NSA Focus Isn #39;t on Bad People, But "Interesting People"
Michael Hayden, former NSA Director, former Director of National Intelligence, and former Director of CIA has just bragged about how he #39;s wasn #39;t part of law ...
By: THElNFOWARRlOR
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NSA Focus Isn't on Bad People, But "Interesting People" - Video
Becky Mackintosh NSA Speaker, Heal Hearts - Save Lives
Becky Mackintosh enlightens minds, strengthens families and heals hearts. With an emphasis on issues surrounding homosexuality, Becky shares a universal message of love. Judge less - love...
By: Life #39;s Short Lessons
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Becky Mackintosh NSA Speaker, Heal Hearts - Save Lives - Video
A British tribunal has ruled that data sharing between the NSA and the UK spy group known as GCHQ was illegal for years. Why? Because it was done in secret.
The Investigatory Powers Tribunal in the UK ruled today (.pdf) that British intelligence services acted unlawfully when they accessed the private communications of millions of people that had been collected by the NSA under its mass-surveillance programs known as PRISM and Upstream. The PRISM program, which began in 2007, allowed the NSA to collect data in bulk from U.S. companies like Yahoo and Google. The Upstream program involved the collection of data from taps placed on undersea cables outside the U.S.
The UKs use of the NSA data was illegal, the Tribunal found, because it violated the European Convention on Human Rights, which requires that activity that infringes on an individuals privacy be done both in accordance with the law and only when necessary and proportionate. The law requires that there be a detailed and publicly accessible legal framework in place that explains any privacy safeguards that are in place to help regulate programs that interfere with privacy. This was not the case until December 2014, after documents leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden exposed the data-sharing programs and a legal challenge to the data-sharing forced the government to disclose the safeguards it was using.
The legal challenge was brought in July 2013 by Privacy International, Liberty, and other human rights and civil liberties groups. These groups argued in their complaint that by obtaining data about UK citizens from the NSA, UK spy agencies had done an end-run around privacy protections that UK citizens have under domestic laws. This forced the UK intelligence community to explain the safeguards it had put in place to govern use of the data.
We now know that, by keeping the public in the dark about their secret dealings with the NSA, GCHQ acted unlawfully and violated our rights, said James Welch, legal director for Liberty, in a statement. That their activities are now deemed lawful is thanks only to the degree of disclosure Liberty and the other claimants were able to force from our secrecy-obsessed government.
The Guardian notes that this is the first time since the Tribunal was established in 2000 that it has upheld a complaint relating to the UKs intelligence agencies.
But civil liberties groups say the Tribunal didnt go far enough. They are appealing an earlier decision by the Tribunal in December of last year, which found that now that the safeguards are public, the program is legal.
The IPT ruled that, because the government was forced to disclosed these previous secret policies during the case, that the sharing of intelligence between GCHQ and NSA is lawful post December 2014. We obviously disagree with that, Mike Rispoli, spokesman for Privacy International told WIRED.
He said the groups are also still waiting on a ruling from the Tribunal regarding the proportionality of the data collection and sharing. That ruling is expected within a few months.
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UK Tribunal Declares NSAs Data-Sharing with British Intel Illegal
LONDON Britains electronic spy agency was acting unlawfully until December when it received intelligence provided by the U.S. National Security Agency, a British court ruled Friday.
The Investigatory Powers Tribunal, a court that oversees the intelligence and security agencies, said that Britains spy agency, GCHQ, was violating human rights when it received the intercepted communications from the NSA because it had not made details of the procedure and its safeguards on it public. In the tribunals 15-year history, this is the first time it has ruled against any of Britains intelligence agencies.
The court also said that while the lack of transparency in the past meant that GCHQ had breached human rights, the agency has been in compliance with the law since December.
The ruling comes at a time of heated debate in Britain over the balance between security and privacy, with Prime Minister David Cameron vowing to push for legislation to beef up security agencies surveillance powers if his party wins the upcoming general election.
