Edward Snowden,National Security Agency surveillance 2015-2016

Chatting in Secret While We're All Being Watched | The Intercept

When you pick up the phone and call someone, or send a text message, or write an email, or send a Facebook message, or chat using Google Hangouts, other people find out what you’re saying, who you’re talking to, and where you’re located. Such private data might only be available to the service provider brokering your conversation, but it might also be visible to the telecom companies carrying your internet packets, to spy and law enforcement agencies, and even to some nearby teenagers monitoring your wifi network with Wireshark.

But if you take careful steps to protect yourself, it’s possible to communicate online in a way that’s private, secret, and anonymous. Today I’m going to explain in precise terms how to do that. I’ll take techniques NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden used when contacting me two and a half years ago and boil them down to the essentials. In a nutshell, I’ll show you how to create anonymous real-time chat accounts and how to chat over those accounts using an encryption protocol called Off-the-Record Messaging, or OTR.

If you’re in a hurry, you can skip directly to where I explain step-by-step how to set this up for Mac OS X, Windows, Linux, and Android. Then, when you have time, come back and read the important caveats preceding those instructions.

Continued here:
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/07/14/communicating-secret-watched/

Jacob Appelbaum retweeted

The Intercept ‏@the_intercept 14 hours ago
Why Laura Poitras is suing the U.S. government: http://interc.pt/1SjD1rX




Over six years, filmmaker Laura Poitras was searched, interrogated and detained more than 50 times at U.S. and foreign airports.

When she asked why, U.S. agencies wouldn’t say.
Now, after receiving no response to her Freedom of Information Act requests for documents pertaining to her systemic targeting, Poitras is suing the U.S. government.

In a complaint filed on Monday afternoon, Poitras demanded that the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence release any and all documentation pertaining to her tracking, targeting and questioning while traveling between 2006 and 2012.
“I’m filing this lawsuit because the government uses the U.S. border to bypass the rule of law,” Poitras said in a statement. Poitras co-founded The Intercept with Glenn Greenwald and Jeremy Scahill.

She said she hopes to draw attention to how other people, who aren’t as well known, “are also subjected to years of Kafkaesque harassment at the borders.”

Poitras has been the subject of government monitoring since 2006, when she was working on a documentary film, My Country, My Country, that told the story of the Iraq War from the perspective of an Iraqi doctor.

Airport security informed her that the Department of Homeland Security assigned her the highest “threat rating” possible, despite the fact that she has never been charged with a crime. She described the government’s inspection and forceful seizure of her notebooks, laptop, cell phone and other personal items as “shameful” in an interview with Democracy Now in 2012. On one occasion, security officers at the airport refused to allow her to take notes on her interrogation, arguing that her pen could be used as a weapon.



Continued - https://firstlook.org/theintercept/...-s-government-find-repeatedly-stopped-border/




This is persecution, plain and simple.

I am sure Laura would want each and every one of you to watch this Documentary. So here it is.



My Country, My Country

Trailer



Download - Full Documentary

https://kat.cr/my-country-my-country-limited-dvdrip-xvid-dmt-t9693924.html

Google Exec Turned Obama Official Won't Describe Magic Solution to Encryption Debate | The Intercept

According to Alan Davidson, former Google executive turned Commerce Department official, strong encryption and law enforcement interests are not “irreconcilable.” But he won’t speculate as to how that’s possible.

At a conference devoted to the history and complexity of encryption on Wednesday, Davidson was asked by Politico reporter David Perrera to choose between the strongest encryption, end-to-end encryption, or weaker encryption that law enforcement can access when it needs to.

Davidson, despite his role as an Internet and industry advocate, refused to give a straight answer. “We believe that encryption is an essential tool,” Davidson told guests on Wednesday morning at the Cryptosummit hosted by privacy group Access. “But we don’t think that’s incompatible with public safety.”

That’s the new mantra of Obama administration officials, who continue to insist — despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary from encryption experts and other technologists — that they can have it both ways.
FBI director James Comey, for instance, proposed an imaginary solution to the problem last week, suggesting that the “smart people” in Silicon Valley should work a little harder to come up with it.

Davidson was hired just months ago to the new role of “director of digital economy,” making him the Commerce Department’s leading voice on the surveillance debate, which was ignited two years ago when NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed the expansive monitoring and collection programs the NSA utilizes every day.

In an interview shortly after he started his job, Davidson said his mission was to provide “a greater voice to the Internet community on issues in this administration.”

Continued here:
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/...-believes-magical-solution-encryption-debate/

How Hacking Team Created Spyware that Allowed the FBI To Monitor Tor Browser

In July of 2012, FBI contractor Pradeep Lal contacted the customer support department of the Italian company Hacking Team, a maker of spyware for law enforcement and intelligence agencies worldwide. Lal needed help; he had used Hacking Team software to break into and monitor an investigative target’s computer, but the monitoring wasn’t working as well as Lal expected. It reported what addresses his target visited in normal web browsers, but not when his target used Tor Browser, software designed to mask sensitive web surfing.

