Category Archives: NSA

Senator Udall visiting a wind power plant in Boulder in 2013.

Sen. Mark Udall (D-CO) was one of just a few US Senators decryingwidespreadsurveillance even before the Snowden leaks. Udall hasbeen a sharp critic of intelligence agencies since then as well, asking for CIA Director John Brennan to resign after allegations emerged that the intelligence agency gained access to Senate files.

He won't be in office much longer.Udall lost his election last night against Republican challenger Rep. Cory Gardner. By 1:00am Eastern time, Gardner was ahead by six percentage points, with 87 percent of precinctsreporting. At that point, several news agencies called the election for Gardner.The Senateseat was one of several that flipped from Democratic to Republican control last night, causing Republicans to take control of theupper house.

Udall's positioning as a toughcritic of the NSA wasn't a big issue on the campaign trail, although in the final days ofthe election he did release an ad saying he wont tolerate overbroad government surveillance. But much of Udall's campaigning came across as out of touch, running an old playbook. Udall hammered his opponent on womens' issues in socially liberal Colorado, noting that Gardner supported a "personhood amendment" tolimit abortion and suggesting he wanted to ban some types of birth control.

That led to criticism that Udall was running a "one-issue campaign," with Colorado voters wanting to hear more about the economy and jobs.It was tough to paint the affableGardner as a radical, and when a Denver reporter jokingly dubbed Udall "Mark Uterus,"it stuck.

Gardner alsogota surprise endorsement from The Denver Post, which supported Udall six years earlier.

Supporters of Gardner point out that hevoted for a billin the House to block the bulk surveillance program, suggesting that there may not be much daylight between the candidates onthe surveillance. Still, given Udall'sposition as a longtime criticone on the Senate Intelligence Committee, no lesshis departure willbe a loss for those looking to rein in intelligence agencies.

"What Udall has is the institutional memory and the relationships in the civil liberties community, in the Democratic Party, and in the tech industry so that we dont have to start over again with someone new," the head of ACLU's Washington DC office told The Hill.

The otherlongtime NSA critic on the Senate Intelligence Committee is Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), who was not up for reelection last night.

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NSA critic Udall is sent packing as Republicans grab Senate

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PALO ALTO (KCBS) We come in peace. That was the message delivered by the head of the National Security Agency (NSA) to a Silicon Valley crowd as the nations spy chief is searching for recruits.

The governments top cyber spy made a stop at Stanford University on Monday with a message that they wanted to mend fences with the tech community.

Admiral Michael Rogers, director of the NSA, spoke to about 100 students and professors and said he understood why there is mistrust of the government.

Many tech companies have increased encryption in the wake of the Edward Snowden release of classified documents that detailed the NSAs spying techniques. However, Roger stressed the importance of public and private partnerships in cybersecurity; the same message that he recently delivered to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

You cant start out by distrusting each other with, Hey, you cant trust the government because theyre big brother. Or, you cant trust the private sector because theyre all about money. That is not what is going to work, he said.

Rogers also encouraged Stanford Students to consider a career with the NSA, saying that they offer rewards that no benefits package from Google or Apple could match; with opportunities to do some neat stuff you cant do anywhere else.

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NSA Luring Stanford Students; Claims Rewards Outweigh Any Google-Apple Benefits

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Brazil Builds Internet Cable to Portugal to Avoid NSA Surveillance!
http://www.undergroundworldnews.com Brazil is building a cable across the Atlantic to escape the reach of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA). The move is one of many ways the Brazilian...

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U.S. intelligence depends on Silicon Valley innovation for technologies that strengthen the Internet and staff to provide national cybersecurity, National Security Agency director Mike Rogers told Stanford University professors and students Monday.

While the federal government is never going to match Silicon Valley salaries, "we are going to give you the opportunity to do some neat stuff, things you probably aren't going to be able to do anywhere else," Rogers said.

Rogers, who also heads up U.S. Cyber Command, said he visits the region at least every six months to tap into local talent and stay attuned to the latest innovations.

During a question and answer session, Jennifer Granick, director of civil liberties at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society, asked Rogers how he can explain disclosures by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden that the agency secretly broke into communications on Yahoo and Google overseas.

Rogers said his agency does not violate U.S. privacy laws here or abroad working with partner intelligence agencies.

"I'm comfortable with what we do, with our partners," he said.

Mark Jaycox, an Electronic Frontier Foundation legislative analyst who watched the speech versus a webstream, said Rogers, who was sworn in in April, has not addressed most privacy concerns raised in recent years.

"Unfortunately, Admiral Rogers hasn't yet engaged on many of the NSA's more egregious activities like disrupting national standards for encryption or the NSA's hacking of American companies' internal databases."

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NSA Director: US Needs Silicon Valley's Expertise

Nevermind the surveillance spat between the US government and the tech titans of Silicon Valley: NSA Director Mike Rogers wants to mend fences.

