Democratic Leadership Says NSA Data Collection Is Fine Because You 'May Be In Communication With Terrorists'

from the seriously? dept

One of the things that became quite clear with yesterday's vote by the House to keep the NSA collecting records on every single one of your phone calls was the strange bedfellows that came together over this issue. Fighting against the surveillance were conservatives who were skeptical about government power along with liberals who were skeptical of government overreach into private lives. On the flip side, you had the White House and the leadership of both parties -- who tend to lean more towards supporting excessive power in the executive branch (perhaps because of their own dreams of being able to control that power). It's not often you see Michele Bachmann and Nancy Pelosi agreeing on very much.

Over at the Huffington Post, there's a good article about these odd pairings, noting the oddity of Bachmann endorsing the "identical" position as the Obama administration. But the really stunning point is at the end of the article, where it mentions that Steny Hoyer, the Democratic whip, who's in charge of gathering up the votes on the Democratic side, and who apparently was working overtime to convince Democrats to vote in favor of ignoring the 4th Amendment, sent the most bizarre "description" of the amendment. While that only has a clip, a friend sent over the full "description" sent by Steny Hoyer to all of the Democrats in the House:

Amash/Conyers/Mulvaney/Polis/Massie Amendment – Bars the NSA and other agencies from using Section 215 of the Patriot Act (as codified by Section 501 of FISA) to collect records, including telephone call records, that pertain to persons who may be in communication with terrorist groups but are not already subject to an investigation under Section 215

Talk about misleading. The program pertains to everyone. At this point, it's no secret that the records collected under this authority include a record of every single phone call. This is not about collecting records of people talking to terrorists. It's about collecting records on everyone. So, the only rational deciphering of Hoyer's email is that he believes that every American "may be in communication with terrorist groups" and therefore it's okay to spy on them.

How do these people get elected?

Filed Under: business records, collection, democrats, metadata, nsa, nsa surveillance, section 215, steny hoyer, terrorists

The 217 Representatives Who Voted To Keep NSA Spying On All Your Data

from the what-4th-amendment? dept

We already talked about the Amash Amendment being voted down very narrowly (217 - 205). While it didn't pass, this was still a huge victory, because a few weeks ago (hell, even last week) people predicted that this amendment had no chance at all and might not even be debated. To come within seven votes of passing shows you why the NSA, the White House and the Senate's primary NSA enablers went absolutely ballistic in going all out against the amendment. Think about that: you had incredibly powerful interests working overtime against this amendment, and no special interests beyond basic common decency and grassroots support working for it... and the vote was still incredibly close.

The full roll call has now been released, and you'll note that this is not a partisan issue. The vote didn't fall along partisan lines at all. Rep. Mike Rogers (one of the strongest defenders of the program) called the vote "bipartisan" against Amash, but it was equally as bipartisan against the NSA. 94 Republicans and 111 Democrats voted to stop the NSA collecting every phone record on every phone call. 134 Republicans and 83 Democrats voted to let the NSA keep spying on you. I'm thankful that my own Representative, Jackie Speier voted for the Amash Amendment.

There are some strange bedfellows voting in favor of NSA spying: there's Nancy Pelosi right alongside John Boehner. Rep. Issa, who's been so good on tech issues, voted to let the NSA keep spying on all of you, whereas Rep. Gohmert, who's been ridiculous on tech issues, voted to stop the spying. Oddly Reps. Jan Schakowsky and Chris Van Hollen, who have specifically complained about the Patriot Act, voted to let it move forward today. Van Hollen specifically spoke out against Section 215 a few years ago, noting that it was too broad, didn't have safeguards and might be used against innocent Americans. Yet, he voted to allow that to continue today. Bizarre. This amendment would have stopped exactly what he complained about.

