A
federal judge has ruled against the NSA’s controversial collection of
Americans’ phone records. The program was set to expire by the end of
the month, but the ruling is considered a victory for civil liberties
because it sets a legal precedent.
In his ruling on Monday, Judge Richard Leon of the US District Court reiterated his assertion that the NSA’s program “likely violates the Constitution” and said that “the loss of constitutional freedoms for even one day is a significant harm.”
In
doing so, he sided with conservative legal activist Larry Klayman,
whose clients had sued the NSA over its data collection following the
revelations of whistleblower of Edward Snowden in 2013. “This
court simply cannot, and will not, allow the government to trump the
Constitution merely because it suits the exigencies of the moment,’’ Leon wrote in his 43-page decision.
Klayman said that winning the case is a “tremendous victory for the American people.” He added that Leon is one of the few judges in the country who “has
the guts to stand in the breach for the American people during a period
of time where their government is running roughshod over them."
Klayman also said that he will continue the fight and seek monetary damages from the government.
NSA
whistleblower Edward Snowden has voiced his opposition to the
Investigatory Powers Bill, which was unveiled Wednesday by the British
government, saying ministers are “taking notes on how to defend the
indefensible.”
His remarks come
as Home Secretary Theresa May has admitted that UK spy agencies MI5,
MI6 and GCHQ secretly collected communications data for decades to
protect “national security.”
Snowden, who sought asylum in Russia
after leaking top-secret documents about American and British mass
surveillance techniques, posted a series of tweets condemning the new
bill.
He said the powers given to security agencies in the bill amounted to access to “the activity log of your life.”
May
announced on Wednesday that internet companies would be required to
store a record of every website accessed by users for a year. The new
bill also targets encrypted messaging services, such as WhatsApp and
iMessenger, which allow users to evade hackers and data collection.
Click to Open Overlay Gallery PlatonAs winter approaches in Moscow, Snowden may have new hope of a safe haven in a warmer expatriate climate: The European Union.
On
Thursday the EU parliament voted by a narrow margin of 285-281 to
protect Snowden from extradition if he were to reside in Europe, a step
toward allowing the NSA leaker to leave Moscow and safely live or travel
on the continent. The motion, according to a statement from the parliament,
will “drop any criminal charges against Edward Snowden, grant him
protection and consequently prevent extradition or rendition by third
parties, in recognition of his status as whistle-blower and
international human rights defender.”
Snowden himself reacted with excitement to the news, calling it “extraordinary” and a “game-changer” on his Twitter feed—a strong sign that he may take the EU up on its offer.
House
judiciary committee Bob Goodlatte has agreed to support the
surveillance overhaul bill. Photograph: Alex Milan Tracy/Corbis
The
chairman of a key committee in the House of Representatives agreed to
move on a major surveillance overhaul on Monday, after months of delay.
The
decision, by the Republican chairman of the House judiciary committee,
Bob Goodlatte of Virginia, breathes new life back into the USA Freedom
Act, a legislative fix favoured by privacy advocates to prevent the US
government from collecting domestic data in bulk.
The judiciary
committee is expected to take action on an amendment encapsulating the
provisions of the USA Freedom Act on Wednesday at 1pm. Congressional
aides expected it to pass the committee with bipartisan support, setting
up a fight on the House floor.
Goodlatte, who had been hesitant
to endorse the bill, written by former committee chairman James
Sensenbrenner, will now vote for it personally.
Goodlatte’s
decision comes despite pressure by the House Republican leadership,
which preferred an alternative bill, written by the House intelligence
committee leadership, that would permit the government to acquire
Americans’ data without a specific prior judicial order for it.
Additional pressure came from a desire on all sides to avoid
surveillance-related amendments to unrelated, critical bills slated for floor consideration later this month.
An
attempt by the intelligence committee and the House leadership to
circumvent Goodlatte’s committee and pass the rival bill is said by
observers to have galvanised Goodlatte’s decision to move forward on the
USA Freedom Act. Internal committee negotiations on modifying the USA
Freedom Act for passage intensified after the House intelligence committee unveiled its bill in March.
