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Author Topic: they know what you are doing  (Read 273876 times)

Offline Amaterasu

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Re: they know what you are doing
« Reply #405 on: December 06, 2013, 08:52:59 am »
With THAT patch...  I think I VERY much have a need to know!  Because it does suggest that things will be done against Me that I do not consent to.

Yeah, I want to know what that is all about.
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Offline Pimander

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Re: they know what you are doing
« Reply #406 on: December 06, 2013, 10:32:12 am »
NSA 'tracking' hundreds of millions of mobile phones

Almost five billion mobile phone location records are logged by the NSA every day, reports the Washington Post.



The data is said to help the NSA track individuals, and map who they know, to aid the agency's anti-terror work.

The "dragnet surveillance" was condemned by digital rights groups who called for the NSA's snooping efforts to be reined in.

The news comes as Microsoft plans to use more encryption to thwart NSA spying on it and its customers.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-25231757

Offline Somamech

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Re: they know what you are doing
« Reply #407 on: December 06, 2013, 10:54:37 am »
This VERY Kreepy data monitoring would be cool if put to a good purpose.

Unfortunatley it seem's not. 

sky otter

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Re: they know what you are doing
« Reply #408 on: December 07, 2013, 12:41:58 pm »


WHAT !!! ok now i am really pissed


://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/06/att-nsa-surveillance_n_4399517.html?ref=topbar

AT&T Says It Doesn't Need To Disclose All NSA Data Requests
AP  |  By By MARTHA MENDOZA Posted: 12/06/2013 12:48 pm EST





SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) — AT&T, under fire for ongoing revelations that it shares and sells customers' communications records to the National Security Agency and other U.S. intelligence offices,

Sales to nsa..this is the first I have read about money involved..it’s getting worse..now they are paying to spy on us with our money..oh grrrrrrr

says it isn't required to disclose to shareholders what it does with customers' data.In a letter sent Thursday to the Securities and Exchange Commission, AT&T said it protects customer information and complies with government requests for call records "only to the extent required by law."

The telecom giant's letter was a response to a shareholder revolt sparked on Nov. 20 by the New York State Common Retirement Fund, the ACLU of Northern California and others. The groups are demanding that AT&T and Verizon be more transparent about their dealings with the NSA.

In the letter, AT&T said information about assisting foreign intelligence surveillance activities is almost certainly classified. The company said it should not have to address the issue at its annual shareholders meeting this spring.

Nicole Ozer, technology and civil liberties policy director at the ACLU of Northern California said AT&T has overstepped its bounds.

"It's outrageous that AT&T is trying to block the shareholder proposal," she said. "Customers have a right to know how often their private information is ending up in the government's hands."

After the Sept. 11 terror attacks, U.S agencies established a warrantless program to monitor phone calls and e-mail between individuals in the United States and other countries who are suspected of having links to terrorism. But disclosures in recent weeks from former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden have exposed the breadth and depth of U.S. government surveillance programs on the Internet and over other telecommunications networks. The Washington Post reported this week that the NSA tracks locations of nearly 5 billion cellphones every day overseas, including those of Americans.

Companies are responding to the revelations in a variety of ways. Tech firms including Yahoo and Google are pushing back, adding encryption, filing motions in the FISA court, and arguing that the NSA is overstepping its bounds.

But telecommunications firms appear to be cooperating fully.

"AT&T has not made it clear to investors or customers what data it shares or with whom. Customers should not be the last to know how their personal information is being used by governmental agencies," said New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli.

DiNapoli co-signed the AT&T shareholder resolution on behalf of the New York State Common Retirement Fund, which holds assets totaling about $161 billion. The fund owns more than 15 million shares of AT&T valued at roughly $517 million.

"Customer trust is critical for any business, but nowhere is it more so than for those corporations that handle our personal data and communications," DiNapoli said.

---

Follow Martha Mendoza at https://twitter.com/mendozamartha.

Offline Ellirium113

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Re: they know what you are doing
« Reply #409 on: December 07, 2013, 01:16:02 pm »
Simple Wi-Fi hotspot coverage, or state of the art spy grid? Here's some food for thought.  ???