Lal described his problem succinctly, complaining on Hacking Team’s customer website that the company’s “URL collector does not collect web traffic on TOR browser,” according to a large trove of emails and other documents recently obtained by one or more computer hackers. He then outlined the steps someone might take to reproduce the problem he encountered with Hacking Team spyware:

download TOR browser bundle. Surf web through TOR browser. Infect the target with an agent with www collector enabled. WWW traffic is not collect when target surfs through TOR browser.

Hacking Team’s support staff responded the next day, writing, “From our understanding the tbb [Tor Browser Bundle] is just a customized Firefox, we will look at it for future releases.“ Less than two weeks later they told Lal that his requested feature was in the works: “Dear Client, next RCS [Remote Control System] release (8.2.0) will capture URL from the TOR browser. Thank you.” (An April 2013 email laments Lal’s departure from the FBI.)

Hacking Team, at the FBI’s request, had just added the ability to monitor ostensibly anonymous Tor Browser traffic from a target infected with Hacking Team malware. The Tor Browser monitoring capability did not represent a breach of the Tor network, which bounces web traffic around the world to hide its destination. It’s impossible for any security software, including Tor Browser, to continue to protect someone after their computer has been hacked. But the incident serves as a reminder of the government’s strong interest in bypassing the protections Tor offers — and of how vulnerable computer users can be even when using proven and secure privacy systems.

Continued here:
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/07/16/hackingteam-attacked-tor-browser/

The Making of a Republican Snowdenista

By Jenna McLaughlin, The Intercept, July 19, 2015



Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., hands me a copy of a letter from James Clapper in which the director of national intelligence complains to two members of the House Intelligence Committee about Massie’s recent attempts to reform one of the NSA’s massive surveillance programs.

On the top right, in curly script, Massie has written his response: “Get a warrant.” It’s in red ink. He’s underlined it.

“If you assume the worst” about the National Security Agency’s surveillance practices, Massie tells me, “it’s not a bad position to take, given what we’ve found out.”

Indeed, for Massie, as with so many others, the information NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden gave journalists two years ago about the extraordinary sweep of U.S surveillance programs was a huge eye-opener.

Prior to the Snowden revelations, Massie says, he knew almost nothing about the NSA’s implementation of the tools Congress gave it to protect national security.

When he tried to find out more, his friends on the Intelligence Committee and in secret briefings told him things he isn’t allowed to share. He tells me he is sure that there is more he doesn’t know — because it’s hard to know what to ask. “It’s ’20 questions’ — you don’t know what questions to ask,” he says. “There are concentric rings of knowledge” when it comes to surveillance. “I am on the outer ring.”

But what he does know about NSA surveillance, aside from what Snowden released to the public, he doesn’t like. “There are line items we’re paying for …” he says, and shakes his head, unable to finish his sentence.

Continued here:
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/07/19/making-republican-snowdenista/

NSA Helped CIA Outmanoeuvre Europe on Torture | WikiLeaks

Today, Monday 20 July at 1800 CEST, WikiLeaks publishes evidence of National Security Agency (NSA) spying on German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier along with a list of 20 target selectors for the Foreign Ministry. The list indicates that NSA spying on the Foreign Ministry extends back to the pre-9/11 era, including numbers for offices in Bonn and targeting Joschka Fischer, Vice Chancellor and Foreign Minister from 1998 to 2005.

https://wikileaks.org/nsa-germany/

The Spirit of Judy Miller is Alive and Well at the New York Times, and it Does Great Damage

By Glenn Greenwald

One of the very few Iraq War advocates to pay any price at all was former New York Times reporter Judy Miller, the classic scapegoat. But what was her defining sin? She granted anonymity to government officials and then uncritically laundered their dubious claims in The New York Times. As the paper’s own editors put it in their 2004 mea culpa about the role they played in selling the war: “we have found a number of instances of coverage that was not as rigorous as it should have been. In some cases, information that was controversial then, and seems questionable now, was insufficiently qualified or allowed to stand unchallenged.” As a result, its own handbook adopted in the wake of that historic journalistic debacle states that “anonymity is a last resort.”

But 12 years after Miller left, you can pick up that same paper on any given day and the chances are high that you will find reporters doing exactly the same thing. In fact, its public editor, Margaret Sullivan, regularly lambasts the paper for doing so. Granting anonymity to government officials and then uncritically printing what these anonymous officials claim, treating it all as Truth, is not an aberration for The New York Times. With some exceptions among good NYT reporters, it’s an institutional staple for how the paper functions, even a decade after its editors scapegoated Judy Miller for its Iraq War propaganda and excoriated itself for these precise methods.

That The New York Times mindlessly disseminates claims from anonymous officials with great regularity is, at this point, too well-documented to require much discussion. But it is worth observing how damaging it continues to be, because, shockingly, all sorts of self-identified “journalists” – both within the paper and outside of it – continue to equate unverified assertions from government officials as Proven Truth, even when these officials are too cowardly to attach their names to these claims, as long as papers such as the NYT launder them.

Let’s look at an illustrative example from yesterday to see how this toxic process works. The New York Times published an article about ISIS by Eric Schmitt and Ben Hubbard based entirely and exclusively on unproven claims from officials of the U.S. government and its allies, to whom they (needless to say) granted anonymity. The entire article reads exactly like an official press release: paragraph after paragraph does nothing other than summarize the claims of anonymous officials, without an iota of questioning, skepticism, scrutiny or doubt.

