Thread: Privacy Alert! Big Brother is watching and listening, UPDATED

Government Storing Vast Phone, Email Data at NSA Data Center in Utah





by Tony Lee 7 Jun 2013, 5:15 AM PDT 13 post a comment
The federal government may store private phone records ,and Internet data that it has seized through the Prism program, in the National Security Agency's Utah Data Center that is being built and set to open this fall.
The UK Guardian reported on Wednesday that the Obama administration had obtained a secret court order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court forcing Verizon to hand over records of all domestic and international calls in its system on an "ongoing, daily" basis. Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) said if there is a court order for Verizon, then it is safe to assume there are similar ones for other carriers.


According to a report in the The Salt Lake Tribune, the Utah Data Center "is expected to cull billions of bytes of information for the nation’s intelligence community." Even though NSA officials have not revealed specific details, "the Utah Data Center will be part of NSA’s interconnected network that includes sites in Colorado, Georgia and Maryland." The Tribune reports the Utah facility "will be the largest," so "there is a good chance Americans’ phone call data could land" at the Utah Data Center.


The center was described by Wired magazine in 2012:

Under construction by contractors with top-secret clearances, the blandly named Utah Data Center is being built for the National Security Agency. A project of immense secrecy, it is the final piece in a complex puzzle assembled over the past decade. Its purpose: to intercept, decipher, analyze, and store vast swaths of the world’s communications as they zap down from satellites and zip through the underground and undersea cables of international, foreign, and domestic networks. The heavily fortified $2 billion center should be up and running in September 2013. Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases will be all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital “pocket litter.” It is, in some measure, the realization of the “total information awareness” program created during the first term of the Bush administration—an effort that was killed by Congress in 2003 after it caused an outcry over its potential for invading Americans’ privacy.

Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientist’s Project on Government Secrecy, told theTribune that “when you build a facility of that scale, it’s probably meant to be used, and the storage and processing of large volumes of collected data would seem to be a plausible use of this facility.”
“It means that we are always under surveillance,” he said. “Even our most private and intimate communications may be tracked by the government.”


Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), the Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, "acknowledged Thursday that the NSA had obtained secret court orders for seven years to collect records of calls placed or received on Verizon phones," and argued those court orders were needed to protect America.


Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), though, said it was "an astounding assault on the Constitution," and Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) said he was “deeply disturbed” because "overzealous law enforcement, even when well-intended, carries grave risks to Americans’ privacy and liberty."


http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/06/06/Report-Seized-Ph...

Paul: NSA's seizure of phone records 'an outrageous abuse of power'


By Megan R. Wilson - 06/08/13 10:33 AM ET
Following reports that the National Security Agency (NSA) has been collecting phone records, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) on Friday introduced legislation that would require federal law enforcement officials to obtain a warrant, with probable cause, before searching Americans’ phone records.

Among the revelations this week was a top-secret court order enabling the NSA to review telephone data for millions of Americans.
In a statement, Paul called the NSA’s secret seizure of phone records “an outrageous abuse of power and a violation of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution.”

“I have long argued that Congress must do more to restrict the Executive's expansive law enforcement powers to seize private records of law-abiding Americans that are held by a third-party," Paul said.“The collection of citizen’s phone records is a violation of the natural rights of every man and woman in the United States, and a clear violation of the explicit language of the highest law of the land,” Paul writes in the legislation.

Paul introduced the bill on the same day President Obama held a press conference defending the domestic surveillance program, which was authorized by Congress under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Obama signed a bill late last year to reauthorize the measure for another five years.“I want to be very clear: Some of the hype that we've been hearing over the last day or so, nobody's listening to the content of people's phone calls,” Obama said.

The Kentucky senator introduced similar legislation in May, but this version is a narrower request. The Fourth Amendment Preservation and Protection Act has no co-sponsors.Although the president acknowledged the administration had tracked telephone and Internet data – even from sites such as Google, Verizon and Facebook – he said there were safeguards to protect U.S. citizens. The Internet data collection, for example, does not apply to anyone living in the United States, he said.