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARRMyLFrXUE[/youtube]

Through-the-Wall Sensing of Personnel Using Passive Bistatic WiFi Radar at Standoff Distances


Quote
In this paper, we investigate the feasibility of uncooperatively and covertly detecting people moving behind walls using passive bistatic WiFi radar at standoff distances. A series of experiments was conducted which involved personnel targets moving inside a building within the coverage area of a WiFi access point. These targets were monitored from outside the building using a 2.4-GHz passive multistatic receiver, and the data were processed offline to yield range and Doppler information. The results presented show the first through-the-wall (TTW) detections of moving personnel using passive WiFi radar. The measured Doppler shifts agree with those predicted by bistatic theory. Further analysis of the data revealed that the system is limited by the signal-to-interference ratio (SIR), and not the signal-to-noise ratio. We have also shown that a new interference suppression technique based on the CLEAN algorithm can improve the SIR by approximately 19 dB. These encouraging initial findings demonstrate the potential for using passive WiFi radar as a low-cost TTW detection sensor with widespread applicability.

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/articleDetails.jsp?arnumber=6020778

As WiFi gains more and more global coverage think of the implications of this technology on the already mind boggling array of NSA spying toys...

http://www.prisonplanet.com/security-expert-the-nsa-has-everyone-under-constant-surveillance.html

sky otter

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Re: they know what you are doing
« Reply #410 on: December 09, 2013, 09:23:06 am »


i'm sure Undo already knows about this..but grrrrrrrr anyhow >:(


http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/10/world/spies-dragnet-reaches-a-playing-field-of-elves-and-trolls.html?_r=0

Spies’ Dragnet Reaches a Playing Field of Elves and Trolls


Not limiting their activities to the earthly realm, American and British spies have infiltrated the fantasy worlds of World of Warcraft and Second Life, conducting surveillance and scooping up data in the online games played by millions of people across the globe, according to newly disclosed classified documents.
Fearing that terrorist or criminal networks could use the games to communicate secretly, move money or plot attacks, the documents show, intelligence operatives have entered terrain populated by digital avatars that include elves, gnomes and supermodels.



The spies have created make-believe characters to snoop and to try to recruit informers, while also collecting data and contents of communications between players, according to the documents, disclosed by the former National Security Agency contractor Edward J. Snowden. Because militants often rely on features common to video games — fake identities, voice and text chats, a way to conduct financial transactions — American and British intelligence agencies worried that they might be operating there, according to the papers.



Online games might seem innocuous, a top-secret 2008 N.S.A. document warned, but they had the potential to be a “target-rich communication network” allowing intelligence suspects “a way to hide in plain sight.” Virtual games “are an opportunity!” another 2008 N.S.A. document declared.

But for all their enthusiasm — so many C.I.A., F.B.I. and Pentagon spies were hunting around in Second Life, the document noted, that a “deconfliction” group was needed to avoid collisions — the intelligence agencies may have inflated the threat.



The documents do not cite any counterterrorism successes from the effort, and former American intelligence officials, current and former gaming company employees and outside experts said in interviews that they knew of little evidence that terrorist groups viewed the games as havens to communicate and plot operations.

Games “are built and operated by companies looking to make money, so the players’ identity and activity is tracked,” said Peter W. Singer of the Brookings Institution, an author of “Cybersecurity and Cyberwar: What Everyone Needs to Know.” “For terror groups looking to keep their communications secret, there are far more effective and easier ways to do so than putting on a troll avatar.”



The surveillance, which also included Microsoft’s Xbox Live, could raise privacy concerns. It is not clear exactly how the agencies got access to gamers’ data or communications, how many players may have been monitored or whether Americans’ communications or activities were captured.

One American company, the maker of World of Warcraft, said that neither the N.S.A. nor its British counterpart, the Government Communications Headquarters, had gotten permission to gather intelligence in its game. Many players are Americans, who can be targeted for surveillance only with approval from the nation’s secret intelligence court. The spy agencies, though, face far fewer restrictions on collecting certain data or communications overseas.



"We are unaware of any surveillance taking place," said a spokesman for Blizzard Entertainment, based in Irvine, Calif., which makes World of Warcraft. "If it was, it would have been done without our knowledge or permission." 