The
Obama administration has yet to take a public position on the House
judiciary bill or the House intelligence bill, although President Barack
Obama endorsed getting the National Security Agency out of the business of bulk domestic phone records collection in March.
“This will start to look like a reasonable path forward for surveillance reform,” said a congressional aide.
Barely
an hour after the judiciary committee announced its move on the USA
Freedom Act, the House intelligence committee announced that it will
mark up its alternative bill, the Fisa Transparency and Modernization
Act, on Thursday.
"This bill directly addresses the privacy
concerns many Americans have expressed over bulk collection. The bill
ends bulk collection of telephone metadata and increases transparency
while maintaining the tools our government needs to keep Americans and
our allies safe. We believe this bill responds to the concerns many
members of Congress have expressed and can be the compromise vehicle to
reform Fisa while preserving important counterterrorism capabilities,"
said the intelligence committee leaders, Republican Mike Rogers of
Michigan and Democrat Dutch Ruppersberger of Maryland, in a joint
statement on Monday.
Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.). (Bill O'Leary / The Washington Post)
A
key House committee has approved a package of NSA reforms that would
end the spy agency's bulk collection of Americans' phone records, nearly
a year after former NSA contractor Edward Snowden disclosed the
program's existence.
The House Judiciary Committee voted 32-0
Wednesday to rein in the NSA with the USA FREEDOM Act, a measure that
places new requirements on the government when it comes to gathering,
targeting and searching telephone metadata for intelligence purposes.
In
addition to prohibiting the NSA from engaging in what the bill's
sponsors have called "dragnet surveillance," the bill would also require
authorities to get permission from the secret Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Court on a case-by-case basis. It would establish a panel
of privacy experts and other officials to serve as a public advocate at
the court. And it would also give businesses more latitude to tell the
public about requests it receives from the government for user data.
Defiant Apple, Facebook, other firms to inform public of govt surveillance requests
Published time: May 02, 2014 01:07 Edited time: May 02, 2014 06:42
The
same technology companies that the US intelligence community has relied
upon to disclose email records are now refusing to keep surveillance
requests secret and informing customers when they are the subject of
such requests.
In the nearly ten months since former US National
Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden revealed extensive
surveillance efforts on everyday Americans’ online activity, the
companies that were forced to facilitate that surveillance have come
under harsh public scrutiny.
The embarrassment ignited a series of
comments from executives at Google and Facebook, among others, calling
on the NSA and other agencies to either stop forcing them to provide the
communications that customers trust them with, or allow them to be more
transparent.
Now, according to a Thursday report in the Washington Post,
Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, and Google have updated their policies to
routinely notify customers when law enforcement has requested
information about them.
Yahoo enacted such a change in July, with the Post reporting Thursday that companies “have found that investigators often drop data demands to avoid having suspects learn of inquiries.”
Major
U.S. technology companies have largely ended the practice of quietly
complying with investigators’ demands for e-mail records and other
online data, saying that users have a right to know in advance when
their information is targeted for government seizure.This
increasingly defiant industry stand is giving some of the tens of
thousands of Americans whose Internet data gets swept into criminal
investigations each year the opportunity to fight in court to prevent
disclosures. Prosecutors, however, warn that tech companies may
undermine cases by tipping off criminals, giving them time to destroy
vital electronic evidence before it can be gathered.
Graphic
How the NSA is infiltrating private networks
Fueling the shift is the industry’s eagerness to distance itself from the government after last year’s disclosures about National Security Agency surveillance
of online services. Apple, Microsoft, Facebook and Google all are
updating their policies to expand routine notification of users about
government data seizures, unless specifically gagged by a judge or other
legal authority, officials at all four companies said. Yahoo announced
similar changes in July.As this position becomes uniform across the
industry, U.S. tech companies will ignore the instructions stamped on
the fronts of subpoenas urging them not to alert subjects about data
requests, industry lawyers say. Companies that already routinely notify
users have found that investigators often drop data demands to avoid
having suspects learn of inquiries.
“It serves to chill the
unbridled, cost-free collection of data,” said Albert Gidari Jr., a
partner at Perkins Coie who represents several technology companies.
“And I think that’s a good thing.”
The Justice Department
disagrees, saying in a statement that new industry policies threaten
investigations and put potential crime victims in greater peril.