“You can't have 100 percent security and also have 100 percent privacy and zero inconvenience. We're going to have to make some choices as a government,” Obama said, adding that he thought the program had helped thwart plots against the U.S.
Several lawmakers, including Paul, have disputed the president’s claim that lawmakers were fully briefed on the program.

Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/304329-paul-bill-w...

FALSE': Congress Denies Obama Claim 'Every Member' Briefed on Surveillance


13 597 post a comment
On Friday morning, President Barack Obama defended his administration’s massive telephone records surveillance programs by explaining that “every member of Congress has been briefed on this program.”

There’s only one problem: both Republican and Democrat Congresspeople say that isn’t true. On Friday afternoon, the press office for Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI), one of the authors of the Patriot Act, tweeted, “Obama’s claim that ‘every Member of Congress’ was briefed is FALSE.”

It wasn’t just Sensenbrenner. Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) said that only certain members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees had been told about the program, and he only knew about it because he received “special permission” to be briefed after hearing about it through the grapevine. “I knew about the program,” he said on MSNBC, “because I specifically sought it out. It’s not something that’s briefed outside the Intelligence Committee.” Merkley added that the administration had ignored the law. “Clearly the administration has not followed what an ordinary person would consider to be the standard of the law here,” he said.

Merkely summed up: “when the president says all members of Congress were briefed … well, I think a very small number of Senators in Congress had full details on these programs.”Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) said he only knew about the program after asking for a briefing under “classified circumstances.” The “average member,” he said, had no access to this information. “They don’t receive this kind of briefing.”
Senators Mike Lee (R-UT) and Jim Inhofe (R-OK) said they had not been briefed on the phone surveillance program, either. “Not quite!” Rep. Billy Long (R-LA) tweeted after hearing about Obama’s claim.

Obama’s claim was not a slip of the tongue. On Friday, Obama’s White House spokesman Josh Earnest said, “In December of 2009 and in February of 2011, the Department of Justice and the intelligence community provided a document to the House and Senate Intelligence Committees to be made available to all members of the House and Senate, describing the classified uses of Section 215 in detail.”

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/06/07/Obama-lie-member...

Maxine Waters: “Obama Has Put In Place” Secret Database With “Every...

Posted by Jim Hoft on Sunday, June 9, 2013, 12:37 PM
We were warned–
Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) told Roland Martin in a February interview,
“Obama has put in place the kind of database… will have everything on every individual”
Via Free Republic:
Before It’s News has the transcript:

“The President has put in place an organization with the kind of database that no one has ever seen before in life,” Representative Maxine Waters told Roland Martin on Monday.
“That’s going to be very, very powerful,” Waters said. “That database will have information about everything on every individual on ways that it’s never been done before and whoever runs for President on the Democratic ticket has to deal with that. They’re going to go down with that database and the concerns of those people because they can’t get around it. And he’s [President Obama] been very smart. It’s very powerful what he’s leaving in place.”

NSA Whistleblower: I Mistakenly Believed in Obama’s Promises

Posted by Jim Hoft on Sunday, June 9, 2013, 4:40 PM

Edward Snowden admits he was duped by Obama.
Twenty-nine year-old NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden admitted to The Guardian that he mistakenly believed in Obama’s promises on privacy rights.

From The Guardian interview, via The Examiner:

“A lot of people in 2008 voted for Obama. I did not vote for him. I voted for a third party,” Snowden said in an interview with the Guardian. “But I believed in Obama’s promises. I was going to disclose it [but waited because of his election]. He continued with the policies of his predecessor.”
Snowden acknowledged that he watched Obama struggle as he attempted to justify the surveillance programs during his press conference on Friday.
“My immediate reaction was he was having difficulty in defending it himself,” Snowden said about Obama. “He was trying to defend the unjustifiable and he knew it.”

