Tag: Domestic Spying

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President Obama’s team sought NSA intel on thousands of Americans during the 2016 election

obama-cell-phone-facebook

by John Solomon

WATCH | The Obama administration distributed thousands of intelligence reports with the  unredacted names of U.S. residents during the 2016 election.

During his final year in office, President Obama’s team significantly expanded efforts to search National Security Agency intercepts for information about Americans, distributing thousands of intelligence reports across government with the unredacted names of U.S. residents during the midst of a divisive 2016 presidential election.

The data, made available this week by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, provides the clearest evidence to date of how information accidentally collected by the NSA overseas about Americans was subsequently searched and disseminated after President Obama loosened privacy protections to make such sharing easier in 2011 in the name of national security. A court affirmed his order.

https://circa.com/politics/president-obamas-team-sought-nsa-intel-on-thousands-of-americans-during-the-2016-election

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House intel committee opens probe of eavesdropping on Congress

Congress

By NOLAN D. MCCASKILL

12/30/15 12:30 PM EST

A House panel on Wednesday announced it is opening an investigation into U.S. intelligence collection that may have swept up members of Congress.

The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence’s announcement of the probe comes after a Wall Street Journal report that the U.S. collected information on private exchanges between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and members of Congress during ongoing negotiations for nuclear deal with Iran.

“The House Intelligence Committee is looking into allegations in the Wall Street Journal regarding possible Intelligence Community (IC) collection of communications between Israeli government officials and Members of Congress,” Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) said in a statement. “The Committee has requested additional information from the IC to determine which, if any, of these allegations are true, and whether the IC followed all applicable laws, rules, and procedures.”

Read more: https://www.politico.com/story/2015/12/house-intel-probe-wsj-217228#ixzz3vpcivzqX

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Why is it With All the Resources Devoted to Domestic Spying every time a Terror Issue Come up Our Public Officials Seem as surprised as we are?

San Bernardino Terror Couple Entering US

Why were Tashfeen Malik, and Syed Rizwan Farook not on any kind of a watch list ?

 Evidence Continues to pile up that they were Radicalized for some time , where was the NSA, FBI, DHS and so on?

Welcome to America: New Photo Shows San Bernardino Terror Couple Entering US

By BRIAN ROSS
MATTHEW MOSK
MICHELE MCPHEE
MEGAN CHRISTIE
JOSH MARGOLIN

Dec 7, 2015, 6:55 AM ET

Federal officials around the world today are urgently trying to track the backgrounds and contacts of the newly-married parents of a baby girl who killed 14 people in California last week in a suspected ISIS-inspired attack, as a new photograph emerged showing the future terrorists entering the U.S. together for the first time last year.

The image, apparently taken as the couple moved through customs in Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport on July 27, 2014 and obtained exclusively by ABC News, shows Tashfeen Malik clad in all black looking directly into the camera as the taller Syed Rizwan Farook stands behind her, black bearded and with a blank expression. It is the most recent photograph of the two to be made public.

U.S. officials previously said that Farook, a U.S. citizen originally from Chicago, traveled to Saudi Arabia in July 2014 and returned less than two weeks later with Malik in tow. Malik, a Pakistani who officials said spent much of her life in Saudi Arabia, entered the U.S. on a so-called “fiancé” visa, which allowed Farook to petition for her entry ahead of marriage. The two were married in the eyes of U.S. law in California just a month after their arrival, although some officials have said they could have been married earlier abroad.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/america-photo-shows-terror-couple-entering-us/story?id=35615829

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Obama Spying On Consumers Without Security Protections

Obama-Golf

“A just-released inspector general report found that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, is conducting a massive consumer data-mining operation without the security safeguards to protect the sensitive data from cyberattacks.” Rep. Mia Love, R-Utah

10/13/2015 05:25 PM

Privacy: The most powerful unaccountable agency in Washington is mining and amassing all your personal financial data. While that’s bad enough, it also isn’t adequately protecting them from hackers and identity thieves.A just-released inspector general report found that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, is conducting a massive consumer data-mining operation without the security safeguards to protect the sensitive data from cyberattacks.

