NSA WhistleBlower: NSA Owns Entire Worldwide Network – Pete Santilli Episode #851 – Video


NSA WhistleBlower: NSA Owns Entire Worldwide Network - Pete Santilli Episode #851
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NSA WhistleBlower: NSA Owns Entire Worldwide Network - Pete Santilli Episode #851 - Video

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Patriot Act Deadline Threatens to Splinter NSA Reformers

Provided by National Journal NSA reforms

Privacy advocates, facing an uphill battle in a Republican-controlled Congress next year, will have to make a difficult choice.

Some argue that their best shot to curb the National Security Agency's powers will be to kill core provisions of the USA Patriot Act altogether. But other reformers aren't ready to take the post-9/11 law hostage.

The debate over whether to let the Patriot Act provisions expire in June threatens to splinter the surveillance-reform coalition. If the tech industry, privacy groups, and reform-minded lawmakers can't coalesce around a strategy soon, they may have little hope of reining in the surveillance state.

And with outrage over the Snowden revelations fading and fear over the Islamic State rising, the push for reform appears to have already lost its momentum.

The NSA critics are still licking their wounds after Senate Republicans blocked the USA Freedom Act last week. The bill, authored by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, would have prohibited the government's carte blanche collection of U.S. phone metadatathe numbers and time stamps of phone calls but not their actual contents.

The bill would have also extended key provisions of the Patriot Act for two years, including the controversial Section 215, which the NSA uses to justify its phone record collection program. But that wasn't enough for Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Sen. Marco Rubio, and most of the Republican caucus, who warned that the bill would have helped terrorists kill Americans.

"This is the worst possible time to be tying our hands behind our backs. The threat from ISIL is real," McConnell said in a statement, using an alternative name for the Islamic State.

With the Republicans winning the Senate, McConnell is about to become the majority leader, giving him control over the chamber's agenda. Given his aggressive last-minute whipping against the Freedom Act, privacy advocates say it is difficult to imagine him pushing anything more than cursory changes to the NSA.

But with so many ways to block legislation in Congress, it's always easier to stop something than to pass it. That reality has already led some privacy advocates to want to kill any reauthorization of the Patriot Act that doesn't include substantial reforms to the government's spying powersa viewpoint that has already spawned a #Sunset215 hashtag.

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Patriot Act Deadline Threatens to Splinter NSA Reformers

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NSA privacy director defends agency's surveillance

The U.S. National Security Agencys surveillance programs are legal and under close scrutiny by other parts of the government, the agencys internal privacy watchdog said Monday in an online Q&A.

NSA surveillance and data collection programs conform to the U.S. Constitution, Rebecca Richards, the agencys first civil liberties and privacy director, wrote during an hour-plus Q&A on Tumblr.

The NSA operates under rules that ensure that its activities fall within the parameters of the Constitution, Richards wrote when asked why she believes the surveillance programs are constitutional.

The oversight regime governing NSA is extensive, spanning all three branches of government, she added. The fact that NSA created my job highlights the value and importance NSA leadership places on privacy and civil liberties protections.

Critics have said some NSA surveillance programs violate the Constitutions Fourth Amendment, prohibiting unreasonable searches and seizures by the government.

One Q&A participant asked if U.S. residents fears of being discreetly spied on are merited.

The fears are not merited, Richards wrote. NSA is a foreign intelligence agency, she wrote. Our mission is to collect critical intelligence on foreign powers or their agents necessary to defend the country.

U.S. law requires that the NSA, when targeting a U.S. citizen for foreign intelligence purposes, to obtain a court order based on a finding of probable cause to believe the intended target is a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power, she added.

One participant paraphrased Benjamin Franklin to Richards: He who gives up freedom for safety deserves neither. The questioner then asked whether the NSAs erosion of the Fourth Amendment is fair and righteous, in regard to the principles on which the United States were founded?

Richards again defended the NSA: Intelligence agencies, just like other government agencies, have a responsibility to protect privacy and civil liberties, she wrote. In the course of our operations, we take great care to protect and safeguard personal privacy.

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NSA privacy director defends agency's surveillance

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Shock: The NSAs live Q&A is totally devoid of substance

Taking a page from reddit's ask-me-anything feature and other live Q&A sessions, the country's most popular spies are burnishing their image today with a little direct outreach.

