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

Snowden applies for temporary asylum in Russia

Russian President Vladimir Putin is characterizing National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden's long stay at a Moscow airport as an unwelcome present foisted on Russia by the United States. (July 15)
Kim Hjelmgaard, USA TODAY 10:16 a.m. EDT July 16, 2013


(Photo: Alexei Nikolsky, AP)


Intelligence leaker Edward Snowden formally submitted an application for temporary asylum in Russia on Tuesday, his lawyer said.

Snowden argued in his application that he needs asylum because "he faces persecution by the U.S. government and he fears for his life and safety, fears that he could be subjected to torture and capital punishment," lawyer Anatoly Kucherena said on Russian television.

The former NSA systems analyst has been living in the transit zone of Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport since arriving from Hong Kong on June 23. Snowden said Friday at a meeting with Russian rights activists and public figures that he would seek at least temporary refuge in Russia until he could fly to one of the Latin American nations that have offered him asylum.

The application may not be welcome news to President Vladimir Putin.Putin has characterized the National Security Agency leaker's long stay at a Moscow airport as an unwelcome present foisted on Russia by the U.S. He says the U.S. intimidated other countries against accepting Snowden, effectively blocking him from flying further.When asked about Snowden's future, Russia media quoted Putin as saying, "Such a present to us. Merry Christmas."

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/w...sylum/2520131/

Former President and Commander-In-Chief: America Is No Longer a Democracy

Posted on July 18, 2013 by WashingtonsBlog

And Says Snowden’s Revelations are “Helpful”

One of Germany’s biggest newspapers – Spiegel – reports:

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter … in the wake of the NSA spying scandal criticized the American political system. “America has no functioning democracy,” Carter said Tuesday at a meeting of the “Atlantic Bridge” in Atlanta.

Many other high-level U.S. officials have also warned that the U.S. is no longer a democracy.

Carter also said that the moral authority of of the U.S. has sharply declined due to excessive restriction of civil rights.

And – like many other top American officials – Carter also said that Edward Snowden’s revelations do not harm our national security, but are “useful”.

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/...democracy.html

7/19/13 Damage by Snowden is irreversible

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=T9_viJ1ZXyE

LOL ABS!!!

Secret court lets NSA extend its trawl of Verizon customers' phone records

Latest revelation an indication of how Obama administration has opened up hidden world of mass communications surveillance

The Guardian, Friday 19 July 2013 18.39 EDT
Pedestrians pass a Verizon store in New York. Photograph: John Minchillo/AP

The National Security Agency has been allowed to extend its dragnet of the telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon through a court order issued by the secret court that oversees surveillance.
In an unprecedented move prompted by the Guardian's disclosure in June of the NSA's indiscriminate collection of Verizon metadata, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) has publicly revealed that the scheme has been extended yet again.

The statement does not mention Verizon by name, nor make clear how long the extension lasts for, but it is likely to span a further three months in line with previous routine orders from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (Fisa).The announcement flowed, the statement said, from the decision to declassify aspects of the metadata grab "in order to provide the public with a more thorough and balanced understanding of the program".

According to Democratic senator Dianne Feinstein, the Verizon phone surveillance has been in place – updated every three months – for at least six years, and it is understood to have been applied to other telecoms giants as well.The decision to go public with the latest Fisa court order is an indication of how the Obama administration has opened up the previously hidden world of mass communications surveillance, however slightly, since former NSA contractor Edward Snowden exposed the scheme to the Guardian.

The ODNI statement said "the administration is undertaking a careful and thorough review of whether and to what extent additional information or documents pertaining to this program may be declassified, consistent with the protection of national security."The Verizon metadata was the first of the major disclosures originating with Snowden, who remains in legal limbo in the international airport in Moscow.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013...gh-court-order

Intelligence chiefs would consider NSA data collection changes – top lawyer

Robert Litt, the ODNI's top lawyer, says officials are 'currently working to declassify more information about our activities'
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Friday 19 July 2013 16.51 EDT

Litt pointed to problems with phone-company maintenance of such records that he said led NSA to collect it in bulk starting in 2001. Photograph: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty

The top lawyer for the US director of national intelligence suggested Friday that the intelligence community would consider changes to its controversial bulk surveillance of telephone records.
The apparent openness to modifying the surveillance efforts comes after a week of increasing criticism on Capitol Hill by Republican and Democratic legislators.Robert S Litt, speaking at the Brookings Institution in Washington on Friday, strongly defended the legality and propriety of the National Security Agency collecting telephone records on millions of Americans prior to specific national-security investigations.

