Trump Doesn't Understand Surveillance Powers; House Votes To Give Him More Of It

from the surveillance-madness dept

As discussed this morning, the House voted a few hours ago on a bill to reauthorize Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act that did not reform the widely abused surveillance rules -- other than to codify some of the power allowing them to continue to abuse it for warrantless surveillance on Americans. There was a vote on an important Amendment from Reps. Justin Amash and Zoe Lofgren that would have allowed the reauthorization of the underlying program, but (importantly) required a warrant (as per the 4th Amendment) for spying on Americans. And, unfortunately, the amendment was voted down (183-233) and the awful reauthorization passed, 256 to 164.

The fight over this bill was... weird in so many ways. There was the expected bullshit: politicians outright lying to the public, arguing that the Amash/Lofgren amendment (which again, just said that the program had to be conducted in accordance with the 4th Amendment) would somehow stop the intelligence and law enforcement community from finding terrorists (it wouldn't). Again: everyone expected that. What was weird was (1) having some of Donald Trump's loudest detractors in Congress... then argue against the Amash amendment and in favor of giving the Trump administration more power to warrantlessly spy on Americans and share that data widely among law enforcement. And (2) having President Trump tweet a series of confused tweets this morning that demonstrated that he clearly didn't know what the debate is actually about... and suggesting he was against the reauthorization, despite the fact that the White House (his White House) had issued a statement strongly supporting the reauthorization.

So despite the White House (which, last I checked is supposed to represent the views of the President) tweeted in support of Section 702, here's what the President himself tweeted early this morning:

Not surprisingly, this came just minutes after Trump's besties at Fox & Friends had complained about Section 702, and even directly said "Mr. President, this is not the way to go."

That resulted in Trump's tweet which freaked out supporters of the bill, and even had a few members of Congress suggesting delaying the vote. Of course, while Trump later when on to tweet about some other topic, hours later, he added another tweet to the original tweet above, suggesting that he was now in favor of the reauthorization:

You will be unsurprised, of course, to learn that in the hours between those tweets, Rep. Paul Ryan (who was soon to go on the floor and completely misrepresent the bill) had spoken to the President.

It's worth pointing out, of course, that both of Trump's tweets totally misrepresent the 702 program and the vote today. While there are many, many examples of abuse of Section 702 surveillance powers, there has yet to be any evidence that it was abused to do surveillance on the Trump campaign. But the second tweet is also wrong. The issue was not "foreign bad guys on foreign land" but the fact that the new bill authorizes surveillance of totally innocent people -- including American citizens at home in America -- without a warrant.

As for the other oddity: some of Trump's biggest critics in Congress -- Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi -- just helped to give Trump much greater surveillance powers on Americans without a warrant... despite regularly complaining that he has abused his powers.

...the most powerful member of the Democratic Caucus, House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, was notably silent on the bill. If Pelosi had whipped Democrats to vote against the bill and supported the USA RIGHTS Act instead, there’s a good chance that Trump and Ryan would have failed to get their full extension. Yet, just before the floor vote today she said she would not support the USA Rights Act and shamefully voted to hand Trump exactly what he wanted.

Almost worse than Pelosi's willingness to go along with the NSA was Rep. Adam Schiff's, D-Calif., who has seen his star rise over the last year being the Democrat’s go-to voice on the Russia investigation. On CNN with Jake Tapper this weekend, Schiff talked at length how he thought Trump was abusing his power and misusing the Justice Department to go after his political enemies.

Nonetheless, Schiff was a leading driver in the House to extend the NSA's surveillance powers, and has been undercutting the more robust reforms proposed by other Democrats, like longtime Senate Intelligence Committee member Sen. Ron Wyden, for months.

So, in summary: this bill that effectively expands the power of US intelligence and law enforcement communities to spy on Americans without warrants... was supported, then opposed, then supported again by the President while demonstrating he had no idea what was in the bill... then supported by Democrats who keep warning that the President will abuse the wider surveillance powers that they are voting to give him... and then the bill passed just as expected.

This is all kinds of fucked up.

Either way, this now moves on to the Senate. And while there are some Senators who are speaking out against the reautorhization -- mainly Senators Ron Wyden, Rand Paul and Mike Lee -- it's widely believed that there's not enough 4th Amendment supporters in the Senate to stop the bad bill from getting passed as well. And, at that point, it's quite likely that the President will sign the bill, despite his own tweet complaining about the program this morning.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, adam schiff, domestic surveillance, donald trump, fisa, fisa amendments act, nancy pelosi, section 702, warrants

Senator Burr Pitches 702 'Reform' That Would Give NSA Back Its Most Abused Collection Program

from the word-is-pretty-much-meaningless dept

The Senate Intelligence Committee has released its Section 702 reauthorization bill [PDF]. Rather than fix anything, it makes pretty much everything worse. This is largely due to Sen. Burr's influence, who probably felt he had to bring something to the debate, but couldn't bear to part completely with his "clean, forever reauthorization" dreams.

Senator Burr is somehow claiming this is a "reform" bill. Marcy Wheeler has written an excellent post describing all the ways in which it isn't, especially the tail end of the bill which pretends to limit US law enforcement access to NSA collections.

It does so in Section 5, in what is cynically called “End Use Restriction,” but which is in reality a vast expansion of the uses to which Section 702 data may be used (affirmatively codifying, effectively, a move the IC made in 2015). It permits the use of 702 data in a criminal proceeding for any criminal proceeding that “Affects, involves, or is related to” the national security of the United States (which will include proceedings used to flip informants on top of whatever terrorism, proliferation, or espionage and hacking crimes that would more directly fall under national security) or involves,

Death

Kidnapping

Serious bodily injury

Specified offense against a minor

Incapacitation or destruction of critical infrastructure (critical infrastructure can include even campgrounds!)

