Monitoring NSA in de VS en erbuiten, deel 9

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Do NSA's Bulk Surveillance Programs Stop Terrorists?

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On June 5, 2013, the Guardian broke the first story in what would become a flood of revelations regarding the extent and nature of the NSA’s surveillance programs. Facing an uproar over the threat such programs posed to privacy, the Obama administration scrambled to defend them as legal and essential to U.S. national security and counterterrorism. Two weeks after the first leaks by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden were published, President Obama defended the NSA surveillance programs during a visit to Berlin, saying: “We know of at least 50 threats that have been averted because of this information not just in the United States, but, in some cases, threats here in Germany. So lives have been saved.” Gen. Keith Alexander, the director of the NSA, testified before Congress that: “the information gathered from these programs provided the U.S. government with critical leads to help prevent over 50 potential terrorist events in more than 20 countries around the world.” Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said on the House floor in July that “54 times [the NSA programs] stopped and thwarted terrorist attacks both here and in Europe – saving real lives.”

However, our review of the government’s claims about the role that NSA “bulk” surveillance of phone and email communications records has had in keeping the United States safe from terrorism shows that these claims are overblown and even misleading. An in-depth analysis of 225 individuals recruited by al-Qaeda or a like-minded group or inspired by al-Qaeda’s ideology, and charged in the United States with an act of terrorism since 9/11, demonstrates that traditional investigative methods, such as the use of informants, tips from local communities, and targeted intelligence operations, provided the initial impetus for investigations in the majority of cases, while the contribution of NSA’s bulk surveillance programs to these cases was minimal. Indeed, the controversial bulk collection of American telephone metadata, which includes the telephone numbers that originate and receive calls, as well as the time and date of those calls but not their content, under Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act, appears to have played an identifiable role in initiating, at most, 1.8 percent of these cases. NSA programs involving the surveillance of non-U.S. persons outside of the United States under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act played a role in 4.4 percent of the terrorism cases we examined, and NSA surveillance under an unidentified authority played a role in 1.3 percent of the cases we examined.

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NSA Turned Germany Into Its Largest Listening Post in Europe

The National Security Agency has turned Germany into its most important base of operations in Europe, according to a story published by Der Spiegel this week.

The German magazine reports that documents provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden “paint a picture of an all-powerful American intelligence agency that has developed an increasingly intimate relationship with Germany over the past 13 years while massively expanding its presence.” The magazine adds, “No other country in Europe plays host to a secret NSA surveillance architecture like the one in Germany…In 2007, the NSA claimed to have at least a dozen active collection sites in Germany.”

The story reveals that the NSA’s key facilities in Germany include Building 4009 at the “Storage Station” on Ludwig Wolker Street in Wiesbaden, which is in the southwest of the country. Officially known as the European Technical Center, the facility is the NSA’s “primary communications hub” in Europe, intercepting huge amounts of data and forwarding it to “NSAers, warfighters and foreign partners in Europe, Africa and the Middle East,” according to the documents.

Spiegel also reports that an even larger NSA facility is under construction three miles away, in the Clay Kaserne, which is a U.S. military complex. Called the Consolidated Intelligence Center, the facility will cost $124 million once it is completed, and will house data-monitoring specialists from the Storage Station.

The agency’s operations in Germany came under intense scrutiny earlier this year when Spiegel revealed that the NSA had eavesdropped on Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cellphone calls. In its latest issue, the magazine reports on a legal controversy over the NSA’s still-close relationship with its German partner, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND). The Snowden documents show that “the exchange of data, spying tools and know-how is much more intense than previously thought,” according to Spiegel—and this raises the question of whether the BND is violating constitutional protections on privacy for Germans abroad and foreigners in Germany.

The scope of the NSA’s activities in Germany is considerable. Another key NSA facility, Spiegel reports, is the “Dagger Complex” in Griesheim, a town about 25 miles from Wiesbaden. It is “the NSA’s most important listening station in Europe,” with around 240 intelligence analysts working there in 2011. The facility’s official name is the European Center for Cryptology. “NSA staff in Griesheim use the most modern equipment available for the analysis of the data streams, using programs like XKeyscore, which allows for the deep penetration of Internet traffic,” according to Spiegel.

