Brazilian lawmakers press Greenwald for greater detail on Snowden’s NSA leaks
RT | October 10, 2013
Brazilian lawmakers indicated that, in lieu of direct teleconferences with Edward Snowden to gain further insight into allegations of NSA spying in their country, they may seek to seize documents now held by American journalist Glenn Greenwald.
On Wednesday Greenwald spoke to Brazilian senators currently investigating evidence of US as well as British and Canadian espionage in the Latin American country.
The legislators are part of a probe into potential foreign surveillance — the Comissão Parlamentar de Inquérito, or CPI — called into action by President Dilma Rousseff in the wake of initial news reports alleging that even the president’s online communication had been intercepted.
Greenwald, who appeared along with his partner David Miranda, a Brazilian national, broached several topics during the hearing, including the possibility of granting asylum to NSA contractor turned whistleblower Edward Snowden.
So far, Brazil has been vague as to whether it would seriously consider extending Snowden, who is currently residing in Russia, an offer of political asylum.
“There are many nations saying, ‘We’re glad to be learning all this information,’ but almost nobody wants to protect the person responsible for letting the world discover it,” Greenwald told the panel.
In the meantime, Brazilian legislators seem eager to find out the extent of foreign surveillance on the country in greater detail.
To that end, the country’s government — specifically, the CPI inquiry — is now seeking to establish teleconferencing sessions with Snowden.
Asked by the commission to turn over documents obtained through the whistleblower Greenwald refused, citing the need for a separation between journalism and government. His partner, Miranda, also cited that divulging the documents would constitute an “act of treason” and prevent Greenwald from entering the US again.
One Brazilian Senator, Ricardo Ferraço, went so far as to suggest that the government commission seek the authority of the country’s courts to seize documents now held by Greenwald if such communication with Snowden proved unfeasible.
Unlike allegations of NSA surveillance in the US, coverage of the agency’s activities in Brazil have taken on a broader scope, and in particular centered on the country’s economy.
Greenwald himself has shaped the narrative of Snowden’s disclosures through his testimony to Brazil’s government, as well as his work with the O Globo newspaper and Rede Globo’s news television.
In August, the journalist told Brazil’s government that alleged American espionage in Brazil was centered on gaining economic advantages rather than on any national security concerns.
“We now have several denunciations that show that the spy program is not about terrorism. It is about increasing the power of the American government,” Greenwald told senators on Wednesday, speaking in Portuguese.
In the most recent report last Sunday, Greenwald said on Globo network television that Canadian spies had targeted Brazil’s Mines and Energy Ministry, intercepting the metadata of phone calls and emails passing through the ministry.
The impact of the steady stream of surveillance allegations on Brazil has been swift. Last month Petrobras announced that it would be investing $9.5 billion over the next five years to heighten its data security.
Meanwhile, Communications Minister Paulo Bernardo announced that the country’s government was pursuing legislation requiring domestic data exchanges to use locally made equipment.
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- Brazilian president postpones visit to Washington over US spying (alethonews.wordpress.com)
- Canadian spy agency ‘dissected’ Brazilian Energy Ministry (alethonews.wordpress.com)
NSA’s vast new Utah data hub suffering from ‘meltdowns’ – report
RT | October 8, 2013
Though the NSA’s vast data storage facility in Utah is now hardly a secret, new information has surfaced indicating widespread technical failures delaying its opening, including 10 “meltdowns” within the past 13 months.
The Pentagon’s facility, located in Bluffdale, which lies south of Salt Lake City, is being built to house a gargantuan quantity of data harvested, presumably, by many of the NSA’s surveillance programs now made public by former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden.
Estimates of the facility’s capacity, which is classified, ranges from exabytes or zettabytes, reports the Wall Street Journal. An exabyte being equivalent to 100,000 times the size of printed material held by the Library of Congress, while a zettabyte is 1,000 times that amount.
A new report compiled through project documents and information provided to the WSJ by officials cite a number of electrical surges — called “arc fault failures” — which over the past 13 months have destroyed hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of equipment, and delayed the facility from going active for a year.
