Category Archives: NSA

Lawmakers should know how the laws they pass impact their constituents. Thats especially true when the law would reauthorize a vast Internet and telephone spying program that collects information about millions of law-abiding Americans.

But thats exactly what the Intelligence Community wants Congress to do when it considers reauthorizing a sweeping electronic surveillance authority under the expiring Section 702, as enacted by the FISA Amendments Act, before the end of the year.

Intelligence officials have been promising Congress they would provide lawmakers with an estimate of the number of American communications that are collected under Section 702. That estimate is a critical piece of information for lawmakers to have as they consider whether and how to reauthorize and reform the warrantless Internet surveillance of millions of innocent Americans in the coming months.

But during a hearing on Section 702 in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee yesterday, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, despite previous assurances, said he wont be providing that estimate out of national security and, ironically, privacy concerns.

He told lawmakers it is infeasible to generate an exact, accurate, meaningful, and responsive methodology that can count how often a U.S. persons communications may be incidentally collected under Section 702. To do so would require diverting NSA analysts attention away from their current work to conduct additional significant research to determine whether the communications collected under Section 702 are American. I would be asking trained NSA analysts to conduct intense identity verification research on potential U.S. persons who are not targets of an investigation, he said. From a privacy and civil liberties perspective, I find this unpalatable.

From a privacy and civil liberties perspective, we find it unpalatable that the Intelligence Community would ask Congress to reauthorize a controversial surveillance program without first following through on the promisereiterated by Coats as recently as earlier this yearto provide some much needed information about how the program impacts Americans. To do so supposedly in the name of privacy concerns is even worse.

It should go without saying: if the Intelligence Community is truly worried about the privacy and civil liberties of ordinary Americans, officials will take the looming Section 702 sunset as an opportunity to give lawmakers the information they need to have an informed and meaningful debate about how government spying programs impact Americans privacy.

Privacy advocate Sen. Ron Wyden criticized DNI Coats for his backtracking, calling his reversal a very, very damaging position to stake out. He warned, Were going to battle it out in the course of this, because there are a lot of Americans that share our view that security and liberty are not mutually exclusive.

And that battle is already happening. With Congress debate over Section 702 reauthorization heating up, now is the time to tell your representatives in Congress to let this warrantless spying authority lapse.

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NSA Reneges on Promise to Tell Congress How Many Innocent Americans it Spies On - EFF

Washington Post

NSA director explains unmasking Washington Post June 7, 2017 11:18 AM EDT - NSA director Mike Rogers explained the limited process of revealing the identity of Americans subject to incidental surveillance, during a hearing Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on June 7 at the Capitol. (Reuters ...

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NSA director explains unmasking - Washington Post

Observer

50 Years Ago: NSA's Deadliest Day Observer The USS Liberty was owned and operated by the U.S. Navy, which euphemistically referred to her as one of its Technical Research Ships, but she really worked for NSA. A converted World War Two freighter, the Liberty was barely a warship, possessing ... and more »

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50 Years Ago: NSA's Deadliest Day - Observer

New York Post

NSA 'leaker' feared feds would 'make her disappear': mom New York Post The Air Force veteran accused of leaking classified NSA documents was terrified that the federal agents who arrested her over the weekend were going to make her disappear, according to her mother. Her words to me was that she was scared she was ... Here's what we know about the alleged NSA leaker's military recordAirForceTimes.com all 32 news articles »

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NSA 'leaker' feared feds would 'make her disappear': mom - New York Post

Reality Winner, a government contractor accused of leaking top secret National Security Agency intelligence on Russias alleged interference in last years election, was arrested on Monday, according to court documents filed in the case.

Within hours of the arrest, the Department of Justice announced she had been charged with removing classified material from the government facility where she worked and mailing it to a news outlet. She could now face 10 years in prison.

