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Author Topic: they know what you are doing  (Read 273661 times)

sky otter

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Re: they know what you are doing
« Reply #240 on: July 31, 2013, 09:55:14 pm »


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-23522565

31 July 2013 Last updated at 21:48 ET

US declassifies phone-snooping order

The Obama administration has released documents on its phone-snooping, as a Senate panel questions intelligence officials about the programme.

The declassification was made in the "interest of increased transparency", intelligence officials said.

But significant parts of the three released documents were redacted.

Meanwhile the father of Edward Snowden, who leaked information about the surveillance, says the FBI has asked him to go to Moscow to see his son.

Also on Wednesday, the UK's Guardian newspaper published slides leaked by Edward Snowden that detail a secret US surveillance system known as XKeyscore.

It reportedly enables American intelligence to monitor "nearly everything a typical user does on the internet".

The programme includes real-time data and suggests analysts could narrow searches through use of so-called metadata also stored by the National Security Agency (NSA), America's electronic intelligence organisation, the newspaper reports.

Blacked out
 
The official US documents released on Wednesday include a court order describing how the data from the phone-snooping programme would be stored and accessed.

Two reports to US lawmakers on the telephone and email records were also declassified.

But lines in the files, including details on "selection terms" used to search the massive data stores, were blacked out.

Deputy Attorney General James Cole told a Senate judiciary committee hearing on Wednesday that the court order spells out how the government can use call data obtained from telecom giants such as Verizon.

For the first time, the government acknowledged publicly that by using what it calls "hop analysis" it can scour the phone calls of millions of Americans in the hunt for just one suspect.

NSA analysts could use the records of everyone a suspect calls, as well as everyone who contacts the contacts of contacts of the initial suspect.

If the average person calls 40 unique people, such three-hop analysis could allow the government to mine the records of 2.5 million Americans when investigating one suspected terrorist.

Senator Richard Durbin said: "What's being described as a very narrow programme is really a very broad programme."

But the head of the NSA, General Keith Alexander, remained unapologetic about the agency's methods at a hacker conference in Las Vegas on Wednesday, insisting the programme had prevented attacks on the US.

'Find a safe haven'
 
Wednesday's was the first congressional session on the issue since the House narrowly rejected a proposal effectively to shut down the NSA's secret collection of hundreds of millions of Americans' phone records.

During the early parts of the hearing, NSA deputy director John Inglis said "no" when asked if anyone had been fired over the leak.

"No-one has offered to resign," Mr Inglis said. "Everyone is working hard to understand what happened."

Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy, the chairman of the committee, also questioned the deputy director on the number of attacks the agency said had been disrupted by the programmes.

"If this programme is not effective it has to end. So far, I'm not convinced by what I've seen," said Sen Leahy, who cited "massive privacy implications" of keeping phone call records.

Gen Alexander has said phone and internet surveillance disrupted 54 schemes by militants.

Sen Leahy said a list of the relevant plots provided to Congress did not reflect dozens, as he said, "let alone 54 as some have suggested".

Mr Inglis said the phone surveillance helped disrupt or discover attacks 12 times, and the larger number were foiled thanks to both the phone-records snooping and a second programme collecting global internet users' data.

Meanwhile, Edward Snowden's father, Lon, told Russian state TV he does not believe his son would get a fair trial in America and that the fugitive should stay in Russia.

In the interview, the elder Snowden thanked the Russian authorities for keeping his son safe and advised the 29-year-old "to find a safe haven".

Edward Snowden, a former NSA contractor, has been stuck in a transit area at a Moscow airport for more than a month after the US revoked his travel documents.

sky otter

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Re: they know what you are doing
« Reply #241 on: August 01, 2013, 07:57:58 am »


http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/08/01/19815210-edward-snowden-granted-temporary-asylum-in-russia?lite

Edward Snowden granted temporary asylum in Russia

By Jim Maceda and Alastair Jamieson, NBC News
MOSCOW, Russia - NSA leaker Edward Snowden has been granted temporary asylum in Russia and has left the Moscow airport where he had been stranded for more than a month, his lawyer said Thursday.

An airport representative told Reuters that the former intelligence contractor had already crossed through the immigration line and left the airport.

Snowden's lawyer, Anatoly Kucherena, said he wouldn't disclose the 30-year-old fugitive's whereabouts for security reasons.

“He is the most wanted man on planet Earth. What do you think he is going to do? He has to think about his personal security. I cannot tell you where he is going,” Kucherena told Reuters.

“I put him in a taxi 15 to 20 minutes ago and gave him his certificate on getting refugee status in the Russian Federation,” he said. “He can live wherever he wants in Russia. It's his personal choice.”

WikiLeaks posted on Twitter that Snowden had been granted asylum in Russia for a year.

"We would like to thank the Russian people and all those others who have helped to protect Mr. Snowden," it said in a tweet.

"We have won the battle -- now the war."

Marie Harf, a State Department deputy spokesperson, told reporters Wednesday that Snowden was “not a human rights activist.”

“He’s not a dissident. He’s been accused of leaking classified information, has been charged with three very serious felony counts, and must be, should be, returned to the United States to face a free and fair trial as soon as possible,” she said at the daily briefing.

“We are working through law enforcement channels with the Russian government to make the point that Mr. Snowden is wanted on serious felony charges and needs to be returned to the United States.”

But Harf added that the U.S. had also “made the point that we don’t want this issue to have a hugely negative impact on our bilateral relationship.”

A senior Kremlin official, Yuri Ushakov, told Reuters that he doubted ties between Russia and the United States would suffer because of the “relatively insignificant” Snowden case.

