Monthly Archives: June 2014

Inside Edward Snowden’s Life as a Robot

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Snowden appears via Beam bot in the ACLUs New York offices with (from left) journalist Laura Poitras, Freedom of the Press Foundation director Trevor Timm and security technologist Micah Lee. Photo: Courtesy of Freedom of the Press Foundation

Since he first became a household name a year ago, Edward Snowden has been a modern Max Headroom, appearing only as a face on a screen broadcast from exile in Hong Kong or Russia. But in the age of the telepresence robot, being a face on a screen isnt as restrictive as it used to be.

For at least the past three months, Snowden and his supporters have been experimenting with a Beam Pro remote presence system, a Wi-Fi-connected screen and camera on wheels that Snowden can use to communicate with the staffers in the New York office of the American Civil Liberties Union, according to his ACLU lawyer Ben Wizner. From a computer in Moscow, Snowden can turn on the video bot and wheel around the ACLUs office on a whim. And Snowdens supporters hope the Beam system might be the first of several that could bring the distant whistleblower into the room with colleagues around the world, partially erasing the isolation enforced by the Espionage Act charges awaiting him if he leaves the relative safety of Russia.

Hes used it to roll out into the hallway and generously interact with large numbers of ACLU staff, says Wizner. I think it can be a profound response to exile.

Snowdens Beam bot has been in the ACLU offices since before his TED talk in March, when he used the same $16,000 wheeled robot to speak on stage. Wizner says the TED organizers wanted to test the robot in New York before it was used at the Vancouver conference. They brought a couple models to the office, and gave us a login, says Wizner. We found that it worked really well.

Snowden can drive his in-office telepresence system with his keyboards arrow keys at around two miles an hour. It has an eight hour battery life before it needs to dock into a $950 charging station, and even comes with a party mode that activates more ambient microphones and elevates the volume of its speaker.

Edward Snowden is interviewed by TED Curator Chris Anderson via Beam during the 2014 TED conference. Photo: Steven Rosenbaum/Getty

Since its first appearance at TED, Snowdens Beam came into the spotlight again Wednesday in a story in the German newspaper Tagesspiegel. But while Tagesspiegel described Snowden as using the Beam system on a regular basis, Wizner says Snowdenbot has been a more occasional visitor to the ACLU office. Once, the non-profits executive director Anthony Romero gave the Snowden-possessed machine a walking tour of the building. Another time, Wizner had to jump on a phone call during a meeting with his whistleblower client. When he got off the phone, he found that Snowden had rolled the bot into civil liberties lawyer Jameel Jaffers office and was discussing the 702 provision of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. It was kind of cool, Wizner says.1

Trevor Timm, the director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation where Snowden sits on the board, says Snowden had been interested in trying the telepresence bot even before his TED talk. He was telling people for a while that it could be this game-changing technology, says Timm. I dont think anyone quite believed him until we saw it in actionAll he needs is arms to open doors, and he can go wherever he wants.

Timm met with Snowden-as-robot last April, along with journalist and Snowden-chronicling filmmaker Laura Poitras. It lights up and he shows up on the screen, Timm describes. When it started moving towards us, everyone kind of jumped back.

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Inside Edward Snowden’s Life as a Robot

Snowden leaks after one year: Wrangling over the meaning of ‘bulk’

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A debate in the U.S. about whether the National Security Agency should end its bulk collection of U.S. telephone and business records has come down to an argument over the meaning of the word bulk.

A year after the first leaks by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden were published, it appears that already scaled-back proposals to limit the NSAs bulk collection of U.S. telephone and business records may not even happen. And officials with President Barack Obamas administration, backing an NSA reform bill called the USA Freedom Act, have already begun to pick holes in its definitions.

An amended version of the USA Freedom Act that passed the House of Representatives in May would allow the NSA to continue to target wide groups of U.S. records, critics said, because of its expanded definition of the terms the NSA must use to define its searches.

President Barack Obama in January announced plans to end the bulk collection of U.S. phone and business records, and administration officials have said the amended version of the USA Freedom Act would accomplish that goal.

But whether Obamas plan or the bill ends bulk collection depends on the definition of bulk. Deputy Attorney General James Cole told the Senate Intelligence Committee Thursday that the prohibition on bulk collection means the indiscriminate collection of U.S. records. The USA Freedom Act would allow the NSA to collect large numbers of records, if a surveillance court judge approves the request, he said.

Somewhat contradictory, Cole said the bill would prohibit the collection of all phone records in a ZIP code. That would be the type of indiscriminate bulk collection that this bill is designed to end, he said.

The language in the bill tells a different story, critics said.

Senators, let us not use the phrase, bulk collection, as coded jargon for existing programs or nationwide surveillance dragnets, Harley Geiger, senior counsel at the Center for Democracy and Technology, said during the Thursday hearing. Rather, bulk collection, as any normal person would understand it, means the large-scale collection of information about individuals with no connection to a crime or investigation.

