Category Archives: NSA Spying

NSA spying: What if secrecy trumps the Constitution? | Fox …

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The United States Constitution. (ARCHIVES.GOV)

What if the National Security Agency (NSA) knows it is violating the Constitution by spying on all Americans without showing a judge probable cause of wrongdoing or identifying the persons it wishes to spy upon, as the Constitution requires? What if this massive spying has come about because the NSA found it too difficult to follow the Constitution?

What if the Constitution was written to keep the government off the peoples backs, but the NSA and the president and some members of Congress have put the NSA not only on our backs, but in our bedrooms, kitchens, telephones and computers? What if when you look at your computer screen, the NSA is looking right back at you?

What if the NSA really thought it could keep the fact that it is spying on all Americans and many others throughout the world secret from American voters?

What if Congress enacted laws that actually delegate some congressional powers to elite congressional committees -- one in the Senate and one in the House?

What if this delegation of power is unconstitutional because the Constitution gives all legislative powers to Congress as a whole and Congress itself is powerless to give some of its power away to two of its secret committees?

What if the members of these elite committees who hear and see secrets from the NSA, the CIA and other federal intelligence agencies are themselves sworn to secrecy?

What if the secrets they hear are so terrifying that some of these members of Congress dont know what to do about it?

What if the secrecy prohibits these congressional committee members from telling anyone what they know and seeking advice about these awful truths?

What if they cant tell a spouse at home, a lawyer in her office, a priest in confessional, a judge when under oath in a courtroom, other members of Congress or the voters who sent them to Congress?

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NSA spying: What if secrecy trumps the Constitution? | Fox ...

The NSA Spying Machine: An Interactive Graphic – Businessweek

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With every new leak from Edward Snowdens bottomless trove of pilfered documents, it gets harder to keep track of all the bizarre ways the National Security Agency has cooked up to spy on people and governments. This may help.

Data in Motion NSAs spies divide targets into two broad categories: data in motion and data at rest. Information moving to and from mobile phones, computers, data centers, and satellites is often easier to grab, and the agency sucks up vast amounts worldwide. Yet common data such as e-mail is often protected with encryption once it leaves a device, making it harderbut not impossibleto crack.

Data at Rest Retrieving information from hard drives, overseas data centers, or cell phones is more difficult, but its often more valuable because stored data is less likely to be encrypted, and spies can zero in on exactly what they want. NSA lawyers can compel U.S. companies to hand over some of it; agency hackers target the most coveted and fortified secrets inside computers of foreign governments.

Where the Data Goes Much of the data the NSA compiles from all these efforts will be stored in its million-square-foot data center near Bluffdale, Utah. It can hold an estimated 12 exabytes of data. An exabyte is the equivalent of 1 billion gigabytes.

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The NSA Spying Machine: An Interactive Graphic - Businessweek

New Harris poll finds NSA spying affecting online commerce

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Summary: 85 percent of adult Americans are somewhat aware of NSA spying and many have already changed their online behavior. And the Snowden revelations continue. Where will this end?

A new Harris poll commissioned by security software maker ESET (not available online; reported on here) found that 47 percent of respondents have changed their online behavior and think more about the sites they visit, what they say, and what they do.

Twenty-six percent say that they are now doing less online banking and shopping. More worrying: the 18-34 age group is doing less online.

Twenty-four percent are less inclined to use email. Among 18-34 year olds in households making less than $50,000, a year the the percentage rises to 32.

OK, all the big e-commerce sites may be quaking, but the NSA not so much. Why?

While two-thirds believe technology companies have violated the trust of users by working with the Feds, 57 percent believes that mass surveillance helps prevent terrorism. Really?

I asked Stephen Cobb, Senior Security Researcher at ESET, author of the article about the survey and a long-time security geek, about the disparity between concern about security and support for surveillance.

The NSA revelations brought to the surface concerns that a lot of people had in the area of data privacy. People are now debating with themselves the balance between privacy and security.

People's feelings are becoming more nuanced. People want better oversight, new laws, because people see value in surveillance.

But is the concern temporary or long term?

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New Harris poll finds NSA spying affecting online commerce

Interactive Graphic: The NSA Spying Machine

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With every new leak from Edward Snowdens bottomless trove of pilfered documents, it gets harder to keep track of all the bizarre ways the National Security Agency has cooked up to spy on people and governments. This may help.

Data in Motion NSAs spies divide targets into two broad categories: data in motion and data at rest. Information moving to and from mobile phones, computers, data centers, and satellites is often easier to grab, and the agency sucks up vast amounts worldwide. Yet common data such as e-mail is often protected with encryption once it leaves a device, making it harderbut not impossibleto crack.

Data at Rest Retrieving information from hard drives, overseas data centers, or cell phones is more difficult, but its often more valuable because stored data is less likely to be encrypted, and spies can zero in on exactly what they want. NSA lawyers can compel U.S. companies to hand over some of it; agency hackers target the most coveted and fortified secrets inside computers of foreign governments.