A spokeswoman for Microsoft declined to comment. Philip Rosedale, the founder of Second Life and a former chief executive officer of Linden Lab, the game’s maker, declined to comment on the spying revelations. Current Linden executives did not respond to requests for comment.

A Government Communications Headquarters spokesman would neither confirm nor deny any involvement by that agency in gaming surveillance, but said that its work is conducted under “a strict legal and policy framework” with rigorous oversight. An N.S.A. spokeswoman declined to comment.

Intelligence and law enforcement officials became interested in games after some became enormously popular, drawing tens of millions of people worldwide, from preteens to retirees. The games rely on lifelike graphics, virtual currencies and the ability to speak to other players in real time. Some gamers merge the virtual and real worlds by spending long hours playing and making close online friends.

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Next Page »
Andrew W. Lehren contributed reporting. Justin Elliot is a reporter for ProPublica



last part

In spring 2009, academics and defense contractors gathered at the Marriott at Washington Dulles International Airport to present proposals for a government study about how players’ behavior in a game like World of Warcraft might be linked to their real-world identities. “We were told it was highly likely that persons of interest were using virtual spaces to communicate or coordinate,” said Dmitri Williams, a professor at the University of Southern California who received grant money as part of the program.

After the conference, both SAIC and Lockheed Martin won contracts worth several million dollars, administered by an office within the intelligence community that finances research projects.

It is not clear how useful such research might be. A group at the Palo Alto Research Center, for example, produced a government-funded study of World of Warcraft that found “younger players and male players preferring competitive, hack-and-slash activities, and older and female players preferring noncombat activities,” such as exploring the virtual world. A group from the nonprofit SRI International, meanwhile, found that players under age 18 often used all capital letters both in chat messages and in their avatar names.

Those involved in the project were told little by their government patrons. According to Nick Yee, a Palo Alto researcher who worked on the effort, “We were specifically asked not to speculate on the government’s motivations and goals.”

« Previous Page 1 2 3
Andrew W. Lehren contributed reporting. Justin Elliot is a reporter for ProPublica.




Offline thorfourwinds

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Re: they know what you are doing
« Reply #411 on: December 09, 2013, 09:56:45 pm »
[youtube]CP1j04_X4Oo[/youtube]



Published on Dec 9, 2013
To check your phone check out http://ismyipdirty.com/

In this video Alex Heid, information security consultant shows you
how to see what government agency is spying on your cell phones unique IP address.









EARTH AID is dedicated to the creation of an interactive multimedia worldwide event to raise awareness about the challenges and solutions of nuclear energy.

sky otter

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Re: they know what you are doing
« Reply #412 on: December 10, 2013, 08:37:31 pm »


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/10/nsa-reach_n_4420939.html

 

  The NSA's Reach Might Be Even Bigger Than We Thought


Posted: 12/10/2013 4:26 pm EST  |  Updated: 12/10/2013 6:01 pm EST

Matt Sledge



The National Security Agency's court-approved authority to access and analyze phone records three "hops" away from a suspected terrorist's phone number has alarmed civil liberties groups like the ACLU, which estimated that just one starting number could yield 2.5 million people's phone records.

Now, new research from Stanford graduate students Jonathan Mayer and Patrick Mutchler suggests that the NSA's dragnet could be bigger -- much bigger.

"Under current FISA Court orders, the NSA may be able to analyze the phone records of a sizable proportion of the United States population with just one seed number," they wrote in a blog post published Monday. "And by the way, there are tens of thousands of qualified seed numbers."

Under the rules approved by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the agency's broad-reaching phone metadata collection program can only sift through details on who Americans called and when if the caller is three or fewer degrees of separation, or "hops," from a number suspected of associations with terrorism.

That will yield 2.5 million people's records alone if, as the ACLU assumed, the average person has 40 phone contacts. But Mayer and Mutchler say that between voicemail, spam robocalls and calling services like Skype, many of us are connected by just a small set of phone numbers.