A source with knowledge of the matter later confirmed to ABC News that the charges stemmed from a May 5, 2017, intelligence document published on Monday by The Intercept, an online news organization best known for its publication and coverage of leaked documents on government activities provided by Edward Snowden.

Winner's background

Winner of Augusta, Georgia, is a contractor with Pluribus International Corporation, authorities said. She had been working at an unidentified government facility in Georgia "since on or about Feb. 13" and held a top secret security clearance, according to authorities.

She is a former Air Force linguist who speaks Pashto, Farsi and Dari, according to her attorney, and had recently worked as a yoga instructor at Oh Yeah Yoga in Augusta.

"She is still in federal custody and we have a detention hearing on Thursday to determine if shell be released before trial," her attorney, Titus Thomas Nichols, told ABC News in a statement Monday night. "Shes a good person with no criminal history who is caught in a political whirlwind."

Winners mother, Billie Winner-Davis, described her as a "very passionate" person who was outspoken about her beliefs.

"Very passionate about her views and things like that, but shes never to my knowledge been active in politics or any of that, Winner-Davis told The Daily Beast on Monday.

How the alleged leak started

On March 22, The Intercept hosted a podcast online looking at, among other things, the public outcry over Russia's alleged collusion with associates of President Donald Trump and the Kremlin's alleged interference in last year's presidential election.

Host Jeremy Scahill said "there is a tremendous amount of hysterics" and "a lot of premature conclusions being drawn around all of this Russia stuff," but "there's not a lot of hard evidence to back it up."

Appearing as a guest on the podcast, Intercept reporter Glenn Greenwald agreed, saying that while "it's very possible" Russia was behind election-related hacks last year, "we still haven't seen any evidence for it."

Little more than a week later, Winner allegedly used a Gmail account to contact The Intercept, and she "appeared to request transcripts of a podcast," court documents said.

More than a month later, the NSA secretly issued the classified document now at the center of the leak case. And within days, Winner allegedly found it, printed it out and mailed it to The Intercept.

How it all came to light

On May 30, three weeks after Winner allegedly printed the classified document, The Intercept contacted the U.S. government, likely through the NSA, to discuss an upcoming story based on the intelligence document it had obtained. The Intercept even shared a copy of the document with government officials, who confirmed that it was indeed classified at the top secret level, "indicating that its unauthorized disclosure could reasonably result in exceptionally grave damage to the national security," the affidavit said.

Two days later, the FBI was notified of the matter and initiated an investigation to determine the source of the leak.

Further analysis of the documents showed that they "appeared to be folded and/or creased, suggesting they had been printed and hand-carried out of a secure space," according to the affidavit.

Winner was one of just six individuals who had printed the intelligence document, according to an internal audit of the agency that housed the report. The audit also revealed that Winner was the only individual of the group that had email contact with the news outlet.

FBI agent Justin Garrick said in the affidavit filed with the court that he interviewed Winner at her home on Saturday and that she "admitted intentionally identifying and printing the classified intelligence reporting at issue" and sent it to a news outlet.

The news outlet was not identified in the charging documents, but a source with knowledge of the matter confirmed that the charges were connected to The Intercepts Monday report titled: "Top-Secret NSA report details Russian hacking effort days before 2016 election."

The potential impact

As stated above, the leaked document has provided the public with the most detailed account yet of how Russian hackers targeted American election systems.

The Intercept posted a redacted classified NSA document, detailing how Russian hackers allegedly infiltrated outside vendors dealing with voter-related information ahead of last year's presidential election.

The document said Russian military intelligence "executed cyber espionage operations against a named U.S. company in August 2016 evidently to obtain information on elections-related software and hardware solutions, according to information that became available in April 2017."

ABC News' Mike Levine contributed to this report.

