What the Court Ruling on the NSA’s Metadata Snooping Means

A federal appeals court ruled last week that Section 215 of the Patriot Act does not authorize the National Security Agency’s telephone metadata surveillance program. Since Edward Snowden disclosed it in June 2013, the NSA program has been so controversial that its fate has taken on historic significance.

The decision in American Civil Liberties Union v. Clapper arrived as Congress must decide whether to reform the program, continue it by reauthorizing Section 215 or let Section 215 expire on its June 1 sunset date.

The judgment provided the program’s defenders and critics with ammunition in this debate. Moreover, the court, through its decision, seems to be sending the political branches explicit constitutional messages about what should happen next.

Read more @ http://www.newsweek.com/what-court-ruling-nsa-metadata-snooping-means-331116

 

Many of the NSA’s Loudest Defenders Have Financial Ties to NSA Contractors

The debate over the NSA’s bulk collection of phone records has reached a critical point after a federal appeals court last week ruled the practice illegal, dramatically raising the stakes for pending Congressional legislation that would fully or partially reinstate the program. An army of pundits promptly took to television screens, with many of them brushing off concerns about the surveillance.

The talking heads have been backstopping the NSA’s mass surveillance more or less continuously since it was revealed. They spoke out to support the agency when NSA contractor Edward Snowden released details of its programs in 2013, and they’ve kept up their advocacy ever since — on television news shows, newspaper op-ed pages, online and at Congressional hearings. But it’s often unclear just how financially cozy these pundits are with the surveillance state they defend, since they’re typically identified with titles that give no clues about their conflicts of interest. Such conflicts have become particularly important, and worth pointing out, now that the debate about NSA surveillance has shifted from simple outrage to politically prominent legislative debates.

As one example of the opaque link between NSA money and punditry, take the words of Stewart Baker, who was general counsel to the NSA from 1992 through 1994. During a Senate committee hearing last summer on one of the reform bills now before Congress, the USA FREEDOM Act, which would partially limit mass surveillance of telephone metadata, Baker essentially said the bill would aid terrorists.

“First, I do not believe we should end the bulk collection program,” he told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. “It will put us at risk. It will, as Senator King strongly suggested, slow our responses to serious terrorist incidents. And it is a leap into the dark with respect to this data.”

Previously, in December 2013, Baker wrote in The New York Times that “Snowden has already lost the broader debate he claims to want, and the leaks are slowly losing their international impact as well.” He made similar comments in multiple news outlets, and testified before Congress to defend virtually every program revealed by the Snowden documents. Baker at one point told intelligence committee lawmakers that The Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald was simply on a campaign to “cause the greatest possible diplomatic damage to the United States and its intelligence capabilities.”

Baker has identified himself at various points as a former government official with the NSA and Department of Homeland Security and as a Washington, D.C. attorney. But the law firm at which Baker is a partner, Steptoe & Johnson, maintains a distinct role in the world of NSA contracting. At the time of his pro-NSA advocacy in 2013 and 2014, the company was registered to lobby on behalf of companies which have served as major NSA contractors, including Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), Leidos and Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC).

Asked about his law firm’s lobby work for NSA contractors, Baker responded, “If you’re looking for someone with a ‘financial stake in the surveillance debate’ you should start with your boss, Glenn Greenwald, who has a $250 million stake in continuing to present the debate as ‘Snowden good. NSA evil.’ And, of course, there’s you. You’ve got a ‘financial stake’ in keeping your job. Which means that you won’t have the balls to publish my reply.” (Pierre Omidyar made a $50 million contribution and $250 million commitment to First Look Media. Glenn Greenwald is the co-founding editor of the First Look publication The Intercept, not the holder of a $250 million stake.)