Edward Snowden: the whistleblower behind the NSA surveillance revelations

The 29-year-old source behind the biggest intelligence leak in the NSA's history explains his motives, his uncertain future and why he never intended on hiding in the shadows

• Q&A with NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden: 'I do not expect to ...

• Glenn Greenwald, Ewen MacAskill and Laura Poitras in Hong Kong

The individual responsible for one of the most significant leaks in US political history is Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old former technical assistant for the CIA and current employee of the defence contractor Booz Allen Hamilton. Snowden has been working at the National Security Agency for the last four years as an employee of various outside contractors, including Booz Allen and Dell.
The Guardian, after several days of interviews, is revealing his identity at his request. From the moment he decided to disclose numerous top-secret documents to the public, he was determined not to opt for the protection of anonymity. "I have no intention of hiding who I am because I know I have done nothing wrong," he said.
Snowden will go down in history as one of America's most consequential whistleblowers, alongside Daniel Ellsberg and Bradley Manning. He is responsible for handing over material from one of the world's most secretive organisations – the NSA.
In a note accompanying the first set of documents he provided, he wrote: "I understand that I will be made to suffer for my actions," but "I will be satisfied if the federation of secret law, unequal pardon and irresistible executive powers that rule the world that I love are revealed even for an instant."
Despite his determination to be publicly unveiled, he repeatedly insisted that he wants to avoid the media spotlight. "I don't want public attention because I don't want the story to be about me. I want it to be about what the US government is doing."
He does not fear the consequences of going public, he said, only that doing so will distract attention from the issues raised by his disclosures. "I know the media likes to personalise political debates, and I know the government will demonise me."
Despite these fears, he remained hopeful his outing will not divert attention from the substance of his disclosures. "I really want the focus to be on these documents and the debate which I hope this will trigger among citizens around the globe about what kind of world we want to live in." He added: "My sole motive is to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them."
He has had "a very comfortable life" that included a salary of roughly $200,000, a girlfriend with whom he shared a home in Hawaii, a stable career, and a family he loves. "I'm willing to sacrifice all of that because I can't in good conscience allow the US government to destroy privacy, internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they're secretly building."
'I am not afraid, because this is the choice I've made'

Three weeks ago, Snowden made final preparations that resulted in last week's series of blockbuster news stories. At the NSA office in Hawaii where he was working, he copied the last set of documents he intended to disclose.
He then advised his NSA supervisor that he needed to be away from work for "a couple of weeks" in order to receive treatment for epilepsy, a condition he learned he suffers from after a series of seizures last year.
As he packed his bags, he told his girlfriend that he had to be away for a few weeks, though he said he was vague about the reason. "That is not an uncommon occurrence for someone who has spent the last decade working in the intelligence world."
On May 20, he boarded a flight to Hong Kong, where he has remained ever since. He chose the city because "they have a spirited commitment to free speech and the right of political dissent", and because he believed that it was one of the few places in the world that both could and would resist the dictates of the US government.
In the three weeks since he arrived, he has been ensconced in a hotel room. "I've left the room maybe a total of three times during my entire stay," he said. It is a plush hotel and, what with eating meals in his room too, he has run up big bills.
He is deeply worried about being spied on. He lines the door of his hotel room with pillows to prevent eavesdropping. He puts a large red hood over his head and laptop when entering his passwords to prevent any hidden cameras from detecting them.
Though that may sound like paranoia to some, Snowden has good reason for such fears. He worked in the US intelligence world for almost a decade. He knows that the biggest and most secretive surveillance organisation in America, the NSA, along with the most powerful government on the planet, is looking for him.
Since the disclosures began to emerge, he has watched television and monitored the internet, hearing all the threats and vows of prosecution emanating from Washington.
And he knows only too well the sophisticated technology available to them and how easy it will be for them to find him. The NSA police and other law enforcement officers have twice visited his home in Hawaii and already contacted his girlfriend, though he believes that may have been prompted by his absence from work, and not because of suspicions of any connection to the leaks.
"All my options are bad," he said. The US could begin extradition proceedings against him, a potentially problematic, lengthy and unpredictable course for Washington. Or the Chinese government might whisk him away for questioning, viewing him as a useful source of information. Or he might end up being grabbed and bundled into a plane bound for US territory.
"Yes, I could be rendered by the CIA. I could have people come after me. Or any of the third-party partners. They work closely with a number of other nations. Or they could pay off the Triads. Any of their agents or assets," he said.
"We have got a CIA station just up the road – the consulate here in Hong Kong – and I am sure they are going to be busy for the next week. And that is a concern I will live with for the rest of my life, however long that happens to be."
Having watched the Obama administration prosecute whistleblowers at a historically unprecedented rate, he fully expects the US government to attempt to use all its weight to punish him. "I am not afraid," he said calmly, "because this is the choice I've made."
He predicts the government will launch an investigation and "say I have broken the Espionage Act and helped our enemies, but that can be used against anyone who points out how massive and invasive the system has become".
The only time he became emotional during the many hours of interviews was when he pondered the impact his choices would have on his family, many of whom work for the US government. "The only thing I fear is the harmful effects on my family, who I won't be able to help any more. That's what keeps me up at night," he said, his eyes welling up with tears.
'You can't wait around for someone else to act'

