The U.S. government won't protect your internet privacy, so here's how to do it yourself.

The U.S. government won't protect your internet privacy, so here's how to do it yourself. (Popsci).

Yesterday, by a vote of 215 to 205, the House of Representatives voted to strip privacy safeguards from people who use the internet. The measure already cleared the Senate with a narrow majority, and experts expect that President Trump will sign the bill into law. When he does so, ISPs, the companies that connect people to the internet, will be able to collect and sell information about specific users without their permission.

More specifically, the bill nullifies a set of rules put in place by the FCC. Collectively, the rules—which have been in the works in the works for months and years and are built on prior rulemaking—are newly formalized: The FCC published the final version last December, and most took effect in January, with one part coming into effect this March.

Some of those protections provided by these rules are, technologically speaking, ancient—like extending 1934 privacy requirements originally written for telecommunication companies to also cover broadband internet service. Modern additions deal more explicitly with consumer consent and privacy online. The rules mandate that ISPs do three things: Let customers know about (and opt-in or opt-out of) any sharing of their information; get affirmative consent when offering customers financial incentives in exchange for selling their data; and not offer cheaper service to people on the condition that they surrender privacy rights.

Without these measures in place, ISPs will be freed up to turn user data into a lucrative business—and to do so without the users' knowledge or consent. Nullifying these rules, after all the time it took to create and implement them, gives companies implicit permission to do exactly what the rules protect against. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a major online privacy rights organization, describes it succinctly:

Putting the interests of internet providers over internet users, Congress today voted to erase landmark broadband privacy protections. If the bill is signed into law, companies like Cox, Comcast, Time Warner, AT&T, and Verizon will have free rein to hijack your searches, sell your data, and hammer you with unwanted advertisements. Worst yet, consumers will now have to pay a privacy tax by relying on VPNs to safeguard their information. That is a poor substitute for legal protections.

This change in rules means ISPs can profit off a captive customer base twice: first, by charging them for the service, and second, by collecting data on what users do online and selling it to a third party.

“I’m concerned about their stewardship of the data,” says Shauna Dillavou, a former member of the D.C. intelligence community who now runs CommunityRED, a nonprofit that works on finding and providing secure technology tools for citizen reporters operating in journalism-unfriendly places abroad. “We still have to pay for their service, for the most part, and a lot of the tools you’ll have to use to safeguard your privacy and your security will slow your connection down, so then you have to upgrade your service and pay even more, because ISPs are sucking your data out.”

To make matters worse for users, should the bill be signed into law, ISPs will no longer be required to disclose data breaches. That means people could have their information stolen from the company that collected it without their consent, and then not even know that the data theft took place.

“We’ve put the entire responsibility of security on the users,” says Dillavou.

Restoring consumer protections will likely take either legislative or legal action, which means waiting until the next Congress takes office in 2019 at the earliest—or hoping a privacy-relevant case works through the courts before then.

Still, that doesn’t mean individual users are completely powerless to protect their own data. Here are some steps a user can take to secure their privacy: Read the full story here.

Forensic scientist: ‘Back Doors’ Running on Every iOS Device

Forensic scientist:‘Back Doors’ Running on Every iOS Device. (ZDnet).

Forensic scientist and author Jonathan Zdziarski has posted the slides (PDF) from his talk at the Hackers On Planet Earth (HOPE/X) conference in New York called Identifying Backdoors, Attack Points, and Surveillance Mechanisms in iOS Devices.
…According to one slide the iPhone is “reasonably secure” to a typical attacker and the iPhone 5 and iOS 7 are more secure from everybody except Apple and the government. 

But he notes that Apple has “worked hard to ensure that it can access data on end-user devices on behalf of law enforcement” and links to Apple’s Law Enforcement Process Guidelines, which clearly spell this out.

Zdziarski's questions for Apple include:

• Why is there a packet sniffer running on 600 million personal iOS devices instead of moved to the developer mount?
• Why are there undocumented services that bypass user backup encryption that dump mass amounts of personal data from the phone?
• Why is most of my user data still not encrypted with the PIN or passphrase, enabling the invasion of my personal privacy by YOU?
• Why is there still no mechanism to review the devices my iPhone is paired with, so I can delete ones that don’t belong? Read the full story here.

"Yes We Scan" - Emails reveal close Google Relationship with NSA.

"Yes We Scan" - Emails reveal close Google Relationship with NSA.(Al Jazeera).

Email exchanges between National Security Agency Director Gen. Keith Alexander and Google executives Sergey Brin and Eric Schmidt suggest a far cozier working relationship between some tech firms and the U.S. government than was implied by Silicon Valley brass after last year’s revelations about NSA spying.

Disclosures by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden about the agency’s vast capability for spying on Americans’ electronic communications prompted a number of tech executives whose firms cooperated with the government to insist they had done so only when compelled by a court of law.

But Al Jazeera has obtained two sets of email communications dating from a year before Snowden became a household name that suggest not all cooperation was under pressure.

On the morning of June 28, 2012, an email from Alexander invited Schmidt to attend a four-hour-long “classified threat briefing” on Aug. 8 at a “secure facility in proximity to the San Jose, CA airport.”

“The meeting discussion will be topic-specific, and decision-oriented, with a focus on Mobility Threats and Security,” Alexander wrote in the email, obtained under a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, the first of dozens of communications between the NSA chief and Silicon Valley executives that the agency plans to turn over.Read the full story Here.

