Edward Snowden,National Security Agency surveillance 2015-2016

Apple Is Testing a Feature That Could Kill Police iPhone Unlockers | Motherboard

This is part of an ongoing Motherboard series on the proliferation of phone cracking technology, the people behind it, and who is buying it. Follow along here.

Apple’s new security feature, USB Restricted Mode, is in the iOS 12 Beta, and it could kill the popular iPhone unlocking tools for cops made by Cellebrite and GrayShift.

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/...hone-usb-restricted-mode-cellebrite-grayshift

Reality Winner, accused of leaking report on Russian election hacking to press, to plead guilty | ABC News

Quote:

Reality Winner, a former U.S. intelligence specialist accused of leaking a report on Russian election hacking, will change her plea to guilty when she appears for a hearing next week in Augusta, Georgia, according to court documents.

Winner, a six-year Air Force veteran, was charged a year ago with espionage for allegedly leaking information to The Intercept about potential Russian interference in the 2016 election.

She was denied bail and has remained in jail since her arrest, which is rare in espionage cases, according to the Courage Foundation.

“My daughter Reality has decided to change her plea. I believe that this plea is in Reality’s best interest at this time. Given the time and circumstances and the nature of the espionage charge I believe that this was the only way that she could receive a fair sentence. I still disagree strongly with the use of the espionage charge against citizens like Reality,” her mother, Billie Winner Davis, said in a statement through the Courage Foundation.

“The cards were stacked [against] her and she couldn’t defend herself against the espionage charge as that charge doesn’t allow for defendant to show public interest or best interest or intent,” Winner Davis continued.

Under the 1917 Espionage Act, Winner could face up to 10 years in prison.

“Releasing classified material without authorization threatens our nation’s security and undermines public faith in government," Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said at the time of her arrest. "People who are trusted with classified information and pledge to protect it must be held accountable when they violate that obligation."

Continued at https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/rea...rt-russian-election-hacking/story?id=56087641

Snowden Archive — The SIDToday Files

Quote:

SIDtoday is the internal newsletter for the NSA’s most important division, the Signals Intelligence Directorate. After editorial review, The Intercept is releasing nine years’ worth of newsletters in batches, starting with 2003. The agency’s spies explain a surprising amount about what they were doing, how they were doing it, and why.

https://theintercept.com/snowden-sidtoday

Reality Winner, who pleaded guilty to leaking secret U.S. report, gets 63-month sentence | CBS News

Quote:

A former government contractor who pleaded guilty to mailing a classified U.S. report to a news organization was sentenced to more than five years Thursday as part of a deal with prosecutors, who called it the longest sentence ever imposed for a federal crime involving leaks to the media.

Reality Winner, 26, pleaded guilty in June to a single count of transmitting national security information. The former Air Force translator worked as a contractor at a National Security Agency's office in Augusta, Georgia, when she printed a classified report and left the building with it tucked into her pantyhose. Winner told the FBI she mailed the document to an online news outlet.

In court Thursday, Winner apologized and acknowledged that what she did was wrong.

Authorities never identified the news organization. But the Justice Department announced Winner's June 2017 arrest the same day The Intercept reported on a secret NSA document. It detailed Russian government efforts to penetrate a Florida-based supplier of voting software and the accounts of election officials ahead of the 2016 presidential election. The NSA report was dated May 5, the same as the document Winner had leaked.

U.S. intelligence agencies later confirmed Russian meddling.

The judge's sentence was in line with a plea agreement between Winner's defense team and prosecutors, who recommended she serve five years and three months behind bars. Prosecutors said in a court filing that punishment would amount to "the longest sentence served by a federal defendant for an unauthorized disclosure to the media."

Continued at https://www.cbsnews.com/news/realit...o-leaking-secret-u-s-report-today-2018-08-23/

Statement on the Sentencing of Whistleblower Reality Winner for Disclosing NSA Report on Russian Election Hacking

By Betsy Reed, The Intercept

Excerpt:

The information in The Intercept story on the NSA report played a crucial role in alerting local election officials who had been in the dark about the cyberattack — a public service that was implicitly acknowledged in a recent report from the Senate Intelligence Committee. As a former official from the Department of Homeland Security told The Intercept’s Sam Biddle, transmitting word of the cyberattacks down the chain was “not a high priority issue” for the NSA. The vulnerability of the American electoral system is a national topic of immense gravity, but it took Winner’s act of bravery to bring key details of an attempt to compromise the democratic process in 2016 to public attention. Those same details were included in the July indictment of alleged Russian military intelligence operatives issued by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

Instead of being recognized as a conscience-driven whistleblower whose disclosure helped protect U.S. elections, Winner was prosecuted with vicious resolve by the Justice Department under the Espionage Act. Her plea agreement reflects the conclusion of Winner and her lawyers that the terms of this deal represent the best outcome possible for her in the current environment. She not only faced unrelenting pressure from prosecutors, but a series of setbacks in the courtroom severely restricted her lawyers’ ability to defend her.