Snowden did not always believe the US government posed a threat to his political values. He was brought up originally in Elizabeth City, North Carolina. His family moved later to Maryland, near the NSA headquarters in Fort Meade.
By his own admission, he was not a stellar student. In order to get the credits necessary to obtain a high school diploma, he attended a community college in Maryland, studying computing, but never completed the coursework. (He later obtained his GED.)
In 2003, he enlisted in the US army and began a training program to join the Special Forces. Invoking the same principles that he now cites to justify his leaks, he said: "I wanted to fight in the Iraq war because I felt like I had an obligation as a human being to help free people from oppression".
He recounted how his beliefs about the war's purpose were quickly dispelled. "Most of the people training us seemed pumped up about killing Arabs, not helping anyone," he said. After he broke both his legs in a training accident, he was discharged.
After that, he got his first job in an NSA facility, working as a security guard for one of the agency's covert facilities at the University of Maryland. From there, he went to the CIA, where he worked on IT security. His understanding of the internet and his talent for computer programming enabled him to rise fairly quickly for someone who lacked even a high school diploma.
By 2007, the CIA stationed him with diplomatic cover in Geneva, Switzerland. His responsibility for maintaining computer network security meant he had clearance to access a wide array of classified documents.
That access, along with the almost three years he spent around CIA officers, led him to begin seriously questioning the rightness of what he saw.
He described as formative an incident in which he claimed CIA operatives were attempting to recruit a Swiss banker to obtain secret banking information. Snowden said they achieved this by purposely getting the banker drunk and encouraging him to drive home in his car. When the banker was arrested for drunk driving, the undercover agent seeking to befriend him offered to help, and a bond was formed that led to successful recruitment.
"Much of what I saw in Geneva really disillusioned me about how my government functions and what its impact is in the world," he says. "I realised that I was part of something that was doing far more harm than good."
He said it was during his CIA stint in Geneva that he thought for the first time about exposing government secrets. But, at the time, he chose not to for two reasons.
First, he said: "Most of the secrets the CIA has are about people, not machines and systems, so I didn't feel comfortable with disclosures that I thought could endanger anyone". Secondly, the election of Barack Obama in 2008 gave him hope that there would be real reforms, rendering disclosures unnecessary.
He left the CIA in 2009 in order to take his first job working for a private contractor that assigned him to a functioning NSA facility, stationed on a military base in Japan. It was then, he said, that he "watched as Obama advanced the very policies that I thought would be reined in", and as a result, "I got hardened."
The primary lesson from this experience was that "you can't wait around for someone else to act. I had been looking for leaders, but I realised that leadership is about being the first to act."
Over the next three years, he learned just how all-consuming the NSA's surveillance activities were, claiming "they are intent on making every conversation and every form of behaviour in the world known to them".
He described how he once viewed the internet as "the most important invention in all of human history". As an adolescent, he spent days at a time "speaking to people with all sorts of views that I would never have encountered on my own".
But he believed that the value of the internet, along with basic privacy, is being rapidly destroyed by ubiquitous surveillance. "I don't see myself as a hero," he said, "because what I'm doing is self-interested: I don't want to live in a world where there's no privacy and therefore no room for intellectual exploration and creativity."
Once he reached the conclusion that the NSA's surveillance net would soon be irrevocable, he said it was just a matter of time before he chose to act. "What they're doing" poses "an existential threat to democracy", he said.
A matter of principle