On Tumblr, Rebecca Richards the National Security Agency's civil liberties and privacy officer is tossing out casual, Internetty answers to mostly softball questions like "What is your first priority as Privacy Director?" and "What is involved in your typical day of work?"

The answers consist mainly of abstract buzzwords like "protect and safeguard personal privacy" without going into specifics.

The chat, if you can call it that, is only one hour long and was first promoted by the NSA about six hours ago. It would've been easy to miss unless you already follow the NSA closely. So far, Richards hasn't addressed last week's USA Freedom Act vote in Congress, or any other substantive policy issues which left some visibly frustrated over the event.

Richards has taken one question from Gellman and one from another journalist, but didn't directly address the first and offered few specifics on the second.

Brian Fung covers technology for The Washington Post.

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Shock: The NSAs live Q&A is totally devoid of substance

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U.S. Said to Cite Islamic State Fight to Block UN Spying Text

The U.S. cited the threat posed by Islamic State to avert a United Nations condemnation of collecting metadata in an anti-surveillance resolution backed by Germany and Brazil, diplomats said.

The two countries are seeking a decision today in the General Assemblys human rights committee on a non-binding resolution on the loss of privacy from surveillance and mass collection of metadata, such as the bulk records of phone calls that are gathered by the U.S. National Security Agency and other intelligence agencies.

The Obama administration maintained that such intelligence-gathering is needed to fight the Sunni extremists in Iraq and Syria and address the threat of foreign fighters coming home to stage terrorist attacks in Europe or the U.S., said two UN diplomats involved in the negotiations who asked not to be named commenting on private consultations.

The U.S. was backed by Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the U.K., its fellow members in an intelligence cooperation agreement known as the Five Eyes. The group succeeded in softening the resolution, removing language that called the collection of metadata a highly intrusive act.

The anti-spying resolution at the UN is a joint Brazilian and German initiative begun last year after the disclosure that the NSA may have tapped German Chancellor Angela Merkels mobile phone and eavesdropped on Brazilian President Dilma Rousseffs private communications.

While the General Assembly adopted the text by consensus last year and is expected to do the same with todays version, the U.S. has shifted from the low-key approach it took a year ago to minimize the political backlash after former NSA contractor Edward Snowden disclosed U.S. surveillance at home and abroad, diplomats said.

Unlike last year, when American negotiators largely left the voicing of objections to allies, the U.S. directly expressed concerns, they said.

Metadata include the dates and time stamps of communications, such as how long calls lasted, when and where an e-mail account was accessed, or which websites were visited and when, without disclosing the contents of the communications.

The advance of Islamic State militants has eclipsed the global debate over U.S. spying at home and overseas, even in Germany, which is a member of the U.S.-led coalition against the extremists. The two diplomats said that may be what gave the U.S. room to be more forceful in negotiations.

A third UN diplomat said the U.S. may have shifted its negotiating tactics because of a separate provision in the draft resolution that says governments should abide by international human rights obligations when they require third parties, including companies, to disclose personal data.

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U.S. Said to Cite Islamic State Fight to Block UN Spying Text

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NSA Warns China or Russia Have The Ability To Cyber Attack The U.S. Infrastructure – Episode 523 – Video


NSA Warns China or Russia Have The Ability To Cyber Attack The U.S. Infrastructure - Episode 523
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NSA Warns China or Russia Have The Ability To Cyber Attack The U.S. Infrastructure - Episode 523 - Video

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NSA dissenters warned of possible privacy backlash in 2009

Video still by PBS NewsHour

WASHINGTON Dissenters within the National Security Agency, led by a senior agency executive, warned in 2009 that the program to secretly collect American phone records wasnt providing enough intelligence to justify the backlash it would cause if revealed, current and former intelligence officials say.

The NSA took the concerns seriously, and many senior officials shared them. But after an internal debate that has not been previously reported, NSA leaders, White House officials and key lawmakers opted to continue the collection and storage of American calling records, a domestic surveillance program without parallel in the agencys recent history.

The warnings proved prophetic last year after the calling records program was made public in the first and most significant leak by Edward Snowden, a former NSA systems administrator who cited the governments deception about the program as one of his chief motivations for turning over classified documents to journalists. Many Americans were shocked and dismayed to learn that an intelligence agency collects and stores all their landline calling records.

