Edward Snowden exposes National Security Agency domestic surveillance

CIA Chief Apologizes To Senators Feinstein, Chambliss Over Computer Intrusion | NPR

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way...s-feinstein-chambliss-over-computer-intrusion

Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald · 2h
Now, Obama's hand-picked DNI (Clapper) and CIA chief (Brennan) are proven liars. Not prosecuted; not fired
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way...s-feinstein-chambliss-over-computer-intrusion

Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald · 2h
LOL: "Brennan is commissioning an "accountability board, which will be chaired by former Senator Evan Bayh"
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way...s-feinstein-chambliss-over-computer-intrusion

Press Release: Americans, Brits and Germans want their governments to protect Edward Snowden | Courage Foundation

• As Edward Snowden’s year of temporary asylum in Russia expires, German, UK, US and Russian governments are asked to take action
• US will be asked to drop its charges against Snowden
• Supporters across 39 countries have joined the call from Snowden’s defence fund, Courage, for Snowden’s asylum and protection
• Germany, UK and US supporters lead Courage’s ‘Stand With Snowden’ campaign, calling for Snowden’s continued protection

Today, on the final day of Edward Snowden’s one year of temporary asylum in Russia, members of Courage, the organisation that has run his official defence fund for the past year, write to those governments where support for Snowden has been greatest. Since June this year, Courage has been running a campaign asking members of the public to submit photos showing they “Stand With Snowden.” As his asylum ends, Courage asks the governments of countries where the support was greatest to “ask them to respond to this call.”

Today it was announced that Edward Snowden has applied for permanent political asylum in Russia, a year after he was awarded temporary asylum by the Russian Federation after one month stranded in Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport, following a decision by the US State Department to announce the cancellation of his passport. As his temporary asylum expires today, he is formerly once again an asylum-seeker. It is therefore paramount at this critical time that governments around the world respond to their citizens’ wishes and help protect Edward Snowden. Courage will also be writing to President Putin to encourage Russia to renew Mr Snowden’s asylum.

Over the last year, Snowden has been able to actively participate in the debate he began, thanks to the protection Russia afforded him, allowing him a realtively normal life throughout that country. In the letters to be delivered tomorrow, Courage sets out for each government the impact and importance of Snowden’s revelations. Courage asks that governments around the world support his courageous action in showing how their citizens’ rights were being violated by the NSA and GCHQ, and to support his legal right to asylum to allow his continued participation in the debate on mass surveillance. Courage will also ask the United States to drop its charges against Snowden.

Tomorrow, 1st August, Courage will deliver letters calling for Edward Snowden’s protection to elected representatives in Germany, Britain, the US and to Russia. In the UK and Germany, Members of Parliament Hans-Christian Ströbele and Caroline Lucas will be accepting these letters. Letters will also be delivered to US Senator Ron Wyden and the Russian Government. Please follow @CourageFound and this page for updates on the deliveries.

Continued at
https://couragefound.org/2014/07/am...-their-governments-to-protect-edward-snowden/

I wonder if it would be in Putin's interests to serve up Snowden to the US as an apple of discord distraction right now?

CIA director John Brennan lied to you and to the Senate. Fire him. | The Guardian

This is not the type of guy who is going to resign because of some report he doesn’t like; this is the type of spy who apologizes even though he’s not sorry, who lies because he doesn’t like to tell the truth.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/31/cia-director-john-brennan-lied-senate

Student starts global class action against Facebook | Reuters

Austrian law student Max Schrems appealed to a billion Facebook users around the world on Friday to join a class-action lawsuit against Facebook's alleged violations of its users' privacy, stepping up a years-long data-protection campaign.

Schrems, a thorn in Facebook's side who has a case involving the social network pending at the European Court of Justice, has filed a claim at Vienna's commercial court and invited others to join the action at www.fbclaim.com using their Facebook login.

Under Austrian law, a group of people may transfer their financial claims to a single person - in this case, Schrems. Legal proceedings are then effectively run as a class action.

Schrems is claiming damages of 500 euros ($670) per user for alleged data violations, including aiding the U.S. National Security Agency in running its Prism program, which mined the personal data of users of Facebook and other web services.

The 26-year-old is also seeking injunctions under EU data-protection law at the court in data-privacy-friendly Austria. "Our aim is to make Facebook finally operate lawfully in the area of data protection," he said.

<snipped>

Users from anywhere outside the United States and Canada may sign up to join the Austrian case, since Facebook runs all its international operations from Ireland, another EU country. The case relies largely on the EU Data Protection Directive. Europe in general has stricter data-protection rules than the United States and considers itself more privacy-conscious.

But its history of enforcing data protection is mixed, bar a few high-profile cases such as the ECJ's ruling in May that compels internet companies to remove irrelevant or excessive personal information from search results.

