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NSA Spying on Latin American Countries Included Targeting of Trade Secrets

By Noel Brinkerhoff | AllGov | July 11, 2013

The United States has been accused of spying on numerous countries in Latin America in an effort to collect intelligence on trade secrets and military capabilities.

Using information provided by former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden, a Brazilian newspaper, O Globo, published a story that said the U.S. spy agency has gathered data on telephone calls and emails from Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Venezuela and others.

The account indicated that the NSA had collected military and security data on countries including Venezuela, while also carrying out surveillance operations to acquire trade secrets from within the oil industry in Venezuela and the energy sector in Mexico.

O Globo also published a story over the weekend saying Brazil was a major target of the NSA’s global spying on telecommunications, which involved the cooperation of American and Brazilian companies (which were not named).

It was additionally reported that the CIA and NSA jointly operated monitoring stations to gain foreign satellite data in 65 countries, including five in Latin America.

In response to the accusations, the U.S. ambassador to Brazil, Thomas Shannon, reportedly denied that Washington has been conducting surveillance operations on Brazilian communications.

News of the alleged spying upset many in Brazil and other Latin countries, which have a history of military governments—often supported by the United States—that spied on their own people.

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, who was jailed and tortured in the 1970s under the ruling junta, said her government would raise concerns with the U.N. Commission on Human Rights.

“Brazil’s position on this issue is very clear and very firm,” Rousseff told the media. “We do not agree at all with interference of this kind, not just in Brazil but in any other country.”

To Learn More:

U.S. Spy Spread Through Latin America (by Glenn Greenwald, and Kaz and Roberto Jose’ Casado; O Globo)

Capitals 4 Countries Also Housed the Office of the NSA and CIA (by Kaz and Roberto Jose’ Casado; O Globo)

U.S. and Britain Eavesdropped on World Leaders at 2009 Summits (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)

US NSA Spied on Venezuela When President Chavez Died, Documents Reveal (alethonews.wordpress.com)

July 11, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception, Economics, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Press TV, iFilm airing on new frequency on Express AM44

Press TV – July 10, 2013

Iran’s entertainment and movie channel iFilm as well as the 24-hour English-language news channel Press TV are airing with new parameters on the Express AM44 satellite.

Viewers can watch Press TV and the English version of iFilm on the following frequency:

Satellite: Express AM44 at 11.0 W
Transponder: B5
Frequency: 11109
Polarization: Horizontal
Symbol Rate: 9479
FEC: ¾

The Arabic version of iFilm and the Spanish-language Hispan TV have also been uplinked with the same parameters on the Express AM44 at 11.0 W.

Press TV and other Iranian channels have come under an unprecedented wave of attacks by European governments and satellite companies since January 2012.

They have been taken off the air in several Western countries, including Britain, France, Germany and Spain.

European companies say they are abiding by anti-Iran sanctions. However, Michael Mann, the EU foreign policy chief’s spokesman, has told Press TV that sanctions do not apply to media.

The latest move against Iranian alternative channels came in June when Intelsat told Iran’s national broadcasting corporation, Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB), that it will no longer provide services to Iranian channels, including Press TV, as of July 1.

Intelsat made the move under the pretext of the US sanctions against the head of the IRIB, Ezzatollah Zarghami.

Press TV later learned that the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) — an agency of the US Treasury Department headed by an Ashkenazi Jew called Adam Szubin — was behind the pressure on Intelsat.

Media activists call the attacks on Iranian channels a campaign against free speech launched by the same European governments that preach freedom of expression.

Related articles

July 11, 2013 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Obama gives himself control of all communication systems in America

RT | July 11, 2013

US President Barack Obama quietly signed his name to an Executive Order on Friday, allowing the White House to control all private communications in the country in the name of national security.

President Obama released his latest Executive Order on Friday, July 6, a 2,205-word statement offered as the “Assignment of National Security and Emergency Preparedness Communications Functions.” And although the president chose not to commemorate the signing with much fanfare, the powers he provides to himself and the federal government under the latest order are among the most far-reaching yet of any of his executive decisions.

“The Federal Government must have the ability to communicate at all times and under all circumstances to carry out its most critical and time sensitive missions,” the president begins the order. “Survivable, resilient, enduring and effective communications, both domestic and international, are essential to enable the executive branch to communicate within itself and with: the legislative and judicial branches; State, local, territorial and tribal governments; private sector entities; and the public, allies and other nations.”