Either way, I figured folks would want to see the names of the 217 Congressional Representatives who gave a giant middle finger to the 4th Amendment and voted to let the NSA continue to spy on each and every American citizen. Direct from the roll call: ---- NOES    217 ---

Aderholt Alexander Andrews Bachmann Barber Barr Barrow (GA) Benishek Bera (CA) Bilirakis Bishop (GA) Bishop (NY) Boehner Bonner Boustany Brady (TX) Brooks (AL) Brooks (IN) Brown (FL) Brownley (CA) Bucshon Butterfield Calvert Camp Cantor Capito Carney Carter Castor (FL) Castro (TX) Cole Collins (GA) Collins (NY) Conaway Cook Cooper Costa Cotton Crawford Crenshaw Cuellar Culberson Davis (CA) Delaney Denham Dent Diaz-Balart Duckworth Ellmers Engel Enyart Esty Flores Forbes Fortenberry Foster Foxx Frankel (FL) Franks (AZ) Frelinghuysen Gallego Garcia Gerlach Gibbs Gingrey (GA) Goodlatte Granger Graves (MO) Green, Al Grimm Guthrie Gutierrez Hanabusa

Hanna Harper Hartzler Hastings (WA) Heck (NV) Heck (WA) Hensarling Higgins Himes Hinojosa Holding Hoyer Hudson Hunter Hurt Israel Issa Jackson Lee Johnson (GA) Johnson, E. B. Johnson, Sam Joyce Kaptur Kelly (IL) Kelly (PA) Kennedy Kilmer Kind King (IA) King (NY) Kinzinger (IL) Kirkpatrick Kline Kuster Lance Langevin Lankford Larsen (WA) Latham Latta Levin Lipinski LoBiondo Long Lowey Lucas Luetkemeyer Maloney, Sean Marino Matheson McCarthy (CA) McCaul McIntyre McKeon McKinley McNerney Meehan Meeks Meng Messer Miller (FL) Miller (MI) Murphy (FL) Murphy (PA) Neugebauer Noem Nunes Nunnelee Olson Palazzo Paulsen Payne Pelosi

Peters (CA) Peters (MI) Peterson Pittenger Pitts Pompeo Price (NC) Quigley Reed Reichert Renacci Rigell Roby Rogers (AL) Rogers (KY) Rogers (MI) Rooney Ros-Lehtinen Roskam Royce Ruiz Runyan Ruppersberger Ryan (OH) Ryan (WI) Schakowsky Schneider Schwartz Scott, Austin Scott, David Sessions Sewell (AL) Shimkus Shuster Simpson Sinema Sires Slaughter Smith (NE) Smith (TX) Smith (WA) Stivers Stutzman Terry Thompson (CA) Thornberry Tiberi Titus Turner Upton Valadao Van Hollen Vargas Veasey Visclosky Wagner Walberg Walden Walorski Wasserman Schultz Webster (FL) Wenstrup Westmoreland Whitfield Wilson (FL) Wittman Wolf Womack Woodall Young (FL) Young (IN)

As for those who voted to cut off the NSA's ability to do bulk data collection on all your phone calls:

---- AYES    205 ---

Amash Amodei Bachus Barton Bass Becerra Bentivolio Bishop (UT) Black Blackburn Blumenauer Bonamici Brady (PA) Braley (IA) Bridenstine Broun (GA) Buchanan Burgess Capps Capuano Cardenas Carson (IN) Cartwright Cassidy Chabot Chaffetz Chu Cicilline Clarke Clay Cleaver Clyburn Coffman Cohen Connolly Conyers Courtney Cramer Crowley Cummings Daines Davis, Danny Davis, Rodney DeFazio DeGette DeLauro DelBene DeSantis DesJarlais Deutch Dingell Doggett Doyle Duffy Duncan (SC) Duncan (TN) Edwards Ellison Eshoo Farenthold Farr Fattah Fincher Fitzpatrick Fleischmann Fleming Fudge Gabbard Garamendi

Gardner Garrett Gibson Gohmert Gosar Gowdy Graves (GA) Grayson Green, Gene Griffin (AR) Griffith (VA) Grijalva Hahn Hall Harris Hastings (FL) Holt Honda Huelskamp Huffman Huizenga (MI) Hultgren Jeffries Jenkins Johnson (OH) Jones Jordan Keating Kildee Kingston Labrador LaMalfa Lamborn Larson (CT) Lee (CA) Lewis Loebsack Lofgren Lowenthal Lujan Grisham (NM) Lujan, Ben Ray (NM) Lummis Lynch Maffei Maloney, Carolyn Marchant Massie Matsui McClintock McCollum McDermott McGovern McHenry McMorris Rodgers Meadows Mica Michaud Miller, Gary Miller, George Moore Moran Mullin Mulvaney Nadler Napolitano Neal Nolan Nugent O'Rourke