“Our president has ... expressed hope many times that this will not affect the character of our relations,” he told reporters, saying there was no sign that U.S. President Barack Obama would cancel a planned visit to Moscow in September.

Reuters contributed to this report.

sky otter

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Re: they know what you are doing
« Reply #242 on: August 04, 2013, 07:44:39 pm »

ok.. if all the info was public for the last 7 or so years then Snowden isn't a traitor.. and really not even a whistle blower.
so what's the freakin big deal already..? ?   geeeeeeeeeze




Snowden’s ‘secrets’ should not surprise
By Lou Kilzer

Published: Saturday, August 3, 2013, 9:30 p.m.
Updated 5 hours ago


Almost all the information about spying made public by celebrity American intelligence leaker Edward Snowden could have been gathered during the past seven years by any foreign agency, terrorist organization or individual with Internet access. And little about the National Security Agency's information gathering should surprise Americans.

The NSA's programs were so well-publicized in news articles and books that a federal judge in 2010 called the government's spying “common knowledge to most Americans,” a Tribune-Review examination found.

By then, dozens of civil rights lawsuits over NSA snooping had been filed — almost all receiving news coverage. They were dismissed, though appeals are pending.

“One thing that is ‘new' is that there is controversy, where previously there was pretty much none,” John Pike, who directs the national security website GlobalSecurity.org, said of Snowden's disclosures, many of them to The Guardian, a U.K. newspaper.

Retired Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden, former head of the NSA and subsequently, the CIA, told the Trib that Snowden added little to what had been publicly reported.

His primary concern, he said, is that Snowden took computers that could contain strategic information when he fled the United States.

“I would lose all respect for Chinese State Security or the (Russian) FSB if they hadn't drained Snowden's computers,” Hayden said.

Hayden doubts encryption on the computers could withstand a concerted attack.

“I used to laugh when someone said the encryption on something was unbreakable,” he said.

The Guardian this past week published Snowden's latest “top secret” announcement about the NSA's using the XKEYSCORE program to spy overseas. The program reportedly captures content of foreign emails.

The NSA, established in 1952 specifically to gather foreign electronic intelligence, responded with a statement that any “implication that NSA's collection is arbitrary and unconstrained is false.”

As of 2008, XKEYSCORE had led to the capture of more than 300 terrorists, the NSA said.

Marc Ambinder, who co-authored a book that discussed XKEYSCORE, pointed out online that searching LinkedIn profiles for national security information will yield hundreds of individuals who worked for NSA and list fluency in XKEYSCORE as a skill.

“I quibble with The Guardian's description of the program as ‘top secret.' The word is not secret; its association with the NSA is not secret. That the NSA collects bulk data on foreign targets is, well, probably classified, but (not) at the secret level,” Ambinder said.

Public disclosure in 2005

Snowden's supporters contend he revealed to an unknowing public two critical parts of the snooping program: that Verizon released “metadata” on customers' calls to the NSA, giving their origin, destination and duration, and that the NSA can examine the content of emails and phone calls.

None of this, however, appears to be new, although names of the programs and mechanics evolved over the years.

In December 2005, The New York Times — after waiting for more than a year at the Bush administration's request — revealed the essence of what would evolve into the capture of telephone and Internet content. Based on interviews with more than 10 sources, the newspaper said the government intercepted certain calls and emails to or from the United States in which the originator or recipient were foreigners.

Hundreds, even thousands, of American communications were intercepted involving citizens, the Times said.

In response to some public outcry, President George W. Bush acknowledged authorizing that but said the disclosure was improper: “As a result, our enemies have learned information they should not have, and the unauthorized disclosure of this effort damages our national security and puts our citizens at risk.”

The Justice Department began a widely publicized search for leakers.

Six months later, USA Today laid out the metadata aspect: “The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth.”

The newspaper quoted a source saying the agency's goal was “to create a database of every call ever made within the United States.”

Access initially restricted

“Warrantless wiretap programs,” then and now, seemed to be fused in many people's minds.

Yet initial warrantless spying on U.S. citizens was restricted and limited, Bush reported, an assertion supported by an Inspector General report released by The Washington Post and The Guardian.

The IG's report shows that between Oct. 4, 2001, when Bush authorized the program, and Jan. 17, 2007, when the warrantless program ended, the government read content from 406 email addresses and intercepted conversations between U.S. citizens and foreigners from 2,612 phone numbers. Ninety-two percent of data intercepted was foreign.

The three American telecoms providing data collectively supply 81 percent of international telephone access in the Unites States. The IG noted that in 2002, nearly all of the world's Internet traffic traveled through the United States.

Snowden claimed that nine Internet companies such as Google, Yahoo and Microsoft later gave NSA direct access to their servers — an assertion each company disputes.

Before American communications were intercepted, such requests went through rigorous review, the inspector general reported.

Alan Freedman of the Washington-based nonprofit Brookings Institution said many people wrongly believe the government recorded content of most telephone calls or emails. “This is not the case,” he said.

However, Freedman said the NSA never before intercepted calls to or from the United States. The gravity of that depends on one's stance on privacy, he said.

Amplified awareness

Under Bush, the President's Surveillance Program, as it was called, bypassed seeking warrants from a court established to handle matters of national security after the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (commonly referred to as FISA court). After 9/11, Bush said it was necessary to act speedily, and he authorized snooping for 30 days. In 2002, an appeals court ruled he had the power to do so.