"We have this habit of pointing the finger at the United States, but we're not enforcing our rights anyway," Schrems told Reuters. "If we can get a class action through like this, it will send out a huge signal to the industry overall."

Schrems has had limited success pursuing cases in Ireland, home to the European or international headquarters of some of the largest U.S. technology companies, including Microsoft and Google, who employ thousands there.

His europe-v-facebook group appealed to the Irish High Court to rule on allegations that U.S. companies helped the NSA harvest private data from EU citizens after the Irish data watchdog said there were no grounds for an investigation. The High Court referred the case to the ECJ.

Schrems's Austrian court case relies on EU law for the alleged data violations, which also include tracking of users on external websites through Facebook's "like" button and unauthorized sharing of user data with external applications.

The claims for damages will have to be assessed under more financially generous California law, Schrems said, since Facebook says California law governs its terms of service.

A specialist financier will bear the legal costs if Schrems loses the case and will take 20 percent of the damages if he wins, meaning users can join the case at no financial risk.

Schrems himself is not charging a fee but stands to win 500 euros, like the other claimants.

More: http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/08/01/us-facebook-austria-lawsuit-idUSKBN0G13O020140801

Site: http://europe-v-facebook.org/EN/en.html

Search: https://privatelee.com/search/?q="Max Schrems" Facebook

Cash, Weapons and Surveillance: the U.S. is a Key Party to Every Israeli Attack | The Intercept

By Glenn Greenwald

The U.S. government has long lavished overwhelming aid on Israel, providing cash, weapons and surveillance technology that play a crucial role in Israel’s attacks on its neighbors. But top secret documents provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden shed substantial new light on how the U.S. and its partners directly enable Israel’s military assaults – such as the one on Gaza.

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/08/04/cash-weapons-surveillance/

This keeps on getting better:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/03/israel-spied-kerry-peace-effort-report

It's a dog eats dog world.

New leaker disclosing US secrets, government concludes | CNN

The federal government has concluded there's a new leaker exposing national security documents in the aftermath of surveillance disclosures by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, U.S. officials tell CNN.

Proof of the newest leak comes from national security documents that formed the basis of a news story published Tuesday by the Intercept, the news site launched by Glenn Greenwald, who also published Snowden's leaks.

The Intercept article focuses on the growth in U.S. government databases of known or suspected terrorist names during the Obama administration.

The article cites documents prepared by the National Counterterrorism Center dated August 2013, which is after Snowden left the United States to avoid criminal charges.

Greenwald has suggested there was another leaker. In July, he said on Twitter "it seems clear at this point" that there was another.

Government officials have been investigating to find out that identity.

In a February interview with CNN's Reliable Sources, Greenwald said: "I definitely think it's fair to say that there are people who have been inspired by Edward Snowden's courage and by the great good and virtue that it has achieved."

He added, "I have no doubt there will be other sources inside the government who see extreme wrongdoing who are inspired by Edward Snowden."

It's not yet clear how many documents the new leaker has shared and how much damage it may cause.

So far, the documents shared by the new leaker are labeled "Secret" and "NOFORN," which means it isn't to be shared with foreign government.

That's a lower level of classification than most of the documents leaked by Snowden.

Government officials say he stole 1.7 million classified documents, many of which were labeled "Top Secret," a higher classification for the government's most important secrets.

Continued at http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/05/politics/u-s-new-leaker/

Barack Obama's Secret Terrorist-Tracking System, by the Numbers | The Intercept

Nearly half of the people on the U.S. government’s widely shared database of terrorist suspects are not connected to any known terrorist group, according to classified government documents obtained by The Intercept.

Of the 680,000 people caught up in the government’s Terrorist Screening Database — a watchlist of “known or suspected terrorists” that is shared with local law enforcement agencies, private contractors, and foreign governments — more than 40 percent are described by the government as having “no recognized terrorist group affiliation.” That category — 280,000 people — dwarfs the number of watchlisted people suspected of ties to al Qaeda, Hamas, and Hezbollah combined.

The documents, obtained from a source in the intelligence community, also reveal that the Obama Administration has presided over an unprecedented expansion of the terrorist screening system. Since taking office, Obama has boosted the number of people on the no fly list more than ten-fold, to an all-time high of 47,000 — surpassing the number of people barred from flying under George W. Bush.

“If everything is terrorism, then nothing is terrorism,” says David Gomez, a former senior FBI special agent. The watchlisting system, he adds, is “revving out of control.”

Continued at https://firstlook.org/theintercept/article/2014/08/05/watch-commander/

Snowden leaks spur new crop of secure phones, communications | Reuters

Public concerns about the U.S. government's secretive surveillance programs exposed by Edward Snowden have spawned a slew of encryption products and privacy services that aim to make electronic spying more difficult.