In response, President Barack Obama is now trying to stop the NSA collection but preserve the agencys ability to search the records in the hands of the telephone companies an arrangement similar to the one the administration quietly rejected in 2009. But his plan, drawing opposition from most Republicans, fell two votes short of advancing in the Senate on Tuesday.

A now-retired NSA senior executive, who was a longtime code-breaker who rose to top management, had just learned in 2009 about the top secret program that was created shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. He says he argued to then-NSA Director Keith Alexander that storing the calling records of nearly every American fundamentally changed the character of the agency, which is supposed to eavesdrop on foreigners, not Americans.

Alexander politely disagreed, the former official told The Associated Press.

The former official, who spoke only on condition of anonymity because he didnt have permission to discuss a classified matter, said he knows of no evidence the program was used for anything other than hunting for terrorism plots in the U.S. But he said he and others made the case that the collection of American records in bulk crossed a line that had been sacrosanct.

He said he also warned of a scandal if it should be disclosed that the NSA was storing records of private calls by Americans to psychiatrists, lovers and suicide hotlines, among other contacts.

Alexander, who led the NSA from 2005 until he retired last year, did not dispute the former officials account, though he said he disagreed that the program was improper.

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ALERT! For the First Time NSA Admits China and Others Can Cripple US Power Grid! – Video


ALERT! For the First Time NSA Admits China and Others Can Cripple US Power Grid!
http://www.undergroundworldnews.com The head of the National Security Agency warned Congress on Thursday that China and one or two other nations currently possess the capability of crippling...

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ALERT! For the First Time NSA Admits China and Others Can Cripple US Power Grid! - Video

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NSA chief warns Chinese cyber attacks could shut U.S. infrastructure

China and "probably one or two" other countries have the ability to invade and possibly shut down computer systems of U.S. power utilities, aviation networks and financial companies, Admiral Mike Rogers, the director of the U.S. National Security Agency, said on Thursday.

Testifying to the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee on cyber threats, Rogers said digital attackers have been able to penetrate such systems and perform "reconnaissance" missions to determine how the networks are put together.

"What concerns us is that access, that capability, can be used by nation-states, groups or individuals to take down that capability," he said.

Rogers said China was one of the countries with that capability, but that there were others.

"There's probably one or two others," he said, declining to elaborate in a public setting.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said the Chinese government "forbids" cyber hacking and that it is often a victim of such attacks that originate from the United States.

"The Chinese government resolutely cracks down on these activities. This reality is irrefutable," Hong told reporters at a regular press briefing on Friday.

Rogers testified two days after a bill to overhaul the NSA's bulk collection of telephone records failed in the Senate. Privacy advocates will probably now have to start over to pass a law to reform U.S. surveillance rules.

He said at the hearing that telephone companies are still providing those records to the NSA, but under stricter rules than when the program was exposed in 2013 by former contractor Edward Snowden.

Rogers said the agency, anticipating passage of a new law, would wait before moving forward with technological changes. He said the agency, and telephone companies, would rather wait and see what might be included in any new law.

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NSA chief warns Chinese cyber attacks could shut U.S. infrastructure

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NSA director: China can damage US power grid – VIDEO: NSA head pushes for offensive strategy

Published November 20, 2014

WASHINGTON The head of the NSA issued a blunt warning Thursday to lawmakers: China can shut down the United States.

The grim forecast came from Admiral Michael Rogers, the director of the National Security Agency and commander of the U.S .Cyber Command.

Rogers said he believed China along with one or two other countries had the capability to successfully launch a cyber-attack that could shut down the electric grid in parts of the United States.

Rogers reiterated that if the U.S. remains on the defensive, it would be a losing strategy.

Speaking to the House Intelligence Committee, the NSA director said the cyber threat was so real, and that agreeing to an international code, a sort of laws of law in the cyber realm is urgent.

The possibility of such cyberattacks by U.S. adversaries has been widely known, but never confirmed publicly by the nation's top cyber official.

At a House hearing, Rogers says U.S. adversaries are performing electronic "reconnaissance," on a regular basis so that they can be in a position to attack the industrial control systems that run everything from chemical facilities to water treatment plants.

Outside experts say the U.S. Cyber Command also has that capability, which in theory should amount to mutual deterrence.

Fox News' Catherine Herridge and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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NSA director: China can damage US power grid - VIDEO: NSA head pushes for offensive strategy

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