Among the assertions mindlessly repeated by the Paper of Record from their beloved anonymous officials is this one:


Leave to the side the banal journalistic malpractice of uncritically parroting the self-serving claims of anonymous officials, supposedly what the paper is so horrified at Judy Miller for having done. Also leave to the side the fact that the U.S. government has been anonymously making these Helping-The-Enemy claims not just about Snowden but all whistleblowers for decades, back to Daniel Ellsberg if not earlier. Let’s instead focus on this: the claim itself, on the merits, is monumentally stupid on multiple levels: self-evidently so.

To begin with, The Terrorists™ have been using couriers and encryption for many, many years before anyone knew the name “Edward Snowden.” Last August, after NPR uncritically laundered claims that Snowden revelations had helped The Terrorists™, we reported on a 45-page document which the UK Government calls “the Jihadist Handbook” written by and distributed among extremist groups that describes in sophisticated detail the encryption technologies, SIM card-switching tactics and other methods they use to circumvent U.S. surveillance. Even these 2002/2003 methods were so sophisticated that they actually mirror GCHQ’s own operational security methods for protecting their communications.

Continued here:
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/07/21/spirit-judy-miller-alive-well-nyt-great-damage/

UK Police Confirm Ongoing Criminal Probe of Snowden Leak Journalists | The Intercept

A secretive British police investigation focusing on journalists working with Edward Snowden’s leaked documents remains ongoing two years since it was quietly launched, The Intercept can reveal.

London’s Metropolitan Police has admitted it is still carrying out the probe, which is being led by its counter-terrorism department, after previously refusing to confirm or deny its existence on the grounds that doing so could be “detrimental to national security.”

The disclosure was made by police in a letter sent to this reporter Tuesday, concluding a seven-month freedom of information battle that saw the London force repeatedly attempt to withhold basic details about the status of the case. It reversed its position this week only after an intervention from the Information Commissioner’s Office, the public body that enforces the U.K.’s freedom of information laws.

Following Snowden’s disclosures from the National Security Agency in 2013, the Metropolitan Police and a lawyer for the British government separately stated that a criminal investigation had been opened into the leaks. One of the London force’s most senior officers acknowledged during a parliamentary hearing that the investigation was looking at whether reporters at the Guardian had committed criminal offenses for their role in revealing secret surveillance operations exposed in the Snowden documents.

Continued here:
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/07/24/uk-met-police-snowden-investigation-journalists/

Today the Citizenfour Facebook page mentioned that the film will be released on Blu-ray on August 25.



USA:
http://www.amazon.com/Citizenfour-Blu-ray-Edward-Snowden/dp/B00XIFBF6M

Canada:
http://www.amazon.ca/Citizenfour-Blu-ray-Edward-Snowden/dp/B00XIFBF6M

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Eavesdropping law approved in France


France's Constitutional Council has broadly approved a law giving state intelligence services more scope to eavesdrop on the public to tackle what authorities have described as an unprecedented terror threat.

The surveillance law, unveiled in March this year two months after 17 people were killed by homegrown Islamist gunmen in Paris, has drawn comparisons with the US Patriot Act introduced after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

President Francois Hollande was among those who asked the Council to rule on the constitutionality of a law that waives the need for warrants to use phone taps, cameras and hidden microphones and allows authorities to force Internet providers to monitor suspicious behaviour.

His government has said it expressly forbids bulk collection of telephone records as has been done by the US National Security Agency, but civil rights groups have argued that its provisions could amount to mass surveillance and are lacking sufficient checks and balances.

Instead of requiring a judge's approval, security officials can under the new law order surveillance after advice by a newly created supervisory body specifically dedicated to such approvals.

The Constitutional Council rejected an article that would have allowed authorities to conduct operations in emergency situations without approval. It also rejected an article on international surveillance on the grounds that lawmakers had not sufficiently defined conditions for its use.

Hollande's office said in a statement that the rejection of the two articles did not deprive intelligence agencies of means to protect citizens and French interests.

Under the new law, surveillance agencies will in exceptional cases be able to use so-called "IMSI Catcher" spy devices that record all types of telephone, Internet or text-messaging conversations in an area.

They will also be able to bug suspects' flats with microphones and cameras and add "keyloggers" to their computers to track every keystroke.



moar ... http://www.odt.co.nz/news/world/350181/eavesdropping-law-approved-france



Freedom in France - HUH! - Its nothing more than FUCKING LIES AND MORE FUCKING LIES! OFF WITH THEIR FUCKING HEADS!

Viva La Revolution

Fuck off twat.

^^^^ up yours, CUNTFACE!

http://t.co/mkT8SxstRp

LAWL!

WikiLeaks ‏@wikileaks 51 seconds ago
"The X-Files" is back with a new series partly based on Edward #Snowden, #WikiLeaks and Julian #Assange
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-e...cies-and-paranormal-experiences-10416742.html

After 2 Years, White House Finally Responds to Snowden Pardon Petition – With a "No"

By Dan Froomkin, The Intercept, July 28, 2015

The White House on Tuesday ended two years of ignoring a hugely popular whitehouse.gov petition calling for NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden to be “immediately issued a full, free, and absolute pardon,” saying thanks for signing, but no.

