Edward Snowden in NYT: 'Power of an Informed Public' Stopped NSA

Edward Snowden, the former NSA contractor who two years ago on Thursday leaked stolen information on the agency's metadata programs, says "the power of an informed public" led to the dismantling of the mass surveillance programs.

"Ending the mass surveillance of private phone calls under the Patriot Act is a historic victory for the rights of every citizen, but it is only the latest product of a change in global awareness," Snowden, who continues to live under temporary political asylum in Russia, wrote in an op-ed piece in The New York Times.

Besides his former post at the NSA, Snowden is described at the bottom of the piece as "a former Central Intelligence Agency officer" and "a director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation."

The NSA surveillance programs began under the Patriot Act, which was signed into law by former President George W. Bush in response to the 9/11 attacks.

The law expired on Monday, and Congress approved the USA Freedom Act the next day. That law limits the bulk data the government can collect and requires a specific search warrant to collect the information from telephone companies.

"Though we have come a long way, the right to privacy — the foundation of the freedoms enshrined in the United States Bill of Rights — remains under threat," Snowden said.

He noted that many popular online data companies "have been enlisted as partners in the NSA's mass surveillance programs, and technology companies are being pressured by governments around the world to work against their customers rather than for them.

"Metadata revealing the personal associations and interests of ordinary Internet users is still being intercepted and monitored on a scale unprecedented in history: As you read this online, the United States government makes a note," Snowden said.

However, the outrage from ordinary citizens that led to the end of the Patriot Act points to "the emergence of a post-terror generation, one that rejects a worldview defined by a singular tragedy," he said.

Read more @ http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/edward-snowden-informed-public-stop/2015/06/04/id/648883/ 

 

Edward Snowden: The World Says No to Surveillance

Read more @ http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/05/opinion/edward-snowden-the-world-says-no-to-surveillance.html?_r=0

 

There has already been articles over the past two years in legal cases to say there was abuse, if I remember correctly….  

Politifact: Marco Rubio claims no abuse of bulk metadata collection program

After weeks of political hand-wringing, the Patriot Act is out and the USA Freedom Act is in. But despite substantial support from both parties, the sweeping national security reform is not without critics.

Chief among them is Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., who unsuccessfully lobbied to extend bulk metadata collection authorized under Section 215 of the Patriot Act.

The metadata program, which allowed National Security Agency officials to collect phone data such as call length and the phone numbers involved, started in 2006 and was kept top secret until Edward Snowden famously exposed it and other NSA information-gathering initiatives in 2013.

The USA Freedom Act, meanwhile, forces the NSA to subpoena phone records from phone companies instead of collecting the data directly.

Rubio argued to keep the metadata program as is in a USA Today op-ed May 10.

“There is not a single documented case of abuse of this program,” Rubio wrote. “Internet search providers, Internet-based email accounts, credit card companies and membership discount cards used at the grocery store all collect far more personal information on Americans than the bulk metadata program.”

Read more @ http://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/article23306610.html

 

That is an excellent analogy used by Snowden…. I experience it often in supermarkets…. Is the product, gluten free, carb free, aspartame free, gm free….?  I stand reading labels and shopping always takes a lot of time.  Many times I walk out in frustration with nothing.  And I know a woman with triple the allergies I have so I can’t imagine how frustrating it is for her.  Collecting all the information of millions and millions of people would be a pure and utter waste of taxpayer’s money…. Not just in the time wasted, but also paying staff to do it and they earn very big money.

 

Inside NSA, Officials Privately Criticize “Collect It All” Surveillance

AS MEMBERS OF CONGRESS struggle to agree on which surveillance programs to re-authorize before the Patriot Act expires, they might consider the unusual advice of an intelligence analyst at the National Security Agency who warned about the danger of collecting too much data. Imagine, the analyst wrote in a leaked document, that you are standing in a shopping aisle trying to decide between jam, jelly or fruit spread, which size, sugar-free or not, generic or Smucker’s. It can be paralyzing.

“We in the agency are at risk of a similar, collective paralysis in the face of a dizzying array of choices every single day,” the analyst wrote in 2011. “’Analysis paralysis’ isn’t only a cute rhyme. It’s the term for what happens when you spend so much time analyzing a situation that you ultimately stymie any outcome …. It’s what happens in SIGINT [signals intelligence] when we have access to endless possibilities, but we struggle to prioritize, narrow, and exploit the best ones.”

The document is one of about a dozen in which NSA intelligence experts express concerns usually heard from the agency’s critics: that the U.S. government’s “collect it all” strategy can undermine the effort to fight terrorism. The documents, provided to The Intercept by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, appear to contradict years of statements from senior officials who have claimed that pervasive surveillance of global communications helps the government identify terrorists before they strike or quickly find them after an attack.