Cybersecurity, including violations of CFAA

Transnational crime, including transnational narcotics trafficking

Human trafficking (which, especially dissociated from transnational crime, is often used as a ploy to prosecute prostitution; the government also includes assisting undocumented migration to be human trafficking)

So, just the "serious" crimes. This is how agencies like the FBI are using 702 collections already. All Burr's bill would do is codify the use of foreign-facing national security agency to collect and retain communications related to domestic criminal activity -- some of it potentially rather minor.

Beyond that, the bill looks to give the NSA back its "about" program. This is the program the NSA abandoned after pushback from the FISA court and (perhaps) as a way to dodge uncomfortable questions about the continued collection of domestic communications. This was a voluntary move by the NSA and it was already asking to have its collection back a couple of months later.

Burr's 702 bill would hand the NSA back its program with a 30-day waiting period during which the House or Senate could introduce a bill forbidding the reinstatement of the program. Should no bill be introduced within the notice period, the NSA could pick up where it left off and go back to abusing a collection program it has never not abused since its inception.

It also allows the NSA to make "emergency" claims about its "about" program to bypass legislative attempts to block it. This wouldn't automatically nullify legislative efforts to end the about collection permanently, but it would allow the NSA to continue collecting while the issue is being debated.

So, it's basically what one would expect from one of top hardline supporters of the NSA. Good thing Burr is one of the top men in the "oversight" committee. He's willing to give the NSA what it wants -- along with the stuff it gave up -- and for more years than the House Judiciary Committee's tepid reform option. Burr's bill would push the next renewal fight off until 2025, two years more than the 2023 sunset in the House bill. Fortunately, there may be a third option in play soon. Ron Wyden has announced he's preparing a 702 bill and is pushing the Senate Intelligence Committee to make renewal hearings public.

Filed Under: about collection, fisa, fisa amendments act, mass surveillance, nsa, richard burr, section 702, senate intelligence committee, surveillance

Oh, Sure, Now Congress Is Serious About Asking NSA About Surveillance On Americans

from the about-freaking-time,-goodlatte dept

For many, many years, Senator Ron Wyden has been directly asking the US intelligence community a fairly straightforward question (in his role as a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee): just how many Americans are having their communications swept up in surveillance activities supposedly being conducted on foreigners under the FISA Amendments Act (FISA being Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act). Wyden started asking way back in 2011 and got no answers. His continued questioning in 2013 resulted in Director of National Intelligence James Clapper lying to Congress in a public hearing, which Ed Snowden later claimed was a big part of the inspiration to make him leak documents to the press.

Just last month, we noted that Wyden had renewed his request for an accurate depiction of how many Americans have had their communications swept up, this time asked to new Director of National Intelligence, Dan Coats. Unfortunately, for all these years, it's basically felt like Senator Wyden tilting at a seeming windmill, with many others in Congress basically rolling their eyes every time the issue is raised. I've never understood why people in Congress think that these kinds of things can be ignored. There have been a few attempts by others -- notably on the House Judiciary Committee -- to ask similar questions. Almost exactly a year ago, there was a letter from many members of the HJC, and there was a followup in December. But, notably, while there were a number of members from both parties on that letter, the chair of the House Judiciary Committee, Bob Goodlatte, did not sign the letter, meaning that it was unlikely to be taken as seriously.

Suddenly, though, it seems that the ins-and-outs of Section 702, and how the "incidental" information it collects on Americans is used has taken on a much wider interest, following President Trump's misleading suggestion that President Obama tapped his phone lines, and some Trump supporters trying to twist typical 702 surveillance to justify those remarks. Either way, if that leads people to actually look at 702, that may be a good result out of a stupid situation. And, thus, we get to this surprising moment, in which Goodlatte has actually sent a similar letter to Coats (along with ranking member John Conyers) asking about the impact of 702 surveillance on Americans. And since (for reasons that are beyond me) Reuters refuses to link to the actual source materials, you can read the full letter here or embedded below.

The letter demands an answer by April 24th. And, yes, it's notable that Goodlatte has signed on, because Section 702 is up for reauthorization at the end of the year, and if Goodlatte is not on board with reauthorization, then the NSA is going to have some difficulty in getting it through.

You have described reauthorization of Section 702 as your "top legislative priority." Although Congress designed this authority to target non-U.S. persons located outside of the United States, it is clear that Section 702 surveillance programs can and do collect information about U.S. persons, on subjects unrelated to counterterrorism. It is imperative that we understand the size of this impact on U.S. persons as our Committee proceeds with the debate on reauthorization.

The letter then even points to Coats' response to Wyden during Coats' confirmation hearing that he was "going to do everything I can to work with Admiral Rogers in NSA to get you that number." Of course, back in December, it was said that the intelligence community might finally deliver that number... in January. And it's now April. Still, with Goodlatte finally taking an interest in this, it's a sign that the NSA can't just coast by and continue to completely ignore this.

Filed Under: bob goodlatte, dan coats, fbi, fisa amendments act, house judiciary committee, nsa, ron wyden, section 702, surveillance

Once Again, Senator Wyden Wants To Know How Many Americans Are Being Surveilled By The NSA

from the why-is-this-so-difficult dept

Many people seem to forget that before Ed Snowden came along, Senator Ron Wyden was beating the drum in Congress about how the NSA was abusing Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act to spy on Americans. Here's a story we did back in 2011 concerning Wyden raising concerns about the failure of the Director of National Intelligence to say how Section 702 was being used on Americans. Even earlier in 2011, we wrote about then Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, refusing to answer this question, saying that "it is not reasonably possible to identify the number of people located in the United States whose communications may have been reviewed."

Wyden kept up a series of similar requests, famously leading to the 2013 hearing in which Wyden directly asked Clapper about whether or not information was being collected on Americans and Clapper flat out lied. Snowden himself has credited that particular exchange as playing a big role in convincing him to leak documents.

