Monthly Archives: July 2014

Snowden urges work on technology that will protect privacy

Posted on by

Former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden himself is going to be 'involved in' working on the problem of embedding security into technology

HOPE X. Edward Snowden speaking via video link at the HOPE X conference. Screen shot from video feed.

MANILA, Philippines Former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden called on developers over the weekend to build systems that protect personal privacy and security by design.

Speaking via videolink at the Hackers on Planet Earth Conference (HOPE X), Snowden once again asked the technology sector to increase privacy-protecting technology in tech products.

According to TechCrunch, Snowden discussed the importance of building new privacy-protecting protocols and technological infrastructures.

"It doesnt end at encryption; it starts at encryption," noted Snowden. "Encryption protects the content but we forget about associations. These programs like Section 215 [of the Patriot Act] and mass surveillance in general is not about surveilling you, its not about surveilling me. Its about surveilling us collectively. Its about watching the company, for everybody in the country and on a global scale.

"This is basically a big data program which provides the raw data that can then be analyzed, it can be filtered, it can be subjected to rules, for example. It says everything you do is being analyzed, its being weighted, its being measured and thats without regard to whether or not youve done anything wrong."

According to tech website Re/Code, Snowden also said, without elaborating, that he was going to be "involved in" working on the problem of embedding security into technology himself.

"We the people you the people, you in this room right now have both the means and the capability to help build a better future by encoding our rights into the programs and protocols upon which we rely every day," Snowden said.

"And thats what a lot of my future work is going to be involved in, and I hope youll join mein making that a reality," he added.

See the article here:
Snowden urges work on technology that will protect privacy

Snowden: At NSA, racy photos were shared

Posted on by

Racy photos seen as a "fringe benefit" of surveillance positions, says Edward Snowden. Photo: NBC

Washington: Former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden said the oversight of surveillance programs was so weak that members of the United States military working at the spy agency sometimes shared sexually explicit photos they intercepted.

He also said the British government often pioneered the most invasive surveillance programs because its intelligence services operate with fewer restrictions designed to protect individual privacy than its counterpart in the US and other allies.

The interview in London's Guardian, was conducted in Moscow where Mr Snowden has been marooned for a little more than a year. He fled there from Hong Kong after he gave journalists hundreds of thousands of classified documents he downloaded from the NSA, which specialises in electronic surveillance. He had most recently worked for the agency in Hawaii.

Mr Snowden said that some of the US military personnel working on agency programs were between the ages of 18 and 22 and did not always respect the privacy of those whose communications were intercepted.

Advertisement

"In the course of their daily work they stumble across something that is completely unrelated to their work, for example an intimate nude photo of someone in a sexually compromising situation but they're extremely attractive," he said. "So what do they do? They turn around in their chair and they show a co-worker. And their co-worker says: 'Oh, hey, that's great. Send that to Bill down the way.'"

Mr Snowden said that type of sharing occurred once every couple of months and was "seen as the fringe benefits of surveillance positions". He said that this was "never reported" and that the system for auditing surveillance programs "is incredibly weak".

"Now while people may say that it's an innocent harm - this person doesn't even know that their image was viewed - it represents a fundamental principle, which is that we don't have to see individual instances of abuse," he said.

NSA spokeswoman Vanee Vines said that the agency had zero tolerance for wilful violations of authority or professional standards, and would respond as appropriate to any credible allegations of misconduct.

Visit link:
Snowden: At NSA, racy photos were shared

New Surveillance Whistleblower: The NSA Violates the Constitution

Posted on by

A former Obama Administration official calls attention to unaccountable mass surveillance conducted under the guise of a 1981 executive order.

Syvwlch/Flickr

John NapierTyeisspeaking out to warn Americans about illegal spying. The former State Department official, who served in the Obama administration from 2011 to 2014, declared Friday that ongoing NSA surveillance abuses are taking place under the auspices of Executive Order 12333, which came into being before the era of digital communications but is being used to collect them promiscuously. The whistleblower alleges that the Obama Administration has been violating the United States Constitution with scant oversight from Congress or the judiciary.

"The order as used today threatens our democracy," he wrote. "I am coming forward because I think Americans deserve an honest answer to the simple question: What kind of data is the NSA collecting on millions, or hundreds of millions, of Americans?" If you've paid casual attention to the Edward Snowden leaks and statements by national security officials, you might be under the impression that the Obama administration is already on record denying that this sort of spying goes on. In fact, denials about NSA spying are almost always carefully worded to address activities under particular legal authorities, like Section 215 of the Patriot Act orSection 702of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. An official will talk about what is or isn't done "under this program,"eliding the fact that the NSA spies on Americans under numerous different programs, despite regularly claiming to be an exclusively foreign spy agency.

Executive Order 12333 is old news to national security insiders and the journalists who cover them, but is largely unknown to the American public, in part because national security officials have a perverse institutional incentive to obscure its role. But some insiders are troubled by such affronts to representative democracy. A tiny subset screw up the courage to inform their fellow citizens.

The former State Department employee, Tye, is but the latest surveillance whistleblower, though he took pains in hisWashington Post op-ed, where he leveled his accusations, to distinguish himself from Snowden and his approach to dissent. "Before I left the State Department, I filed a complaint with the departments inspector general, arguing that the current system of collection and storage of communications by U.S. persons under Executive Order 12333 violates the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures," Tye explained. "I have also brought my complaint to the House and Senate intelligence committees and to the inspector general of the NSA." These stepswhich many say Snowden should've takenproduced no changes to the objectionable NSA spying and wouldn't be garnering attention at all but for Snowden's leaks. It is nevertheless telling that another civil servant with deep establishment loyalties and every incentive to keep quite felt compelled to speak out in dissent.

As Tye put it:

I have never made any unauthorized disclosures of classified information, nor would I ever do so. I fully support keeping secret the targets, sources and methods of U.S. intelligence as crucial elements of national security. I was never a disgruntled federal employee; I loved my job at the State Department. I left voluntarily and on good terms to take a job outside of government. A draft of this article was reviewed and cleared by the State Department and the NSA to ensure that it contained no classified material.

When I started at the State Department, I took an oath to protect the Constitution of the United States. I dont believe that there is any valid interpretation of the Fourth Amendment that could permit the government to collect and store a large portion of U.S. citizens online communications, without any court or congressional oversight, and without any suspicion of wrongdoing. Such a legal regime risks abuse in the long run, regardless of whether one trusts the individuals in office at a particular moment.

This act of conscience illuminates yet another path that a surveillance whistleblower can take. If more current and former federal officials believe that the NSA is in flagrant violation of the 4th Amendment, they should consider declaring themselves too. "Based in part on classified facts that I am prohibited by law from publishing," Tye wrote, "I believe that Americans should be even more concerned about the collection and storage of their communications under Executive Order 12333 than under Section 215." I wonder what he saw but isn't revealing.

Go here to see the original:
New Surveillance Whistleblower: The NSA Violates the Constitution