President Obama campaigned in 2008 with a pledge to end warrantless wiretaps. But by then, the program had ended; the FISA court took it under its wing. As a senator in 2008, Obama voted to amend the FISA legislation to require warrants for such spying. The legislation immunized companies that participated in Bush's warrantless program. As president, Obama has fought to retain the 2008 changes.

Experts believe social media may be one reason that people are more aware of domestic spying. Twitter, for example, did not exist when the 9/11 attacks occurred, nor did Facebook, smartphones and rampant texting.

Joshua Benton, director of the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University, said social media enable people with similar views to align. If groups of people find a story interesting, he said, it can instantly burgeon — within and outside those groups.

Snowden gives the spying story a narrative and a face, said Benton, a former reporter. It became not an abstract story about intelligence but one about a young man scrambling around the world to escape the clutches of authorities.

“The Web and social media do make it much easier for news junkies to sink their teeth into a story and amplify it across their networks,” Benton said. “But I think this story would have blown up big even if we still only had newspapers and television. It's just a good old-fashioned, juicy, dramatic story.”

Lou Kilzer is a Trib Total Media staff writer. Reach him  lkilzer@tribweb.com.

 


Read more: http://triblive.com/news/editorspicks/4408043-74/nsa-snowden-program#ixzz2b3h7UQRq
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Offline Amaterasu

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Re: they know what you are doing
« Reply #243 on: August 04, 2013, 08:07:17 pm »
Snowden is a psyop, I tell You.
"If the universe is made of mostly Dark Energy...can We use it to run Our cars?"

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sky otter

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Re: they know what you are doing
« Reply #244 on: August 05, 2013, 08:28:00 am »


video at link


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/05/dea-surveillance-cover-up_n_3706207.html

DEA Special Operations Division Covers Up Surveillance Used To Investigate Americans: Report
Reuters  |  Posted: 08/05/2013 4:59 am EDT  |  Updated: 08/05/2013 9:34 am EDT






By John Shiffman and Kristina Cooke

WASHINGTON, Aug 5 (Reuters) - A secretive U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration unit is funneling information from intelligence intercepts, wiretaps, informants and a massive database of telephone records to authorities across the nation to help them launch criminal investigations of Americans.

Although these cases rarely involve national security issues, documents reviewed by Reuters show that law enforcement agents have been directed to conceal how such investigations truly begin - not only from defense lawyers but also sometimes from prosecutors and judges.

The undated documents show that federal agents are trained to "recreate" the investigative trail to effectively cover up where the information originated, a practice that some experts say violates a defendant's Constitutional right to a fair trial. If defendants don't know how an investigation began, they cannot know to ask to review potential sources of exculpatory evidence - information that could reveal entrapment, mistakes or biased witnesses.

"I have never heard of anything like this at all," said Nancy Gertner, a Harvard Law School professor who served as a federal judge from 1994 to 2011. Gertner and other legal experts said the program sounds more troubling than recent disclosures that the National Security Agency has been collecting domestic phone records. The NSA effort is geared toward stopping terrorists; the DEA program targets common criminals, primarily drug dealers.

"It is one thing to create special rules for national security," Gertner said. "Ordinary crime is entirely different. It sounds like they are phonying up investigations."

THE SPECIAL OPERATIONS DIVISION

The unit of the DEA that distributes the information is called the Special Operations Division, or SOD. Two dozen partner agencies comprise the unit, including the FBI, CIA, NSA, Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Homeland Security. It was created in 1994 to combat Latin American drug cartels and has grown from several dozen employees to several hundred.

Today, much of the SOD's work is classified, and officials asked that its precise location in Virginia not be revealed. The documents reviewed by Reuters are marked "Law Enforcement Sensitive," a government categorization that is meant to keep them confidential.

"Remember that the utilization of SOD cannot be revealed or discussed in any investigative function," a document presented to agents reads. The document specifically directs agents to omit the SOD's involvement from investigative reports, affidavits, discussions with prosecutors and courtroom testimony. Agents are instructed to then use "normal investigative techniques to recreate the information provided by SOD."

A spokesman with the Department of Justice, which oversees the DEA, declined to comment.

But two senior DEA officials defended the program, and said trying to "recreate" an investigative trail is not only legal but a technique that is used almost daily.

A former federal agent in the northeastern United States who received such tips from SOD described the process. "You'd be told only, 'Be at a certain truck stop at a certain time and look for a certain vehicle.' And so we'd alert the state police to find an excuse to stop that vehicle, and then have a drug dog search it," the agent said.

"PARALLEL CONSTRUCTION"

After an arrest was made, agents then pretended that their investigation began with the traffic stop, not with the SOD tip, the former agent said. The training document reviewed by Reuters refers to this process as "parallel construction."

The two senior DEA officials, who spoke on behalf of the agency but only on condition of anonymity, said the process is kept secret to protect sources and investigative methods. "Parallel construction is a law enforcement technique we use every day," one official said. "It's decades old, a bedrock concept."

A dozen current or former federal agents interviewed by Reuters confirmed they had used parallel construction during their careers. Most defended the practice; some said they understood why those outside law enforcement might be concerned.

"It's just like laundering money - you work it backwards to make it clean," said Finn Selander, a DEA agent from 1991 to 2008 and now a member of a group called Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, which advocates legalizing and regulating narcotics.

Some defense lawyers and former prosecutors said that using "parallel construction" may be legal to establish probable cause for an arrest. But they said employing the practice as a means of disguising how an investigation began may violate pretrial discovery rules by burying evidence that could prove useful to criminal defendants.

