Congressional Agency Questions Legality of Wiretaps

[Defiant]

[Rip]

I always wondered why I could never get my cell phone to work when I was diving.

[Defiant]

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Government Surveillance

[GreenGoo]

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Government Surveillance

Fantastic.

"Americans don't give a shit about foreign surveillance".

I think that's true and I don't think it's a overly heinous position to have, particularly when they don't seem to care about their own privacy at all (which *is* heinous, imo).

[Kraken]

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Government Surveillance

That was great.

[Rip]

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Government Surveillance

Luv his work.

Edit: Ohh and I am opposed to the Dick Pic Program as well.

Now I need to build up a list of everyone's e-mail addresses so I can send you all a pic of my junk. Otherwise you might think I don't value my freedoms.

[LordMortis]

I'ma put this right here

http://mashable.com/2015/04/06/snowden- ... -brooklyn/

[Anonymous Bosch]

From the front page of USA Today -- U.S. Secretly Tracked Billions of Calls for Decades:

WASHINGTON — The U.S. government started keeping secret records of Americans' international telephone calls nearly a decade before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, harvesting billions of calls in a program that provided a blueprint for the far broader National Security Agency surveillance that followed.

For more than two decades, the Justice Department and the Drug Enforcement Administration amassed logs of virtually all telephone calls from the USA to as many as 116 countries linked to drug trafficking, current and former officials involved with the operation said. The targeted countries changed over time but included Canada, Mexico and most of Central and South America.

[Isgrimnur]

Sen. Mitch McConnell has no use for your complaints.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) put up a bill very late on Tuesday night to extend the Patriot Act unchanged through 2020.
...
His bill would send a renewed and unchanged Patriot Act to the Senate floor for a vote without having to go through the committee process. If it passed there and was then approved by the House of Representatives, it would get to President Obama's desk with unusual speed for a bill. Whether the president would sign it is unclear. He has voiced support for some reforms but not for getting rid of the Act entirely. But the June 1 deadline before the Patriot Act expires could force his hand as there wouldn't be any time for a second version to get through Congress at that point.

[Isgrimnur]

US Appeals Court

A federal appeals court on Thursday said a National Security Agency program that collected the records of millions of Americans' phone calls was not authorized by Congress.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said a lower court judge erred in dismissing a lawsuit challenging the program's constitutionality, and returned the case to the judge for further proceedings. It also upheld the denial of a preliminary injunction to block the collection of phone records under the program.

Thursday's decision vacated a December 2013 dismissal of an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit contending that the NSA's collection of "bulk telephony metadata" violated the bar against warrantless searches under the Fourth Amendment.

[GreenGoo]

Cool, but you shouldn't let congress off the hook. They might not have known every single thing that was being done, but they certainly seemed ok with the concept.

[Isgrimnur]

June 1st is the expiration date. I imagine that the media will start covering it on May 31st.

[Isgrimnur]

Stay classy, Bob.

Senator Bob Corker, who heads the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, appears to now be calling for the NSA to spy on more Americans, rather than fewer, arguing that the metadata collection program that is currently being debated in Congress is so small that he considers it negligent.

"It's almost malpractice," Corker said at a breakfast for reporters hosted by The Christian Science Monitor. "That's the best word I can use to describe the amount of data that is being collected."

Corker, who said the NSA's data collection needs to be "ramped up hugely", was reacting to a closed-door briefing that national security officials held Tuesday to brief senators on federal surveillance programs....

"I think there was an aha moment (Tuesday) for people on both sides of the aisle when we realized how little data is being collected.... It's beyond belief how little data is part of this program, especially if the goal is to uncover terrorists."

Now, this is the same Senator Corker who originally was quite disturbed when he first heard about the very same program after it was leaked by Ed Snowden (suggesting he was completely unaware of it prior to it leaking, despite being a Senator). Back in June of 2013, he sent an angry letter to the President about how such "broad collection" raised "extremely serious concerns."