According to one official, such arc fault failures can resemble “a flash of lightning inside a 2-foot box” and can melt metal and destroy circuitry.
Speculation as to whether the NSA’s facility in Utah is already active has been rampant, and indications are that its equipment is being slowly brought online as it becomes available, rather than in one dramatic on-switch moment.
“We turn each machine on as it is installed, and the facility is ready for that installation to begin,” NSA spokeswoman Vanee Vines told the Salt Lake City Tribune in late September.
The $1.5 billion facility is estimated to be not only the NSA’s largest data center, but the largest in the world, with some 1 million square feet of space. Engineers have said the center will dwarf even Google’s largest data hub.
Special teams from the Army Corps of Engineers have been assigned to investigate the electrical issues at the Utah center. The most recent arc failure according to the WSJ seems to have occurred on September 25, causing $100,000 in damage. The first such reported failure is thought to have taken place on August 9 of last year.
So far the information available indicates that the reason for the technical failures remains in dispute. A statement issued by a consortium of private contractors currently working on site eluded to the sheer complexity of the data warehouse as the culprit.
“Problems were discovered with certain parts of the unique and highly complex electrical system. The causes of those problems have been determined and a permanent fix is being implemented,” said the firms.
According to various reports, including the latest by the WSJ, the Bluffdale site was chosen by the NSA owing to its affordable electricity. The data hub will consume some 65 megawatts of energy at a cost of $1 million per month.
Beyond its logistical hurdles, the NSA’s data hub will also open amidst heightened scrutiny. Lawmakers including Senator Ron Wyden, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee who recently questioned whether the NSA has also been harvesting geo-location data, have expressed a need to lay out just how the NSA will justify the collection of an increasingly dramatic amount of data.
“There is no question there is going to be increased scrutiny of these kinds of practices,” said Wyden, “because Americans understand this is a dangerous time, but the government, if it’s going to collect [this information], ought to have to say here’s how it contributes to security of the American people. They have not made that case.”
Only a week prior to Edward Snowden’s first batch of published leaks, the massive Utah center had been billed by the agency’s Deputy Director, John Inglis, as only one additional working part of the country’s national security apparatus.
“They shouldn’t be worried because, A, we’re Americans,” Inglis said. “We understand what the principles are that govern the nation; [and] B, we take an oath to the Constitution, and we take that very seriously.”
Polls Continue to Show Majority of Americans Against NSA Spying
By Mark M. Jaycox | EFF | October 7, 2013
Shortly after the June leaks, numerous polls asked the American people if they approved or disapproved of the NSA spying, which includes collecting telephone records using Section 215 of the Patriot Act and collecting phone calls and emails using Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The answer then was a resounding no, and new polls released in August and September clearly show Americans’ increasing concern about privacy has continued.
Since July, many of the polls not only confirm the American people think the NSA’s actions violates their privacy, but think the surveillance should be stopped. For instance in an AP poll, nearly 60 percent of Americans said they oppose the NSA collecting data about their telephone and Internet usage. In another national poll by the Washington Post and ABC News, 74 percent of respondents said the NSA’s spying intrudes on their privacy rights. This majority should come as no surprise, as we’ve seen a sea change in opinion polls on privacy since the Edward Snowden revelations started in June.
What’s also important is that it crosses political party lines. The Washington Post/ABC News poll found 70 percent of Democrats and 77 percent of Republicans believe the NSA’s spying programs intrude on their privacy rights. This change is significant, showing that privacy is a bipartisan issue. In 2006, a similar question found only 50 percent of Republicans thought the government intruded on their privacy rights.
Americans also continue their skepticism of the federal government and its inability to conduct proper oversight. In a recent poll, Rasmusson—though sometimes known for push polling—revealed that there’s been a 30 percent increase in people who believe it is now more likely that the government will monitor their phone calls. Maybe even more significant is that this skepticism carries over into whether or not Americans believe the government’s claim that it “robustly oversees” the NSA’s programs. In a Huffpost/You Gov poll, 53 percent of respondents said they think “the federal courts and rules put in place by Congress” do not provide “adequate oversight.” Only 18 percent of people agreed with the statement.