The version of the bill that passed the House would allow the NSA to target wide groups of U.S. records, critics said, because it allows an expended definition of a specific selection term that the NSA must use to define its searches. The amended version of the bill allows the NSA to target things such as a person, entity, accounts, address, or device, language that would give the NSA few limits on what groups it can target, critics said.

The amended USA Freedom Act does not end bulk collection, Geiger added. The definition of specific selection term is deliberately ambiguous and open-ended. There is nothing in the bill that would prohibit, for example, the use of [search terms] Verizon, Gmail.com or the state of Georgia as a specific selection term.

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Snowden leaks after one year: Wrangling over the meaning of 'bulk'

Edward Snowden rejects German plans for meeting in Moscow

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In a letter to German lawmakers, Snowden's Berlin-based lawyer, Wolfgang Kaleck, dismissed their request for an informal meeting with the former intelligence official in Russia.

There was "no room or need for an oral, 'informal' meeting in Moscow," Kaleck wrote, adding that a hearing "in the desired form" is only possible in Germany.

The German parliamentary inquiry was set up to investigate alleged operations by the US National Security Agency (NSA), under which Snowden had worked as a contractor. Snowden's various revelations on NSA surveillance caused a worldwide public outcry about intrusions of privacy.

The allegations have prompted particular worry in Germany, a country with relatively fresh memories of oppressive secret services both during Adolf Hitler's reign and in former communist East Germany.

No testimony in Berlin

Opposition lawmakers have demanded that Snowden be allowed to come to Berlin and testify, but the German government has said doing so would hurt relations with the United States. It is also not known if such a move would jeopardize Snowden's immigration status in Russia, where his temporary asylum runs until the end of July.

Parliamentarians from the two main parties in Merkel's ruling coalition, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Social Democratic Party (SPD), had wanted to hold an "informal discussion" with Snowden in Moscow in preparation for a formal hearing.

The United States wishes to try Snowden on espionage charges and has issued an international warrant for his arrest.

Snowden has only testified live once before to legislators, speaking by video hookup from Moscow on April 8 to a committee of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, France.

Earlier this month, German's federal prosecutor general opened a formal investigation into claims that the NSA tapped the phone of German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

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Edward Snowden rejects German plans for meeting in Moscow

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard Supports Amendment to Defund Illegal NSA Spying Programs – Video

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Rep. Tulsi Gabbard Supports Amendment to Defund Illegal NSA Spying Programs
June 19, 2014 - Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) speaks in support of an amendment she co-sponsored to prohibit funding for the NSA spying programs that illegally t...

By: Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard

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Rep. Tulsi Gabbard Supports Amendment to Defund Illegal NSA Spying Programs - Video

NSA using DEA as a cover to spy on government …

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"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men." - Lord Acton

If we were to try to identify the most corrupt of the U.S. government agencies, we would be hard pressed to find any more vile and destructive than the Drug Enforcement Agency led by Director Michele Leonhart, a holdover from the Bush administration renominated by President Obama in a gesture of goodwill to the Republicans and his homage to Abraham Lincoln's tradition of bipartisanship.

Now, Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, brings us news that the Drug Enforcement Agency has been operating as a front for the National Security Agency to spy on foreign governments, corporations and individuals in Latin America - in fact, the DEA and NSA are operating as a "two-way street." In The Hill we learn the sordid details Another US spying problem in Latin America: The DEA.

From the Intercept: DEA is actually one of the biggest spy operations there is, says Finn Selander, a former DEA special agent Our mandate is not just drugs. We collect intelligence. ... Selander added that countries let us in because they dont view us, really, as a spy organization.

This is potentially an even bigger breach of diplomatic trust than the NSA spying that Rousseff denounced at the U.N. Governments allow the DEA access to military, police and intelligence resources sometimes including phone-tapping -- as part of a collaborative effort with the United States to fight organized crime. They do not expect that by doing so they are unwittingly assisting the NSA and the enormous U.S. intelligence apparatus with unauthorized spying for political or commercial purposes.

Our U.S. relationships with Brazil were already in rough waters after documents leaked by Edward Snowden inidicated Brazil was one of the top targets of NSA spying including the personal phone calls of President Rousseff and the computer systems of Petrobras - Brazils national oil company. President Obama apologized on our behalf and we promised we would not do this anymore.

Are we learning now this may be a promise our President can not keep? Are the spying and surveillance habits of our vast intelligence system even known, and knowable by our political leaders?

Last year, among the documents released by Snowden, and published in the New York Times, was an inconspicuous memo that received little attention, but I noticed it because I'm obsessed with the idea that the DEA has become so corrupt the only solution is to abolish it, and spread any legitimate functions it has among the 15 other federal law enforcement agencies.