"We're going to give you the opportunity to do some neat stuff you can't do anywhere else," National Security Agency director Adm. Michael Rogers said in a recruiting pitch to Stanford University students. Seth Rosenblatt/CNET

STANFORD, Calif. -- The director of the National Security Agency has a message for Silicon Valley: We come in peace.

Adm. Michael Rogers visited the home of most of the world's dominant tech firms for the second time in the seven months since he took the reins of the NSA from longtime leader Gen. Keith Alexander. In his pitch to around 100 professors, students and reporters gathered to hear him answer questions at Stanford's Encina Hall, he promised attendees he would be in the Valley twice a year and implored potential hires that working at the NSA offered rewards that no benefits package from Google or Apple could match.

He said there was more to what the NSA offered than patriotically serving the US. "We're going to give you the opportunity to do some neat stuff you can't do anywhere else," he said. "We're going to give you responsibility early, that's part of our culture."

Rogers' appeal comes at a time of high tension between Silicon Valley and the US government. Documents first leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden in June 2013 have led to a cascading series of spying revelations that have soured governmental relationships here.

Tech firms responded by tightening and accelerating their implementation of encryption to prevent customer data from being spied on without a warrant. Google and Yahoo said last summer they are working on tools to encrypt webmail, which is notoriously difficult to obfuscate. Most recently, Apple and Google announced in September that data stored on their mobile operating systems, which power the vast majority of smartphones around the world, will be encrypted by default.

Government agencies have responded by accusing tech firms of helping criminals and terrorists by embracing advanced encryption standards. The Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey said in October tech firms should build encryption with backdoors for the US government, while today the new director of Britain's top spy agency, Government Communications Headquarters, said that Internet technologies are used as "command-and-control networks of choice" for the bad guys.

Rogers took a less strident tone, acknowledging that tech firms might have good reasons for responding the way that they have.

"It doesn't do us any good to villainize either side of this argument," Rogers said to a smaller group of reporters and Stanford students after the question-and-answer session had ended. "Reasonable people can come to different conclusions about what is appropriate and not appropriate," he said.

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New NSA director renews pitch to Silicon Valley

PALO ALTO, Calif. The director of the National Security Agency said Monday that he understands why Silicon Valley companies have beefed up security to keep out government agencies, including his own.

The statement, during a speech by Adm. Michael Rogers at Stanford University, marked a small olive branch amid rising tension between technology companies and Washington following disclosures about the extent of electronic surveillance by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

Adm. Rogers said technology companies took steps to enhance encryption in order to assure consumers that their personal data is safe from prying government eyes. In addition, some companies felt embarrassed after slides leaked by Snowden suggested the companies had cooperated with U.S. spies.

Adm. Rogers, who took over the NSA in April, has been charged with repairing those relations.

In the most recent clash, Apple and Google in September said they would no longer be able to unlock smartphones, even if ordered by a court, for law enforcement. James Comey, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Robert Hannigan, head of the U.K. equivalent of the NSA, said the moves are enabling criminals.

Im not one who jumps up and down and says either side is fundamentally wrong, Adm. Rogers said in response to a reporters question Monday. I understand what drives each side to their viewpoint.

Still, Adm. Rogers said he wondered if there might be some mechanism that would allow the government to circumvent the encryption schemes in special circumstances. It was unclear if he endorsed such a policy.

The NSA is trying to mend bridges in Silicon Valley partly out of necessity. The agency relies on young math and computer science experts to power its intelligence operation. Many of those techie kids go to Stanford and then work at technology companies.

Adm. Rogers, whose visit was part recruiting pitch, acknowledged he cant pay these students as much as Facebook or Twitter , but he can offer them something thats bigger than you are.

There are also the cool spy toys. Were going to give you the opportunity to do stuff you cant legally do anywhere else, he said.

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NSA Director Offers Olive Branch in Silicon Valley Speech

A federal appeals court will hear arguments Tuesday in a case challenging the NSA's vast phone data collection program the next act in the legal battle pitting the agency's antiterrorism efforts against the privacy rights of Americans.

Privacy advocates head into the arguments with a lower court victory in hand: A judge in Washington ruled in their favor in December, calling the technology to gather and analyze the phone records "almost Orwellian."

The lawsuit brought by conservative activist Larry Klayman is one of several filed after former NSA contractor Edward Snowden revealed the data collection program a leak that has opened the way for judges to scrutinize the agency's surveillance activities, and could propel the issue to the Supreme Court.

"Whatever one thinks of Snowden, we're only here because of him," said Stephen I. Vladeck, a law professor at American University.

The National Security Agency, which is headquartered at Fort Meade, says it mines "telephony metadata" the times of calls, numbers dialed and the duration of conversations in search of links between people making calls in the United States and suspected terrorists.

