Category Archives: NSA

A current civil lawsuit represents a legal battle against top U.S. intelligence officials that started when Barack Obama was president. Elliott J. Schuchardt, the plaintiff, claims surveillance programs have violated his Fourth Amendment rights. (Darkside354 / Wikimedia)

Elliott J. Schuchardt is suing Donald Trump for violating Schuchardts rights under the Fourth Amendment. The Tennessee lawyer has filed a civil lawsuit in Pennsylvania against the president of the United States, the director of the Office of National Intelligence, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the director of the National Security Agency who is also chief of the Central Security Service. Schuchardt contends that the defendants are unlawfully intercepting, accessing, monitoring and/or [his] private communications.

The lawsuit represents a longstanding legal battle Schuchardt has waged against top U.S. intelligence officials that started when Barack Obama was president. William Binney, a former U.S. intelligence official and NSA whistleblower, is supporting Schuchardts most recent legal case.

The plaintiff claims that his Fourth Amendment rights have been violated by government surveillance programs. According to Ars Technica, Schuchardt argued in his June 2014 complaint that both metadata and content of his Gmail, Facebook, and Dropbox accounts were compromised under the PRISM program as revealed in the documents leaked by former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden.

That case was dismissed for lack of standing, but Schuchardt has continued to file amended complaints related to U.S. intelligence activities.

Im making an allegation that no one else is making: Im contending that the government is collecting full content of e-mail, Schuchardt told Ars Technica in 2014. Im contending that theyre not doing it by PRISM but via [Executive Order] 12333. Im not saying that this is being done on a case by case basis but that theyre grabbing it all. Where is that email residing? Is it back at the Google servers? Im contending that this is on a government server. I am the only person in the U.S. who is objecting to those set of facts.

Schuchardt, whose legal works focuses on civil litigation, corporate law, personal injury, bankruptcy, divorce and child custody cases, felt compelled to challenge the highest levels of American government.

Ive been following the issue before Snowden came forward, Schuchardt said three years ago. Then I started to watch it for that first year, and then when Congress was dragging its feet, I decided I was going to file the case when nothing got done, and when nothing got done, I decided to move forward.

Last week, Binney, the NSA whistleblower, gave an affidavit in the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Pennsylvania, opposing the defendants renewed motion to dismiss the second amended complaint.

2. I have reviewed the complaint in the complaint in the above-captioned civil lawsuit. It is my understanding, based on the Complaint, that the Plaintiff, Elliott Schuchardt, contends that the Defendants are unlawfully intercepting, accessing, monitoring and/or storing [his] private communications. (Complaint, &?para; 50.)

3. It is my understanding, based on the complaint, that Mr. Schuchardt is a consumer of various types of electronic communication, storage and internet-search services. These include the e-mail services provided by Google and Yahoo; the internet search service provided by Google; the cloud storage services provided by Google and Dropbox; the e-mail and instant message services provided by Facebook; and the cell phone and text communication service provided by Verizon Communications. (Complaint, &?para; 49.)

4. The allegations in the Complaint are true and correct: Defendants are intercepting, accessing, monitoring and storing the Plaintiffs private communications.

Read Binneys complete affidavit below.

Click the following links to see Exhibits 1, 3 and 6 from Binneys affidavit.

LISTEN: Robert Scheer Talks With William Binney About Blowing the Whistle on the NSA

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In a Lawsuit Affidavit, NSA Whistleblower William Binney Confirms US Government Spies on Citizens - Truthdig

NEW DELHI: India's external security challenges, evolving regional power play as well as threat of terrorism were today deliberated at a meeting attended by Defence Minister Arun Jaitley, NSA Ajit Doval and the three service chiefs.

The Unified Commanders' Conference, an annual forum to take stock of the country's security preparedness, is also understood to have discussed the situation in Jammu and Kashmir and issues relating to maritime domain.

In his address on the first day of the two-day congregation, Jaitley is learnt to have expressed satisfaction over the level of preparedness by the Army, Navy and the Indian Air Force to deal with any security challenge facing the country.

There was no official word on deliberations at the meeting and it was not clear whether the ongoing standoff between armies of India and China in Sikkim sector figured in it.

The meeting is also understood to have discussed the need for ensuring coordination among the three services to ensure optimal use of resources as well as in effectively dealing with challenges facing the country.

