Monitoring NSA in de VS en erbuiten, deel 4

quote:

NSA Surveillance Leaks Prompt Legislation

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), the powerful chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and other lawmakers today introduced legislation they say would provide more accountability and oversight of laws bolstering recently disclosed surveillance programs.

The proposal is not designed to halt the spying disclosed by NSA leaker Edward Snowden.

One of the most controversial provisions of the Patriot Act — Section 215 — allows the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to authorize broad warrants for most any type of records, including those held by banks, doctors and phone companies. Lawmakers have repeatedly voted to prevent the act from expiring. The government only needs to show that the information pertains to an “authorized investigation.” No connection to a terrorist or spy is required.

Under today’s proposal, the act would be amended to require “the government to show relevance to an authorized investigation and a link to one of three categories of a foreign agent, power, or group.” Another provision would demand the government “to provide a statement of the facts and circumstances” to the court to justify the surveillance, lawmakers said.

Among other things, the measure would also demand the government to produce an unclassified report on the “impact” the surveillance programs has “on the privacy of United States persons.” It would also allow recipients of National Security Letters to challenge non-disclosure orders at any time, instead of a year’s period.

Inspector General auditing would also be required, as would the formulation of methods for “minimization procedures for data collected under Section 215.”

What’s more, the proposal would require the FISA Amendments Act to expire in June 2015, instead of December 2017, when it is slated to sunset.

That FISA Amendments Act is relevant to Snowden’s leak on the PRISM program. The act authorizes the government to electronically eavesdrop on Americans’ phone calls and electronic communications without a probable-cause warrant so long as one of the parties to the communication is believed outside the United States. The communications may be intercepted “to acquire foreign intelligence information.”

The act generally requires the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to rubber-stamp electronic surveillance requests. The government does not have to identify the target or facility to be monitored. The court’s approval lasts for up to a year.

bron

The bill

quote:

Op dinsdag 25 juni 2013 09:49 schreef gebrokenglas het volgende:
Iedereen spreekt er schande van. Maar zijn er vervolgactie's gaande? Is er iemand die de overheid aanklaagt en roept die troep moet uit?

Ik hoor daar niets over. De taps staan vol open en zullen dat waarschijnlijk ook voor altijd blijven.

quote:

Op dinsdag 25 juni 2013 12:57 schreef Stezo het volgende:

[..]

Rand Paul, één van de grootste kanshebbers in de Amerikaanse presidentsverkiezingen in 2016, gaat mogelijk de overheid aanklagen...

http://blogs.wsj.com/wash(...)ue-over-nsa-program/

quote:

Op dinsdag 25 juni 2013 12:59 schreef Claudia_x het volgende:

[..]

Is hij een serieuze kanshebber?

quote:

Op dinsdag 25 juni 2013 12:59 schreef Stezo het volgende:

[..]

Ja.

quote:

Op dinsdag 25 juni 2013 12:59 schreef Stezo het volgende:

[..]

Ja.

Noam Chomsky - Ron Paul's ideas are savage

quote:

Op dinsdag 25 juni 2013 13:04 schreef Claudia_x het volgende:

[..]

Waarop baseer je dat?

(Dat vraag ik niet omdat ik het in twijfel trek, maar omdat ik het echt niet weet. Ik kan me haast niet voorstellen dat Amerikanen - nee, zelfs Amerikanen niet - en masse op een libertariër stemmen.)

quote:

Op maandag 24 juni 2013 21:04 schreef deelnemer het volgende:

[..]

Ik vermoed dat het verhaal over chemische wapens onzin is. Men zegt dat het relatief eenvoudig is om de sporen ervan vast te stellen.

quote:

The so-called proof includes blood, tissue and soil samples "smuggled out of the country by rebels or intelligence operatives," reports The Washington Post, adding, "precisely who acquired the evidence and what methods were used to guard against tampering may be unknowable."

In a story published Thursday, The Washington Post quotes a number of officials who cite this "lack of transparency" as reason to question the credibility of the Obama administration's chemical-weapons claims.

“If you are the opposition and you hear” that the White House has drawn a red line on the use of nerve agents, “you have an interest in giving the impression that some chemical weapons have been used,” Rolf Ekeus, a Swedish scientist who formerly led UN weapons inspections in Iraq, told the Post.

The lack of transparency over how the evidence has been collected and analyzed further prevents independent experts from assessing the authenticity of these findings.

Some of the published reports of chemical weapons “make certain alarm bells ring,” said Jean Pascal Zanders, former research fellow at the European Union Institute for Security Studies.