“We live in a dangerous world,” Lisa Monaco, President Obama’s advisor on homeland security and terrorism, said in a statement.

More than 167,000 people signed the petition, which surpassed the 100,000 signatures that the White House’s “We the People” website said would garner a guaranteed response on June 24, 2013.

In Tuesday’s response, the White House acknowledged that “This is an issue that many Americans feel strongly about.”

Monaco then explained her position: “Instead of constructively addressing these issues, Mr. Snowden’s dangerous decision to steal and disclose classified information had severe consequences for the security of our country and the people who work day in and day out to protect it.”

Snowden didn’t actually disclose any classified information – news organizations including the Guardian, Washington Post, New York Times and The Intercept did the disclosing. And the Obama administration has yet to specify any “severe consequences” that can be independently confirmed.

Echoing the views of the most hardline Snowden critics, Monaco continued: “If he felt his actions were consistent with civil disobedience, then he should do what those who have taken issue with their own government do: Challenge it, speak out, engage in a constructive act of protest, and — importantly — accept the consequences of his actions. He should come home to the United States, and be judged by a jury of his peers — not hide behind the cover of an authoritarian regime. Right now, he’s running away from the consequences of his actions.”

Intercept founding editor Glenn Greenwald, one of the journalists to whom Snowden entrusted his archive, has frequently responded to that argument, noting that Snowden is willing to accept the legal consequences of his acts – but, were he to come home under the current circumstances, would be barred under the draconian Espionage Act from publicly arguing that his leaks were justified.

Continued here:
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/...use-finally-responds-snowden-pardon-petition/

Thomas Drake ‏@Thomas_Drake1 6 seconds ago
As usual, #Snowden attorney .@JesselynRadack nails it.

Pardon Snowden? Nah, White House Says in Petition Response | US News & World Report

In a long-awaited petition response, the administration taunts the whistleblower, saying he should 'come home.'

Excerpt:

"How does President Obama think Snowden should have 'constructively addressed these issues' when his administration has led the worst crackdown on national security and intelligence whistleblowers in U.S. history?" says Jesselyn Radack, an attorney for Snowden.

"The actual consequences of Snowden’s revelations have been an informed global debate that even the president acknowledges 'we needed to have,' two federal court decisions finding that the phone dragnet program [was] 'unlawful' and 'likely unconstitutional,' and the first significant intelligence reform legislation in 30 years."

Radack adds: "Civil disobedience does not require that a person of conscience go to jail. Snowden is not 'running away from his actions' or 'hid[ing] behind the cover of an authoritarian regime.' Snowden is in Russia because of the United States, which revoked his passport while he as transiting through there to Latin America."

http://www.usnews.com/news/articles...den-nah-white-house-says-in-petition-response

NSA Doesn't Want Court That Found Phone Dragnet Illegal to Actually Do Anything About It

By Jenna McLaughlin, The Intercept, July 28, 2015

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/...rs-nsas-request-keep-vacuuming-data-180-days/

U.N. Gives U.S. Flunking Grades on Privacy and Surveillance Rights

By Jenna McLaughlin, The Intercept, July 28, 2015

The United States scores very low when it comes to protecting its citizens’ privacy, according to a new United Nations Human Rights Committee review.

The committee issued mid-term report cards for several countries on Tuesday based on how well they have adhered to and implemented its recommendations related to the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights, an international treaty outlining the civil and political rights of all individuals. The U.S. performance in several aspects of protecting privacy was graded “not satisfactory.”

In particular, the committee noted that the U.S. government failed to establish an adequate oversight system to make sure privacy rights are being upheld, and failed to make sure that any breaches of privacy were regulated and authorized by strict law, such as requiring a warrant. The lowest grade reflected the U.S.’s failure to “Ensure affected persons have access to effective remedies in cases of abuse.”

The committee also expressed dismay at the U.S.’s failure to “Establish the responsibility of those who provided legal pretexts for manifestly illegal behavior.”

Continued here:
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/...rivacy-national-security-surveillance-rights/

Electronic Frontier Foundation and ACLU Win Review of Automated License Plate Reader Case

By Jennifer Lynch, July 29, 2015

Quote:

The California Supreme Court today granted our petition to review the lawsuit filed by EFF and the ACLU of Southern California that seeks to shine a light on the collection of license plate data by the Los Angeles Police and Sheriff’s Departments. This comes just two days after we filed our latest brief with the court, arguing the highest court should review an earlier, troubling court decision that ruled license plate data could be withheld as “records of law enforcement investigations.” Today’s development gives us a chance to convince the state’s highest court to overturn that ruling and force the police agencies to turn over the data so the privacy risks of this mass data collection can be scrutinized.

The lawsuit, originally filed in 2013, asked for a week’s work of data collected from automated license plate readers (ALPRs) that are mounted on patrol cars and at fixed locations around the city and county of Los Angeles. These cameras capture images of license plates and include the time, date, and location where the vehicle was photographed, potentially creating a detailed picture of a driver’s movements throughout the area. As with all location data, this is particularly sensitive information, which can disclose things like what medical clinic you visit, where you worship, and what kind of political meetings you attend, as well as where your friends and family live. And the law enforcement agencies gather this information on about three million vehicles in Los Angeles each and every week — which means a staggering number of people are affected.