Key operational and logistical issues also figured.

Chief of the Navy Staff Admiral Sunil Lanba, Army Chief Gen. Bipin Rawat and IAF Chief Air Chief Marshal B S Dhanoa also presented their views during the conference.

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Arun Jaitley, NSA, service chiefs review security challenges - Economic Times

The man whodesignedthe NSAs electronic intelligence gathering system (Bill Binney) sent usan affidavitwhich he signed on the Fourth of July explaining that the NSA is still spying on normal, every day Americans and not focused on stopping terror attacks (Ive added links to provide some background):

The attacks on September 11, 2001 completely changed how the NSA conducted surveillance . the individual liberties preserved in the U.S. Constitution were no longer a consideration. In October 2001, the NSA began to implement a group of intelligence activities now known as the Presidents Surveillance Program.

The Presidents Surveillance Programinvolved the collection of the full content of domestic e-mail trafficwithout any of the privacy protections built into [theprogram that Binney had designed]. This was done under the authorization ofExecutive Order 12333. This meant that the nations e-mail could be read by NSA staff members without the approval of any court or judge.

***

The NSA isstill collecting thefull contentof U.S.domestice-mail, without a warrant. We know this because of the highly-detailed information contained in the documents leaked by former NSA-contractor, Edward Snowden. I have personally reviewed many of these documents.

I can authenticate these documents because they relate to programs that I created and supervised during my years at the NSA.

[U.S. government officials] have also admitted the authenticity of these documents.

***

The documents provided by Mr. Snowden are the type of data that experts in the intelligence community would typically and reasonably rely upon to form an opinion as to the conduct of the intelligence community.

[The Snowden documents prove that the NSA isstill spyingonmost Americans.]

When Mr. Snowden said that he could read the e-mail of a federal judge if he had that judges email address, he was not exaggerating.

***

The NSA is creating a program that shows the real-time location of all cell phones, tablets and computers in the world, at any time. To have a state-actor engaging in this sort of behavior, without any court supervision, is troubling.

***

In their public statements, [government officials] claim that collection of information is limited, and is being done pursuant to Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). FBI Director James Comey recently described Section 702 of FISA as the crown jewel of the intelligence community.

Defendants, however, are not being candid with the Court. Collection is actually being done pursuant to Executive Order 12333(2)(3)(c), which to my knowledge has never been subject to judicial review. This order allows the intelligence community to collectincidentallyobtained information thatmay indicateinvolvement in activities thatmay violatefederal, state, local or foreign laws. Any lawyer can appreciate the scope of this broad language. [Background.]

***

According to media reports, President Obamas former National Security Advisor, Susan Rice, requested email and phone records on President Trump and various members of his political campaignduring and after the 2016 election.

According to these reports, the National Security Council (NSC) has computer logs showing when Rice requested and viewed such records. The requests were made from July 2016 through January 2017, and included President Trump and various members of his campaign staff According to an internal NSC report, the accessed information contained valuable political information on the Trump transition. Rices requests into Trump-related conversations increased following the presidential election last November. None of the requests were reviewed by any independent court.

***

We also know that certain NSA staffers have used their access to e-mail and phone calls to conduct surveillance on current and former significant others. The NSA has referred to this sort of action as LOVEINT, a phrase taken from other internal-NSA terms of art, such as SIGINT for signals intelligence.

***

Bulk collection makes it impossible for the NSA to actually do its job.

For example, consider the Pinwale program, discussed above, in which the NSA searches the collected data based on certain pre-defined keywords, known as the dictionary. The results from the dictionary search are known as the daily pull.

Eighty percent of the NSAs resources go towards review of the daily pull. The problem is that the daily pull is enormous. It is simply not possible for one analyst to review all questionable communications made by millions of people generating e-mail, text messages, web search queries, and visits to websites. Every person making a joke about a gun, bomb or a terrorist incident theoretically gets reviewed by a live person. This is not possible. When I was at the NSA, each analyst was theoretically required to review 40,000 to 50,000 questionable records each day. The analyst gets overwhelmed, and the actual known targets from the metadata analysis get ignored.

This is clear from some of the internal NSA memos released by Edward Snowden and published by the Intercept. In these memos, NSA analysts say:

NSA is gathering too much data. . . . Its making it impossible to focus.

Analysis Paralysis.