As strong as those beliefs are, there still remains the question: why did he do it? Giving up his freedom and a privileged lifestyle? "There are more important things than money. If I were motivated by money, I could have sold these documents to any number of countries and gotten very rich."
For him, it is a matter of principle. "The government has granted itself power it is not entitled to. There is no public oversight. The result is people like myself have the latitude to go further than they are allowed to," he said.
His allegiance to internet freedom is reflected in the stickers on his laptop: "I support Online Rights: Electronic Frontier Foundation," reads one. Another hails the online organisation offering anonymity, the Tor Project.
Asked by reporters to establish his authenticity to ensure he is not some fantasist, he laid bare, without hesitation, his personal details, from his social security number to his CIA ID and his expired diplomatic passport. There is no shiftiness. Ask him about anything in his personal life and he will answer.
He is quiet, smart, easy-going and self-effacing. A master on computers, he seemed happiest when talking about the technical side of surveillance, at a level of detail comprehensible probably only to fellow communication specialists. But he showed intense passion when talking about the value of privacy and how he felt it was being steadily eroded by the behaviour of the intelligence services.
His manner was calm and relaxed but he has been understandably twitchy since he went into hiding, waiting for the knock on the hotel door. A fire alarm goes off. "That has not happened before," he said, betraying anxiety wondering if was real, a test or a CIA ploy to get him out onto the street.
Strewn about the side of his bed are his suitcase, a plate with the remains of room-service breakfast, and a copy of Angler, the biography of former vice-president Dick Cheney.
Ever since last week's news stories began to appear in the Guardian, Snowden has vigilantly watched TV and read the internet to see the effects of his choices. He seemed satisfied that the debate he longed to provoke was finally taking place.
He lay, propped up against pillows, watching CNN's Wolf Blitzer ask a discussion panel about government intrusion if they had any idea who the leaker was. From 8,000 miles away, the leaker looked on impassively, not even indulging in a wry smile.
Snowden said that he admires both Ellsberg and Manning, but argues that there is one important distinction between himself and the army private, whose trial coincidentally began the week Snowden's leaks began to make news.
"I carefully evaluated every single document I disclosed to ensure that each was legitimately in the public interest," he said. "There are all sorts of documents that would have made a big impact that I didn't turn over, because harming people isn't my goal. Transparency is."
He purposely chose, he said, to give the documents to journalists whose judgment he trusted about what should be public and what should remain concealed.
As for his future, he is vague. He hoped the publicity the leaks have generated will offer him some protection, making it "harder for them to get dirty".
He views his best hope as the possibility of asylum, with Iceland – with its reputation of a champion of internet freedom – at the top of his list. He knows that may prove a wish unfulfilled.
But after the intense political controversy he has already created with just the first week's haul of stories, "I feel satisfied that this was all worth it. I have no regrets.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/09/edward-snowden-nsa-whis...

NSA Leaker: I Had Authority 'To Wiretap Anyone'




by Tony Lee 9 Jun 2013, 4:23 PM PDT post a comment
Edward Snowden, the 29-year-old who leaked information about the NSA's data surveillance programs, said he had the authority to wiretap even the president's email if he had a personal email address.