But now he thinks the NSA should actually be spying on more Americans? It sounds like the NSA briefing that was just given to Senators was designed to really ramp up the fear-mongering.

[Pyperkub]

Well, I'm glad he considers the program negligent - though that is the article writer's fault...

[Kraken]

If we merely surrender our last vestiges of privacy we can be totally safe? I'm in.

[Defiant]

The House on Wednesday overwhelmingly approved legislation to end the federal government’s bulk collection of phone records, exerting enormous pressure on Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Senate majority leader, who insists that dragnet sweeps continue in defiance of many of those in his Republican Party.

338-88

[GreenGoo]

I'm sure they've been working on fifty different ways to get around this repeal since the program hit public light.

I'm happy for you guys to see this repealed. I am less than confident that this is the end of it.

[Isgrimnur]

Only 18 more days to see how it plays out.

[Isgrimnur]

The NSA wanted to hijack app stores to deliver spyware.

The NSA hatched a plan that would allow the agency to infect smartphones with malware by hijacking the Google Play and Samsung and the Samsung App Store, according to documents obtained by Edward Snowden.

The documents, dated 2011 and 2012 and published by The Intercept Thursday, outline a plan codenamed "irritant horn". The plan's goal: find ways to exploit the connection between smartphones and app stores to allow the NSA — along with its counterparts in Canada, the U.K, New Zealand and Australia — to inject data-collecting malware into users' phones.

It's not clear whether the plan was ever carried out; the documents are apparently from internal workshops. But they highlight the security agencies' interest in finding new ways to hack into individual smartphones.

[Pyperkub]

The thing is, I don't mind if they did that, provided it was targeted, and that there was an actual warrant for individual American citizens caught up in it (which we know damn well there wasn't).

Google may mind however, as it causes a serious problem with faith in their system abroad...

As is, they are pretty much lawless.

[Isgrimnur]

But the agencies wanted to do more than just use app stores as a launching pad to infect phones with spyware. They were also keen to find ways to hijack them as a way of sending “selective misinformation to the targets’ handsets” as part of so-called “effects” operations that are used to spread propaganda or confuse adversaries. Moreover, the agencies wanted to gain access to companies’ app store servers so they could secretly use them for “harvesting” information about phone users.

Buuum, buh BUH buh.

The story you are about to see is true. The names have been changed to protect the innocent.

Unfortunately, to the NSA, there's no such thing as innocent.

[Jaymann]

The only app I have on my phone is Pandora. Can they bust me for bad taste in music?

[Isgrimnur]

Chris Christie

The sponsor of the Senate bill to reform the Patriot Act is accusing Gov. Chris Christie of engaging in "political pornography" for suggesting that amending the Patriot Act would lead to deadly terrorist attacks, but the governor is now doubling down on his calls for its unamended renewal.

On Friday morning, Utah's junior U.S. senator, Mike Lee, told CNN that Christie "ought to be ashamed" of this statement he made: "You can't enjoy your civil liberties if you're in a coffin." Christie made the remark during a trip to New Hampshire earlier this week while arguing for the continued bulk collection of American's metadata and phone records by the National Security Agency. Such collection is authorized by the Patriot Act.
...
Within the crowded 2016 field, Christie warned, "I'm the only person who's used the Patriot Act to try and convict terrorists" and added, "The first job of president of the United States is to protect the homeland and that's' what we need to do."

[LawBeefaroni]

Chris Christie

Within the crowded 2016 field, Christie warned, "I'm the only person who's used the Patriot Act to try and convict terrorists" and added, "The first job of president of the United States is to protect the homeland and that's' what we need to do."

I wonder if intentionally disrupting traffic infrastructure in a high congestion urban area in order to gain acquiescence is considered terrorism. If so, he has a lot more experience than his humility will allow him to admit.

On Friday morning, Utah's junior U.S. senator, Mike Lee, told CNN that Christie "ought to be ashamed" of this statement he made: "You can't enjoy your civil liberties if you're in a coffin."