In its ruling, the court said that the regime governing the soliciting, receiving, storing and transmitting by UK authorities of private communications of individuals located in the UK by the NSA breached Articles 8 or 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, because GCHQs safeguards were kept secret. Article 8 refers to the right of privacy, while Article 10 covers freedom of expression.
In December, the tribunal said, the security agency made public the safeguards governing the exchanges with the NSAs Prism and Upstream mass surveillance programs, making the exchanges lawful. The safeguards were disclosed as part of a separate legal challenge brought by civil liberty groups.
GCHQ said that the legal frameworks around intelligence-sharing were compatible with the law and that Fridays ruling against it was, in essence, a technicality, or in one small respect in relation to the historic intelligence-sharing regime. It also said that the ruling did not require it to change its operations.
The NSA and other U.S. officials declined to comment.
A GCHQ spokesman also said: We are pleased that the court has once again ruled that the U.K.s bulk interception regime is fully lawful. He added, Todays IPT ruling re-affirms that the processes and safeguards within the intelligence-sharing regime were fully adequate at all times it is simply about the amount of detail about those processes and safeguards that needed to be in the public domain. We welcome the important role the IPT has played in ensuring that the public regime is sufficiently detailed.
The British government is committed to transparency, Britains Home Office said response to the ruling. We have now made public the detail of the safeguards that underpin requests to overseas governments for support on interc
Originally posted here:
The Investigatory Powers Tribunal ruled today that the UK intelligence services acted unlawfully in their sharing of intelligence with the NSA prior to December 2014.
The case was brought to the Tribunal, which rules on intelligence matters, by the organisations Privacy International, Bytes for All, Liberty and Amnesty International.
The basis of the ruling is that the way in which intelligence sharing between GCHQ and the US intelligence services was kept secret prior to that date contravenes human rights. That includes the Tempora programme, by which the UK intercepts data passing through the transatlantic fibre-optic cables that carry much of the world's internet traffic, and warrantless access to data harvested by the NSA's Prism and Upstream programmes.
However, those same activities are now deemed to be legal. Following a limited disclosure by UK intelligence about its methodology with respect to information sharing with the US, on December 5th the IPT ruled that the cooperation between GCHQ and the NSA could continue.
Privacy International welcomed today's ruling, but said it does not go far enough since the activities are continuing as before.
"For far too long, intelligence agencies like GCHQ and NSA have acted like they are above the law. Today's decision confirms to the public what many have said all along - over the past decade, GCHQ and the NSA have been engaged in an illegal mass surveillance sharing program that has affected millions of people around the world," said deputy director Eric King in a statement.
"We must not allow agencies to continue justifying mass surveillance programmes using secret interpretations of secret laws. The world owes Edward Snowden a great debt for blowing the whistle, and today's decision is a vindication of his actions," he said, adding that more now needs to be done to put pressure on the authorities.
"The only reason why the NSA-GCHQ sharing relationship is still legal today is because of a last-minute clean-up effort by Government to release previously secret 'arrangements'. That is plainly not enough to fix what remains a massive loophole in the law, and we hope that the European Court decides to rule in favour of privacy rather than unchecked state power."
James Welch, legal director for Liberty, said his organisation will continue the battle through the European courts.
"We now know that, by keeping the public in the dark about their secret dealings with the National Security Agency, GCHQ acted unlawfully and violated our rights. That their activities are now deemed lawful is thanks only to the degree of disclosure Liberty and the other claimants were able to force from our secrecy-obsessed Government." Welch said.
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NSA-GCHQ data sharing was illegal - but they are free to carry on doing it
A secret UK court has ruled that the UK's intelligence agency GCHQ acted unlawfully by intercepting information gathered by the NSA. Investigatory Powers Tribunal said that because the rules surrounding the UKs access to the NSA's PRISM and UPSTREAM program data were secret, data sharing between the US and UK was illegal. A case has been brought against GCHQ by Privacy International, Bytes for All, Liberty, and Amnesty International.