Data Is Not Intelligence. Overcome by Overload.

Bulk collection is making it difficult for the NSA to find the real threats. [Indeed.] The net effect from the current approach is that people die first. The NSA has missed repeated terrorist incidents over the last few years, despite its mass monitoring efforts. The NSAcannot identifyfuture terrorism because 99.9999% of what it collects and analyzes isforeseeably irrelevant.This is swamping the intelligence community, while creating the moral hazards and risks to the republic .

After a terrorist incident occurs, only then do analysts and law enforcement go into their vast data, and focus on the perpetrators of the crime.This is exactly the reverse of what they should be doing.If the NSA wants to predict intentions and capabilitiespriorto the crime, then it must focus onknownsubversive relationships, giving decision-makers time to react and influence events.

There is a second reason why data mining bulk collected data is a waste of time and resources: the professional terrorists know that we are looking at their e-mail and telephonic communications. As a result, they use code words that arenotin the dictionary, and will not come up in the daily pull.

***

Thus, collecting mass amounts of data and searching it to find the proverbial needle in a haystack doesnt work. It is fishing in the empty ocean, where the fish are scientifically and foreseeably not present.

Binney explains what we should do instead:

The truth is that there has always been a safe, alternate path to take.Thats a focused, professional, disciplined selection of data off the fiber lines.

***

I serve as a consultant to many foreign governments on the issues described in this affidavit. As such, I have testified before the German Parliament, the British House of Lords, and the EU Libe Committee on Civil Liberties on these issues. I also consult regularly with members of the European Union on intelligence issues.

***

it is my understanding that the European Union intends to adopt legislation requiring its intelligence community to get out of the business of bulk collection, and implement smart selection.

***

Smart selection is not enough. Governments, courts and the public need to have an absolute means of verifying what intelligence agencies are doing. This should be done within government by having a cleared technical team responsible to the whole of government and the courts with the authority and clearances to go into any intelligence agency and look directly into databases and tools in use. This would insure that government as a whole could get to the bottom line truth of what the intelligence agencies were really doing

I would also suggest that agencies be required to implement software that audits their analytic processes to insure compliance with law and to automatically detect and report any violations to the courts and others.

Indeed, Binney has patiently explained for many years thatwe know howto help prevent terrorism andcorruption is whatspreventing us from doing it.

Binney thinks we shouldget seriousabout motivating the intelligence agencies to do their job.

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Whistleblower: The NSA Is Still Collecting the Full Content Of US Domestic E-Mail, Without a Warrant - Center for Research on Globalization

The Hindu

PMO, NSA tracking impact of Chinese FDI in South Asia The Hindu PMO, NSA tracking impact of Chinese FDI in South Asia. Arun S. New Delhi, July 08, 2017 23:56 IST. Updated: July 08, 2017 23:56 IST. Share Article; PRINT; AAA. The Centre has begun its first ever in-depth assessment of Chinese investments in India's ... and more »

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PMO, NSA tracking impact of Chinese FDI in South Asia - The Hindu

MSNBC host Rachel Maddow warned other media outletson Thursdaythat she believes she was provided forged National Security Agency documents alleging collusion between a Trump campaign official andRussia's efforts to influence last year's presidential election.

I feel like I need to send this up like a flare for other news organizations in particular, Maddow said on her programThursday night.

Somebody, for some reason, appears to be shopping a fairly convincing fake NSA document that purports to directly implicate somebody from the Trump campaign in working with the Russians in their attack in the election, she said.

Maddow explained that she and her producers compared the document they received with a leaked NSA document published last month by The Intercept. That document quickly resulted in the arrest of a 26-year-old federal contractor, Reality Winner.

Maddow said she thinks the document she received was created by copying elements of the document published by The Intercept.

The MSNBC host made a similar allegation back in March when she suggested Trump himself may have leaked his 2005 tax documents.

He's the only person who could leak it without concern of being sued by Trump or anyone else, she said at the time. They're trying to threaten us for publishing them which is complete bull.

David Cay Johnston, the reporter who obtained the tax documents, also said while discussing the documents on The Rachel Maddow ShowTuesdaythat Trump could have been behind the leak, as did MSNBC "Morning Joe"co-host Joe Scarborough.