A QUESTION OF CONSTITUTIONALITY

"That's outrageous," said Tampa attorney James Felman, a vice chairman of the criminal justice section of the American Bar Association. "It strikes me as indefensible."

Lawrence Lustberg, a New Jersey defense lawyer, said any systematic government effort to conceal the circumstances under which cases begin "would not only be alarming but pretty blatantly unconstitutional."

Lustberg and others said the government's use of the SOD program skirts established court procedures by which judges privately examine sensitive information, such as an informant's identity or classified evidence, to determine whether the information is relevant to the defense.

"You can't game the system," said former federal prosecutor Henry E. Hockeimer Jr. "You can't create this subterfuge. These are drug crimes, not national security cases. If you don't draw the line here, where do you draw it?"

Some lawyers say there can be legitimate reasons for not revealing sources. Robert Spelke, a former prosecutor who spent seven years as a senior DEA lawyer, said some sources are classified. But he also said there are few reasons why unclassified evidence should be concealed at trial.

"It's a balancing act, and they've doing it this way for years," Spelke said. "Do I think it's a good way to do it? No, because now that I'm a defense lawyer, I see how difficult it is to challenge."

CONCEALING A TIP

One current federal prosecutor learned how agents were using SOD tips after a drug agent misled him, the prosecutor told Reuters. In a Florida drug case he was handling, the prosecutor said, a DEA agent told him the investigation of a U.S. citizen began with a tip from an informant. When the prosecutor pressed for more information, he said, a DEA supervisor intervened and revealed that the tip had actually come through the SOD and from an NSA intercept.

"I was pissed," the prosecutor said. "Lying about where the information came from is a bad start if you're trying to comply with the law because it can lead to all kinds of problems with discovery and candor to the court." The prosecutor never filed charges in the case because he lost confidence in the investigation, he said.

A senior DEA official said he was not aware of the case but said the agent should not have misled the prosecutor. How often such misdirection occurs is unknown, even to the government; the DEA official said the agency does not track what happens with tips after the SOD sends them to agents in the field.

The SOD's role providing information to agents isn't itself a secret. It is briefly mentioned by the DEA in budget documents, albeit without any reference to how that information is used or represented when cases go to court.

The DEA has long publicly touted the SOD's role in multi-jurisdictional and international investigations, connecting agents in separate cities who may be unwittingly investigating the same target and making sure undercover agents don't accidentally try to arrest each other.

SOD'S BIG SUCCESSES

The unit also played a major role in a 2008 DEA sting in Thailand against Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout; he was sentenced in 2011 to 25 years in prison on charges of conspiring to sell weapons to the Colombian rebel group FARC. The SOD also recently coordinated Project Synergy, a crackdown against manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers of synthetic designer drugs that spanned 35 states and resulted in 227 arrests.

Since its inception, the SOD's mandate has expanded to include narco-terrorism, organized crime and gangs. A DEA spokesman declined to comment on the unit's annual budget. A recent LinkedIn posting on the personal page of a senior SOD official estimated it to be $125 million.

Today, the SOD offers at least three services to federal, state and local law enforcement agents: coordinating international investigations such as the Bout case; distributing tips from overseas NSA intercepts, informants, foreign law enforcement partners and domestic wiretaps; and circulating tips from a massive database known as DICE.

The DICE database contains about 1 billion records, the senior DEA officials said. The majority of the records consist of phone log and Internet data gathered legally by the DEA through subpoenas, arrests and search warrants nationwide. Records are kept for about a year and then purged, the DEA officials said.

About 10,000 federal, state and local law enforcement agents have access to the DICE database, records show. They can query it to try to link otherwise disparate clues. Recently, one of the DEA officials said, DICE linked a man who tried to smuggle $100,000 over the U.S. southwest border to a major drug case on the East Coast.

"We use it to connect the dots," the official said.

"AN AMAZING TOOL"

Wiretap tips forwarded by the SOD usually come from foreign governments, U.S. intelligence agencies or court-authorized domestic phone recordings. Because warrantless eavesdropping on Americans is illegal, tips from intelligence agencies are generally not forwarded to the SOD until a caller's citizenship can be verified, according to one senior law enforcement official and one former U.S. military intelligence analyst.

"They do a pretty good job of screening, but it can be a struggle to know for sure whether the person on a wiretap is American," the senior law enforcement official said.

Tips from domestic wiretaps typically occur when agents use information gleaned from a court-ordered wiretap in one case to start a second investigation.

As a practical matter, law enforcement agents said they usually don't worry that SOD's involvement will be exposed in court. That's because most drug-trafficking defendants plead guilty before trial and therefore never request to see the evidence against them. If cases did go to trial, current and former agents said, charges were sometimes dropped to avoid the risk of exposing SOD involvement.

Current and former federal agents said SOD tips aren't always helpful - one estimated their accuracy at 60 percent. But current and former agents said tips have enabled them to catch drug smugglers who might have gotten away.

"It was an amazing tool," said one recently retired federal agent. "Our big fear was that it wouldn't stay secret."

DEA officials said that the SOD process has been reviewed internally. They declined to provide Reuters with a copy of their most recent review. (Edited by Blake Morrison)

sky otter

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Re: they know what you are doing
« Reply #245 on: August 08, 2013, 06:47:26 am »


http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/08/us/broader-sifting-of-data-abroad-is-seen-by-nsa.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0

N.S.A. Sifting Broader Set of Data Crossing U.S. Border

By CHARLIE SAVAGE
Published: August 8, 2013


WASHINGTON — The National Security Agencyhttp://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/n/national_security_agency/index.html?inline=nyt-org

is searching the contents of vast amounts of Americans’ e-mail and text communications into and out of the country, hunting for people who mention information about foreigners under surveillance, according to intelligence officials.