Owens Pascrell Pastor (AZ) Pearce Perlmutter Perry Petri Pingree (ME) Pocan Poe (TX) Polis Posey Price (GA) Radel Rahall Rangel Ribble Rice (SC) Richmond Roe (TN) Rohrabacher Ross Rothfus Roybal-Allard Rush Salmon Sanchez, Linda T. Sanchez, Loretta Sanford Sarbanes Scalise Schiff Schrader Schweikert Scott (VA) Sensenbrenner Serrano Shea-Porter Sherman Smith (MO) Smith (NJ) Southerland Speier Stewart Stockman Swalwell (CA) Takano Thompson (MS) Thompson (PA) Tierney Tipton Tonko Tsongas Vela Velazquez Walz Waters Watt Waxman Weber (TX) Welch Williams Wilson (SC) Yarmuth Yoder Yoho Young (AK)

Finally, we've those who didn't vote:

---- NOT VOTING    12 ---

Barletta Beatty Bustos Campbell

Coble Herrera Beutler Horsford McCarthy (NY)

Negrete McLeod Pallone Rokita Schock

Filed Under: 4th amendment, amash amendment, constitution, nsa, nsa surveillance, privacy

Amash Amendment Narrowly Rejected After Heated (And Partly Ridiculous) Debate

from the lame dept

So, this isn't a huge surprise, but this evening there was a rather fascinating debate in the House in which Congressional Reps debated and then rejected the Amash Amendment to defund the NSA's Section 215 efforts to collect every bit of data about every communication made by Americans. While it sucks that the amendment lost, the vote was very close -- much closer than most people suspected (which explains why the NSA and the White House had flipped out about the amendment even hitting the floor). The debate about the Amash amendment followed one about an amendment from Rep. Pompeo (which is the same as the Rep. Nugent amendment). As we discussed, the Pompeo/Nugent amendment is a red herring pretending to limit the collection of information, but which really just restates the status quote. The Amash amendment was the important one. The debate was fascinating -- seeing a bipartisan group of representatives speak eloquently about protecting our rights and the rights of Americans. However, the defenders of the NSA program really pushed out some crazy claims. Rep. Mike Rogers insisted that the program stopped terrorism -- something that has not yet been shown at all. He also claimed that without spying on all Americans we might have another 9/11.

The worst, by far, were the claims from Rep. Michelle Bachmann, who claimed that the Snowden revelations "helped Islamic jihadists" and that if we don't keep spying on all Americans there will be horrible results... and then immediately lied and claimed that the NSA data collected was "smaller than a phone book" even though others on her side, like Rep. Tom Cotton admitted it was "billions of records." Bachmann's misleading attempt at making a point was because the NSA database doesn't directly include names and addresses, but just phone numbers (and phone calls, locations, people you're calling). What that leaves out is that the NSA can easily connect its database to a phone book and have that information anyway. Or, as Parker Higgins pointed out, if there's less info than a phone book, wouldn't it have been cheaper and easier to just buy the NSA a phone book.

In the end, the Pompeo/Nugent amendment passed by an unfortunately wide margin: 409 to 12. Oddly, the nays were as high as 20 and bounced around up and down for a while, but at the very end of the voting, it looks like a bunch changed their vote. As for the Amash Amendment it wasn't so lopsided. In fact, it was pretty close: 205 voted for the Amash amendment, with 217 against. While the amendment lost, it was pretty damn close, meaning that a very large percentage of Congress appears to be very concerned about NSA bulk collection of data. That bodes well for future reform to limit the NSA.