Read more @ https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/05/28/nsa-officials-privately-criticize-collect-it-all-surveillance/

 

Right’s Rand Paul talks down data laws

Bernardi speaks against Abbott’s ‘power creep’. Terror talk of citizenship oath unsettles migrants. Nuclear Iran deal affects IS fight. Emboldened Eurosceptics evoke ‘Anglosphere’.

Like Magellan making the first voyage around the world to show that it is indeed round, some politicians are demonstrating that if you go way out on the right you can end up on the left, or at least temporarily in leftish company.

Take Rand Paul, the US libertarian senator and Tea Party supporter who’s just declared his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination next year. His splendid filibusters in the senate, including a 10-hour speech, saw the metadata collection by the National Security Agency halt at midnight on Sunday, or at least become illegal if it didn’t.

Standing against his Republican leadership, Paul opposed extension of the metadata powers enabled by the so-called Patriot Act, passed a month after the September 11, 2001 attacks by al-Qaeda followers and extended a couple of times since. “Little by little, we’ve allowed our freedom to slip away,” he declared, thereby putting himself in alignment with civil libertarians usually found on the Democrat side of US politics. They’ve been incensed by the level of NSA domestic espionage exposed two years ago by renegade agency contractor Edward Snowden. The electronic spy agency had been using a secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court interpretation of a clause in the Patriot Act to justify its collection of domestic communication data without warrants or even particular suspicion. Despite a federal court ruling that this was unconstitutional, security hawks had been ready to extend it. 

By Tuesday, mainstream Republicans and some Democrats filled the gap with the new Freedom Act, supported by President Barack Obama, which requires telephone companies and internet service providers, rather than the NSA, to store metadata for at least 18 months and provide it on warrant. There is a six-month switchover period, in which the NSA can get its vacuum-cleaners operating again if it wants.

Has the US been at greater risk during this hiatus? The NSA and its supporters haven’t been able to show the indiscriminate approach to call and browsing records has yielded any further protection than would normal searches on warrants that are usually provided promptly by judges when investigators get a lead on a planned act of terrorism or after an attack. Nor, to give the spooks some credit, has the metadata power been abused J. Edgar Hoover-style to collect dirt on citizens their chiefs don’t like. It’s been a worrying broadening of power without much need.

While the Americans are winding back these excessive powers enacted after the 9/11 panic, Australia is going in the other direction, after a deranged loner took hostages in a Sydney cafe and a knife attack in Melbourne by a teenager. Our new metadata regime approximates the US Freedom Act, though we don’t have anything like the American level of protection for journalists and other citizens investigating abuses, and the Abbott government has made it clear that whistleblowers and leakers will be among the targets.

But the NSA and its counterparts in the Five Eyes electronic intelligence network retain a nifty way around restrictions on domestic eavesdropping. They’re all still empowered to collect both metadata and content on communications by non-citizens outside their jurisdiction, so they can swap data with other countries on each other’s citizens.

Read more @ https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/world/north-america/2015/06/06/rights-rand-paul-talks-down-data-laws/14335128001963

 

It’s Time to Let Edward Snowden Come Home

Now that Congress has passed, and President Obama has signed, the U.S.A. Freedom Act, which places some limits on the domestic-surveillance powers of the National Security Agency, there’s still unfinished business to deal with.

The new legislation, while it is commendable as far as it goes, contains some obvious shortcomings. Barring the N.S.A. from collecting and holding the phone records of hundreds of millions of Americans was a necessary step, but it won’t make much difference if the result is that the phone companies hold on to the data and secret courts enable the N.S.A. to access it virtually at will. The legislation leaves on the books a law from 1986 that allows the government to read any e-mail that is more than six months old, and it doesn’t change Section 702 of the 2008 FISA Amendments Act, which the N.S.A. has used to justify collecting not just metadata, such as phone records, but the actual contents of communications, such as e-mails and online chats.

Another matter still at hand is the fate of Edward Snowden, the former N.S.A. contractor who has been languishing in Vladimir Putin’s Russia for almost two years. In a statement that President Obama issued shortly before signing the new law, he said, “For the past eighteen months, I have called for reforms that better safeguard the privacy and civil liberties of the American people while ensuring our national security officials retain tools important to keeping Americans safe … enactment of this legislation will strengthen civil liberty safeguards and provide greater public confidence in these programs.” Nowhere did the President or the new law’s sponsors on Capitol Hill state the blindingly obvious: that if it hadn’t been for Snowden’s leaks, the intelligence agencies’ excesses would never have come to light, the U.S.A. Freedom Act wouldn’t exist, and the N.S.A. would still be merrily sweeping up phone records and analyzing them as it saw fit. (My colleague Mattathias Schwartz argued last week that Snowden shouldn’t have been necessary.)