EFF and the ACLU have argued that the public needs to know more about this giant program, and a week’s worth of data would be a good start. But earlier court decisions sided with the police and sheriff’s departments, allowing the records to be hidden away with the excuse that they are “investigative records.” This sets the stage for a dangerous new standard, where police can use automated license plate cameras to collect data on millions of law-abiding individuals — but those same individuals can’t access the very information collected on them. And the implications spread beyond cars and license plate cameras. The lower court ruling could apply to data collected by other forms of surveillance systems, like body cameras and dash cameras and drones — information the public needs to see to assure police accountability.

We’re pleased the California Supreme Court is going to take up these important questions and review this case. Sophisticated surveillance technology like ALPRs should not be used without any oversight.

Source:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/07/eff-and-aclu-win-review-automated-license-plate-reader-case

Exclusive: Edward Snowden Explains Why Apple Should Continue To Fight the Government on Encryption

By Jenna McLaughlin, The Intercept, July 19, 2015

As the Obama administration campaign to stop the commercialization of strong encryption heats up, National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden is firing back on behalf of the companies like Apple and Google that are finding themselves under attack.

“Technologists and companies working to protect ordinary citizens should be applauded, not sued or prosecuted,” Snowden wrote in an email.

Snowden was asked by The Intercept to respond to the contentious suggestion — made Thursday on a blog that frequently promotes the interests of the national security establishment — that companies like Apple and Google might in certain cases be found legally liable for providing material aid to a terrorist organization because they provide encryption services to their users.

In his email, Snowden explained how law enforcement officials who are demanding that U.S. companies build some sort of window into unbreakable end-to-end encryption — he calls that an “insecurity mandate” — haven’t thought things through.

“The central problem with insecurity mandates has never been addressed by its proponents: if one government can demand access to private communications, all governments can,” Snowden wrote.

“No matter how good the reason, if the U.S. sets the precedent that Apple has to compromise the security of a customer in response to a piece of government paper, what can they do when the government is China and the customer is the Dalai Lama?”

Weakened encryption would only drive people away from the American technology industry, Snowden wrote. “Putting the most important driver of our economy in a position where they have to deal with the devil or lose access to international markets is public policy that makes us less competitive and less safe.”

Continued here:
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/...ations-war-encryption-just-doesnt-make-sense/

U.S. Declassifies FISA Court Documents about the Protect America Act

By Charlie Savage, The New York Times, August 1, 2015

In response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by The New York Times, the Obama administration has declassified and released documents related to the Protect America Act from late 2007 and early 2008. The disclosure of the documents fills in a gap in the historical record regarding the evolution of the Bush administration’s post-9/11 warrantless surveillance program. In August 2007, Congress temporarily legalized a form of that program with the Protect America Act, permitting surveillance without warrants on domestic soil so long as the target was a foreigner abroad. The law permitted the NSA to immediately begin using its power, even before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court approved its procedures. In early 2008, the court did approve those procedures. The Protect America Act expired, but later in 2008, Congress replaced it with the FISA Amendments Act.

Continued here:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/08/01/us/01paa-foia.html

Leaked Documents Reveal AT&T's 'Extreme Willingness' to Help With NSA Spying

VICE News, August 15, 2015

Documents leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden have revealed a special and "highly collaborative" relationship between the spy agency and telecom giant AT&T, which provided "massive amounts of data" to the government over a decade.

The documents show that between 2003 and 2013, AT&T's "extreme willingness to help" allowed the NSA access to billions of emails that circulated through multiple internet servers across America, including communications that flowed in and out of the United Nations headquarters in New York under various legal channels, and secret court orders, a joint New York Times and ProPublica investigation found.

In that time, AT&T — codenamed Fairview in the documents — reportedly installed surveillance apparatuses at 17 or more of its servers located in the US. The program was almost twice as large and expensive as the agency's second biggest program with AT&T's rival Verizon, which was codenamed Stormbrew in the files.

Neither AT&T nor Verizon were specifically named in the documents, but reporters at the Times and ProPublica revealed in detail the methodology that they used to ascertain the identities of the two companies. Several former intelligence officials also backed up their findings.

At the onset of the Fairview program, AT&T handed over some 400 billion records containing metadata from emails — which did not include the contents — and also forwarded "more than one million emails a day to the keyword selection system." By 2011, the company was providing the spy agency with records on 1.1 billion domestic cellphone calls a day, one internal agency document revealed. Another presentation document showed that in that same year, the agency spent $188.9 million on the Fairview program — almost double what it spent on the Stormbrew operation.

The files further showed that AT&T's unique relationship with the NSA allowed the agency access to web traffic from other companies through its so-called "peering" network, a voluntary connection of separate traffic networks.

Agency documents indicate that the telecom partners sifted through the data before they sent it to the NSA. By 2013, that included some 60 million email exchanges between foreigners abroad that passed through American servers belonging to AT&T. Verizon reportedly only began performing similar operations for the NSA in March 2013.