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Maddow warns other media of fake NSA documents - The Hill

Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., speaking during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing last month about the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. (Alex Brandon / AP Photo)

A controversial surveillance measure set to expire at the end of 2017 could be made permanent through a new piece of GOP legislation. Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton proposed Senate Bill 1297 last month, which addresses a critical component of the National Security Agencys warrantless surveillance program.

At stake is Section 702 of the Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Act (amended in 2008), which allows U.S. surveillance of foreign communications. The Electronic Frontier Foundation explained:

Section 702 surveillance violates the privacy rights of millions of people. This warrantless spying should not be allowed to continue, let alone be made permanent as is.

As originally enacted, Section 702 expires every few years, giving lawmakers the chance to reexamine the broad spying powers that impact their constituents. This is especially crucial as technology evolves and as more information about how the surveillance authority is actually used comes to light, whether through government publication or in the press.

If Congress were to approve Cottons bill, lawmakers would not only be ignoring their constituents privacy concerns, but they would also be ceding their obligation to regularly review, debate, and update the law.

Cottons bill is receiving support from fellow Republican senators, although criticism of the bill does not fall neatly along partisan lines. On June 7, lawmakers discussed the legislation during a hearing in Washington. The New York Times reported:

This is a tool that is essential to the safety of this country, the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, told Congress at a hearing on Wednesday. I did not say the same thing about the collection of telephone dialing information by the N.S.A. I think thats a useful tool; 702 is an essential tool, and if it goes away, well be less safe as a country. And I mean that.

Mr. Comey also warned that one of the proposed changes a new requirement that a warrant be obtained to search for Americans information in the surveillance repository risked a failure to connect dots about potential threats.

But Representative Ted Poe, Republican of Texas, sought to warn other lawmakers that Congress needed to impose a warrant requirement.

Privacy is being betrayed in the name of national security, Mr. Poe told congressional aides at an event to discuss Fourth Amendment issues and legislation late last month.

Cotton argued during the hearing that to allow this program to expire on December 31 would hurt both our national security and our privacy rights. He also used the London terror attack of early June as evidence for the need for increased surveillance. Cotton said:

The attacks in London last weekend exposed in a matter of minutes just how vulnerable our free societies truly are. All it takes is a van or a knife and an unsuspecting bystander to turn a fun night out on the town into a horrific nightmare. Course, we shouldnt need any reminders, but let me give one yet again: We are at war with Islamic extremists. We have been for years, and, Im sorry to say, theres no end in sight. Its easy to forget this as we go about our daily lives, but our enemies have not-and they will not. Theyve never taken their eyes off the ultimate target either: the United States.

Yes, were at war with a vicious and unyielding foe. And just as our enemy can attack us with the simplest of everyday tools, the strongest shield we have in our defense is just as basic: It is the intelligence information of knowing who is talking to whom about what, where, when, and why. After the 9/11 attacks, our national-security agencies developed cutting-edge programs that allowed us to figure out what the bad guys were up to and stop them before they could perpetrate such heinous attacks. Very often the intelligence theyve collected has made the difference between life and death for American citizens.

He concluded by noting the bill has the support of every Republican senator on the Intelligence Committee. Other members of the intelligence community have expressed support for the legislation as well. Tech Crunch provided further analysis of the June 7 hearing:

NSA Director Michael Rogers broke down two scenarios in which the core controversy, namely the incidental violation of the right to privacy for U.S. citizens, comes up. He claimed that in 90 percent of cases, that form of collection is a result of two foreign targets who talk about a third person who is in the U.S. As Rogers tells it, 10 percent of the time a foreign target ends up talking to an American citizen. Because American citizens have Fourth Amendment rights, running into Americans in the course of foreign surveillance creates the sticky situation known as incidental collection, a major focus for privacy advocates seeking reform.

In the course of justifying Section 702 as an invaluable tool for counterterrorism and counterproliferation efforts, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats claimed that agencies have made herculean efforts to get a count on how many Americans have been affected, but in spite of those efforts it remains impossible. He went on to undermine his argument by implying that it probably would be possible, but that he chooses not to allocate resources to the task when the intelligence community could be focusing on imminent concerns in countries like Iran and North Korea. I cant justify such a diversion of critical resources, Coats said.

He went on to note that without Section 702, intelligence agencies would have to obtain a court order issued due to probable cause ostensibly the bar that needs to be cleared in order to surveil U.S. citizens. Thats a relatively higher threshold than we require to foreign intelligence information, Coats said, noting that hed prefer not to need to clear the Fourth Amendment bar when investigating foreign targets.