Chris Christie: "Give me liberty or give me...empty promises of a somewhat longer life!"

[Pyperkub]

Dear idiot - the first job of the President of the United States is to faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and to the best of their ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.

[Isgrimnur]

Presidential Fear-mongering

"I don't want us to be in a situation in which, for a certain period of time, those authorities go away, and suddenly we're dark, and heaven forbid we've got a problem where we could have prevented a terrorist attack or apprehended someone who is engaged in dangerous activity but we didn't do so simply because of inaction in the Senate," Obama said at the conclusion of a meeting with Attorney General Loretta Lynch.
...
The House-passed USA Freedom Act, supported by Democrats and Republicans, would have made changes in the bulk collection program and rolled back some government authority. But the Senate wasn't able to take up even short-term extensions of the programs after some lawmakers, led by Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul, blocked the measure from coming to the floor.

Obama on Friday urged the passage of the USA Freedom Act, which would need to be approved by 8 p.m. ET on Sunday in order for law enforcement agencies to keep the surveillance programs running.

"This not an issue in which we have to choose between security and civil liberties," Obama said. "This is an issue in which we, in fact, have struck the right balance."

[Rip]

[Isgrimnur]

Now the fun begins:

The legal authority for U.S. spy agencies' collection of Americans' phone records and other data expired at midnight on Sunday after the U.S. Senate failed to pass legislation extending the powers.
...
Although the Senate did not act in time to keep the program from expiring, the vote was at least a partial victory for Democratic President Barack Obama, who had pushed for the reform measure as a compromise addressing privacy concerns while preserving a tool to help protect the country from attack.

But final Senate passage was delayed until at least Tuesday by objections from Senator Rand Paul, a libertarian Republican presidential hopeful who has fulminated against the NSA program as illegal and unconstitutional.

As a result, the government's collection and search of phone records terminated at midnight when key provisions of a post-Sept. 11, 2001, law known as the USA Patriot Act expired.

In addition, U.S. law enforcement and security agencies will lose authority to conduct other programs.

Those allow for "roving wiretaps" aimed at terrorism suspects who use multiple disposable cell phones; permit authorities to target "lone wolf" suspects with no connection to specific terrorist groups, and make it easier to seize personal and business records of suspects and their associates.

Still, eventual resumption of the phone records program in another form, and the other government powers, appeared likely after the Senate voted 77-17 to take up the reform legislation, called the USA Freedom Act.

"This bill will ultimately pass," Paul acknowledged after the procedural vote.
...
Obama strongly backed the Freedom Act, as have most Democrats. It passed the House of Representatives on May 13 by 338-88.

[Defiant]

From my understanding:

Congress does have support for a reform bill that will give the spy agencies some power to do this stuff, but with some of the power curtailed and lots of regulations attached -with pretty much all the Democrats and about half of Republicans (in the Senate anyway) supporting it - so it will get passed sometime soon. Some Republican Senators and Obama wanted the original powers (without regulations) repassed, while Paul (and maybe a few others?) didn't want either passed at all.

But this only applies to the issues of phone logging, and doesn't apply to related programs, like PRISM.

[Pyperkub]

The crap they pull, even in England about this, and some journalists swallow it whole, again and again:

The whole article does literally nothing other than quote anonymous British officials. It gives voice to banal but inflammatory accusations that are made about every whistleblower from Daniel Ellsberg to Chelsea Manning. It offers zero evidence or confirmation for any of its claims. The “journalists” who wrote it neither questioned any of the official assertions nor even quoted anyone who denies them. It’s pure stenography of the worst kind: some government officials whispered these inflammatory claims in our ears and told us to print them, but not reveal who they are, and we’re obeying. Breaking!

[GreenGoo]

Yep. It's kind of sickening.

[Pyperkub]

FISA attempts to override the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals:

WASHINGTON — The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court ruled late Monday that the National Security Agency may temporarily resume its once-secret program that systematically collects records of Americans’ domestic phone calls in bulk.