“These
risks of endangering life, risking destruction of evidence, or allowing
suspects to flee or intimidate witnesses are not merely hypothetical,
but unfortunately routine,” department spokesman Peter Carr said, citing
a case in which early disclosure put at risk a cooperative witness in a
case. He declined to offer details because the case was under seal.
The
changing tech company policies do not affect data requests approved by
the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which are automatically
kept secret by law. National security letters, which are administrative
subpoenas issued by the FBI for national security investigations, also
carry binding gag orders.
The government traditionally has
notified people directly affected by searches and seizures — though
often not immediately — when investigators entered a home or tapped a
phone line. But that practice has not survived the transition into the
digital world. Cellular carriers such as AT&T and Verizon typically
do not tell customers when investigators collect their call data.
Many
tech companies once followed a similar model of quietly cooperating
with law enforcement. Courts, meanwhile, ruled that it was sufficient
for the government to notify the providers of Internet services of data
requests, rather than the affected customers.
Twitter, founded in
2006, became perhaps the first major tech company to routinely notify
users when investigators collected data, yet few others followed at
first. When the Electronic Frontier Foundation began issuing its
influential “Who Has Your Back?”
report in 2011 — rating companies on their privacy and transparency
policies — Twitter was the only company to get a star under the category
“Tell users about data demands.” Google, the next mostly highly rated,
got half a star from the civil liberties group.
NSA Said to Exploit Heartbleed Bug for Intelligence for Years
By Michael RileyApr 11, 2014 11:00 PM CT
The
U.S. National Security Agency knew for at least two years about a flaw
in the way that many websites send sensitive information, now dubbed the
Heartbleed bug, and regularly used it to gather critical intelligence,
two people familiar with the matter said.
The agency’s reported
decision to keep the bug secret in pursuit of national security
interests threatens to renew the rancorous debate over the role of the
government’s top computer experts. The NSA, after declining to comment
on the report, subsequently denied that it was aware of Heartbleed until
the vulnerability was made public by a private security report earlier
this month.
“Reports that NSA or any other part of the government
were aware of the so-called Heartbleed vulnerability before 2014 are
wrong,” according to an e-mailed statement from the Office of the
Director of National Intelligence.
Heartbleed appears to be
one of the biggest flaws in the Internet’s history, affecting the basic
security of as many as two-thirds of the world’s websites. Its discovery
and the creation of a fix by researchers five days ago prompted
consumers to change their passwords, the Canadian government to suspend
electronic tax filing and computer companies including Cisco Systems Inc. (CSCO) to Juniper Networks Inc. to provide patches for their systems.
Photographer: Paul J. Richards/AFP/Getty Images
A computer workstation bears the National Security Agency (NSA) logo inside the Threat... Read More
Putting
the Heartbleed bug in its arsenal, the NSA was able to obtain passwords
and other basic data that are the building blocks of the sophisticated
hacking operations at the core of its mission, but at a cost. Millions
of ordinary users were left vulnerable to attack from other nations’
intelligence arms and criminal hackers.
Controversial Practice
“It
flies in the face of the agency’s comments that defense comes first,”
said Jason Healey, director of the cyber statecraft initiative at the
Atlantic Council and a former Air Force cyber officer. “They are going
to be completely shredded by the computer security community for this.”
Experts
say the search for flaws is central to NSA’s mission, though the
practice is controversial. A presidential board reviewing the NSA’s
activities after Edward Snowden’s leaks recommended the agency halt the
stockpiling of software vulnerabilities.
NSA Denies Report It Knew About And Exploited Heartbleed For Years
Updated with NSA denial
Bloomberg is reporting that
the National Security Agency knew about the Heartbleed flaw for at
least two years and “regularly used it to gather critical intelligence,”
according to two sources. NSA denial
The
NSA has denied the Bloomberg report. “Reports that NSA or any other part
of the government were aware of the so-called Heartbleed vulnerability
before April 2014 are wrong. The Federal government was not aware of the
recently identified vulnerability in OpenSSL until it was made public
in a private sector cybersecurity report,” according to a blog post from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
If
the Bloomberg story is true, it would be a major bombshell that is
certain to add fuel to the already contentious debate about the NSA’s
role in surveillance. Last year it was reported that the NSA paid
security firm RSA $10 million to intentionally weaken an encryption
algorithm and had circumvented or cracked other encryption schemes. Reuters recently reported that “NSA infiltrated RSA security more deeply than thought.”