Under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), the NSA must get a warrant before targeting anyone on American soil. In communications between an American and a foreigner abroad, the NSA can target the foreigner without first obtaining a court order, while foreign-to-foreign communications are free for bulk collection by the agency.

Continued here:
https://news.vice.com/article/leake...s-extreme-willingness-to-help-with-nsa-spying

Windows 10 is spying on you, but there's a way out | Hackread

Excerpt:

Microsoft’s new service agreement consists of about 12,000 words, which clearly states that the operating system will be invading your privacy like never before and if you haven’t read that then it’s not your mistake, we hardly read TOS anyway.

So the Microsoft’s new service agreement states that,

“We will access, disclose and preserve personal data, including your content (such as the content of your emails, other private communications or files in private folders), when we have a good faith belief that doing so is necessary to.”

Microsoft does, however, also gives you an option to opt-out of features that you think may be invading your privacy, but remember if you have installed Windows 10 you have opted-in for all features by default.

How to Stop Windows 10 from Spying on You

If you are reading this section because you are seriously worried about this, understand that opting out of Windows 10 is not so straightforward. However, if you follow each of the mentioned steps thoroughly then you will be able to prevent yourself from Windows 10 spying in no time.

https://www.hackread.com/windows-10-is-spying-on-you/

Windows 10 Should be banned for Spying on Users - Demands Russia | Hackread

Excerpt:

Russian lawmakers have come forward and filed a complaint against the OS at the Prosecutor General’s Office. They have demanded a ban on Win10 in Russia citing privacy settings issues.

Russian lawmakers claim that Microsoft is using Win10 OS to collect user information and breaches Russia’s local laws. The lawyers have collaborated with Moscow’s Bubnov and Partners legal practice firm and they have claimed that information like passwords, text messages, browsing history and location etc., is being stored by Win10. Therefore, it violated Russia’s regulations. Moreover, the vice-speaker of the State Duma has asked the government of Russia to ban this OS.

https://www.hackread.com/windows10-spies-shoud-be-ban-in-russia/

New Windows 7/8/8.1 updates spy on you just like Windows 10 | TechWorm

Microsoft is pushing KB3075249 and KB3080149 updates for Windows 7/8/8.1 users which can spy on you.

http://www.techworm.net/2015/08/new-windows-788-1-updates-spy-on-you-just-like-windows-10.html

Anis ‏@hertzmau5 2 hours ago
TIP: Use this Copy/Paste script to remove all your hidden Microsoft's spying updates from Windows 7, 8 & 8.1
http://pastebin.com/hbXTkvjq

Digital surveillance 'worse than Orwell', says new UN privacy chief | The Guardian

Joseph Cannataci describes British oversight as ‘a joke’ and says a Geneva convention for the internet is needed.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/20...on-for-the-internet-says-new-un-privacy-chief

FBI demanded Scandinavian countries arrest Edward Snowden should he visit | The Guardian

The whistleblower will not travel to Norway next week to accept award after national broadcaster released letters US sent in 2013 requesting extradition.

The FBI demanded that Scandinavian countries arrest and extradite Edward Snowden if he flew to any of those countries and claimed asylum, newly released official documents reveal.

In the summer of 2013 the whistleblower had left his hotel in Hong Kong and was holed up in Moscow airport applying to various countries, including Norway, for asylum after leaking to the Guardian a massive cache of documents disclosing the shocking extent of US and British surveillance of digital communications.

Suspecting that Snowden might seek asylum in Scandinavia, the FBI wrote from the US embassy in Copenhagen to the police forces of Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland to inform them that the US Department of Justice had charged Snowden with theft and espionage, and issued a provisional warrant for his arrest, according to documents released by Norway’s national broadcaster NRK.

“The US Department of Justice is prepared to immediately draft the necessary paperwork to request the extradition of Snowden to the US from whichever country he travels to from Moscow,” the letter, dated 27 June, states. “The FBI expresses its gratitude … for any assistance that can be provided on this important matter.”

Continued here:
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/aug/28/edward-snowden-fbi-norway-extradite-julian-assange

A Dubious Deal with the NSA

Internal documents show that Germany's domestic intelligence agency, the BfV, received the coveted software program XKeyscore from the NSA – and promised data from Germany in return.

http://www.zeit.de/digital/datenschutz/2015-08/xkeyscore-nsa-domestic-intelligence-agency

Jacob Appelbaum ‏@ioerror 4 hours ago
This is going to be an exciting week.

Jacob Appelbaum ‏@ioerror 3 hours ago
Today I read about an American teenager being sentenced to eleven years in prison and then lifetime internet monitoring. Say what?

Jacob Appelbaum ‏@ioerror 3 hours ago
How will the US Justice dept implement lifetime internet monitoring? Also surveillance as a lifetime punishment!? Refreshingly honest!

Jacob Appelbaum ‏@ioerror 3 hours ago
"After he is released from prison, Amin's Internet activities will be monitored for life"
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2977100/teen-jailed-for-supporting-isis-on-twitter.html

new shtwit ‏@newshtwit 3 hours ago
@ioerror But we're all sentenced to lifetime internet monitoring, so...