President Obama adds that it is necessary for the government to be able to reach anyone in the country during situations it considers critical, writing, “Such communications must be possible under all circumstances to ensure national security, effectively manage emergencies and improve national resilience.” Later the president explains that such could be done by establishing a “joint industry-Government center that is capable of assisting in the initiation, coordination, restoration and reconstitution of NS/EP [national security and emergency preparedness] communications services or facilities under all conditions of emerging threats, crisis or emergency.”

“The views of all levels of government, the private and nonprofit sectors, and the public must inform the development of NS/EP communications policies, programs and capabilities,” he adds.

On the government’s official website for the National Communications Systems, the government explains that that “infrastructure includes wireline, wireless, satellite, cable, and broadcasting, and provides the transport networks that support the Internet and other key information systems,” suggesting that the president has indeed effectively just allowed himself to control the country’s Internet access.

In order to allow the White House to reach anyone within the US, the president has put forth a plan to establish a high-level committee calling from agents with the Department of Homeland Security, Pentagon, Federal Communications Commission and other government divisions to ensure that his new executive order can be implemented.

In explaining the order, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) writes that the president has authorized the DHS “the authority to seize private facilities when necessary, effectively shutting down or limiting civilian communications.”

In Section 5 of his order, President Obama outlines the specific department and agency responsibilities that will see through his demands. In a few paragraphs, President Obama explains that Executive Committee that will oversee his order must be supplied with “the technical support necessary to develop and maintain plans adequate to provide for the security and protection of NS/EP communications,” and that that same body will be in tasked with dispatching that communiqué “to the Federal Government and State, local, territorial and trial governments,” by means of “commercial, Government and privately owned communications resources.”

Later, the president announces that the Department of Homeland Security will be tasked with drafting a plan during the next 60 days to explain how the DHS will command the government’s Emergency Telecommunications Service, as well as other telecom conduits. In order to be able to spread the White House’s message across the country, President Obama also asks for the purchasing of equipment and services that will enable such.

July 11, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Israeli court sentences Palestinian MPs

Ma’an – 11/07/2013

JERUSALEM – An Israeli court on Thursday sentenced two Palestinian MPs to 30 months, a committee official said.

228273_345x230PLC deputy Mohammad Tawtah and former Jerusalem affairs’ minister Khalid Abu Arafa were sentenced to 30 months plus a one-year suspended sentence for conducting “Hamas activities,” said Amjad Abu Asab, the director of the Jerusalem prisoners’ families committee.

The judge ruled that the MPs must serve an additional six months if they enter Jerusalem, their hometown, Abu Asab told Ma’an.

The MPs have been in Israeli custody since Israeli police detained them in a raid on the Jerusalem headquarters of the International Committee of the Red Cross in January 2012.

The elected officials took refuge at the Red Cross building in East Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah in July 2010 along with lawmaker Ahmad Attoun after Israel revoked their residency permits.

July 11, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Merkel justifies NSA eavesdropping surveillance

RT | July 11, 2013

Despite “justified questions” to the American intelligence community regarding eavesdropping on German networks, the US remains Berlin’s “most loyal ally”, announced Chancellor Angela Merkel in interview to Die Zeit weekly.

Merkel has made her first detailed comment into the unraveling diplomatic scandal with the America’s National Security Agency (NSA) global telecommunication eavesdropping, including those of its European allies, Germany foremost among them.

It emerged recently that Germany happens to be the most-snooped-on EU country by the American National Security Agency (NSA). The NSA’s real-time online surveillance PRISM program allows US intelligence agencies to intercept virtually any communications over the internet, phone calls and makes possible direct access to files stored on the servers of major internet companies.

Merkel declared that she herself has learnt about the US surveillance programs, such as the NSA’s PRISM spy program, “through the current reporting” in the media.

In early July spokesman Steffen Seibert announced on the behalf of Chancellor Merkel that “The monitoring of friends – this is unacceptable. It can’t be tolerated,” adding that Merkel had already delivered her concerns to the US.  “We are no longer in the Cold War,” Seibert added.

The German government subsequently summoned US Ambassador Philip Murphy to Berlin to explain the incendiary reports.

At the same time according to new revelations made by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden to Germany’s Spiegel magazine, the American NSA and Germany’s intelligence agencies are “in bed together.”

