Category Archives: NSA

NSA reform may be the last true bipartisan issue.

Republicans won victories nationwide in Tuesdays midterm election, handily taking control of Congress and ousting two key criticsSenator Mark Udall (D. Colorado) and Senator Mark Begich (D. Alaska)of the NSA. The GOP takeover of the legislative branch means Republicans will chair all senate committees, including the powerful Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

Privacy advocates like the ACLU are often aligned with the Democratic and liberal sides of politics, so it stands to reason that some might worry this would be a crushing blow to privacy. The biggest NSA defenders are Republicans; the Patriot Act that justifies much of the spying behavior disclosed by Edward Snowden was created and passed under a Republican administration and Congress; and a majority of Republican lawmakers have voted to enhance those spying powers over the years, even after the Snowden information was revealed.

Further, 2015 is shaping up to be a key year in the fight for privacy in the post-Snowden era. A number of provisions of the Patriot Act will be up for reauthorization next June. The USA Freedom Act, which aims to curtail NSA powers, will also finally be up for consideration in the Senate. With more than half of the American people disapproving of the NSAs activities, reform is a clearly pressing issue.

Yet, a Republican majority in the House and Senate is not the devastating blow to privacy you might have expected it to be. Here are four reasons why.

Though NSA reform once was a partisan issue, Edward Snowdens revelations of the depth of government surveillance united Democrats and Republicans in calling for an overhaul. Neema Singh Guliani, legislative counsel with the American Civil Liberties Union, says its too early to tell what direction the new leadership will go, but she says the issue of NSA reform is not a one-senator or a one-party issue.

Take Colorado, for instance. Outgoing Democratic Senator Mark Udall was one of the Senate intelligence committees few members who persistently criticized the agencies it oversaw. He fought all expansions of NSA reach and opposed using drones to spy on US citizens, introduing a bill in 2013 to ensure private drone operators could not spy on people in this country.

If he were to be replaced by a pro-NSA senator, the weight of the reform movement would have become severely unbalanced.

In fact, Republican Cory Gardner, who beat Udall handily by 4 percentage points, has such a good record on privacy that Udall was essentially unable to run on his own sterling record. Gardner recently reversed his position on matters of privacy. Though he initially voted for the updated and expanded Patriot Act in 2011 (which Udall was staunchly against), Gardners record changed dramatically after Snowdens NSA revelations, consistently voting against expanding NSA reach. As a congressman, he co-sponsored the EFF-backed version of the new USA Freedom Act.

This kind of bipartisan support for privacy issues is not unique to Colorado, as one look at the congressional scorecard compiled by the coalition for StandAgainstSpying reveals.

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Republicans Taking Over Congress Isnt the Privacy Nightmare Youd Think

Before May, Congress has no alternative but to endorse or end NSA spying on the phone calls of virtually every American. What is the will of the new party in charge?

Toby Melville/Reuters

The Patriot Act substantially expires in May 2015.

When the new Congress takes up its reauthorization, mere months after convening, they'll be forced to decide what to do about Section 215 of the law, the provision cited by the NSA to justify logging most every telephone call made by Americans.

With Republicans controlling both the Senate and the House, the GOP faces a stark choice. Is a party that purports to favor constitutional conservatism and limited government going to ratify mass surveillance that makes a mockery of the Fourth Amendment? Will Mitch McConnell endorse a policy wherein the Obama administration logs and stores every telephone number dialed or received by Roger Ailes of Fox News, Wayne LaPierre of the NRA, the Koch brothers, the head of every pro-life organization in America, and every member of the Tea Party? Is the GOP House going to sacrifice the privacy of all its constituents to NSA spying that embodies the generalized warrants so abhorrent to the founders?

The issue divides elected Republicans. Senator Rand Paul and Rep. Justin Amash are among those wary of tracking the phone calls of millions of innocent people. Senator Richard Burr favors doing it. Republicans pondering a run for president in 2016 will be trying to figure out how mass surveillance will play in that campaign.

Many would rather not take any stand before May, as if governingthe very job citizens are paying them to dois some sort of trap. But their preferences don't matter.

This fight cannot be avoided.

Nor is it the only one that touches on surveillance. The dubiously named USA Freedom Act began as an effort to reform the NSA and has since been weakened. The NSA and FBI engages in lots of questionable surveillance besides the phone dragnet. Republicans will now run the Senate and House intelligence committees.

Rather than urging the GOP to avoid "the governing trap," National Review and other outlets purportedly dedicated to constitutional conservatism ought to be demanding that Republicans use their newfound power to rein in our surveillance bureaucracy, for anyone with a healthy mistrust of government should see how easily its staggering power, exercised in secret, could be ruinous to liberty. A limited government movement that does not demand oversight and reform, now that its party has regained power, is a farce. To endorse the national surveillance bureaucracy as it now stands is tantamount to declaring oneself a trusting statist.

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Now the GOP Must Choose: Mass Surveillance or Privacy?

why i wanted to expose the federal reserve and nsa to the world...

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why i wanted to expose the federal reserve and nsa to the world... - Video

NSA, Google, and the FBI Director
NSA Sergey Brin and Keith Alexander Emails: http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1154294-nsa-google.html#document/p1 People Trust NSA More Than Google Survey: ...