Rand Paul Will Sue Obama Over the NSA.

Rand Paul Will Sue Obama Over the NSA. HT: National Journal.

Here comes some fun. Sen. Rand Paul will join a lawsuit against President Obama, National Intelligence Director James Clapper, FBI Director James Comey, and NSA Director Keith Alexander.

The suit, Paul says, is because Obama “has publicly refused to stop a clear and continuing violation of the Fourth Amendment. The Bill of Rights protects all citizens from general warrants. I expect this case to go all the way to the Supreme Court and I predict the American people will win.”

The Kentucky Republican is joining a suit from FreedomWorks President Matt Kibbe. And to just round out the group, the lead counsel is Ken Cuccinelli, former Virginia attorney general and Republican gubernatorial candidate. 

In the press release from RandPac, Cuccinelli says that “we expect to be opposed by the vast resources of the federal government, yet I am optimistic that we will prevail.”

Paul will join the suit officially on Wednesday. After the filing, he’ll hold a presser in front of the courthouse with Cuccinelli and Kibbe. That’s scheduled for 11 a.m.

Paul has been threatening for months to file a lawsuit against the Obama administration for what he calls its unconstitutional use of sweeping surveillance programs housed at the National Security Agency. Last month he officially announced his plans to carry through with his suit, acting on revelations about the NSA’s spy programs that began surfacing last June from Edward Snowden.

Paul’s class-action suit has accrued hundreds of thousands of signatures via his his website, though some have pointed out that the list will likely double as a supporter database for future political aspirations, which may include a run for the White House in 2016.Read the full story here.

Car makers keep data on drivers' locations.

Car makers keep data on drivers' locations.(Detroit News).

The Government Accountability Office in a report released Monday found major automakers have differing policies about how much data they collect and how long they keep it.

Automakers collect location data in order to provide drivers with real-time traffic information, to help find the nearest gas station or restaurant, and to provide emergency roadside assistance and stolen vehicle tracking. But, the report found, “If companies retained data, they did not allow consumers to request that their data be deleted, which is a recommended practice.” The report reviewed practices of Detroit’s Big Three automakers, Toyota Motor Corp., Honda Motor Co. and Nissan Motor Co. It also looked at navigation system makers Garmin and TomTom and app developers Google Maps and Telenav. The report, which didn’t identify the specific policies of individual companies, found automakers had taken steps to protect privacy and were not selling personal data of owners, but said drivers are not aware of all risks.

A government report finds that major automakers are keeping information about where drivers have been collected from onboard navigation systems — for varying lengths of time. Owners of those cars can’t demand that the information be destroyed. And, says the U.S. senator requesting the investigation, that raises questions about driver privacy.

In addition to navigation systems, there are other ways vehicles can collect information: Event data recorders, known as “black boxes,” store data in the event of crashes. Transponders like EZ-PASS transmit location and are used in some instances by law enforcement and for research. Some owners also agree to monitoring of driving habits to qualify for lower insurance rates or to keep tabs on teen drivers.Read the full story here.

NSA Admits Bulk Collection of Cell Phone Location Data, But Don’t Worry, This Was Only a Test.

NSA Admits Bulk Collection of Cell Phone Location Data, But Don’t Worry, This Was Only a Test.HT: BlacklistedNews. Source: New York Times.

Obama in Sweden:  “And I can give assurances to the publics in Europe and around the world that we’re not going around snooping at people’s emails or listening to their phone calls. What we try to do is to target very specifically areas of concern. Having said that, what I’ve said domestically and what I say to international audiences is with changes in technology, with the growth of our capabilities, if our — if our attitude is, because we can do it we should go ahead and do it, then we may not be, you know, addressing some of the legitimate concerns and dangers that exist anytime we’re talking about intelligence gathering and surveillance.”

The National Security Agency conducted a secret pilot project in 2010 and 2011 to test the collection of bulk data about the location of Americans’ cellphones, but the agency never moved ahead with such a program, according to intelligence officials.

The existence of the pilot project was reported on Wednesday morning by The New York Times and later confirmed by James R. Clapper, the director of national intelligence, at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. The project used data from cellphone towers to locate people’s cellphones.

In his testimony, Mr. Clapper revealed few details about the project. He said that the N.S.A. does not currently collect locational information under Section 215 of the Patriot Act, the provision the government says is the legal basis for the N.S.A.’s once-secret program under which it collects logs of all domestic calls from telephone companies.

“In 2010 and 2011, N.S.A. received samples in order to test the ability of its systems to handle the data format, but that data was not used for any other purpose and was never available for intelligence analysis purposes,” Mr. Clapper said.

He added that the N.S.A. had promised to notify Congress and seek the approval of a secret surveillance court in the future before any locational data was collected using Section 215.

An official familiar with the test project said its purpose was to see how the locational data would flow into the N.S.A.’s systems. While real data was used, it was never drawn upon in any investigation, the official said. It was unclear how many Americans’ locational data was collected as part of the project, whether the agency has held on to that information or why the program did not go forward.

NSA Has Built Its Own, Secret, Warrantless, Shadow Social Network, And You've Already Joined It.

NSA Has Built Its Own, Secret, Warrantless, Shadow Social Network, And You've Already Joined It. HT: TechDirt.