In an interview with Glenn Greenwald the UK Guardian posted on Sunday, Snowden said while the NSA surveillance programs were at first more narrowly tailored, the agency now "specifically targets the communications of everyone" and stores them because "it's the easiest and most efficient" way to achieve their ends. He said he had the authority to wiretap nearly everyone in the United States.
"I, sitting at my desk, certainly had the authorities to wiretap anyone from you, or your accountant, to a federal judge, to even a president if I had a personal email," Snowden said.

He said such invasions of privacy will likely get worse.


http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Governm...A-Leaker-I-Had...

Series: Glenn Greenwald on security and liberty

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Boundless Informant: the NSA's secret tool to track global surveillance data

Revealed: The NSA's powerful tool for cataloguing global surveillance data – including figures on US collection

• Boundless Informant: mission outlined in four slides
• Read the NSA's frequently asked questions document




The color scheme ranges from green (least subjected to surveillance) through yellow and orange to red (most surveillance). Note the '2007' date in the image relates to the document from which the interactive map derives its top secret classification, not to the map itself.

The National Security Agency has developed a powerful tool for recording and analysing where its intelligence comes from, raising questions about its repeated assurances to Congress that it cannot keep track of all the surveillance it performs on American communications.
The Guardian has acquired top-secret documents about the NSA datamining tool, called Boundless Informant, that details and even maps by country the voluminous amount of information it collects from computer and telephone networks.
The focus of the internal NSA tool is on counting and categorizing the records of communications, known as metadata, rather than the content of an email or instant message.
The Boundless Informant documents show the agency collecting almost 3 billion pieces of intelligence from US computer networks over a 30-day period ending in March 2013. One document says it is designed to give NSA officials answers to questions like, "What type of coverage do we have on country X" in "near real-time by asking the SIGINT [signals intelligence] infrastructure."
An NSA factsheet about the program, acquired by the Guardian, says: "The tool allows users to select a country on a map and view the metadata volume and select details about the collections against that country."
Under the heading "Sample use cases", the factsheet also states the tool shows information including: "How many records (and what type) are collected against a particular country."
A snapshot of the Boundless Informant data, contained in a top secret NSA "global heat map" seen by the Guardian, shows that in March 2013 the agency collected 97bn pieces of intelligence from computer networks worldwide.
The heat map reveals how much data is being collected from around the world. Note the '2007' date in the image relates to the document from which the interactive map derives its top secret classification, not to the map itself.
Iran was the country where the largest amount of intelligence was gathered, with more than 14bn reports in that period, followed by 13.5bn from Pakistan. Jordan, one of America's closest Arab allies, came third with 12.7bn, Egypt fourth with 7.6bn and India fifth with 6.3bn.
The heatmap gives each nation a color code based on how extensively it is subjected to NSA surveillance. The color scheme ranges from green (least subjected to surveillance) through yellow and orange to red (most surveillance).
The disclosure of the internal Boundless Informant system comes amid a struggle between the NSA and its overseers in the Senate over whether it can track the intelligence it collects on American communications. The NSA's position is that it is not technologically feasible to do so.
At a hearing of the Senate intelligence committee In March this year, Democratic senator Ron Wyden asked James Clapper, the director of national intelligence: "Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?"
"No sir," replied Clapper.
Judith Emmel, an NSA spokeswoman, told the Guardian in a response to the latest disclosures: "NSA has consistently reported – including to Congress – that we do not have the ability to determine with certainty the identity or location of all communicants within a given communication. That remains the case."