Fast forward to now. Last week, Senator Wyden sent a letter to incoming Director of National Intelligence* Dan Coats, once again asking how many Americans are having their communications watched under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act (which, again, is supposed to be used for foreign intelligence, but which we now know is regularly used to do surveillance on Americans).

I and other members of Congress have been seeking an answer to this question since 2011. We posed the question again in the context of the reauthorization of Section 702 in 2012. It is now central to the debate this year over the reauthorization of the program, which you have described as your "top legislative priority."

As Wyden notes:

The lack of information on the extent to which Americans' communications have been collected under Section 702 is relevant not just to the question of whether Section 702 should be reauthorized, but to what reforms may be needed. For example, the government is currently authorized to conduct warrentless queries for Americans' communications collected under Section 702. Without data on the number of Americans' communications available to government, it is impossible to know the full extent to which these queries intrude on the privacy and constitutional rights of Americans.

Wyden was hoping to get an answer to this question, prior to Coats' being voted in. That, of course, did not happen. However, Wyden gave one of his big speeches about this issue:

In it, he calls out these issues quite clearly:

But I want it understood that the reason that I’m going through this background is that I believe the American people deserve a fully informed debate about the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act reauthorization. You cannot have that debate — you cannot ensure that the American people have security and liberty unless you know the impact of section 702 of that bill on the constitutional rights of law-abiding Americans.

So for six years, Mr. President, in this body Democrats and Republicans — in the other body, Democrats and Republicans — have been asking the same question: How many law-abiding Americans are having their communications swept up in all of this collection?

Without even an estimate of this number, I don’t think it’s possible to judge what section 702 means for the core liberties of law-abiding Americans.

Without this information, the Congress can’t make an informed decision about whether to reauthorize section 702 or what kind of reforms might be necessary to ensure the protection of the individual liberties of innocent Americans.

There's a lot more in the nearly 50-minute speech (the transcript is in the link above). But it's truly incredible that the executive branch refuses to give Congress this information that it needs for oversight:

Mr. President, how many law-abiding Americans — innocent, law-abiding Americans are getting swept up in these searches? It will be an increasingly important issue, as the nature of telecommunications companies continues to change because it is now a field that is globally interconnected. We don’t have telecommunications systems just stopping at national borders.

So getting the number of Americans whose communications have been collected in the first place is the prerequisite to doing real oversight on this law and doing our job at a time when it is being reauthorized and the American people want both security and liberty and understand that the two are not mutually exclusive. So, Director Clapper then suggested reviewing the classified number of targets that were later determined to be located in the United States. But the question has never been about the targets of section 702, although the mistaken targeting of Americans and the people in our country is another serious question.

The question that Democrats and Republicans have been asking is about how many Americans are being swept up by a program that, according to the law, is supposed to only target foreigners overseas. So let me repeat that. That’s what the law says. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act says that the targets are supposed to be foreigners overseas. And Democrats and Republicans want to know how many law-abiding Americans who might reside in Alaska or Oregon or anywhere else are getting swept up in these searches. So this bipartisan coalition has kept asking.

Wyden goes on to explain how many in the intelligence community are misleading the public on how broad the powers and searches under Section 702 really are. He even highlights the claims that some have made that anyone against 702 must be part of a "bad guy caucus." But the issue is that, as currently used, Section 702 can and likely is being used to broadly conduct warrantless surveillance on Americans:

I’ve heard my colleagues on the other side talk frequently. Well, you know, if law-abiding Americans are having their communications swept up, we shouldn’t get all concerned about that because this array of Americans’ communications is being minimized, and somehow that means that it’s not getting out. It’s being hidden. That’s not what necessarily happens.

To begin with, all that collection does not stay at the National Security Agency. All the e-mails collected through the PRISM component of section 702 go to several other agencies, including the C.I.A. and the F.B.I. Then you have those three agencies in particular authorized to conduct searches through all the data for communications that are to, from, or about Americans. Look for an American’s name, telephone number, e-mail address, even a key word or phrase. They can do that without any warrant. There doesn’t have to be even a suspicion, even a suspicion that an American is engaged in any kind of wrongdoing.

The F.B.I.’s authorities are even broader. The F.B.I. can also conduct searches for communications that are to, from, or about an American to seek evidence of a crime. Unlike the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency, the F.B.I. doesn’t even report how many searches for Americans it’s conducting. Moreover, neither the F.B.I. Nor the C.I.A. Reports on the number of searches for Americans it conducts using metadata collected under section 702.

Now, the authority to conduct searches for Americans’ communications in section 702 data is new. Before 2011, the FISA court prohibited, prohibited queries for U.S. persons. I’m going to repeat that: Under the Bush Administration and the first two years of the Obama Administration, it was not possible to conduct these back-door, warrantless searches of law-abiding Americans. Then the Obama Administration sought to change the rules and obtained authority to conduct them.

In April, 2014, the Director of National Intelligence in response to questions from myself and Senator Mark Udall publicly acknowledged these warrantless searches, and my June, the House voted overwhelmingly to prohibit them. That prohibition didn’t become law, but I can tell you it’s sure going to be considered in the context of this reauthorization, and the House voted overwhelmingly, overwhelmingly to prohibit these warrantless searches. So the question really is what exactly is the privacy impact of these warrantless searches for Americans?

There's a lot more in the speech as well, but this post is getting to be long enough. Unfortunately, of course, the speech will get little attention. It's not the exciting sort of political football that cable news likes to cover. There's no partisan horse race element to it. It's just the kind of thing that impacts the basic Constitutional rights of all Americans. And, apparently, only a few people actually seem to care about it -- and none of them seem to be in roles where they can stop this kind of 4th Amendment violation from happening again.