The N.S.A. is not just intercepting the communications of Americans who are in direct contact with foreigners targeted overseas, a practice that government officials have openly acknowledged. It is also casting a far wider net for people who cite information linked to those foreigners, like a little used e-mail address, according to a senior intelligence official.

While it has long been known that the agency conducts extensive computer searches of data it vacuums up overseas, that it is systematically searching — without warrants — through the contents of Americans’ communications that cross the border reveals more about the scale of its secret operations.

It also adds another element to the unfolding debate, provoked by the disclosures of Edward J. Snowden, the former N.S.A. contractor, about whether the agency has infringed on Americans’ privacy as it scoops up e-mails and phone data in its quest to ferret out foreign intelligence.

Government officials say the cross-border surveillance was authorized by a 2008 law, the FISA Amendments Act, in which Congress approved eavesdropping on domestic soil without warrants as long as the “target” was a noncitizen abroad. Voice communications are not included in that surveillance, the senior official said.

Asked to comment, Judith A. Emmel, an N.S.A. spokeswoman, did not directly address surveillance of cross-border communications. But she said the agency’s activities were lawful and intended to gather intelligence not about Americans but about “foreign powers and their agents, foreign organizations, foreign persons or international terrorists.”

“In carrying out its signals intelligence mission, N.S.A. collects only what it is explicitly authorized to collect,” she said. “Moreover, the agency’s activities are deployed only in response to requirements for information to protect the country and its interests.”

Hints of the surveillance appeared in a set of rules, http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/727943-exhibit-a.html

 leaked by Mr. Snowden, for how the N.S.A. may carry out the 2008 FISA law. One paragraph mentions that the agency “seeks to acquire communications about the target that are not to or from the target.” The pages were posted online by the newspaper The Guardian on June 20,

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/20/fisa-court-nsa-without-warrant

but the telltale paragraph, the only rule marked “Top Secret” amid 18 pages of restrictions, went largely overlooked amid other disclosures.

To conduct the surveillance, the N.S.A. is temporarily copying and then sifting through the contents of what is apparently most e-mails and other text-based communications that cross the border. The senior intelligence official, who, like other former and current government officials, spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the topic, said the N.S.A. makes a “clone of selected communication links” to gather the communications, but declined to specify details, like the volume of the data that passes through them.

Computer scientists said that it would be difficult to systematically search the contents of the communications without first gathering nearly all cross-border text-based data; fiber-optic networks work by breaking messages into tiny packets that flow at the speed of light over different pathways to their shared destination, so they would need to be captured and reassembled.

The official said that a computer searches the data for the identifying keywords or other “selectors” and stores those that match so that human analysts could later examine them. The remaining communications, the official said, are deleted; the entire process takes “a small number of seconds,” and the system has no ability to perform “retrospective searching.”

The official said the keyword and other terms were “very precise” to minimize the number of innocent American communications that were flagged by the program. At the same time, the official acknowledged that there had been times when changes by telecommunications providers or in the technology had led to inadvertent overcollection. The N.S.A. monitors for these problems, fixes them and reports such incidents to its overseers in the government, the official said.

The disclosure sheds additional light on statements intelligence officials have made recently, reassuring the public that they do not “target” Americans for surveillance without warrants.

At a House Intelligence Committee oversight hearing in June, for example, a lawmaker pressed the deputy director of the N.S.A., John Inglis,

http://www.c-spanvideo.org/clip/4461523

to say whether the agency listened to the phone calls or read the e-mails and text messages of American citizens. Mr. Inglis replied, “We do not target the content of U.S. person communications without a specific warrant anywhere on the earth.”


Timothy Edgar, a former intelligence official in the Bush and Obama administrations, said that the rule concerning collection “about” a person targeted for surveillance rather than directed at that person had provoked significant internal discussion.
“There is an ambiguity in the law about what it means to ‘target’ someone,” Mr. Edgar, now a visiting professor at Brown, said. “You can never intentionally target someone inside the United States. Those are the words we were looking at. We were most concerned about making sure the procedures only target communications that have one party outside the United States.”



The rule they ended up writing, which was secretly approved by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, says that the N.S.A. must ensure that one of the participants in any conversation that is acquired when it is searching for conversations about a targeted foreigner must be outside the United States, so that the surveillance is technically directed at the foreign end.



Americans’ communications singled out for further analysis are handled in accordance with “minimization” rules to protect privacy approved by the surveillance court. If private information is not relevant to understanding foreign intelligence, it is deleted; if it is relevant, the agency can retain it and disseminate it to other agencies, the rules show.

While the paragraph hinting at the surveillance has attracted little attention, the American Civil Liberties Union did take note of the “about the target” language in a June 21 post analyzing the larger set of rules, arguing that the language could be interpreted as allowing “bulk” collection of international communications, including of those of Americans.



Jameel Jaffer, a senior lawyer at the A.C.L.U., said Wednesday that such “dragnet surveillance will be poisonous to the freedoms of inquiry and association” because people who know that their communications will be searched will change their behavior.

“They’ll hesitate before visiting controversial Web sites, discussing controversial topics or investigating politically sensitive questions,” Mr. Jaffer said. “Individually, these hesitations might appear to be inconsequential, but the accumulation of them over time will change citizens’ relationship to one another and to the government.”