Americans seem to be waking up from its surveillance state slumber as the leaks around the illegal and unconstitutional NSA spying continue. The anger Americans—especially younger Americans—have around the NSA spying is starting to show. President Obama has seen a 14-point swing in his approval and disapproval rating among voters aged 18-29 after the NSA spying disclosures.
These recent polls confirm that Americans are not only concerned with the fact that the spying infringes their privacy, but also that they want the spying to stop. And this is even more so for younger Americans. Now is the time for Congress to act: click here now to join the StopWatching.Us coalition.
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Rep. Mike Rogers Threatens Extrajudicial Execution
By Daniel McAdams | Neocon Watch | October 4, 2013
The US State Department every year releases its Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, arrogating to itself the right to judge how the rest of the world measures up to US standards of respect for human rights.
One of the key measurements the US uses to determine whether the rest of the world is up to its stated standards of human rights protection is whether the country engages in “extrajudicial executions,” i.e. the state killing people without a legal trial. Needless to say, countries which engage in or promote extrajudicial killing are considered among the worst of the human rights abusers.
At a Washington Post sponsored panel yesterday on cybersecurity attended by former NSA/CIA chief Michael Hayden and by current Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee Mike Rogers (R-MI), Hayden quipped that while NSA leaker Edward Snowden is on the consideration list for a European Human Rights Award, he had “also thought of nominating Mr. Snowden, but it was for a different list.”
Considering the input that Hayden had over the US administration’s “kill list,” the implication was fairly clear. One might imagine what among some at least was (hopefully) nervous laughter.
Is it funny to joke about killing someone when everyone knows you have had the power to make it happen? At least Hayden made the comment while he was no longer serving in a position where he could call out the drones.
What is worse, however, was the reaction of the neoconservative warmonger and enemy of civil liberties, Chairman Mike Rogers. To Hayden’s confession that he had thought of putting Snowden on “a different list,” Rogers did not miss a beat.
“I can help you with that,” Rogers said.
It is incredible to imagine that an individual in such a powerful position as is Mike Rogers — not just a Member of Congress but the Chairman of the Committee that coordinates with the CIA, NSA, and the rest of the Intelligence Community on matters covert and operational — would even if perhaps in a lighthearted moment make such a deeply disturbing comment.
Killing is so casual to people like Rogers.
It is the kind of thing that — were the US not the authors — would be written up in a report on human rights abuses and threats to the rule of law.
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US denies entry to German writer and NSA critic Trojanow
DW | October 1, 2013
Questions have arisen after the German author Ilija Trojanow was denied entry to the United States, apparently without reason. A colleague of the writer claims his call for clarity about US spying activity is the answer.
The 48-year-old Trojanow had been invited to a German language convention in the US city of Denver. However, he was left stranded at Salvador da Bahia airport, in Brazil.
“The woman told me curtly and without emotion that entry to the United States was being denied to me – without giving any reason,” Trojanow told the German newspaper the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on Tuesday.
Trojanow and co-author Juli Zeh had been behind an open letter to Chancellor Angela Merkel that demanded the German government “tell the nation the full truth about the spying offensive.” The document was written in light of former US intelligence operative Edward Snowden’s revelations about far-reaching and unsupervised electronic spying operations by the National Security Agency (NSA).
The letter was signed by some 70,000 people and handed to Merkel ahead of Germany’s general election. It stated that there was a growing impression that Berlin had approved the methods of US and British authorities in spying on German citizens.
“For this reason we ask you, is it politically desirable that the NSA monitors German citizens in a way that the German authorities are forbidden from doing by the constitution and the German Constitutional Court?” the authors wrote.
German election campaigns have rarely been so spiritless – only the issue of data protection has been able to drive intellectuals to lift their pens in protest. Have polarizing debates become a thing of the past? (19.09.2013)
Zeh now claims there was a connection between Trojanow’s being denied entry to the US and his criticism of the spying operations of the NSA and other government agencies.