The story also delves into the growth of facilities that house the NSA’s Special Collection Service, which is a joint operation with the CIA to collect targeted communications. There are more than 80 SCS stations around the world, and the Snowden documents indicate two sites are located in Germany—in the U.S. consulate in Frankfurt, and the U.S. embassy in Berlin, which is where the SCS is believed to have recorded Chancellor Merkel’s phone calls.

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Snowdens Deutschland-Akte: Die Dokumente im PDF-Format

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How Secret Partners Expand NSA’s Surveillance Dragnet

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Huge volumes of private emails, phone calls, and internet chats are being intercepted by the National Security Agency with the secret cooperation of more foreign governments than previously known, according to newly disclosed documents from whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The classified files, revealed today by the Danish newspaper Dagbladet Information in a reporting collaboration with The Intercept, shed light on how the NSA’s surveillance of global communications has expanded under a clandestine program, known as RAMPART-A, that depends on the participation of a growing network of intelligence agencies.

It has already been widely reported that the NSA works closely with eavesdropping agencies in the United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia as part of the so-called Five Eyes surveillance alliance. But the latest Snowden documents show that a number of other countries, described by the NSA as “third-party partners,” are playing an increasingly important role – by secretly allowing the NSA to install surveillance equipment on their fiber-optic cables.

The NSA documents state that under RAMPART-A, foreign partners “provide access to cables and host U.S. equipment.” This allows the agency to covertly tap into “congestion points around the world” where it says it can intercept the content of phone calls, faxes, e-mails, internet chats, data from virtual private networks, and calls made using Voice over IP software like Skype.

The program, which the secret files show cost U.S. taxpayers about $170 million between 2011 and 2013, sweeps up a vast amount of communications at lightning speed. According to the intelligence community’s classified “Black Budget” for 2013, RAMPART-A enables the NSA to tap into three terabits of data every second as the data flows across the compromised cables – the equivalent of being able to download about 5,400 uncompressed high-definition movies every minute.

In an emailed statement, the NSA declined to comment on the RAMPART-A program. “The fact that the U.S. government works with other nations, under specific and regulated conditions, mutually strengthens the security of all,” said NSA spokeswoman Vanee’ Vines. “NSA’s efforts are focused on ensuring the protection of the national security of the United States, its citizens, and our allies through the pursuit of valid foreign intelligence targets only.”

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For any foreign government, allowing the NSA to secretly tap private communications is politically explosive, hence the extreme secrecy shrouding the names of those involved. But governments that participate in RAMPART-A get something in return: access to the NSAs sophisticated surveillance equipment, so they too can spy on the mass of data that flows in and out of their territory.

The partnership deals operate on the condition that the host country will not use the NSAs spy technology to collect any data on U.S. citizens. The NSA also agrees that it will not use the access it has been granted to collect data on the host countries citizens. One NSA document notes that there ARE exceptions to this rule though does not state what those exceptions may be.

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House Passes Landmark Amendment To Stop Warrantless NSA Searches

The House overwhelmingly approved an amendment Thursday meant to block the National Security Agency from performing warrantless searches on Americans' communications, rejecting one of the most controversial forms of NSA surveillance revealed by the leaks of Edward Snowden.

The 293-123 vote on an amendment to the annual defense appropriations bill was a victory for civil libertarians on the heels of a gutted NSA reform measure the House approved in May. The amendment still faces an uncertain journey through Congress before it can become law.

"I think people are waking up to what's been going on," said the amendment's sponsor, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.). "Whether you're Republican or Democrat -- because, if you noticed, a majority of Republicans voted for this, as well as a majority of Democrats."

The NSA performs so-called back door searches on the content of Americans' communications without a warrant when they have been in contact with targeted foreigners. Given the vastness of the NSA's target database, and the irrelevance of international boundaries in the Internet age, privacy advocates say they worry an expanding number of Americans' emails and phone calls are being swept up. The House amendment specifically prohibits the NSA from using information identifying U.S. citizens to search communications data it collects under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

NSA critics had warned about such searches for years. But the leaks of former NSA contractor Snowden, as reported in The Guardian, definitively revealed the spy agency's tactics. The NSA claims legal authority to perform the searches.

The amendment was sponsored by Massie, along with Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) and a host of co-sponsors of the earlier attempt at NSA reform, called the USA Freedom Act. The original co-sponsors of that bill included Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.).

Supporters of that measure had surrendered to the Obama administration in dropping the prohibition on back door searches. But the defense appropriations bill gave them another chance.