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What we know about the leaked NSA report on Russia

The Washington Post's Devlin Barrett explains how an arrest of a government contractor was made so quickly in the NSA document leak to The Intercept. (Whitney Leaming/The Washington Post)

It took just days forauthorities to arrest and charge a federal contractorwithleaking classified intelligence to the media. Court documents explain in detail how the 25-year-old woman suspected in the leak,Reality Leigh Winner, allegedly printed off a copy of a National Security Agency report on Russian tampering in the U.S. elections and mailed it to a news outlet.

What helped federal authorities link Winner to the leak were unrelated personal emails she had sent to the Intercept news site weeks before, which surfaced when investigators searched her computer. But how were officials able to gain access to her personal accounts? The answer, according to some former NSA analysts, is that the agency routinely monitors many of its employees' computer activity.

The case offers a reminder that virtually every American worker in today's economy can be tracked and reported and you don't even have to be the NSA to pull it off.

[What we know about Reality Winner, the contractor accused of leaking an NSA document]

She emailed the Intercept using her work computer, said Michelle Richardson, a privacy expert at the Center for Democracy and Technology, a Washington think tank. They can monitor the traffic on their systems, look at thesix people who printed the doc, and see that she was the one who had contact.

The NSA didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

Employee monitoring issoextensive in American society that it may be difficult for workers to know just how far they might have to go to avoid it.Itis a $200 million-a-year industry, according toa study last year by 451 Research, a technology research firm, and is estimated to be worth $500 million by 2020.

[How Congress dismantled federal Internet privacy rules]

Monitoringtechniques have become quite sophisticated, enabling employers to track notonly what websitestheir workers visit, but also when they plug in USB storage devices, move or copy files, and what programs theyrun, privacyexperts say. One companyevenallows bosses to play back videos of what took place on a user's screen and can collect communications activity both on traditional email programs as well as popular webmail services.

Employee monitoringrecently came tolight in ahigh-profile lawsuit involving Uber and Waymo, the self-driving car company owned by Google's parent firm, Alphabet. In accusing former Waymo employee Anthony Levandowski of stealing trade secrets and taking them to Uber, Waymo said it was able to determine that Levandowski installed inappropriate software on his company-issued laptop, then downloaded thousands of confidential files before putting them on an external storage device he connected to the machine.

[Supreme Court to decide if a warrant is needed to track a suspect through cellphone records]

Despite Levandowski's attempt to then erase forensic fingerprints by reformatting the laptop's hard drive, Waymo said, the company was nonetheless able to gather the requisite evidence likely using monitoring technology, analysts said.

Even workers who don't report to an office every day are subject to monitoring. The proliferation of GPS devices in smartphones now means that even truck drivers can be tracked. Arecent report from the technology research firm Aberdeen Group found that nearly two-thirds of companies with employees who work in the field were tracking their employees with GPS.

The earliest forms of modern employee monitoring date to the early 1910s, when companies would use mechanical counters to track how quickly workers were typing on their typewriters, according to Jitendra Mishra and Suzanne M. Crampton, who co-wrote a study in 1998 on the topic.Theynotedthatwhat has changed in more recent years is the method of supervision and the extent of information gathering capabilities available. That includes phone and video surveillance, keystroke logging and other forms of monitoring.

[Booz Allen Hamilton employee left sensitive passwords unprotected online]

Since then, numerous court cases have givenemployers a remarkable amount of freedom towatch their workers. In 2010, the Supreme Court heard a case involving two police officers who had been punished at work after it was discovered that they had used their mobile devices to send personal text messages. The officers argued that the police department's search of their devices was unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment, but the court unanimously ruled against them, saying it was a reasonable search and that the officers should have known that their work devices might be inspected.

Privacy advocates have been pushing for years to have Congress review various communications privacy laws in light of updates to technology. Many argue that the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act does not provide enough protections to consumers today because many emails, text messages and other content can be summoned by law enforcement with little more than a subpoena.

ECPA was first passed in 1986 before Congress could imagine the wealth of personal information that would be stored on third-party servers rather than private hard drives, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a technology advocacy group, has said.