"It is, however, not the only way that we could regulate intelligence collection," Litt said. "We're currently working to declassify more information about our activities to inform that discussion," particularly concerning the bulk collection of Americans' telephone records.Speaking at the Aspen security forum, the NSA director, General Keith Alexander, said on Thursday that "we should consider" restructuring the phone records surveillance so that the telephone companies, rather than the NSA, maintains years-long databases of customer information about numbers dialed and call duration.

Litt pointed to current problems with phone-company maintenance of such records that he said led NSA to collect it in bulk starting in 2001. The phone companies keep different records in different databases in different digital formats, for instance, affecting the NSA's ability to rapidly sift through it."That could be a significant problem in a fast-moving investigation where speed and agility are critical, such as the plot to bomb the New York City subways in 2009," Litt said.

But Litt also noted: "All of the metadata we get under this program is information that the telecommunications companies obtain and keep for their own business purposes."He acknowledged in the beginning of his speech: "There is an entirely understandable concern that the government may abuse this power."
Several members of Congress have expressed concern in recent weeks about the legality and necessity of the NSA's bulk telephone records collection, despite Litt and other intelligence officials' arguments that legislators are fulsomely briefed about the program's operation. Criticism swelled on Wednesday during a contentious House judiciary committee hearing, in which legislators blasted the NSA for what some labeled as illegal and unconstitutional intrusions into American privacy.

Adam Schiff, a Democratic member of the House intelligence committee, praised Alexander for his "openness" to having the companies and not NSA maintain the phone records database, saying it would "better respect the privacy interests of the American people.""I appreciate the director's receptivity to this reform, and urge NSA to work with Congress to implement such a change as expeditiously as possible," Schiff said.
Litt shed light on the government's argument that collecting Americans' telephone records in bulk was permitted under Section 215 of the Patriot Act, despite the provision's language that such collection must be "relevant" to an investigation.

The government, Litt said, "is not limited to obtaining only those records that [analysts] can specifically identify as potentially incriminating or pertinent to establishing liability, because in order to identify such records, it's often necessary to collect a much broader set of records that might potentially bear fruit by leading to specific material that could bear on the issue."Congressman James Sensenbrenner, Republican of Wisconsin and co-author of the Patriot Act, told the Guardian on Thursday that the bulk collection of Americans' phone records, prior to a specific investigation, stemmed from a "misinterpretation of Section 215."
Responding to a question from Brookings scholar Wells C Bennett, Litt said "one option" would be for Congress to pass a new law explicitly permitting the NSA to collect Americans' telephone records in bulk.
"You'd have to make sure that it enables the kind of flexibility and operational agility that we need to conduct the collection," Litt said. "We don't think a new statute is necessary. We think we have the authority. But obviously, if Congress thinks a new statute is appropriate for this, Congress can provide that."

The bulk collection of phone records is authorized by the Fisa court for a 90-day period and has been renewed for years. Yet the existence of the bulk collection was unknown until the Guardian, relying on leaks from ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden, published a Fisa court order compelling Verizon to provide the NSA with the records of calls made and received by all of their American customers.