More at https://theintercept.com/2018/08/23/reality-winner-sentenced-nsa-russia-election-hacking/

The Government’s Argument that Reality Winner Harmed National Security Doesn’t Hold Up. Here’s Why.

By Trevor Timm, The Intercept

https://theintercept.com/2018/08/23/reality-winner-sentenced-leak-election-hacking/

Brandon Neely‏ @BrandonTXNeely 11 hours ago
Let this sink in!
The Republicans voted against voting security!
Republicans voted against finding out what Trump said to Putin!
The person that informed us that the Russians hacked our election is being put in jail.

Disputed N.S.A. Phone Program Is Shut Down, Aide Says

By Charlie Savage, The New York Times, March 4, 2019

Quote:

The National Security Agency has quietly shut down a system that analyzes logs of Americans’ domestic calls and texts, according to a senior Republican congressional aide, halting a program that has touched off disputes about privacy and the rule of law since the Sept. 11 attacks.

The agency has not used the system in months, and the Trump administration might not ask Congress to renew its legal authority, which is set to expire at the end of the year, according to the aide, Luke Murry, the House minority leader’s national security adviser.

In a raw assertion of executive power, President George W. Bush’s administration started the program as part of its intense pursuit for Qaeda conspirators in the weeks after the 2001 terrorist attacks, and a court later secretly blessed it. The intelligence contractor Edward J. Snowden disclosed the program’s existence in 2013, jolting the public and contributing to growing awareness of how both governments and private companies harvest and exploit personal data.

The way that intelligence analysts have gained access to bulk records of Americans’ phone calls and texts has evolved, but the purpose has been the same: They analyze social links to hunt for associates of known terrorism suspects.

Intelligence agencies can use the technique on data obtained through other means, like collection from networks abroad, where there are fewer legal limits. But those approaches do not offer the same systematic access to domestic phone records.

Congress ended and replaced the program disclosed by Mr. Snowden with the U.S.A. Freedom Act of 2015, which will expire in December. Security and privacy advocates have been gearing up for a legislative battle over whether to extend or revise the program — and with what changes, if any.

Mr. Murry, who is an adviser for Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, raised doubts over the weekend about whether that debate will be necessary. His remarks came during a podcast for the national security website Lawfare.

Mr. Murry brought up the pending expiration of the Freedom Act, but then disclosed that the Trump administration “hasn’t actually been using it for the past six months.”

“I’m actually not certain that the administration will want to start that back up,” Mr. Murry said.

He referred to problems that the National Security Agency disclosed last year. “Technical irregularities” had contaminated the agency’s database with message logs it had no authority to collect, so officials purged hundreds of millions of call and text records gathered from American telecommunications firms.

Continued at https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/04/us/politics/nsa-phone-records-program-shut-down.html

The Intercept Shuts Down Access to Snowden Trove | The Daily Beast

"First Look Media, the company that owns the Intercept, also announced that it was laying off several of the researchers who had been charged with maintaining the documents."

https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-intercept-shuts-down-access-to-snowden-trove

The Intercept Bars Co-Founder From Meeting After Snowden Archive Shutdown | The Daily Beast

https://www.thedailybeast.com/laura...ompany-meeting-after-snowden-archive-shutdown

Closure of Snowden Files Underscores That ‘People Don’t Have Free Access’ | Sputnik International

https://sputniknews.com/analysis/20...den-Files-Highlights-People-Dont-Have-Access/

Full Interview: Edward Snowden On Trump, Privacy, And Threats To Democracy | The 11th Hour | MSNBC



"On the eve of his memoir 'Permanent Record' being published, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden talked at length from Moscow with MSNBC's Brian Williams in an exclusive interview. This is their discussion in its entirety, edited down slightly for clarity."

U.S. Tries to Seize Edward Snowden’s Proceeds From New Memoir | The New York Times

The former intelligence contractor, who disclosed surveillance secrets in 2013, failed to submit his book for prepublication review.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/17/us/politics/edward-snowden-memoir-lawsuit.html

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