But the American Civil Liberties Union said Tuesday that it would ask the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which had ruled that the surveillance program was illegal, to issue an injunction to halt the program, setting up a potential conflict between the two courts.

The program lapsed on June 1, when a law on which it was based, Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act, expired. Congress revived that provision on June 2 with a bill called the USA Freedom Act, which said the provision could not be used for bulk collection after six months.

he six-month period was intended to give intelligence agencies time to move to a new system in which the phone records — which include information like phone numbers and the duration of calls but not the contents of conversations — would stay in the hands of phone companies. Under those rules, the agency would still be able to gain access to the records to analyze links between callers and suspected terrorists.

But, complicating matters, in May the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in New York, ruled in a lawsuit brought by the A.C.L.U. that Section 215 of the Patriot Act could not legitimately be interpreted as permitting bulk collection at all.

Congress did not include language in the Freedom Act contradicting the Second Circuit ruling or authorizing bulk collection even for the six-month transition. As a result, it was unclear whether the program had a lawful basis to resume in the interim...

...The surveillance court is subject to review by its own appeals panel, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review. Both the Second Circuit and the surveillance review court are in turn subject to the Supreme Court, which resolves conflicts between appeals courts.

It looks like the expiration may soon require the Supremes to finally rule on both the initial collection and the updated "Freedom" act's constitutionality.

Hopefully.

[Rip]

Would it be naive of me to hope that if the SCOTUS has veered to being a more "liberal" court that we will at least get rulings I like pertaining to this crap?

[Isgrimnur]

I'll bust out the pitchforks when the 6-month mark passes. Congress, the people that were against it when it was revealed, put that language in there. It's a feature not a bug.

[Jaymann]

No fair using the same joke on two threads.

[Isgrimnur]

At least it was two different versions.

...I'm looking for the man that shot my pa(w)!

[Isgrimnur]

Butt dialing does not get wiretapping protection:

The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that if you accidentally call someone and don't take reasonable steps to prevent it, you don’t have an expectation of privacy if that person listens in.

Kentucky executive James Huff accidentally called his assistant for over 90 minutes—and she listened in on an in-person conversation he was having. In this case, the court specifically found that Huff could not sue the assistant for violating a federal wiretap law. This was largely because Huff was aware of steps that he could have taken to prevent a pocket dial, such as locking the phone.

[Pyperkub]

Now this is how the Gov't should treat encryption - break it as needed (with an appropriate subpoena):

Today, President Obama issued an Executive Order establishing the National Strategic Computing Initiative (NSCI) to ensure the United States continues leading in this field over the coming decades. This coordinated research, development, and deployment strategy will draw on the strengths of departments and agencies to move the Federal government into a position that sharpens, develops, and streamlines a wide range of new 21st century applications. It is designed to advance core technologies to solve difficult computational problems

Much better way of dealing with encryption, rather than asking for backdoors (which will only be exploited down the road).

[Rip]

Now this is how the Gov't should treat encryption - break it as needed (with an appropriate subpoena):

Today, President Obama issued an Executive Order establishing the National Strategic Computing Initiative (NSCI) to ensure the United States continues leading in this field over the coming decades. This coordinated research, development, and deployment strategy will draw on the strengths of departments and agencies to move the Federal government into a position that sharpens, develops, and streamlines a wide range of new 21st century applications. It is designed to advance core technologies to solve difficult computational problems

Much better way of dealing with encryption, rather than asking for backdoors (which will only be exploited down the road).

A lot of more important things done with those resources. The cost of breaking modern encryption methods far exceeds the value of doing so in almost every instance. But sure if they think that means they don't need backdoors I'm more than willing to let them.

[Pyperkub]

I'm only hypothesizing that that would be a primary purpose for the initiative, but it strikes me as the way to go. Unbreakable encryption generally lasts about 5 years or so, though the thoughts that Moore's law may finally be meeting its match are intriguing (though I expect that is more that Intel isn't seeing the profitability in pursuing it anymore, more than a lack of ability).