The CFPB is collecting and stockpiling more than 600 million credit card accounts, along with personal data from millions of mortgage loans, but “has not yet fully implemented a number of privacy control steps and information security practices,” warned CFPB Inspector General Mark Bialek in a 10-page memo to CFPB Director Richard Cordray.

More alarming, the agency is sharing the massive databases with outside contractors and storing sensitive private information on unsecured clouds, making the data extra vulnerable to cyberattacks “from outside governments and organized groups.”

American consumers have no idea that the government is doing this. They’re not being alerted about the sharing of data from their private financial accounts, and they’re not being given the right to opt out of the government programs to gather and retain their most sensitive personal information.

The Big Brother operation is being done surreptitiously, with the reluctant cooperation of banks. It’s an unprecedented invasion of privacy, even for the feds — and the Obama administration has no good answers for why it’s amassing this information on private citizens.

In a recent House banking committee hearing, Rep. Mia Love, R-Utah, tried to get answers from Cordray, who explained, unconvincingly, “I’m just looking at overall patterns in the market.”

Read More At Investor’s Business Daily: https://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/101315-775415-ig-warns-cfpb-not-protecting-millions-credit-card-accounts-from-hackers.htm#ixzz3p7Gh92F8

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AT&T Helped N.S.A. Spy on an Array of Internet Traffic

big-brother-poster

By JULIA ANGWIN, CHARLIE SAVAGE, JEFF LARSON, HENRIK MOLTKE, LAURA POITRAS and JAMES RISEN AUG. 15, 2015

The National Security Agency’s ability to spy on vast quantities of Internet traffic passing through the United States has relied on its extraordinary, decades-long partnership with a single company: the telecom giant AT&T.

While it has been long known that American telecommunications companies worked closely with the spy agency, newly disclosed N.S.A. documents show that the relationship with AT&T has been considered unique and especially productive. One document described it as “highly collaborative,” while another lauded the company’s “extreme willingness to help.”

AT&T’s cooperation has involved a broad range of classified activities, according to the documents, which date from 2003 to 2013. AT&T has given the N.S.A. access, through several methods covered under different legal rules, to billions of emails as they have flowed across its domestic networks. It provided technical assistance in carrying out a secret court order permitting the wiretapping of all Internet communications at the United Nations headquarters, a customer of AT&T.

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/us/politics/att-helped-nsa-spy-on-an-array-of-internet-traffic.html?_r=0

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New privacy app takes a page from NSA technology

mrbig058

By Rob Lever

Washington (AFP) – Before the National Security Agency began complaining about being shut out of encrypted devices, it helped develop software for secure communications that could be adapted by the private sector.

That technology is hitting the public this month in the form of a smartphone application called Scrambl3 from a California startup which claims its “dark Internet tunnel” thwarts snooping on voice calls and messages.

Scrambl3 was launched Monday as a stand-alone app for Android devices by the startup, USMobile, which describes it as a way to create “trusted connections on untrusted networks.”

The system creates the smartphone equivalent of a virtual private network to make messages invisible on the Internet, according to USMobile president and co-founder Jon Hanour.

“We want to provide the most private and most secure mobile program on the market,” Hanour told AFP.

“We think we have the best combination of anything that’s available today.”

https://news.yahoo.com/privacy-app-takes-page-nsa-technology-085850591.html

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SURVEILLANCE POWERS LAPSE WITH NO DEAL IN SENATE

Rand Paul

May 31, 7:36 PM EDT
BY ERICA WERNER AND KEN DILANIAN
ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON (AP) — The National Security Agency will lose its authority at midnight to collect Americans’ phone records in bulk, after an extraordinary Sunday Senate session failed to produce an 11th-hour deal to extend the fiercely contested program.

Intelligence officials warned that the outcome amounts to a win for terrorists. But civil liberties groups applauded the demise, at least temporarily, of the once-secret post-Sept. 11 program made public by NSA contractor Edward Snowden, which critics say is an unconstitutional intrusion into Americans’ privacy.