That order expired at 5pm on Friday. The Obama administration announced shortly before 5 that the Fisa Court allowed it to renew the Verizon order, one of several secretly issued by the court to phone companies on behalf of the government.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013...ata-collection

Tech firms should be allowed to publish more data on US surveillance

The 'deal' the government offered tech firms to publish limited data is a joke. We need real transparency



Tech companies have scrambled to distance themselves from the National Security Agency. Photograph: Terry Ashe/Time & Life Pictures/Getty

Following the leaks about NSA surveillance, people demanded information about the scope and scale of the US government's data collection. In response, the administration offered internet companies a deal: they could publish the number of secret national security requests, but only if it was aggregated with data about non-secret, criminal requests.
Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, and Yahoo! immediately accepted and published aggregate data. But Google rejected the offer, stating that "lumping the two categories together would be a step back for users".

Google is right. Americans are understandably concerned that their digital privacy may be eroded through the government's ham-handed approach to foreign surveillance. But fixating on the accidental collection of domestic communications during foreign surveillance risks ignoring the ways that the US government legally and intentionally surveils the digital communications of its citizens. We must be careful that, in our rush to answer questions about Prism, we don't endanger the gains we have made over the past few years in understanding our domestic surveillance apparatus.
This week, leading technology companies, including Prism participants Facebook, Google, Apple, and Microsoft, issued a joint letter with prominent members of civil society asking the US government to allow them to publish summary statistics about national security requests for user data separate from their existing reports about domestic criminal requests. It's a critical step.
An outdated law called the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) gives the government broad powers to request data on US citizens stored by companies like Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Twitter. Using a subpoena, a law enforcement agency can obtain your name, address, IP addresses, data about when you sign on and off, and your payment processing information, all without any court intervention. And in some circumstances, simply by notifying the target of the investigation, the government can use a subpoena to collect opened emails and unopened emails stored for longer than 180 days (and agencies can postpone that notice in some circumstances). The government doesn't need to accidentally slurp up domestic data through Prism when it is so easy for them to legally and intentionally collect the digital data of its citizens.
Google and Twitter have been pioneers in educating consumers about the scope and scale of the US domestic criminal surveillance state. Starting in 2009, Google became the first internet company to begin publishing statistics about government requests for user data. In 2012, Twitter followed suit. And over the past few months, seven other tech companies, including Microsoft and Dropbox, have joined in publishing transparency reports.
Although informative about our domestic criminal surveillance state, these reports told us very little about secretive national security surveillance. And make no mistake, we need transparency reports on national security surveillance just like the ones Google, Twitter, and others release on domestic surveillance.
That said, the Faustian deal the administration offered for aggregate reporting handicaps all transparency reporting while failing to provide useful information about the secret surveillance state. Facebook, Apple, and Yahoo! have never published transparency reports before, so when Facebook accepted the deal and then reported that they received 9,000 to 10,000 requests in the six-month period ending on 31 December, we have no clue whether 10% or 90% of those are national security requests because we have no baseline for comparison. And that's why it is likely the government offered this deal: it does not reveal very much, other than the vague reassurance that the number of requests are in the thousands instead of millions.
But the deal gets worse. By combining domestic and national security figures, companies may be committing themselves to publishing less transparent transparency reports than they currently do. The perfect illustration is the situation Microsoft now finds itself in as the only company to accept the deal that has previously released a transparency report. According to their pre-deal transparency report, Microsoft received 12,227 criminal requests on 29,379 accounts in the United States in 2012. As a rough estimate, we can assume that during the six-month period ending December 31, 2012, the totals were 6,114 requests on 14,690 accounts. After accepting the deal, Microsoft revealed that during that same six-month period, they received between 6,000 and 7,000 requests on 31,000 to 32,000 accounts when aggregating both secret national security requests and domestic criminal requests.
Simply by subtracting, we can estimate that Microsoft received between zero and 886 national security requests covering 16,310 to 17,310 accounts. If the government's goal is to obscure national security requests, companies are going to need to be even vaguer and less transparent than Microsoft was in its last report. And including more specific data such as the number of warrants and subpoenas may become impossible.
That is why Google called the administration's offer a step backwards and the letter the technology companies sent this week is so important. We need greater transparency into the US government's secret surveillance programs. In getting that transparency, however, we shouldn't sacrifice transparency about the government's non-secret surveillance programs. After all, if our estimates are correct, national security surveillance accounted for only about 13% of the total requests Microsoft received and 54% of the total accounts surveilled. That means that non-secret criminal surveillance of Americans is as pervasive, if not more so, than the secret national security surveillance.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...e-transparency