* Clapper, astoundingly, was never fired or otherwise punished for lying to Congress, and only left at the beginning of this year with the change in administrations.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, dan coats, fisa amendments act, james clapper, nsa, ron wyden, section 702

Court Dismisses Wikimedia's Lawsuit Over NSA Surveillance

from the not-over-yet dept

Back in March, we noted that Wikimedia was suing the NSA over its mass surveillance program under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act. This is the part of the law that the NSA uses to justify its "upstream" collection -- which lets the NSA partner with backbone providers like AT&T and tap their fiber lines at entry/exit points from the country and sniff through all the traffic. The problem in many lawsuits concerning NSA surveillance is that it's been difficult for the plaintiff to satisfy the requirements necessary to get "standing." That is, can the plaintiff prove that he/she/it had rights violated by the program. Many earlier attempts failed, because they just presented stories of "well, the NSA is collecting everything, so..." and the courts have said that's not enough, since it needs to be shown that the plaintiff, in particular, was a target.

Wikimedia (and the ACLU, who is helping with the case), believed they had a smoking gun that could grant them standing. The following slide, which was revealed by Ed Snowden: See that Wikipedia logo? Wikimedia Foundation and the ACLU argued that this presented evidence that the NSA was targeting Wikipedia users, and thus the Wikimedia Foundation had standing.

Unfortunately, so far, it's not working. Earlier today, the court tossed out the lawsuit, saying that Wikimedia did not present enough evidence to prove it has standing. The court, not surprisingly, relies heavily on the Supreme Court's ruling in Clapper v. Amnesty International, in which SCOTUS rejected Amnesty's similar claim by saying the organization failed to prove it had standing, since it couldn't prove its team was caught up in dragnet surveillance. Of course, famously, to get to that ruling, the US government flat out lied to the Supreme Court (something it has since admitted), claiming (incorrectly) that if information collected via such surveillance was used in criminal cases, the defendants would be told about it.

But, no matter, the court says that under the Clapper ruling, Wikimedia does not have standing, and basically argues that this case really is no different than that one. It rejects the idea that, thanks to Snowden, we now know a lot more about the NSA's surveillance program, basically saying that it's still too speculative.

Plaintiffs cannot provide a sufficient factual basis for their allegations because the scope and scale of Upstream surveillance remain classified, leaving plaintiffs to prop their allegation of actual injury on suppositions and speculation about how Upstream surveillance must operate in order to achieve the government's "stated goals." Indeed, plaintiffs cite the government's "stated goals" in nearly every facet of their argument.... It is, of course, a "possibility" that the NSA conducts Upstream surveillance in the manner plaintiffs allege, but this "bare assertion" is unaccompanied by "factual matter" that raises it "above a speculative level," and hence does not establish standing.

The court notes that the "speculative chain" may be "shorter" than in the Clapper case, but "it is a chain of speculation nonetheless."

The court also rejects the claim that since it's been revealed that the NSA does "about" searches in addition to "to" and "from" searches, that reveals much more broad searches. If you don't recall, one of the revelations is the fact that the NSA can run queries not just on something like "emails to or from Osama bin Laden" but also "emails about Osama bin Laden" which obviously would include a much larger set of content to sniff through. The court doesn't think this matters very much:

... plaintiff's contention that "about surveillance" is like the hypothetical government agent reading every piece of mail misses the mark. Unlike the hypothetical government agent reading every word of every communication and retaining the information, "about surveillance" is targeted insofar as it makes use of only those communications that contain information matching the tasked selector.

In short... it's not a problem that the NSA sniffs through everything to find all the emails about Osama bin Laden, because it's not using the data in all the ones it rejects. Besides, the court argues, the argument is still highly speculative.

Finally, the court looks at a few specific arguments for why Wikimedia and some of the other plaintiffs have more direct evidence that situate themselves differently. First, there's lawyer Joshua Dratel, who is somewhat well known for taking some rather high profile cases, such as handling Ross Ulbricht's defense over the Silk Road arrest, or defending the widow of Boston Marathon bomber Tamarlane Tsarnaev. Two other clients were Agron Hasbajrami and Sabirhan Hasanoff -- and in both cases, the government has admitted those two were subject to Section 702 surveillance. From there, the ACLU argues this means that Dratel's communications were almost certainly swept up and looked at by the NSA as well. However, the court doesn't buy it, saying that while it may be true that Dratel's communications were likely swept up, there's still not enough evidence that it was swept up by the 702 upstream program that the lawsuit is about:

Plaintiffs in this case... do not allege facts that plausibly establish that the information gathered from the two instances of Section 702 surveillance was the product of Upstream surveillance. In neither of Dratel's cases did the government indicate whether the information at issue was derived from PRISM or Upstream surveillance, and no factual allegations in the AC plausibly establish that Upstream surveillance--rather than PRISM--was used to collect the information. Moreover, given what is known about the two surveillance programs, it appears substantially more likely that PRISM collection was used in these cases...

The court is probably right here. There are two major surveillance programs under 702. The "Upstream" program that taps the backbone and then PRISM, in which a list of big internet firms agree to hand over certain information pursuant to a FISA court ruling rubber stamp telling them to hand over that information. And it is actually likely that the part of 702 that was used on Dratel's clients was of the PRISM variety. But the "well, you were surveilled under this other program using the same authority..." reason to dump this argument seems pretty weak. Because it still means surveillance of dubious legality under the same legal authority.