Bloomberg said that the NSA was able to use the Heartbleed flaw to obtain passwords and other user data. Is NSA making us less secure?
Obama Lets N.S.A. Exploit Some Internet Flaws, Officials Say
Edward J. Snowden, the N.S.A. leaker, speaking to European officials via videoconference last week.Credit Frederick Florin/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
WASHINGTON
— Stepping into a heated debate within the nation’s intelligence
agencies, President Obama has decided that when the National Security
Agency discovers major flaws in Internet security, it should — in most
circumstances — reveal them to assure that they will be fixed, rather
than keep mum so that the flaws can be used in espionage or
cyberattacks, senior administration officials said Saturday.
But
Mr. Obama carved a broad exception for “a clear national security or
law enforcement need,” the officials said, a loophole that is likely to
allow the N.S.A. to continue to exploit security flaws both to crack
encryption on the Internet and to design cyberweapons.
The
White House has never publicly detailed Mr. Obama’s decision, which he
made in January as he began a three-month review of recommendations by a
presidential advisory committee on what to do in response to recent
disclosures about the National Security Agency.
But
elements of the decision became evident on Friday, when the White House
denied that it had any prior knowledge of the Heartbleed bug, a newly
known hole in Internet security that sent Americans scrambling last week
to change their online passwords. The White House statement said that
when such flaws are discovered, there is now a “bias” in the government
to share that knowledge with computer and software manufacturers so a
remedy can be created and distributed to industry and consumers.
Caitlin
Hayden, the spokeswoman for the National Security Council, said the
review of the recommendations was now complete, and it had resulted in a
“reinvigorated” process to weigh the value of disclosure when a
security flaw is discovered, against the value of keeping the discovery
secret for later use by the intelligence community.
“This process is biased toward responsibly disclosing such vulnerabilities,” she said.
Until
now, the White House has declined to say what action Mr. Obama had
taken on this recommendation of the president’s advisory committee,
whose report is better known for its determination that the government
get out of the business of collecting bulk telephone data about the
calls made by every American. Mr. Obama announced last month that he
would end the bulk collection, and leave the data in the hands of
telecommunications companies, with a procedure for the government to
obtain it with court orders when needed.
But
while the surveillance recommendations were noteworthy, inside the
intelligence agencies other recommendations, concerning encryption and
cyber operations, set off a roaring debate with echoes of the Cold War
battles that dominated Washington a half-century ago.
One
recommendation urged the N.S.A. to get out of the business of weakening
commercial encryption systems or trying to build in “back doors” that
would make it far easier for the agency to crack the communications of
America’s adversaries. Tempting as it was to create easy ways to break
codes — the reason the N.S.A. was established by Harry S. Truman 62
years ago — the committee concluded that the practice would undercut
trust in American software and hardware products. In recent months,
Silicon Valley companies have urged the United States to abandon such
practices, while Germany and Brazil, among other nations, have said they
were considering shunning American-made equipment and software. Their
motives were hardly pure: Foreign companies see the N.S.A. disclosures
as a way to bar American competitors.
Guántanamo
Bay. The head of the US delegation to Geneva said the country was
‘continually striving to improve’. Photograph: Brennan Linsley/AP
The
US came under sharp criticism at the UN human rights committee in
Geneva on Thursday for a long list of human rights abuses that included
everything from detention without charge at Guantánamo, drone strikes
and NSA surveillance, to the death penalty, rampant gun violence and
endemic racial inequality.
At the start of a two-day grilling of
the US delegation, the committee’s 18 experts made clear their deep
concerns about the US record across a raft of human rights issues. Many
related to faultlines as old as America itself, such as guns and race.
Other
issues were relative newcomers. The experts raised questions about the
National Security Agency’s surveillance of digital communications in the
wake of Edward Snowden’s revelations. It also intervened in this week’s
dispute
between the CIA and US senators by calling for declassification and
release of the 6,300-page report into the Bush administration’s use of
torture techniques and rendition that lay behind the current CIA-Senate
dispute.