“We don’t have the barest of information. There is not even a fact sheet documenting the samples,” he added. “This is an immensely political process, and there is no way of challenging the findings.”

Raising a few eyebrows, this fact has prompted some, including The Nation's Greg Mitchell, to posture that the claims may simply be "used as an excuse for stepping up Syrian intervention."

The United Nations has also remained unconvinced thus far.

twitter:

tomjanmeeus twitterde op dinsdag 25-06-2013 om 10:36:49 Snowden weet zóveel, zegt Witte Huis, dat ze een 'potentially devastating blow to U.S. national security' vrezen: http://t.co/LiCsnEMvx0 reageer retweet

quote:

Op dinsdag 25 juni 2013 13:23 schreef gebrokenglas het volgende:

twitter:

tomjanmeeus twitterde op dinsdag 25-06-2013 om 10:36:49 Snowden weet zóveel, zegt Witte Huis, dat ze een 'potentially devastating blow to U.S. national security' vrezen: http://t.co/LiCsnEMvx0 reageer retweet

Ehh, tsja ligt dat niet een beetje aan hunzelf?

Volgens msnbc: A 2012 report on security clearance determinations showed 4.9 million people had security clearance and, of those, 483,263 contractors hold top secret clearances.

Dat is wel een beetje veel mensen lijkt me, voor top secret. Dan is het ook niet bepaald top secret meer.

quote:

Op dinsdag 25 juni 2013 13:26 schreef Claudia_x het volgende:
Het is hier misschien niet helemaal de plek ervoor, maar wat is dan het nuanceverschil tussen libertariër en libertarische conservatieveling? Is Rand Paul wel tegen het homohuwelijk en abortus bijvoorbeeld? Of gaat het meer om de minder radicale manier waarop hij zichzelf presenteert? Ik merk wel duidelijk dat hij een belangrijke rol speelt in het mediadebat over PRISM, aandacht waar hij misschien politiek ook weer van kan profiteren.

In dit verband vind ik het trouwens verbazingwekkend hoe Obama buiten schot lijkt te blijven vooralsnog. Of heb ik daar een verkeerde indruk van?

quote:

Op maandag 24 juni 2013 19:47 schreef gebrokenglas het volgende:
De VS is verbolgen op Rusland en China.

[..]

bron: nos

VS denkt de alleenheerser te zijn in de wereld en dat iedereen naar haar pijpen moet dansen.

Maar volgens mij heeft China nog een vraag uitstaan over die afluisterpraktijken...

Consequences will never be the same

quote:

Op dinsdag 25 juni 2013 13:49 schreef teckna het volgende:

[..]

Ik vind het vooral jammer dat in de media het verhaaltje steeds probeert op te schuiven van PRISM naar Snowden en wat hij dan allemaal wel of niet weet of publiekelijk zou kunnen maken en uit welke motieven hij dat wel of niet zou doen.

quote:

Demonizing Edward Snowden: Which Side Are You On? : The New Yorker



As I write this, a bunch of reporters are flying from Moscow to Havana on an Aeroflot Airbus 330, but Edward Snowden isn’t sitting among them. His whereabouts are unknown. He might still be in the V.I.P. lounge at Sheremetyevo International Airport. He could have left on another plane. There are even suggestions that he has taken shelter in the Ecuadorian Embassy in Moscow.

What we do know is that, on this side of the Atlantic, efforts are being stepped up to demonize Snowden, and to delegitimize his claim to be a conscientious objector to the huge electronic-spying apparatus operated by the United States and the United Kingdom. “This is an individual who is not acting, in my opinion, with noble intent,” General Keith Alexander, the head of the National Security Agency, told ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday. “What Snowden has revealed has caused irreversible and significant damage to our country and to our allies.” Over on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Senator Dianne Feinstein, head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said, “I don’t think this man is a whistle-blower… he could have stayed and faced the music. I don’t think running is a noble thought.”

An unnamed senior Administration official joined the Snowden-bashing chorus, telling reporters, “Mr. Snowden’s claim that he is focussed on supporting transparency, freedom of the press, and protection of individual rights and democracy is belied by the protectors he has potentially chosen: China, Russia, Cuba, Venezuela, and Ecuador. His failure to criticize these regimes suggests that his true motive throughout has been to injure the national security of the U.S., not to advance Internet freedom and free speech.”