But while the IPT said that accessing this information breached human rights laws this is no longer the case. Why? The illegality of sharing data collected through these surveillance programs centered on the very fact that they were secret. In blowing the whistle about what the NSA was doing, Edward Snowden unwittingly made this data sharing legal. Whoops.
The IPT's ruling states that GCHQ's access to NSA data was illegal before December 2014, but after this time the documents revealed by Snowden has brought the sharing of gathered intelligence to the public attention -- it is now legal. The activities of the NSA are now something we are all too aware of. This is largely thanks to the revelations made by Snowden which led to a massive surge in public interest about government monitoring of web usage.
Few would have suspected, however, that the documents leaked by Snowden would end up making the activities legal. The new ruling says that
...prior to the disclosures made and referred to in the Tribunal's Judgment of 5 December 2014 and this judgment the Prism and/or Upstream arrangements contravened Articles 8 or 10 ECHR, but now comply.
So when we didnt know about what was going on, it was illegal. Now that we do know about it, it's legal. The ethical and legal rights and wrongs of the surveillance have been questioned by many, and today's ruling will do little to silence those opposed to what is going on. Deputy director of Privacy International, Eric King, said:
The only reason why the NSA-GCHQ sharing relationship is still legal today is because of a last-minute clean-up effort by Government to release previously secret 'arrangements'. That is plainly not enough to fix what remains a massive loophole in the law, and we hope that the European Court decides to rule in favor of privacy rather than unchecked State power.
Privacy International and Bytes for All are now calling for the deletion of all data collected before December 2014. The two groups will also continue to fight against GCHQ access to NSA-gathered information, and the ruling is seen as being very bittersweet. James Welch, Legal Director for Liberty, said:
We now know that, by keeping the public in the dark about their secret dealings with the National Security Agency, GCHQ acted unlawfully and violated our rights. That their activities are now deemed lawful is thanks only to the degree of disclosure Liberty and the other claimants were able to force from our secrecy-obsessed Government [...] The Tribunal believes the limited safeguards revealed during last year's legal proceedings are an adequate protection of our privacy. We disagree, and will be taking our fight to the European Court of Human Rights.
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Thanks to Snowden, NSA-GCHQ surveillance data sharing is now legal
Should I Join Toastmasters, National Speaker Association (NSA), etc...
Should I Join Toastmasters, National Speaker Association (NSA), etc...? Well it depends! Joining these organization will certainly help you but only you can ...
By: Victor Antonio
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Should I Join Toastmasters, National Speaker Association (NSA), etc... - Video
NSA - Edward Snowden Edit 1
Music: Atreyu - Bleeding Mascara America, Fuck Yeah - Team America World Police Soundtrack.
By: Dick Nutton
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NSA Director Michael Rogers speaks Thursday at the UC San Diego, calling for a national dialogue on security versus privacy concerns
NSA Director Admiral Michael Rogers said Thursday that the nation needs to debate security versus privacy concerns in the wake of revelations of expansive government surveillance revealed by whistle-blower Edward Snowden.
In a wide-ranging speech at UC San Diego, which operates one of the nations largest computer science programs and is a leader in cybersecurity, Rogers contended that the Snowden revelations have hurt the National Security Agencys counterterrorism efforts.
After Snowden, a former NSA contractor, leaked documents 18 months ago, Al Qaeda videos online warned terrorists to avoid certain communications methods because the Americans are onto it, Rogers said.
Dont let there be any doubt from anybody in this room that these revelations have hurt our ability to conduct our mission, he said. As I look at ISIL and others, Im watching those targets change their behavior directly because of this.
Snowden remains abroad after being charged with leaking secret information about U.S. government surveillance programs. He contends hes a whistle-blower who exposed NSA abuses particularly the bulk collection of domestic phone records.