The program is all but certain to be revived in a matter of days, although it also looks certain to be completely overhauled under House-passed legislation that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell reluctantly blessed in an about-face Sunday evening. With most senators opposed to extending current law unchanged, even for a short time, McConnell said the House bill was the only option left other than letting the program die off entirely. The Senate voted 77-17 to move ahead on the House-passed bill.

But no final action was expected before Sunday’s midnight deadline after McConnell’s fellow Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul served notice that he would assert his prerogatives under Senate rules to delay a final vote for several days.

“This is what we fought the revolution over, are we going to so blithely give up our freedom? … I’m not going to take it anymore,” Paul declared on the Senate floor, as supporters wearing red “Stand With Rand” T-shirts packed the spectator gallery.

McConnell countered: “We shouldn’t be disarming unilaterally as our enemies grow more sophisticated and aggressive, and we certainly should not be doing so based on a campaign of demagoguery and disinformation launched in the wake of the unlawful actions of Edward Snowden.”

https://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_CONGRESS_SURVEILLANCE?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2015-05-31-19-36-38

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NSA winds down once-secret phone-records collection program

metadata

May 23, 2:02 PM (ET)

By KEN DILANIAN

WASHINGTON (AP) — The National Security Agency has begun winding down its collection and storage of American phone records after the Senate failed to agree on a path forward to change or extend the once-secret program ahead of its expiration at the end of the month.

Barring an 11th hour compromise when the Senate returns to session May 31, a much-debated provision of the Patriot Act — and some other lesser known surveillance tools — will sunset at midnight that day. The change also would have a major impact on the FBI, which uses the Patriot Act and the other provisions to gather records in investigations of suspected spies and terrorists.

In a chaotic scene during the wee hours of Saturday, Senate Republicans blocked a bill known as the USA Freedom Act, which would have ended the NSA’s bulk collection but preserved its ability to search the records held by the phone companies on a case-by-case basis. The bill was backed by President Barack Obama, House Republicans and the nation’s top law enforcement and intelligence officials.

It fell just three votes short of the 60 needed for passage. All the “no” votes but one were cast by Republicans, some of whom said they thought the USA Freedom Act didn’t go far enough to help the NSA maintain its capabilities.

 

https://apnews.myway.com/article/20150523/us-nsa-surveillance-dbd7e82d6e.html

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Domestic surveillance fate unclear after lengthy Senate talk

Rand Paul

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky.

May 21, 3:47 AM (ET)

By CHARLES BABINGTON

WASHINGTON (AP) — The fate of the government’s bulk collection of Americans’ phone records is unclear following an FBI warning, House-Senate disagreements and more than 10 hours of criticisms by a GOP presidential candidate.

Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, the most libertarian-leaning of the major Republican presidential contenders, dominated the Senate floor from 1:18 to 11:49 p.m. Wednesday to decry the National Security Agency’s mass collection of phone data without warrants. In doing so, he highlighted deep divisions within Congress — and among his party’s presidential hopefuls — over the program whose existence was exposed by former contractor Edward Snowden, now living in Russia.

Paul wasn’t coy about the political overtones. His campaign issued a fundraising appeal while he slowly paced and steadily talked in a mostly empty Senate chamber. It also told reporters that several conservative House Republicans were available for interviews after they sat a while in support of Paul in the Senate.

It marked the second time in two years that Paul has used a marathon Senate speech to draw attention to a pet issue, and to himself, as C-SPAN cameras provided unbroken footage for Twitter and other social media. In March 2013 he spent 13 hours filibustering John Brennan’s nomination to head the CIA, to underscore Paul’s opposition to U.S. drone policies.

Wednesday’s performance wasn’t an official filibuster because the bill before the Senate dealt with trade, not surveillance. Still, by never sitting or yielding the floor, Paul kept senators from talking on other topics.

Paul opposes renewal of key sections of the Patriot Act, which the government cites to authorize the massive examination of who calls who on American phones. The government does not collect the content of the calls. Those sections are set to expire June 1.