Due to the secretive nature of the agency’s work, NSA contracts are often shielded from public disclosure, and identifying financial links between pundits and the agency’s web of partners is tricky. But the work of journalists and whistleblowers such as James Bamford, who was assigned to an NSA unit while serving in the Navy, gives us a sense of which companies work for U.S. intelligence agencies. Drawing largely from these disclosures, The Intercept has identified several former government and military officials whose voices have shaped the public discourse around government spying and surveillance issues but whose financial ties to NSA contractors have received little attention. These pundits have played a key role in the public debate as the White House and the agency itself have struggled to defend the most controversial spying programs revealed by Snowden’s documents.

Retired general says “what the NSA has been doing has been right,” cashes big checks from NSA contractor

 

Fox News Military Analyst Jack Keane appears regularly on the network to opine on national security issues. His credentials are strong. Keane served as a four star general, as vice chief of staff of the Army, and is currently the chairman of the Institute for the Study of War.

Keane has appeared on Fox News to discuss surveillance issues multiple times, coming down squarely in support of the NSA. Last year, as President Obama was developing reform proposals mirroring key provisions in the FREEDOM Act, including limits on the collection of phone records, he dismissed concerns about civil liberties.

“Well, I believe what the NSA has been doing has been right on the mark,” Keane told Fox Business Network’s Lou Dobbs. Backing down from any of the NSA programs, Keane said, would make America “less secure and more vulnerable.” In another appearance on Fox, Keane called the bulk collection of American phone records “vital for national security.”

Since 2004, Keane has served as board member to General Dynamics, a firm that contracts with the NSA — as occasionally disclosed publicly, as in October 2014, in 2010, and in 2009. For his service as a board member, Keane has earned about a quarter of a million dollars a year in cash and stock awards. According to a December 2010 Boston Globe article, Keane has also worked as a consultant to other military contractors, pushing government officials to hire his clients for government work, but failed to register his activities under the Lobbying Disclosure Act because he said his lobby activity fell below the statutory requirement for registration.

A spokesman for Keane said he “appears on TV news as much as 30 times per month, covering multiple topics at each appearance as a military analyst. He does not recall making comments on the topic you have mentioned.”

Ex-CIA chief imagined Snowden “hanged by his neck” while earning money from funder of NSA contractors

 

In June of 2013, following the first Snowden disclosures, retired General Wesley Clark and former Central Intelligence Agency Chief James Woolsey cast aspersions on the whistleblower who brought the NSA’s privacy violations to light.

“The American people,” Clark said confidently during an interview on CNN, “are solidly behind the PRISM program and all that’s going on.” Appearing on Fox News, Woolsey referred to Snowden’s disclosure of documents as “damaging because it gives terrorists an idea of how we collect and what we might know.” Woolsey would later comment that Snowden “should be hanged by his neck” if convicted for treason.

The men are, and were at the time, advisors to Paladin Capital Group, an investment advisor and private equity firm whose Homeland Security Fund was set up about three months after the September 11 attacks to focus on defense and intelligence-related startups. Woolsey confirmed he is paid by Paladin Capital; Clark did not respond to a request for comment. In 2014, Paladin’s portfolio was valued at more than $587 million. At the time of Woolsey and Clark’s anti-Snowden statements, it included a stake in Endgame Systems, a computer network security company that had worked with the NSA, having reportedly counted the agency among its largest customers. Paladin was also invested in CyberCore, which had provided technological work to the NSA. Later, in 2014, Paladin invested in Shadow Networks, formerly known as ZanttzZ, which also provided tech work to the NSA.

RNC chair called Snowden a “traitor” — and took $1 million from NSA contractor

In March 2014, former Republican National Committee Chair Jim Gilmore took to the pages of the Washington Times to write that, “Mr. Snowden’s traitorous act is a perfect example of the dual threat we face from state and non-state actors.” He also promoted his view that conservatives should not embrace Snowden’s disclosures about mass surveillance during a testy debate with libertarians at the Conservative Political Action Conference last year.

At CPAC, Gilmore touted his credentials on the issue of homeland security as “the governor of Virginia during the 9/11 attack” and chairman of an advisory board on homeland security issues. But since 2009, Gilmore has also worked for a major NSA contractor as member of the board of CACI International, for which he has been compensated with more than $1 million in cash and stock awards. CACI, the firm whose contractors were behind the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal, has steadily increased its stake in the cyberintelligence business, acquiring the firm Six3 Systems, an NSA contractor, for $820 million two years ago.