Most of the Snowden stuff was about us and the metadata and all that type of thing, said Lawrence Korb, a senior adviser at the Center for Defense Information in Washington, D.C.
External reviews found the NSAs surveillance was within the law. Still, Rogers believes there should be a debate on the long-standing legal framework that authorizes cybersurveillance.
What we need to have, I believe, as a nation is a dialogue about what are we comfortable with here, he said. A world of great security but limited freedom, I have zero interest as a citizen of being a part of that. But the flip side, a world of great freedom but limited security, I dont think that is in our best interests either.
He lamented that at a time when terrorism and cyberthreats are rising, public trust in the oversight of the NSA and other government agencies has plunged.
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The NSA and its allies have raided the pockets of independent and nation-state hackers and monitored some of the security industry's foremost researchers in its bid to hoover information on targets and find better ways to break systems, Snowden documents reveal.
Spooks would monitor the work of 'freelance' and rival state hackers, notably those plundering email accounts owned by targets of interest to the NSA and friends, and pilfer the stolen contents, according to a report by The Intercept.
That stolen data, referred to as 'take', was then pinched from hacker targets such as journalists, activists and military sources including the Indian Navy. Those hacks were likely the handiwork of other nation-state hackers given the sophistication of the breaches.
The documents revealed the hackers' email-plundering infrastructure was referred to under the moniker INTOLERANT and that Canada and the UK had hands in hacker pockets.
Here's a choice bit from one of the alleged NSA documents:
The NSA would tip-off allies such as the UK and Australia when it found data in hackers' take.
Snowden's trickle-feed cache also revealed the NSA had run an open source intelligence gathering service known as Lovely Horse which monitored the Twitter feeds of security bods including Mark Dowd, Tavis Ormandy and HD Moore. The Intercept listed 36 other Twitter sources who could be flattered by the agency's interest.
The agency also scraped security blogs for data in its bid to keep abreast of emerging exploits and vulnerabilities.
It need not have go to the length to build in-house systems however. Plenty of RSS feed platforms and page-monitoring browser extensions exist, while Aussie hacker Matt Jones (@volvent) had in 2012 created the TalkBack portal to analyse Twitter chatter and pry out new vulnerability information using known good security sources.
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The NSA has published its first "report" on signals intelligence "reform" in the US. If you were hoping for sweeping changes in the wake of Ed Snowden's whistleblowing, you're in for disappointment.
The factsheet, covering the year to date, was written up after some prodding and tutting by President Obama in January 2014.
It shows some minor tweaks in how Uncle Sam's agencies collect and processes information on people's everyday lives. We're told mass surveillance is still allowed:
Information obtained en masse from emails, phone calls, internet snooping, and so on, by spies using Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) will now be more closely scrutinized rather than slung into a bottomless bit well: any material deemed to not be of national importance will be deleted as soon as it is found, it's claimed.
Data which could be useful will be kept for five years before deletion, unless it's stuff the NSA really wants to keep for national security purposes in which case, it's indefinite.
The rules on whistleblowing have also been amended to allow staff to report illegal activity by their peers without fear of professional sanction. If, like Edward Snowden, you're a contractor, there are still no legal protections for whistleblowing, and you can expect to be prosecuted if you speak out.
The use of secret National Security Letters by the FBI and others has been changed, the NSA notes. These letters allow investigators to trawl through corporate databases but deny the businesses concerned the right to tell anyone about it. These gagging orders will now expire after three years.
The NSA report states:
In his January 17, 2014 remarks, the President directed the Attorney General to amend how we use National Security Letters so that [their] secrecy will not be indefinite, and will terminate within a fixed time unless the government demonstrates a real need for further secrecy.
In response to the Presidents new direction, the FBI will now presumptively terminate National Security Letter nondisclosure orders at the earlier of three years after the opening of a fully predicated investigation or the investigations close.
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NSA lays out its reforms post-Snowden (they can fit on back of a stamp)
Throw sum mo nicki minaj ft rae sremmurd ,Bbe ,nsa
Bbe challenge ,nsa challenge, twerk.