Two products brought out in the past five weeks illustrate the rapid development of the new marketplace: Blackphone, a handset which started shipping on June 30 for $629, and Signal, a free app that appeared on the iPhone app store last week.

They are among an array of offerings to emerge since Snowden, a former National Security Agency contractor, last year leaked documents that showed the U.S. government harvested enormous amounts of data from the likes of Google Inc, Yahoo Inc, Microsoft Corp, AT&T Inc and Verizon Communications Inc.

Though they have different business philosophies, target markets and tactical approaches, the companies behind Blackphone and Signal share an underlying encryption technique, world-class cryptographers, and an anti-government stance.

"In an environment of increasingly pervasive surveillance, we want to make it as easy as possible for anyone to be able to organize and communicate securely," Signal maker Open Whisper Systems wrote on its blog.

Secure communications will be a major topic at two key hacking conferences in Las Vegas this week: Black Hat, which is aimed at professionals, and Def Con, which attracts many amateurs.

Blackphone uses software from one of its backers, Silent Circle, that allows users to send encrypted voice calls and texts to one another. Silent Circle's software is already available for iPhone and Android phones, but the company says Blackphone is more secure because it uses a new operating system - based on Android - that makes it harder for hackers to take control of the phone and eavesdrop.

Silent Circle recently expanded its service by allowing encrypted calls to landlines. That feature has helped its sales rate triple in the past three months, said Silent Circle Chief Revenue Officer Vic Hyder. He declined to give subscriber figures but said Chevron Corp and Walt Disney Co were among the company's major corporate customers.

Supported mainly by grants, Signal maker Open Whisper Systems was co-founded by security researcher Moxie Marlinspike and already has a compatible Android version called RedPhone. The company said Signal had 70,000 downloads on the first day.

Marlinspike said the company may charge in the future for extra services, but the basic functions of the app should remain free forever. "Open Whisper Systems is a project rather than a company, and the project's objective is not financial profit," he wrote on his personal blog.

An encrypted chat service popular with security professionals is Wickr. The free service relies on heavy encryption that is considered unbreakable for the foreseeable future if implemented correctly.

Wickr does not use the open-source software that is the industry standard, which means security experts cannot inspect its software code. But Wickr says it will soon post results of security audits by well-regarded firms, and it is offering a$200,000 reward for anyone who breaks its system.

Wickr Chief Executive Nico Sell, a longtime official at Def Con, said she plans to add a desktop version of Wickr soon.

Continued at http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/08/05/us-cybersecurity-hackers-phones-idUSKBN0G527220140805

One Way to Stand Against Spying: Meet With A Legislator | Electronic Frontier Foundation

The NSA pulls no punches when it comes to the surveillance of innocent people in every corner of the world in its attempt to “collect it all.” Those in the U.S. prepared to vigorously oppose mass government spying need to fight back and hold our representatives to account for the routine human rights violations perpetrated by the National Security Agency. And this activism needs to occur on all levels, from lobbying local and state officials to setting up meetings with Congress members.

That’s part of the inspiration behind StandAgainstSpying.org, a tool that grades members of Congress on their track record in the fight against unconstitutional mass surveillance and the protection of the basic human right to privacy. Congress is in recess for the month of August, so right now is an ideal time to schedule a visit in-district.

Continued at https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/08/one-way-stand-against-spying-meet-legislator

Russia Extends Snowden Asylum By Three Years

http://news.sky.com/story/1314735/russia-extends-snowden-asylum-by-three-years

WikiLeaks @wikileaks · 3h
Snowden received a three year Russian residency permit today. It is telling that no "western" country was willing to protect him from the US.

Illegal Spying Below: Activists Fly Anti-Surveillance Airship over NSA's Utah Data Center



Published by Electronic Frontier Foundation on August 5, 2014

To celebrate the Fourth of July, EFF teamed up with Greenpeace and the Tenth Amendment Center to launch an airship (yes, you read that correctly) over the NSA's sprawling data center in Utah. Acclaimed filmmaker Brian Knappenberger documented our campaign in a short, powerful video. Check out the video and share it with your friends.

See whether your lawmakers have taken a stand against spying at https://standagainstspying.org

Snowden critic resigns Naval War College after online penis photo flap | Ars Technica

John Schindler, the former National Security Agency analyst and an outspoken critic of Edward Snowden, resigned Monday from his position as a professor at the US Naval War College months after a picture of his alleged penis surfaced online. The professor of national security affairs announced via Twitter his resignation from the Rhode Island institution, effective August 29.

"Sorry to say I'm severing my affiliation with Naval War College. I had a great time there but it's time to move on. Thanks for your support," Schindler tweeted.

A former National Security Agency analyst who was part of a task force that claimed Saddam Hussein maintained weapons of mass destruction, Schindler was employed by the college since 2005. He was put on leave in June as the college ordered an investigation to determine whether the picture of his genitalia was falsified.