In a broad appeal on 702s utility, Rogers went so far as to claim that 702 [created] insights on the Russian involvement in 2016 election, providing intelligence that would otherwise not have been possible.

There is, however, growing opposition to the bill. The American Civil Liberties Union has argued against it, as has California Democrat Dianne Feinstein.

Sen. Dianne Feinsteinwho has historically been sympathetic to the intelligence communitysaid she could not support a bill that makes Section 702 permanent, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation. We cannot accept lawmakers ignoring our privacy concerns and their responsibility to review surveillance law, and our lawmakers need to hear that.

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GOP Lawmakers Aim to Continue NSA Foreign Surveillance Through New Bill - Truthdig

MSNBC host Rachel Maddow gave a heads up to other news organizations on Thursday after she was sent what she believes are faked National Security Agency documents alleging collusion between a member of the Trump campaign and Russian government.

Somebody, for some reason, appears to be shopping a fairly convincing fake NSA document that purports to directly implicate somebody from the Trump campaign in working with the Russians in their attack in the election, Maddow said in a lengthy segment on her show.

She suggested that the unidentified muckraker who sent her the fake documents hopes to undermine news organizations in general and deflate the Trump-Russia collusion investigation, which has been going on for nearly a year.

This is news, because: why is someone shopping a forged document of this kind to news organizations covering the Trump-Russia affair? Maddow asked.

On June 7, an unidentified person sent documents to an online tip line for Maddows show, she said.

That was two days after The Intercept published legitimate NSA documents that were stolen by Reality Winner, a contractor for the agency.

Maddow said that the documents sent to her show appeared to have used The Intercepts published documents as a template. Secret ID markings on The Intercept reports appeared on the documents passed to Maddow.

WATCH:

She said that metadata from the set of documents sent to her show preceded the publication of the documents published in The Intercept. Maddow suggested that it was possible that whoever sent her the forgeries had access to The Intercept documents. But she also theorized that whoever sent her the fake documents could have changed the metadata somehow.

The documents Maddow received appeared legitimate at first glance, she said, butseveral clues suggested that they were forgeries.

Typos and spacing issues raised eyebrows, but it was secret markings on the documents as well as their contents that convinced Maddow and her staff that the records were fakes.

But Maddow said that that the big red flag for her and her team was that the document she was given named an American citizen a specific person from the Trump campaign who allegedly cooperated with the Russians during the presidential campaign.

We believe that a U.S. citizens name would not appear in a document like this, asserted Maddow, who said that her team consulted national security experts on the matter.

And so, heads up everybody, Maddow warned.

The host pointed to two recent retractions one at CNN and the other at Vice News and suggested that they were the result of a similar scheme to undermine news outlets covering Trump.

In the case of CNN, three reporters were fired after the network retracted an article alleging that Trump transition team official Anthony Scaramucci was under investigation for ties to a Russian investment fund.

CNN said that the three reporters were fired because of shortcomings in their reporting process, but the network has been tight-lipped about what those shortcomings were.

Vice retracted two articles about a Trump robot display at Disney World.

One way to stab in the heart aggressive American reporting on [the subject of Trump-Russia collusion] is to lay traps for American journalists who are reporting on it, said Maddow.

And then after the fact blow that reporting up. You then hurt the credibility of that news organization. You also cast a shadow over any similar reporting in the futureeven if its true.

Maddow did not provide details about who sent her team the faked NSA documents.

But she concluded her segment saying, We dont know whos doing it, but were working on it.

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Someone Sent Rachel Maddow Fake NSA Documents Alleging Trump-Russia Collusion - The Daily Caller

Drake continued, "The new mantra to intercepting intelligence was 'just get it' regardless of the law."

Shameful.

It is becoming clear that such a lack of candor from our government officials has become a feature of our post-9/11 surveillance state, and not a bug. Perhaps the infringements of our freedoms necessitate an end to the entire post-9/11 project. But with the billion dollar Utah Data Center sitting right-smack in Salt Lake County, it's doubtful we could successfully kill the beast that is the surveillance industry.

Perhaps we, too, like Jonathan Swift, need "A Modest Proposal." It would be a shame to let the texts, emails, phone records and Google searches of Utah's most popular citizens go to waste. We paid for these records, let's make them public.