The government says the technique respects Americans' constitutional right to privacy because the records already have been handed over to phone companies, and they do not include the contents of the conversations.

The American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation have filed briefs in support of Klayman. Klayman said the NSA's "unconstitional acts affect all segments of society."

"This case is unique in that both conservatives and liberals alike have joined to represent the American people," Klayman said in a statement.

The NSA referred questions about the case to the Justice Department. The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment.

U.S. law enforcement, police and spies alike have raced to find ways to use information shed by criminals and terrorists as they move through the digital world.

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Appeals court to weigh NSA phone data program

Further Reading On Tuesday, three judges at one of the nations most powerful appellate courts will hear oral arguments in the only legal challenge to result in a judicial order against the National Security Agencys (NSA) vast telephone metadata collection program. That order was put on hold pending the governments appeal in this case.

The District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals could overturn last years unusual lower court ruling that ordered an end to the program, or the court could confirm it.

The lawsuit, known as Klayman et al v. Obama et al, pits a longstanding conservative lawyer, Larry Klayman, against the American government and its intelligence apparatus. If Klayman wins, the suit is likely to be eventually appealed further to the Supreme Court.

Klayman filed his federal lawsuit at the District of Columbia District Court on June 6, 2013, the day after the first disclosures from the Snowden leaks were published. The very first story revealed that Verizon had been routinely handing over all metadata on its customers to the NSA. And as a Verizon customer, Klayman argued that his constitutional rights were violated as the result of such data handover, not to mentionthe rights of all other Verizon customers.

The government relied primarily, as it has done numerous times in similar cases, on a 1979 Supreme Court decision known as Smith v. Maryland. That case famously established the "third-party doctrine," holding that information (such as call metadata) disclosed to a third party (like Verizon) cannot be private as it was by definition shared with that third party. Therefore, the argument goes, it can be disclosed to the government without any violation of privacy.

ButJudge Richard Leon, a Republican appointee, agreed with Klaymans argument. He wrote in a December 16, 2013 memorandum opinion:

Indeed, the question in this case can more properly be styled as follows: when do present-day circumstancesthe evolutions in the Government's surveillance capabilities, citizens' phone habits, and the relationship between the NSA and telecom companiesbecome so thoroughly unlike those considered by the Supreme Court 34 years ago that a precedent like Smith simply does not apply? The answer, unfortunately for the government, is now.

In sum, the Smith pen register and the ongoing NSA Bulk Telephony MetadataProgram have so many significant distinctions between them that I cannot possibly navigate these uncharted Fourth Amendment waters using as my North Star a case that predates the rise of cell phones.

Judge Leon ordered the government to immediately halt the Bulk Telephony Metadata Program and to destroy "any such metadata in its possession that was collected through the bulk collection program."But, he noted, "in light of the significant national security interests at stake in this caseand the novelty of the constitutional issues, I will stay my order pending appeal."

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A top appeals court to hear why NSA metadata spying should stay or go

National Security Agency director Mike Rogers speaks at Stanford University, Monday, Nov. 3, 2014, in Stanford, Calif. Rogers told professors and students that U.S. intelligence is depending on Silicon Valley innovation for technologies that strengthen the Internet and staff to provide national cybersecurity. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez) ( Marcio Jose Sanchez )

STANFORD -- U.S. intelligence depends on Silicon Valley innovation for technologies that strengthen the Internet and staff to provide national cybersecurity, National Security Agency director Mike Rogers told Stanford University professors and students on Monday.

While the federal government is never going to match Silicon Valley salaries, "we are going to give you the opportunity to do some neat stuff, things you probably aren't going to be able to do anywhere else," Rogers said.

Rogers, who also heads up U.S. Cyber Command, said he visits the region at least every six months to tap into local talent and stay attuned to the latest innovations.

Audience members including cryptographer Whitfield Diffie, center, listen to NSA Chief Mike Rogers at Stanford University, Monday, Nov. 3, 2014, in Stanford, Calif. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez) ( Marcio Jose Sanchez )

During a question and answer session, Jennifer Granick, director of civil liberties at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society, asked Rogers how he can explain disclosures by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden that the agency secretly broke into communications on Yahoo and Google overseas.

Rogers said his agency does not violate U.S. privacy laws here or abroad working with partner intelligence agencies.

"I'm comfortable with what we do, with our partners," he said.

Mark Jaycox, an Electronic Frontier Foundation legislative analyst who watched the speech versus a webstream, said Rogers, who was sworn in in April, has not addressed most privacy concerns raised in recent years.

"Unfortunately, Admiral Rogers hasn't yet engaged on many of the NSA's more egregious activities like disrupting national standards for encryption or the NSA's hacking of American companies' internal databases."

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NSA chief: U.S. needs Silicon Valley's expertise