In June, a text message conversation with "John Schindler" at the top circulated widely on Twitter. The picture was accompanied with the message: "Got this?" It has not been revealed of who posted the text message conversation.

A college spokeswoman, Cmdr. Kelly Brannon, refused to disclose the inquiry's findings. She told The Washington Times that Schindler was notified of the results in late July.

Schindler had often criticized Snowden, the NSA leaker, and journalist Glenn Greenwald. In December, Schindler said on MSNBC that "Passion is nice, passion is good. Joseph Stalin was passionate. Adolf Hitler was passionate. We just buried Nelson Mandela who showed us how to enact passion in the cause of justice. Is what Edward Snowden is doing about justice or about a personal agenda? I'd really like to know."

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...val-war-college-over-online-penis-photo-flap/

NPR Is Laundering CIA Talking Points to Make You Scared of NSA Reporting | The Intercept

By Glenn Greenwald and Andrew Fishman

On August 1, NPR’s Morning Edition broadcast a story by NPR national security reporter Dina Temple-Raston touting explosive claims from what she called “a tech firm based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.” That firm, Recorded Future, worked together with “a cyber expert, Mario Vuksan, the CEO of ReversingLabs,” to produce a new report that purported to vindicate the repeated accusation from U.S. officials that “revelations from former NSA contract worker Edward Snowden harmed national security and allowed terrorists to develop their own countermeasures.”

The “big data firm,” reported NPR, says that it now “has tangible evidence” proving the government’s accusations. Temple-Raston’s four-minute, 12-second story devoted the first 3 minutes and 20 seconds to uncritically repeating the report’s key conclusion that ”just months after the Snowden documents were released, al-Qaeda dramatically changed the way its operatives interacted online” and, post-Snowden, “al-Qaeda didn’t just tinker at the edges of its seven-year-old encryption software; it overhauled it.” The only skepticism in the NPR report was relegated to 44 seconds at the end when she quoted security expert Bruce Schneier, who questioned the causal relationship between the Snowden disclosures and the new terrorist encryption programs, as well as the efficacy of the new encryption.

Continued with open comments here:
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/...or-independent-fear-monger-snowden-reporting/

Because people never overhaul seven-year old software.

In case you missed it:

The most wanted man in the world

By James Bradford

http://www.wired.com/2014/08/edward-snowden/

U.S. Military Bans The Intercept | The Intercept

By Ryan Gallagher

The U.S. military is banning and blocking employees from visiting The Intercept in an apparent effort to censor news reports that contain leaked government secrets.

According to multiple military sources, a notice has been circulated to units within the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps warning staff that they are prohibited from reading stories published by The Intercept on the grounds that they may contain classified information. The ban appears to apply to all employees — including those with top-secret security clearance — and is aimed at preventing classified information from being viewed on unclassified computer networks, even if it is freely available on the internet. Similar military-wide bans have been directed against news outlets in the past after leaks of classified information.

A directive issued to military staff at one location last week, obtained by The Intercept, threatens that any employees caught viewing classified material in the public domain will face “long term security issues.” It suggests that the call to prohibit employees from viewing the website was made by senior officials over concerns about a “potential new leaker” of secret documents.

The directive states:

We have received information from our higher headquarters regarding a potential new leaker of classified information. Although no formal validation has occurred, we thought it prudent to warn all employees and subordinate commands. Please do not go to any website entitled “The Intercept” for it may very well contain classified material.

As a reminder to all personnel who have ever signed a non-disclosure agreement, we have an ongoing responsibility to protect classified material in all of its various forms. Viewing potentially classified material (even material already wrongfully released in the public domain) from unclassified equipment will cause you long term security issues. This is considered a security violation.

A military insider subject to the ban said that several employees expressed concerns after being told by commanders that it was “illegal and a violation of national security” to read publicly available news reports on The Intercept.

“Even though I have a top secret security clearance, I am still forbidden to read anything on the website,” said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the subject. “I find this very disturbing that they are threatening us and telling us what websites and news publishers we are allowed to read or not.”

(If you work for the military or the government and have received similar instructions, please let us know.)

Continued at https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/08/20/u-s-military-bans-the-intercept/

Here's a press release from the Electronic Frontier Foundation:

https://www.eff.org/press/releases/eff-aclu-demolish-its-just-metadata-claim-nsa-spying-appeal

Quote:

Electronic Frontier Foundation, ACLU Demolish “It’s Just Metadata” Claim in NSA Spying Appeal

Americans Deserve Full Protection of the Fourth Amendment for their Telephone Records, Groups Argue

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) today filed an amicus brief in Klayman v. Obama, a high-profile lawsuit that challenges mass surveillance, arguing that Americans' telephone metadata deserves the highest protection of the Fourth Amendment.

