Monthly Archives: May 2014

US v ISRAEL - NSA spied on Top Israeli Commanders - ISRAEL wants US APOLOGY
The crisis in Ukraine and the steadily dropping temperature in relations between Moscow and Washington made many talk about a new Cold War; and many others a. Please click here to subscribe...

By: megaeconomic

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US v ISRAEL - NSA spied on Top Israeli Commanders - ISRAEL wants US APOLOGY - Video

NSA leak #39;most significant in US history #39;
A huge dispute is brewing between two titans of the whistlblower community. Wikileaks and Glenn Greenwald, the journalist who gained access to documents leak...

By: MOSTNEWS

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NSA leak 'most significant in US history' - Video

How the Government Tracks You: NSA Surveillance - Clean
NSA Video for APUSH.

By: ashraj98

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How the Government Tracks You: NSA Surveillance - Clean - Video

Will Deputy NSA comment weigh in?
Deputy National Security Advisor stirs up a controversy -- says conflict entrepreneurs in Pakistan continue to flourish and pollute atmosphere of India.

By: TIMES NOW

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Will Deputy NSA comment weigh in? - Video

House passes NSA #39;reforming #39; USA Freedom Act
In a move to reform the National Security Agency #39;s surveillance practices, the House of Representatives passed the USA Freedom Act Thursday morning, with 303 representatives voting in favor...

By: RT America

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House passes NSA 'reforming' USA Freedom Act - Video

NSA headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland. Image: Courtesy NSA

The U.S. House of Representatives has passed a bill that would end the NSAs mass collection of Americans phone records. Unfortunately, it may not end the NSAs mass collection of Americans phone records.

The House voted 303 to 121 Thursday in favor of the USA Freedom Act, broad legislation aimed at reforming the NSAs surveillance powers exposed by Edward Snowden. The central provision of the bill, which now moves on to debate in the Senate, is intended to limit what the intelligence community calls bulk collectionthe indiscriminate vacuuming up of citizens phone and internet records. But privacy advocates and civil libertarians say last-minute changes to the legislation supported by the White House added ambiguous language that could essentially give the NSA a generous loophole through which it can continue its massive domestic data collection.

In the Houses final version of the bill, the NSA would be stripped of the power to collect all Americans phone records for metadata analysis, a practice revealed in the firstGuardian story about Snowdens leaks published last year. It instead would be required to limit its collection to specific terms. The problem is that those terms may not be nearly specific enough, and could still include massive lists of target phone numbers or entire ranges of IP addresses.

The core problem is that this only ends bulk collection in the sense the intelligence community uses that term, says Julian Sanchez, a researcher at the Cato Institute. As long as theres some kind of target, they dont call that bulk collection, even if youre still collecting millions of recordsIf they say give us the record of everyone who visited these thousand websites, thats not bulk collection, because they have a list of targets.

To any normal person, he adds, thats still pretty bulky.

Specifically, the House changed the definition of a search term from a term used to uniquely describe a person, entity, or account to a discrete term, such as a term specifically identifying a person, entity, account, address, or device. That shift, particularly the removal of the word unique and addition of such as, might be enough to enable nearly the same sort of mass surveillance the NSA now conducts, according to a statement from the New America Foundations Open Technology Institute.

Taken together, the Institute wrote, the changes to this definition may still allow for massive collection of millions of Americans private information based on very broad selection terms such as a zip code, an area code, the physical address of a particular email provider or financial institution, or the IP address of a web hosting service that hosts thousands of web sites.

Of course, how those specific terms are defined in practice will be decided by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which must approve NSA requests for data collection under the 214 and 215 provisions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. But after a year of revelations that have showed how the NSA uses word games to expand its legal powers, Kevin Bankston of the the Open Technology Institute says the court cant be fully trusted to interpret the law strictly. The danger is that its ambiguous, and if the FISA court and the NSA has showed us anything, its that any ambiguity in these laws is dangerous, Bankston says.

In fact, the watered-down version of the Freedom Act passed by the House also weakens early provisions that would have provided more resistance against the NSA in its FISA arguments, Sanchez says. The earlier version of the bill would have established a public advocate to argue against the NSA in FISA proceedings; the current bill has only a weaker amicus option, something closer to an outside adviser to the court.

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NSA Reform Bill Passes the HouseWith a Gaping Loophole

This June 6, 2013, file photo shows the sign outside the National Security Agency campus in Fort Meade, Md. A presidential advisory panel has recommended dozens of changes to the government's surveillance programs, including stripping the NSA of its ability to store Americans' telephone records and requiring a court to sign off on the individual searches of phone and Internet data.AP/File

WASHINGTON The House on Thursday passed legislation to end the National Security Agency's bulk collection of American phone records, the first legislative response to the disclosures by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

Although the compromise measure was significantly "watered down," in the words of Democrat Jan Schakowsky of Illinois, it passed by a vote of 303 to 120, with 9 members not voting.

"We must not let the perfect be the enemy of the good," Schakowsky, an intelligence committee member, said in summing up the feelings of many Republicans and Democrats who voted for the measure but wanted tougher provisions. Dropped from the bill was a requirement for an independent public advocate on the secret intelligence court that oversees the NSA.