Jacob Appelbaum ‏@ioerror 3 hours ago
A life sentence of internet surveillance. Is that proportionate? How can it be implemented without everyone being impacted?

Jacob Appelbaum ‏@ioerror 3 hours ago
Do people advocating for the murderous IDF also get lifetime internet surveillance or is it only misguided teenage Muslims in America?

Jacob Appelbaum ‏@ioerror 3 hours ago
The idea that some *teenager* has just been sentenced to *lifetime* internet monitoring seems to be some kind of dystopian high water mark.

Jeff Stalin Bezos ‏@onekade 2 hours ago
Hey guys, the FBI wants to be able to fingerprint and take face scans of everyone from their mobile phones. Sorry to bear this news.

Jeff Stalin Bezos ‏@onekade 2 hours ago
From the war on terror to the war at home: FBI seeks smaller, faster biometric collection tools (face/prints)
http://privacysos.org/node/1808

Colombia has built a 'shadow state' of mass surveillance, report says | The Verge

Bulk collection of phone and internet data detailed in Privacy International investigation

Police and intelligence agencies in Colombia have been building "secret and unlawful" systems of mass surveillance over the past decade, according to a new report from the London-based watchdog Privacy International. The report, based on confidential documents and testimony, reveals that various Colombian agencies have covertly sought to expand their bulk collection of phone and internet data, extending beyond the scope of the law and undermining recent efforts at reform.

Colombia has a fraught history of government surveillance, fueled by an ongoing conflict that has killed an estimated 220,000 people since 1958. Backed by US aid, Colombian intelligence agencies have used wiretapping to monitor leaders of the FARC and other rebel groups, though reports have revealed cases of abuse. Top police generals were dismissed in 2007 after it was revealed that the national police force had conducted surveillance on activists, journalists, lawyers, and opposing politicians. In 2011, President Juan Manuel Santos dissolved the Administrative Security Department (DAS) after it was revealed that the national spy agency surveilled and harassed more than 600 politicians and public figures.

These scandals drew international criticism and calls for reform, though today's report claims that Colombia's current privacy safeguards are opaque and inadequate. The report also sheds light on powerful surveillance systems that were not previously disclosed, and which operate outside of Colombian law.

Continued here:
http://www.theverge.com/2015/8/31/9231069/colombia-mass-surveillance-privacy-international-report

How China and Russia are mining major U.S. data hacks | PBS

Video and transcript:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/china-russia-mining-major-u-s-data-hacks/

Ridiculous: Lawsuit Against Secret NSA Spying Loses Because the Evidence is Secret

By Carey Wedler, The Anti Media, August 31, 2015

Quote:

A three-judge panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals ruled on Friday that a lawsuit challenging the NSA’s warrant-less, bulk collection of Americans’ data cannot move forward. Ironically, the reasoning behind the ruling is that the plaintiff cannot prove his information was specifically collected — even as the suit’s fundamental premise challenges the extraordinary secrecy under which the NSA has operated for years. The ruling constitutes the latest back-and-forth development in a variety of ongoing court battles on the subject.

Public interest lawyer, founder of Freedom Watch, and Verizon customer Larry Klayman filed the lawsuit. Lower court judge, U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon, previously ruled that Klayman had “demonstrated a substantial likelihood of success” in proving the NSA’s program is unconstitutional and violated the fourth amendment. In his 68-page, December 2013 opinion, Leon called the program “almost – Orwellian” – and “at best, the stuff of science fiction.” He noted that the government had failed to produce evidence that the practices foiled any terrorist plots.

Even so, the three-judge panel from the Washington D.C. Court of Appeals ruled Friday that Klayman “lack direct evidence” that his communications “have actually been collected,” and therefore cannot proceed. The ruling came in spite of the fact that Verizon is one of the most well-known contributors to the NSA’s program (this information was one of the first leaks Snowden released in 2013).

The “lack of direct evidence” appears to highlight a conundrum in the case. As the Washington Post noted, “The court in Klayman’s case observed that Klayman’s effort to prove standing was complicated by the possibility that the government could withhold information that would bolster his allegations. ‘Plaintiffs’ claims may well founder in that event,’ said Circuit Court Judge Janice Rogers Brown. ‘But such is the nature of the government’s privileged control over certain classes of information. [emphasis added]”

The decision not only handed the case back down to a lower court for deliberation, but also served to invalidate a call to ban NSA bulk data collection issued by Judge Leon in his December 2013 ruling. Though the mainstream narrative asserts that the passage of the USA Freedom Act in June limits government reach, in actuality, it merely adds a bureaucratic step to the process. Rather than accessing user data directly, the government must go through a court to obtain the same information from private companies.

While on its face this seems to provide more oversight, the unfortunate truth is two-pronged: First, the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court the government must go through for “approval” to spy acts as little more than a “rubber stamp” for state surveillance (admittedly, the USA Freedom Act claims to add transparency to the process, though the government’s track record in this realm is dismal, at best). Second, the companies involved have already overwhelmingly cooperated with the government (news broke last week that AT&T was “highly collaborative” in sharing private user data with the government).