Congresstook a step toward updating the country's digital privacy laws in February, when the Housevoted to approve the Email Privacy Act. While the bill has largely stalled, it proposes requiring a warrant for searching emails that have been sitting in an account for more than 180 days.

Still, given the other case law surrounding employee surveillance, it's important to note that changes to the ECPA mightnot putan end to routine employer monitoring. Soyou might still want to be careful with what you do on your devices at work.

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The latest NSA leak is a reminder that your bosses can see your every move - Washington Post

Sen. Angus KingAngus KingGOP chairman admonishes intel chiefs Senator blasts NSA chief: What you feel isnt relevant, admiral The Hill's 12:30 Report MORE (I-Maine) snapped at the head of the National Security Agency (NSA) in a contentious moment of a Senate hearing on Wednesday that delved into questions over Russias meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

King, known as one of the Senates more genial members, reached a breaking point more than an hour into the hearing after Michael Rogers repeatedly refused to answer questions about whether President Trump tried to interfere in the FBIs investigation into Russias actions and possible collusion with his campaign.

Rogers declined to answer questions about reports of his interactions with Trump throughout the morning, telling a visibly frustrated King that he didnt feel it was appropriate.

What you feel isnt relevant, admiral, King said back at the NSA chief.

Later, when Rogers said he did not mean for his answer to King's question to sound confrontational, King said he did mean to sound confrontational.

Why are you not answering these questions? Is there an invocation of executive privilege? King demanded. Im not satisfied with, I do not believe its appropriate or I do not believe I should answer.

Im not sure I have a legal basis, Coats said at one point, adding that he would provide as much information as he was able behind closed doors.

Rogers indicated that while he and Coats have had conversations with the White House about a potential claim of executive privilege, he said that they had not gotten a definitive answer.

McCabe and Rosenstein both cited the ongoing federal investigation, led by special counsel Robert Mueller, arguing that it is longstanding Justice Department procedure not to discuss anything that might be under active investigation.

I dont understand why the special counsels lane takes precedence over the lane of the United States Congress, King said.

At issue was whether any of the officials had any evidence that Trump may have inappropriately attempted to curtail the FBI's investigation.

The Washington Post reported on Tuesday that Trump had asked Coats to intervene with then-FBI Director James Comey to limit the probe.

Both Coats and Rogers deniedfeeling pressured by Trump to intervene in the handling of intelligence in any inappropriate way but refused to answer specific questions about their interactions with the president.

Im willing to come before the committee and tell you what I know and dont know, Coats said. What Im not willing to do is share information I think ought to be protected in an opening hearing.

In a clear sign of the level of frustration in the room, Democrats repeatedly interrupted and talked over officials claims that they couldnt respond to certain lines of questioning. The argumentative exchanges on more than one occasion prompted Sen. John McCainJohn McCainSenator blasts NSA chief: What you feel isnt relevant, admiral Senate trying to insert Russia sanctions into popular Iran bill OPINION: Why President Trump should fear John McCain MORE (R-Ariz.) to grab his microphone and request that witnesses be allowed to answer.

In a previous and equally tense moment, Sen. Martin HeinrichMartin HeinrichSenator blasts NSA chief: What you feel isnt relevant, admiral Unemployment rate hits 16-year low as just 138K jobs added Intel chief has not talked with Trump about reported disclosure of classified info MORE (D-N.M.) cut off Rosenstein by saying, At this point you filibuster better than most of my colleagues.

Chairman Richard BurrRichard BurrGOP senator threatens to subpoena Comey GOP chairman admonishes intel chiefs Senator blasts NSA chief: What you feel isnt relevant, admiral MORE (R-N.C.), clearly aggravated, eventually intervened. The committee is on notice, he snapped, pointing a finger and demanding that members provide the witnesses the courtesy to respond.

Comey is set to testify before the Senate Intelligence panel on Thursday in what may be the most highly anticipated congressional hearing since the Senate Judiciary Committee heard from Anita Hill, who had accused then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment.