Many phone connections look more like spokes all heading toward a central hub on a wheel, rather than the complex web of interactions we may assume. Millions of people who subscribe to T-Mobile, for example, call into one, central voicemail number. In Mayer and Mutchler's crowdsourced study of volunteer Android phone users, 17.5 percent were connected in just two hops by the T-Mobile voicemail number.

"That’s potentially tens of millions of Americans connected by just two phone hops, solely because of how their carrier happens to configure voicemail," they write. It gets worse when you toss in those annoying automatic spam robocalls.

In the FISA court rulings he has reviewed, Mayer told HuffPost in an email, he has seen little discussion of the implications of his research.

"We can’t expect lawyers to be experts in graph theory, of course," he said.

Mayer and Mutchler have previously used their expertise to show how our metadata -- which the courts have generally ruled is not protected by the Fourth Amendment -- can even be used to show who phone users are dating.

Their research could be limited, Mayer said, by the limited, self-selected nature of the survey, which relies on users signing up for an app. The NSA might also choose on its own to cut popular digits, like the T-Mobile voicemail number, out when linking Americans to suspected terrorist numbers.

"But that is not a legal requirement," Mayer said. "And, for those concerned about the scope of agency authority, voluntary self-restraint offers little reassurance."

Offline Ellirium113

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Re: they know what you are doing
« Reply #413 on: December 11, 2013, 03:58:00 pm »
Snowden document shows Canada set up spy posts for NSA


Quote
A top secret document retrieved by American whistleblower Edward Snowden reveals Canada has set up covert spying posts around the world and conducted espionage against trading partners at the request of the U.S. National Security Agency.


The leaked NSA document being reported exclusively by CBC News reveals Canada is involved with the huge American intelligence agency in clandestine surveillance activities in “approximately 20 high-priority countries."


Much of the document contains hyper-sensitive operational details which CBC News has chosen not to make public.

Sections of the document with the highest classification make it clear in some instances why American spymasters are particularly keen about enlisting their Canadian counterparts, the Communications Security Establishment Canada.


"CSEC shares with the NSA their unique geographic access to areas unavailable to the U.S," the document says.

The briefing paper describes a "close co-operative relationship" between the NSA and its Canadian counterpart, the Communications Security Establishment Canada, or CSEC — a relationship "both sides would like to see expanded and strengthened.


"The intelligence exchange with CSEC covers worldwide national and transnational targets."


http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/snowden-document-shows-canada-set-up-spy-posts-for-nsa-1.2456886

PLAYSWITHMACHINES

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Re: they know what you are doing
« Reply #414 on: December 11, 2013, 05:13:46 pm »
Yes, i remember someone offered me a lot of money years ago to develop a TTW system, it never got off the table, but i was thinking of using EHF reflection in this manner, of course Wifi wasn't invented back then, but it's a classic example of 'using the system backwards', like the old TV licence peeps used to do, or the FAA tracking pirate stations.

All tech is a double edged sword. If you invent something, be prepared to invent a defense against it.................

Offline Pimander

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Re: they know what you are doing
« Reply #415 on: December 11, 2013, 06:12:41 pm »
"they know what you are doing"

Thank fuc4 for that.  Someone is actually doing their job properly!

They don't know do they?  ::)

sky otter

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Re: they know what you are doing
« Reply #416 on: December 14, 2013, 06:58:20 pm »
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/15/us/officials-say-us-may-never-know-extent-of-snowdens-leaks.html?src=twr&_r=0


Officials Say U.S. May Never Know Extent of Snowden’s Leaks

By MARK MAZZETTI and MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT
Published: December 14, 2013

WASHINGTON — American intelligence and law enforcement investigators have concluded that they may never know the entirety of what the former National Security Agency contractor Edward J. Snowden extracted from classified government computers before leaving the United States, according to senior government officials.

Investigators remain in the dark about the extent of the data breach partly because the N.S.A. facility in Hawaii where Mr. Snowden worked — unlike other N.S.A. facilities — was not equipped with up-to-date software that allows the spy agency to monitor which corners of its vast computer landscape its employees are navigating at any given time.

Six months since the investigation began, officials said Mr. Snowden had further covered his tracks by logging into classified systems using the passwords of other security agency employees, as well as by hacking firewalls installed to limit access to certain parts of the system.