Just think, no one would need private investigators to catch husbands texting old girlfriends. You could easily recover your mom's old meatloaf recipe she emailed years ago.

And all those public officials who, when under investigation, manage to lose thousands of emails, as one-time IRS official Lois Lerner did. And former Utah Attorney General John Swallow, who just happened to leave his tablets on airplanes. Call up the NSA. Problem solved!

Think of the money newspapers and community watchdogs would save in GRAMA / FOIA requests. And how would life be different if police, prosecutors, legislators and other government officials knew their communications would be discoverable?

Deception begets deception, poison begets poison. The Fourth Amendment means what it says, and the government should not have power to spy on Americans without a warrant. In this current case, U.S. Department of Justice officials have until March to disclose relevant documents. Let's hope they can do so honestly.

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Tribune Editorial: Lawsuit should get to the truth about NSA spying in Utah - Salt Lake Tribune

KINGSVILLE -

The mother of a Kingsville native accused of leaking government information continues to stand up for her daughter. 25 year old Reality Winner remains in jail as she awaits her trial in federal court. She's charged with giving out information important to national security.

Billie Winner-Davis, her mother, wants people to wait for an outcome in that trial before judging her daughter.

"People, you know, just want to lock her up, throw away the key, or even hang her not knowing whether or not she did this, not knowing if she's guilty. She hasn't had a trial yet," Winner-Davis says.

Reality Winner is accused of sending classified information about Russian election meddling to a news outlet while she worked as a National Security Agency contractor in Georgia. The FBI says Winner admitted to leaking the information and prosecutors allege she said, "Mom, those documents. I screwed up.", in a recorded jail phone call.

"I really don't recall her saying those words to me. She could have, you know, maybe I've forgotten, you know?" Winner-Davis says.

Winner-Davis says she doesn't know if her daughter did it, adding she wants to ask but hasn't been able to, since all conversations between them have been recorded.

"I don't know if she would risk her entire life, if she would risk her new job that she just got, her future, her entire life for something like this," Winner-Davis says.

Winner-Davis calls her daughter a patriot. She references her daughter's time in the Air Force and some shirts paid for by supporters. One of the shirts has hash tags on it that say #TRUEPATRIOT and #ISTANDWITHREALITY.

"I'm afraid that she won't get a fair trial in this. I'm afraid that they're going to try to make an example out of her and I want the American people to be watching," Winner-Davis says.

Winner-Davis says that mainly because of President Trump's vow to crack down on leakers.

Reality Winner's trial is set for late October in Georgia. Her mom returned from there a few weeks ago and plans on going back in August. Billie Winner-Davis says she plans on staying through the end of her daughter's trial.

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Mother of accused NSA leaker defends daughter - KRISTV.com | Continuous News Coverage | Corpus Christi - KRIS Corpus Christi News

The phenomenon of a recent widespread cyberattack, using weapons developed by the U.S. National Security Agency to disrupt major computer operations all over the globe, is not surprising, but it does call for urgent action on the federal governments part.

Weapons proliferation grew much more lethal when the United States developed the atomic bomb, intended to end World War II more rapidly. The technology then got handed to the Soviet Union. Nuclear weapons eventually ended up in the hands of China, France, India, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia and the United Kingdom, as well as the United States.

More recently, Americas and others cyberweapons creatively have been used to mess up Irans nuclear enrichment program, using the computer worm known as Stuxnet. It also appears that U.S. cyberaction has been used to gum up North Koreas rocket launches.

The problem now is that some of the clever procedures that NSA developed have leaked out, or have been developed independently by people in basements and elsewhere in Kiev, Moscow and Pyongyang, and are being used as they were last week from Ukraine to sabotage important systems, as well as to try to shake down computer system users across the world.

The NSA witness contractor-defector Edward J. Snowden is showing itself to be leaky. Its having difficulty protecting what it knows and preventing unintended use of the skills it develops.

The NSA must button up its files and techniques much more tightly. And whatever cyberweapons we have, we must also stay ahead in that game in our capacity to protect our own cyber infrastructure.

The penalty for falling behind in that development is chaos and danger in our society and country, incredibly high stakes given our vulnerability.

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Another View: NSA needs to secure its files and techniques more tightly - Press Herald