"After the passage of the USA Freedom Act, this amendment is the logical next step to prevent improper surveillance," Nadler said in a statement before Thursday's vote. "I will continue to work to improve our nation’s privacy laws and to ensure that this Administration, and all those that follow it, respect the constitutional rights of all Americans."

The amendment also aims to block the NSA and CIA from forcing software and hardware providers to insert back doors into their products to allow the government agencies easy access to customer communications. The measure's backers include the American Civil Liberties Union and Google.

Massie pronounced himself "pleasantly surprised" with his amendment's passage. But he acknowledged it still faces a long road to passage.

"That's going to be the trick," Massie said. "It would take somebody to support it on the Senate side as well, and in conference," where the House and Senate reconcile companion bills.

Massie said he faced hurdles from House leaders -- particularly those in charge of the House Intelligence and Judiciary committees -- in winning approval for the amendment. "The leadership was not in favor of it," he said. "The whip's description of the bill, which you could pick up in the cloakroom, was very unflattering and misleading in my opinion.

"It was an amazing struggle to get it ruled in order," he said, referring to parliamentary rules around appropriations bills. He noted that a similar provision was stripped out of the "watered down" USA Freedom Act that passed last month.

But in the end, Massie said, co-sponsors from both parties were critical in getting the amendment approved.

The House passage of the amendment may create momentum for similar reform efforts in the Senate, where Oregon Democrat Ron Wyden has been fighting for years to expose and end the practice of back door searches.

Wyden warned in a recent Los Angeles Times opinion piece with Sens. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) that "intelligence agencies are using a loophole in the law to read some Americans' emails without ever getting a warrant."

The senators wrote that the debate over NSA reforms "is likely to continue for at least the next few years as Americans continue to learn about the scale of ongoing government surveillance activities."

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Fisa court grants extension of licence for bulk collection of US phone records

Reauthorisation is fifth since the Guardian revealed existence of Section 215 telephony metadata program in June last year

US intelligence agencies have made a fifth attempt to extend their bulk collection of American telephone records – more than a year after the controversial practice was first revealed by National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden.

Despite repeated calls from Congress and President Obama for the mass gathering of private US phone records to be banned, a court has approved the request in secret, allowing the NSA to continue collecting metadata until 12 September 2014.

In a joint statement released late on Friday afternoon, the justice department and director of national intelligence, James Clapper, said it was necessary to continue seeking such legal extensions because the Congressional reform process supported by Obama was not yet complete.

"Given that legislation has not yet been enacted, and given the importance of maintaining the capabilities of the Section 215 telephony metadata program, the government has sought a 90-day reauthorization of the existing program," said the joint statement.

The 90-day blanket licence granted by the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, or Fisa court, is the fifth such extension that has been requested, and granted, since the Guardian first revealed the existence of the Section 215 program on 5 June 2013.

Similar 90-day reauthorisations were subsequently declassified by the administration on 19 July 2013, 11 October 2013, 3 January 2014 and 11 April 2014.Yet in March, Obama reacted to growing criticism of the NSA's domestic surveillance acitivities by calling for an end to bulk collection under Section 215 and suggesting that records be retained instead by telephone companies, and only be available for specific searches following court requests.

In May, the House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed the USA Freedom Act, which sought to enshrine this ban in law, although civil liberties campaigners claimed it was significantly watered down after pressure on legislators by government regulators.

In a statement explaining the latest renewal request on Friday, the justice department and office of the director of national intelligence said that they still support the legislation and would work with Congress to try to clarify the language before it is voted on by the Senate.

"Overall, the bill's significant reforms would provide the public greater confidence in our programs and the checks and balances in the system, while ensuring our intelligence and law enforcement professionals have the authorities they need to protect the Nation," the statement said.

"The administration strongly supports the USA Freedom Act. We urge the Senate to swiftly consider it, and remain ready to work with Congress to clarify that the bill prohibits bulk collection as noted above, as necessary."

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Home secretary denies security services engaged in mass surveillance

May uses Mansion House speech to make case for reviving 'snooper's charter' legislation, calling it matter of 'life and death'

The home secretary has denied that the security services are engaged in a programme of mass surveillance as she made her most detailed case yet for a revival of a "snooper's charter" bill to give them extra powers to track everyone's internet and mobile phone use.