Seibert told Reuters this week that German’s Federal Intelligence Agency’s (BND) cooperation with the NSA “took place within strict legal and judicial guidelines and is controlled by the competent parliamentary committee.”

‘Intelligence is essential for democracies’

Merkel stressed that intelligence “has always been and will in future be essential for the security of citizens” of democratic countries. “A country without intelligence work would be too vulnerable,” Merkel said.

At the same time, she observed that there must be a “balance between maximum freedom and what the state needs to give its citizens the greatest possible security.”

Merkel emphasized that German-American special relationship should not be endangered by the incident.

“America has been, and is, our most loyal ally over all the decades,” Merkel said, but pointed out that Washington should clear up the situation with the US allegedly bugging the embassies of the European countries and the EU facilities, noting that “the Cold War is over.”

Stasi and NSA are not comparable

In acknowledgment of the Germany’s contemporary history, Merkel, who grew up in East Germany, refused to make any parallels between the methods of work of DDR’s secret police Stasi and America’s NSA.

“For me, there is absolutely no comparison between the Stasi and the work of intelligence agencies in democratic states,” she was quoted as saying. “They are two completely different things and such comparisons only lead to a trivialization of what the Stasi did to [East Germany’s] people,” said Merkel.

Rhetoric shift

In the face of the national elections in September, Angela Merkel has come under fierce criticism in connection with the NSA spying scandal for not protesting unequivocally enough, while various German politicians demanded to stop spying immediately.

Germany’s center-left opposition insists on questioning country’s officials with a view to find out what exactly they knew about the American surveillance of German communications before the eavesdropping scandal emerged.

Earlier Germany’s Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich and Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger both declined any knowledge of the eavesdropping performed by the American US in German networks.

In the interview to Die Zeit Chancellor Merkel revealed that reports from German intelligence agencies are being delivered to her chief of staff, Ronald Pofalla who coordinates their work from the chancellery.

The head of the center-left opposition Social Democratic Party (SPD) Sigmar Gabriel told Spiegel Online that “Ms. Merkel is now trying to shift political responsibility to her chief of staff.”

“That’s an old game: [pretending] not knowing anything at first, trying to play down the problem and then finally pointing the finger at a staff member. But it’s not going to work because it’s clear that the dimensions of this scandal are so great that no person other than the chancellor can ensure that basic rights are defended in Germany,” the SPD leader claimed.

Today battling terrorism is impossible “without the possibility of telecommunications monitoring,” Merkel told the weekly. “The work of intelligence agencies in democratic states was always vital to the safety of citizens and will remain so in the future.”

In the meantime, Friedrich is meeting US Attorney General Eric Holder and White House counterterrorism adviser Lisa Monaco in Washington on Friday for talks dedicated to the NSA scandal.  Though Merkel’s government is not likely to pedal the spying issue, Berlin surely expects explanation from Washington in regards of the ‘Snowdengate’ “for all the more-than-justified questions”, Merkel was quoted as telling Die Zeit.

July 11, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Luxembourg PM resigns over spying scandal

RT | July 11, 2013

Luxembourg’s long-serving Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker officially announced he would resign following a spying scandal involving illegal phone-taps and other illicit activities.

The announcement comes as Juncker’s junior coalition partner called for the dissolution of the house and early parliamentary elections.

Juncker’s departure follows allegations the country’s security services abused their power under his watch, including illegally bugging politicians, purchasing cars for private use, and taking payments and favors in return for access to local officials from 2003 to 2009.

A report commissioned by Luxembourg’s parliament into the matter determined that Juncker failed to rein in the agency despite it being under his auspices. The July 5 document further said that the outgoing PM was “politically responsible” for failing to inform the parliamentary committee of control or justice authorities about the Luxembourg State Intelligence Service’s (SREL) alleged illegalities.

The report was commissioned after a Luxembourg weekly newspaper published a secretly-taped conversation from 2008 between Juncker and the head of SREL at the time, Marco Mille.

On tape, Mille revealed that his staff had secretly recorded a conversation involving Luxembourg’s Grand Duke – the monarchial head of state – and that the sovereign was in regular contact with Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service.

The ensuing parliamentary inquiry revealed extensive illicit activity: the existence of 13,000 secret files on people and businesses, illegal wire-taps on business leaders, and a counter-terror operation which was in actually a front to help a Russian oligarch pay US$10 million to a Spanish spy, and even a shadowy private dealership in luxury cars, AFP reports.