Filed Under: appropriations, justin amash, michelle bachmann, mike rogers, nsa, nsa surveillance, privacy, section 215, surveillance

Congress Should Support Amash Amendment Just Because White House Statement Is So Insulting

from the don't-take-that-kind-of-crap dept

Last night, we wrote about the pure insanity of the White House's statement against the Amash Amendment, which would pull funding from the NSA for just the "dragnet" surveillance efforts, in which it collects all metadata on all phone calls. Considering that the very author of the Patriot Act insists the law was never meant to allow this kind of collection, Amash's amendment shouldn't be all that controversial. It's literally him bringing the actual law back in line with what many in Congress thought the law already was. For the Obama White House to hit back by claiming that this clear fix to the law "is not the product of an informed, open, or deliberative process" is downright ridiculous and insulting, considering that the decision to reinterpret the law in secret was hardly the product of an "informed, open or deliberative process."

In fact, as Marcy Wheeler points out, this statement is so insulting to Congress, that Congress should vote for the Amash amendment as a response to the White House's claim. As she notes, this seems to be the White House blaming Congress for not being "informed, open or deliberative" in responsing to the administration's own efforts to mislead Congress by keeping them not fully informed, with a secret process, that guaranteed many were kept in the dark. To then flip that around and blame Congress as if it was Congress who wasn't being open is downright insulting:

Hell, if I were a self-respecting member of Congress, I’d support Amash-Conyers even if I weren’t already predisposed to, if only because this is such a crazy bat-shit claim to reason and openness.

The Executive Branch has had 7 years to have an open debate. It chose not to have that open debate. Now that one has been brought to it by Congress, it pretends Congress is the one at fault for the lack of informed or open process.

Of course, Wheeler makes another good point in that same post. The fact that the White House put this statement out, even after the NSA did a full court emergency lobby extravaganza to convince Congress not to support the amendment, at least suggests that the White House is realizing that there might really be enough votes to get this amendment through.

President Obama claimed he "welcomed this debate." He might want to speed up that process, because it's happening and all he's doing is stalling and blaming others. But the debate is happening without him, and he might not like where it ends up.

Filed Under: amendment, appropriations, debate, justin amash, nsa, nsa surveillance, patriot act, section 215, white house

NSA: Sure We Can Search Your Emails, But Not Ours

from the facepalm dept

The NSA. They're the no-such-agency with the time-honored tradition of looking through the metadata we all leave behind, like the scum-trail of a slug. Also, our emails, social media communications, recipe exchanges, and those obituaries we write up for our enemies in nearly-sexual anticipation of their demise (editor's note: damn it, Timothy, nobody does that but you!). They have the kind of technological hardware and software that would make an IT admin's pants explode. They can search through approximately all the stuff, ever, anywhere, to root out terrorist plots and reality TV spoilers.

But you want them to find one of their own internal emails? That's just crazy-talk, apparently. This, according to ProPublica's Justin Elliot:

I filed a request last week for emails between NSA employees and employees of the National Geographic Channel over a specific time period. The TV station had aired a friendly documentary on the NSA and I want to better understand the agency's public-relations efforts. A few days after filing the request, Blacker called, asking me to narrow my request since the FOIA office can search emails only “person by person," rather than in bulk. The NSA has more than 30,000 employees.

"There's no central method to search an email at this time with the way our records are set up, unfortunately," NSA Freedom of Information Act officer Cindy Blacker told me last week.

I know, I know. you're thinking, "Will my insurance cover a broken, face-palmed nose?" But surely there's an explanation for this. Let's think about it logically. The NSA is essentially a spy organization. They deal in lots of classified stuff and they probably send a lot of information that is classified to one another. After all, they don't have to worry about being spied on, since they're doing the spying, follow? So, they set up a system, something like an ultra-awesome Mission Impossible platform, where searching for emails between employees is impossible, because it's been designed to be impossible. Got it? This is all part of the system, a way to keep information privileged. It's not ineptitude, they're just guarding secrets, and that's why the FOIA request can't be fulfilled. Right, Cindy?

The system is “a little antiquated and archaic," she added.

Well, slap a puppy, that's just unbelievable. And I mean that in every sense of the word. I don't believe it. The NSA can likely tell me how many emails I've sent to whom and about what subjects, but it can't find any of its own internal emails via the kind of search any competent IT manager could do in his/her sleep? I literally don't believe that. Neither does anyone else concerned, apparently.