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Theresa May said on Tuesday evening that new legislation was now a matter of "life and death", as well as national security, and was needed to maintain the ability of the police and security services to monitor communications – which was being undermined by rapidly changing technology. "We must keep on making the case until we get the changes we need," she said in her Mansion House speech on privacy and security.

May also made a sweeping attack on the claims of privacy campaigners in the wake of the Snowden disclosures of mass harvesting of personal communications data or metadata by Britain's GCHQ and America's NSA, denying that they amount to a programme of mass surveillance. "There is no surveillance state," she said

She insisted the security agencies had not acted illegally, including an explicit denial of a technical loophole being exploited to intercept overseas communications and claimed that the current system of oversight in Britain was unsurpassed in the world.

Although she did not repeat the Home Office claim made two years ago that they had already lost the capability to track 25% of communications data, the home secretary instead said the National Crime Agency had to drop at least 20 cases during a six-month period as a result of missing communications data: "Thirteen of these were threat-to-life cases in which a child was assessed to be at risk of immediate harm," she said without giving further details of why they were dropped.

May's speech follows evidence last week from Charles Farr, the head of the Home Office's security and counter-terrorism unit, that confirmed they could monitor the mass use of social media including Google searches and Facebook use without an individual warrant. Cressida Dick, the most senior police counter-terrorism officer, also warned that the daily loss of capability meant the authorities were "staring into the abyss" on the matter.

But a senior Liberal Democrat source confirmed the position had not changed and there would be no "snooper's charter" this side of the general election, fuelling speculation that the home secretary's campaign is being conducted with an eye on what happens after May 2015.

May said she would go on making the case, telling her Mansion House audience: "The real problem is not that we have built an over-mighty state but that the state is finding it harder to fulfil its most basic duty, which is to protect the public. That is why I have said before and go on saying that we need to make changes to the law to maintain the capabilities we need."

She drew a contrast between the global power of the internet companies, which harvest and trade in personal data from their online services and intrude daily on the privacy of our lives without any warrant, with the disadvantaged position of the state. May said that while such firms can "drive a car up your road and put an image of your home online for the world to observe" it was far harder for governments.

"Far from having some fictitious mastery over all this technology we, in democratic states, face a significant risk of being caught out by it. Governments have always reserved the power to monitor communications and to collect data about communications when it is necessary and proportionate to do so," she said.

"It is much harder now – there is more data, we do not own it and we can no longer always obtain it. I know some people will say 'hurrah for that' – but the result is that we are in danger of making the internet an ungoverned, ungovernable space, a safe haven for terrorism and criminality."

She added that the greatest danger now being faced was not mass surveillance nor illegal and unaccountable behaviour but the loss of capability.

May justified the mass harvesting of personal communications data, saying it relied on automated and remote access to data on the internet and other communications systems: "Computers search for only the communications relating to a small number of suspects under investigation. Once the content of these communications has been identified, and only then, is it examined by trained analysts. And every step of the way it is governed by strict rules, checked against Human Rights Act requirements."

But Julian Huppert, the Lib Dem home affairs spokesman, said it was clear from the Snowden revelations and other sources that "what we have in this country is not done proportionately and with effective oversight. What is needed is a complete review of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, the Telecommunications Act, and everything that goes into the legislative framework of surveillance."

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US to extend privacy protection rights to EU citizens

EU and human rights and privacy groups welcome pledge, which follows pressure in wake of Snowden revelations

The Obama administration has caved in to pressure from the European Union in the wake of Edward Snowden's revelations on surveillance by promising to pass legislation granting European citizens many of the privacy protection rights enjoyed by US citizens.

The proposed law would apply to data on European citizens being transferred to the US for what Washington says is law enforcement purposes.

After the first Snowden revelations appeared in June last year, the Obama administration irritated many by insisting that while US citizens were protected by law from snooping by US spy agencies, this did not apply to non-Americans.

On Wednesday the US attorney general, Eric Holder, promised at a US-EU meeting of home affairs and justice ministers in Athens that legislation would be sent to Congress to extend the US Privacy Act to EU citizens.

The EU, as well as human rights and privacy groups, welcomed Holder's announcement but coupled it with expressions of scepticism, describing it as a vague promise.

Viviane Reding, the EU justice commissioner, said it was an important step in the right direction but added: "Words only matter if put into law. We are waiting for the legislative step."

Human rights groups said the US Privacy Act, in spite of being touted as a beacon for the rest of the world, had a relatively weak regulatory framework. They said Holder's pledge did not address many of the other issues raised by mass surveillance worldwide by the NSA and its partners, including Britain's GCHQ.