In June, the PM survived Luxembourg’s first no confidence vote in 150 years after the opposition Liberals and Greens accused Finance Minister Luc Frieden of pressuring the state prosecutor to stop legal proceedings against a group implicated in a series of 1980s bombings.

However, the specter of a fresh no confidence vote once again hung over Juncker, who became prime minister in 1995 and is the European Union’s longest-serving head of government, following the report.

The PM delivered a defiant speech to lawmakers on Wednesday in which he attempted to refute allegations that he has used the SREL to bolster both him and his Christian Social People’s Party.

Juncker initially refused to step down, claiming the PM should not be expected to resign over the alleged wrongdoing of a few intelligence agents.

“The intelligence service was not my top priority,” Juncker told parliament. “Moreover, I hope Luxembourg will never have a prime minister who sees SREL as [his or her] priority.”

However, Junker’s junior partner, Luxembourg Socialist Workers’ Party (LSAP) President Alex Bodry, called on the PM to take” full political responsibility” for the scandal.

“We invite the prime minister to take full political responsibility in this context and ask the government to intervene with the head of state to clear the path for new elections,” Bodry said.

Juncker, who said it would be impossible to take personal responsibility for the allegations leveled at him, ultimately resigned to avoid a vote of no confidence.

“I will convene the government tomorrow morning at 10am (08:00 GMT) and will go to the Palace to suggest snap elections to the Grand Duke,” he told parliament on Wednesday.

As head of state, only the Grand Duke can officially dissolve parliament.

In line with Junker’s recommendation, the government will continue its work until early elections are held on October 20. It remains unclear whether the outgoing PM intends to run.

Political responsibility as last resort

Luxembourg, a tiny state nestled between Belgium, France and Germany, is viewed as a major European financial hub, where some 40 percent of the country’s 500,000 residents are foreigners working in banks and other European institutions.

Juncker’s departure over intelligence service malfeasance was a major wave in one of Europe’s most politically-stable states.

As the outgoing PM admitted the intelligence service scandal left him “no other choice than to hand in the government’s resignation,” other European leaders are increasingly being scrutinized for the alleged role in sweeping surveillance activities.

UK Foreign Secretary William Hague, who oversees the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), has recently come under fire for the agency’s Tempora surveillance program, as well as its collusion with US National Security Agency’s (NSA) sweeping spying programs.

Last week the European Union began investigating whether Britain had broken EU law following reports it had tapped international phone traffic and shared vast amounts of personal data with the US, an EU source told Reuters.

Viviane Reding, the vice-president of the European Commission and EU commissioner for justice, wrote to Hague asking him to clarify the “scope of the [Tempora surveillance] program, its proportionality and the extent of judicial oversight that applies.”

In Germany, where the US a reportedly combs through half a billion German phone calls, emails and text messages on a daily basis, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden recently accused the country’s political leadership of ‘being in bed’ with the NSA.

On Wednesday Chancellor Angela Merkel defended Germany’s cooperation with US intelligence, dismissing charges its methods resembled those deployed in the former German Democratic Republic.

“For decades, intelligence services have been working together under certain conditions that are tightly regulated in our country, and this serves our security,” Merkel told the German weekly Die Zeit.

“For me, there is no comparison at all between the state security [Stasi] of the GDR and the work of intelligence services in democratic states,” she continued.

“These are completely different things and such comparisons only lead to a trivialization of what the state security did to people in East Germany,” she said.

With elections slated for September 22, the center-left opposition has pounced on the issue, claiming Merkel, whose office coordinates and oversees Germany’s intelligence services, must have known more about NSA operations.

Related article

July 11, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , | Leave a comment

UK has a CCTV for every 11 people

Press TV – July 10, 2013

Britain has a CCTV camera for every 11 people, a security industry report disclosed, as privacy campaigners criticized the growth of the “surveillance state”.

Britain has a CCTV camera for every 11 people including 750,000 in “sensitive locations” such as schools and hospitals, British Security Industry Authority (BSIA) says.

The BSIA said there are up to 5.9 million closed-circuit cameras across Britain dramatically raising the previous estimates that put the number of cameras somewhere between 1.5 million and four million.

“Because there is no single reliable source of data no number can ever be held as truly accurate however the middle of our range suggests that there are around five million cameras,” Simon Adcock, of the BSIA, said.