By: Kim E
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The Obama administration has announced a series of modest changes in the use of private data collected for intelligence purposes, a move that underscores how little the Edward Snowden revelations have impeded the National Security Agency's exploitation of global Internet communications.
Eighteen months after the first Snowden-fueled news story and one year after President Obama delivered a major speech calling for changes to NSA data collection, the White House on Tuesday said it had tightened rules governing how the FBI, CIA and other intelligence agencies use Internet and phone communications of foreigners collected by the NSA. But the bulk collection would continue as robustly as ever, the announcement made clear.
Where once the data could be used for any reason and held forever, now it must fall into six specific threat categories and irrelevant data is to be purged after five years. But the categories are broad enough that an intelligence officer could find justification to use a piece of information on a foreigner if he or she feels the need. The information need only have some relevance to counter-espionage, counterterrorism, counter-proliferation, cybersecurity, countering threats to U.S. or allied armed forces or personnel; and combating transnational criminal threats.
The new policy also imposed more supervision over how intelligence agencies use the communications of Americans they acquire without individual warrants, making clear, for example, that such data may only be used to prosecute someone for "serious crimes" such as a murder or kidnapping, or national security crimes.
But the changes stopped well short of the recommendations of a presidential task force, including one that data collected by the NSA without warrants should never be used against an American in court, and another that such data should only be searched using the name of an American with a specific court order naming that person. Robert Litt, general counsel for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, said in a conference call with reporters that those ideas were deemed too restrictive.
The result is that the private communications of Americans collected without warrants are still circulating around the government.
Moreover, Mr. Obama's most significant proposal in response to the Snowden leaks - to end the NSA's bulk collection of domestic calling records - has not been enacted. The president wants Congress to pass a law, and Congress has balked. The NSA is still collecting the records, even though Mr. Obama could stop the practice on his own.
"There's pressure to say we're doing something, and that leads to some symbolic changes or tweaks, but there would be a great reluctance to forswear access to intelligence like this," said Richard Betts, a professor at Columbia's School of International & Public Affairs and a former staffer in the 1970s congressional investigations of intelligence agencies.
"The reforms are far from sufficient and they really do tinker around the edges," said Neema Singh Guliani, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. "It's clear the administration is going to continue to stand by a lot of the mass surveillance policies."
In a statement, White House counter terrorism adviser Lisa Monaco said U.S. digital spying "must take into account that all persons have legitimate privacy interests in the handling of their personal information. At the same time, we must ensure that our Intelligence Community has the resources and authorities necessary for the United States to advance its national security and foreign policy interests and to protect its citizens and the citizens of its allies and partners from harm."
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The Obama administration on Tuesday announced a series of modest steps to strengthen privacy protections for Americans and foreigners in U.S. intelligence-gathering, including an end to the indefinite gag order on certain subpoenas issued to companies for customers personal data.
At the same time, U.S. intelligence officials said they were still hoping to fulfill a goal President Obama set a year ago: ending the National Security Agencys collection of millions of Americans phone records.
It was the revelation of that NSA program in June 2013 by former agency contractor Edward Snowden that set off a controversy over the scope of the governments surveillance powers and that led Obama in a speech last year to announce a number of reforms to intelligence-gathering practices.
The centerpiece of that speech was his call for an end to the NSAs bulk phone records collection, with the aim of devising an alternative approach that would preserve the agencys access to the data for counterterrorism purposes. But Congress failed last year to pass legislation to achieve that.
The underlying authority for the collection will expire June 1. The administration fears the expiration would end not only the program but also the FBIs ability to obtain a broad range of information on a standard much lower than probable cause.
While privacy advocates believe the White House could unilaterally end the NSA program, administration officials are calling on Congress to pass legislation to do so.