Larry Klayman, conservative activist and founder of Judicial Watch and Freedom Watch, was among the first plaintiffs to sue the National Security Agency (NSA) over the collection of telephone metadata from Verizon customers that was detailed in documents released by Edward Snowden. In December 2013, Judge Richard Leon issued a preliminary ruling that the program was likely unconstitutional, and the case is currently on appeal before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

In the new amicus brief in Klayman v. Obama, the EFF and ACLU lawyers repudiate arguments by U.S. officials that the records are "just metadata" and therefore not as sensitive as the contents of phone calls. Using research and new case law, the civil liberties groups argue that metadata (such as who individuals called, when they called, and how long they spoke) can be even more revealing than conversations when collected en masse.

"Metadata isn't trivial," EFF Legal Fellow Andrew Crocker says. "Collected on a massive scale over a broad time period, metadata can reveal your political and religious affiliations, your friends and relationships, even whether you have a health condition or own guns. This is exactly the kind of warrantless search the Fourth Amendment was intended to prevent."

The brief explains that changes in technology, as well as the government's move from targeted to mass surveillance, mean that the holding of the 1979 Supreme Court case Smith v. Maryland that the government relies on (often called the "third-party doctrine") does not apply. Instead, EFF and the ACLU point to a series of recent key decisions — including the Supreme Court decisions in United States v. Jones in 2012 and Riley v. California in 2014 — in which judges ruled in favor of requiring a warrant for electronic search and seizure.

"Dragnet surveillance is and has always has been illegal in the United States," says ACLU Staff Attorney Alex Abdo. "Our country's founders rebelled against overbroad searches and seizures, and they would be aghast to see the liberties they fought hard to enshrine into our Constitution sacrificed in the name of security. As even the president himself has recognized, we can keep the nation safe without surrendering our privacy."

EFF and the ACLU have each litigated numerous First and Fourth Amendment lawsuits related to NSA surveillance and together represent Idaho nurse Anna Smith in a similar case currently on appeal in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals called Smith v. Obama. The ACLU is a plaintiff in a case currently pending before the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, ACLU v. Clapper, to be heard on Sept. 2. EFF has two cases — Jewel v. NSA and First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles v. NSA — before the U.S. District Court for Northern District of California.

For the amicus brief:
https://www.eff.org/document/eff-and-aclu-amicus-brief-klayman

NSA and GCHQ agents 'leak Tor bugs' alleges developer | BBC News

Some US and UK cyberspies are deliberately undermining their workmates' "dark web" surveillance efforts, according to the leading developer of software used to access hidden parts of the internet.

The Tor Project's executive director has alleged members of the NSA and GCHQ regularly leak it details of flaws the agencies have discovered in its code. By fixing these flaws, the project can protect users' anonymity, he explained. The agencies declined to comment.

The allegations were made in an interview given to the BBC by Andrew Lewman, who is responsible for all the Tor Project's operations. "There are plenty of people in both organisations who can anonymously leak data to us to say - maybe you should look here, maybe you should look at this to fix this," he said. "And they have."

Mr Lewman is part of a team of software engineers responsible for the Tor Browser - software designed to prevent it being possible to trace users' internet activity. The programs involved also offer access to otherwise hard to reach websites - some of which are used for illegal purposes.

Continued at http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-28886462

The U.S. government’s creeping war on journalists | Salon

A new poll reveals that three quarters of reporters agree the public isn't getting the information it needs

By David Sirota

As states move to hide details of government deals with Wall Street, and as politicians come up with new arguments to defend secrecy, a study released earlier this month revealed that many government information officers block specific journalists they don’t like from accessing information. The news comes as 47 federal inspectors general sent a letter to lawmakers criticizing “serious limitations on access to records” that they say have “impeded” their oversight work.

The data about public information officers was compiled over the past few years by Kennesaw State University professor Dr. Carolyn Carlson. Her surveys found that 4 in 10 public information officers say “there are specific reporters they will not allow their staff to talk to due to problems with their stories in the past.”

“That horrified us that so many would do that,” Carlson told the Columbia Journalism Review, which reported on her presentation at the July conference of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication.

Carlson has conducted surveys of journalists and public information officers since 2012. In her most recent survey of 445 working journalists, four out of five reported that “their interviews must be approved” by government information officers, and “more than half of the reporters said they had actually been prohibited from interviewing [government] employees at least some of the time by public information officers.”

In recent years, there have been signs that the federal government is reducing the flow of public information. Reason Magazine has reported a 114 percent increase in Freedom of Information Act rejections by the Drug Enforcement Agency since President Obama took office. The National Security Agency has also issued blanket rejections of FOIA requests about its metadata program. And the Associated Press reported earlier this year that in 2013, “the government cited national security to withhold information a record 8,496 times — a 57 percent increase over a year earlier and more than double Obama’s first year.”