Speaking after the Athens meeting, the EU home affairs commissioner, Cecilia Malmstrom, said: "EU-US relations have been strained lately in the aftermath of the Snowden revelations but we have worked very hard to restore trust."

Holder said: "The Obama administration is committed to seeking legislation that would ensure that … EU citizens would have the same right to seek judicial redress for intentional or wilful disclosures of protected information and for refusal to grant access or to rectify any errors in that information, as would a US citizen under the Privacy Act.

"This commitment, which has long been sought by the EU, reflects our resolve to move forward not only on the data protection and privacy agreement but on strengthening transatlantic ties."

The US and the EU have been negotiating for three years over personal data protection, but the discussions took on a new immediacy with the Snowden revelations.

Emotions have been strongest in Germany, given the history of mass surveillance by the Stasi, and this was compounded when it was revealed that the US had been snooping on Angela Merkel. The German government has pressed Obama, Holder and other members of the US administration to set out how they would curb spying on non-Americans.

Over the last year Obama has made repeated overtures to Merkel and other EU leaders only to be rebuffed. European governments, as well as the European parliament, has called for concrete action rather than just soft words. Even a speech in January in which Obama said he had asked Holder and the intelligence community to develop safeguards for foreign citizens met with scepticism.

Holder said the data protection agreement under discussion related to personal data shared with the US by European countries for law enforcement purposes. He framed it in the context of transnational crime and terrorism, in particular fighters travelling to and from Syria.

"One consistent theme ran through all our discussions: in a world of globalised crime and terrorism, we can protect our citizens only if we work together," Holder said. "At the same time, we must ensure that we continue our long tradition of protecting privacy in the law enforcement context."

Gus Hosein, executive director of Privacy International, said: "It is a good step forward. Nonetheless, there are three massive impediments to achieving equivalent protection under law. First, Congress needs to act on this and we haven't seen many positive steps on protecting non-Americans' rights."

Secondly, Hosein described the US Privacy Act as "an unfortunately weak legal regime" and, thirdly, he wanted worldwide privacy protections against what he said was the accumulation of massive amounts of data by US intelligence against non-Americans.

Cynthia Wong, senior internet researcher at Human Rights Watch, said: "It may be a small step in the right direction but much more needs to be done to address data protection in the US and to rein in the sheer scale of what the NSA is collecting."

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NSA fears prompt Germany to end Verizon contract

BERLIN -- The German government is ending a contract with Verizon over fears the company could be letting U.S. intelligence agencies eavesdrop on sensitive communications, officials said Thursday.

The New York-based company has for years provided Internet services to a number of government departments, although not to German security agencies, said Interior Ministry spokesman Tobias Plate.

While Germany had been reconsidering those contracts for some time, they faced additional scrutiny after former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden revealed the extent of electronic eavesdropping by the U.S. intelligence agency and Britain's GCHQ.

German authorities were particularly irked by reports that the NSA had targeted Chancellor Angela Merkel. Berlin has also proposed building more secure networks in Europe to avoid having to rely on American Internet companies that manage much of the electronic traffic circulating the globe.

"There are indications that Verizon is legally required to provide certain things to the NSA, and that's one of the reasons the cooperation with Verizon won't continue," said Plate.

The current contract with Verizon will expire in 2015, he said.

The announcement follows reports this week that Verizon and British company Colt also provide Internet services to the German Parliament and to other official entities.

Verizon didn't immediately respond to emails seeking comment on Germany's decision.

Airship Over the NSA Data Center

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'Illegal Spying Below': blimp flies over NSA data centre in surveillance protest

Stunt used to draw attention to new website rating members of Congress on their approach to data collection



Activists flew a blimp emblazoned with the words "Illegal Spying Below" over the National Security Agency's data centre in Utah on Friday in protest against the US government's mass surveillance programmes.

The one-hour flight was carried out by the environmental group Greenpeace, digital rights activists the Electronic Frontier Foundation and a conservative political organisation, the Tenth Amendment Centre.

The 41 metre (135ft) blimp, owned by Greenpeace, was adorned with a sign that read "NSA Illegal Spying Below".

In an email to Reuters the agency declined to comment. But a spokesman did note there was no restricted airspace over the data centre, housed on the grounds of the Utah National Guard's Camp Williams in Bluffdale, 23 miles (37km) south of Salt Lake City.