From the getprsm dept: Soon after the very earliest reporting on Ed Snowden's leaked documents about PRISM, the folks from Datacoup put together the very amusing GETPRSM website, which looks very much like the announcement of a new social network, but (the joke is) it's really the NSA scooping up all our data and making the connections. It's pretty funny. Except, of course, when you find out that it's real. And, yes, that seems to be the latest revelation out of Ed Snowden's leaks. 

The NY Times has an article by James Risen and Laura Poitras (what a combo reporting team there!) detailing how the NSA has basically built its own "shadow" social network in which it tries to create a "social graph" of pretty much everyone that everyone knows, foreign or American, and it all happens (of course) without a warrant. And, note, this is relatively new:

The agency was authorized to conduct “large-scale graph analysis on very large sets of communications metadata without having to check foreignness” of every e-mail address, phone number or other identifier, the document said. Because of concerns about infringing on the privacy of American citizens, the computer analysis of such data had previously been permitted only for foreigners. 

The agency can augment the communications data with material from public, commercial and other sources, including bank codes, insurance information, Facebook profiles, passenger manifests, voter registration rolls and GPS location information, as well as property records and unspecified tax data, according to the documents. They do not indicate any restrictions on the use of such “enrichment” data, and several former senior Obama administration officials said the agency drew on it for both Americans and foreigners.

There were apparently two policy changes that allowed this to happen, and both occurred in the past three years.

First, in November of 2010, the NSA was allowed to start looking at phone call and email logs of Americans to try to help figure out associations for "foreign intelligence purposes." Note that phrase. We'll come back to it. For years, the NSA had been barred from viewing any content on US persons, and the NSA, President Obama and others have continued to insist to this day that there are minimization procedures that prevent spying on Americans. Except, this latest revelation shows that, yet again, this isn't actually true. 

The second policy change came in January of 2011, when the NSA was told it could start creating this massive "social graph" on Americans without having to make sure they weren't Americans any more, as indicated above.

Somewhat amazingly, the new report notes that in 2006, the NSA asked the Justice Department for permission to do exactly this sort of thing, and was rejected, saying that a "misuse" of that kind of data "could raise serious concerns." Indeed, it could, and does raise serious concerns, but apparently the current administration just doesn't give a crap.

If all of this sounds familiar, it's almost exactly what the feds tried to setup in 2002 with the Orwellian name Total Information Awareness. Except that time (right after 9/11, when you'd think the public would be at its most receptive to such programs), as word got out about the program, the public rightly flipped out, and we were told the program was shuttered. Except, as some have been arguing for years, it was never shuttered, it was just rebuilt in secret.

And, of course, the NSA is still willing to defend this massive breach on Americans' privacy:

An agency spokeswoman, asked about the analyses of Americans’ data, said, “All data queries must include a foreign intelligence justification, period.”

“All of N.S.A.’s work has a foreign intelligence purpose,” the spokeswoman added. “Our activities are centered on counterterrorism, counterproliferation and cybersecurity.”

Note the continued shift in language. For a while, they kept saying that the NSA does no surveillance on Americans at all. At all! They insisted that would be illegal. Then, later, people started to note that they would use the phrase "targeting foreign intelligence" which had just enough (barely) wiggle room to get people to think that they were only looking at non-US person data and content, but really meant as long as the overall investigation "targeted" foreign intelligence, it was fine. Now they're even walking back from that, and saying that apparently it's fine to spy on Americans without a warrant so long as there's "a foreign intelligence justification." In short: if you can come up with some excuse for how it might impact something foreign, the NSA can spy on Americans without a warrant. 

That's no limitation at all. In fact, such a rule is meaningless. We already know that the NSA gets every telephone record handed over because they claim it's "necessary" to "connect the dots" on foreign terror plots. And, similarly, now they're arguing that they can look at anything else so long as they claim that there's a "foreign intelligence justification." That means they have no limits. They just have to come up with some wacky reason to claim that so-and-so might have foreign connections that are important to know about, and voila, their life is open for the NSA to dig in, all without any oversight or a warrant. 

Somewhat surprisingly, the already disclosed phone metadata dragnet is actually not used for this social network effort, but that doesn't mean the NSA is lacking in data with which to create this shadow spying social network. It uses the NSA's taps on fiber optic networks, the ones that collect a ton of internet data, as Dianne Feinstein confirmed last week.

The N.S.A. documents show that one of the main tools used for chaining phone numbers and e-mail addresses has the code name Mainway. It is a repository into which vast amounts of data flow daily from the agency’s fiber-optic cables, corporate partners and foreign computer networks that have been hacked.

The documents show that significant amounts of information from the United States go into Mainway. An internal N.S.A. bulletin, for example, noted that in 2011 Mainway was taking in 700 million phone records per day. In August 2011, it began receiving an additional 1.1 billion cellphone records daily from an unnamed American service provider under Section 702 of the 2008 FISA Amendments Act, which allows for the collection of the data of Americans if at least one end of the communication is believed to be foreign.

Um. That's an awful lot of records on Americans. And yet, we're still being told that the NSA doesn't spy on Americans? Yeah, right.

Anyway, it appears that the GETPRSM social network has been in existence for quite some time now, and don't worry if you haven't received your invite. You've already joined.