The senior intelligence official argued, however, that it would be inaccurate to portray the N.S.A. as engaging in “bulk collection” of the contents of communications. “ ‘Bulk collection’ is when we collect and retain for some period of time that lets us do retrospective analysis,” the official said. “In this case, we do not do that, so we do not consider this ‘bulk collection.’ ”

Stewart Baker, a former general counsel for the N.S.A., said that such surveillance could be valuable in identifying previously unknown terrorists or spies inside the United States who unwittingly reveal themselves to the agency by discussing a foreign-intelligence “indicator.” He cited a situation in which officials learn that Al Qaeda was planning to use a particular phone number on the day of an attack.

“If someone is sending that number out, chances are they are on the inside of the plot, and I want to find the people who are on the inside of the plot,” he said.



The senior intelligence official said that the “about the target” surveillance had been valuable, but said it was difficult to point to any particular terrorist plot that would have been carried out if the surveillance had not taken place. He said it was one tool among many used to assemble a “mosaic” of information in such investigations. He also pointed out that the surveillance was used for other types of foreign-intelligence collection, not just terrorism, the official said.



There has been no public disclosure of any ruling by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court explaining its legal analysis of the 2008 FISA law and the Fourth Amendment as allowing “about the target” searches of Americans’ cross-border communications. But in 2009, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel signed off on a similar process for searching federal employees’ communications without a warrant to make sure none contain malicious computer code.



That opinion, by Steven G. Bradbury, who led the office in the Bush administration, may echo the still-secret legal analysis. He wrote that because that system, called EINSTEIN 2.0,
pdf file go to link for connection to this
scanned communications traffic “only for particular malicious computer code” and there was no authorization to acquire the content for unrelated purposes, it “imposes, at worst, a minimal burden upon legitimate privacy rights.”

Offline Amaterasu

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Re: they know what you are doing
« Reply #246 on: August 08, 2013, 10:30:40 am »
Given that Al Q(however it's spelt) is a CIA construct, the reading of:

Quote
He cited a situation in which officials learn that Al Qaeda was planning to use a particular phone number on the day of an attack.

“If someone is sending that number out, chances are they are on the inside of the plot, and I want to find the people who are on the inside of the plot,” he said.

had Me in stitches!
"If the universe is made of mostly Dark Energy...can We use it to run Our cars?"

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sky otter

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Re: they know what you are doing
« Reply #247 on: August 08, 2013, 10:49:06 am »


yeah the whole bunch of these articles
(which i am only putting here to watch the evolution of the spin)

makes me want to laugh and cry at the same time

i keep asking
who believes this stuff?
and sadly the answer is
millions
but most folk ~ that wonderous silent majority ~ aren't even paying attention

 :'( ;D    ???

sky otter

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Re: they know what you are doing
« Reply #248 on: August 11, 2013, 03:47:48 pm »


wellllll this headline certainly clears up a few other headlines making the news..
gotta watch the peoples more closely  to save them
yep...
what a crock  >:(


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/11/michael-hayden-nsa_n_3739610.html
 
Ryan Grim Become a fan
ryan@huffingtonpost.com

  Michael Hayden, Former NSA Chief: After A Major Attack, U.S. Likely To Seize More Surveillance Powers

Posted: 08/11/2013 12:06 pm EDT  |  Updated: 08/11/2013 3:43 pm EDT



WASHINGTON -- Former National Security Agency chief Gen. Michael Hayden hinted Sunday at how the NSA's eavesdropping and data collection program is likely to evolve over time. Critics of the project have warned that by building the capacity to track the electronic communications of all American citizens, the government will inevitably be tempted to employ every tool it has at its disposal and scuttle whatever constitutional safeguards stand in the way. Not to do so eventually would in fact be more surprising, goes the argument.

In an appearance on CBS' "Face The Nation," Hayden -- also the former head of the CIA -- unintentionally opened a window into just how that evolution will likely unfold.

Asked by host Bob Schieffer about the president's proposal for a civil liberties advocate to argue on behalf of the Constitution in the secret court that oversees the NSA, Hayden said that such a setup would be inappropriate for fast-moving investigations. But he did float a hypothetical scenario in which such a safeguard might be appropriate: After an attack, he said, the NSA would want to use the vast store of information it has been collecting in more aggressive ways.

Hayden said that in general he was opposed to a civil liberties advocate's involvement in the process, and warned that slowing it down would lead to criticism.

"When you're looking in your rearview mirror after the next successful attack, this runs the danger of looking like bureaucratic layering," he said. "And, so, you need to be careful about how many processes you put in there even though I freely admit, you don't get to do this at all unless the American people feel comfortable about it."

He continued, adding that an advocate might be appropriate after an attack, when the temptation to overreach is greatest.

"This is no one's proposal," he cautioned, before unveiling his hypothetical. "You've got this metadata. It's now [currently] queried under very, very narrow circumstances. If the nation suffers an attack, there are other things you could do with that metadata. There are other tools. So in that kind of emergency perhaps you would go to the court and say, 'In addition to these very limited queries we're allowed to do, we actually want to launch some complex algorithms against it.'"

"That's the kind of argument that frankly, even I could accept you might wanna have an advocate there," he said.

In Hayden's hypothetical, the NSA would want to use an advanced algorithm to search through the information it had collected on American citizens. Such an algorithm could, for instance, read the email of every American, the type of search that is strictly prohibited by the Fourth Amendment.

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized," the amendment reads.

Edward Snowden and the debate over privacy and national security dominated the Sunday shows in the wake of President Obama's Friday news conference in which he unveiled a series of proposed reforms.