The memo was from an NSA operative to a DEA investigator. The NSA operative had obtained information about a non-terrorist drug dealer spotted by the NSA in this massive illegal terrorist data mining operation, that we've been assured is only used for to identify terrorists.

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NSA using DEA as a cover to spy on government ...

House Moves to Rein in NSA ‘Backdoor’ Spying on Americans

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A rally in 2013 against NSA spying. (Photo: Stephen Melkisethian/cc/flickr)The House of Representatives on Thursday approved an effort to rein in government surveillance by passing an amendment that attempts to block so-called "backdoor" searches by the NSA.

The late night vote on the amendment, whose main sponsor was Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), passed 293-123 with overwhelming bipartisan support and little debate.

Massie and amendment co-sponsors Reps. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) called their proposal "a sure step toward shutting the back door on mass surveillance," and stated that it would "reinstate an important provision that was stripped from the original USA FREEDOM Act to further protect the Constitutional rights of American citizens. Congress has an ongoing obligation to conduct oversight of the intelligence community and its surveillance authorities."

Specifically, the amendment to the 2015 Department of Defense Appropriations Act would "prohibit use of funds by an officer or employee of the United States to query a collection of foreign intelligence information acquired under FISA using a United States person identifier except in specified instances."

In other words, as a group of privacy advocates and tech companies wrote in a letter (pdf) to House members,

the amendment would address the backdoor search loophole by prohibiting the use of appropriated funds to enable government agencies to collect and search the communications of U.S. persons without a warrant using section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (50 U.S. C. 1881a), a statute primarily designed to pick up communications of individuals abroad. Although section 702 prohibits the government from intentionally targeting the communications of U.S. persons, it does not impose restrictions on querying those communications if they were inadvertently or incidentally collected under section 702. Moreover, as a result of an apparent change in the NSAs internal practices in 2011, the NSA is now explicitly permitted under certain circumstances to conduct searches using U.S. person names and identifiers without a warrant.

The amendment would block the Defense Appropriations Bill from funding the NSA to conduct this kind of backdoor search.

Mike Masnick writes at Techdirt that the vote marks

the first time that Congress has overwhelmingly voted to defund an NSA program. Last year's Amash Amendment came very, very close to defunding a different program (the Section 215 bulk records collection program), but by passing by an overwhelming margin, this vote is a pretty big sign that the House (on both sides of the aisle) is not happy with how the NSA has been spying on Americans. [...] it's also a big slap in the face to the White House and certain members of the House leadership who conspired to water down the USA Freedom Act a few weeks ago, stripping it of a very similar provision to block backdoor searches.

EFF said the vote marked "a great day in the fight to rein in NSA surveillance abuses." Mark Rumold, staff attorney fir EFF, said in a statement:

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House Moves to Rein in NSA 'Backdoor' Spying on Americans

U.S. House Votes to Limit NSA Spying

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House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., speaks at her weekly news briefing on May 9, 2014, on Capitol Hill in Washington.

Image: Jacquelyn Martin/Associated Press

By Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai2014-06-20 15:24:18 UTC

The road to NSA reform took another unexpected turn.

In a surprise vote late Thursday night, the U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly sided in favor of an amendment that would stop two key NSA surveillance activities: searching government databases for information on U.S. citizens without a warrant the so-called "backdoor searches" and ask hardware and software makers to build backdoors for surveillance purposes.

The amendment was introduced as part of the 2015 Defense Appropriations bill, the annual bill to fund the military, which includes funds for the NSA. Representatives passed it after just 10 minutes of debate, with 293 votes in favor and 123 against.

Strictly speaking, the measure doesn't prohibit the NSA from conducting backdoor searches or asking companies to introduce backdoors in their products but it cuts funding for both these activities. If it becomes law, the measure would effectively prevent the NSA from doing that.

The vote, which was bipartisan (among its supporters were 158 Democrats and 135 Republicans,) shows that Congress isn't done with NSA reforms after passing the USA Freedom Act, which critics labelled as "watered-down," and "weak."

"Tonight's overwhelming vote to rein in the NSA's backdoor access to Americans' data signals widespread discontent amongst House members over how the USA Freedom Act was watered down by the House leadership in secret negotiations with the intelligence community," Kevin Bankston, the policy director for the New America Foundation's Open Technology Institute, said in a statement.

The amendment is just a first step, however. The bill still needs to be approved by the Senate and then signed into law by President Barack Obama. However, the vote shows how much has changed in terms of how Congress views the NSA after a year of Snowden revelations. Last summer, a similar amendment to defund the NSA's phone surveillance was rejected by Congress in a close vote. Months later, lawmakers seem to have changed their minds.

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U.S. House Votes to Limit NSA Spying