Hmmm.......Obama in Sweden: “And I can give assurances to the publics in Europe and around the world that we’re not going around snooping at people’s emails or listening to their phone calls.
What we try to do is to target very specifically areas of concern. Having said that, what I’ve said domestically and what I say to international audiences is with changes in technology, with the growth of our capabilities, if our — if our attitude is, because we can do it we should go ahead and do it, then we may not be, you know, addressing some of the legitimate concerns and dangers that exist anytime we’re talking about intelligence gathering and surveillance.”

"Yes We Can" - John McAfee reveals details on gadget to thwart NSA.

"Yes We Can" - John McAfee reveals details on gadget to thwart NSA.HT: Mecury News.

John McAfee lived up to his reputation Saturday as tech's most popular wild child, electrifying an audience with new details of his plan to thwart the NSA's surveillance of ordinary Americans with an inexpensive, pocket-size gadget.

Dubbed "Decentral," the as-yet-unbuilt device will cost less than $100, McAfee promised the enthusiastic crowd of about 300 engineers, musicians and artists at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center.

"There will be no way (for the government) to tell who you are or where you are," he said in an onstage interview with moderator Dan Holden at the inaugural C2SV Technology Conference + Music Festival.

And if the U.S. government bans its sale, "I'll sell it in England, Japan, the Third World. This is coming and cannot be stopped."

The ambitious -- some would say quixotic -- project is the latest chapter of McAfee's colorful life.
The anti-virus software pioneer's antics have included his widely publicized flight last year from Belize, where he remains wanted as a "person of interest" in the shooting death of his neighbor.
Even so, he remains an icon in the annals of Silicon Valley's history of entrepreneurship. In 1989, he founded the anti-virus software company that still bears his name and once was worth $100 million. In 1994, he ended his relationship with the company and moved to Colorado.
One man asked whether Decentral essentially creates a "dark Web," or part of the Internet that can no longer be accessed by conventional means.

Yes, he said.

Video - "Yes We Scan" - New iPhone5 NSA Commercial.

NSA possibly involved in major Belgian telecom provider hack

Obama in Sweden:  “And I can give assurances to the publics in Europe and around the world that we’re not going around snooping at people’s emails or listening to their phone calls. 

NSA possibly involved in major Belgian telecom provider hack.(RT).

This weekend internet and telephone services provider Belgacom in Belgium revealed to have found traces of a digital intrusion in its internal IT system. Belgacom is a public company, of which the majority of shares is owned by the Belgian state.

"The inquiry has shown that the hacking was only possible by an intruder with significant financial and logistic means," they said. "This fact, combined with the technical complexity of the hacking and the scale on which it occurred, points towards international state-sponsored cyber espionage."
 
The company claims to have taken all appropriate actions to protect the integrity of its IT system and to further reinforce the prevention against possible incidents.

The newspaper 'De Standaard' however cites anonymous but reliable sources confirming that the National Security Agency was already monitoring all Belgacom international telephone traffic 'during at least two years'.

Belgacom has filed a complaint against an unknown third party and 'is granting its full support to the investigation that is being performed by the Federal Prosecutor'.

As to the perpetrators and their motives, the company states 'it is up to the Federal Prosecutor’s investigation to bring clarity on this'.

In the meantime the Belgian prime minister Elio Di Rupo also condemned the hack in an official press release, stating: "The Government takes notice that the technology used would indicate the high level involvement of another country."

"If this hypothesis is confirmed and the intrusion is indeed of a case of so-called cyber espionage, the government strongly condemns this intrusion and this breach of the integrity of the public company."

"In that case, the government will take the appropriate steps."

The hack takes an extra dimension as Brussels, the capital of Belgium, hosts the official seats of the European Commission and the European Parliament, but also the NATO headquarters and many lobby organizations. 

Hmmm.......Obama in Sweden:  “And I can give assurances to the publics in Europe and around the world that we’re not going around snooping at people’s emails or listening to their phone calls. What we try to do is to target very specifically areas of concern. Having said that, what I’ve said domestically and what I say to international audiences is with changes in technology, with the growth of our capabilities, if our — if our attitude is, because we can do it we should go ahead and do it, then we may not be, you know, addressing some of the legitimate concerns and dangers that exist anytime we’re talking about intelligence gathering and surveillance.”

First ever Facebook "Government Requests" report reveals the most inquisitive authorities.

First ever Facebook "Government Requests" report reveals the most inquisitive authorities.HT: NakedSecurity.

Facebook has released its first everTransparency Report, listing all the national governments that have requested access to information on its members. 

The report includes how many requests were made, how many users the requests affected, and how many resulted in data being handed over.

The stats, covering the first half of 2013, show a significant chunk of the data is demanded by US authorities - somewhere between 11,000 and 12,000 requests received, referencing over 20,000 US-based members, of which some 79% resulted in data being handed over.

The closest rival is India, with 3,245 requests for data on 4,144 citizens and a 50% hit rate. The other big hitters are the expected big European countries, with the UK, Germany, Italy and France next in sequence on the list. Turkey sought data on only 170 users

Judge throws out ‘state secrets’ claim, allowing lawsuit against NSA to continue.

Judge throws out ‘state secrets’ claim, allowing lawsuit against NSA to continue.HT: RussiaToday.

The suit, known as Jewel vs. National Security Agency, was originally filed in 2008 by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and a group of AT&T customers who claimed Bush administration officials had conducted an “illegal and unconstitutional program of dragnet communications surveillance” by operating warrantless surveillance on US citizens. 