Instead of thanking Snowden for his public service and inviting him to come home, the U.S. government is still seeking to arrest him and try him on charges that carry long prison sentences. “The fact is that Mr. Snowden committed very serious crimes,” the White House spokesman Josh Earnest said on Monday. “The U.S. government and the Department of Justice believe that he should face them.”

Read more @ http://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/its-time-to-let-edward-snowden-come-home 

 

US wrestles with Snowden legacy

Sceptics would say surveillance changes are largely cosmetic and will scarcely inhibit state agencies, while offering some veneer of a response to civil rights critics

The US authorities have moved partially to undo the broad surveillance powers acquired in the wake of the 9/11 attack 14 years ago. The passage through the Senate of the USA Freedom Act on Tuesday, and signed yesterday by President Obama, marks a significant reappraisal of, and public uneasiness at, the wide powers of the National Security Agency (NSA) whose activities, specifically the bulk collection of phone records, were put under a spotlight in 2013 by former agency contractor, whistleblower Edward Snowden, now resident in Moscow.

The debate brought out complaints – notably from the majority leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell (Kentucky) – that the dilution of the Patriot Act would allow terrorism to flourish, while others warned that the government would use the new legislation to pry into medical records and spy on legitimate political groups. Repeated studies, according to the media, have however found no evidence of intentional abuse for personal or political gain, but also no evidence that the NSA programme had ever thwarted a terrorist attack. A federal appeals court recently ruled, however, that the NSA’s widespread phone record mining of “metadata” was unlawful.

Read more @ http://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/editorial/us-wrestles-with-snowden-legacy-1.2236256

 

Morning Wrap: Data Breach at OPM | FIFA Scores Quinn Emanuel | Scalia: Nothing 'Unprecedented'

Excerpts:

Don’t say that name: Federal prosecutors in a Chicago terrorism case want to bar the defendant’s lawyers from mentioning the name “Edward Snowden” at trial, the Intercept reports. “A juror’s opinion on Edward Snowden, the NSA, or any other issue regarding the government’s collection of evidence against the defendant has no place in this trial,” government lawyers wrote in a court filing in the case against Adel Daoud, whose lawyers challenged the government’s surveillance. Snowden, marking the two-year anniversary of his leaks, wrote this op-ed for the NYT on Thursday.

Expanded surveillance: A New York Times-Pro Publica report: “Without public notice or debate, the Obama administration has expanded the National Security Agency’s warrantless surveillance of Americans’ international Internet traffic to search for evidence of malicious computer hacking, according to classified N.S.A. documents. In mid-2012, Justice Department lawyers wrote two secret memos permitting the spy agency to begin hunting on Internet cables, without a warrant and on American soil, for data linked to computer intrusions originating abroad—including traffic that flows to suspicious Internet addresses or contains malware, the documents show.” More surveillance news: Federal prosecutors in California want a judge to overturn a decision requiring the government to get a warrant to obtain cell tower records, NLJ affiliate The Recorder reports.

Read more @ http://www.nationallawjournal.com/legaltimes/id=1202728451304/Morning-Wrap-Data-Breach-at-OPM--FIFA-Scores-Quinn-Emanuel--Scalia-Nothing-Unprecedented?slreturn=20150506202125 

 

Future Unclear for NSA’s Bulk Telephone Metadata Collection Program

May 29, 2015

Fast approaching is the June 1 expiration of certain provisions of the Patriot Act, including § 215, (codified as 50 U.S.C § 1861), which is the basis for the National Security Agency’s (NSA’s) bulk telephone metadata collection program. The future of the program is unclear in light of ACLU, et al. v. Clapper, et al., a recent Second Circuit decision that struck down the program as illegal under § 215, and the continued turmoil in Congress regarding efforts to reform or renew the Patriot Act.

In ACLU v. Clapper, the Second Circuit overturned the district court’s dismissal of ACLU’s complaint, ruling that the NSA’s telephone metadata program was illegal under § 215. The program first came to light in 2013 after former government contractor Edward Snowden leaked documents exposing its details to a British newspaper. The NSA has since admitted that the program has been in place since at least May 2006. Under the program, numerous Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) orders were issued to various telephone companies ordering the production of all “call-detail records” or “telephony metadata” on an “ongoing daily basis.” Clapper at **13-15. NSA compiled the data into a database that was accessed and searched when a “reasonable, articulable suspicion” arose that a telephone number was associated with a foreign terrorist organization. Id.