“They’ve spent hundreds and hundreds of man-hours trying to reconstruct everything he has gotten, and they still don’t know all of what he took,” a senior administration official said. “I know that seems crazy, but everything with this is crazy.”

That Mr. Snowden was so expertly able to exploit blind spots in the systems of America’s most secretive spy agency illustrates how far computer security still lagged years after President Obama ordered standards tightened after the WikiLeaks revelations of 2010.

Mr. Snowden’s disclosures set off a national debate about the expansion of the N.S.A.’s powers to spy both at home and abroad, and have left the Obama administration trying frantically to mend relations with allies after his revelations about American eavesdropping on foreign leaders.

A presidential advisory committee that has been examining the security agency’s operations submitted its report to Mr. Obama on Friday. The White House said the report would not be made public until next month, when Mr. Obama announces which of the recommendations he has embraced and which he has rejected.



Mr. Snowden gave his cache of documents to a small group of journalists, and some from that group have shared documents with several news organizations — leading to a flurry of exposures about spying on friendly governments. In an interview with The New York Times in October, Mr. Snowden said he had given all of the documents he downloaded to journalists and kept no additional copies.

In recent days, a senior N.S.A. official has told reporters that he believed Mr. Snowden still had access to documents not yet disclosed. The official, Rick Ledgett, who is heading the security agency’s task force examining Mr. Snowden’s leak, said he would consider recommending amnesty for Mr. Snowden in exchange for those documents.

“So, my personal view is, yes, it’s worth having a conversation about,” Mr. Ledgett told CBS News. “I would need assurances that the remainder of the data could be secured, and my bar for those assurances would be very high. It would be more than just an assertion on his part.”

Mr. Snowden is living and working in Russia under a one-year asylum. The Russian government has refused to extradite Mr. Snowden, who was indicted by the Justice Department in June on charges of espionage and stealing government property, to the United States.

Mr. Snowden has said he would return to the United States if he was offered amnesty, but it is unclear whether Mr. Obama — who would most likely have to make such a decision — would make such an offer, given the damage the administration has claimed Mr. Snowden’s leaks have done to national security.

Because the N.S.A. is still uncertain about exactly what Mr. Snowden took, government officials sometimes first learn about specific documents from reporters preparing their articles for publication — leaving the State Department with little time to notify foreign leaders about coming disclosures.

With the security agency trying to revamp its computer network in the aftermath of what could turn out to be the largest breach of classified information in American history, the Justice Department has continued its investigation of Mr. Snowden.

According to senior government officials, F.B.I. agents from the bureau’s Washington field office, who are leading the investigation, believe that Mr. Snowden methodically downloaded the files over several months while working as a government contractor at the Hawaii facility. They also believe that he worked alone, the officials said.

But for all of Mr. Snowden’s technical expertise, some American officials also place blame on the security agency for being slow to install software that can detect unusual computer activity carried out by the agency’s work force — which, at approximately 35,000 employees, is the largest of any intelligence agency.

An N.S.A. spokeswoman declined to comment.

After a similar episode in 2010 — when an Army private, Chelsea Manning, gave hundreds of thousands of military chat logs and diplomatic cables to the antisecrecy group WikiLeaks — the Obama administration took steps intended to prevent another government employee from downloading and disseminating large volumes of classified material.

In October 2011, Mr. Obama signed an executive order establishing a task force charged with “deterring, detecting and mitigating insider threats, including the safeguarding of classified information from exploitation, compromise, or other unauthorized disclosure.” The task force, led by the attorney general and the director of national intelligence, has the responsibility of developing policies and new technologies to protect classified information.

But one of the changes, updating computer systems to track the digital meanderings of the employees of intelligence agencies, occurred slowly.

“We weren’t able to flip a switch and have all of those changes made instantly,” said one American intelligence official.

Lonny Anderson, the N.S.A.’s chief technology officer, said in a recent interview that much of what Mr. Snowden took came from parts of the computer system open to anyone with a high-level clearance. And part of his job was to move large amounts of data between different parts of the system.

But, Mr. Anderson said, Mr. Snowden’s activities were not closely monitored and did not set off warning signals.