Read more @ https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/05/12/intelligence-industry-cash-flows-media-echo-chamber-defending-nsa-surveillance/

 

Wake-up call: Second Circuit declares NSA’s mass telephone surveillance program illegal; defers injunction while Congress ponders renewal of key Patriot Act provision

Whatever your opinion of Edward Snowden, the shockwaves from his leaks of classified material continue to roil all three branches of the federal government.    

The latest wave broke last week when the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held in ACLU v. Clapper that the National Security Agency’s mass telephone metadata collection program, which has been in place for a decade or more, is not authorized by Section 215 of the Patriot Act, and is therefore illegal.  Public awareness of that program came to light in June 2013, and only when the newspaper The Guardian published a leaked order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (“FISC”) requiring Verizon to produce to the NSA “on an ongoing daily basis . . . all call detail records or ‘telephony metadata’ created by Verizon for communications (i) between the United States and abroad; or (ii) wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls.” It has since become clear that such FISC orders have been issued to virtually all major telephone carriers in the United States.  

This is arguably the most significant ruling to date on the various surveillance programs revealed by Snowden, and the only appellate court ruling on Section 215, which is currently set to expire on June 1, 2015.  In recent months, lawmakers have intensely debated whether the program should be continued as is, modified, or ended.  Some members of Congress, such as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and other republican lawmakers, are still pushing for a clean reauthorization, even though extending the program without modification would appear to run contrary to the court’s ruling.  Meanwhile, the bipartisan-backed USA Freedom Act in the House and the Senate’s USA FREEDOM ACT of 2015 would curb bulk data collection and introduce additional reforms, but consumer advocates argue that the reforms do not go far enough, and are urging Congress to simply let the provisions expire.  While the Obama Administration has defended the program, it has also called for the end of bulk collection, advancing an alternative mechanism that would require the carriers themselves to maintain the data, until the government requests it.  Votes on such reforms are expected soon in both the House and the Senate, with some Senators already threatening a filibuster.  

Read more @ http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=1c57b24a-4e40-49b1-bb2a-cba051131b23

 

Obama Brings On NSA-Bashing Hacker Professor As His New Tech Advisor

Yesterday, the White House named Ed Felten, a Princeton computer science professor, as a deputy chief technology officer.

The current tech advisors staffing the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy came from big tech companies: Megan Smith, chief technology officer, was a vice president at Google, while Alexander Macgillivray, deputy chief technology officer, was a general counsel at Twitter.

Felten, in contrast, brings an academic perspective to policy discussions. Over the course of his career, Felten has dug deep into a range of technical—and often controversial—problems. He is a privacy and security expert, with a particular interest in how these issues play out in the media. In 2001, for instance, as Napster was being shut down, he wrote about the weaknesses in music security systems. This earned him the wrath of music organizations such as the Recording Industry Association of America, who feared that his findings would only spur more music-stealing behavior.

Read more @ http://www.fastcompany.com/3046185/fast-feed/obama-brings-on-nsa-bashing-hacker-professor-as-his-new-tech-advisor

 

The NSA’s Call Record Program, a 9/11 Hijacker, and the Failure of Bulk Collection

Before 9/11, there was an individual by the name of Khalid al-Mihdhar, who came to be one of the principal hijackers. He was being tracked by the intelligence agencies in the Far East. They lost track of him. At the same time, the intelligence agencies had identified an al-Qaeda safehouse in Yemen. They understood that that al-Qaeda safehouse had a telephone number, but they could not know who was calling into that particular safehouse.

We came to find out afterwards that the person who had called into that safehouse was al-Mihdhar, who was in the United States in San Diego. If we had had this program in place at the time, we would have been able to identify that particular telephone number in San Diego….[T]he opportunity was not there. If we had had this program that opportunity would have been there.

-- former FBI Director Robert Mueller, testifying before Congress in June 2013 (PDF).