The court found that the telephone metadata program was too broad in that it “requires that the phone companies turn over records on an ‘ongoing daily basis’ – with no foreseeable end point, no requirement of relevance to any particular set of facts, and no limitations as to subject matter or individuals covered.” Id. at **63-64. The court further held that the telephone metadata program ignored a requirement in § 215 that the collection be tied to an authorized investigation, since it compiles such data “in advance of the need to conduct any inquiry (or even to examine the data), and is based on no evidence of any current connection between the data being sought and any existing inquiry.” Id. at *72. The court further noted, in rejecting the government’s attempt to expand the meaning of “relevancy” in § 215 that “[s]uch a monumental shift in our approach to combating terrorism requires a clearer signal from Congress than a recycling of oft-used language long held in similar contexts to mean something far narrower.” Id. at 75. The court declined to address the constitutionality of § 215 and was careful to avoid opining on the constitutionality of any potential alternative versions of the program that could be crafted by Congress.

Read more @ http://www.mcguirewoods.com/Client-Resources/Alerts/2015/5/Future-Unclear-NSA-Bulk-Telephone-Metadata-Collection.aspx?utm_source=Mondaq&utm_medium=syndication&utm_campaign=View-Original 

 

Edward Snowden awarded Bjornson Prize for speaking truth to power

Raw Story reports that yesterday the Norwegian Academy of Literature and Freedom of Expression awarded the Bjornson Prize to Edward Snowden “for his work protecting privacy and for shining a critical light on US surveillance of its citizens and others.” Bjornson was a Norwegian poet and champion of peasant farmers who was known for his passionate call-to-action speeches. He spoke truth to power and was forced to flee Norway to avoid arrest and prosecution for High Treason in the late 1870s, but was welcomed back in 1882. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1903 and is regarded as a national hero in Norway. The prize also includes a 100,000 Kronen award ($12,700).

Last year Snowden was awarded Sweden’s Right Livelihood Award and he has been nominated again this year to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. I can think of no one who is more deserving, except possibly Chelsea Manning.

Even though the secret NSA bulk metadata collection program that Snowden publicly disclosed has been declared unlawful and eliminated by the Freedom Act, the Obama Administration continues to vilify him as a traitor and claim that his disclosures have harmed the United States. Of course, there is no evidence to support that claim. Nevertheless, unlike Bjornson, who was welcomed back by his native Norway after tempers cooled, the Obama Administration and its Department of Justice remain stubbornly committed to prosecuting Snowden for allegedly violating the 1917 Espionage Act that Congress passed to criminalize spying on behalf of foreign powers, namely Germany.

The charge is utterly ridiculous and the Obama Administration should have the decency to drop it and welcome him back. He is a true patriot and genuine American hero.

Read more @ http://firedoglake.com/2015/06/03/edward-snowden-awarded-norways-bjornson-prize-for-freedom-of-expression/ 

 

Are they forgetting that the NSA flooded the internet with Malaware and also put Malaware into companies computers in transit to the companies? You can search back through the threads on the spying to find the stories about it.

 

Report: NSA Expanded Internet Spying

One Expert Says Program Seeks Info on Malware, Not People

The National Security Agency secretly expanded its warrantless surveillance of Americans' international Internet traffic to seek evidence of malicious computer hacking, according to documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, Pro Publica and The New York Times report.

See Also: Fighting Financial Fraud: Mitigation for Malware, Phishing & DDoS Attacks

Two secret Justice Department memos, written in mid-2012, deemed as legal the search of Internet communications, without warrants and on American soil, for data linked to computer intrusions emanating from abroad, including traffic that flows to suspicious Internet addresses or contains malware, the publications reported on June 4, citing the Snowden documents leaked two years ago.

The Justice Department allowed the agency to monitor only addresses and "cyber-signatures" - patterns associated with computer intrusions - which it could tie to foreign governments, according to the news reports. But the leaked documents also note that the NSA sought to target hackers even when it could not establish any links to foreign powers.

Packets, Not People?

Martin Libicki, a national security and information technology scholar at the Rand Corp., a think tank, says the NSA program, as described in the news reports, seems to be focused on searching for malware by applying a version of the Department of Homeland Security's Einstein intrusion prevention system. "In other words," he says, "this isn't about people but packets."

Read more @ http://www.bankinfosecurity.com/report-nsa-expands-internet-spying-a-8287 


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