Continued at http://www.salon.com/2014/08/21/the_u_s_governments_creeping_war_on_journalists_partner/

Up to 25,000 Homeland Security staff have personal data stolen | PBS NewsHour

By Stephen Braun, Associated Press, August 22, 2014

The internal records of as many as 25,000 Homeland Security Department employees were exposed during a recent computer break-in at a federal contractor that handles security clearances, an agency official said Friday.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss details of an incident that is under active federal criminal investigation, said the number of victims could be greater. The department was informing employees whose files were exposed in the hacking against contractor USIS and warning them to monitor their financial accounts.

Earlier this month, USIS acknowledged the break-in, saying its internal cybersecurity team had detected what appeared to be an intrusion with “all the markings of a state-sponsored attack.” Neither USIS nor government officials have speculated on the identity of the foreign government. A USIS spokeswoman reached Friday declined to comment on the DHS notifications.

USIS, once known as U.S. Investigations Services, has been under fire in Congress in recent months for its performance in conducting background checks on National Security Agency systems analyst Edward Snowden and on Aaron Alexis, a military contractor employee who killed 12 people during shootings at the Navy Yard in Washington in September 2013.

Private contractors perform background checks on more than two-thirds of the 4.9 million government workers with security clearances, and USIS handles nearly half of that number. Many of those investigations are performed under contracts with the Office of Personnel Management, and the Homeland Security and Defense departments.

The Justice Department filed a civil complaint in January against USIS alleging that the firm defrauded the government by submitting at least 665,000 security clearance investigations that had not been properly completed and then tried to cover up its actions. USIS replied in a statement at the time that the allegations dealt with a small group of employees and that the company had appointed a new leadership team and enhanced oversight and was cooperating with the Justice probe.

It’s not immediately clear when the hacking took place, but DHS notified all its employees internally on Aug. 6.

Continued at http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/25000-homeland-security-staff-data-stolen/

ICREACH: How the NSA Built Its Own Secret Google

By Ryan Gallagher, The Intercept

The National Security Agency is secretly providing data to nearly two dozen U.S. government agencies with a “Google-like” search engine built to share more than 850 billion records about phone calls, emails, cellphone locations, and internet chats, according to classified documents obtained by The Intercept.

The documents provide the first definitive evidence that the NSA has for years made massive amounts of surveillance data directly accessible to domestic law enforcement agencies. Planning documents for ICREACH, as the search engine is called, cite the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Drug Enforcement Administration as key participants.

ICREACH contains information on the private communications of foreigners and, it appears, millions of records on American citizens who have not been accused of any wrongdoing. Details about its existence are contained in the archive of materials provided to The Intercept by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

Earlier revelations sourced to the Snowden documents have exposed a multitude of NSA programs for collecting large volumes of communications. The NSA has acknowledged that it shares some of its collected data with domestic agencies like the FBI, but details about the method and scope of its sharing have remained shrouded in secrecy.



Continued at https://firstlook.org/theintercept/...each-nsa-cia-secret-google-crisscross-proton/

^

Anonymous @YourAnonNews · 2h
Pro-tip: never Google anything ever again. There are alternatives.


srsly - Don't fucking use Google.

Jacob Appelbaum - People Think They're Exempt From NSA



Jacob Appelbaum discusses the fallacy of Americans thinking that they won't be targeted, passive and active surveillance methods, AI and human analyst systems working together, satellite networks, deep packet inspection and injection, military contractors getting special access to surveillance programs, proprietary vs open source software, OTR messaging, hoarding exploits for self-gain. A great talk from an amazing person. 2014 Security Summit.

More: http://www.itweb.co.za/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=69327

Federal police mistakenly publish metadata from criminal investigations | The Guardian

Serious breach of security will embarrass AFP and government as they push for greater access to metadata and mandatory retention laws

http://www.theguardian.com/world/20...publish-metadata-from-criminal-investigations

#Anonymous calls #OpGCHQ tonight in UK | The Cryptosphere

This latest action by #OpGCHQ aims to watch the Cheltenham HQ of GCHQ for a full day, starting tonight, and catch everyone going in or out.

http://thecryptosphere.com/2014/08/28/anonymous-calls-opgchq-tonight-in-london/

Latest on Twitter: https://twitter.com/search?f=realtime&q=OpGCHQ

#OpGCHQ: Anonymous launches 4-day privacy rights protest outside UK spy base | RT UK

http://rt.com/uk/183612-anonymous-gchq-protest-surveillance/

Holt, Seven Stories Sign Comics Works on Snowden, NSA | Publishers Weekly

Comics can wed different parts of a story together and really show things in ways prose can’t,” said Riva Hocherman, an editor at Metropolitan Books (an imprint of Holt), about Verax, a forthcoming work of graphic nonfiction that tackles the history of the National Security Agency’s electronic surveillance of American citizens. Dan Simon, publisher of Seven Stories Press, agrees with Hocherman: he’s signed comics journalist Ted Rall to produce a graphic biography of NSA whistle-blower and international fugitive Edward Snowden. The work will recap Snowden’s life, and address overarching issues of privacy.

