Category Archives: NSA Spying

Mike Malloy speaks on Snowdens revelations of NSA spying at the 2009 Copenhagen climate talks – Video

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Mike Malloy speaks on Snowdens revelations of NSA spying at the 2009 Copenhagen climate talks
Snowden #39;s steady stream of information has been earth-shattering. The lastest tidbits include the fact that our government is using the popular online game "...

By: Ananda Das

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Mike Malloy speaks on Snowdens revelations of NSA spying at the 2009 Copenhagen climate talks - Video

NSA surveillance revelations sour German perception of Obama

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JUDY WOODRUFF: As Secretary of State John Kerry prepares for his visit to Germany tomorrow, chief foreign affairs correspondent Margaret Warner takes another look at the countrys outrage over U.S. surveillance programs.

Tonight, she talks to a rising star in German politics, who tells her that many in his country are disappointed with the American president, who at one time spurred so much hope.

MARGARET WARNER: German Chancellor Angela Merkel yesterday again criticized Washington for its electronic surveillance of German citizens, including herself.

CHANCELLOR ANGELA MERKEL, Germany (through translator): A program where everything that is technically possible has been done, it harms trust. In the end, there will be less, not more security.

MARGARET WARNER: Her transatlantic coordinator is 34-year-old parliamentarian Philipp Missfelder. Though their center-right party has long stood by the U.S./German alliance, hes been a blunt critic of NSA surveillance and is now the point man dealing with Washington on tough issues facing the two allies.

We spoke this morning in the parliamentary office building in Berlin.

Philipp Missfelder, thank you for having us. Congratulations on your new job.

PHILIPP MISSFELDER, German Coordinator for Transatlantic Cooperation: Thank you very much.

MARGARET WARNER: In her speech yesterday, Chancellor Merkel said, not only was NSA spying in Germany undermining trust between our countries, but that would actually undermine security. Does that undermine the kind of cooperation against global threats, say, terrorism? Is Germany cooperating less with the United States now as a result of this?

PHILIPP MISSFELDER: No, of course not.

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NSA surveillance revelations sour German perception of Obama

Tech Giants, Telcos Get OK to Release Stats on NSA Spying

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In Obamas speech 10 days ago outlining surveillance reforms, the president promised he would allow corporations like Google, Apple and Microsoft to be more transparent with their customers about NSA spying.

We will also enable communications providers to make public more information than ever before about the orders that they have received to provide data to the government, the president said.

Today, we learned what that means. The Justice Department announced(.pdf)that for the first time corporate America may publicly report a broad range of vague and inexact figures about the number of secret orders they receive from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

The companies may begin reporting the number of FISA orders in bands of 1,000. Each company can also report the number of accounts affected collectively by the FISA orders, but, also, only in ranges of 1,000.

Companies were previously blocked from disclosing any of that information.

The change strikes an appropriate balance between the competing interests of protecting national security and furthering transparency, said Deputy Attorney General James Cole in a letter to the general counsels of Yahoo, Microsoft, LinkedIn, Google and Facebook, who had fought for the right to disclose FISA counts to their customers.

The guidelines are roughly the same that already apply to another type of secret order, called a National Security Letter.After a private deal with Google last summer, the government allowed the media giant to report the number of National Security Letters it received and the number of accounts affected by them, all in ranges of 1,000. For 2012, the latest year in which figures were available, Google had said it received 0-999 National Security Letters affecting 1000-1999 accounts.

National Security Letters allow the government to get detailed information on Americans finances and communications without oversight from a judge. The FBI has issued hundreds of thousands of NSLs and has even been reprimanded for abusing them.

FISA orders are potentially broader. FISA orders were issued to telcos under the bulk telephone metadata program NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden disclosed in June.

The companies may publish the figures one every six months, with a six-month delay in reporting periods. The government also ordered a two-year delay for companies to report snooping stats following the first order that is served on a company for a platform, product, or service (whether developed or acquired) for which the company has not previously received such an order.

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Tech Giants, Telcos Get OK to Release Stats on NSA Spying

German government faces legal action over NSA spying

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The German government and the German Federal Intelligence Service are facing legal action because they allegedly aided the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) data collection program.

We will send the legal action to the authorities next Monday, said Constanze Kurz, a German computer scientist and spokeswoman for the Chaos Computer Club (CCC), in an email on Wednesday.

There are several persons as well as organizations which are suing our government and other named persons in charge, she said, adding that one of them is the International League for Human Rights, a German section of the International Federation for Human Rights.

The complainants will bring charges over the alleged involvement of the German government in the NSA spying programs, she said. That is one reason, she said, adding that the action was also started because they did not even try to stop them from tapping into phones, hacking and spying on computers and collecting massive amounts of data although we have clearly laws that forbid foreign espionage.

Kurz said the legal complaint will comprise more than 50 pages, and will be published Monday.

The German government and the German Federal Intelligence Service (BND) have been cooperating closely with the NSA and have used spy software provided by the NSA, according to a July report from Der Spiegel based on documents leaked by Edward Snowden.

According to those documents, the BND, the German Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) and the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) played a central role in the exchange of information among intelligence agencies referred to by the NSA as key partners, Der Spiegel reported.

The NSA also provided the BfV with a spying tool called XKeyscore, according to the report. The XKeyscore tool is a surveillance program that the NSA uses to collect data sets and allows analysts to search through vast numbers of emails, online chats and browsing histories without prior authorization, according to the Guardian newspaper. The BfV has admitted to another German publication, Bild, that it is using an NSA program, but said it is only testing it.

Kurz is also one of the complainants that is challenging the legality of Internet surveillance programmes operated by U.K. intelligence agency GCHQ.

She filed a complaint with the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in October together with U.K. groups Big Brother Watch, Open Rights Group and English PEN, alleging that the U.K. government illegally used Internet and telecommunications networks to systematically spy onits citizens.

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German government faces legal action over NSA spying