It is easy to understand, though not to approve of, why Administration officials, who have been embarrassed by Snowden’s revelations, would seek to question his motives and exaggerate the damage he has done to national security. Feinstein, too, has been placed in a tricky spot. Tasked with overseeing the spooks and their spying operations, she appears to have done little more than nod.

More unnerving is the way in which various members of the media have failed to challenge the official line. Nobody should be surprised to see the New York Post running the headline: “ROGUES’ GALLERY: SNOWDEN JOINS LONG LIST OF NOTORIOUS, GUTLESS TRAITORS FLEEING TO RUSSIA.” But where are Snowden’s defenders? As of Monday, the editorial pages of the Times and the Washington Post, the two most influential papers in the country, hadn’t even addressed the Obama Administration’s decision to charge Snowden with two counts of violating the Espionage Act and one count of theft.

If convicted on all three counts, the former N.S.A. contract-systems administrator could face thirty years in jail. On the Sunday-morning talk shows I watched, there weren’t many voices saying that would be an excessive punishment for someone who has performed an invaluable public service. And the person who did aggressively defend Snowden’s actions, Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian blogger who was one of the reporters to break the story, found himself under attack. After suggesting that Greenwald had “aided and abetted” Snowden, David Gregory, the host of NBC’s “Meet the Press,” asked, “Why shouldn’t you, Mr. Greenwald, be charged with a crime?”

After being criticized on Twitter, Gregory said that he wasn’t taking a position on Snowden’s actions—he was merely asking a question. I’m all for journalists asking awkward questions, too. But why aren’t more of them being directed at Hayden and Feinstein and Obama, who are clearly intent on attacking the messenger?

To get a different perspective on Snowden and his disclosures, here’s a portion of an interview that ABC—the Australian Broadcasting Company, not the Disney subsidiary—did today with Thomas Drake, another former N.S.A. employee, who, in 2010, was charged with espionage for revealing details about an electronic-eavesdropping project called Trailblazer, a precursor to Operation Prism, one of the programs that Snowden documented. (The felony cases against Drake, as my colleague Jane Mayer has written, eventually collapsed, and he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor.)

INTERVIEWER: Not everybody thinks Edward Snowden did the right thing. I presume you do…

DRAKE: I consider Edward Snowden as a whistle-blower. I know some have called him a hero, some have called him a traitor. I focus on what he disclosed. I don’t focus on him as a person. He had a belief that what he was exposed to—U.S. actions in secret—were violating human rights and privacy on a very, very large scale, far beyond anything that had been admitted to date by the government. In the public interest, he made that available.

INTERVIEWER: What do you say to the argument, advanced by those with the opposite viewpoint to you, especially in the U.S. Congress and the White House, that Edward Snowden is a traitor who made a narcissistic decision that he personally had a right to decide what public information should be in the public domain?

DRAKE: That’s a government meme, a government cover—that’s a government story. The government is desperate to not deal with the actual exposures, the content of the disclosures. Because they do reveal a vast, systemic, institutionalized, industrial-scale Leviathan surveillance state that has clearly gone far beyond the original mandate to deal with terrorism—far beyond.

As far as I’m concerned, that about covers it. I wish Snowden had followed Drake’s example and remained on U.S. soil to fight the charges against him. But I can’t condemn him for seeking refuge in a country that doesn’t have an extradition treaty with the United States. If he’d stayed here, he would almost certainly be in custody, with every prospect of staying in a cell until 2043 or later. The Obama Administration doesn’t want him to come home and contribute to the national-security-versus-liberty debate that the President says is necessary. It wants to lock him up for a long time.

And for what? For telling would-be jihadis that we are monitoring their Gmail and Facebook accounts? For informing the Chinese that we eavesdrop on many of their important institutions, including their prestigious research universities? For confirming that the Brits eavesdrop on virtually anybody they feel like? Come on. Are there many people out there who didn’t already know these things?

Snowden took classified documents from his employer, which surely broke the law. But his real crime was confirming that the intelligence agencies, despite their strenuous public denials, have been accumulating vast amounts of personal data from the American public. The puzzle is why so many media commentators continue to toe the official line. About the best explanation I’ve seen came from Josh Marshall, the founder of T.P.M., who has been one of Snowden’s critics. In a post that followed the first wave of stories, Marshall wrote, “At the end of the day, for all its faults, the U.S. military is the armed force of a political community I identify with and a government I support. I’m not a bystander to it. I’m implicated in what it does and I feel I have a responsibility and a right to a say, albeit just a minuscule one, in what it does.”