The president suggested increasing the transparency of the eavesdropping and data collection project, and creating an advocate for civil liberties who would contest government requests for information before the secret court.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) told Fox News Sunday's Chris Wallace that he could get behind the president. "I don't disagree with any of those proposals of the president," he said.

McCain, for his part, said he was concerned that younger people were losing trust in the government, and that many seemed to view Snowden as "some kind of Jason Bourne."

Hayden was asked his opinion of Snowden. "I've actually thought about this," he said. "He didn't inform [the debate], he made it more emotional."

He compared Snowden's revelations to Hurricane Katrina. The disaster, Hayden said, had led to the construction of much stronger levies, which is a good thing, but, "Katrina was still a bad thing."

"He wasn't a whistleblower, he was a defector," Hayden determined.

Asked specifically if he considered Snowden a traitor, he said, "Traitor is narrowly defined in the Constitution. I'll stick with defector."

Hayden was also asked about members of Congress, who have criticized the NSA for being less than transparent, even in its classified briefings. "Let me apologize to members of Congress," he said, before adding that, "this is just incredibly complicated."

"The agency's been tremendously candid," he promised, pointing to a previous classified letter that informed Congress that "we are gathering the metadata of all calls in the United States."

After apologizing, he pinned the blame on members of Congress. "If you don't have time" to sufficiently study the intelligence community, he said, "then you shouldn't be a member of the [intelligence] committee."

This story has been updated to include full quotes from Hayden's interview.

Offline zorgon

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Re: they know what you are doing
« Reply #249 on: August 12, 2013, 02:17:27 am »
POINT ONE

They have over 120 spy agencies on the public payroll

They have ECHELON and MUOS listening posts all over the world

They have every internet network being recorded

They monitor every email and cell phone call

They have satellites (hundreds) that can read a newspaper over your shoulder...

HOW MUCH MORE CAN THEY POSSIBLE SPY ON????

POINT TWO

90% of people on Facebook and Twitter ( as well as on the rest of the web...) do little more than post pictures and add endless comment like 'pretty pic or share false news stories or the latest gossip....

WHY do these people think that the SPOOKS give a rats ass about what they are up to?

Now me for example... been spending years exposing whatever I can... and yes THEY have visited the house and spent three days chatting. At the end of that visit my .mil access increased and today bout NASA and the Military run a few ads on the Living Moon :D

So STOP WORRYING you are not important enough :P If you were they would already have knocked on your door :D

Offline Sinny

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Re: they know what you are doing
« Reply #250 on: August 12, 2013, 03:23:57 am »
Ha.

I had to get my laptop serviced yesterday, as there appeared to be something eating my system from the inside out - and I couldn't locate the damned thing.

The guy who worked on it said it apeared 'somebody' was in there 'having a good nose around'.

Hmm.
"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 #251 on: August 12, 2013, 07:09:48 am »

So STOP WORRYING you are not important enough  If you were they would already have knocked on your door

no worries on my end..see reply #247

bwhahahahahahahahahahah

















Reply #247
yeah the whole bunch of these articles
(which i am only putting here to watch the evolution of the spin)

makes me want to laugh and cry at the same time

i keep asking
who believes this stuff?
and sadly the answer is
millions
but most folk ~ that wonderous silent majority ~ aren't even paying attention
« Last Edit: August 12, 2013, 07:12:02 am by sky otter »

Offline stealthyaroura

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Re: they know what you are doing
« Reply #252 on: August 12, 2013, 03:27:35 pm »
POINT ONE

They have over 120 spy agencies on the public payroll

They have ECHELON and MUOS listening posts all over the world

They have every internet network being recorded

They monitor every email and cell phone call

They have satellites (hundreds) that can read a newspaper over your shoulder...

HOW MUCH MORE CAN THEY POSSIBLE SPY ON????

POINT TWO

90% of people on Facebook and Twitter ( as well as on the rest of the web...) do little more than post pictures and add endless comment like 'pretty pic or share false news stories or the latest gossip....

WHY do these people think that the SPOOKS give a rats ass about what they are up to?

Now me for example... been spending years exposing whatever I can... and yes THEY have visited the house and spent three days chatting. At the end of that visit my .mil access increased and today bout NASA and the Military run a few ads on the Living Moon :D

So STOP WORRYING you are not important enough :P If you were they would already have knocked on your door :D

EXACTLY ECHELON and my country the UK does most the work THIS IS OLD NEWS!!!!!
I don't care.I'm not shocked! if you are then you have dropped the ball.menwith hill anybody??
Nikola Tesla humanitarian / Genius.
never forget this great man who gave so much
& asked for nothing but to let electricity be free for all.

sky otter

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Re: they know what you are doing
« Reply #253 on: August 12, 2013, 08:49:04 pm »


ah just another data base..
what's the harm >:(




http://www.today.com/money/serial-returners-beware-retailers-are-tracking-you-6C10900265#money/serial-returners-retailers-are-tracking-you-6C10900265

Your money
Serial returners, beware: Retailers are tracking you
 
Jennifer C. Kerr The Associated Press
10 hours ago

It's not just the government that might be keeping tabs on you. Many retailers are tracking you, too — or at least your merchandise returns.

The companies say it's all in the name of security and fighting fraud. They want to be able to identify chronic returners or gangs of thieves trying to make off with high-end products that are returned later for store credit.

Consumer advocates are raising transparency issues about the practice of having companies collect information on consumers and create "return profiles" of customers at big-name stores such as Best Buy, J.C. Penney, Victoria's Secret, Home Depot and Nike.