The revelations drew angry criticism from privacy campaigners Big Brother Watch who described the CCTV culture as a sign of an ailing democracy in Britain.

“This report is another stark reminder of how out of control our surveillance culture has become,” Big Brother Watch director Nick Pickles said.

“With potentially more than five million CCTV cameras across country, including more than 300,000 cameras in schools, we are being monitored in a way that few people would recognize as a part of a healthy democratic society,” he added.

Pickles also compared the situation to the dystopia represented in George Orwell’s 1984 novel.

“This report should be a wakeup call that in modern Britain there are people in positions of responsibility who seem to think ‘1984’ was an instruction manual,” he said.

The novel pictures a society where every single private move of the citizens in the then future Britain of 1984 is monitored by the eye of the state.

Related article

July 11, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , | Leave a comment

NSA Blackmailing Obama? | Interview with Whistleblower Russ Tice

breakingtheset · July 9, 2013

Abby Martin talks to Russell Tice, former intelligence analyst and original NSA whistleblower, about how the recent NSA scandal is only scratches the surface of a massive surveillance apparatus, citing specific targets the he saw spying orders for including former senators Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama.

July 10, 2013 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Supreme Court asked to end NSA spying program

RTAmerica · July 9, 2013

The National Security Agency continues to experience fallout for the surveillance programs which spy on millions of American’s phone records and online activities, and this time the Electronic Privacy Information Center is filing an emergency petition to end the spy program. Alan Butler, Appellate Advocacy Counsel for EPIC, joins us with the details on the demand.

Find RT America in your area: http://rt.com/where-to-watch/

Or watch us online: http://rt.com/on-air/rt-america-air/

Follow us on Twitter http://twitter.com/RT_America

July 10, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Video | , , , , | Leave a comment

A Secret Court Making Secret Laws? That’s No Democracy

By Mike Masnick | TechDirt | July 8th 2013

Last December, well before the Ed Snowden leaks revealed some information about the FISA court (FISC) and its rulings, we had already noted that the court itself was almost certainly unconstitutional. More recently, we talked about how the fact that all the court’s judges are appointed by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court means that the court has turned into a rubber stamp made in the image of some of the most “law and order”-minded Chief Justices from the past few decades. Ezra Klein has since expanded on that to discuss the oddity of how current Chief Justice John Roberts is basically the Chief Justice of the Surveillance State, answerable to absolutely no one: “You have exclusive, unaccountable, lifetime power to shape the surveillance state.”

Over the weekend, the NY Times put out a powerful piece discussing how FISC has basically become a shadow Supreme Court, doling out all sorts of important rulings in total secrecy. It rules on cases where it only hears one side, and where there are no appeals, no guarantee that the full story is presented, and involves a bunch of judges who tend to have law enforcement backgrounds before being appointed to the court. In the end, you have a secret court issuing secret rulings by ex-law enforcement officials, allowing their former colleagues ever greater power to spy on everyone.

The 11-member Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, known as the FISA court, was once mostly focused on approving case-by-case wiretapping orders. But since major changes in legislation and greater judicial oversight of intelligence operations were instituted six years ago, it has quietly become almost a parallel Supreme Court, serving as the ultimate arbiter on surveillance issues and delivering opinions that will most likely shape intelligence practices for years to come, the officials said.

[….] Unlike the Supreme Court, the FISA court hears from only one side in the case — the government — and its findings are almost never made public. A Court of Review is empaneled to hear appeals, but that is known to have happened only a handful of times in the court’s history, and no case has ever been taken to the Supreme Court. In fact, it is not clear in all circumstances whether Internet and phone companies that are turning over the reams of data even have the right to appear before the FISA court.

As an example of how FISC has basically completely overturned the rules of surveillance in secret, the NY Times reveals the details of some of its thinking, taking a extremely narrow ruling meant to apply in special cases, and turning it into a general rule that has allowed the vast capture of information:

In one of the court’s most important decisions, the judges have expanded the use in terrorism cases of a legal principle known as the “special needs” doctrine and carved out an exception to the Fourth Amendment’s requirement of a warrant for searches and seizures, the officials said.