“It’s just baffling,” says Mark Caramanica of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. “This is an agency that’s charged with monitoring millions of communications globally and they can’t even track their own internal communications in response to a FOIA request.”

I think the truth is much closer to they won't rather than can't. But, hey, what do I know?

Filed Under: emails, foia, nsa, nsa surveillance

Irony Alert: Obama Opposes Amash Amendment Because It's A 'Blunt Approach' And Not A Product Of 'Open' Process

from the now-they're-just-fucking-with-us,-right? dept

Okay, someone in the White House just feels like giving people who believe in protecting civil liberties a giant middle finger today. As a quick review, the President and the administration have been hiding behind secret court orders with secret interpretations of the Patriot Act and the FISA Amendments Act to use a very blunt instrument: collecting pretty much all digital data around, and keeping the whole thing totally quiet for years. In response, Rep. Justin Amash is seeking to pull funding from one of the key NSA programs -- the one that involved a secret interpretation of Section 215 of the Patriot Act by a secret court to pretend that language that clearly applied to only limited data now meant the NSA could order AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and others to hand over every call record on every phone call. And, this is a program that no one knew about until Ed Snowden leaked it to the Guardian and the Washington Post.

Okay, having reinforced those basic points, check out the giant "screw you guys" the White House just pushed out in the form of a "statement" in response to the Amash Amendment. I'll bold the key guffaw-inducing lines:

In light of the recent unauthorized disclosures, the President has said that he welcomes a debate about how best to simultaneously safeguard both our national security and the privacy of our citizens. The Administration has taken various proactive steps to advance this debate including the President’s meeting with the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, his public statements on the disclosed programs, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s release of its own public statements, ODNI General Counsel Bob Litt’s speech at Brookings, and ODNI’s decision to declassify and disclose publicly that the Administration filed an application with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. We look forward to continuing to discuss these critical issues with the American people and the Congress.

However, we oppose the current effort in the House to hastily dismantle one of our Intelligence Community’s counterterrorism tools. This blunt approach is not the product of an informed, open, or deliberative process. We urge the House to reject the Amash Amendment, and instead move forward with an approach that appropriately takes into account the need for a reasoned review of what tools can best secure the nation.

Let me repeat that again: This blunt approach is not the product of an informed, open, or deliberative process. As opposed to the blunt process of collecting all data on everyone which was arrived at via an "informed, open and deliberative process -- known as totally secretly interpreting the plain language of a law in a secret ruling from a secret court to mean something almost entirely different than what the language itself said?

This is a joke, right?

Only someone who really has a sick sense of humor would try to argue that a bill looking to slow down the rampant spying on pretty much all Americans comes from a lack of an "informed, open, or deliberative process" when the process to create that massive surveillance infrastructure was all done in complete darkness.

Filed Under: appropriations, barack obama, debate, irony, justin amash, nsa, nsa surveillance, open, surveillance

Senator Wyden: Public Has Been Actively Mislead By Government Officials Over Surveillance

from the indeed dept

While some Senators are insisting that we need to keep going with NSA surveillance and just trust them that the NSA and FBI aren't abusing the law and the information they have access to, others are pointing out that it's a lot of hogwash. Senator Ron Wyden, who has been leading the charge against these programs for years (and was mostly ignored for that effort), gave a great speech describing how defenders of the program are directly choosing to mislead the American public. A key point, though it comes late in the speech, is the following:

The public was not just kept in the dark about the Patriot Act and other secret authorities. The public was actively misled.

Most of the speech is detailing exactly how that happened, and the distortions defenders of the program try to tell the American people and why they're wrong. We'll highlight a few, but reading or watching the whole speech is worthwhile.

He notes that he warned, quite specifically (and publicly) that when the American public found out how the laws were being interpreted, they would be surprised. That, clearly, proved accurate:

When the Patriot Act was last reauthorized, I stood on the floor of the United States Senate and said “I want to deliver a warning this afternoon. When the American people find out how their government has interpreted the Patriot Act, they are going to be stunned and they are going to be angry.” From my position on the Senate Intelligence Committee, I had seen government activities conducted under the umbrella of the Patriot Act that I knew would astonish most Americans.

