Monitoring NSA in de VS en erbuiten, deel 10

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Draft snooper's charter 'fails on spying powers and privacy protections'

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Theresa May’s draft “snooper’s charter” bill fails to cover all the intrusive spying powers of the security agencies and lacks clarity in its privacy protections, a parliamentary committee has said.

The intelligence and security committee said the draft legislation published by the home secretary suffered from a lack of sufficient time and preparation. It was evident that even those working on the legislation had not always been clear about what it was intended to achieve, it said.

The unexpectedly critical intervention by the ISC, which is nominated by the prime minister and chaired by the former Conservative attorney general, Dominic Grieve, comes just two days before a key scrutiny committee of MPs and peers is to deliver its verdict on the draft legislation aimed at regulating the surveillance powers of the security agencies.

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Here you can read about:
- Signals Intelligence (SIGINT),
- Communications Security (COMSEC),
- Information Classification,
and also about the equipment, from past and present, which make that civilian and military leaders can communicate in order to fulfill their duties.

The main focus will be on the United States and its National Security Agency (NSA), but attention will also be paid to other countries and subjects.

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How NSA contact chaining combines domestic and foreign phone records

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In the previous posting we saw that the domestic telephone records, which NSA collected under authority of Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act (internally referred to as BR-FISA), were stored in the centralized contact chaining system MAINWAY, which also contains all kinds of metadata collected overseas.

Here we will take a step-by-step look at what NSA analysts do with these data in order to find yet unknown conspirators of foreign terrorist organisations.

It becomes clear that the initial contact chaining is followed by various analysis methods, and that the domestic metadata are largely integrated with the foreign ones, something NSA never talked about and which only very few observers noticed.

_{What is described here is the situation until the end of 2015. The current practice under the USA FREEDOM Act differs in various ways. The information in this article is almost completely derived from documents declassified by the US government, but these have various parts redacted.}

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Apple weigert FBI te helpen om iPhone terrorist te kraken - rtlz.nl

Een rechter bepaalde gisteren dat Apple de FBI speciale software moet leveren die een bepaalde veiligheidsencryptie kan kraken. Maar Apple weigert dat.

Het technologiebedrijf zegt dat het een 'gevaarlijke achterdeur' in zijn systeem moet bouwen. "De overheid heeft ons gevraagd om iets dat we niet hebben en iets dat we te gevaarlijk vinden om te creëren.''

Misbruik door criminelen
Als rechercheurs de beveiliging van een telefoon kunnen kraken, kunnen criminelen zo'n gat in de beveiliging ook misbruiken, zegt Apple.

"Als de techniek eenmaal is gemaakt, kan het telkens weer worden gebruikt, op alle apparaten. Het zou hetzelfde zijn als een moedersleutel die honderden miljoenen sloten kan openen, van restaurants en banken tot winkels en huizen. Geen redelijk persoon zou dat acceptabel vinden."

Alle gegevens gewist
Om meer te weten te komen over de schutter, Syed Farook, willen rechercheurs van de FBI zijn telefoon uitpluizen. Maar dat kan niet, omdat ze nog niet door de beveiliging heen zijn. Als ze het te vaak proberen, zorgt ingebouwde software ervoor dat alle gegevens worden gewist.

Syed Farook en zijn vrouw Tashfeen Malik schoten op 2 december vorig jaar in het Californische San Bernardino 14 mensen dood. De twee terroristen werd later doodgeschoten door de politie.

Bron: www.rtlz.nl

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Snowden komt terug naar de VS als hij een eerlijk proces krijgt - rtlz.nl

De voormalige medewerker van de Amerikaanse geheime dienst lijkt langzaam genoeg te hebben van zijn verblijf in Rusland. Hij woont daar sinds hij in 2013 de VS ontvluchtte, nadat hij details had gelekt van een grootschalig spionageprogramma van de Amerikaanse overheid. In de VS hangt hem daarvoor een gevangenisstraf van 30 jaar boven het hoofd.

Via Skype vertelde Snowden gisteren aan aanhangers in de Amerikaanse staat New Hampshire dat hij bereid is om uitgeleverd te worden, meldt persbureau AP.

Openbaar verdedigen
"Ik heb de overheid verteld dat ik terug zou komen als ze een eerlijk proces zouden garanderen", zei hij volgens het persbureau. Snowden wil tijdens de rechtszaak de mogelijkheid krijgen om zichzelf in het openbaar te verdedigen en uit te leggen waarom hij de geheimen lekte. Hij wil graag dat zijn daden beoordeeld worden door een jury.

Snowden heeft eerder al eens gezegd dat hij zijn terugkeer naar de VS wil bespreken met de overheid. Hij zou bijvoorbeeld schuld willen bekennen in ruil voor een strafvermindering en heeft ook gezegd dat hij bereid was de cel in te gaan.

Wachten op de overheid
Eric Holder, tot eind vorig jaar minister van Justitie in de VS, zei eerder dat een deal met Snowden een mogelijkheid was. Maar Snowden zei in oktober dat hij nog steeds wachtte op een reactie van de overheid.