The special needs doctrine was originally established in 1989 by the Supreme Court in a ruling allowing the drug testing of railway workers, finding that a minimal intrusion on privacy was justified by the government’s need to combat an overriding public danger. Applying that concept more broadly, the FISA judges have ruled that the N.S.A.’s collection and examination of Americans’ communications data to track possible terrorists does not run afoul of the Fourth Amendment, the officials said.

That legal interpretation is significant, several outside legal experts said, because it uses a relatively narrow area of the law — used to justify airport screenings, for instance, or drunken-driving checkpoints — and applies it much more broadly, in secret, to the wholesale collection of communications in pursuit of terrorism suspects. “It seems like a legal stretch,” William C. Banks, a national security law expert at Syracuse University, said in response to a description of the decision. “It’s another way of tilting the scales toward the government in its access to all this data.”

I don’t care where you come down on the importance of widespread surveillance — I just don’t see how you can possibly square the above interpretation of the law with the 4th Amendment. If “special needs” can be used to justify mass collection of data on just about everyone “just in case” it might stop some sort of terrorist attack, then you no longer have a 4th Amendment. At all.

But, the bigger issue here is just the fact that we have a secret court issuing secret interpretations of the law that have a massive impact on our privacy. This is supposed to be an open democracy. An open democracy doesn’t involve secret courts and secret laws. We have laws that everyone knows, and which the public can discuss and weigh in on through their elected officials. When you set up a secret court, making secret rules with no oversight, and with all of the judges appointed by a single Supreme Court Justice with a particular bias, you no longer have a functioning democracy at all. And that’s downright scary.

This is a point that some Senators have been making for years now, but the leaks from Ed Snowden have really made it that much clearer just how insane the situation is. Earlier, it had seemed like perhaps there was one or two rulings from FISC that had some oddities in the interpretation, and which should probably be revealed to the public. However, the various revelations so far suggest that the issue is much, much bigger, and we have a secret “shadow court” system that is systematically obliterating the 4th Amendment and helping to create and then “legitimize” the vast surveillance state.

The Snowden leaks have shone a number of lights on various bad things within our government, but one thing that they have made abundantly clear is that the FISC needs to go. Whether that means it needs to be opened up, or to have greater oversight, or just be done away with completely, could be up for discussion. But if it remains the way it is, it’s clear that we’ve thrown away our basic democratic principles, and moved towards the same sorts of autocratic regimes with secret courts that the US has always presented itself as being against.

Related article

July 9, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Federal Judge Allows EFF’s NSA Mass Spying Case to Proceed

Rejects Government’s State Secret Privilege Claims in Jewel v. NSA and Shubert v. Obama

EFF | July 8, 2013

San Francisco – A federal judge today rejected the U.S. government’s latest attempt to dismiss the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s (EFF’s) long-running challenge to the government’s illegal dragnet surveillance programs. Today’s ruling means the allegations at the heart of the Jewel case move forward under the supervision of a public federal court.

“The court rightly found that the traditional legal system can determine the legality of the mass, dragnet surveillance of innocent Americans and rejected the government’s invocation of the state secrets privilege to have the case dismissed,” said Cindy Cohn, EFF’s Legal Director. “Over the last month, we came face-to-face with new details of mass, untargeted collection of phone and Internet records, substantially confirmed by the Director of National Intelligence. Today’s decision sets the stage for finally getting a ruling that can stop the dragnet surveillance and restore Americans’ constitutional rights.”

In the ruling, Judge Jeffrey White of the Northern District of California federal court agreed with EFF that the very subject matter of the lawsuit is not a state secret, and any properly classified details can be litigated under the procedures of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). As Judge White wrote in the decision, “Congress intended for FISA to displace the common law rules such as the state secrets privilege with regard to matter within FISA’s purview.” While the court allowed the constitutional questions to go forward, it also dismissed some of the statutory claims. A status conference is set for August 23.

EFF’s Jewel case is joined in the litigation with another case, Shubert v. Obama.

“We are pleased that the court found that FISA overrides the state secrets privilege and look forward to addressing the substance of the illegal mass surveillance,” said counsel for Shubert, Ilann Maazel of Emery Celli Brinckerhoff & Abady LLP. “The American people deserve their day in court.”