Congress Prepares To Limit NSA Spying Reach

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 07/21/2013 13:38 -0400

Late on Friday, with little fanfare, the government's Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) reported that the secret FISA court - the "legal" administrators of the NSA's assorted domestic espionage programs - would be granted an extension of its telephone surveillance program. And while so far the US public has shown a stoic resolve in its response to learning more details about how the US government spies on its day after day, things may soon be changing. As McClatchy reports, "Congress is growing increasingly wary of controversial National Security Agency domestic surveillance programs, a concern likely to erupt during legislative debate - and perhaps prod legislative action - as early as next week."

Among the measures considered are legislation to make those programs less secret, and talk of denying funding and refusing to continue authority for the snooping. Pipe dreams of course, but one consequence of Congress finally responding to the biggest privacy intrusion flap since Watergate, will be to shift attention away from the president, and back to party politics, as it is virtually assured that a majority of republicans and democrats in both chambers will vote to continue the NSA's programs.

The resultant political acrimony and bickering will lead to an even more profound political split, and as the record acute polarization in Congress means absolutely no agreement on any fiscal reforms in the near (and not so near) term, the only "economic force" in town will be the Chairman (or Chairwoman's soon) monetary policies for years to come. In other words, the Fed will continue to "fix" the Fed's mistakes of the past century by doing even more of the same.

McClatchy has more on what is coming:

Most in Congress remain reluctant to tinker with any program that could compromise security, but lawmakers are growing frustrated. “I think the administration and the NSA has had six weeks to answer questions and haven’t done a good job at it. They’ve been given their chances, but they have not taken those chances,” said Rep. Rick Larsen, D-Wash.

The House of Representatives could debate one of the first major bids for change soon. Rep. Justin Amash, R-Mich., is trying to add a provision to the defense spending bill, due for House consideration next week, that would end the NSA’s mass collection of Americans’ telephone records. It’s unclear whether House leaders will allow the measure to be considered.

Other legislation could also start moving. Larsen is pushing a measure to require tech companies to publicly disclose the type and volume of data they have to turn over to the federal government. Several tech firms and civil liberties groups are seeking permission to do so.

Other bipartisan efforts are in the works. Thirty-two House members, led by Amash and Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., are backing a plan to restrict Washington’s ability to collect data under the Patriot Act on people not connected to an ongoing investigation. Also active is a push to require the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which rules on government surveillance requests, to be more transparent.

“It is incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to have a full and frank discussion about this balance when the public is unable to review and analyze what the executive branch and the courts believe the law means,” said Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., who has asked the administration to make the opinions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court public.

Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., is leading an effort along with Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas, to have the court’s judges nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. Currently, the Supreme Court’s chief justice selects judges from those holding other federal district court judgeships.

Schiff also is pushing a measure, along with Rep. Todd Rokita, R-Ind., to require the attorney general to declassify significant Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act opinions, and got a boost Friday from House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

What is most ironic, is that the NSA is operating under laws and rules previously passed by the same Congress that only now is having second thoughts on its enacted legislation. Of course, as always happens, the bills must be passed for Congress to justify its existence and only subsequently tone them down or undo them entirely.

“These programs are not illegal,” said James Litt, general counsel for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. “They are authorized by Congress and are carefully overseen by the congressional intelligence and judiciary committees. . . . “In short, all three branches of government knew about these programs, approved them, and helped to ensure that they complied with the law.”

In 2011, he said, Congress reauthorized the programs after the House and Senate intelligence and judiciary committees had been briefed and information was made available to all members.

But Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., recalled that when he chaired the House Judiciary Committee in 2006, “I was not aware of any dragnet collection of phone records when the Patriot Act was reauthorized.” If he had, he said, “I would have publicly opposed such abuse.”

He cautioned the White House that the mood could turn against it. “If the administration continues to turn a deaf ear to the American public’s outcry, Section 215 will not have the necessary support to be reauthorized in 2015,” Sensenbrenner said. “. . . The proper balance between privacy and security has been lost.”