I suspect that many Washington journalists, especially the types who go on Sunday talk shows, feel the way Marshall does, but perhaps don’t have his level of self-awareness. It’s not just a matter of defending the Obama Administration, although there’s probably a bit of that. It’s something deeper, which has to do with attitudes toward authority. Proud of their craft and good at what they do, successful journalists like to think of themselves as fiercely independent. But, at the same time, they are part of the media and political establishment that stands accused of ignoring, or failing to pick up on, an intelligence outrage that’s been going on for years. It’s not surprising that some of them share Marshall’s view of Snowden as “some young guy I’ve never heard of before who espouses a political philosophy I don’t agree with and is now seeking refuge abroad for breaking the law.”

Mea culpa. Having spent almost eighteen years at The New Yorker, I’m arguably just as much a part of the media establishment as David Gregory and his guests. In this case, though, I’m with Snowden—not only for the reasons that Drake enumerated but also because of an old-fashioned and maybe naïve inkling that journalists are meant to stick up for the underdog and irritate the powerful. On its side, the Obama Administration has the courts, the intelligence services, Congress, the diplomatic service, much of the media, and most of the American public. Snowden’s got Greenwald, a woman from Wikileaks, and a dodgy travel document from Ecuador. Which side are you on?

Bron: www.newyorker.com

quote:

How much damage has Prism done to US tech giants? – Telegraph Blogs


^{By Willard Foxton Tech business Last updated: June 24th, 2013}

The fallout from the Prism leak continues. As people digest what the leaks mean, ripples are going out into the business community. Firms were moving towards free, American, reliable cloud-based services; now things are screeching to a halt, as they think "do we want the NSA having access to this?"

It's more than just idle fear. Newspapers using cloud-based email systems have started communicating with confidential sources using other means. Of course, that throws up problems of its own, as the using of email encryption or anonymising software like Tor automatically marks you as higher risk in the NSA's calculations.

Firms which guarantee client confidentiality – doctors and lawyers, for example – have genuine worries about what could or could not be read. Law firms who regularly end up suing governments are especially worried. New details from the Snowden leaks says that the NSA routinely violates attorney client privilege if "foreign intelligence" is contained within. Even if the NSA doesn't actually end up reading the text of your emails, if you deal with anyone they are watching, you end up on a watch list – which is a recipe for airport harassment all over the world.

Silicon Valley is seen to be too close to the American security services. For example, when Facebook's chief of security left the social media giant, he went straight to work at the NSA. When big tech firms buy up their smaller rivals, they are keen to make deals with the state to improve intelligence access to those services. For example, since Skype was bought by Microsoft, its officials have refused to confirm Skype's original claim that calls can't be tapped, and have updated their privacy policies to demonstrate that they "cooperate with law enforcement as is legally required and technically feasible".

This doesn't just worry lawyers and journalists, it worries the tech industry itself, too. Firms like Amazon, Dropbox and Rackspace have bet the farm on secure, easily accessible cloud storage, and now the NSA looks like pulling the rug out from under them. Firms across Europe – like the French state-funded "Sovereign Cloud" – are looking to make a killing, exploiting the fears businesses have. Many IT professionals would rather have, say, French intelligence reading their data than US intelligence. For example, Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer at internet security company F-Secure, said to CNBC "If you are going to have a Big Brother, I'd much rather have a domestic Big Brother than a foreign Big Brother."

Perhaps the hardest hit is Canadian phone manufacturer RIM, who make the Blackberry phone. One of the last things going for the struggling firm was the perceived security of the Blackberry handset, and particularly the BBM instant messaging system. However, following on from the allegation last week in the Guardian that British intelligence was regularly "Penetrating the security on [G20] delegates' BlackBerrys to monitor their messages and phone calls", rivals to Blackberry in the secure messaging market have seen sales surge.

Redact, a small British firm that makes an allegedly unhackable secure messaging app, tell me their sales have gone up 400 per cent since the Guardian story on Monday. Obviously, they're flogging a product, but other firms are reporting similar effects – for example, anonymous search engine DuckDuckGo has reported huge traffic surges too. People all over the world are worried about the NSA and their links with Silicon valley – and that if European firms move quickly in this febrile environment around US spying, they might be able to steal a march on their previously untouchable rivals.

Bron: blogs.telegraph.co.uk

quote:

'Meet the Press' Pundit With Financial Ties to NSA Misleadingly Slams Snowden | The Nation

Investigating the intersection of politics, lobbying and public policy.