Filed in 2008, Jewel v. NSA is aimed at ending the NSA’s dragnet surveillance of millions of ordinary Americans and holding accountable the government officials who illegally authorized it. Evidence in the case includes undisputed documents provided by former AT&T telecommunications technician Mark Klein showing AT&T has routed copies of Internet traffic to a secret room in San Francisco controlled by the NSA. The case is supported by declarations from three NSA whistleblowers along with a mountain of other evidence. The recent blockbuster revelations about the extent of the NSA spying on telecommunications and Internet activities also bolster EFF’s case.

For the full decision:
https://www.eff.org/node/74895

For more on Jewel v. NSA:
https://www.eff.org/cases/jewel

July 9, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite | Leave a comment

Five unanswered questions about the NSA’s surveillance programs

By Brendan Sasso | The Hill | 07/07/13

Leaks by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden have provided new insight into how the government monitors domestic and foreign communications for threats to national security.

Although the government has disclosed some additional details about the programs in response to the leaks, important questions remain about the nature and scope of the surveillance programs.

Without that additional information, it is impossible to know the extent to which the government is peering into the lives of Americans in the name of national security, according to privacy advocates.

1. What other data is being collected under the Patriot Act?

The first leak from Snowden was a secret court order demanding that Verizon turn over vast batches of “metadata” on its U.S. customers. The data included the time and duration of calls, as well as the phone numbers involved, but not the contents of the conversations. The data collection was authorized under Section 215 of the Patriot Act.

The Director of National Intelligence (DNI) clarified that while the government does obtain data on millions of U.S. phone calls (and from more companies than just Verizon), it only “queries” the database a limited number of times for specific national security reasons.

Michelle Richardson, a legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), questioned whether the NSA is using Section 215 to collect more than just phone records.

“Is it also financial data or Internet records or other things?” she asked. “Knowing now that the court has been so broad in its interpretation, it’s even more important to figure out what else they’re getting.”

Greg Nojeim, a senior counsel for the Center for Democracy and Technology, said the NSA is likely using the Patriot Act to collect the credit card records and IP addresses of millions of people within and outside of the United States.

2. How broad are the programs?

How many people have been spied on through the NSA programs remains unclear. According to the NSA, it queried its massive database of phone records fewer than 300 times in 2012. But the agency did not disclose figures on other years or how many phone numbers were accessed in those queries.

Richardson explained that a single query could be an algorithm that scans the database and returns information on many people.

The other major program revealed by Snowden is the NSA’s Internet surveillance program, called PRISM. Unlike the phone record collection program under the Patriot Act, the NSA uses PRISM to access the contents of communications, such as emails, video chats, photographs and other information.

According to the DNI, the NSA only accesses those online records if there is a “foreign intelligence purpose” and the target is “reasonably believed” to be outside of the U.S. The program is authorized by Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and the searches require approval by a secret FISA court.

The NSA has not disclosed how many people it has targeted under Section 702 or how many people were spied on incidentally as part of the program.

“We have no idea how many U.S. persons have had their communications swept up,” said Sharon Bradford Franklin, senior counsel for the Constitution Project.

3. What’s the legal rationale?

The NSA has insisted the surveillance programs comply with the law and are overseen by independent FISA courts. But the opinions of those courts are secret, so little is known about how the courts are enforcing privacy protections or why they signed off on certain surveillance methods.

Section 215 of the Patriot Act allows the government to collect business records if they are “relevant” to a terrorism investigation. The FISA courts have determined that that provision allows the NSA to collect records on virtually all phone calls within and outside of the U.S. Why the court determined that so much data is “relevant” to a terrorism investigation remains unclear.

“Generally we don’t know the legal rationale being offered by the administration and being accepted by the FISA court to justify these particular types of surveillance programs,” Bradford Franklin said. “We should not have secret law in a democracy.”

4. Is the NSA still collecting email records?

One of the latest leaks revealed that beginning in 2001, the NSA collected vast amounts of email records. The NSA was able to identify the email accounts that sent and received messages, as well as IP addresses. The data collection did not include the contents of the emails.

The Obama administration confirmed the existence of the program, but said it ended in 2011 for “operational and resource reasons.”

One major question, according to privacy advocates, is whether the government is still able to obtain similar email records through a separate program.

5. Are there other programs that we don’t know about?

Although the NSA has provided some details about the programs leaked by Snowden, it is unclear what other programs exist and how they work together as part of a broad surveillance strategy.

“There’s this giant surveillance superstructure out there that we’re finally getting glimpses of, but there’s still a lot of questions of how does the whole thing work,” Richardson said.

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July 9, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

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