Then there's the case of Wikimedia, who argues that given the government's "stated goals," and the vast amount of traffic going to Wikipedia, it's all but certain that Wikipedia has been swept up in the Upstream collection. The court still isn't buying it:

Plaintiffs' argument is unpersuasive, as the statistical analysis on which the argument rests is incomplete and riddled with assumptions. For one thing, plaintiffs insist that Wikimedia's over one trillion annual Internet communications is significant in volume. But plaintiffs provide no context for assessing the significance of this figure. One trillion is plainly a large number, but size is always relative. For example, one trillion dollars are of enormous value, whereas one trillion grains of sand are but a small patch of beach. Here, the relevant universe for comparison purposes is the total number of annual Internet communications, a figure plaintiffs do not provide--nor even attempt to estimate--in the AC. Without defining the universe of the total number of Internet communications, it is impossible to determine whether Wikimedia's alleged one trillion annual Internet communications is significant or just a drop in the bucket of all annual Internet communications.

Moreover, plaintiffs conclude that there is a greater than 99.9999999999% chance that the NSA has intercepted at least one of their over one-trillion communications on the bases of an arbitrary assumption, namely that there is a 0.00000001% chance the NSA will intercept any particular Internet communication. Plaintiffs provide no basis for the 0.00000001% figure, nor do they explain why the figure is presented as a conservative assumption. Plaintiffs seem to presume a string of zeroes buys legitimacy. It does not. Indeed, a closer look reveals that the number of zeros chosen by plaintiffs leads conveniently to plaintiff's desired result. If three more zeros are added to plaintiffs' figure (0.00000000001%), the odds that at least one of Wikimedia's one trillion annual communications is intercepted drops to approximately 10%. If four more zeros are added (0.000000000001%), the odds that at least one of Wikimedia's communications is intercepted drops to 1%. In short, plaintiffs' assumption appears to be the product of reverse engineer; plaintiffs first defined the conclusion they sought--virtual certainty--and then worked backwards to find a figure that would lead to that conclusion. Mathematical gymnastics of this sort do not constitute "sufficient factual matter" to support a "plausible allegation."

Ouch.

The court also rejects the idea that this kind of ruling means that the Upstream program can never face judicial review, pretending that the fact that the FISA court reviewed it (without any adversarial party) is enough... and (again, incorrectly) that criminal defendants prosecuted with information collected under the program can challenge said collection. And, yes, it's true that the DOJ has now said that it will start informing defendants, but it didn't for years.

The ACLU is, not surprisingly upset by the ruling, and I imagine it will be appealed soon.

Filed Under: fisa amendments act, joshua dratel, prism, section 702, standing, surveillance, upstream, wikipedia
Companies: aclu, wikimedia foundation

Bill Introduced To Repeal Patriot Act And Prevent The Government From Demanding Encryption Backdoors

from the a-legislator-can-dream,-can't-he? dept

Since the Snowden leaks began, there have been several efforts made -- legislative and administrative -- in response to the exposure of the NSA's domestic surveillance programs. Some have been real fixes. Some have been fake fixes. Others have targeted the thing the NSA desires even more than seemingly limitless access to data from all over the world: funding.

But none of these, not even the President's weak reform efforts, have managed to take hold. Neither will this, most likely, although you have to admire the audacity of the bill's authors, Reps. Thomas Massie and Marc Pocan.

The bill would completely repeal the Patriot Act, the sweeping national security law passed in the days after Sept. 11, 2001, as well as the 2008 FISA Amendments Act, another spying law that the NSA has used to justify collecting vast swaths of people's communications through the Internet.

If anything's due for a complete revamp, if not a complete repeal, it's the Patriot Act. It wasn't even good legislation back when it was passed. At best, it was "timely," which is a term that gives the rushed, secretive, knee-jerk legislation far more credit than it deserves. Pocan and Massie's (the latter of which has just introduced a new phone-unlocking bill with Rep. Zoe Lofgren to replace the bad one passed by the House in 2014) "Surveillance State Repeal Act" doesn't waste any time "tinkering around the edges."

Not only would the bill repeal the law, it would reset anything (amendments/additional government powers) brought into force by the Patriot Act and the FISA Amendments Act of 2008. On top of that, it would demand the immediate deletion of tons of data from the NSA's collections.

DESTRUCTION OF CERTAIN INFORMATION.—The Director of National Intelligence and the Attorney General shall destroy any information collected under the USA PATRIOT Act (Public Law 107-56) and the amendments made by such Act, as in effect the day before the date of the enactment of this Act, concerning a United States person that is not related to an investigation that is actively ongoing on such date.

The bill, oddly, also describes a path towards FISA Judge For Life positions.

TERMS; REAPPOINTMENT.—Section 103(d) of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (50 U.S.C. 1803(d)) is amended— (1) by striking ‘‘maximum of seven’’ and inserting ‘‘maximum of ten’’; and (2) by striking ‘‘and shall not be eligible for re-designation’’.

Which is fine (not really) if you like the judges already appointed. But this is the sort of thing that leads to the permanent appointment of judges favored by either side of the surveillance question. And so far, presidential administrations have come down in favor of domestic surveillance. Removing the term limits just encourages the appointment of permanent NSA rubber stamps.

The bill creates a warrant requirement for the acquisition of US persons' data under the FISA Amendments Act and Executive Order 12333. It also expressly forbids a government mandate for encryption backdoors, although the first sentence of this section seems to be a rather large loophole.

Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the Federal Government shall not mandate that the manufacturer of an electronic device or software for an electronic device build into such device or software a mechanism that allows the Federal Government to bypass the encryption or privacy technology of such device or software.

If this bill somehow manages to pass a round or two of scrutiny, language tweaks will certainly be requested -- possibly leading to a complete subversion of the bill's intent. But that's a huge "if." Very few legislators have the stomach to gut the Patriot Act or the FISA Amendments Act. Many will be happy to entertain smaller fixes, but most won't be willing to essentially strip the NSA of its domestic surveillance powers. No one wants to be the "yea" vote that's pointed to in the wake of a terrorist attack and only a few more are actually willing to go head-to-head with the intelligence agency.

