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Tech firms and privacy groups press for curbs on NSA surveillance powers

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The nations top technology firms and a coalition of privacy groups are urging Congress to place curbs on government surveillance in the face of a fast-approaching deadline for legislative action.

A set of key Patriot Act surveillance authorities expire on June 1, but the effective date is May 21 the last day before Congress breaks for a Memorial Day recess.

In a letter to be sent Wednesday to the Obama administration and senior lawmakers, the coalition vowed to oppose any legislation that, among other things, does not ban the bulk collection of Americans phone records and other data.

The status quo is untenable and ... it is urgent that Congress move forward with reform, said the letter, whose signatories include the Reform Government Surveillance industry coalition. Members of the group include Apple, Google, Microsoft and Twitter.

We know that there are some in Congress who think that they can get away with reauthorizing the expiring provisions of the Patriot Act without any reforms at all, said Kevin Bankston, policy director of New America Foundations Open Technology Institute, a privacy group that organized the effort. This letter draws a line in the sand that makes clear that the privacy community and the Internet industry do not intend to let that happen without a fight.

At issue is the bulk collection of Americans data by intelligence agencies such as the National Security Agency. The NSAs daily gathering of millions of records logging phone call times, lengths and other metadata stirred controversy when it was revealed in June 2013 by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

The records are placed in a database that can, with a judges permission, be searched for links to foreign terrorists. They do not include the content of conversations.

That program, placed under federal surveillance court oversight in 2006, was authorized by the court in secret under Section 215 of the Patriot Act one of the expiring provisions.

The public outcry that ensued after the program was disclosed forced President Obama in January 2014 to call for an end to the NSAs storage of the data. He also appealed to Congress to find a way to preserve the agencys access to the data for counterterrorism information.

But in recent months, the political opposition to limiting surveillance has gained strength in part because of growing concerns over the threat of terrorism. Those concerns were exacerbated by the rise of the Islamic State and the attacks that left 17 people dead in and around Paris in January.

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Tech firms and privacy groups press for curbs on NSA surveillance powers

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NSA authorisation to collect bulk phone data extended to June 1

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John Ribeiro | March 3, 2015

The FISC court granted the extension pending new legislation blocking bulk collection.

A U.S. secret court has extended until June 1 the controversial bulk collection of private phone records of Americans by the National Security Agency.

The government said it had asked for reauthorization of the program as reform legislation, called the USA Freedom Act, was stalled in Congress. The bill would require telecommunications companies rather than the NSA to hold the bulk data, besides placing restrictions on the search terms used to retrieve the records.

An added urgency for Congress to act comes from the upcoming expiry on June 1 of the relevant part of the Patriot Act that provides the legal framework for the bulk data collections. Under a so-called "sunset" clause, the provision will lapse unless it is reauthorized in some form or the other by legislation.

Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which relates to business records, was used by the government to vacuum telephone metadata from customers of Verizon, according to revelations in 2013 by former NSA contractor, Edward Snowden. The section comes bundled with "gag orders" that prohibit service providers from making such information demands public.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court had previously extended in December the authorization for the program by 90 days after the USA Freedom Act, backed by the administration of President Barack Obama, failed to pass in the Senate. A version of the bill had passed the House of Representatives.

The government has now sought renewal of the current program up to June 1 in order to align its expiry date with the sunset on the same day of Section 215 of the Patriot Act, according to a joint statement by the Department of Justice and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Friday.

In March last year, as part of his reform program for the NSA, Obama had proposed that the data should remain with the telephone companies, and government would have access to that data only through individual court orders. The president, however, said there was need for new legislation to put these changes into effect.

With Section 215 and two other key rules set to lapse on June 1, Congress "has a limited window" before the sunset to enact new legislation "that would implement the President's proposed path forward for the telephony metadata program, while preserving key intelligence authorities," according to a statement by the White House press secretary.

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NSA authorisation to collect bulk phone data extended to June 1

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NSA spying law set to expire

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The current law, due to expire on June 1, allows the NSA to collect bulk data on numbers called and the time and length of calls, but not their content.

Efforts by Congress to extend the law so far have proved fruitless, and Congressional aides said that little work on the issue was being done on Capitol Hill.

Read More Want to be invisible online? There's an app for that

There are deeply divergent views among the Republicans who control Congress. Some object to bulk data collection as violating individual freedoms, while others consider it a vital tool for preventing terrorist attacks against America.

Ned Price, a national security council spokesman, told Reuters the administration had decided to stop bulk collection of domestic telephone call metadata unless Congress explicitly re-authorizes it.

Some legal experts have suggested that even if Congress does not extend the law the administration might be able to convince the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to authorize collection under other legal authorities.

But Price made clear the administration now has no intention of doing so, and that the future of metadata collection after June 1 was up to Congress.

Read MoreiPhone encryption 'petrified' NSA: Greenwald

Price said the administration was encouraging Congress to enact legislation in the coming weeks that would allow the collection to continue.

But Price said: "If Section 215 (of the law which covers the collection) sunsets, we will not continue the bulk telephony metadata program."