“It is more than ironic that an author who raises his voice against the dangers of surveillance and the secret state within a state over the years could be denied entry to the ‘land of the free and the home of the brave,'” Zeh wrote on her Facebook page.
“To look at it in a positive way – everything we are doing is having an effect; It is being brought to public attention,” Zeh observed. “To look at it negatively, it is a farce, pure paranoia. People who stand up for civil rights are being treated as enemies of the state.”
“It may only be an individual case, but it illustrates the consequences of a disastrous development and exposes the naïve attitude of many citizens who reassure themselves with the mantra that this does not affect them,” Zeh said.
A spokeswoman for Trojanow’s publisher said he was on the on way back to Germany on Tuesday, the news agency DPA reported.
Zeh and Trojanow co-authored a 2009 book in German: “Attack on Freedom: Security Paranoia, the Surveillance State and the Dismantling of Civil Rights.”
Related articles
- *German-Bulgarian Writer Banned From US For Criticizing NSA (novinite.com)
- U.S. Reportedly Bars Entry To Leading Critic Of NSA Surveillance Programs (jonathanturley.org)
- United States Blocks German Author, Critical of NSA Surveillance, From Entering the Country (dissenter.firedoglake.com)
NSA targeting users of Internet privacy tool
Press TV – October 5, 2013
New documents have shown that the US National Security Agency has targeted people using a popular service which protected the anonymity of Internet users.
Documents leaked by former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden have revealed the US spy agency has targeted users of The Onion Router (Tor) which helped web users keep business secrets and conduct research anonymously.
According to the documents, the agency has been collecting identities and locations of millions of users of Tor.
Tor aims to help people “defend against traffic analysis, a form of network surveillance that threatens personal freedom and privacy, confidential business activities and relationships, and state security.”
However, the NSA has followed Tor’s users, while the software is primarily funded and promoted by the US State Department and the Department of Defense.
The agency has been using ad networks like Google’s and Tor’s own entry and exit nodes on the Internet in order to track the users.
In addition, the surveillance agency has been able to block access to the anonymous network, diverting Tor users to insecure channels.
The NSA has repeatedly uncloaked users through circumventing Tor’s protections, although it cannot directly access Tor’s anonymous network.
One of the documents showed that an NSA technique code-named EGOTISTICALGIRAFFE had managed to unmask 24 Tor users over a single weekend.
Court documents have shown that the NSA violated privacy rules for years with improper surveillance practices.
The documents released over the past few months show a troubling picture of the super spy agency that has sought and won far-reaching surveillance powers to run complex domestic data collection without anyone having full technical understanding of the efforts.
The privacy violations were first revealed by Snowden in June. He leaked confidential information that showed the NSA collects data of phone records and Internet communications of American citizens.
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EXPOSED: The iPhone and The Government Biometric Database
RINF Alternative News | October 2, 2013
A recent video released by hacktivist group Anonymous presents compelling evidence which claims that Apple’s TouchID technology is linked to the FBI and NSA and is involved in the provision of information on users for a large-scale biometric database under construction by the US Government for use “both domestically and on the battlefield”.
This biometric database is due to be populated by any personal information retrieved by government agencies, leading to fears that Big Brother’s eye is following us wherever we go and whatever we do, even in the privacy of our own homes.
Anonymous alleges that they have uncovered proof of a corrupt alliance of Department of Defense contractors, NSA and CIA-related venture capital which led to the development of technologies subsequently purchased by Apple.
These findings were the result of investigation by Barrett Brown, the jailed and gagged journalist and links to further enlightening material have been posted on the Pastebin website and were largely based on documents obtained by the US defense contractor ManTech in 2010.
So what exactly are these revelations? Firstly, Anonymous claim that there are links between AuthenTec (the company bought by Apple to enable them to develop the TouchID technology) and the “most powerful and corrupt” Defense Department and intelligence community contractors and officials. Anonymous concentrate largely on one individual – Robert E Grady, a prominent figure and political speechwriter under both Bush administrations – when delineating and highlighting the opaque relationships between big business and the US government.