Al-Mihdhar and the Justification for NSA Bulk Collection

The al-Mihdhar example has haunted the debate over the NSA’s call records program since the program’s disclosure in June 2013. As the story goes, had the program been in place before 9/11, the NSA would have known al-Mihdhar was calling the Yemeni safehouse from inside the U.S. and, potentially, could have stopped the attacks on September 11th from happening. As former NSA Director Keith Alexander, also in testimony before Congress, described the problem, the intelligence community “couldn’t connect the dots [before 9/11] because we didn’t have the dots.” (PDF).

There’s only one problem: that's just not true.

The fact is, U.S. intelligence agencies knew of al-Mihdhar long before 9/11 and had the ability find him. In the years, months, and days before 9/11, the NSA already had access to a massive database of Americans’ call records. Analysts—at NSA or CIA—could have easily searched the database for calls made from the U.S. to the safehouse in Yemen. They simply didn't.

Others have already questioned the government's claims about al-Mihdhar. They argued that missed opportunities and the failure of agencies to share critical information in the run-up to 9/11, not the absence of a massive metadata repository, resulted in the failure to stop the plot. However, disclosures over the past year have undermined government officials' claims about the call records program even more deeply: the surveillance tool that al-Mihdhar supposedly justifies was already in use before 9/11. And it did nothing to enhance our nation’s security.

Read more @ https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/04/nsas-call-record-program-911-hijacker-and-failure-bulk-collection

 

The Technological Panopticon: On Catie Disabato’s ‘The Ghost Network’

Read more @ http://www.themillions.com/2015/05/the-technological-panopticon-on-catie-disabatos-the-ghost-network.html

 

A Progressive Approach

Read more @ http://www.probonoaustralia.com.au/news/2015/05/progressive-approach#

 

Intelligence Head 'Forgot' to Tell Congress About NSA Program

Read more @ http://patriotpost.us/posts/35150

 

The war on terror isn't worth our privacy

Our View: Americans need to guard individual rights -- or the terrorists win

The threat of terrorism remains as real as the hatred of extremists who mean us harm.

Yet Americans' way of life — the life terrorists want to destroy — thrives on personal freedom and individual liberty. Our government can't forget that or the terrorists will win without detonating another bomb.

Two court decisions reiterate the need to take a hard look at the balance between privacy and an over-intrusive government. One is about searches at the border; the other is about your phone calls.

Last week, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the National Security Agency's massive collection of Americans' phone data is illegal. The court sidestepped the issue of whether the surveillance is unconstitutional, focusing instead on what's permissible under Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act.

This court said sweeping up and storing phone data "exceeds the scope" of that law.

"The statutes to which the government points have never been interpreted to authorize anything approaching the breadth of the sweeping surveillance at issue here," Judge Gerard Lynch wrote for a three-judge panel. "The sheer volume of information sought is staggering."

Read more @ http://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/editorial/2015/05/11/privacy-cant-be-collateral-damage-in-war-on-terrorism/27149675/

 

What Edward Snowden Said At The Nordic Media Festival

On May 8, Edward Snowden spoke to the audience at the Nordic Media Festival in Bergen, Norway about surveillance and digital security. The session was moderated by journalist Ole Torp, who started by asking me how Snowden and I first met. What follows is a lightly edited transcript of my interview with Snowden. All of the questions were submitted by Norwegian journalists in the days leading up to the session. You can find a video recording of the session here.

Runa Sandvik
Ed and I first met about six months before the leaks came out where we organized a CryptoParty in Hawaii. A CryptoParty is a type of event where people can come and learn about encryption, about security, about how to protect themselves online.

Edward Snowden
It was really an amazing experience when we look at it in hindsight. This was before anyone knew who I was. Runa was associated with The Tor Project, which works to help protect people’s anonymity online. I, at the time, was working for the NSA through a contractor, and sort of moonlighting also helping people protect their privacy, something the NSA might not have been too happy about. But the extraordinary thing about this, that we can draw as a lesson from it, is that these word of mouth efforts to teach people how to improve their security actually work. Because the same kind of methods that I used to teach people, ordinary citizens have used to protect themselves online. These methods also protected me against one of the largest manhunts in recent history.