The NSA says the facility provides the government with intelligence and warnings about cyber security threats. It is thought to be the agency's largest data storage centre.

The blimp protest coincided with the launch of an online campaign that rates members of Congress on actions the activists say either further or stop data collection efforts by the NSA.

Greenpeace said the report cards on the site standagainstspying.org were created by analysing NSA reform bills in Congress and weighting proposals on the degree to which they would end mass data collection.

"Our right to privacy is not a partisan issue. It's a human rights issue," said Michael Boldin, founder of Tenth Amendment Centre, which advocates for decentralised government.

"This coalition gives great hope for the future because it shows that people across the political spectrum can set aside differences to work together."

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Meet Onionshare, the File Sharing App the Next Snowden Will Use

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A small software app called Onionshare offers the most secure file sharing available. So why hasn't anyone heard of it? Well, mostly because it was released with just a tweet from its creator, and you have to go to Github to download it. But don't let its underground status fool you—this is a very important app.

Technologist Micah Lee debuted his peer-to-peer file sharing service with little fanfare, but what it does is big: Onionshare lets users share files securely and anonymously, without middlemen. Lee created it after reading about the trouble journalist Glenn Greenwald had accepting the NSA files from Edward Snowden. Now Lee works at The Interceptwith Greenwald, where the staff is already putting Onionshare to good use.

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'NSA mag vrijwel iedereen bespioneren'

De Amerikaanse inlichtingendienst NSA heeft een veel groter mandaat om informatie over buitenlandse regeringen en internationale instellingen te verzamelen dan tot nu toe bekend was. Dat blijkt uit een lijst die klokkenluider Edward Snowden heeft gelekt en die The Washington Post in handen heeft.

Daaruit blijkt dat de NSA informatie mag verzamelen over 193 landen, waaronder Nederland. Datzelfde geldt voor een reeks internationale instellingen en organisaties als de Wereldbank, de Europese Unie en het Internationaal Agentschap voor Atoomenergie IAEA. Het in 1978 opgerichte hof dat toezicht op de NSA houdt, heeft met de ruime bevoegdheden voor de NSA ingestemd.

Volgens The Washington Post betekent dit niet noodzakelijkerwijze dat de NSA de blik op al die landen en organisaties heeft gericht, maar wel dat hij de bevoegdheid heeft om dat te doen.

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Court gave NSA broad leeway in surveillance, documents show

Virtually no foreign government is off-limits for the National Security Agency, which has been authorized to intercept information from individuals concerning all but four countries on Earth, according to top-secret documents.

The United States has long had broad no-spying arrangements with those four countries Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand in a group known collectively with the United States as the Five Eyes. But a classified 2010 legal certification and other documents indicate the NSA has been given a far more elastic authority than previously known, one that allows it to intercept through U.S. companies not just the communications of its overseas targets, but any communications about its targets as well.

The certification approved by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and included among a set of documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden lists 193 countries that would be of valid interest for U.S. intelligence. The certification also permitted the agency to gather intelligence about entities such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the European Union and the International Atomic Energy Agency, among others.

The NSA is not necessarily targeting all the countries or organizations identified in the certification, affidavits and an accompanying exhibit; it has only been given authority to do so. Still, the privacy implications are far-reaching, civil liberties advocates say, because of the wide spectrum of people who might be engaged in communication about foreign governments and entities and whose communications might be of interest to the United States.

These documents show both the potential scope of the governments surveillance activities and the exceedingly modest role the court plays in overseeing them, said Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union, who had the documents described to him.

NSA officials, who declined to comment on the certification or acknowledge its authenticity, stressed the constraints placed on foreign intelligence-gathering. The collection must relate to a foreign intelligence requirement there are thousands set for the intelligence agencies by the president, director of national intelligence and various departments through the so-called National Intelligence Priorities Framework.

Furthermore, former government officials said, it is prudent for the certification to list every country even those whose affairs do not seem to immediately bear on U.S. national security interests or foreign policy.

Its not impossible to imagine a humanitarian crisis in a country thats friendly to the United States, where the military might be expected on a moments notice to go in and evacuate all Americans, said a former senior defense official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

If that certification did not list the country, the NSA could not gather intelligence under the law, the former official said.