Attention has re-focused on the case in recent weeks after fugitive whistleblower Edward Snowden leaked NSA documents revealing the government’s widespread domestic and foreign monitoring of telephone and Internet activity. 
US District Judge Jeffrey White in San Francisco, California refused to allow the Obama administration to end the lawsuit by citing the ‘state secrets’ privilege. By invoking that privilege, the EFF argued, the federal government hoped to prove widespread warrantless surveillance is not subject to judicial review. 
“The government has unlawfully solicited and obtained from telecommunications companies such as AT&T the complete and ongoing disclosure of the private telephone and Internet transactional records of those companies’ millions of customers, communications records indicating who the customers communicated with, when and for long, among other sensitive information,” the technology and civil rights group wrote on its website. 
“This transactional information is analyzed by computers in conjunction with the vast quantity of communications content acquired by government’s network of surveillance devices, in what has been described as a vast data-mining operation.” 

While Judge White did not explicitly discontinue the lawsuit, Reuters noted, he may have introduced limitations strict enough to only delay the end of the case or tie it up in court indefinitely. He ordered the NSA to provide more data on how the “recent disclosure of the government’s continuing surveillance activities” could impact national security. 
White requested “further briefing” from both sides, writing that certain information from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which authorizes the NSA requests, “should be declassified and immediately released to the public.” 
White’s decision is regarded as the first step in what could be a long process, but one Cindy Cohn, the legal director of the EFF, said was “a huge victory and a very courageous decision.”Read the full story here.

'Restore the Fourth': Reddit, Mozilla, thousands of people set for July 4 NSA spying protest

'Restore The Fourth'

'Restore the Fourth': Reddit, Mozilla, thousands of people set for July 4 NSA spying protest.HT: RussiaToday.

‘Restore the Fourth’ is aimed at restoring the fundamentals of the Fourth Amendment – the part of the Bill of Rights which protects citizens against unlawful searches and seizures. Participants will display an online banner which reads, “This 4th of July, we stand by the 4th Amendment and against the U.S. government’s surveillance of internet users.”

The campaign, which was spawned on Reddit, has the support of several privacy and press freedom advocacy organizations, including Mozilla, Free Press, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Freedom of the Press Foundation, and ColorOfChange.org.

The rally was largely organized by Fight for the Future – another non-profit agency which fights against internet censorship. The organization’s co-founder, Tiffiniy Cheng, said in a statement that “the NSA programs that have been exposed are blatantly unconstitutional, and have a detrimental effect on free speech and freedom of press worldwide." The rally is expected to be Fight for the Future’s largest online mobilization since its actions against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).

But the protest doesn’t stop online. Organizers are planning live protests in dozens of US cities, including New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, San Francisco, Houston, and Atlanta. Doug MacArthur, a member of Restore the Fourth's national board and moderator on Reddit’s r/news, expects between 10,000 and 20,000 people to take part in the protests in the nation’s larger cities.



MacArthur stressed the need for the protest, largely because mainstream media is failing to adequately cover the NSA leaks and what that means for everyday citizens.

"I think if you are on social media right now and political blogs, this might seem like it's an issue that's all over the political blogs. But if you turn on CNN or Fox or MSNBC, you'll see that a lot of the more mainstream channels aren't covering this as much as you might be assuming. So I really think it's important we get more citizens aware of this issue," he said, as quoted by Mashable.

Free Press CEO and President Craig Aaron echoed MacArthur’s sentiments. "We need to bring these government and corporate activities into the light of day, and the only way that will happen is if millions more people get involved and demand accountability, demand change, demand the truth,” he said in a Tuesday press conference.

However, it’s not just internet activists getting involved in the fight – one Hollywood celebrity has been very vocal in expressing his views on the NSA’s surveillance practices.

"How long do we expect rational people to accept using terrorism to justify and excuse endless executive and state power?" actor John Cusack said during a press conference announcing the protests. "Why are so many in our government, our press, our intellectual class afraid of an informed public?"

Cusack, who is a board member of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, complained that many of those defending the NSA surveillance programs are focusing on supposed character flaws of former NSA contractor Edward Snowden instead of questioning the program’s legality.

Harvey Anderson, senior vice president of business and legal affairs at Mozilla, agrees with Cusack. He said in a statement that the spotlight on Snowden is a “big distraction to avoid focusing on the invasions that have actually been occurring.” The lack of transparency about the surveillance programs “undermines the openness of the internet,” he added.

There has been a massive outcry against the surveillance practices since former NSA contractor Edward Snowden leaked sensitive information in May. In just three weeks, StopWatching.us has collected more than 531,000 signatures from people calling for Congress to fully disclose details about the NSA surveillance programs.

Snowden is currently held up in the international transit zone of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport. He is unable to travel as his passport is invalid. Washington has issued an extradition order against Snowden, calling for international cooperation in returning him to American soil.

The whistleblower has so far made asylum requests for more than a dozen countries, with ten nations already denying him refuge. Venezuela says it will consider Snowden’s request when it is received. Hmmmmm......Why do we have to read about this on Russia Today of all places?Read the full story here.

Growing Alarm: German Prosecutors To Review Allegations of US Spying, One criminal complaint has already been filed in Germany.

Growing Alarm: German Prosecutors To Review Allegations of US Spying, One criminal complaint has already been filed in Germany. HT: Spiegel.