Other documents seen by the Guardian further demonstrate that the NSA does in fact break down its surveillance intercepts which could allow the agency to determine how many of them are from the US. The level of detail includes individual IP addresses.
IP address is not a perfect proxy for someone's physical location but it is rather close, said Chris Soghoian, the principal technologist with the Speech Privacy and Technology Project of the American Civil Liberties Union. "If you don't take steps to hide it, the IP address provided by your internet provider will certainly tell you what country, state and, typically, city you are in," Soghoian said.
That approximation has implications for the ongoing oversight battle between the intelligence agencies and Congress.
On Friday, in his first public response to the Guardian's disclosures this week on NSA surveillance, Barack Obama said that that congressional oversight was the American peoples' best guarantee that they were not being spied on.
"These are the folks you all vote for as your representatives in Congress and they are being fully briefed on these programs," he said. Obama also insisted that any surveillance was "very narrowly circumscribed".
Senators have expressed their frustration at the NSA's refusal to supply statistics. In a letter to NSA director General Keith Alexander in October last year, senator Wyden and his Democratic colleague on the Senate intelligence committee, Mark Udall, noted that "the intelligence community has stated repeatedly that it is not possible to provide even a rough estimate of how many American communications have been collected under the Fisa Amendments Act, and has even declined to estimate the scale of this collection."
At a congressional hearing in March last year, Alexander denied point-blank that the agency had the figures on how many Americans had their electronic communications collected or reviewed. Asked if he had the capability to get them, Alexander said: "No. No. We do not have the technical insights in the United States." He added that "nor do we do have the equipment in the United States to actually collect that kind of information".
Soon after, the NSA, through the inspector general of the overall US intelligence community, told the senators that making such a determination would jeopardize US intelligence operations – and might itself violate Americans' privacy.
"All that senator Udall and I are asking for is a ballpark estimate of how many Americans have been monitored under this law, and it is disappointing that the inspectors general cannot provide it," Wyden told Wired magazine at the time.
The documents show that the team responsible for Boundless Informant assured its bosses that the tool is on track for upgrades.
The team will "accept user requests for additional functionality or enhancements," according to the FAQ acquired by the Guardian. "Users are also allowed to vote on which functionality or enhancements are most important to them (as well as add comments). The BOUNDLESSINFORMANT team will periodically review all requests and triage according to level of effort (Easy, Medium, Hard) and mission impact (High, Medium, Low)."
Emmel, the NSA spokeswoman, told the Guardian: "Current technology simply does not permit us to positively identify all of the persons or locations associated with a given communication (for example, it may be possible to say with certainty that a communication traversed a particular path within the internet. It is harder to know the ultimate source or destination, or more particularly the identity of the person represented by the TO:, FROM: or CC: field of an e-mail address or the abstraction of an IP address).
"Thus, we apply rigorous training and technological advancements to combine both our automated and manual (human) processes to characterize communications – ensuring protection of the privacy rights of the American people. This is not just our judgment, but that of the relevant inspectors general, who have also reported this."
She added: "The continued publication of these allegations about highly classified issues, and other information taken out of context, makes it impossible to conduct a reasonable discussion on the merits of these programs."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/08/nsa-boundless-informant...

