PRISM

[Lamplighter]

Holder Tells Russia Snowden Won’t Face Torture or Death...

Water-boarding or a few other extreme interrogation techniques ? Well maybe.
But NO torture... and death would certainly be something of an "Ooooops"

[ZenGum]

In other news, Holder grants Snowden immortality, apparently.

[Lamplighter]

And the beat goes on... 32 pages of newly declassified documents
that show details of even larger surveillance "projects"


NY Times
CHARLIE SAVAGE
Published: July 31, 2013

U.S. Outlines N.S.A.’s Culling of Data for All Domestic Calls

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration on Wednesday released
formerly classified documents outlining a once-secret program of the National Security Agency
that is collecting records of all domestic phone calls in the United States,
as top officials testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
<snip>
The documents released by the government, meanwhile, include an April ruling
by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that supported a secondary order
— also leaked by Mr. Snowden — requiring a Verizon subsidiary to turn over all
of its customers’ phone logs for a three-month period.

It said the government may access the logs only when an
executive branch official determines that there are
“facts giving rise to a reasonable, articulable suspicion”
that the number searched is associated with terrorism.
<snip>

The newly disclosed XKeyscore presentation focuses in particular on Internet activities,
ncluding chats and Web site browsing activities, as intelligence analysts
search for terrorist cells by looking at “anomalous events” like who is using encryption
or “searching the web for suspicious stuff.”

[Griff]

Ho hum. Another day another violation of the 4th Amendment.

[Lamplighter]

The Guardian
Glenn Greenwald
8/4/13

Members of Congress denied access to basic information about NSA

Documents provided by two House members demonstrate
how they are blocked from exercising any oversight over domestic surveillance
<snjp>
Two House members, GOP Rep. Morgan Griffith of Virginia and
Democratic Rep. Alan Grayson of Florida, have provided the Guardian
with numerous letters and emails documenting their persistent,
and unsuccessful, efforts to learn about NSA programs and relevant FISA court rulings.
<snjp>
Rep. Griffith requested information about the NSA from the House Intelligence Committee
six weeks ago, on June 25. He asked for "access to the classified FISA court order(s)
referenced on Meet the Press this past weekend": a reference to my raising with host David Gregory
the still-secret 2011 86-page ruling from the FISA court that found substantial parts
of NSA domestic spying to be in violation of the Fourth Amendment as well as governing surveillance statutes.

And then there is the question of Freedom of Information...

NBC News
Michael Isikoff
6/12/13
Secret court won't object to release of opinion on illegal surveillance

In a rare public ruling by the nation’s most secretive judicial body,
the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court ruled Wednesday that
it did not object to the release of a classified 86-page opinion concluding
that some of the U.S. government’s surveillance activities were unconstitutional.

The ruling, signed by the court’s chief judge, Reggie Walton, rejected
the Justice Department’s arguments that the secret national security court’s rules
prevented disclosure of the opinion. Instead, the court found that
because the document was in the possession of the Justice Department,
it was subject to release under the Freedom of Information Act.
<snip>
The EFF’s lawsuit was inspired by a July 20, 2012 letter from an aide to
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper to Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore.,
that stated that “on at least one occasion,” the FISC held that “some collection”
carried out by the U.S. government under classified surveillance programs
“was unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment.”

[BigV]

I flatly refuse to believe that the government is only intercepting communications of foreigners.

I know that should some American citizen (wacko extremist though he may be) located in the country, make mention of some threat to the president, that it would be acted upon, even though the aforementioned wacko extremist was previously unknown to the government.

Where is the fucking due process in this whole farce? Where is the check and balance of the three co-equal branches of government? Where is the transparency?

sickening!

[Griff]

Screw checks and balances, no branch should be actively subverting the Constitution and right now by my count we are at two and three is likely.

[Lamplighter]

Some Dwellars may remember this post....

Ron Wyden is still at it... hinting, but not disclosing.
This weekend new issues may be becoming public.

With NSA revelations, Sen. Ron Wyden’s vague warnings about privacy finally become clear
It was one of the strangest personal crusades on Capitol Hill:
For years, Sen. Ron Wyden said he was worried that intelligence agencies were violating Americans’ privacy.
But he couldn’t say how. That was a secret.

Today another article clarifies more of what Wyden was all about...