Germany's Federal Prosecutors' Office confirmed to SPIEGEL on Sunday that it is looking into whether systematic data spying against the country conducted by America's National Security Agency violated laws aimed at protecting German citizens.

A spokeswoman at the Federal Prosecutors' Office, which is responsible for domestic security issues, told SPIEGEL that all available and relevant information about the Prism, Tempora and Boundless Informant spying programs is currently being reviewed by the agency. The spokeswoman said the office was seeking to form a reliable understanding of the facts. However, the agency has not indicated when or if it will launch a formal investigation.

Nevertheless, the spokeswoman said that "criminal complaints" relating to the scandal appear "likely". One criminal complaint has already been filed in Germany. SPIEGEL has learned that a provision was used at the local public prosecutor's office in the city of Giessen to lodge a criminal complaint against an unknown perpetrator over the spying.

Meanwhile, the British government -- whose Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) intelligence service operates the Tempora spying program that is in part directed at Germany -- has shifted away from its strict policy of silence on the issue. In response to requests from the German government for additional information during the past week, officials in London said only that they fundamentally do not address issues pertaining to intelligence operations publicly . Any inquiries were directed by the government to the British intelligence agencies.

The response angered politicians in Germany, especially Justice Minister Sabine Leuthheusser-Schnarrenberger, who complained of having only received "three meager sentences" in reply. The politician, with the business-friendly Free Democratic Party (FDP), said the terse response didn't go far enough to contain a scandal of this proportion.

Berlin officials have since been invited by the British government to participate in a video conference on Monday at 4 p.m. in the British Embassy in Berlin. SPIEGEL has learned that the German government will be represented by senior officials from the Interior Ministry, the Justice Ministry, the Foreign Ministry and Germany's foreign intelligence agency, the BND. Government sources said that in light of the revelations, tough questions are likely to be posed at the meeting.Read the full story here.

US taps half-billion German phone and internet activities a month – report.

US taps half-billion German phone and internet activities a month – report.HT: RussiaToday.

The NSA document leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden and published by Der Spiegel classified Germany as a “third-class” partner, on the same level as China, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, meaning that the US surveillance in Germany was stronger than in any other EU country. "We can attack the signals of most foreign third-class partners, and we do it too," the document states.

It revealed that NSA monitors phone calls, text messages, emails and internet chat contributions and has saved the metadata (connections and not the content) at its headquarters.
NSA snooped through 20-60 million German phone connections and 10 million internet data sets a day, Der Spiegel claims.In comparison, US tapped around 2 million connection data a day in France.

The only countries exempt from the surveillance attacks were Canada, Australia, Britain and New Zealand.Snowden’s documents already revealed that NSA had spied on EU, including Germany, but the extent of surveillance was not known.

Spiegel’s earlier report, which revealed that European citizens, employees of the EU diplomatic missions in Washington and the UN were under electronic surveillance from the NSA, was met with anger from EU policymakers.
Germany demanded an “immediate” US response over bugging allegations, adding that this kind of surveillance was reminiscent of the Cold War.
"It must ultimately be immediately and extensively explained by the American side whether media reports about completely disproportionate tapping measures by the US in the EU are accurate or not," Minister of Justice Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger said in a statement.
The president of the European parliament has also demanded an explanation from US authorities over the latest revelation.

“I am deeply worried and shocked about the allegations of US authorities spying on EU offices,” said Martin Schulz. “If the allegations prove to be true, it would be an extremely serious matter which will have a severe impact on EU-US relations.”
The whistleblower behind the leaked documents, Snowden, has left US for Hong Kong in May and currently remains in the transit area of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport while Ecuador reviews his asylum request.
Edward Snowden, a former CIA employee and ex-staff member of a private contractor working for the NSA, disclosed secret documents revealing US surveillance program PRISM and British secret Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) sharing its intelligence with NSA, as part of the Tempora data collection project.The US has charged Snowden with espionage and is trying to extradite him.

Related:  Spiegel - 'Out of Control': Europe Furious over NSA Spying on EU Facilities

Former Stasi lieutenant colonel on NSA surveillance: "You know, for us, this would have been a dream come true."

Former Stasi lieutenant colonel on NSA surveillance: "You know, for us, this would have been a dream come true."HT: InfiniteUnknown.

Memories of Stasi color Germans’ view of U.S. surveillance programs (McClatchy, June 26, 2013):

BERLIN — Wolfgang Schmidt was seated in Berlin’s 1,200-foot-high TV tower, one of the few remaining landmarks left from the former East Germany. Peering out over the city that lived in fear when the communist party ruled it, he pondered the magnitude of domestic spying in the United States under the Obama administration. A smile spread across his face.

“You know, for us, this would have been a dream come true,” he said, recalling the days when he was a lieutenant colonel in the defunct communist country’s secret police, the Stasi.

In those days, his department was limited to tapping 40 phones at a time, he recalled. Decide to spy on a new victim and an old one had to be dropped, because of a lack of equipment. He finds breathtaking the idea that the U.S. government receives daily reports on the cellphone usage of millions of Americans and can monitor the Internet traffic of millions more.“So much information, on so many people,” he said.

East Germany’s Stasi has long been considered the standard of police state surveillance during the Cold War years, a monitoring regime so vile and so intrusive that agents even noted when their subjects were overheard engaging in sexual intercourse. Against that backdrop, Germans have greeted with disappointment, verging on anger, the news that somewhere in a U.S. government databank are the records of where millions of people were when they made phone calls or what video content they streamed on their computers in the privacy of their homes.