Where the Data Goes Much of the data the NSA compiles from all these efforts will be stored in its million-square-foot data center near Bluffdale, Utah. It can hold an estimated 12 exabytes of data. An exabyte is the equivalent of 1 billion gigabytes.

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Interactive Graphic: The NSA Spying Machine

NSA Searched Americans’ E-Mail, Phone Calls, Clapper Says

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U.S. intelligence agencies searched the content of e-mails and other electronic communications of Americans without warrants, the nations top intelligence official told members of Congress.

The queries were part of efforts to obtain information about suspected foreign terrorists under a law that Congress passed in 2008, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper wrote in a March 28 letter to Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat and one of the most vocal critics of government surveillance.

The spying is unacceptable and proves the existence of a loophole in surveillance law that allows the National Security Agency to illegally search the Internet communications and listen to the phone calls of Americans who may have no connection to terrorism, Wyden and Senator Mark Udall, a Colorado Democrat, said in an e-mailed statement yesterday.

It raises serious constitutional questions and poses a real threat to the privacy rights of law-abiding Americans, the lawmakers said. Senior officials have sometimes suggested that government agencies do not deliberately read Americans e-mails, monitor their online activity or listen to their phone calls without a warrant. However, the facts show that those suggestions were misleading.

Big Data Meets Big Surveillance

The disclosure is significant because it potentially opens up a new line of public and congressional scrutiny into NSA spying. Until now, most of the focus of public debate has been on restraining the NSAs ability to collect and store bulk phone records, which include numbers dialed and call durations without the contents of conversations.

The NSA collects phone records from Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ) and other carriers and operates a program known as Prism under which it compels Google Inc. (GOOG), Facebook Inc. (FB) and other Internet companies to hand over data about users suspected of being foreign terrorists, according to documents exposed since June by former government contractor Edward Snowden.

The 2008 law amending the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act allows the NSA to intercept the communications of suspected foreign terrorists without warrants. The data can include the communications of U.S. citizens as long as they arent the target of an investigation. A warrant is required to search the communications of Americans who are the focus of an investigation.

Wyden and Udall have long warned that intelligence agencies use the loophole to monitor the communications of Americans without warrants and said legislation is needed to prevent that type of spying.

It is now clear to the public that the list of ongoing intrusive surveillance practices by the NSA includes not only bulk collection of Americans phone records, but also warrantless searches of the content of Americans personal communications, Wyden and Udall said yesterday.

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NSA Searched Americans’ E-Mail, Phone Calls, Clapper Says

NSA Searched E-Mail, Phone Calls of Americans: Clapper

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U.S. intelligence agencies searched the content of e-mails and other electronic communications of Americans without warrants, the nations top intelligence official told members of Congress.

The queries were part of efforts to obtain information about suspected foreign terrorists under a law that Congress passed in 2008, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper wrote in a March 28 letter to Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat and one of the most vocal critics of government surveillance.

The spying is unacceptable and proves the existence of a loophole in surveillance law that allows the National Security Agency to illegally search the Internet communications and listen to the phone calls of Americans who may have no connection to terrorism, Wyden and Senator Mark Udall, a Colorado Democrat, said in an e-mailed statement today.

It raises serious constitutional questions and poses a real threat to the privacy rights of law-abiding Americans, the lawmakers said. Senior officials have sometimes suggested that government agencies do not deliberately read Americans e-mails, monitor their online activity or listen to their phone calls without a warrant. However, the facts show that those suggestions were misleading.

The disclosure is significant because it potentially opens up a new line of public and congressional scrutiny into NSA spying. Until now, most of the focus of public debate has been on restraining the NSAs ability to collect and store bulk phone records, which include numbers dialed and call durations without the contents of conversations.

The NSA collects phone records from Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ) and other carriers and operates a program known as Prism under which it compels Google Inc. (GOOG), Facebook Inc. (FB) and other Internet companies to hand over data about users suspected of being foreign terrorists, according to documents exposed since June by former government contractor Edward Snowden.

The 2008 law amending the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act allows the NSA to intercept the communications of suspected foreign terrorists without warrants. The data can include the communications of U.S. citizens as long as they arent the target of an investigation. A warrant is required to search the communications of Americans who are the focus of an investigation.

Wyden and Udall have long warned that intelligence agencies use the loophole to monitor the communications of Americans without warrants and said legislation is needed to prevent that type of spying.

It is now clear to the public that the list of ongoing intrusive surveillance practices by the NSA includes not only bulk collection of Americans phone records, but also warrantless searches of the content of Americans personal communications, Wyden and Udall said.

Requiring the NSA to obtain court warrants in order to search its database of e-mails and other Internet communications would be burdensome and delay investigations of terrorist plots, officials in President Barack Obamas administration told a U.S. privacy panel March 19.

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NSA Searched E-Mail, Phone Calls of Americans: Clapper