Filed Under: congress, fisa, fisa amendments act, marc pocan, nsa, patriot act, surveillance, thomas massie

Wikimedia Sues NSA Over Its Mass Surveillance Program

from the boom dept

This is big news. Wikimedia Foundation, the organization behind Wikipedia, has announced that it is suing the NSA (with help from the ACLU) over its mass surveillance program. While the full lawsuit hasn't yet been posted, the lawsuit targets the "upstream" collection under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act. Because this gets confusing if you're not spending a lot of time with this, let's break out some of the different surveillance programs:

• Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act: Under this program the NSA is collecting all the phone metadata on calls in the US.
• Executive Order 12333: This is what enables the NSA to hack into pretty much anything overseas -- including things like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft's data centers.
• PRISM: Actually part of Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act. Allows for (slightly) targeted collections of information via a court order from the FISA Court, demanding specific types of information (rather than "all" information).
• Upstream collection: Also under Section 702, but this is the program that lets the NSA tap into backbone fiber optic cables, such as from AT&T and others, and slurp up all traffic in case there's anything "interesting" happening that it can classify as "foreign intelligence information."

It's the upstream collection that Wikimedia is challenging in this lawsuit, arguing (among other things) that it violates both the First and Fourth Amendments.

That upstream program is the one that was first disclosed by Mark Klein, a former AT&T technician who wandered into the EFF's offices a decade ago with the evidence. This resulted in a lawsuit -- Hepting v. AT&T -- that AT&T was able to get out of thanks to Congress passing a law granting the telcos retroactive immunity for helping the NSA. The EFF has a long-running similar case against the NSA over the upstream collection -- Jewel v. NSA -- which recently suffered a setback, in that the judges claimed there wasn't evidence for "standing." That is, the plaintiffs need to be able to prove that they were spied on -- which is a fairly tough barrier.

Another case that was filed on similar grounds, by Amnesty International (also with the ACLU), also lost at the Supreme Court on the question of "standing." However, as it later came out, that victory was based mostly on a false statement from Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, who had argued that if the US government made use of any of the upstream collection data in a lawsuit against someone, the government would need to reveal it to the defendants, who would then have standing to challenge it. Only later -- thanks to a Senate speech from Senator Dianne Feinstein -- did it come out that the DOJ regularly made use of information collected this way without ever alerting the defendants about how the information was collected.

Wikimedia thinks that it has a chance to get past this "standing" hurdle, thanks to the following NSA slide that was leaked in the Ed Snowden revelations: See that big Wikipedia logo? That seems to be the NSA admitting that it's spying on Wikipedia users.

The 2013 mass surveillance disclosures included a slide from a classified NSA presentation that made explicit reference to Wikipedia, using our global trademark. Because these disclosures revealed that the government specifically targeted Wikipedia and its users, we believe we have more than sufficient evidence to establish standing.

In an op-ed for the NY Times, Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales explains why the organization is doing this:

The harm to Wikimedia and the hundreds of millions of people who visit our websites is clear: Pervasive surveillance has a chilling effect. It stifles freedom of expression and the free exchange of knowledge that Wikimedia was designed to enable.

During the 2011 Arab uprisings, Wikipedia users collaborated to create articles that helped educate the world about what was happening. Continuing cooperation between American and Egyptian intelligence services is well established; the director of Egypt’s main spy agency under President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi boasted in 2013 that he was “in constant contact” with the Central Intelligence Agency.

So imagine, now, a Wikipedia user in Egypt who wants to edit a page about government opposition or discuss it with fellow editors. If that user knows the N.S.A. is routinely combing through her contributions to Wikipedia, and possibly sharing information with her government, she will surely be less likely to add her knowledge or have that conversation, for fear of reprisal.

And then imagine this decision playing out in the minds of thousands of would-be contributors in other countries. That represents a loss for everyone who uses Wikipedia and the Internet — not just fellow editors, but hundreds of millions of readers in the United States and around the world.

Given how much difficulty other cases have had in establishing standing, it appears that this may still be a challenge here. However, the fact that the US government effectively misled the Supreme Court last time around at least suggests that maybe it will be open to revisiting the issue this time around.

Kudos to Wikimedia for stepping up to the challenge, and to the ACLU for not giving up on this issue.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, 4th amendment, faa, fisa amendments act, nsa, section 702, standing, surveillance, upstream
Companies: aclu, wikimedia, wikimedia foundation, wikipedia

Court Rejects EFF's Arguments Over NSA Internet Surveillance

from the keep-appealing dept

One of the key ongoing lawsuits challenging the NSA's warrantless surveillance of Americans and their internet usage is the Jewel v. NSA case that actually predates the Snowden revelations. The specific case involves challenges to the so-called "upstream collection" under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act. Specifically, this is about the NSA tapping telco fiber directly (as Mark Klein revealed concerning AT&T) and sifting through all the traffic for "relevant" (defined loosely) information. The EFF is handling the case against the government in Jewel, and argued that such collection violates the 4th Amendment. Unfortunately, the court has now rejected that argument, refusing to grant summary judgment to the EFF, instead granting partial summary judgment to the US Government.

Unfortunately, as in past attempts to challenge US surveillance, much of the issue comes down to one of standing. The individuals suing don't have evidence that their personal information was collected, so they don't necessarily have standing to sue (so says the US government). Of course, even when there is evidence, the government often has a way to weasel out of the legal challenge anyway. And, unfortunately, we're right back in that situation with the Jewel case. Since this case was over the AT&T internet taps, the EFF noted that AT&T customers should have standing, but the court isn't convinced that's enough:

However, the question whether Plaintiffs can establish standing to pursue their Fourth Amendment claim against the Government Defendants for constitutional violations goes beyond whether they, as individuals and AT&T customers with Internet communications, can proffer evidence of generalized surveillance of Internet communications. Although the public and admissible evidence presented establishes that Plaintiffs are indeed AT&T customers with Internet communications and would fall into the class of individuals surveilled, the evidence at summary judgment is insufficient to establish that the Upstream collection process operates in the manner in which Plaintiffs allege it does.