Klayman expressed resentment toward the panel’s Friday ruling. “An ill-informed first-year law student could have written this within one day,” he opined. “Why did you wait nearly two years after Leon issued his decision? You delayed getting to the issues. During that time the constitutional rights of Americans continue to be violated.”

He accused the judges of doing the bidding of Washington’s Republican establishment, which he says operates under the philosophy of “Do what you want, NSA.” Further, he clarified that “Nobody’s against doing surveillance of terrorists. What we’re saying is get a warrant.”

Klayman is confident he can amend his suit to include plaintiffs who can prove the government collected their data. In the meantime, NSA data collection will continue until December, at which point provisions of the USA Freedom Act will take effect (and the same data will continue to be collected).

The only U.S. Appeals Court to judge the merits of the program — the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in New York — ruled in May that such spying was “unprecedented and unwarranted.” It is set to hear a case from the ACLU next week seeking to end bulk data collection data now — not in December (regardless, in June the FISA court ruled that the NSA could continue its data collection).

As egregious violations of data collection are tediously argued in court, the government continues to impose upon the privacy of its citizens. As Harvey Geiger, senior counsel for the Center for Democracy and Technology, said of Friday’s ruling, it “demonstrates that excessive secrecy limits debate and reform. It leads to unbalanced surveillance programs and provides victims with little or no recourse.”

The DOJ declined to comment on Friday’s ruling.

This article is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Carey Wedler and theAntiMedia.org.

Source:
http://theantimedia.org/lawsuit-against-secret-nsa-spying-loses-because-the-evidence-is-secret/

The Intercept ‏@the_intercept 2 minutes ago
Full video of @ggreenwald squaring off against former NSA chief Keith Alexander:
youtube.com/watch?v=sfPjgUgoLaQ

Panel at HP Protect 2015



Published by HP Enterprise Business on September 2, 2015

General Keith B. Alexander, USA (Ret.), former director of the NSA and journalist Glenn Greenwald, widely known for writing a series of reports detailing U.S. surveillance programs based on classified documents disclosed by Edward Snowden debate security vs. privacy. What’s the right balance between protecting the data of your enterprise and protecting the privacy of your people? Hear from two opposing voices.

Fifteen Year-Old News Segment On Government Mass Spying: “Every Conversation Around The World” Is Captured

It's interesting to note how our mainstream media has changed over time from reporting the facts to regurgitating the party line about liberty vs security

By Sophie McAdam, True Activist



This CBS 60 second segment from back in 2000 describes a mass surveillance operation called Echelon. Originally a code name, Echelon was later used to refer to a software created in the 1960s to spy on Russia during the cold war. By the end of the 20th century, Echelon had evolved beyond its military origins to also become a global system for the interception of private and commercial communications.

Fifteen years ago, CBS’s Peter Klein reported on how a global surveillance program was launched by the NSA as part of an agreement with the UK, New Zealand, Australia and Canada (collectively known as ‘five eyes’) to collect and share data. Five eyes, or FVEY, was of course ramped up a gear in the aftermath of 9/11, and continues to be the most comprehensive and powerful espionage alliance in history under codename PRISM. In the clip, Klein says: “The mission is to eavesdrop on the enemies of the state…but in the process, Echelon’s computers capture virtually every electronic conversation around the world.”

In the years since this report was first aired, we have seen the rise and fall of Wikileaks and the witch-hunt of Julian Assange. We have witnessed Edward Snowden‘s revelations on the extent of the NSA‘s technological capabilities and his subsequent escape from the USA. We have seen what happened to journalists like Glenn Greenwald and others at The Guardian when they dared to report Snowden‘s leaks as a matter of great public interest.

It’s 2015, and we now know how the corporate press fights to maintain the status quo by brainwashing us into believing that these spy programs exist for our own ‘security’. We now know that even our smart TVs and smart phones are spying on us. But because today’s mainstream media almost never criticizes these kinds of dystopian surveillance programs, this historic CBS report is a breath of fresh air.

This article is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to the author and TrueActivist.com.

Source:

www.trueactivist.com/fifteen-year-old-news-segment-on-government-mass-spying-every-conversation-around-the-world-is-captured/

Field of Vision: An Interview With Co-Creators Laura Poitras, AJ Schnack and Charlotte Cook

On a Saturday in late August, high above the sleepy weekend streets of Manhattan in the quiet offices of The Intercept, Field of Vision is already in action mode — films are being finalized and tweaked, series are being prepared for launch.

After two years of preparation, the visual journalism wing of The Intercept goes public this month, led by an episodic series directed by Intercept co-founder Laura Poitras (Academy Award-winning director of Citizenfour) that offers a dramatic firsthand chronicle of the events that led Julian Assange to seek asylum in London. During this calm before the storm, Poitras was joined by her two collaborators — fellow filmmaker AJ Schnack (Caucus, We Always Lie to Strangers, co-founder of the Cinema Eye Honors) and Charlotte Cook, until recently the director of programming for Hot Docs Film Festival in Toronto — to talk about their vision for Field of Vision, the glories of working in shorter forms, and the richly fertile ground between cinema and journalism.

Continued here:
https://theintercept.com/2015/09/09...view-laura-poitras-aj-schnack-charlotte-cook/