During his time sitting on the board of AuthenTec, Grady was a formerly leading partner in The Carlyle Group, an investment firm which previously owned not only Authentec, but also was the main shareholder of Booz Allen Hamilton, the NSA contractor and erstwhile employer of whistleblower Edward Snowden.
Anonymous presents further claims that the Authentec board of directors ensured that the company would be sold exclusively to Apple, due to the company’s position as market-leader, as this in turn would encourage rival companies to adopt the same technology in order to compete. They state that the launch of the Apple iPhone 5S has meant that secret surveillance and biometric collection has heightened into a full-scale assault on personal data and privacy.
However, other commentators suggest that Apple’s fingerprint security feature may be the thin end of the wedge in terms of biometric collection and consumer devices. Internationally, increasing numbers of countries are deploying biometric technology within organs of the state and rumours abound that biometrics – such as fingerprinting and facial recognition – will soon be a standard feature on game consoles and other electronic leisure products and household gadgets.
Apple’s lack of transparency regarding their usage of data obtained secretly from their customers is not restricted to their newest innovations, either. As far back as 2011 technological researchers were warning that the company could face law suits for breaches of privacy in relation to the storing of users’ locations and other personal information in secret files, which stores location coordinates with a timestamp to effectively map and record the precise movements of individuals.
The implication of this would be the danger this data could fall into the wrong hands if someone was able to hack the system. It is unclear why Apple is storing this data, but it is clearly intentional as such information on the database is being restored across backups and even device migrations. In 2010 Apple was once again the target of claims of privacy violation when a class-action suit was filed against them in a US Federal Court. The claim was that earlier models of the iPhone and iPad contained unique identifying elements, known as Unique Device Identifiers, which allowed advertising agencies track which applications were being downloaded by users, how frequently they were being used and for what period of time.
Users are unable to block the transmission of the UDID, a 40-character string that uniquely identifies each device. The lawsuit alleged: “Some apps are also selling additional information to ad networks, including users’ location, age, gender, income, ethnicity, sexual orientation and political views.” Apple has continuously denied that it transmits user-data without consent, but this has done little to ease fears that the company’s actions constitute an intrusive tracking scheme which aids and abets serious invasions of privacy.
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NSA chief admits govt collected cellphone location data
RT | October 02, 2013
The director of the National Security Agency admitted this week that the NSA tested a program that collected cellphone location data from American citizens starting in 2010, but suspended it shortly after.
Gen. Keith Alexander, the head of both the NSA and the United States Cyber Command, told lawmakers in Washington early Wednesday that the secretive pilot program was taken offline in 2011, but that the intelligence community may someday in the future make plans to routinely collect location data about US citizens.
Alexander briefly discussed the program during a Senate hearing on the Hill early Wednesday that focused on the data provided to the government through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, including programs that were exposed earlier this year by unauthorized disclosures attributed to contractor-turned-leaker Edward Snowden.
Only days earlier, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) asked Alexander during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing if the NSA was collecting location data on American citizens.
“I’m asking, has the NSA ever collected, or ever made any plans to collect, American cell site information?” Wyden asked last Thursday.
The NSA, Alexander responded at the time, “is not receiving cell-site location data and has no current plans to do so.”
During this Wednesday’s hearing, Alexander explained that, “In 2010 and 2011, NSA received samples in order to test the ability of its systems to handle the data format, but that data was not used for any other purpose and was never available for intelligence analysis purposes.”
According to a written copy of the statement obtained by The New York Times before Wednesday’s hearing, Alexander said that location information is not being collected by the NSA under Section 215 of the Patriot Act. Alexander did not discuss if any other laws are being implemented to otherwise allow for the collection and analysis of location data.
Moments after Alexander revealed the pilot program before the Senate committee, he said that the NSA may someday want to seek approval from Washington to revive that initiative as part of a fully functioning intelligence gathering operation.
“I would just say that this may be something that is a future requirement for the country, but it is not right now,” Alexander said.
Alexander’s statement regarding the new defunct program was expected, and obtained by The New York Times moments before Wednesday’s hearing was underway. Times reporter Charlie Savage wrote that morning that information about the pilot project was only recently declassified by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, and that the draft answer obtained by the paper and later read aloud by Alexander was prepared in case he was asked about the topic.