In their attempt to establish the factual foundation for their standing to sue on their Fourth Amendment Claim, Plaintiffs rely in large part on the declarations of Mark Klein and their proffered expert, J. Scott Marcus, as well as other former AT&T and NSA employees to present the relevant operational details of the surveillance program. Plaintiffs assert that the declarations support the contention that all AT&T customers’ Internet communications are currently the subject of a dragnet seizure and search program, controlled by or at the direction of the Government. However, having reviewed the record in its entirety, the Court finds the Plaintiffs’ evidence does not support this claim.

Plaintiffs principally rely on the declaration of Klein, a former AT&T technician who executed a declaration in 2006 about his knowledge and perceptions about the creation of a secure room at the AT&T facility at Folsom Street in San Francisco. However, the Court finds that Klein cannot establish the content, function, or purpose of the secure room at the AT&T site based on his own independent knowledge.... The limited knowledge that Klein does possess firsthand does not support Plaintiffs’ contention about the actual operation of the Upstream data collection process. Klein can only speculate about what data were actually processed and by whom in the secure room and how and for what purpose, as he was never involved in its operation. In addition, Plaintiffs’ expert, Marcus, relies exclusively on the observations and assumptions by Klein to formulate his expert opinion. Accordingly, his testimony about the purpose and function of the secure equipment at AT&T and assumed operational details of the program is not probative as it not based on sufficient facts or data.... The Court finds that Plaintiffs have failed to proffer sufficient admissible evidence to support standing on their claim for a Fourth Amendment violation of interference with their Internet communications. In addition, without disclosing any of the classified content of the Government Defendants’ submissions, the Court can confirm that the Plaintiffs’ version of the significant operational details of the Upstream collection process is substantially inaccurate.

And, unfortunately, the court further accepts the DOJ's claims that going any further in this case will lead to the terrorists winning or something:

In addition, having reviewed the classified portion of the record, the Court concludes that even if the public evidence proffered by Plaintiffs were sufficiently probative on the question of standing, adjudication of the standing issue could not proceed without risking exceptionally grave damage to national security. The details of the Upstream collection process that are subject the Government’s assertion of the state secrets privilege are necessary to address the defenses against Plaintiffs’ theory of standing as well as to engage in a full and fair adjudication of Government Defendants’ substantive defenses against the Claim. The Court has reviewed the classified brief submitted by the Government and finds that its legal defenses are persuasive, and must remain classified.

Disclosure of this classified information would risk informing adversaries of the specific nature and operational details of the Upstream collection process and the scope of the NSA’s participation in the program. Notwithstanding the unauthorized public disclosures made in the recent past and the Government’s subsequent releases of previously classified information about certain NSA intelligence gathering activities since 2013, the Court notes that substantial details about the challenged program remain classified. The question of whether Plaintiffs have standing and the substantive issue of whether there are Fourth Amendment violations cannot be litigated without impinging on that heightened security classification. Because a fair and full adjudication of the Government Defendants’ defenses would require harmful disclosures of national security information that is protected by the state secrets privilege, the Court must exclude such evidence from the case.

And, with that, the judge, Jeffrey White, rejects the 4th Amendment claim. I'm guessing that the EFF will appeal.

Filed Under: doj, faa, fisa amendments act, jewel v. nsa, nsa, section 702, standing, state secrets, surveillance, upstream collection
Companies: eff

Yahoo Threatened With A Secret $250,000 Per Day Fine If It Didn't Comply With NSA PRISM Demands

from the how-do-you-explain-that-one? dept

Back in 2013, a week after the whole PRISM program was first revealed thanks to Ed Snowden's leaks, it was then revealed that Yahoo had fought a secret legal battle against the program, based on a predecessor to the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 called the Protect America Act of 2007. Yahoo took this fight to the FISA court and then lost. The company was ordered to begin handing over information, even though the company believed the requests were unconstitutional. Late yesterday, Yahoo noted that the FISA Court was finally declassifying many of the documents from that legal fight. James Clapper's office quickly provided its spin on the 1,500 pages worth of documents in the fight. We're digging through all the documents and will likely have more to say once we've had a chance to read through them more carefully.

However, we wanted to comment briefly on the story that's already been making the rounds -- which was called out by Yahoo in its announcement about this. And it's that the government threatened Yahoo with a $250,000 per day fine for refusing to comply with the demands to turn over the information. That specific threat can be seen in the government's motion for an order of civil contempt, after Yahoo sought to appeal the original decision against Yahoo. Yahoo asked for a stay of the original ruling while it appealed, but the government insisted that the court should not allow a stay and should order Yahoo to hand over the data or pay the $250,000 per day fine -- which even the government refers to as a "coercive fine."

$250,000 per day is a lot. Yes, that number can add up pretty quickly, but the truly stunning thing about all of this is that you have to remember all of this was done in total secrecy (it's only come out now, about seven years after it happened). As a company making billions, perhaps it would be able to hide millions of dollars in fines, but somewhere along the line it would have had to have raised alarm bells from someone -- whether an accountant for the company or even someone on the board, wondering why giant chunks of money were going to the government based on absolutely no explanation. And making it even more bizarre is that almost no one in the company itself would have even been allowed to know what was going on. While it never actually got to that point, imagine the financial mess such a secret fine from a secret court would cause.

FISA Court judge Reggie Walton denied Yahoo's request for the stay, meaning Yahoo would likely have been found in contempt if it didn't start handing over data. Thus, even though the company was still trying to appeal the decision (unsuccessfully), it was forced to start handing over the data anyway.