The documents shed light on a little-understood process that is central to one of the NSAs most significant surveillance programs: collection of the e-mails and phone calls of foreign targets under Section 702 of the 2008 FISA Amendments Act.

The foreign government certification, signed by the attorney general and director of national intelligence, is one of three approved annually by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, pursuant to the law. The other two relate to counterterrorism and counterproliferation, according to the documents and former officials.

Under the Section 702 program, the surveillance court also approves rules for surveillance targeting and for protecting Americans privacy. The certifications, together with the National Intelligence Priorities Framework, serve as the basis for targeting a person or an entity.

The documents underscore the remarkable breadth of potential foreign intelligence collection. Though the FISA Amendments Act grew out of an effort to place under statute a surveillance program devoted to countering terrorism, the result was a program far broader in scope.

An affidavit in support of the 2010 foreign government certification stated that the NSA believes foreigners who will be targeted for collection possess, are expected to receive and/or are likely to communicate foreign intelligence information concerning these foreign powers.

That language could allow for surveillance of academics, journalists and human-rights researchers. A Swiss academic who has information on the German governments position in the run-up to an international trade negotiation, for instance, could be targeted if the government has determined there is a foreign intelligence need for that information. If a U.S. college professor e-mails the Swiss professors e-mail address or phone number to a colleague, the Americans e-mail could be collected as well, under the programs court-approved rules.

Even the no-spy agreements with the Five Eye countries have exceptions. The agencys principal targeting system automatically filters out phone calls from Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. But it does not do so for their 28 sovereign territories, such as the British Virgin Islands. An NSA policy bulletin distributed in April 2013 said filtering out those country codes would slow the system down.

Intelligence requirements, whether satisfied through human sources or electronic surveillance, involve information that may touch on almost every foreign country, said Timothy Edgar, former privacy officer at the Office of Director of National Intelligence and now a visiting fellow at Brown Universitys Watson Institute for International Affairs.

Those efforts could include surveillance of all manner of foreign intelligence targets anything from learning about Russian anti-submarine warfare to Chinese efforts to hack into American companies, he said. Its unlikely the NSA would target academics, journalists or human-rights researchers if there was any other way of getting information, Edgar said.

A spokeswoman for the NSA, Vanee Vines, said the agency may only target foreigners reasonably believed to be outside the United States.

Vines noted that in January, President Obama issued a policy directive that stated that U.S. surveillance shall be as tailored as feasible. He also directed that the United States no longer spy on dozens of foreign heads of state and that sensitive targeting decisions be subject to high-level review.

In short, there must be a particular intelligence need, policy approval and legal authorization for U.S. signals intelligence activities, including activities conducted pursuant to Section 702, Vines said.

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PayPal freezes account of email encryption startup ProtonMail

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ProtonMail was supposed to be an easy email encryption tool that would finally give us an answer to Internet surveillance around the world.

Instead, PayPal has frozen over $275,000 in donations to the project because, a PayPal representative told the company, the American payment service is not sure if ProtonMail is legal.

Of course, it is absolutely legal to encrypt email. The freeze remains in place.

Most incredible of all, the PayPal representative was unsure if ProtonMail has the necessary government approval to encrypt emails, as though anyone who encrypts needs a license to do so.

ProtonMail doesn’t need government approval, by the way, but it has it anyway. The encryption used by ProtonMail has been unquestionably legal since the 1990s. If that’s not enough, the Constitution’s First Amendment protects encryption code and its Fourth Amendment guarantees against unreasonable searches, exactly what encryption protects against.

“At this time, it is not possible for ProtonMail to receive or send funds through PayPal,” ProtonMail co-founder Andy Yen announced this morning. “No attempt was made by PayPal to contact us before freezing our account, and no notice was given.”

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Top-secret court to weigh ban on MI5 and GCHQ spying on MPs in public

Investigatory Powers Tribunal will hold public hearing brought by Greens on Wilson Doctrine, which bans spying on parliament

Britain's most secretive court is to hold a rare public hearing to decide whether there is any legal force behind the long-standing political doctrine that the country's intelligence agencies cannot bug the phones or spy on the emails of members of parliament.

The Investigatory Powers Tribunal agreed to the hearing after two Green party parliamentarians – Caroline Lucas, MP for Brighton Pavilion, and Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb – complained that disclosures by the whistleblower Edward Snowden made it clear that GCHQ was capturing their communications in breach of the so-called Wilson Doctrine.