Snowdens onthullingen over de Amerikaanse en Britse geheime diensten hebben geleid tot een internationale discussie over het monitoren van persoonlijke communicatie en de balans tussen veiligheid en privacy.

Zijn acties maken hem volgens sommigen een held. Critici noemen hem een verrader en stellen dat zijn onthullingen de strijd tegen terrorisme in gevaar hebben gebracht.

Bron: www.rtlz.nl

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We cannot trust our government, so we must trust the technology | US news | The Guardian

Apple’s battle with the FBI is not about privacy v security, but a conflict created by the US failure to legitimately oversee its security service post Snowden


The showdown between Apple and the FBI is not, as many now claim, a conflict between privacy and security. It is a conflict about legitimacy.

America’s national security agencies insist on wielding unaccountable power coupled with “trust us, we’re the good guys”, but the majority of users have no such trust. Terrorism is real, and surveillance can sometimes help prevent it, but the only path to sustainable accommodation between technologies of secrecy and adequately informed policing is through a root-and-branch reform of the checks and balances in the national security system.

The most important principle that the Obama administration and Congress need to heed in this conflict is: “Physician, heal thyself.”

The FBI, to recap, is demanding that Apple develop software that would allow it to access the secure data on the work phone of one of the two perpetrators of the San Bernardino attack.

Apple has refused to do so, arguing that in order to build the ability to access this phone, it would effectively be creating a backdoor into all phones.

The debate is being publicly framed on both sides as a deep conflict between security and freedom; between the civil rights of users to maintain their privacy, and the legitimate needs of law enforcement and national security. Yet this is the wrong way to think about it.

The fundamental problem is the breakdown of trust in institutions and organizations. In particular, the loss of confidence in oversight of the American national security establishment.

It is important to remember that Apple’s initial decision to redesign its products so that even Apple cannot get at a user’s data was in direct response to the Snowden revelations. We learned from Snowden that the US national security system spent the years after 9/11 eviscerating the system of delegated oversight that had governed national security surveillance after Watergate and other whistleblower revelations exposed pervasive intelligence abuses in the 1960s and 70s.

Apple’s design of an operating system impervious even to its own efforts to crack it was a response to a global loss of trust in the institutions of surveillance oversight. It embodied an ethic that said: “You don’t have to trust us; you don’t have to trust the democratic oversight processes of our government. You simply have to have confidence in our math.”

This approach builds security in a fundamentally untrustworthy world.

Related: Apple v FBI: engineers would be ashamed to break their own encryption

Many people I know and admire are troubled by the present impasse. After all, what if you really do need information from a terrorist about to act, or a kidnapper holding a child hostage? These are real and legitimate concerns, but we will not solve them by looking in the wrong places. The FBI’s reliance on the All Writs Act from 1789 says: “I am the government and you MUST do as you are told!” How legitimate or illegitimate what the government does is irrelevant, so this logic goes, to the citizen’s duty to obey a legally issued order.

The problem with the FBI’s approach is that it betrays exactly the mentality that got us into the mess we are in. Without commitment by the federal government to be transparent and accountable under institutions that function effectively, users will escape to technology. If Apple is forced to cave, users will go elsewhere. American firms do not have a monopoly on math.

In the tumultuous days after the Snowden revelations there were various committees and taskforces created to propose reforms. Even a review group made of top former White House and national security insiders proposed extensive structural reforms to how surveillance operated and how it was overseen. Neither the administration nor Congress meaningfully implemented any of these reforms.

Apple’s technology is a response to users’ thirst for technology that can secure their privacy and autonomy in a world where they cannot trust any institutions, whether government or market.

It is therefore the vital national security interest of the US that we build an institutional system of robust accountability and oversight for surveillance and investigation powers. We need meaningful restrictions on collection and use of data; we need genuinely independent review, with complete access to necessary information and a technically proficient capacity to exercise review.

Perhaps most importantly, we need to end the culture of impunity that protects people who run illegal programs and continue to thrive in their careers after they are exposed, but vindictively pursues the whistleblowers who expose that illegality.

Only such a system, that offers transparently meaningful oversight and real consequences for those who violate our trust, has any chance of being trustworthy enough to remove the persistent global demand for platforms that preserve user privacy and security even at the expense of weakening the capabilities of their policing and national security agencies.

Apple’s case is not about freedom versus security; it is about trustworthy institutions or trust-independent technology. We cannot solve it by steamrolling the technology in service of untrusted institutions.

Bron: www.theguardian.com

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WikiLeaks: NSA luisterde telefoontjes tussen Merkel en Ban Ki-moon af

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De Amerikaanse inlichtingendienst NSA heeft in 2008 naar verluidt telefoongesprekken tussen de Duitse bondskanselier Angela Merkel en secretaris-generaal van de Verenigde Naties Ban Ki-moon afgeluisterd. Dit blijkt uit de meest recente onthullingen op de klokkenluiderwebsite WikiLeaks.