Furthermore, he points out that officials chose to directly mislead the American public.

If that is not enough to give you pause, then consider that not only were the existence of and the legal justification for these programs kept completely secret from the American people, senior officials from across the government were making statements to the public about domestic surveillance that were clearly misleading and at times simply false.

The misleading statements from the officials are based on how the government interprets the law as compared to how the public actually reads the law:

...there are effectively two Patriot Acts the first is the one that they can read on their laptop in Medford or Portland, analyze and understand. Then there’s the real Patriot Act the secret interpretation of the law that the government is actually relying upon. The secret rulings of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court have interpreted the Patriot Act, as well as section 702 of the FISA statute, in some surprising ways, and these rulings are kept entirely secret from the public. These rulings can be astoundingly broad. The one that authorizes the bulk collection of phone records is as broad as any I have ever seen.

And, of course, such a situation is clearly anti-democratic:

Without public laws, and public court rulings interpreting those laws, it is impossible to have informed public debate. And when the American people are in the dark, they can’t make fully informed decisions about who should represent them, or protest policies that they disagree with. These are fundamentals. It’s Civics 101. And secret law violates those basic principles. It has no place in America.

Furthermore, Wyden digs into the ridiculous claim by defenders of the NSA -- including from President Obama, Senator Feinstein and NSA boss Keith Alexander -- that there is sufficient "oversight" in these programs because others in the government review them. That, of course, is ridiculous:

...when James Madison was attempting to persuade Americans that the Constitution contained sufficient protections against any politician or bureaucrat seizing more power than that granted to them by the people, he did not just ask his fellow Americans to trust him. He carefully laid out the protections contained in the Constitution and how the people could ensure they were not breached. We are failing our constituents, we are failing our founders, and we are failing every brave man and woman who fought to protect American democracy if we are willing, today, to just trust any individual or any agency with power greater than the checked and limited authority that serves as a firewall against tyranny.

As for the claims by defenders that the business records collection is no different than a grand jury subpoena, Wyden rightly calls bullshit on that:

For years, senior Justice Department officials have told Congress and the public that the Patriot Act’s business record authority which is the authority that is used to collect the phone records of millions of ordinary Americans is “analogous to a grand jury subpoena.” This statement is exceptionally misleading it strains the word “analogous” well beyond the breaking point. It’s certainly true that both authorities can be used to collect a wide variety of records, but the Patriot Act has been secretly interpreted to permit ongoing bulk collection, and this makes that authority very, very different from regular grand jury subpoena authority. Any lawyers in here? After the speech is over come up and tell me if you’ve ever seen a grand jury subpoena that allowed the government on an ongoing basis to collect the records of millions of ordinary Americans. The fact is that no one has seen a subpoena like that is because there aren’t any. This incredibly misleading analogy has been made by more than one official on more than one occasion and often as part of testimony to Congress. The official who served for years as the Justice Department’s top authority on criminal surveillance law recently told the Wall Street Journal that if a federal attorney “served a grandjury subpoena for such a broad class of records in a criminal investigation, he or she would be laughed out of court.”

Going even further, he trashes the claims that this is all okay because intelligence officials tell Congress "the truth" behind closed doors in classified sessions. As he notes, this means that they're lying to the public, and that's not right:

Sure, members of Congress COULD get the full story in a classified setting, but that does not excuse the practice of half truths and misleading statements being made on the public record. When did it become all right for government officials’ public statements and private statements to differ so fundamentally? The answer is that it is not all right, and it is indicative of a much larger culture of misinformation that goes beyond the congressional hearing room and into the public conversation writ large.

And all of this spying and deceit has a very real impact on our democracy:

James Madison, the father of our constitution, said that the the accumulation of executive, judicial and legislative powers into the hands of any faction is the very definition of tyranny. He then went on to assure the nation that the Constitution protected us from that fate. So, my question to you is: by allowing the executive to secretly follow a secret interpretation of the law under the supervision of a secret, nonadversarial court and occasional secret congressional hearings, how close are we coming to James Madison’s “very definition of tyranny”? I believe we are allowing our country to drift a lot closer than we should, and if we don’t take this opportunity to change course now, we will all live to regret it.