The practice led to a privacy lawsuit against Best Buy that eventually was tossed out.

Each year, consumers return about $264 billion worth of merchandise, or almost 9 percent of total sales, according to industry estimates.

Many buyers aren't aware that some returns, with and without receipts, are being monitored at stores that outsource that information to a third-party company, which creates a "return profile" that catalogs and analyzes the customer's returns at the store.

"I had absolutely no idea they were doing that," said Mari Torres of Springfield, Va., during a shopping trip with her daughter at the Pentagon City Mall in Arlington, Va. "I honestly think it's an invasion of privacy."

Torres, 39, says she's a responsible shopper and she'd like to know what kind of information retailers keep on her, with whom they may be sharing it, and how long they keep it.

One company that offers return tracking services, The Retail Equation in Irvine, Calif., says it doesn't share information in the profiles it creates with outside parties or with other stores.

For example, if TRE logs and analyzes returns from a Victoria's Secret customer, The Retail Equation only reports back to Victoria's Secret about the return activity. It does not then also share that information with J.C. Penney or other retailers that use TRE.

Even so, consumer advocates don't like it.

"There should be no secret databases. That's a basic rule of privacy practices," says Ed Mierzwinski, consumer program director at the U.S. Public Interest Research Group. "Consumers should know that information is being collected about them."

The retail industry says it's not about monitoring the majority of its shoppers, but fighting theft.

Lisa LaBruno, senior vice president of retail operations at the Retail Industry Leaders Association, says organized retail crime is costing retailers tens of billions of dollars each year.

LaBruno says the problem goes beyond the small-time shoplifter and involves organized groups of criminals who make a living from the large-scale theft of merchandise. For example, they might switch the UPC code on a $600 faucet with a lower-cost code that rings up at $50. They buy the faucet, then replace the fake UPC tag with the original, higher-priced code, and return the faucet to the store without the receipt for a $600 store credit, which can later be sold online.

"It's not to invade the privacy of legitimate customers at all," LaBruno said in an interview. "It's one of many, many, creative solutions out there to help combat a really big problem that affects retailers, honest customers, the entire industry and the public at-large."

The problem, says government privacy experts, is disclosure, or lack of it in many cases.

People need to be aware when they make a purchase that if they return it, some information from the transaction may be stored, according to the experts.

"Most people think when they hand over a driver's license that it's just to confirm identity and not to be kept to be used for future transactions," says the Federal Trade Commission's Bob Schoshinski, assistant director at the agency's division of privacy and identity protection. "It shouldn't be that a third party is keeping a profile on someone without them being informed what's going to happen when they hand over their driver's license or some other information to a retailer."

In some cases, the disclosure by retailers is conspicuous. In others, not so much.

At Best Buy, a sign at each cash register states the return policy, and it's also on the back of the receipt, telling consumers that returns are tracked and an ID is required. The disclosure adds: "Based on return/exchange patterns, some customers will be warned that subsequent returns and exchanges will not be eligible for returns or exchanges for 90 days. Customers who are warned or have been denied an exchange/return may request a copy of their 'Return Activity Report'" from The Retail Equation by contacting the company.

At Victoria's Secret and Bath and Body Works, disclosures at the cash register said nothing about The Retail Equation's tracking returns.

Home Depot spokesman Stephen Holmes says the return tracking isn't just about money.

"This isn't only about protecting our bottom line," Holmes said in an interview. "It's about protecting our communities, too. We know from working with law enforcement at the state and federal levels that organized retail crime is feeding other crimes, such as drug trafficking and even terrorism, in some cases."

The Retail Equation says more than 27,000 stores use its services. Best Buy, Home Depot, J.C. Penney, Victoria's Secret, Bath and Body Works, and Nike are among its clients. TRE would not say how long the profiles on consumers are kept in its database; it varies from retailer to retailer. But a recent "return activity report" obtained by one consumer turned up returns to The Sports Authority dating to 2004.

Here's how the tracking works.

—A consumer buys an item at Best Buy and later returns it. Even if the shopper has the original receipt and is within the time frame when returns are permitted, store policy requires that Smith provide a photo ID, such as a driver's license. Other stores, such as Home Depot, only require the ID if there's no receipt or if the item was purchased with a store credit.

—The ID is swiped and then some information from the transaction is sent by the store to The Retail Equation. The company says the information captured from the ID typically includes the identification number, name, address, date of birth and expiration date.

—The Retail Equation catalogs return activity by the shopper and creates a "return activity report" on him with his returns at the store. If The Retail Equation determines that there's a pattern of questionable returns that suggests potential fraud, it would notify Best Buy, which could then deny returns by that shopper at the store for a period of time.

The threshold for too many returns is determined by each retailer. The Retail Equation says the vast majority of returns — about 99 percent — are accepted.

In a 2011 lawsuit in Florida against Best Buy, Steven Siegler complained after the magnetic strip on his driver's license was swiped for a return. He wanted the manager to delete the information. His suit said Best Buy refused. He alleged that Best Buy violated privacy law when it swiped the license. But a federal appeals court agreed with a lower court ruling that the Driver's Privacy Protection Act didn't apply in the case.


Offline robomont

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Re: they know what you are doing
« Reply #254 on: August 13, 2013, 05:31:29 am »
i totally forgot about this surveilence thread and posted a link about the nsa over on gigas thread .sorry.
alot of good info your posting sky.thankyou.i think all the snooping  is going to cause a backlash to the gov.maybe in november.
ive never been much for rules.
being me has its priviledges.

Dumbledore

 


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