Snowden Speaks: A Vanity Fair Exclusive
10:30 AM, APRIL 8 2014
“Every person remembers some moment in their life where they witnessed some injustice, big or small, and looked away, because the consequences of intervening seemed too intimidating,” former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden tells Vanity Fair about his motivation for leaking tens of thousands of secret documents. “But there’s a limit to the amount of incivility and inequality and inhumanity that each individual can tolerate. I crossed that line. And I’m no longer alone.”
Snowden’s extensive response is part of a 20,000-word narrative in Vanity Fair’s May issue, by special correspondent Bryan Burrough and contributing editors Suzanna Andrews and Sarah Ellison. The article is the first comprehensive account—bolstered by interviews with dozens of key players—providing an inside look at how a geeky dropout from the Maryland suburbs found himself alone in a Hong Kong hotel room, releasing some of America’s most carefully guarded secrets to the world.
New study shows NSA phone metadata can reveal EVERYTHING about your life
New research published by Stanford Univeristy Wednesday reveal phone and Internet metadata collected by the NSA can expose far more information about an individual than the agency admits, including, “medical conditions, financial and legal connections, and even whether they own a gun.”
Two of the school’s computer science graduate students were able to uncover the sensitive personal details of individuals from phone data details, like the numbers of callers and recipients, the location of callers, phone serial numbers and the length of conversations — all of which are data the signals intelligence agency collects in bulk both domestically and internationally.
Of the 33,688 unique numbers called by the study’s 546 study volunteers, students were able to positively identify a specific individual in 18 percent of those calls. They were also able to discern 57 percent made at least one medical call and 40 percent made a financial services call.
Computer scientists Jonathan Mayer and Patrick Mutchler, the doctoral students that authored the study, say metadata are “extremely sensitive and revealing,” and “can yield a wealth of detail about family, political, professional, religious and sexual associations.”
“It would be no technical challenge to scale these identifications to a larger population,” Mayer told Stanford News, referencing similar metadata analysis the NSA is almost certainly already engaged in.
Edward Snowden to SXSW: NSA Leaders Have Harmed Our National Security ‘More Than Anything’ Else
The fugitive leaker, appearing by video conference, attacked virtually every corner of the national security apparatus during a Q&A session at the festival.
America’s most high-profile fugitive visited one of the country’s most popular entertainment festivals in Texas on Monday, drawing thunderous applause from a crowded room filled with his adoring fans.
Edward Snowden, appearing from Russia through a live video stream, told attendees of the South by Southwest Interactive conference in Austin that Congress had fundamentally failed to do its job as an overseer of the government’s bulk surveillance programs, declaring that “we need a watchdog that watches Congress.
The former National Security Agency contractor, in a conversation with the American Civil Liberties Union’s Christopher Soghoian and Ben Wizner, also charged the current and most recent chief of the NSA as the two people most responsible for jeopardizing the country’s national security due to their preference for aggressive collection of data rather than protection of it after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
“More than anything, there are two officials who have harmed our Internet security and national security,” Snowden said, his image backdropped by an enlarged copy of the U.S. Constitution. “Those two officials are Michael Hayden and Keith Alexander.”
CIA Took Secret, “Unprecedented Action” Against Senate Intelligence Committee
Nick Gillespie|Mar. 5, 2014 8:08 am
The New York Times is reporting that the CIA took what Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) called “unprecedented action” against the Senate Intelligence Committee in response to an investigation of the spy agency’s actions following the 9/11 attacks.
The [Senate Intelligence] committee has spent several years working on a voluminous report about the detention and interrogation program, and according to one official interviewed in recent days, C.I.A. officers went as far as gaining access to computer networks used by the committee to carry out its investigation….
The specifics of the inspector general’s investigation are unclear. But several officials interviewed in recent days — all of whom insisted on anonymity, citing a continuing inquiry — said it began after the C.I.A. took what Senator Mark Udall, Democrat of Colorado, on Tuesday called an “unprecedented action” against the committee.
The action, which Mr. Udall did not describe, took place after C.I.A. officials came to suspect that congressional staff members had gained unauthorized access to agency documents during the course of the Intelligence Committee’s years-long investigation into the detention and interrogation program.
Welcome to the 21st century, which is looking a whole lot like the 20th when it comes to CIA fooling around in places it shouldn’t be. The Times story is short on specifics but includes this gem from Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) who generally has never met a government incursion against civil liberties she doesn’t like.
Rule That Evidence Can’t Be Destroyed Would Lead to Expansion of Controversial Phone Program
WASHINGTON—The government is considering enlarging the National Security Agency’s controversial collection of Americans’ phone records—an unintended consequence of lawsuits seeking to stop the surveillance program, according to officials.
A number of government lawyers involved in lawsuits over the NSA phone-records program believe federal-court rules on preserving evidence related to lawsuits require the agency to stop routinely destroying older phone records, according to people familiar with the discussions. As a result, the government would expand the database beyond its original intent, at least while the lawsuits are active.
No final decision has been made to preserve the data, officials said, and one official said that even if a decision is made to retain the information, it would be held only for the purpose of litigation and not be subject to searches. The government currently collects phone records on millions of Americans in a vast database that it can mine for links to terror suspects. The database includes records of who called whom, when they called and for how long.
How much phone data does NSA collect?
February 08, 2014, 12:08 pm
By Megan R. Wilson
The National Security Agency collects less than 30 percent of U.S. phone records due to “technical challenges” involved with the influx of cellphone data, according to media reports.
The agency’s phone data collection has dropped significantly since 2006 as it struggles to keep pace with consumers’ shift away from landlines.