The committee is charged with upholding the International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), a UN treaty that the US
ratified in 1992. The current exercise, repeated every five years, is a
purely voluntarily review, and the US will face no penalties should it
choose to ignore the committee’s recommendations, which will appear in a
final report in a few weeks’ time.
But the US is clearly
sensitive to suggestions that it fails to live up to the human rights
obligations enshrined in the convention – as signalled by the large size
of its delegation to Geneva this week. And as an act of public shaming,
Thursday’s encounter was frequently uncomfortable for the US.
The
US came under sustained criticism for its global counter-terrorism
tactics, including the use of unmanned drones to kill al-Qaida suspects,
and its transfer of detainees to third countries that might practice
torture, such as Algeria. Committee members also highlighted the Obama
administration’s failure to prosecute any of the officials responsible
for permitting waterboarding and other “enhanced interrogation”
techniques under the previous administration.
Walter Kälin, a
Swiss international human rights lawyer who sits on the committee,
attacked the US government’s refusal to recognise the convention’s
mandate over its actions beyond its own borders. The US has asserted
since 1995 that the ICCPR does not apply to US actions beyond its
borders - and has used that “extra-territoriality” claim to justify its
actions in Guantánamo and in conflict zones.
Answering
UN criticisms of detentions at Guantánamo Bay, the US delegation said:
‘It is the policy of the US to support the preservation of life in a
humane manner.’ Photo: John Moore/Getty Images
The
US has put up its defence at the United Nations in Geneva over charges
that it is guilty of widespread human rights violations, claiming that
the military commissions at Guantanámo Bay meet – and exceed – fair
trial standards and that agencies engaging in mass surveillance are
subject to “rigorous oversight”.
The US delegation delivered its
rebuttal on Friday to the strong criticism it has faced from members of
the UN human rights committee. Over two days, the committee has pressed hard questions about the US human rights record, from National Security Agency data mining to racial discrimination and rampant gun violence.
The
interaction between the US and the committee is part of a process,
completed every five years, to review whether the country is meeting its
commitments under the International Covenant on Civil and Political
Rights (ICCPR), which the US ratified in 1992. At the end of the
process, the committee will produce a non-binding final report that is
aimed at encouraging the US at all levels of government to improve its
policies in areas of perceived weakness.
US officials sought to
fend off the committee’s criticisms, focusing particularly on Guantánamo
and the mass dragnet of data exposed by Edward Snowden. The delegation
insisted that the 154 detainees still being held in Guantánamo are there
“lawfully both under international law and US law”.
Officials
disputed that any of the detainees had been “cleared for release”.
Rather, they were subject to review board assessments every six months
to see whether “continued lawful detention is necessary to protect
against a continuing threat against the US”.
Just three days after the first Guantánamo detainee lodged the first legal challenge
to force feeding at the base in a US federal court, alleging he had
been subjected to a form of torture known as the “water cure”, the US
delegation in Geneva claimed detainees had “access to exceptional
healthcare” and said: “It is the policy of the US to support the
preservation of life in a humane manner.”
http://www.democracynow.org-
The spat between the CIA and its Congressional overseers has
intensified after Senator Dianne Feinstein took to the Senate floor to
directly accuse the CIA of spying in an effort to undermine a probe of
the agency's torture and rendition program. The Senate Intelligence
Committee's report has yet to be released but reportedly documents
extensive abuses and a cover-up by CIA officials. Feinstein says the CIA
broke the law in secretly removing more than 900 documents from
computers used by panel investigators. She also accused the CIA of
intimidation in requesting an FBI inquiry of the panel's conduct. CIA
Director John Brennan has rejected Feinstein's allegations. Meanwhile,
former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden has weighed in
by accusing Feinstein of hypocrisy for criticizing alleged CIA spying
on U.S. senators while condoning government surveillance of private
citizens. We host a roundtable discussion with three guests: former FBI
agent Mike German, former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, and Pulitzer-winning
journalist Julia Angwin, author of the new book, "Dragnet Nation: A
Quest for Privacy, Security and Freedom in a World of Relentless
Surveillance."