Still unsatisfied by the intelligence community’s explanation about the collection of cellphone location data, Sen. Wyden supplied the Times with a response suggesting that the truth behind the NSA’s activities isn’t being fully acknowledged by the intelligence community.
“After years of stonewalling on whether the government has ever tracked or planned to track the location of law-abiding Americans through their cellphones, once again, the intelligence leadership has decided to leave most of the real story secret — even when the truth would not compromise national security,” Wyden said.
In March, Wyden asked Clapper to say if the NSA was collecting personal information on millions of Americans. The intelligence director dismissed that allegation, then later apologized to the Senate for offering a “clearly erroneous” response.
“Time and time again, the American people were told one thing about domestic surveillance in public forums, while government agencies did something else in private,” Wyden told the Senate Intelligence Committee panel of witnesses last week, which included Alexander, Clapper, and Deputy Attorney General James Cole.
During last week’s meeting, Wyden said he “will continue to explore that because I believe this is something the American people have a right to know whether the NSA has ever collected or made plans to collect cell-site information.”
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Former Qwest CEO says refusal to comply with NSA spying landed him in jail
RT | October 1, 2013
Former Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio, who spent over four years in prison for insider trading, now says his conviction was based on his company’s refusal to cooperate with NSA requests to spy on its customers.
Nacchio says he feels “vindicated” by ongoing revelations provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden that the NSA does, in fact, access massive amounts of metadata and communications information of both foreigners and Americans.
Nacchio told The Wall Street Journal that the NSA set up a meeting with him in February 2001 wherein he believed they would discuss potential government contracts. But he says the NSA instead asked him for permission to surveil Qwest customers.
He says he refused to cooperate based on advice from his lawyers that such an action would be illegal, as the NSA would not go through the normal process of asking the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for a subpoena. About this time, he says the company’s ability to win unrelated government contracts – something it did not have trouble with before the NSA meeting – slowed significantly.
It took until 2007 before Nacchio was convicted of insider trading. Prosecutors claim he was guilty of selling off Qwest stock in early 2001, not long before the company went through financial ills. Nevertheless, he claimed in court documents that he was still confident in the firm’s ability to win government contracts.
Nacchio believes his conviction was in retaliation for his refusal to play ball with legally dubious NSA spying requests.
“I never broke the law, and I never will,” Nacchio told the WSJ.
His version of events matches reporting by USA Today in 2006, in which the paper noted that Qwest was the lone holdout from the government’s warrantless surveillance operations and that defiance “might affect its ability to get future classified work with the government.”
Yet despite his efforts, Nacchio was barred from using any evidence of potential retaliation in his defense, given that the material was considered classified, and his judge refused requests to allow the evidence in trial. Reports from The Washington Post on evidence that has been made public on his case since that time seem consistent with the CEO’s claims.
As a result of his likely hobbled defense, Nacchio was indicted by federal prosecutors and served four-and-a half years in federal prisons before being released in late September.
The NSA has declined to comment on Nacchio, according to the WSJ and The Washington Post.
While spying operations disclosed by Snowden have had some level of legal backing, President George W. Bush’s wiretapping program did not. Thus, telecom companies that cooperated with the program were eventually given immunity for their compliance in 2008.
Related articles
- Don’t Refuse the Nsa or You’ll Sleep With the Fishes (theburningplatform.com)
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No Surprise: NSA Stores All Metadata It Collects For At Least A Year, Even If It Has Nothing To Do With Anything
By Mike Masnick | Techdirt | September 30, 2013
The latest revelation from the Snowden docs published by The Guardian is that the NSA’s MARINA metadata system for internet data stores the information it gets for up to a year.
“The Marina metadata application tracks a user’s browser experience, gathers contact information/content and develops summaries of target,” the analysts’ guide explains. “This tool offers the ability to export the data in a variety of formats, as well as create various charts to assist in pattern-of-life development.”