While the final shape of any legislation, if any, remains uncertain, questions about the programs are getting tougher.

“I’m not saying that they’ve been breaking the law or anything like that, but I think it’s been surprising to most members that it extends as far as it has, and I think members would like to review what is appropriate for the NSA to do,” said Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, a senior House Appropriations Committee member.

However, no matter what the final outcome, the rabbit is now firmly out of the hat, and with the NSA's actions now solidly in the open, the espionage agency will find its status quo activities to be far more problematic than before Snowden.

The concerns fall into two general categories: What exactly is the NSA doing, and how can its work be more open?

“They need to provide as much clarity as they possibly can so people know and have a familiarity with what’s happening, why that happens,” said James Lankford, R-Okla., chairman of the House Republican Policy Committee. He wanted “another round of information again and to be able to process that.”

The desire to know more sparked a sometimes fiery House Judiciary Committee hearing earlier this week with top administration officials. Conyers, the committee’s top Democrat, noted that the Fourth Amendment protects Americans from unreasonable search and seizure. “You’ve already violated the law as far as I am concerned,” Conyers said.

The ire came from both parties. “The Star Chamber . . . in England started out . . . as very popular with the people. It allowed people to get justice that otherwise would not,” said Rep. Spencer Bachus, R-Ala., referring to a court that was abolished by Parliament in 1641 over its abuses of power. “But it evolved over time into a powerful weapon for political retribution by the king.”

Litt had a ready explanation, saying the law was designed “to make sure that all three branches of government are involved, that this isn’t just the king, or the administration or an executive branch doing it.” That court also came under tough scrutiny, as lawmakers are pressing to make it more open.

“There’s no legitimate reason to keep this legal analysis from public interest any longer,” said Conyers. Judiciary Chairman Robert Goodlatte, R-Va., was sympathetic, saying, “I share his concern about some classified information that does not need to be classified.”

Alas, all this comes too little, too late and what little goodwill and confidence the US public had in its "three branches" has promptly evaporated. Just like the stock market. At this point all that remains is damage control and a desperate attempt to salvage some confidence in a system which, like every other Ponzi, works efficiently only when there is underlying confidence in the Ponzi.

When there is none, such as now, it is up to the Fed to prevent the entire socio-economic house of cards built on misplaced trust andfiath, from collapsing. How much longer can Bernanke et al maintain the facade that "all is well", and how many more confidence-crushing revelations must appear before the Fed's attempt to offset gravity and the forces of math, physics and the business cycle all finally come crashing down under their own weight?


http://www.zerohedge.com/node/476662

House forces vote on amendment that would limit NSA bulk surveillance

Opposition to bulk surveillance swells with vote that would 'end authority for blanket collection of records under the Patriot Act'
^Beta

• Spencer Ackerman in Washington
  
• guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 23 July 2013 15.26 EDT
• Jump to comments (360)

US senator Ron Wyden said: 'It is another step, as I've outlined, in the march to a real debate [on surveillance].' Photograph: Joshua Roberts/Reuters