Even Schmidt, 73, who headed one of the more infamous departments in the infamous Stasi, called himself appalled. The dark side to gathering such a broad, seemingly untargeted, amount of information is obvious, he said.

“It is the height of naivete to think that once collected this information won’t be used,” he said. “This is the nature of secret government organizations. The only way to protect the people’s privacy is not to allow the government to collect their information in the first place.”

U.S. officials have defended the government collection of information since word of it broke in newspaper stories based on documents leaked by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden. The records are used only to track down terrorists overseas, officials say. The collection has been carefully vetted by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, a body of U.S. judges whose actions are largely kept secret. There is no misuse.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who grew up in East Germany, tried to provide an out for President Barack Obama, offering as a possible explanation for the sweeping nature of the U.S. collection efforts that “the Internet is new to all of us.” She was roundly mocked for that statement, and her administration appeared far less forgiving more recently, when similar spying charges were leveled against the British government.
Germans are dismayed at Obama’s role in allowing the collection of so much information. Before his presidency, hundreds of thousands of Germans turned out to hear him speak in Berlin. During a visit last week, the setup was engineered to avoid criticism: Obama spoke to a small, handpicked audience, many from the German-American school. Access to the Brandenburg Gate, the backdrop for his speech, was severely limited, as was access to Berlin’s entire downtown.

As many Germans as heard Obama speak turned out at quickly arranged protests, including one by self-proclaimed tech nerds near the historic Checkpoint Charlie, where U.S. soldiers welcomed visitors from the communist sector of Berlin for four decades with a sign, “You are entering the American sector.” One demonstrator added this coda: “Your privacy ends here.”

The center-left newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung took Obama to task over the surveillance issue. “Governments do not have the right to conceal broad lines of policy,” the newspaper wrote. “President Obama is operating according to an odd maxim: ‘I am doing a lot of the same things that George W. Bush did, but you can trust me because I am the one doing it.’ Not even Obama is deserving of that much trust.”
“Everyone knows that gathering so much information is bullshit,” said Reinhard Weisshuhn, a political activist and foreign policy adviser. “It’s a total breach of trust by the government. This is how a society destroys itself.”

For 15 years, the Stasi tracked Weisshuhn’s every move and conversation. His Stasi file, which he, like many other Stasi targets, reviewed after the Berlin Wall collapsed, ran to 9,000 pages. He was shocked, and he’s quick to stress that the United States shouldn’t be compared to the totalitarian East German state.“But that doesn’t mean the president gets a free pass,” he said. “The United States is an open society. This is a problem that must be honestly addressed and fixed.”

Weisshuhn shares a common German perception on the scandal: Snowden, who’s been charged under the Espionage Act for leaking news of the domestic spying, isn’t the bad guy.

“In our case, we thought we were being paranoid until we saw what they’d gathered and realized we’d been naive,” Weisshuhn said. “Here, it’s not the whistle-blower who is wrong, it’s the gathering of information.” 

Germans, especially those raised in the east, are unconvinced by arguments that the sweeping collection of information is used only to track terrorists. The assertions by U.S. officials that unspecified attacks have been thwarted don’t persuade them, either. They haven’t forgotten the fear of living under a government that used vague threats to justify blanket spying. In East Germany, the threats came under the banner of disloyalty to socialist ideals. In the United States, the monitoring programs come under the banner of anti-terrorism.
Dagmar Hovestaedt is the spokeswoman for the German Stasi Records Agency, which showed 88,000 people last year what the Stasi had gathered on them. She said the U.S. should consider doing the same.

“This is a study on how to deal with the information the NSA is now gathering,” she said of her archive. “To say that the NSA is the equivalent of the Stasi is too simplistic, but the people who are spied on do have a right to know what was learned about their lives, what they had hoped to keep private that was not. Transparency is essential.”

Still, she noted that Stasi victims have a large advantage in finding out what was studied.“It’s easy to make information available when it was gathered by a state that no longer exists,” she said.Stefan Wolle is the curator for Berlin’s East German Museum, which focuses in part on the actions of and reactions to the Stasi. What becomes clear when studying the information the organization gathered is the banality of evil: Simple pieces of everyday life are given much greater importance than they deserve when a secret organization makes the effort to gather the information.

“When the wall fell, I wanted to see what the Stasi had on me, on the world I knew,” he said. “A large part of what I found was nothing more than office gossip, the sort of thing people used to say around the water cooler about affairs and gripes, the sort of things that people today put in emails or texts to each other.

“The lesson,” he added, “is that when a wide net is cast, almost all of what is caught is worthless. This was the case with the Stasi. This will certainly be the case with the NSA.”

Read the full story here.

Snowden Documents Show NSA Spied on EU Officials.

Snowden Documents Show NSA Spied on EU Officials.HT: RaiNovosti.

The National Security Agency bugged European Union offices in the United States, Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine said on Sunday citing “secret documents obtained by whistleblower Edward Snowden that Spiegel has in part seen.”

An NSA document, dated 2010, names the European Union a "location target."

“The document suggests that in addition to installing bugs in the building in downtown Washington, DC, the EU representation's computer network was also infiltrated. In this way, the Americans were able to access discussions in EU rooms as well as emails and internal documents on computers,” Der Spiegel wrote in an English-language article.