“So the lesson learned for us is that you’ve got to remove anonymity” for those with access to classified systems, Mr. Anderson said during the interview with the Lawfare blog, part of a podcast series the website plans to run this week.

Officials said Mr. Snowden, who had an intimate understanding of the N.S.A.’s computer architecture, would have known that the Hawaii facility was behind other agency outposts in installing monitoring software.

According to a former government official who spoke recently with Gen. Keith B. Alexander, the N.S.A. director, the general said that at the time Mr. Snowden was downloading the documents, the spy agency was several months away from having systems in place to catch the activity.

As investigations by the F.B.I. and the N.S.A. grind on, the State Department and the White House have absorbed the impact of Mr. Snowden’s disclosures on America’s diplomatic relations with other countries.

“There are ongoing and continuing efforts by the State Department still to reach out to countries and to tell them things about what he took,” said one senior administration official. The official said the State Department often described the spying to foreign leaders as “business as usual” between nations.
« Last Edit: December 16, 2013, 09:45:37 pm by sky otter »

Offline Sinny

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Re: they know what you are doing
« Reply #417 on: December 16, 2013, 02:40:49 am »
At least I'm no longer the crazy paranoid Brit who thought the NSA was watching her computer lool.
"The very word "secrecy" is repugnant in a free and open society"- JFK

sky otter

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Re: they know what you are doing
« Reply #418 on: December 16, 2013, 09:24:21 pm »

is the tide turning and will it make any difference...?







http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/17/us/politics/federal-judge-rules-against-nsa-phone-data-program.html?_r=0

Judge Questions Legality of N.S.A. Phone Records

edit to add the bus pic..the best part..lol





A city bus in Washington displays a wraparound advertisement sponsored by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund.

By CHARLIE SAVAGE
Published: December 16, 2013


WASHINGTON — A federal district judge ruled on Monday that the National Security Agency program that is systematically keeping records of all Americans’ phone calls most likely violates the Constitution, describing its technology as “almost Orwellian” and suggesting that James Madison would be “aghast” to learn that the government was encroaching on liberty in such a way.

The judge, Richard J. Leon of Federal District Court for the District of Columbia, ordered the government to stop collecting data on the personal calls of the two plaintiffs in the case and to destroy the records of their calling history. But Judge Leon, appointed to the bench in 2002 by President George W. Bush, stayed his injunction “in light of the significant national security interests at stake in this case and the novelty of the constitutional issues,” allowing the government time to appeal it, which he said could take at least six months.

“I cannot imagine a more ‘indiscriminate’ and ‘arbitrary’ invasion than this systematic and high-tech collection and retention of personal data on virtually every single citizen for purposes of querying and analyzing it without prior judicial approval,” Judge Leon wrote in a 68-page ruling. “Surely, such a program infringes on ‘that degree of privacy’ that the founders enshrined in the Fourth Amendment,” which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures.

Andrew Ames, a Justice Department spokesman, said government lawyers were studying the decision, but he added: “We believe the program is constitutional as previous judges have found.”

The case is the first in which a federal judge who is not on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which authorized the once-secret program, has examined the bulk data collection on behalf of someone who is not a criminal defendant. The Justice Department has said that 15 separate judges on the surveillance court have held on 35 occasions that the calling data program is legal.



It also marks the first successful legal challenge brought against the program since it was revealed in June after leaks by the former N.S.A. contractor Edward J. Snowden.

In a statement from Moscow, where he has obtained temporary asylum, Mr. Snowden praised the ruling.

“I acted on my belief that the N.S.A.’s mass surveillance programs would not withstand a constitutional challenge, and that the American public deserved a chance to see these issues determined by open courts,” Mr. Snowden said in his statement. It was distributed by Glenn Greenwald, a journalist who received leaked documents from Mr. Snowden and wrote the first article about the bulk data collection. “Today, a secret program authorized by a secret court was, when exposed to the light of day, found to violate Americans’ rights,” the statement said. “It is the first of many.”