Democracy isn't electing officials to lie to the public while enabling the vast intelligence community to spy on everyone via secret court orders. It's time that the public spoke up and made it clear to our elected officials that this is not what we signed up for at all.

Filed Under: dianne feinstein, fisa amendments act, james clapper, keith alexander, nsa surveillance, patriot act, ron wyden

Even Powering Down A Cell Phone Can't Keep The NSA From Tracking Its Location

from the making-a-strong-case-for-Snowden's-fridge-logic dept

We know how much information the NSA can grab in terms of cell phone usage -- namely, calls made and received and length of conversations, along with phone and phone card metadata like IMSI and IMEI numbers. It can even grab location data, although for some reason, it claims it never does. (No matter, plenty of law enforcement agencies like gathering location data, so it's not like that information is going to waste [bleak approximation of laughter]).

According to Ryan Gallagher at Slate, the NSA, along with other agencies, are able to something most would feel to be improbable, if not impossible: track the location of cell phones even if they're turned off.

On Monday, the Washington Post published a story focusing on how massively the NSA has grown since the 9/11 attacks. Buried within it, there was a small but striking detail: By September 2004, the NSA had developed a technique that was dubbed “The Find” by special operations officers. The technique, the Post reports, was used in Iraq and “enabled the agency to find cellphones even when they were turned off.” This helped identify “thousands of new targets, including members of a burgeoning al-Qaeda-sponsored insurgency in Iraq,” according to members of the special operations unit interviewed by the Post.

Normally, turning a cell phone off cuts the connection to towers, effectively taking it off the grid and making it only traceable to the last point it was connected. The Post article doesn't explain exactly how the NSA accomplishes it, but other incidents over the past half-decade offer a few indications of how this might be done.

In 2006, it was reported that the FBI had deployed spyware to infect suspects’ mobile phones and record data even when they were turned off... In 2009, thousands of BlackBerry users in the United Arab Emirates were targeted with spyware that was disguised as a legitimate update. The update drained users’ batteries and was eventually exposed by researchers, who identified that it had apparently been designed by U.S. firm SS8, which sells “lawful interception” tools to help governments conduct surveillance of communications.

The FBI's use, in which cell phones' microphones were remotely activated to record conversations (even with the phones turned off), probably had some bearing on Snowden's request that journalists power down their phones and place them in the fridge.

According to Gallagher, the NSA may be using mass updates to infect phones of targets overseas (and presumably, any "non-targets" applying the same faux update). This would be difficult, but not impossible, and considering what we've learned about the NSA's far-reaching surveillance net, certainly not implausible. A couple of details in support of that theory:

First, two telcos that provide service to millions of cell phone users are known to be overly cooperative with intelligence agencies. You may recall the fact that Verizon and AT&T notably did not sign the collective letter asking the government to allow affected companies to release information on government requests for data. Given this background, it's not unimaginable that Verizon and AT&T would accommodate the NSA (and FBI) if it wished to use their update systems to push these trojans.

Add to this the fact that Microsoft and others have allowed intelligence agencies early access to security flaws, allowing them to exploit these for a certain length of time before informing the public and patching the holes. Add these two together and you've got the means and the opportunity to serve snooping malware to millions of unsuspecting cell phone users.

Sparing usage, properly targeted isn't really an issue. But if updates containing spyware have been pushed to the thousands of non-targeted individuals just to ensure the targets are included, it becomes more problematic, and the track record of the two agencies who have used this technology is far from pristine.

Filed Under: fbi, mobile phones, nsa, nsa surveillance, surveillance, tracking, trojans

NSA Defenders In The Senate Flip Out Over Amash Amendment To Stop Dragnet

from the well,-look-at-that dept

Not surprisingly, the NSA's emergency lobbying to try to stop Rep. Justin Amash's amendment that will stop the NSA from its bulk data collection program under Section 215 of the Patriot Act (while allowing lots of other surveillance efforts to continue) has drawn support from the Senate's two biggest supporters of stomping out your privacy: Senators Dianne Feinstein and Saxby Chambliss. Together, they've put out a ridiculous statement defending the trampling of your Constitutional rights to support the efforts of the NSA and giant government contractors to spy on everything you do.

