The Director of National Intelligence (DNI) just today released hundreds of pages of documents related to the government’s secret interpretation of Patriot Act Section 215 and the NSA’s (mis)use of its massive database of every American’s phone records. The documents were released as a result of EFF’s ongoing Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.
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In news that you already assumed was already happening, the NSA declassified documents that reveal repeated violations of American’s phone records. A judge said the NSA had "daily violations" for over two years and that "thousands" of American phone numbers had been improperly accessed.
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By now, it’s no secret that the NSA has courted privacy violations, but new documents divulge just how long such incidents have occurred. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper released approximately 1,800 pages of declassified files, which reveal that the NSA’s phone record program violations happened between 2006 (when it first came under court supervision) and 2009, when the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court ordered changes to the operation. During that period, a total of 17,835 phone numbers were listed for checking against Uncle Sam’s database, and only about 1,800 were based on the standard of reasonable suspicion. According to Clapper, congress received the papers we’re seeing now at the time of the incidents, and corrective measures have been put in place. Among the preventative actions are a complete “end-to-end” review of telephony metadata handling, the creation of the Director of Compliance position and a fourfold increase of the compliance department’s personnel.
As it turns out, the missteps are (again) said to have been accidents. “There was nobody at the NSA who had a full understanding of how the program worked,” an intelligence official claims. Sure, the increased transparency is certainly welcome, but a recently-leaked NSA audit from May of 2012 suggests that collection of protected data is still occurring from a combination of human error and technical limits. To pore through the National Security Agency’s fresh load of documents, hit the second source link below.
Filed under: Internet
Via: Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal published an important investigation last week, reporting that the National Security Agency (NSA) has direct access to many key telecommunications switches around the country and “has the capacity to reach roughly 75% of all U.S. Internet traffic in the hunt for foreign intelligence, including a wide array of communications by foreigners and Americans.” Notably, NSA officials repeatedly refused to talk about this story on theirconference call with reporters the next day. Instead the Director of National Intelligence and the NSA released a statement about the story later that evening.
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The Washington Post has some more documents that reveal the offensive cyber-operations of US spy agencies. The cyber campaign is even broader and more aggressive than we first thought and uses movie-appropriate code names like GENIE, TAO, TURBINE and The ROC. Apparently, US spy agencies launched 231 offensive cyber-operations in 2011.
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According to documents read by Der Spiegel, the NSA was able to bypass the United Nations’ videoconferencing system in summer 2012 and decrypted 446 internal communications in three weeks for a total of 458. Der Spiegel quoted the documents (translated from German) as saying that the hack had, "a dramatic improvement of the data from video teleconferencing and the ability to decrypt this traffic."
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It’s only reasonable to assume that men or women with near unbounded power to spy on the public would eventually use that power to peek at people they are sexually interested in. Well, now you don’t have to assume it, because the NSA is admitting it.
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The mounting national debt? Yeah, you’re probably better off just ignoring why exactly it’s mounting. The Guardian is continuing the blow the lid off of the whole NSA / PRISM saga, today revealing new documents that detail how the NSA paid out “millions” of dollars to cover PRISM compliance costs for a multitude of monolithic tech outfits. As the story goes, the National Security Agency (hence, tax dollars from American taxpayers) coughed up millions “to cover the costs of major internet companies involved in the PRISM surveillance program after a court ruled that some of the agency’s activities were unconstitutional.” The likes of Yahoo, Google, Microsoft and Facebook are expressly named, and while Google is still angling for permission to reveal more about its side of the story, other firms have conflicting tales.
For whatever it’s worth, a Yahoo spokesperson seemed a-okay with the whole ordeal, casually noting that this type of behavior is perfectly legal: “Federal law requires the US government to reimburse providers for costs incurred to respond to compulsory legal process imposed by the government. We have requested reimbursement consistent with this law.” Meanwhile, Facebook stated that it had “never received any compensation in connection with responding to a government data request.” Microsoft, as you might imagine, declined to comment, though we heard that Steve Ballmer could be seen in the distance throwing up a peace sign. At any rate, it’s fairly safe to assume that your worst nightmares are indeed a reality, and you may have a far more enjoyable weekend if you just accept the fact that The Man knows everything. Better, right?
Source: The Guardian
Afraid of PRISM
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In a not-so-startling revelation, the declassification of three secret court opinions on Wednesday show that the NSA hasn’t just been collecting communications related to terrorism investigations. It’s been collecting all kinds of stuff from unsuspecting Americans.
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