The USA Freedom Act would codify a proposal made in January by President Barack Obama, who said he wanted to end the NSA's practice of collecting the "to and from" records of nearly every American landline telephone call under a program that searched the data for connections to terrorist plots abroad.

The bill instructs the phone companies to hold the records for 18 months--which they already were doing-- and lets the NSA search them in terrorism investigations in response to a judicial order. The phone program was revealed last year by Snowden, who used his job as a computer network administrator to remove tens of thousands of secret documents from an NSA facility in Hawaii.

The measure now heads to the Senate. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., the chairwoman of the intelligence committee, has said she is willing to go along with a similar idea.

NSA officials were pleased with the bill because under the existing program, they did not have access to many mobile phone records. Under the new arrangement, they will, officials say.

"I believe this is a workable compromise that protects the core function of a counter terrorism program we know has saved lives around the world," said Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., the House Intelligence Committee chairman.

Privacy and civil liberties activists denounced the measure, saying it had been "gutted" to win agreement from lawmakers such as Rogers who supported the NSA phone records program.

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House approves curbs on NSA record-gathering

The U.S. House of Representatives has approved a bill that would limit the National Security Agencys bulk collection of domestic phone records, even as several civil liberties and tech groups withdrew their support after last-minute changes.

The amended version of the USA Freedom Act, approved by a 303-121 vote in the House Thursday, continues to give the NSA authority to collect telephone and other records from large groups of people because of a change in the definition of the search targets allowed, critics said.

Still, backers of the legislation said it will end the NSAs practice of collecting nearly all U.S. telephone records. The bill represents a huge step forward and would require the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to publish its major surveillance opinions, supporters said.

The amended bill, supported by President Barack Obamas administration, is not perfect, many supporters said, but is better than nothing. The amended bill represents a first step, not a final step in congressional efforts reform U.S. surveillance programs, said Representative Jim Sensenbrenner, a Wisconsin Republican and vocal critic of the NSA phone records program.

The days of the NSA indiscriminately vacuuming up more data than it can store will end with the USA Freedom Act, Sensenbrenner said. In the post-Freedom Act world, we have turned the tables on the NSA and can say to them, we are watching you.

The House bill now heads to the Senate, where it could be further amended. Critics of the House bill said they will fight for stronger privacy protections in the Senate.

Opponents of the bill argued the amended version would allow the NSA to target wide groups of people with its surveillance. The result of the changes is a bill that will not end bulk collection, regretfully, said Representative Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat. Regrettably, we have learned that if we leave any ambiguity in law, the intelligence agencies will run a truck right through that ambiguity.

The House Rules Committee made changes to the USA Freedom Act Tuesday after two other committees had approved an older version backed by several tech and civil liberties groups. After the changes, Facebook, Google, Apple, the Center for Democracy and Technology, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and other groups withdrew their support.

One of the major changes to the bill is an expended definition of a specific selection term that the NSA must use to target its searches. The amended version of the bill allows the NSA to target things such as a person, entity, accounts, address, or device, instead of, in the original language, a person, entity, or account.

The words address and device in the new language, as well as the open-ended term such as, makes the new definition incredibly more expansive than previous definitions, the EFF said in a blog post.

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House approves weakened bill to limit NSA bulk collection

This June 6, 2013, file photo shows the sign outside the National Security Agency campus in Fort Meade, Md. A presidential advisory panel has recommended dozens of changes to the government's surveillance programs, including stripping the NSA of its ability to store Americans' telephone records and requiring a court to sign off on the individual searches of phone and Internet data.AP/File

WASHINGTON The House on Thursday passed legislation to end the National Security Agency's bulk collection of American phone records, the first legislative response to the disclosures by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

Although the compromise measure was significantly "watered down," in the words of Democrat Jan Schakowsky of Illinois, it passed by a vote of 303 to 120, with 9 members not voting.

"We must not let the perfect be the enemy of the good," Schakowsky, an intelligence committee member, said in summing up the feelings of many Republicans and Democrats who voted for the measure but wanted tougher provisions. Dropped from the bill was a requirement for an independent public advocate on the secret intelligence court that oversees the NSA.

The USA Freedom Act would codify a proposal made in January by President Barack Obama, who said he wanted to end the NSA's practice of collecting the "to and from" records of nearly every American landline telephone call under a program that searched the data for connections to terrorist plots abroad.

The bill instructs the phone companies to hold the records for 18 months--which they already were doing-- and lets the NSA search them in terrorism investigations in response to a judicial order. The phone program was revealed last year by Snowden, who used his job as a computer network administrator to remove tens of thousands of secret documents from an NSA facility in Hawaii.

The measure now heads to the Senate. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., the chairwoman of the intelligence committee, has said she is willing to go along with a similar idea.

NSA officials were pleased with the bill because under the existing program, they did not have access to many mobile phone records. Under the new arrangement, they will, officials say.

"I believe this is a workable compromise that protects the core function of a counter terrorism program we know has saved lives around the world," said Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., the House Intelligence Committee chairman.

Privacy and civil liberties activists denounced the measure, saying it had been "gutted" to win agreement from lawmakers such as Rogers who supported the NSA phone records program.

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House approves bill curbing NSA phone data collection