The FISA business records program has contributed to disrupting numerous terrorist attacks against our nation.

Name one. Seriously. To date, every example given falls apart under scrutiny, as it shows that the NSA's mass data collection program was not necessary. Furthermore, just because such a program was used doesn't mean the program makes sense. The bigger question is whether or not other, less intrusive methods, would have been just as effective and (more importantly) whether the country is okay with simply tearing up the 4th and 5th amendments. As stated, we'd probably stop lots of criminal activity if the government was able to put cameras in every room of every house. But we don't do that because there are costs involved -- such as giving up our privacy. Why won't Senators Feinstein and Chambliss even address this part of the equation?

It has been reviewed and authorized by all three branches of government and is subject to strict controls.

Except that's not really true. Multiple people in Congress have made it clear that they were not told the full details of the NSA surveillance efforts. And while Congress did "authorize" the program, it was done with a very weak debate and (specifically) public speeches by both Chambliss and Feinstein that were clearly designed to mislead Congress and the American public. As for the "judicial" branch overseeing it, that's just the totally secret FISA court, with all of its judges selected by one man with no oversight or control, and with all of its decisions held in secret. That's not quite the "judicial oversight" that most of the public thinks is legitimate.

Since the public disclosure of the business records program, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has explored how the program can be modified to add extra privacy protections without sacrificing its effectiveness.

They've done so in secret. The public hearings have been a complete joke with heavily misleading statements to outright perjury from intelligence officials.

We believe this debate in the Congressional Intelligence and Judiciary committees should continue and that any amendments to defund the program on appropriations bills would be unwise.

Yeah, sure. We've heard this before. Feinstein got Senator Ron Wyden to drop his hold on the renewal of the FISA Amendments Act (which has been interpreted to allow part of this crazy excessive surveillance) by promising him that there would be a debate in early 2013. That didn't happen.

Feinstein claiming that there will be continued debate over this issue just isn't credible. It's the same line that she's used to shut down previous attempts to hold these programs back.

Feinstein, Chambliss and the NSA still can't show how these programs are actually constitutional or necessary. So they resort to their usual FUD. Hopefully, Congress realizes that the American public have had enough of this charade.

Filed Under: dianne feinstein, justin amash, nsa, nsa surveillance, saxby chambliss

NSA's Keith Alexander Calls Emergency Private Briefing To Lobby Against Amash Amendment

from the what-are-you-afraid-of? dept

So we were just writing about the details of the amendment from Rep. Justin Amash, which would limit the NSA's ability to twist the language of Section 215 of the Patriot Act to pretend it means it's okay to collect information on every phone call made. If you want to know just how important this is, all you need to know is that NSA boss, General Keith Alexander, wasted no time in scheduling a last-minute emergency briefing for Congress to tell them not to vote for the Amash Amendment.

NSA head Gen. Keith Alexander scheduled a last-minute, members-only briefing in response to the amendment, according to an invitation distributed to members of Congress this morning and forwarded to HuffPost. "In advance of anticipated action on amendments to the DoD Appropriations bill, Ranking Member C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger of the House Intelligence Committee invites your Member to attend a question and answer session with General Keith B. Alexander of the National Security Agency," reads the invitation.

The invitation warned members that they could not share what they learned with their constituents or others. "The briefing will be held at the Top Secret/SCI level and will be strictly Members-Only," reads the invite.

Of course, the people that Congress is supposed to be representing, the public, don't get the privilege of being able to secure a last minute "briefing" with our elected officials to explain to them why the Amash amendment is important. Instead, we need to rely on things like DefundTheNSA.com or Demand Progress to reach out to our Representatives to let them know that bulk data collection on every American is not acceptable behavior by the NSA.

Filed Under: appropriations, congress, funding, justin amash, keith alexander, lobbying, nsa, nsa surveillance, patriot act, section 215