These titles will arrive in the wake of a number of acclaimed nonfiction comics in recent years by such writers as war correspondent Joe Sacco (Footnotes in Gaza), science biographer Jim Ottaviani (Feynman) and Rall, whose latest project, After We Kill You, We Will Welcome You Back as Honored Guests: Unembedded in Afghanistan, is a mixture of prose and comics and will be published in September by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. (Rall is profiled in this issue of PW, see p. 40.)

In early spring 2014, Simon met Rall to discuss possibilities for his next book, and suggested a graphic novel on Snowden. “I think [Snowden] is arguably the great hero of our times,” Simon said. “The reason Ted is a great choice [for the project] is that he has both the political mind for what’s at stake here for our country, in terms of privacy... and then of course he’s a terrific graphic novelist.”

Simon picked up the graphic nonfiction work from Sandra Dijkstra for a five-figure advance. He will edit the book, which is tentatively scheduled to be released in fall 2015.

The Snowden bio, according to Simon, advances two parallel stories—one with episodes from Snowden’s life, and the other, the “story of the rest of us, and what we need to know.” Rall will talk to whistle-blowers like the NSA’s Thomas Drake and Daniel Ellsberg. Seven Stories also picked up foreign rights on the book and plans to tout it at the upcoming Frankfurt Book Fair in October. “This is obviously an international story,” noted Simon.

Continued here:
http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/...stories-sign-comics-works-on-snowden-nsa.html

The U.S. Government's Secret Plans to Spy for American Corporations

By Glenn Greenwald, The Intercept

Last three paragraphs:

In May, the U.S. Justice Department indicted five Chinese government employees on charges that they spied on U.S. companies. At the time, Attorney General Eric Holder said the spying took place “for no reason other than to advantage state-owned companies and other interests in China,” and “this is a tactic that the U.S. government categorically denounces.”

But the following day, The New York Times detailed numerous episodes of American economic spying that seemed quite similar. Harvard Law School professor and former Bush Justice Department official Jack Goldsmith wrote that the accusations in the indictment sound “a lot like the kind of cyber-snooping on firms that the United States does.” But U.S. officials continued to insist that using surveillance capabilities to bestow economic advantage for the benefit of a country’s corporations is wrong, immoral, and illegal.

Yet this 2009 report advocates doing exactly that in the event that ”that the technological capacity of foreign multinational corporations outstrip that of U.S. corporations.” Using covert cyber operations to pilfer “proprietary information” and then determining how it ”would be useful to U.S. industry” is precisely what the U.S. government has been vehemently insisting it does not do, even though for years it has officially prepared to do precisely that.

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/...omic-espionage-benefit-american-corporations/

Five Eyes Fuck Buddies

Electronic Frontier Foundation to PCLOB: Inform the Public About the President's Executive Order 12333 Spying

EFF, joined by Access, filed public comments last week urging the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) to tackle the unknown spying activities occurring under Executive Order 12333 (EO 12333). The Executive Order is supposed to protect Americans from presidentially-directed spying; however, despite the protections, EO 12333 is being used for mass spying that collects Americans' communications, address books, and other information.

Continued here:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/...about-presidents-executive-order-12333-spying

'Five Eyes' surveillance pact should be published, Strasbourg court told | The Guardian

The secret "Five Eyes" treaty that authorises intelligence sharing between the UK, US, Australia, Canada and New Zealand should be published, according to an appeal lodged on Tuesday at the European court of human rights. The application by Privacy International (PI), which campaigns on issues of surveillance, to the Strasbourg court is the latest in a series of legal challenges following the revelations of the US whistleblower Edward Snowden aimed at forcing the government to disclose details of its surveillance policies.

The civil liberties group alleges that the UK is violating the right to access information by "refusing to disclose the documents that have an enormous impact on human rights in the UK and abroad". PI says that it has exhausted all domestic legal remedies because its freedom of information request for the document, detailing how the UK's security services collaborate with the National Security Agency (NSA) in the US and other foreign intelligence agencies, met with outright refusal. "The UK government's GCHQ monitoring service invoked a blanket exemption that excuses it from any obligation to be transparent about its activities to the British public," said PI.

Eric King, deputy director of PI, said: "More than a year after Snowden, the British government continues to dodge the question of just how integrated the operations of GCHQ and NSA truly are. Key documents like the Five Eyes arrangement remain secret, despite them being critical to proper scrutiny of the spy agencies. The hushing-up of the extent of the alliance is shameful. The public deserve to know about the dirty deals going on between the Five Eyes, who trade and exploit our private information through this illicit pact. For trust to be restored, transparency around these secret agreements is a crucial first step."