The case was brought by several plaintiffs led by Larry Klayman, a conservative legal activist. Mr. Klayman, who represented himself and the other plaintiffs, said in an interview on Monday that he was seeking to turn the case into a class action on behalf of all Americans. “I’m extremely gratified that Judge Leon had the courage to make this ruling,” he said. “He is an American hero.”

Mr. Klayman argued that he had legal standing to challenge the program in part because, he contended, the government had sent inexplicable text messages to his clients on his behalf; at a hearing, he told the judge, “I think they are messing with me.”

The judge portrayed that claim as “unusual” but looked past it, saying Mr. Klayman and his co-plaintiff instead had standing because it was highly likely, based on the government’s own description of the program as a “comprehensive metadata database,” that the N.S.A. collected data about their phone calls along with everyone else’s.

Similar legal challenges to the N.S.A. program, including by the American Civil Liberties Union and the advocacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation, are at earlier stages in the courts. Last month, the Supreme Court declined to hear an unusual challenge to the program by the Electronic Privacy Information Center, which had sought to bypass lower courts.

The ruling on Monday comes as several government panels are developing recommendations on whether to keep, restructure or scrap the bulk data collection program, and as Congress debates competing bills over the program’s future.

Though long and detailed, Judge Leon’s ruling is not a final judgment on the program, but rather a preliminary injunction to stop the collection of data about the plaintiffs while they pursued their case



He also wrote that he had “serious doubts about the efficacy” of the program, saying that the government had failed to cite “a single instance in which analysis of the N.S.A.’s bulk metadata collection actually stopped an imminent attack, or otherwise aided the government in achieving any objective that was time-sensitive.”

Judge Leon rejected the Obama administration’s argument that a 1979 case, Smith v. Maryland, had established there are no Fourth Amendment protections for call metadata — information like the numbers dialed and the date, time and duration of calls, but not their content. The 1979 case, which involved collecting information about a criminal defendant’s calls, helped establish the principle that people do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy for information they have exposed to a third party, like the phone company, which knows about their calls.

The surveillance court, which issues secret rulings after hearing arguments from only the Justice Department and without opposing lawyers, has maintained that the 1979 decision is a controlling precedent that shields the N.S.A. call data program from Fourth Amendment review. But Judge Leon, citing the scope of the program and the evolving role of phones and technology, distinguished the bulk collection from the 34-year-old case.

Last month, a federal judge declined to grant a new trial to several San Diego men convicted of sending money to a terrorist group in Somalia. Government officials have since acknowledged that investigators became interested in them because of the call records program. Citing Smith v. Maryland, the judge said the defendants had “no legitimate expectation of privacy” over their call data.

David Rivkin, a White House lawyer in the administration of the elder President George Bush, criticized Judge Leon’s reasoning.

“Smith v. Maryland is the law of the land,” Mr. Rivkin said. “It is not for a District Court judge to question the continuing validity of a Supreme Court precedent that is exactly on point.”

Judge Leon also pointed to a landmark privacy case decided by the Supreme Court in 2012 that held it was unconstitutional for the police to use a GPS tracking device to monitor a suspect’s public movements without a warrant.

Although the court decided the case on narrow grounds, five of the nine justices separately questioned whether the 1979 precedent was still valid in an era of modern technology, which enables long-term, automated collection of information.
« Last Edit: December 16, 2013, 09:47:23 pm by sky otter »

Offline thorfourwinds

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Re: they know what you are doing
« Reply #419 on: December 16, 2013, 09:48:21 pm »

Map Shows The NSA's Massive Worldwide Malware Operations - Business Insider

A new map details how many companies across the world have been infected by malware by the National Security Agency's team of hackers, and where the companies are located.

Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad reports the NSA uses malware to infect, infiltrate and steal information from over 50,000 computer networks around the globe. This new, previously unreported scope of the NSA's hacking operation comes from another PowerPoint slide showing a detailed map of every infection leaked by former contractor Edward Snowden.

The practice is called "Computer Network Exploitation," or CNE for short, and it's carried out by the NSA's Tailored Access Operations team. A yellow dot on the map signifies a CNE infection. The NSA plants malware within a network that can flipped on or off at any time.

Once a network is infected, the malware gives the NSA unfiltered access to the network's information whenever it's most convenient.
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