Washington Post
Ellen Nakashima
9/8/13

Obama administration had restrictions on NSA reversed in 2011

The Obama administration secretly won permission from a surveillance court in 2011
to reverse restrictions on the National Security Agency’s use of intercepted phone calls and e-mails,
permitting the agency to search deliberately for Americans’ communications in its massive databases,
according to interviews with government officials and recently declassified material.

What had not been previously acknowledged is that the court in 2008 imposed an explicit ban
— at the government’s request — on those kinds of searches,
that officials in 2011 got the court to lift the bar and that the search authority has been used.<snip>

But in 2011, to more rapidly and effectively identify relevant foreign intelligence communications,
“we did ask the court” to lift the ban, ODNI general counsel Robert S. Litt said in an interview.
“We wanted to be able to do it,” he said, referring to the searching
of Americans’ communications without a warrant.

Together the permission to search and to keep data longer
expanded the NSA’s authority in significant ways without public debate
or any specific authority from Congress.<snip>

The court’s expansion of authority went largely unnoticed when the opinion was released,
but it formed the basis for cryptic warnings last year by a pair of Democratic senators,
Ron Wyden (Ore.) and Mark Udall (Colo.), that the administration had a “back-door search loophole”
that enabled the NSA to scour intercepted communications for those of Americans.
They introduced legislation to require a warrant, but they were barred by classification rules
from disclosing the court’s authorization or whether the NSA was already conducting such searches.
<snip>

[Griff]

Let's play the reallocation game! What would you do with $52.6 Billion a year that have demonstrably made us less free and likely less safe? Education, science research, space exploration, roads and bridges,...

[Lamplighter]

The beat goes on...monotonously and sadly

This article refers to NSA's collection and use of emails, social media, etc.,
to link people to others, who travels with whom, where they go.

Washington Post
Ellen Nakashima
9/28/13

NSA said to be studying some Americans’ social connections using e-mail, call data

The National Security Agency has been mining for several years
its massive collections of e-mail and phone call data to create extensive graphs
of some Americans’ social connections that can include associates, travel companions
and their locations, according to the New York Times.

The social graphing began in 2010 after the NSA lifted restrictions on the practice,
according to an internal January 2011 memorandum, the Times reported online Saturday.
It based its article on documents obtained by former NSA contractor Edward J. Snowden and interviews with officials.

The graphing, or contact chaining, is conducted using details about phone calls and e-mails,
known as “metadata,” but does not involve the communications’ content,
according to the documents cited by the Times.

It is supposed to be done for foreign intelligence purposes only, the documents state,
but that category is extremely broad and may include everything from data
about terrorism and drug smuggling to foreign diplomats and economic talks.
<snip>
According to documents the Times cited, the NSA can augment the data
with material from public, commercial and other sources, including bank codes,
Facebook profiles, airline passenger manifests and GPS location information.
<snip>

“This report confirms what whistleblowers have been saying for years:
The NSA has been monitoring virtually every aspect of Americans’ lives
— their communications, their associations, even their locations,”
said Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union.<snip>

William Binney, a former NSA technical director turned whistleblower, has
long warned of the NSA’s mining of data to create social graphs.
He alleged that it started in the second week of October 2001,
in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and that it took place on a massive scale.
<snip>

[BigV]

well, defense against the subversion of the constitution is what checks and balances is all about, but never mind that quibble.

I think the core of this problem is a fattening and softening of American attitudes, BY DESIGN, by those who can profit from it, either by increasing their wealth or their power or both. By having unrealistic attitudes like "protect me from everything at all times" "be afraid of _________" "with us or agin us" repeatedly and relentlessly promoted, it gives ideas like this traction. Someone(s) will say, I can provide that protection, just sign here, or rather, look away while I "protect you" and by "protect you" I mean agglomerate more power and money to myself.

THEY'RE culpable for two reasons, simple greed for money and power, and by mistrusting the toughness (indeed, breeding it out of our attitudes) and resilience of regular, civilian citizens.

[Griff]

Amen, brother V.

[BigV]

I need to try out my voice more.

[Griff]

[Griff]

The Drug Enforcement Administration has been the recipient of multiple tips from the NSA. DEA officials in a highly secret office called the Special Operations Division are assigned to handle these incoming tips, according to Reuters. Tips from the NSA are added to a DEA database that includes “intelligence intercepts, wiretaps, informants and a massive database of telephone records.” This is problematic because it appears to break down the barrier between foreign counter-terrorism investigations and ordinary domestic criminal investigations.

On and on...