nationaljournal.com/tech/republicans-make-dubious-claims-in-defense-of-nsa-surveillance-20150508

The NSA's greatest hiring strength is students, but resistance is growing

For years the NSA has used the incentive of paid tuition to lure talented teens into employment with the agency. But in light of the Snowden leaks, students are organizing against what they see as just another invasion of their privacy rights

Excerpt:

The campaign included the publication of a formal letter, endorsed by the above organizations. “While ASU’s relationship with the NSA provides a certain level of prestige and brings in valuable funding,” write the students, “we do not believe we should trade our civil liberties for institutional advantages.”

The students’ cause was then championed by a Republican state senator, Kelli Ward, who introduced a bill that would ban the NSA from recruiting at state university campuses in Arizona.

Contrary to the anti-CIA and ROTC campaigns of the 1960s, the most organized resistance to the NSA on campuses comes from rightwing and libertarian student organizers. Many of these students want reform, and for the NSA to stop overstepping what they believe to be its constitutional bounds.

Many of the students and faculty who have published letters in protest of the NSA say that since the Snowden revelations, they now realize the agency’s principles are antithetical to those of their universities: freedom of speech and discovery, civic engagement and learning.

A strong nationalist thread runs through most of the rhetoric, as the NSA’s practices are also perceived as at odds with some of America’s founding tenets. For example, a letter published in May 2014 by Purdue University Students and Faculty Against Mass Surveillance reads:

“Since our country’s inception, Americans have fought and sacrificed to ensure our basic civil liberties and freedoms … But recently that freedom has come under threat. Mass warrantless surveillance by the NSA has restricted our ability to freely think, act, research, innovate, and share ideas in a multitude of ways.”

Foster himself says that the NSA’s place in a functioning democracy is vastly overstated and the agency should be reformed, but not done away with.

The resistance doesn’t end here. In July 2013, two recruiters visited the University of Wisconsin campus to sell the NSA employee lifestyle to language students. During the Q&A session that followed the presentation, Madiha Tahir, a Columbia PhD student who, at the time, was enrolled in a language program at Wisconsin, began asking questions about certain NSA policies and Orwellian word choice that the recruiters found challenging to answer. Tahir’s line of questioning inspired other students to publicly call out the recruiters on their easy manipulation of the truth. Audio of the incident was recorded, posted online and shared widely.

Read more @ http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/may/01/nsa-recruitment-college-campuses-student-privacy 

US put Al Jazeera's Pakistan bureau chief on terror list

Documents leaked by Edward Snowden show Ahmad Muaffaq Zaidan was suspected by US authorities of being a member of al-Qaeda

US authorities placed an Al Jazeera journalist on a watch list of suspected terrorists, linking him to al-Qaeda, a report said Friday, citing documents provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

The online news site The Intercept said Al Jazeera's Islamabad bureau chief, Ahmad Muaffaq Zaidan, was on a terror watch list, and was described in the National Security Agency documents as "a member" of both Al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood.

Zaidan told The Intercept he "absolutely" denied being part of the organisations, while noting that he had through his work conducted interviews with senior al-Qaeda leaders including Osama bin Laden.

Responding to the report, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said it was "deeply troubled" by the allegations.

"Coloring the legitimate newsgathering activities of a respected journalist as evidence of international terrorism risks chilling the vital work of the media, especially in Pakistan where journalists routinely interview Taliban and other militant groups as part of their coverage," said Bob Dietz, the committee's Asia program coordinator.

Read more @ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/pakistan/11594186/US-put-Al-Jazeeras-Pakistan-bureau-chief-on-terror-list.html

US SKYNET program marks Al Jazeera journalist as Al Qaeda

The US government has marked Ahmad Zaidan, an influential journalist and Al Jazeera's longtime Islamabad bureau chief, as a member of Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood, according to NSA documents unearthed by whistleblower Edward Snowden (via The Intercept). Zaidan has been embedded in Afghanistan and Pakistan throughout his career, and he's had unique access to top Taliban and Al Qaeda leadership, including Osama bin Laden. In 2011, Zaidan and Al Jazeera released a documentary about bin Laden, including interviews with Taliban fighters, government workers and journalists who knew him. Zaidan has, in the course of his job, regularly traveled across the Middle East and communicated with Al Qaeda officials -- which is why the US government's SKYNET program marked him as a member of Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood.