On Meet the Press yesterday, shortly after host host David Gregory stunned many by suggesting that The Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald should face prosecution, a roundtable of pundits discussed the unfolding Edward Snowden story. Mike Murphy, one of the Meet the Press pundits, mocked Snowden’s attempt to seek asylum, calling him a “so-called whistleblower,” and charging that “it’s never been easier in human history to be a whistleblower” through official means.

There are problems here with both the messenger and the message.

First, the message. In fact, the Obama administration has one of the worst records of any president’s in terms of prosecuting leaks and whistleblowers. Moreover, Snowden had virtually no legal protections as a member of an intelligence agency contractor (Booz Allen Hamilton). In These Times reported that “as part of last year’s Whistleblower’s Protection Enhancement Act, rights for whistleblowers were enhanced for many categories of federal employees, but intelligence employees were excluded from coverage under the act. Likewise, intelligence workers—both federal and contract employees—were excluded from whistle blower protections offered to military contract employees under the most recent National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).”

But Murphy himself has a stake in this debate that arguably ought to have been disclosed. Though Murphy was introduced only as a “Republican strategist,” he is also the founding partner of Navigators Global, a lobbying firm that represents one of the NSA’s largest contractors. Disclosures show that Navigators Global represents Computer Sciences Corp. (CSC) on issues before Congress. For at least a decade, CSC has won major contracts from the National Security Agency (NSA). Murphy’s firm has lobbied on behalf of CSC for bills that would expand the NSA’s reach, including the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act or CISPA, which passed the House of Representatives earlier this year. As the Center for Democracy and Technology noted, the “legislation is being billed as an expansion of a collaboration between the National Security Agency (NSA) and major ISPs dubbed the Defense Industrial Base Pilot.”

As Americans continue to debate the revelations raised by Snowden, few lawmakers have raised the potential for abuse when powerful spy technology is outsourced to private contractors. Rather than focusing on the issue of the sprawling surveillance state or its legions of private contractors, many in the media seem intent on only discussing the personality or motives of Edward Snowden. While Murphy’s misleading assertion about whistleblower protections was challenged briefly by NBC’s Chuck Todd, his claim obscures the facts of the story.

Though Meet the Press has a strong reputation for confronting politicians with tough questions, often the show has trouble with disclosure, particularly in terms of revealing the private sector ties of their guests. For instance, Harold Ford, a regular Meet the Press pundit and a frequent voice for corporate-friendly policies, has served in various roles in the finance industry, with Bank of America and now with Morgan Stanley. He has used his perch on the show to criticize the Occupy movement and, more recently, to warn the Obama campaign against attacking Mitt Romney’s private equity record. Yet transcripts show that Ford is almost always introduced not as a Wall Street executive but as a “former Congressman.” Similarly, Murphy is almost always introduced as a “Republican strategist” without mention of his lobbying firm or its clients.

Bron: www.thenation.com

quote:

Op dinsdag 25 juni 2013 14:09 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

[..]

quote:

Op dinsdag 25 juni 2013 15:34 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

[..]

quote:

Op dinsdag 25 juni 2013 15:35 schreef -Strawberry- het volgende:

[..]

Kamp Snowden.

Which side are you on ? (Wall Street)

twitter:

FullertonImages twitterde op dinsdag 25-06-2013 om 19:50:57 Holy crap, #Verizon service has been terrible lately. The #NSA must be bogging down the network... reageer retweet

quote:

Op dinsdag 25 juni 2013 10:51 schreef Weltschmerz het volgende:

[..]

Zoals je misschien weet verzorgt de NOS meerdere nieuwsuitzendingen op een dag, of iets wat daarvoor door moet gaan. Als je dan de formulering "De Amerikaanse regering heeft bevestigd dat het Syrische regime chemische wapens heeft gebruikt.." of woorden van gelijke strekking gebruikt in het ochtendjournaal op televisie dan zegt dat heel veel over het denkraam van degene die dat uit zijn toetsenbord of mond krijgt. Dat er dan in andere, uitgebreidere, uitzendingen wordt genuanceerd doet daar niet aan af.

quote:

Op dinsdag 25 juni 2013 20:18 schreef heiden6 het volgende:

Obama's Insider Threats: Leaking to the Press is ESPIONAGE

Creepy fascistische toestanden.

Insider Threat: Government Employees Urged to Tattle On Coworkers In Effort to Stop Classified Leaks

quote:

Op woensdag 26 juni 2013 05:45 schreef heiden6 het volgende:

MSM failed journalism in Snowden NSA saga

Het is echt triest gesteld met de journalistiek.