Kate Grange, counsel for GCHQ, MI5 and MI6, told the IPT on Tuesday that her clients wanted to reserve the right to make submissions on the issue in "closed" – or secret – session, with the public and the media excluded. "It may well be that we would want to say something in closed about the past policy or practice in relation to the Wilson Doctrine," she said.

The convention is named after former prime minister Harold Wilson, who pledged in 1966 that MPs' and peers' phones would not be tapped. In December 1997, then prime minister Tony Blair said the doctrine extended to electronic communication, including emails.

Prime ministers have the power to reverse the policy. While they must inform MPs of the change, they can choose when to announce it. Lucas and Jones argue that the Wilson Doctrine must have legal force, and complain that GCHQ's bulk interception of electronic communications must be unlawful.

The president of the tribunal, Mr Justice Burton, said he wished first to give a judgment on whether or not the doctrine had legal force. At that point, he said, if it did have legal force "we will make our usual inquiries" of the agencies to establish whether the parliamentarians' communications had been intercepted.

Burton raised objections to the agencies' suggestion that the issue may need to be considered partly in closed session, on the grounds that it would fuel criticisms that the IPT operated in a Kafkaesque fashion, which he said it did not.

But he declined to provide lawyers for Lucas and Jones with a copy of an order that the tribunal had issued to the agencies after the parliamentarians' complaint had been lodged. The government's lawyers say they will neither confirm nor deny the existence of the interception programmes that were disclosed by Snowden.

The hearing was adjourned until October.

The IPT investigates complaints about the intelligence agencies and other bodies that have powers of surveillance. Almost all of its work is conducted behind closed doors, with complainants usually unaware that hearings are taking place.

This year the Guardian disclosed [http://www.theguardian.co(...)-clegg-miliband]that although the IPT claims to be independent of government, it had been secretly operating from within the Home Office since it was established 14 years earlier.

The IPT is also about to hear a challenge to the legality of the government's bulk interception practices, in a case brought by almost a dozen British and international rights groups.

It is also considering a complaint by a Libyan dissident who was kidnapped in 2004 and delivered to Muammar Gaddafi, along with his heavily pregnant wife, with the help of MI6. He alleged that the bulk interception operations had collected his legally privileged communications with lawyers who are bringing his damages claim against the British government and the former foreign secretary Jack Straw.

The IPT has dealt with about 1,500 complaints since it was established. It has not upheld any complaints about any of the UK's intelligence agencies.

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NSA Whistleblowers Testify on ‘Totalitarian Mentality’ of NSA at German Parliamentary Committee Hearing

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National Security Agency whistleblowers William Binney and Thomas Drake testified before a German parliamentary committee as part of an inquiry into NSA surveillance in Germany.

According to Deutsche Welle, Binney argued that the NSA had abandoned nearly all rule of law principles. It now has a “totalitarian mentality” and wants “total information control.”

He called NSA the “greatest threat” to America since the Civil War.

The committee asked him about a story that broke that day from Panorama on how NSA targets individuals who merely search for “privacy-enhancing software tools.” The agency tracks the IP address of the person and especially spies on the Tor network, which democracy activists are known to use to bypass authoritarian internet controls.

The NSA uses XKeyscore, a program that was first revealed when disclosures from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden began in June 2013. It is a “collection and analysis tool” used to exploit computer networks. It can be used to gather data on “nearly everything a user does on the internet.”

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What do we want? CAT VIDEOS! How do we get them? TOR!

Anonymity outfit responds to NSA targeting allegations

The Onion Router project has fired back at the National Security Agency, after it emerged that those who use the network – and read Linux magazines – are considered worthy of surveillance.

Tor's blogged riposte points out that “Just learning that somebody visited the Tor or Tails website doesn't tell you whether that person is a journalist source, someone concerned that her Internet Service Provider will learn about her health conditions, or just someone irked that cat videos are blocked in her location.”

Cat videos are blocked in some places? Now that sounds like the kind of thing the NSA should be fighting!

The post we've linked to comes from an author named “Phobos”, a handle generally assumed to be a pen name for Tor executive director Andrew Lewman.

Whatever the author's true identity, he or she is clearly quite upset by NSA's alleged activities.

“... it's worth emphasizing that we designed bridges for users in countries like China and Iran, and here we are finding out about attacks by our own country,” Phobos writes. “Now I understand how the Google engineers felt when they learned about the attacks on their infrastructure.” ®