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NSA spying law set to expire

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Beyond PRISM: "Plenty" more domestic spy programs to reveal

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Summary:Although Edward Snowden revealed many of the NSA's clandestine activities, Ron Wyden remains one of the only hopes of US intelligence reform from within Congress.

Sen. Ron Wyden talks in April 2011 of secretly-interpreted laws (Credit: AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, File)

A number of US surveillance programs that target Americans have yet to be revealed, a Democratic senator has warned.

In an interview with BuzzFeed earlier this month, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) said there are "plenty" of domestically-focused surveillance programs that have not yet been revealed by the Snowden leaks. He declined to discuss the subject further, saying that the programs are still classified.

Wyden has spent years quietly attacking the US intelligence community from his seat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, only to face resistance from not just the intelligence agencies, but also his colleagues and even the president. Although Edward Snowden revealed a considerable portion of the NSA's clandestine activities, Wyden remains one of the only hopes -- even if he is a lone wolf -- of US intelligence reform from within Congress.

The senator's position on the committee gives him access to some of the government's biggest secrets -- who is spying on whom, specific threats to the US homeland, and the details of ongoing surveillance operations and programs. These privileged few committee members are also cursed. They are barred from telling anyone about most of their work, including their fellow lawmakers -- let alone their own staff, most of which do not have "top secret" security clearance.

That poses a problem for members of Congress whose job it is to create new laws based on the information they have -- including privileged information.

"There are other things that need to be disclosed or debated among those who vote on and write the legislation," said Rep. Thomas Massie, a Kentucky-based congressman, in a phone interview earlier this year.

Massie remains concerned about further infractions by the government. Although a great deal has been disclosed about the NSA's activities -- including the PRISM surveillance system and the bulk phone records collection programs -- he said he was acutely aware that Edward Snowden "hasn't disclosed everything."

Massie, who was elected in part thanks to his pro-privacy stance and views on government reform, said he wasn't surprised by the disclosures. He described the news as a "disappointing confirmation" of things he suspected.

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Beyond PRISM: "Plenty" more domestic spy programs to reveal

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Germany: The SecuTABLET could shield governments from NSA spying – Video

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Germany: The SecuTABLET could shield governments from NSA spying
BlackBerry-owned Secusmart unveiled their high-security SecuTABLET at CeBIT 2015 in Hanover on Monday. The tablet is based on the Samsung Galaxy Tab S 10.5. ----------------------------------------...

By: RuptlyTV

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Germany: The SecuTABLET could shield governments from NSA spying - Video

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Juice PLUS+ France fr - Gnration Y, Team Rhino, l'indpendance financire. NSA. - Video

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The NSA's plan: improve cybersecurity by hacking everyone else

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The NSA wants more powers to hack whomever it wants. Photograph: Dado Ruvic/REUTERS

The National Security Agency want to be able to hack more people, vacuum up even more of your internet records and have the keys to tech companies encryption and, after 18 months of embarrassing inaction from Congress on surveillance reform, the NSA is now lobbying it for more powers, not less.

NSA director Mike Rogers testified in front of a Senate committee this week, lamenting that the poor ol NSA just doesnt have the cyber-offensive capabilities (read: the ability to hack people) it needs to adequately defend the US. How cyber-attacking countries will help cyber-defense is anybodys guess, but the idea that the NSA is somehow hamstrung is absurd.

The NSA runs sophisticated hacking operations all over the world. A Washington Post report showed that the NSA carried out 231 offensive operations in 2011 - and that number has surely grown since then. That report also revealed that the NSA runs a $652m project that has infected tens of thousands of computers with malware.

And that was four years ago - its likely increased significantly. A leaked presidential directive issued in 2012 called for an expanded list of hacking targets all over the world. The NSA spends ten of millions of dollars per year to procure software vulnerabilities from private malware vendors ie, holes in software that will make their hacking much easier. The NSA has even created a system, according to Edward Snowden, that can automatically hack computers overseas that attempt to hack systems in the US.

Moving further in this direction, Rogers has also called for another new law that would force tech companies to install backdoors into all their encryption.The move has provoked condemnation and scorn from the entire security community - including a very public upbraiding by Yahoos top security executive - as it would be a disaster for the very cybersecurity that the director says is a top priority.

And then there is the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (Cisa) the downright awful cybersecurity bill passed by the Senate Intelligence Committee last week in complete secrecy that is little more than an excuse to conduct more surveillance.The bill will do little to stop cyberattacks, but it will do a lot to give the NSA even more power to collect Americans communications from tech companies without any legal process whatsoever. The bills text was finally released a couple days ago, and, as EFF points out, tucked in the bill were the powers to do the exact type of offensive attacks for which Rogers is pining.

While the NSA tries to throw every conceivable expansion of power against the wall hoping that something sticks, the clock continues to tick on Section 215 of the Patriot Act the law which the spy agency secretly used to collect every Americans phone records. Congress has to re-authorize by vote in June or it will expire, and as Steve Vladick wrote on Just Security this week, there seems to be no high-level negotiations going on between the administration and Congress over reforms to the NSA in the lead-up to the deadline. Perhaps, as usual, the NSA now thinks it can emerge from yet another controversy over its extraordinary powers and still end up receiving more?

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The NSA's plan: improve cybersecurity by hacking everyone else

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