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Senator blasts NSA chief: 'What you feel isn't relevant, admiral' - The Hill

The 25-year-old contractor accused of leaking classified NSA documents may have used her linguistics skills to gain access to a government listening post that collects intelligence signals from the Middle East and Europe, according to a report Tuesday.

Reality Winner who allegedly leaked a classified intelligence report containing Top Secret Level defense info likely worked at the Sweet Tea outpost, a 604,000-square-foot NSA post in Fort Gordon, Ga., according to The Daily Beast.

The sprawling facility, which opened 2012, can house up to 4,000 specialists working to translate and analyze intercepted communications from Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, according to The Daily Beast.

Winner speaks at least four languages and served as a linguistics specialist for in the Air Force. She speaks Farsi, Pashto, and Dari, her mother told The Guardian.

What she did is very common among former military personnel, especially people who, like her, were trained in the military with linguistic skill sets, Bradley Moss, an attorney specializing in national security told The Daily Beast. She was already vetted and cleared by the Air Force for at least top secret clearance, if not top secret clearance with sensitive compartmented information access eligibility. It transfers over to her contract wherever she goes, in this case apparently the NSA.

Winners rsum notes she worked at the Georgia Cryptologic Center as a contractor for Pluribus International Corporation, the news site reported. An Army spokesperson for Fort Gordon claimed Winner was contractor who was not in Fort Gordon.

An NSA spokesperson wouldnt confirm whether Winner had worked at Sweet Tea. Winners employer, Pluribus International, did not return a request for comment.

Inside, behind barbed-wire fences, heavily armed guards, and cipher-locked doors, earphone-clad men and women secretly listen in as al-Qaeda members chat on cell phones along the Afghan border, and to insurgents planning attacks in Iraq, journalist James Bamford wrote about the site in 2008.

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Accused NSA leaker may have worked at secretive listening post - New York Post

If the Reality Winner story sounds like a James Bond movie, Stephen Colbert says that makes Donald Trump "Smallfinger."(Photo: Richard Boeth/CBS)

TV's late night hosts spent the beginning of Tuesday night's show explaining the latest development in the Russian election-meddling scandal for viewers after a contractor from the NSAwas arrested for leaking a top-secret document.

"Daysbefore (the election)?" an incredulousColbert said of the hackers' timing. "Come on,Guccifer.That's just poor planning. You can't leave your hacking to the last minute! Put some thought into it. Nobody wants an election you picked up at Walgreens!"

That said, the CBS host is worried aboutthe Russian hackers' attempts to trick local government employees into opening documents that were infected with malware: "This is how democracy ends: With a fake email sent to the ancient cat lady manning the polling station at your high school gym."

He then got into the arrest of NSA contractor Reality Winner ("It's official: The Trump administration is at war with reality").

"So a young female spy named Reality Winner steals intelligence from the Pluribus Corporation?That sounds like a James Bond movie, which of course makes Trump "Smallfinger!" he sang in his best Shirley Bassey voice.

"This is a confusing story so let me try to break it down," Meyers saidas the show's technical director rapidly switched out photos of the players involved. "Reality Winner leaked information about a reality denier (Putin) who tried to influence the election to support a reality host (Trump) who is detached from reality. So now the (Reality) Winner is the loser and this loser (Putin) who helped this loser (Trump) win is the winner and that's our reality."

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NSA leak: Stephen Colbert and Seth Meyers explain our new 'reality' - USA TODAY

Experts say the U.S. election system remains profoundly vulnerable to trickery or sabotage.

HOUSTON A leaked intelligence document outlining alleged attempts by Russian military intelligence to hack into U.S. election systems is the latest evidence suggesting a broad and sophisticated foreign attack on the integrity of the nation's elections.

And it underscores the contention of security experts and computer scientists that the highly decentralized, often ramshackle U.S. election system remains profoundly vulnerable to trickery or sabotage .