By: CPerceptionsTV

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NSA, Google, and the FBI Director - Video

PM #39;s office NSA to review border infrastructure with China
The Prime Minister #39;s office and the National Security Advisor will be reviewing the border infrastructure with China. Principal Secretary to the PM, and the NSA Ajit Doval will be attending...

By: Headlines Today

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PM's office & NSA to review border infrastructure with China - Video

MidPoint | Larry Klayman to discuss the suit he has filed against the NSA
A former Justice Department attorney and the founder of Judicial Watch and Freedom Watch joins MidPoint to discuss the suit he has filed against the NSA for eavesdropping which will be heard...

By: NewsmaxTV

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MidPoint | Larry Klayman to discuss the suit he has filed against the NSA - Video

Campus Shut Down an Anti-NSA Petition, but This Student Fought Back
Vincenzo Sinapi-Riddle #39;s troubles with Citrus College began on Constitution DaySeptember 17last year when he asked another student to sign a petition protesting the NSA #39;s surveillance...

By: TheFIREorg

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Campus Shut Down an Anti-NSA Petition, but This Student Fought Back - Video

This undated photo provided by the National Security Agency (NSA) shows its headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland.  NSA via Getty Images

WASHINGTON - Three U.S. appeals court judges struggled Tuesday over whether the National Security Agency's phone data surveillance program is an intelligence-gathering tool that makes the nation safer or an intrusive threat that endangers privacy.

The judges - all appointed by Republican presidents - expressed uncertainty about where to draw the line between legal surveillance and violations of constitutional rights.

Since 2006, the FBI has obtained orders from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court directing phone companies to produce telephone "metadata" - outgoing phone numbers dialed and numbers from incoming calls - to the government.

The NSA consolidates the records into a searchable database in the hunt for terror suspects.

During the hour-and-a-half hearing, Judge David Sentelle questioned whether it is an invasion of privacy if the NSA simply collects the data, stopping short of using it.

Is it not an invasion "with mere collection?" asked Sentelle.

It is not, replied Justice Department lawyer H. Thomas Byron.

Arguing against the NSA program, activist attorney Larry Klayman disputed Byron, telling Judge Janice Rogers Brown that "collection is enough" to justify pursuing the lawsuit against the government.

Klayman won the first round in December when U.S. District Judge Richard Leon, a Republican appointee, ruled that the NSA's surveillance program likely runs afoul of the Constitution's ban on unreasonable searches. The government is seeking to have Leon's ruling thrown out.

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Federal appeals court struggles over NSA program's legality

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Washington (CNN) -- The scope and legality of the government's warrantless electronic surveillance programs was discussed Tuesday as a federal appeals court reviewed a lower U.S. court's injunction that would block collection of data from two plaintiffs who are suing

Activist Larry Klayman, an attorney who heads the group "Freedom Watch," filed suit last year based on published reports of wrongdoing from whistleblower Edward Snowden. The former contractor with the National Security Agency accused authorities of misusing some of the capabilities he observed, and acting without a judicial or statutory basis.

Klayman, using himself as an aggrieved party from the surveillance, used the lawsuit to accuse the government of conducting "a secret and illegal government scheme to intercept and analyze vast quantities of domestic telephonic communications," along with communications "from the internet and electronic service providers."

Tuesday he said he has the standing to bring the suit as a customer of Verizon, one of the companies known to be cooperating with warrantless surveillance. But when the appeals panel asked him for documented proof he had been targeted, Klayman said only that the broad scope of the surveillance made it likely.

The other plaintiff is Charles Strange, whose son Michael was an NSA cryptologist and Navy SEAL in Afghanistan in 2011 when he was killed in the downing of his helicopter by insurgents. The father told reporters he has been the target of secret intelligence gathering because he's been asking questions about the circumstances surrounding his son's death.

Both men late last year won a preliminary injunction that would have barred the government from collecting data on them, and it ordered authorities to destroy any data already gathered.

But the District Court judge immediately stayed his order pending the appeal that was heard Tuesday, because of "significant national security interests" that could be affected.

Justice Department attorney Thomas Byron, defending the government, asked the appeals court judges to reverse the injunction, saying a phone company's business records are not protected by the Fourth Amendment against unreasonable searches.

Byron said there was no documentation that any records gathered were "intrusively acquired." He said Congress passes laws to protect privacy, such as for hospital records and banking, and that the government's surveillance is constrained by the provisions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, with activities judged by the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

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NSA snoop case reaches appeal

After the FBI and Britain's top spy agency criticized Silicon Valley for encrypting and protecting user data, Michael Rogers, director of the NSA, came to Palo Alto to make peace. "I am not one who jumps up and down and says either side is fundamentally wrong," Rogers told a crowd of students and professors at Stanford University on Monday. "I understand what drives each side to their viewpoint on this." He said that he understood FBI Director James Comey's desire for "some mechanism on the technical side" where, "using a legal framework," encrypted data could be accessed by the government.

He also claimed that the NSA did not know about or exploit the Heartbleed bug before news of it broke in April. When it comes to cybersecurity threats, Rogers said it was "unrealistic to expect the private sector to withstand the actions of nation-states," but equally unrealistic to "expect the government to deal with this all by itself." Rogers also tried to woo away computer science students from lucrative Silicon Valley jobs. "We are going to give you the opportunity to do some neat things that you can't legally do anywhere else," he said.

First published November 4 2014, 10:55 AM

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NSA Head Makes Nice with Silicon Valley Over Privacy