The Republican-controlled House voted overwhelmingly to end bulk collection of phone data but to allow surveillance on a case-by-case basis if a special court approves. President Barack Obama supports that change. Paul says it doesn’t go far enough.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky is among those Republicans who want to keep the full program going. But McConnell says the Senate will vote on the House bill, and possibly other versions, before beginning a Memorial Day recess.

https://apnews.myway.com/article/20150521/us-nsa-surveillance-8f7cf281bc.html

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Patriot Act on life support

i2NncpcC

By Julian Hattem – 05/17/15 02:30 PM EDT

A stalemate in the Senate would leave the FBI and National Security Agency (NSA) without powers they have used to track terrorists for years, say supporters of the Patriot Act.

Without action by the end of the month, key provisions of the Patriot Act will expire, which Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) argues would put the United States at a pre September 11, 2001-footing.

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Yet McConnell has no definite path to extend those provisions.

He and other hawkish senators are pressing for an extension of the key Patriot Act measures, but they are opposed by other senators, the White House and a majority of House lawmakers in both parties.

The House voted last week to approve reforms to the NSA provisions in an overwhelming 338-88 vote.

McConnell filed a short-term extension of existing law just 24 hours later, signaling his determination to move in a different direction.

Observers say it’s increasingly looking like the standoff could result in no action by Congress, which would mean the Patriot Act provisions would lapse.

That would be a worst-case scenario for the NSA, but a pipe dream for ardent civil libertarians who have been rooting for such a result.

“Right now that we’re down to the wire… it’s just not clear to me how you get authorization through the Senate and the House,” said Neema Singh Guliani, a lobbyist for the American Civil Liberties Union and critic of the law.

Defenders of the NSA say that would be disastrous for national security.

“Congress must act to reauthorize” the provisions, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.) — two hawkish members of their respective Intelligence Committees — warned in an op-ed for Fox News on Friday. “The alternative is too dangerous.”

At issue is Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which allows the federal government to collect “any tangible things” that are “relevant” to an investigation into terrorist or foreign intelligence activity.

The NSA has used that to collect millions of people’s phone call “metadata” — which include information about the numbers involved in a call and when the call occurred, but not people’s actual conversations — without a warrant. Supporters say that’s a crucial tool that has allowed the government to connect the dots between possible terrorist suspects.

If Congress doesn’t act, the program would end, the White House has said. The NSA would simply stop collecting the records.

https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/242271-patriot-act-on-life-support

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Sen. Rand Paul: What You Discuss on Your Phone Is None of the Government’s Busines

FILE PHOTO NSA Compiles Massive Database Of Private Phone Calls

This undated photo provided by the National Security Agency (NSA) shows its headquarters in Fort Meade, Md.

Sen. Rand Paul @SenRandPaul
May 7, 2015

Paul is the junior U.S. Senator for Kentucky.

The sacrifice of our personal liberty for security is and will forever be a false choice

I’ve long said what you discuss on your phone is none of the government’s business, and the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit agrees.

Today, the federal court struck down the government’s sweeping, undefined, and illegal war on civil liberties, ruling that it is unlawful for the National Security Agency to collect the bulk phone records of American citizens.

The three judge panel slams the overreach of the NSA’s limitless metadata collection and privacy intrusion, writing in the opinion that the program was an “unprecedented contraction of the privacy expectations of all Americans.” The court judges the program’s premise as ineffectual, stating “the records demanded are all-encompassing; the government does not even suggest that all of the records sought, or even necessarily any of them, are relevant.”

https://time.com/3851286/nsa-court-decision-rand-paul-patriot-act/

 

 

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Top court rules against NSA program

big-brother-poster

By Julian Hattem – 05/07/15 09:25 AM EDT

A federal court has decided that the National Security Agency’s (NSA) bulk, warrantless collection of millions of Americans’ phone records is illegal.

The decision from the Second Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday represents the second major court victory for opponents of the NSA, after a lower court decision called the program nearly unconstitutional six months ago.

The phone records program “exceeds the scope of what Congress has authorized,” Judge Gerard Lynch wrote on behalf of the three-judge panel. The court did not examine the constitutionality of the surveillance program.

https://thehill.com/policy/technology/241305-top-court-rules-against-nsa-program

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US UNVEILS 6-YEAR-OLD REPORT ON NSA SURVEILLANCE

imgres

Apr 25, 1:38 PM EDT
BY NEDRA PICKLER
ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON (AP) — With debate gearing up over the coming expiration of the Patriot Act surveillance law, the Obama administration on Saturday unveiled a 6-year-old report examining the once-secret program to collect information on Americans’ calls and emails.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence publicly released the redacted report following a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the New York Times. The basics of the National Security Agency program had already been declassified, but the lengthy report includes some new details about the secrecy surrounding it.