Congressional opposition to the NSA's bulk surveillance on Americans swelled on Tuesday as the US House prepared to vote on restricting the collection of US phone records and a leading Senate critic blasted a "culture of misinformation" around government surveillance.
Republican congressman Justin Amash prevailed in securing a vote for his amendment to a crucial funding bill for the Department of Defense that "ends authority for the blanket collection of records under the Patriot Act." The vote could take place as early as Wednesday evening.
"The people have spoken through their representatives," Amash told the Guardian on Tuesday. "This is an opportunity to vote on something that will substantially limit the ability of the NSA to collect their phone records without suspicion."
It will be the first such vote held by Congress on restricting NSA surveillance after the revelations from ex-contractor Edward Snowden, published in the Guardian and the Washington Post, that detailed a fuller picture of the surveillance authorities than officials had publicly disclosed – something blasted in a fiery Tuesday speech by Senator Ron Wyden, a prominent Democratic critic of the surveillance programs.
In a sign of how crucial the NSA considers its bulk phone records collection, which a secret surveillance court reapproved on Friday, its director, General Keith Alexander, held a four-hour classified briefing with members of Congress. Alexander's meeting was listed as "top-secret" and divided into two two-hour sessions, the first for Republicans and the second for Democrats. Staffers for the legislators were not permitted to attend.
Amash, who attended the briefing, described it as cordial but declined to give specifics about what was discussed. "I don't believe anyone's mind was changed one way or the other," he said.
Representatives for Alexander did not respond to a request for comment.
Amash's amendment, supported by a Michigan Democrat, John Conyers, unexpectedly made it through the House rules committee late on Monday night, a feat for which the second-term legislator credited House speaker John Boehner.
The amendment would prevent the NSA, the FBI and other agencies from relying on Section 215 of the Patriot Act "to collect records, including telephone call records, that pertain to persons who are not subject to an investigation under Section 215."
Debate over Amash's amendment is expected for late Wednesday, with a vote coming either Wednesday night or early Thursday.
Its outcome is difficult to predict. The vote by itself will not restrict the surveillance, it would simply include Amash's amendment in the annual Defense appropriations bill, which the House is considering this week; the Senate must also approve the bill before it goes to President Obama's desk. There is deep, bipartisan support for the domestic phone-records collection in the House intelligence committee and deep, bipartisan opposition for it in the House judiciary committee.
Yet Wyden, one of the leading Senate critics of the NSA's bulk domestic surveillance, called it "unquestionably good" that Congress was openly debating the extent of the collection of Americans' phone records.
"It is another step, as I've outlined, in the march to a real debate," Wyden said during a speech at the Center for American Progress, a thinktank aligned with the Obama administration. "We wouldn't have had that seven, eight weeks ago."
Wyden described the bulk surveillance of Americans' phone records as a "human relationship database," and described a "culture of misinformation" around it from government officials as a threat to American democracy, warning that "unless we seize this unique moment" to weaken both, "we will all live to regret it."
"The combination of increasingly advanced technology with a breakdown in the checks and balances that limit government action could lead us to a surveillance state that cannot be reversed," Wyden said.
Wyden, in a wide-ranging speech, reiterated a warning that the authorities government officials believe themselves to have under Section 215 of the Patriot Act might also allow the NSA or FBI to retain bulk medical records, gun purchase records, financial transactions, credit card data and more. "Intelligence officials have told the press that they currently have the legal authority to collect Americans' location information in bulk," he noted
Wyden assailed administration and intelligence officials for describing their surveillance as limited in public remarks while secretly briefing legislators about their broad scope.
"The public was not just kept in the dark about the Patriot Act and other secret authorities," Wyden said. "The public was actively misled."
On July 2, James Clapper, the US director of national intelligence, apologized to Wyden for erroneously saying the NSA did "not wittingly" collect data on millions of Americans. While not naming names, Wyden alluded to a comment made by Alexander last year in which the director of the NSA said publicly: "We don't hold data on US citizens."
"When did it become all right for government officials' public statements and private statements to differ so fundamentally?" Wyden said in his speech.
"The answer is that it is not all right, and it is indicative of a much larger culture of misinformation that goes beyond the congressional hearing room and into the public conversation writ large."
That culture faces one of its first major legislative challenges as early as Wednesday with the vote on Amash's amendment. There are others: a Senate bill introduced in June and co-signed by Wyden would compel declassification of the rulings of the secret Fisa court that sets broad rules for the NSA and FBI's collection and analysis of phone records and online communications.
Additionally, the NSA itself has indicated its willingness to consider abandoning the phone-records collection provided the telecommunications companies it partners with retains the data. And a former judge on the Fisa court wrote an op-ed for the New York Times advocating the secret surveillance court adopt an adversarial process, with a lawyer appointed to "to challenge the government when an application for a FISA order raises new legal issues."
"The side of transparency and openness," Wyden said, "is starting to put some points on the board."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013...k-surveillance