Read more @ http://www.forbes.com/sites/runasandvik/2015/05/10/what-edward-snowden-said-at-the-nordic-media-festival/

 

So, the NSA Has an Actual Skynet Program

We’ve suspected it all along—that Skynet, the massive program that brings about world destruction in the Terminator movies, was just a fictionalization of a real program in the hands of the US government. And now it’s confirmed—at least in name.

As The Intercept reports today, the NSA does have a program called Skynet. But unlike the autonomous, self-aware computerized defense system in Terminator that goes rogue and launches a nuclear attack that destroys most of humanity, this one is a surveillance program that uses phone metadata to track the location and call activities of suspected terrorists. A journalist for Al Jazeera reportedly became one of its targets after he was placed on a terrorist watch list.

Ahmad Muaffaq Zaidan, bureau chief for Al Jazeera’s Islamabad office, got tracked by Skynet after he was identified by US intelligence as a possible Al Qaeda member and assigned a watch list number. A Syrian national, Zaidan has scored a number of exclusive interviews with senior Al Qaeda leaders, including Osama bin Laden himself.

Skynet uses phone location and call metadata from bulk phone call records to detect suspicious patterns in the physical movements of suspects and their communication habits, according to a 2012 government presentation The Intercept obtained from Edward Snowden.

Read more @ http://www.wired.com/2015/05/nsa-actual-skynet-program/

 

Pass Freedom Act now

Recently, a federal appeals court ruled that the National Security Agency’s bulk collection program is not authorized under Section 215 of the Patriot Act. This court ruling confirms what we’ve been saying all along: bulk collection of data is not authorized under the law and is not accepted by the American people. 

It also reaffirms that a straight reauthorization of the bulk collection program, as some have proposed, is not a choice for Congress. Now more than ever, it is imperative that we reform our nation’s intelligence-gathering programs so they protect both national security and Americans’ privacy.

For more than a year, we have worked to craft a bill that does just that. The result is the USA Freedom Act, which contains the most sweeping set of reforms to government surveillance practices in nearly 40 years. And this week, the House will vote on this bipartisan legislation.

Last year, the USA Freedom Act passed the House 303-121. It narrowly failed to advance in the Senate, garnering 58 votes in its favor but falling 2 votes short of reaching the 60 required for cloture. That could have been the end of the reform effort, but we believed it was important to keep tackling this issue, because core American values are at stake. 

Consequently, we have worked since January on a bipartisan, bicameral basis to update the USA Freedom Act. The result is an even stronger bill that achieves greater reforms, unequivocally ends bulk collection of data, protects Americans’ civil liberties and increases the transparency and oversight of our intelligence community, while also protecting national security and specifically including targeted enhancements to combat foreign terrorists like members of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

Read more @ http://thehill.com/opinion/op-ed/241683-pass-freedom-act-now

 

Court Declares NSA Spy Program Illegal, Senate GOP Leaders Respond, “So What?”

In March 2013, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper sat before the Senate Intelligence Committee when Sen. Ron Wyden asked him if the NSA collected “any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?” Clapper’s unequivocal response: “No, sir.” It was a lie; but it was not until months later that Clapper finally offered a tepid apology for what he claimed was a “mistake.” His excuse -- delivered with all the sincerity he could muster and still keep a straight face -- was that he “simply didn’t think about Section 215 of the Patriot Act” when he delivered his earlier, unqualified denial.

Clapper moved on to other endeavors, as did the Senate; and his bald-faced lie largely faded away. Thankfully, just last week, a federal Appeals Court panel in New York showed it was not so willing to “let bygones be bygones.” In an opinion that was unusually blistering in its tone and wording, the Court stated that the manner in which the National Security Agency (NSA) has been using Section 215 to scoop up so-called “metadata” on virtually all cell phone and other electronic communications, is simply illegal.