According to the document, the EU mission to the United Nations was under a similar surveillance.
The information obtained by Der Spiegel also suggests that NSA was behind an “electronic eavesdropping operation” which apparently targeted the Justus Lipsius Building, home to the EU Council of Ministers and the European Council.
Without citing sources, Der Spiegel says that approximately five years ago European security officials had noticed “several telephone calls that were apparently targeting the remote maintenance system in the Justus Lipsius Building.”

“Security officials managed to track the calls to NATO headquarters in the Brussels suburb of Evere. A precise analysis showed that the attacks on the telecommunications system had originated from a building complex separated from the rest of the NATO headquarters that is used by NSA experts,” the magazine said.

Reuters quoted Martin Schulz, the president of the European Parliament, as saying that if the report was correct, it would have a "severe impact" on relations between the EU and the United States.
"On behalf of the European Parliament, I demand full clarification and require further information speedily from the U.S. authorities with regard to these allegations," he said in an emailed statement.Hmmm.......Read the full story here.

NSA inspector general report on email and internet data collection under Stellar Wind – full document

NSA inspector general report on email and internet data collection under Stellar Wind – full document. HT: Guardian.

Top-secret draft report from 2009 by the NSA's inspector general shows development of 'collection of bulk internet metadata' under program launched under Bush

• NSA collected US email records in bulk for more than two years under Obama.

Read and see the full story here.

Judicial Watch Obtains Records Detailing Obama Admin’s Warrantless Collection of Citizens’ Personal Financial Data.

Judicial Watch Obtains Records Detailing Obama Admin’s Warrantless Collection of Citizens’ Personal Financial Data.HT: JudicialWatch.

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it has obtained records from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) revealing that the agency has spent millions of dollars for the warrantless collection and analysis of Americans’ financial transactions. The documents also reveal that CFPB contractors may be required to share the information with “additional government entities.”
The records were obtained pursuant to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed on April 24, 2013, following the April 23 Senate Banking Committee testimony of CFPB Director Richard Cordray. The documents uncovered by Judicial Watch include:

• Overlapping contracts with multiple credit reporting agencies and accounting firms to gather, store, and share credit card data as shown in the task list of a contract with Argus Information & Advisory Services LLC worth $2.9 million
  • Deloitte Consulting: solicitation issue date 11/30/2011, award effective date 05/29/2012;
  • Argus: solicitation issue date 02/14/2012, award effective date 03/15/2012;
  • Experian: solicitation issue date: 07/03/2012, award effective date: 09/24/2012

• An “indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity” contract with Experian worth up to $8,426,650 to track daily consumer habits of select individuals without their awareness or consent

• $4,951,333 for software and instruction paid to Deloitte Consulting LLP (

• A provision stipulating that “The contractor recognizes that, in performing this requirement, the Contractor may obtain access to non-public, confidential information, Personally Identifiable Information (PII), or proprietary information.”

• A stipulation that “The Contractor may be required to share credit card data collected from the Banks with additional government entities as directed by the Contracting Officer’s Representative (COR).”

The CFPB data collection program has been highly controversial since the April 2013 hearing, when Cordray disclosed elements of the venture at a Senate Banking Committee hearing. At the time, the US Chamber of Commerce accused the CFPB of breaking the law by demanding the account-level data without a warrant or National Security Letter.
“The Obama administration’s warrantless collection of the private financial information of millions of Americans is mind-blowing.  Is there anything that this administration thinks it can’t do?” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.
“These documents show that the Consumer Financial Protection Board is an out-of-control government agency that threatens the fundamental privacy and financial security of Americans. This is every bit as serious as the controversy over the NSA’s activities.”

NSA Leak Spooks Terrorists: Al Qaeda Changes Way It Communicates.

NSA Leak Spooks Terrorists: Al Qaeda Changes Way It Communicates.HT: AP.

Members of al Qaeda and pretty much every other terrorist organization are now reportedly switching up their communication tactics in response to the leaked details of the National Security Agency’s surveillance program.

According to two anonymous U.S. intelligence officials, this poses a major problem for keeping an eye on operatives and staying ahead of potential plots.The officials would not explain what exactly the terrorists are doing-switching their email accounts or cellphone providers, for example-but did specify that al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the organization’s Yemeni branch, was one of the first to change.

Terrorist groups had always taken care to avoid detection - from using anonymous email accounts, to multiple cellphones, to avoiding electronic communications at all, in the case of Osama bin Laden.

But there were some methods of communication, like the Skype video teleconferencing software that some militants still used, thinking they were safe, according to U.S. counterterrorism officials who follow the groups. They spoke anonymously as a condition of describing their surveillance of the groups.

Those militants now know to take care with Skype - one of the 9 U.S.-based Internet servers identified by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden's leaks to The Guardian and The Washington Post.

Two U.S. intelligence officials say members of virtually every terrorist group, including core al-Qaida members, are attempting to change how they communicate, based on what they are reading in the media, to hide from U.S. surveillance. 

It is the first time intelligence officials have described which groups are reacting to the leaks. The officials spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to speak about the intelligence matters publicly. The officials wouldn't go into details on how they know this, whether it's terrorists switching email accounts or cellphone providers or adopting new encryption techniques, but a lawmaker briefed on the matter said al-Qaida's Yemeni offshoot, al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, has been among the first to alter how it reaches out to its operatives.Read the full story here.