Continued here:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/20...veillance-pact-appeal-disclosure-human-rights

More Than 70 Public Interest Organizations and Companies Urge Congress to Update Email Privacy Law | Electronic Frontier Foundation

EFF, along with more than 70 civil liberties organizations, public interest groups, and companies sent two letters to the House and Senate leadership today. One supported HR 1852, the bipartisan Email Privacy Act, and the other supported Senate companion bill S. 607, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act Amendments Act of 2013 (.pdf). The bills aim to update the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), an archaic law that's been used by the government to obtain emails without getting a probable cause warrant. The bills are sponsored by a wide range of lawmakers like Senators Patrick Leahy and Mike Lee, and Representatives Kevin Yoder, Tom Graves, and Jared Polis.

The letters are part of a larger push from the Digital Due Process Coalition to pass the two bills. The Email Privacy Act in the House has over 260 cosponsors, while the Senate bill is ready for a final vote. Both bills will codify the precedent set by the Sixth Circuit, which ruled in US v. Warshak that users have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their email. The bills ensure the government must obtain a warrant in all contexts before it looks at your private online messages.

The coalition letters urge congressional leaders to set a vote on both bills. The letters also encourage passing the bills since they

would eliminate outdated discrepancies between the legal process for government access to data stored locally in one’s home or office and the process for the same data stored with third parties in the Internet “cloud.”

Signers include the American Civil Liberties Union, Microsoft, Google, Rackspace, Dropbox, Freedomworks, Apple, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and others.

Join us now in helping push the bills forward by emailing your lawmaker and telling them to cosponsor the bills!

Source: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/...ions-and-companies-urge-congress-update-email

Yahoo Faced Huge Fine Over Surveillance Data | Sky News

The US government threatened to fine Yahoo $250,000 a day if it failed to turn over customer data to intelligence agencies - a step the search engine company regarded as unconstitutional.

The details emerged after a federal judge ordered the unsealing of some court documents about a legal challenge launched by Yahoo in 2007 against government surveillance. Yahoo lost the court battle, which experts say helped pave the way for the Prism surveillance programme revealed last year by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.

Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Centre, said: "It's always been a little bit behind the curtain as to what internet companies do when they actually receive these requests. Now we have evidence that Yahoo did in fact fight this battle and look at considerable fines as a consequence of not disclosing the data. It tells us how very serious the Bush administration was about trying to get the internet firms to turn over this data. Until the disclosure, it was mostly hearsay that they were willing to impose these penalties."

US internet companies are eager to disclose as much as they can about the procedure through which federal agencies request their user data in secret courts, in part because of worries about the impact on their business.

On Thursday, Yahoo said it would begin to make public some 1,500 previously classified pages documenting the lengthy tussle with the US government.

Continued here:
http://news.sky.com/story/1334422/yahoo-faced-huge-fine-over-surveillance-data

Interview: Glenn Greenwald | 3 News New Zealand

United States journalist Glenn Greenwald says there are serious questions about whether the New Zealand Government was truthful about the GCSB law change.

"What I can tell you is that the statement that the GCSB made to New Zealand citizens last year — 'We do not engage in mass surveillance of New Zealanders' — is one that is not truthful."

The Government engages in "extraordinary amounts of analysis of metadata – meaning who's talking to whom for how long, where they are when they speak – on a massive, indiscriminate scale, not just internationally but of New Zealanders as well".

He says New Zealand is an active member of the Five Eyes Alliance and spends an extraordinary amount of resources on electronic surveillance.

"…Every single thing that the NSA does that we have been reporting on over the last year and a couple of months involves New Zealand directly."

The GCSB spies on a variety of countries, both hostile and allies. New Zealand spy agencies also have access to the XKeyscore spyware and contributes to it.

In his first television interview in New Zealand, he talks to Lisa Owen about the Edward Snowden leaks and how New Zealand agencies are involved in spying here and abroad.

Mr Greenwald is in New Zealand for Kim Dotcom's "moment of truth" announcement on Monday night.

Watch the video for the full interview.

http://www.3news.co.nz/tvshows/thenation/interview-glenn-greenwald-2014091311

I maintain that Persian culture will win.

In his theory of knowledge, Ibn Sina identifies the mental faculties of the soul in terms of their epistemological function.

The Intercept @the_intercept · 6h
The NSA and GCHQ have penetrated the networks of Deutsche Telekom and other German internet companies.
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/09/14/nsa-stellar/

The Intercept @the_intercept · 6h
Watch German engineers react to documents showing how thoroughly the NSA and GCHQ have owned their networks.