The document, purportedly produced by the U.S. National Security Agency, does not indicate whether actual vote-tampering occurred. But it adds significant new detail to previous U.S. intelligence assessments that alleged Russia-backed hackers had compromised elements of America's electoral machinery. It also suggests that attackers may also have been laying groundwork for future subversive activity.

The operation described in the document could have given attackers "a foothold into the IT systems of elections offices around the country that they could use to infect machines and launch a vote-stealing attack," said J. Alex Halderman, a University of Michigan computer scientist. "We don't have evidence that that happened," he said, "but that's a very real possibility."

Computer scientists have proven in the lab that once sophisticated attackers are inside an election network, they could manipulate pre-election programming of its systems and alter results without leaving a trace.

Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the ranking Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, said Tuesday that hacking into state voting systems ahead of the Nov. 8 vote was more widespread than has been disclosed.

Attempts by Russia to "break into a number of our state voting processes" was "broad-based," he said, without offering details. In Moscow, a Kremlin spokesman categorically denied Tuesday that Moscow had tried to hack the U.S. elections.

Warner did not directly address the classified intelligence report published Monday by The Intercept, an online news outlet. The Associated Press has not independently verified the authenticity of the report, although its apparent leaker, an NSA contract worker, was arrested last weekend in Georgia.

The NSA document says Russian military intelligence first targeted employees of a Florida voting systems supplier in August. Apparently exploiting technical data obtained in that operation, the cyber spies later sent phishing emails to more than 100 local U.S. election officials just days ahead of the Nov. 8 vote, intent on stealing their login credentials and breaking into the their systems, the document says.

The emails packed malware into Microsoft Word documents and were forged to give the appearance of being sent by the system vendor, VR Systems of Tallahassee, Florida.

The Department of Homeland Security knew in September that hackers believed to be Russian agents had targeted the voter registration systems of more than 20 states. To date, no evidence of tampering with vote tallies or registration rolls has emerged.

The U.S. elections system is a patchwork of more than 3,000 jurisdictions overseen by the states with almost no federal oversight or standards. The attack sketched out in the NSA document appears designed specifically to cope with that sprawl.

The NSA document did not name any of the states where local officials were targeted by the emails masquerading as being from VR Systems.

But in September, the FBI held a conference call with all 67 county elections supervisors in the battleground state of Florida to inform them of infiltration of VR Systems without naming the company. Ion Sancho, who retired as Leon County supervisor in December, said he later learned from industry contacts that it was VR Systems.

VR Systems officials did not respond directly to questions emailed by the AP. In a statement, the company said it only knows of a "handful" of customers who received the fraudulent email, adding that it had "no indication" that anyone had clicked on the malware. The NSA document says at least one account was likely compromised.

The company makes software for on-site voter registration at polling stations and backend systems for voting management, according to its website, which says it has customers in California, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, New York, North Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia.

VR Systems' electronic poll books electronic systems used to verify registered voters at polling places experienced problems on Nov. 8 in Durham County, North Carolina. The issue forced officials to abandon the system, issue paper ballots and extend voting hours.

North Carolina's state elections director said Tuesday that officials would investigate to see if officials in Durham County were targeted and possibly compromised.

Iowa University's Douglas Jones is among computer scientists who say voter registration systems are particularly vulnerable to tampering, in part because they are on the internet.

Someone trying to cause chaos and discredit an election could delete names from registration rolls prior to voting or request absentee ballots en masse. In the latter case, a voter showing up at the polls on Election Day would be recorded as having already cast their ballot. That could force voters to file provisional ballots, and provoke long lines.

There is no evidence any of that happened last Election Day.

___

Satter reported from Paris. Associated Press writers Deb Riechmann in Washington, D.C., and Emery D'Alesio in Raleigh, N.C., contributed to this report.

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Leaked NSA doc highlights deep flaws in US election system - Gainesville Sun