There are so many things wrong (and seemingly unconstitutional) in this entire setup -- and I'm sure we'll have more to say on it after we've gone through the documents. But what kind of constitutional democracy are we living in when this kind of thing is considered to be perfectly acceptable by those in power?

Filed Under: 4th amendment, doj, fisa amendments act, fisa court, fisc, nsa, prism, protect america act, surveillance
Companies: yahoo

How Dianne Feinstein Misled Congress About How 'Useful' NSA Spying Authorities Were In Stopping Plots

from the say-what-now? dept

We've been following the case of Adel Daoud for a little while now. He's one of the many people arrested for "terrorism" in one of the FBI's dozens of "home grown plots" in which they create their very own terrorist plot, dupe someone into "joining" and then arrest (and then relish in the headlines about stopping a terrorist "plot" that was never a real plot in the first place). In Daoud's case, the made up "plot" involved blowing up a Chicago bar. But the Daoud case got a lot more attention, because in the big "debate" over the renewal of the FISA Amendments Act (FAA) in late 2012, Senator Dianne Feinstein directly described the Daoud "plot" as an example of why the FAA and Section 702 were necessary. Here's what she said:

There is a view by some that this country no longer needs to fear attack. I don't share that view, and I have asked the intelligence committee staff to compile arrests that have been made in the last 4 years in America on terrorist plots that have been stopped. There are 100 arrests that have been made between 2009 and 2012. There have been 16 individuals arrested just this year alone. Let me quickly review some of these plots. Some of these may arrests come about as a result of this program. Again, if Members want to see the specific cases where FISA Amendments Act authorities were used, they can go and look at the classified background of these cases.

First, in November, 1 month ago, two arrests for conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists and use a weapon of mass destruction. That was Raees Alam Qazi and Sheheryar Alam Qazi. They were arrested by the FBI in Fort Lauderdale, FL. The next case is another conspiracy to provide material support. Arrested were Ralph Deleon, Miguel Alejandro Santana Vidriales and Arifeen David Gojali. These three men were planning to travel to Afghanistan to attend terrorist training and commit violent jihad; third, was a plot to bomb the New York Federal Reserve Bank; fourth, a plot to bomb a downtown Chicago bar; fifth, a conspiracy to provide material support to the Islamic Jihad Union; sixth, a plot to carry out a suicide bomb attack against the U.S. Capitol in February of 2012; seventh, a plot to bomb locations in Tampa, FL; eighth, a plot to bomb New York City targets and troops returning from combat overseas; ninth, a plot to assassinate the Saudi Ambassador to the United States; and it goes on and on and on.

So I believe the FISA Amendments Act is important and these cases show the program has worked

That caught the attention of a bunch of folks, because nowhere in Daoud's case had the government suggested it had obtained or used evidence via the FAA -- leading to serious questions about whether the government had been withholding evidence or if that evidence had been unconstitutionally obtained. Unfortunately, Daoud's attempt to get access to whatever evidence has been collected on him has been shut down by the courts. Judge Richard Posner issued a "supplemental classified opinion" to go with the original opinion we wrote about, but parts of that opinion have been released as well. Very large portions of it, however, remain totally redacted. What remains more or less says that the government did everything in a proper way and there were no constitutional problems. It also implies there was a ton of evidence pointing to Daoud's activities.

However, what caught my attention in the unredacted snippets of the ruling is Judge Posner basically claiming that Feinstein's claims about Daoud's case involving the FAA didn't actually mean the FAA was used:

The defendant's challenge relies primarily on a December 27, 2012 Senate floor speech by Senator Feinstein, who said: "There have been 16 individuals arrest[ed] just this year alone. Let me quickly just review what these plots were. And some of them come right from this program [meaning the FAA]. The counter-terrorism come[s] -- and the information came right from this program. And again, if members want to see that, they can go and look in a classified manner.... Fourth, a plot to bomb a downtown Chicago bar...." (emphasis added) (visited July 11, 2014).

The referenced "plot" is obviously the defendant's, and because the Senator used the examples to support the reauthorization of the FAA, the defendant not unreasonably interpreted her remarks to mean that the FAA had been used in his case. But an equally reasonable interpretation of the Senator's remarks is that she was merely saying that the defendant was one of the 16 individuals who had been arrested in 2012, same of whom had been arrested on the basis of such information. The Senate's Legal Counsel confirmed in a letter to defense counsel that "Senator Feinstein did not state, and did not mean to state, that FAA surveillance was used in any or all of the nine cases she enumerated, including [the defendant's] case, in which terrorist plots had been stopped.... Rather, her purpose in reviewing several recent terrorism arrests was to refute the "view by some that this country no longer needs to fear attack.'"

Reading the original quote, Posner is correct that before Feinstein lists the examples, she adds the caveat that "some" of them "may" have used the FAA. But she also concludes it by insisting that these prove that the FAA worked. If anything, this ruling highlights just what a disingenuous and deceiving speech Feinstein gave during the debate over the FAA. Any reasonable person listening to that speech would hear that and believe that this program (the FAA and its 702 surveillance program) was the key to breaking up all of those "plots." After all, the entire debate was about renewing the FAA.

And yet, now it's quite clear that Feinstein was just listing out any and all "plots" (and even that is not really accurate since so many, including Daoud, were plots created by the FBI itself, meaning they never needed the FAA anyway), and falsely implying the FAA was necessary to break them up. Feinstein's scare-mongering over what would happen without a renewal of the FAA was a big part of why it passed, and as this ruling more or less confirms, she completely mislead others in Congress and the American public about it.

Filed Under: adel daoud, dianne feinstein, fisa amendments act, fud, nsa, richard posner, section 702, surveillance, terrorism