Im hopeful that in the four months we have until this expires, well be able to get legislation passed, Robert S. Litt, the general counsel for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, said in a phone call with reporters. Officials are not yet making contingency plans in the event it doesnt, he said.
The steps announced Tuesday by the administration are aimed at increasing transparency and privacy in an effort to rebuild public trust that was eroded in the wake of the Snowden disclosures. At the same time, Litt said, officials want to maintain operational capabilities needed to protect the nation and its allies.
Under the new measures, the FBI will lift indefinite gag orders on companies that receive administrative subpoenas, known as national security letters. NSLs are issued by a senior law enforcement official without a judges sign-off and require the recipient to turn over data such as a customers credit-card transactions, billing records and data on when and to whom an e-mail was sent or a phone call made. The gag order will now be dropped after three years or when an investigation ends, whichever comes first.
The three-year limit on NSL gag orders is a significant concession by the FBI, but it does not meet the constitutional standard, said Gregory Nojeim, senior counsel for the Center for Democracy & Technology. Instead, the FBI should have to go to court and prove a likelihood of harm if disclosure was allowed from the start.
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As Obama tightens surveillance guidelines, uncertainty lingers on NSA program
By Stewart Baker February 3
In this weeks episode, our guest is Rebecca Richards, NSAs director of privacy and civil liberties. We ask the tough questions: Is her title an elaborate hoax or is she the busiest woman on the planet? How long will it be before privacy groups blame the Seattle Seahawks loss on NSAs policy of intercepting everything? How do you tell an extroverted NSA engineer from an introvert? And, more seriously, now that acting within the law isnt apparently enough, how can an intelligence agency assure Americans that it shares their values without exposing all its capabilities?
In the weeks news, Jason Weinstein, Michael Vatis and I explore the DEAs license plate collection program and what it means, among other things, for future Supreme Court jurisprudence on location and the fourth amendment. We take on the WikiLeaks-Google flap and conclude that theres less there than meets the eye.
Jason celebrates a festival of FTC news. The staff report on the Internet of Things provokes a commissioner to dissent from feel-good privacy bromides. The FTC data security scalp count grows to 53, with more on the way. We discover that the FTC has aspirations to become the Federal Telecommunications Commission, regulating telecommunications throttling as well as cramming and apparently forcing the FCC into the business of regulating hotels. To be fair, we find ourselves rooting for the Commission as it brings the hammer down on a revenge porn site.
And Michael finds the key to understanding Chinas policies on cybersecurity and encryption.
The Cyberlaw Podcast is now open to feedback. Send your questions, suggestions for interview candidates, or topics toCyberlawPodcast@steptoe.com. If youd like to leave a message by phone, contact us at +1 202 862 5785.
Download the fifty-second episode (mp3).
Subscribe to the Cyberlaw Podcast here. We are also now oniTunesandPocket Casts!
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Postponement of Poll: APC faults NSA
The All Progressives Congress has rejected the call by the National Security Adviser for the postponement of next month #39;s general elections. The party warns ...
By: Silverbird Television
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NSA Orlando/NAWCTSD Leadership Update Week of February 2, 2015
Exercise Solid Curtain/Citadel Shield, IITSEC papers, industry partners.
By: NSA Orlando
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NSA Orlando/NAWCTSD Leadership Update Week of February 2, 2015 - Video
Model 344 Level 8 Paper Shredder with Particles Smaller than NSA Requirements
http://www.monomachines.com/shop/sem-model-344-high-security-paper-shredder-level-8.html - Model 344 Level 8 Paper Shredder with Particles Smaller than NSA Requirements.
By: officejungle
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Model 344 Level 8 Paper Shredder with Particles Smaller than NSA Requirements - Video
Germany: #39;NSA are cowards #39; - whistleblower Bill Binney
"These people are cowards. They are afraid of the truth," William Bill Binney said of the NSA leadership at the Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intel...
By: RuptlyTV
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Germany: 'NSA are cowards' - whistleblower Bill Binney - Video