Zaidan's file was singled out as an example of the power of SKYNET, the US program that attempts to find suspicious patterns within location and communication information gathered from bulk call records. SKYNET recognized Zaidan as a likely Al Qaeda courier, though it appears the NSA had an existing file on the journalist, The Intercept reports.

Read more @ http://www.engadget.com/2015/05/08/skynet-nsa-journalist-terrorist/?ncid=rss_truncated

 

China tightens cybersecurity controls to limit foreign spying

Summary:China has included a "sovereignty" clause in a new wave of policies designed to tighten IT management.

China has proposed a fresh wave of cybersecurity legislation to tighten its grip on the county's information technology structure and further localise the use of tech products.

China has included cybersecurity as an important element of a draft national security law, as reported by Reuters. The document, posted online this week, proposes tighter controls on the country's information technology structure in response to US intelligence agency surveillance.

Last year, former US National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden revealed the extent of the NSA's spying activities, which included bulk metadata collection on domestic and foreign targets, wiretapping and the creation of backdoors within US tech products used to spy on foreign targets.

As part of a fresh wave of changes in response to these revelations, China's National People's Congress (NPC) have begun to review the draft legislation, which includes a "sovereignty" clause to make cybersecurity an official national interest -- one to be controlled and protected. The document says:

"The state establishes national internet and information security safeguard systems [..] and protects national internet space sovereignty, security and development interests."

The country must also "achieve security and control in internet and information core technology, key infrastructure, and important data and information systems," as well as punish Internet assaults and strengthen Internet management -- potentially going beyond China's Great Firewall and Great Cannon censorship tools.

Read more @ http://www.zdnet.com/article/china-tightens-cybersecurity-controls-to-limit-foreign-spying/

China's draft national security law calls for cyberspace 'sovereignty'

Read more @ http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/05/08/us-china-security-idUSKBN0NT0E620150508 

China tightens national security in wake of Snowden revelations

Read more @ http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/asia-pacific/china-tightens-national-security-in-wake-of-snowden-revelations-1.2205576

Snowden: Australian mass surveillance of citizens won't prevent terrorism

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has criticised the Australian Government's data retention laws, labelling them 'dangerous'.

US National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Edward Snowden has criticised the Australian Government's data retention laws which passed in March.

Speaking at the Progress 2015 conference in Melbourne - from Moscow where he has sought asylum, Mr Snowden labelled the metadata collection laws as dangerous.

"What this means is they are watching everybody all the time. They're collecting information and they're just putting it in buckets that they can then search through not only locally, not only in Australia, but they can then share this with foreign intelligences services," Mr Snowden said on Friday.

"Whether or not you're doing anything wrong, you're being watched."

Mr Snowden also weighed in on the additional protections for journalists, saying they are minimal.

"Under these mandatory metadata laws you can immediately see who journalists are contacting, from which you can derive who their sources are."

Read more @ http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2015/05/09/snowden-australian-mass-surveillance-citizens-wont-prevent-terrorism

Snowden slams Australia’s data retention laws during Melbourne confrence

NSA WHISTLEBLOWER Edward Snowden has lashed out at the Australian Government’s data retention laws during a conference in Melbourne.

Mr Snowden joined the Progress 2015 conference via video link from Moscow, where he sought asylum.

During his address, Mr Snowden said the Federal Government’s data retention laws passed in March breach the privacy of Australians.

“This is dangerous,” he said.

“This is not things that governments have ever traditionally been empowered to claim for themselves as authorities.

Mr Snowden said the laws were a radical departure from the operation of traditional liberal societies around the world.

“What this means is they are watching everybody all the time,” he said.

“They’re collecting information and they’re just putting it in buckets that they can then search through not only locally, not only in Australia, but they can then share this with foreign intelligences services.

“They can trawl through this information in the same way. Whether or not you’re doing anything wrong you’re being watched.”

Read more @ http://www.news.com.au/technology/online/snowden-slams-australias-data-retention-laws-during-melbourne-confrence/story-fnjwnfzw-1227349253141


"What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us."  ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson ~

Edited 2 times by PeacefulSwannie May 10 15 7:03 PM.