Edward Snowden's explosive NSA leaks have US in damage control mode

White House refers Snowden's case to Justice Department while Republicans in Congress call for whistleblower's extradition


ak the most important leak in American history Link to video: NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden: 'I don't want to l...
Washington was struggling to contain one of the most explosive national security leaks in US history on Monday, as public criticism grew of the sweeping surveillance state revealed by whistleblower Edward Snowden.

Political opinion was split, with some members of Congress calling for the immediate extradition of a man they consider a "defector" but other senior politicians from both parties questioning whether US surveillance practices had gone too far.Daniel Ellsberg, the former military analyst who revealed secrets of the Vietnam war through the so-called Pentagon Papers in 1971, described Snowden's leak as even more important and perhaps the most significant leak in American history.

In London, the British foreign secretary, William Hague, was forced to defend the UK's use of intelligence gathered by the US. Other European leaders also voiced concern.The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, is expected to grill Obama next week, during a much-awaited summit in Berlin. Peter Schaar, Germany's federal data protection commissioner, told the Guardian it was unacceptable for the US authorities to have access to EU citizens' data, and that the level of protection is lower than that guaranteed to US citizens.

In Washington, the Obama administration offered no indication on Monday about what it intended to do about Snowden, who was praised by privacy campaigners but condemned by some US politicians keen for him to be extradited from Hong Kong and put on trial.
The White House made no comment beyond a short statement released by a spokesman for the US director of national intelligence on Sunday. Shawn Turner said Snowden's case had been referred to the Justice Department, and that US intelligence was assessing the damage caused by the disclosures.

"Any person who has a security clearance knows that he or she has an obligation to protect classified information and abide by the law," Turner said.Snowden disclosed his identity in an explosive interview with the Guardian, published on Sunday. He revealed he was a 29-year-old former technical assistant for the CIA and current employee of the defence contractor Booz Allen Hamilton. Snowden worked at the National Security Agency for the past four years as an employee of various outside contractors, including Booz Allen and Dell.
He left for Hong Kong on 20 May. He chose Hong Kong because "they have a spirited commitment to free speech and the right of political dissent".

In his interview, Snowden revealed himself as the source for a series of articles in the Guardian last week, which included disclosures of a wide-ranging secret court order that demanded Verizon pass to the NSA the details of phone calls related to millions of customers, and a huge NSA intelligence system called Prism, which collects data on intelligence targets from the systems of some of the biggest tech companies.

Snowden said he had become disillusioned with the overarching nature of government surveillance in the US. "The government has granted itself power it is not entitled to. There is no public oversight. The result is people like myself have the latitude to go further than they are allowed to," he said."My sole motive is to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them."
Snowden drew support from civil liberty activists and organisations. Ellsberg wrote for the Guardian: "In my estimation, there has not been in American history a more important leak than Edward Snowden's release of NSA material – and that definitely includes the Pentagon Papers 40 years ago".

Thomas Drake, a former NSA executive who famously leaked information about what he considered a wasteful data-mining program at the agency, said of Snowden: "He's extraordinarily brave and courageous."The Electronic Frontier Foundation, an internet rights group, called for a "new Church committee" to investigate potential government infringements on privacy and to write new rules protecting the public. In the wake of the Watergate affair in the mid-1970s, a Senate investigation led by Idaho senator Frank Church uncovered decades of serious abuse by the US government of its eavesdropping powers. The committee report led to the passage of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and set up the Fisa courts that today secretly approve surveillance requests.

Both Snowden and the Obama administration appeared to be considering their options on Monday. Hong Kong is unlikely to offer Snowden a permanent refuge, but Snowden could buy time by filing an asylum request, thanks to a landmark legal ruling that has thrown the system into disarray.For years, Hong Kong has relied on the United Nations refugee agency to handle the bulk of claims. But in March its court of final appeal ruled that the government must independently screen cases. No system for processing the claims is yet in place.
China-watchers also wonder if Beijing would wish to become publicly involved in such a high-profile case – particularly given China's doctrine of non-interference in other countries' domestic affairs, and that it comes days after a meeting between presidents Xi Jinping and Barack Obama, as the countries seek to improve bilateral relations.

In New York, Mayor Michael Bloomberg cancelled at very short notice a planned photo opportunity with the Hong Kong chief executive, Leung Chun-ying. "It would have been a circus, so we decided to catch up with him another time," a mayoral spokesman told the Guardian.
Shares in Snowden's employer, Booz Allen, fell on Monday by 61¢, or 3.4%, in midday trading, a slight recovery from a 5% drop earlier in the session.

In a statement on Sunday, the company said it has employed Snowden for less than three months on a team in Hawaii. It added that it is working with clients and authorities to investigate the leaks. "News reports that this individual has claimed to have leaked classified information are shocking, and if accurate, this action represents a grave violation of the code of conduct and core values of our firm," the statement said.Booz Allen Hamilton is a consultant to government and corporate clients. About 23% of its revenue, or $1.3bn, came from US intelligence agencies last year. The company has said in SEC filings that security breaches could materially hurt results.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/10/white-house-nsa-leaks-e...