President George W. Bush authorized the “President’s Surveillance Program” in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. The review was completed in July 2009 by inspectors general from the Justice Department, Pentagon, CIA, NSA and Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

They found that while many senior intelligence officials believe the program filled a gap by increasing access to international communications, others including FBI agents, CIA analysts and managers “had difficulty evaluating the precise contribution of the PSP to counterterrorism efforts because it was most often viewed as one source among many available analytic and intelligence-gathering tools in these efforts.”

Critics of the phone records program, which allows the NSA to hunt for communications between terrorists abroad and U.S. residents, argue it has not proven to be an effective counterterrorism tool. They also say an intelligence agency has no business possessing the deeply personal records of Americans. Many favor a system under which the NSA can obtain court orders to query records held by the phone companies.

The Patriot Act expires on June 1, and Senate Republicans have introduced a bill that would allow continued collection of call records of nearly every American. The legislation would reauthorize sections of the Patriot Act, including the provision under which the NSA requires phone companies to turn over the “to and from” records of most domestic landline calls.

https://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_NSA_SURVEILLANCE?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2015-04-25-13-38-12

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Americans Trust Government Less and Less Because We Know More and More About How It Operates

mlk

Americans Trust Government Less and Less Because We Know More and More About How It Operates

Nick Gillespie|Nov. 16, 2014 10:09 am

Fifty years ago, FBI operatives sent Martin Luther King, Jr. was has come to be known as the “suicide letter,” an anonymous note suggesting the civil rights leader should off himself before his private sex life was made public. The information about King’s extramarital assignations was gathered with the approval not just of the FBI’s J. Edgar Hoover but Attorney General Robert Kennedy and President Lyndon Johnson.

“There is but one way out for you,” reads the note, which appeared in unredacted form for the first time just last week. “You better take it before your filthy fraudulent self is bared to the nation.”

Thus is revealed one of the most despicable acts of domestic surveillance in memory. These days, we worry less about the government outing our sex lives than in it tracking every move we move online. It turns out that President Obama, who said he would roll back the unconstitutional powers exercised by his predecessor, had a secret “kill list” over which he was sole authority. Jesus, we’ve just learned that small planes are using so-called dirtboxes to pick up cell phone traffic. One of the architects of Obamacare publicly states that Americans are stupid and that the president’s healthcare reform was vague and confusing on purpose. The former director of national intelligence, along with the former head and current heads of the CIA, have lied to Congress.

https://reason.com/blog/2014/11/16/americans-trust-government-less-and-less

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More Federal Agencies Are Using Undercover Operations

gestapo

More Federal Agencies Are Using Undercover Operations
By ERIC LICHTBLAU and WILLIAM M. ARKINNOV. 15, 2014

WASHINGTON — The federal government has significantly expanded undercover operations in recent years, with officers from at least 40 agencies posing as business people, welfare recipients, political protesters and even doctors or ministers to ferret out wrongdoing, records and interviews show.

At the Supreme Court, small teams of undercover officers dress as students at large demonstrations outside the courthouse and join the protests to look for suspicious activity, according to officials familiar with the practice.

At the Internal Revenue Service, dozens of undercover agents chase suspected tax evaders worldwide, by posing as tax preparers or accountants or drug dealers or yacht buyers, court records show.

At the Agriculture Department, more than 100 undercover agents pose as food stamp recipients at thousands of neighborhood stores to spot suspicious vendors and fraud, officials said.

Undercover work, inherently invasive and sometimes dangerous, was once largely the domain of the F.B.I. and a few other law enforcement agencies at the federal level. But outside public view, changes in policies and tactics over the last decade have resulted in undercover teams run by agencies in virtually every corner of the federal government, according to officials, former agents and documents.

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/16/us/more-federal-agencies-are-using-undercover-operations.html