Read more @ http://townhall.com/columnists/bobbarr/2015/05/13/court-declares-nsa-spy-program-illegal--senate-gop-leaders-respond-so-what-n1997978

 

Impeding the Fight Against Terror

The appeals-court ruling on surveillance will have damaging consequences if Obama doesn’t appeal.

Usually, the only relevant objections to a judicial opinion concern errors of law and fact. Not so with a federal appeals court ruling on May 7 invalidating the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of telephone metadata under the USA Patriot Act.

Not that the ruling by the three-judge panel of the Second Circuit in New York lacks for errors of law and fact. The panel found that when the Patriot Act, passed in the aftermath of 9/11, permitted the government to subpoena business records “relevant” to an authorized investigation, the statute couldn’t have meant bulk telephone metadata—consisting of every calling number, called number, and the date and length of every call.

Read more @ http://www.wsj.com/articles/impeding-the-fight-against-terror-1431471515

US Congress to vote on bill banning NSA from bulk-collecting phone calls

Practice revealed by Edward Snowden – collection of metadata of all US phone calls – being debated

Less than a week after a US appeals court delivered a stinging legal rebuke to the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of US phone data, the House of Representatives is set to vote on the most domestically controversial of Edward Snowden’s revelations.

Read more @ http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/may/13/bill-banning-nsa-from-bulk-collecting-phone-calls-goes-to-vote

Mitch McConnell's surreal quest to preserve the NSA's illegal surveillance

The USA Freedom Act, a modest but significant surveillance reform bill, is set to pass the House of Representatives by a large margin today. Yet the law still faces an uphill battle in the Senate, thanks largely to the intransigence of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who is plowing ahead with a plan to reauthorize controversial provisions of the Patriot Act — including the authority behind NSA’s massive telephone records database. And in the wake of a recent federal appeals court decision holding that program unlawful, McConnell’s stubborn opposition to reform has gone from misguided to downright illogical, even on McConnell’s own terms.

When former NSA contractor Edward Snowden first revealed, nearly two years ago, that the spy agency had been indiscriminately vacuuming up the telephone records of millions of Americans, legal experts were stunned at the audacious legal justification the government offered for the program.

Read more @ http://theweek.com/articles/554665/mitch-mcconnells-surreal-quest-preserve-nsas-illegal-surveillance

Rand Paul Battles the PATRIOT Act (and Fellow Senators Who Miss Votes)

Last night, before arriving for a short and busy visit to New Hampshire, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul published an op-ed in Manchester's conservative Union Leader newspaper.

"As President of the United States, I will immediately end the NSA’s illegal bulk data collection and domestic spying programs," said Paul. "I will take my responsibilities seriously and protect the Fourth Amendment rights of all Americans. I believe the overreaching NSA spying program represents the worst of the 'Washington Machine.'"

He'd touched on some of the same themes Saturday, on a visit to San Francisco. Paul, having been accused of a light touch when drone strikes and police brutality were forced into the news cycle, was taking the opposite approach to the NSA. He would talk about it whenever he could, and focus on the June battle over whether to reauthorize the PATRIOT Act.

Read more @ http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-05-11/rand-paul-battles-the-patriot-act-and-fellow-senators-who-miss-votes-

Court's 'no' to secret laws vindicates Snowden

IN A major vindication for Edward Snowden - and a blow for the national security policy pursued by Republicans and Democrats alike - the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled last Thursday that the National Security Agency's (NSA) metadata collection programme is unlawful.

This is the most serious blow to date for the legacy of the Patriot Act and the surveillance overreach that followed 9/11.

The central question depended on the meaning of the word "relevant": Was the government's collection relevant to an investigation when it collects all the metadata for any phone call made to or from anywhere in the United States?

The court said no. That was the right decision - not so much because it protects privacy, as because it broke the bad precedent of secret law created by the NSA and endorsed by the secret national security court known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

Read more @ http://www.straitstimes.com/news/opinion/more-opinion-stories/story/courts-no-secret-laws-vindicates-snowden-20150511


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