It has faced issues in customizing its system to handle the increase of cell data while not sweeping in cell tower and location-based information, which the agency is not legally authorized to obtain. The records include numbers called and call duration.
Eight years ago, the NSA was collecting “almost 100” percent of bulk call data, an anonymous senior U.S. official told the Washington Post Saturday.
While officials told the Post that collection stands at under 30 percent, the Wall Street Journal pegs the telephone metadata collection levels at fewer than 20 percent – spurring questions about the legitimacy of the program.
Congressmen Scott Garrett is looking for your views on the NSA’s collection of meta-data?
January 23, 2014
Ridgewood NJ, As founder and Chairman of the Congressional Constitution Caucus, I am committed to preserving and protecting your rights as outlined by the Constitution of the United States. Like you, I believe it is critical to keep Americans safe, particularly without jeopardizing the protection of their civil liberties. But, recently, news came out that Americans’ civil liberties might be in jeopardy.
Over the summer, it was revealed that the Obama Administration’s National Security Agency (NSA) was engaged in a bulk collection of data, including phone call and text message information, for all Americans.
Though the NSA is apparently not collecting the contents of these calls and text messages, this bulk collection is troubling. This data can readily be used to establish important facts about citizens, including the patterns of their behavior, their preferences, and who they call and why. This reveals, beyond the mere collection of the data, information about which citizens typically have a reasonable expectation of privacy. I have serious concerns that various NSA programs that collect information about American citizens do—in principle and in effect—violate both the spirit and letter of the constitutional protections of our civil liberties.
I write to inquire about your views regarding the Obama Administration’s NSA meta-data collection.
Do you think the NSA meta-data collection is constitutional?
[ ] Yes
[ ] No
[ ] Undecided
Are you comfortable with the NSA’s meta-data collection program?
[ ] Yes
[ ] No
[ ] Undecided
Would you like to see the NSA’s meta-data collection program change?
If the U.S. Supreme Court applies an appropriate constitutional analysis the NSA’s program of wholesale collection of data will be dismantled
I just read the Constitutional Law section of the Privacy and Civil Liberty Oversight Board’s January 23, 2014 Report on the NSA’s Telephone Records Program. I also skimmed the other sections, including one that analyzes the policy aspects of the program. The entire document can be found at: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1008957-final-report.html
As an attorney, I found the Constitutional law section to be well-written, incisive, and balanced. As a citizen and patriot, I appreciate the fact that the authors of this report appear to have a firm grip on the fact that the ultimate authority in this country resides in the citizens themselves (We the People), regardless of what anyone vocationally associated with the Federal Government, or philosophically committed to promoting statism, may believe to the contrary.
I am now convinced that the NSA’s program of wholesale collection and long-term storage of U.S. citizens’ telephone data is a vastly expensive and expansive sitting duck that will be dismantled and cast onto the ash heap of history as soon as the U.S. Supreme Court applies an appropriate constitutional analysis to it, if not sooner (e.g., pursuant to a lawful order of a lower court). It is absolutely unconscionable that such a program was allowed to proceed as far as it did, and our federal government should be ashamed of itself.
Regardless of what anyone believes the definition of the terms ‘traitor’ and ‘treason’ to be, Edward Snowden did all U.S. citizens a solid favor by so clearly bringing the scope and details of this program to the attention of the U.S. public at large. Why? Because without the enormous amount of concentrated critical attention on the NSA that Snowden triggered, this behemoth of a government program and system could well have closed the loop on all of our freedoms and important constitutional rights in a very short period of time (e.g., before the end of the Obama Administration), permanently altering the relationship between ordinary U.S. citizens and the federal government, and leaving us powerless to force the federal government to reverse course or enact necessary reforms. So if time was truly of the essence, and Snowden acted in a timely fashion, are we the law-abiding duty-bound to condemn him?
Highly-placed members of the George W. Bush administration involved in national security, and Bush-era government lawyers who should have been (and likely were) aware of the clear unconstitutionality of the program as it was designed and run prior to Obama’s inauguration in January 2009, should be roughly ignored if they persist in supporting the NSA’s bulk telephone data collection program. They are compromised from a political and professional standpoint and will never admit that what they did was wrong. Going forward, they will need to be dragged kicking and screaming into a corrected view of reality in which our constitutional rights and liberties are abruptly restored, and the federal government is forced to take its medicine.
NSA Official: ‘We Are Now a Police State’
December 19, 2013 – 10:54 AM
By Matt Vespa
Last year, high-ranking NSA official Bill Binney said, “We are, like, that far from a turnkey totalitarian state.” Now, Binney says that the U.S. has already become a full-blown police state.
Binney told Washington’s Blog on Wednesday that:
“The main use of the collection from these [NSA spying] programs [is] for law enforcement. [See the 2 slides below].”
“These slides give the policy of the DOJ/FBI/DEA etc. on how to use the NSA data. In fact, they instruct that none of the NSA data is referred to in courts – cause it has been acquired without a warrant.”
“So, they have to do a ‘Parallel Construction’ and not tell the courts or prosecution or defense the original data used to arrest people. This I call: a ‘planned programed perjury policy’ directed by US law enforcement.”
“And, as the last line on one slide says, this also applies to ‘Foreign Counterparts.’”
“This is a total corruption of the justice system not only in our country but around the world. The source of the info is at the bottom of each slide. This is a totalitarian process – means we are now in a police state.”
– See more at: https://www.cnsnews.com/mrctv-blog/matt-vespa/nsa-official-we-are-now-police-state#sthash.LOUz0Dxo.NyI3jnfi.dpuf