The guide goes on to explain Marina’s unique capability: “Of the more distinguishing features, Marina has the ability to look back on the last 365 days’ worth of DNI metadata seen by the Sigint collection system, regardless whether or not it was tasked for collection.” [Emphasis in original.]
Note that this is different than the phone metadata that people have been talking about. This is “internet” metadata — so browser history, contacts, etc. In other words, the kind of stuff that Dianne Feinstein accidentally admitted the US is scooping up by the boatloads by tapping the internet’s backbone with help from US telcos.
The fact that they can look through it even if it hasn’t been “tasked for collection” is pretty big. It again shows how the NSA keeps saying one thing (such as claiming they only keep data on people they’re “targeting”) is simply false. The NSA continues to redefine things. Information isn’t “collected” until it’s searched. And it’s apparently not “stored” until it’s moved into a different database than this one.
How does anyone take these guys seriously?
Feinstein’s Senate Committee Defends NSA Phone Surveillance, Pushes Bill to Retain It
By Noel Brinkerhoff | AllGov | September 28, 2013
Senator Dianne Feinstein
Members of the Senate Intelligence Committee made it clear this week that they see no reason to halt the National Security Agency’s controversial program that collects records of Americans’ phone calls.
Led by the panel’s chair, Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-California), a majority of the committee indicated during a hearing on Thursday that they want the NSA to keep using the once-secret program, but under certain conditions.
Feinstein and the committee’s top Republican, Senator Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, plan to draft new legislation by next week that would require the NSA to file public reports on the calling log database.
The bill would also mandate that the agency reduce the number of years that it stores the database’s contents. Currently, the NSA says that it stores the records for five years.
In addition, Feinstein wants the Senate to have confirmation authority over new NSA directors.
At the same time, the Democratic lawmaker is willing to broaden the agency’s power to wiretap without court approval a foreigner’s cellphone for at least one week when that person travels to the United States.
Another provision would demand that the NSA send lists of the phone numbers it searches, along with explanations for doing so, to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for review.
Critics of the NSA’s domestic surveillance have called for ending the phone-records program altogether. These advocates include two members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Democrats Ron Wyden of Oregon and Mark Udall of Colorado, who have introduced a tougher reform bill.
But it appears unlikely Wyden’s bill will get past Feinstein’s committee, since Feinstein says the call log program is legal and “necessary for our nation’s security,” according to The New York Times.
To Learn More:
Senators Push to Preserve N.S.A. Phone Surveillance (by Charlie Savage, New York Times)
Feinstein Outlines NSA Changes (by Brendan Sasso and Kate Tummarello, The Hill)
“Independent Experts” Reviewing NSA Spying Have Ties to Intelligence Community (by Noel Brinkerhoff and Danny Biederman, AllGov)
Left and Right Unite to Sue NSA over Telephone Records Surveillance (by Matt Bewig, AllGov)
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- Political Moves: How Dianne Feinstein Cut Off One Of The Few Attempts At Actual Oversight By Senate Intelligence Committee (alethonews.wordpress.com)
- Feinstein’s NSA ‘reform’ bill would expand snooping powers (EndtheLie.com)
- Dianne Feinstein Accidentally Confirms That NSA Tapped The Internet Backbone (blacklistednews.com)
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The Maidan Killings and the False-Flag Case
By Freddie Ponton | 21st Century Wire | September 5, 2026
Before the killings that helped bring down Ukraine’s president in February 2014, American diplomats were discussing who should enter its government. In a leaked telephone call, senior State Department official Victoria Nuland told US ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt, “I think Yats is the guy,” referring to opposition leader Arseniy Yatseniuk. Washington had clear preferences and was working to advance them. Later that month, Yatseniuk became prime minister.
Ivan Katchanovski’s The Maidan Massacre in Ukraine examines the violence that preceded that transfer of power. Drawing on television footage, witness testimony, forensic examinations and Ukrainian court proceedings, he argues that elements of the opposition shot protesters and police in a false-flag operation. His case centres on evidence of protesters being shot from opposition-controlled locations, including Hotel Ukraina, overlooking the killing ground. … continue
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