Daily Archives: November 13, 2014

UN rappporteur to "investigate" NSA / GCHQ agency spying
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UN rappporteur to "investigate" NSA / GCHQ agency spying - Video

Senate Democrats took the first steps Wednesday to set a final vote on a bill to halt the NSAs phone-snooping program, in a move that signals a developing consensus to try to shut the program down before the end of the year.

Democratic leaders set a first test vote for Friday, which would likely be followed by final passage next week adding yet another major issue to the list of priorities in the short lame-duck session.

Senators will vote on a revamped version of the bill written by SenateJudiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy, Vermont Democrat, choosing that option over a more NSA-friendly bill that passed the House earlier this year.

The American people are wondering whether Congress can get anything done, Mr. Leahy said in statement. The answer is yes.

Under the NSA phone program, revealed by former government contractor Edward Snowden, the government collected the numbers, times and durations of phone calls made by Americans. The information was stored for years, so government analysts could use it to try to track down potential terrorist links.

The Obama administration defended the program, saying it had approval of a special secret court and had been run by a small group of members of Congress who oversee intelligence activities. But many other lawmakers felt the program went too far including Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., author of the 2001 Patriot Act that the government used as legal justification for the program.

There is no excuse not to pass this fundamental piece of legislation during the lame duck, said Mr. Sensenbrenner, Wisconsin Republican.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid moved to schedule the votes. He had resisted for months as an internal fight brewed within his party between Mr. Leahy on the one hand and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, California Democrat and chairwoman of the Senate intelligence committee, who had written a more lenient bill that would have let the NSA continue to collect phone records.

But with Democrats time in control of the Senate about to end, Mr. Reid acted.

Not everyone is on board with Mr. Leahys bill, which bans bulk collection of Americans records and requires the government to be more selective when it seeks data.

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NSA phone snooping ban set for Senate vote

Several technology and digital rights groups have praised a U.S. Senate move toward passing legislation that would rein in the National Security Agencys domestic telephone records collection program.

A procedural vote on the USA Freedom Act could come as early as Tuesday, with a final vote on the bill in the days following. The bill, aimed at ending the NSAs widespread collection of U.S. telephone records, would have to pass both the Senate and the House of Representatives by the end of the year to become law.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, filed a motion to move the bill forward late Wednesday.

Among the groups applauding the decision to move forward with the bill were software trade group BSA, tech trade group the Computer and Communications Industry Association, digital rights group the Center for Democracy and Technology and justice advocacy group the Brennan Center for Justice.

The legal reforms in the USA Freedom Act send a clear signal to U.S. citizens and Internet users around the world that Congress is serious about reforming government surveillance practices, and providing the judiciary and the public with tools that allow better oversight over remaining narrowed programs, CCIA President and CEO Ed Black said by email.The USA Freedom Act closes key loopholes on bulk call data collection and offers greater transparency, which is essential for citizens in a free democracy.

Libraries have been fighting against government searches allowed under the antiterrorism Patriot Act for 13 years, said American Library Association President-elect Sari Feldman.

The Senate bill gives Congress the opportunity to prove to the American people that their freedom from broad surveillance by their own government matters more than political posturing, Feldman said in a statement. Its time, way past time, to finally vote on and pass [the] bipartisan, intelligence community-backed USA Freedom Act without weakening its already modest protections for the public.

While the bill has a good chance of passing in the Senate, it may face a tougher test in the House, where several prominent lawmakers have suggested the legislation would hurt the ability of the U.S. government to fight terrorism. House members approved a compromise, watered-down version of the bill in May.

While top officials in President Barack Obamas administration have voiced support for the stronger Senate version of the bill, some lawmakers have suggested the bill would endanger the U.S.

The Senate bill would require the NSA to use specific selection terms to limit its targets in the telephone records collection, and require the government to issue reports on the number of people targeted in surveillance programs.

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Tech, digital rights groups applaud Senate move on NSA reform

The complexityof the National Security Agencys spying programs has made some of its ex-technical experts the most dangerous critics since they are among the few whounderstandthe potential totalitarian risks involved, as ex-NSA analyst William Binney showed in an interview with journalist Lars Schall.

By Lars Schall

William Binney, who spent 36 years in the National Security Agency rising to become the NSAs technical director for intelligence, has emerged as one of the most knowledgeable critics of excesses in the NSAs spying programs, some of which he says managed to both violate the U.S. Constitution and prove inefficient in tracking terrorists.

Binney has been described as one of the best analysts in NSAs history combining expertise in intelligence analysis, traffic analysis, systems analysis, knowledge management and mathematics (including set theory, number theory and probability). He resigned in October 2001 and has since criticized the NSAs massive monitoring programs. After leaving the NSA, he co-founded Entity Mapping, LLC, a private intelligence agency, together with fellow NSA whistleblower J. Kirk Wiebe.

Former National Security Agency official William Binney sitting in the offices of Democracy Now! in New York City. (Photo credit: Jacob Appelbaum)

Lars Schall: You were invited this year as a witness by the NSA commission of the German parliament, the Bundestag. How has it been to speak there and what did you try to get across?

William Binney: I was there for about six hours testifying with a half hour break in the middle. So it was quite intense. There were so many questions. Some of them I didnt have answers for because I didnt have knowledge about it, and I tried to make those clear and tried to give them information about things I knew personally. I didnt want to extrapolate beyond that.

Initially, they were asking questions about my background which was, I guess, setting the stage for the follow on questions, but in the long run they were interested in the relationships with the BND and the NSA. I think part of the break in the middle had to do with something that happened there and that a BND person was implicated in spying on the commission when it was investigating the relationship, and they were also passing that information to NSA, at least that was alleged at that time, I dont know if thats true or not.

Anyway, it was quite lengthy and very thorough, and my whole point was to try to get across to them that what NSA and the intelligence community in the Five Eyes, at least, and probably in some of the other countries (I dont know exactly which ones and Ive made this clear, but I think theyre not doing it alone) is the idea of collecting massive amounts of data is just like the STASI except this time I kind of tried to get across to them that its like the STASI on super steroids.

As Wolfgang Schmidt, the former lieutenant colonel of East German STASI, commented about NSAs surveillance program: For us, this would have been a dream come true. Well, thats the whole point of it, its so invasive, its digital surveillance on a massive scale, and I tried to get that across to them. Because this is basically a fundamental threat to our democracy and every democracy around the world. You know, I call it over here in the United States the greatest threat to our democracy since our Civil War.

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Plumbing the Depths of NSAs Spying