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Italy summons American ambassador to ​clarify reports NSA spied on Berlusconi | World news | The Guardian

John Phillips summoned to Rome following accusations that the US National Security Agency spied on the former prime minister and his close associates

The Italian government has summoned the American ambassador to Rome following accusations that the US National Security Agency spied on former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi and some of his close associates in 2011, at the height of the eurozone crisis.

The Italian foreign ministry said in a statement that it has summoned the US ambassador, John Phillips, for “clarification” about the reports, but declined to elaborate on who Phillips met and whether the accusations of wiretapping were addressed.

A report in L’Espresso, the Italian news magazine, said that WikiLeaks documents had revealed that the NSA – the US government agency whose mass surveillance programme in the US was revealed by Edward Snowden – had spied on Berlusconi and some of his associates as the Italian economy was heading into freefall, and as the former conservative premier was facing allegations about his “Bunga Bunga” sex parties.

Citing WikiLeaks documents, the report states that Berlusconi, as well as his “trusted personal adviser” Valentino Valentini, national security adviser Bruno Archi, Marco Carnelos, a diplomatic adviser, and the permanent representative of Italy to Nato, Stefano Stefanini, were all targeted.

The US was allegedly concerned with Berlusconi’s relationship with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin. Earlier WikiLeaks cables dating back to 2009 portrayed Valentini as a shadowy figure who looked after Berlusconi’s interests in Russia and quoted US contacts within Berlusconi’s party and the Democratic party – which is currently in power – as believing that Berlusconi was profiting personally from energy deals between Italy and Russia

The report suggested that the new revelations “reopen the case” about why Berlusconi ultimately stepped down, but it did not make any direct allegations in connection to the WikiLeaks documents. Berlusconi’s resignation led to the ascent of Mario Monti’s government, who was followed by prime minister Enrico Letta, and, finally, the current premier, Matteo Renzi.

The report said that the NSA also intercepted a phone conversation between Berlusconi and the Israeli leader, Binyamin Netanyahu, in March 2010, in a period of crisis between Israel and the US, after Netanyahu announced Israel planned to build 1,600 homes in East Jerusalem. In the conversation, Netanyahu allegedly said tensions between Israel and the US could only be heightened by the absence of direct contacts with Barack Obama, the US president. In response, Berlusconi promised to help mend ties with Washington.

The US embassy did not respond to a request for comment. The news comes one day after a report in the Wall Street Journal revealed that Italy has agreed to allow the US to use the American and Nato naval air base in Sicily to launch armed drones in defensive attacks against Isis in northern Africa. The breakthrough came after a year of negotiations between the countries, with Italy reportedly blocking a request by the US to use the Sicilian base to launch potential offensive attacks.

The decision to summon the ambassador was not entirely unprecedented. When the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, learned that the NSA had spied on her, she rang up Obama directly and the issue strained the relationship between Germany and the US.

Ambassador Phillips was confirmed by the Senate in August 2013. On the US embassy website, it says the former Washington attorney played a “significant role” in the creation of a whistleblower reward programme designed to encourage private citizens to expose and detect defence contractor fraud. He is married to Linda Douglass, who served as communications director for the White House effort to pass healthcare reform.

Bron: www.theguardian.com

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Obama Administration Set to Expand Sharing of Data That N.S.A. Intercepts

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is on the verge of permitting the National Security Agency to share more of the private communications it intercepts with other American intelligence agencies without first applying any privacy protections to them, according to officials familiar with the deliberations.

The change would relax longstanding restrictions on access to the contents of the phone calls and email the security agency vacuums up around the world, including bulk collection of satellite transmissions, communications between foreigners as they cross network switches in the United States, and messages acquired overseas or provided by allies.
Continue reading the main story
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The idea is to let more experts across American intelligence gain direct access to unprocessed information, increasing the chances that they will recognize any possible nuggets of value. That also means more officials will be looking at private messages — not only foreigners’ phone calls and emails that have not yet had irrelevant personal information screened out, but also communications to, from, or about Americans that the N.S.A.’s foreign intelligence programs swept in incidentally.

Civil liberties advocates criticized the change, arguing that it will weaken privacy protections. They said the government should disclose how much American content the N.S.A. collects incidentally — which agency officials have said is hard to measure — and let the public debate what the rules should be for handling that information.

“Before we allow them to spread that information further in the government, we need to have a serious conversation about how to protect Americans’ information,” said Alexander Abdo, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer.

Robert S. Litt, the general counsel in the office of the Director of National Intelligence, said that the administration had developed and was fine-tuning what is now a 21-page draft set of procedures to permit the sharing.

The goal for the final rules, Brian P. Hale, a spokesman for the office, said in a statement, is “to ensure that they protect privacy, civil liberties and constitutional rights while enabling the sharing of information that is important to protect national security.”

Until now, National Security Agency analysts have filtered the surveillance information for the rest of the government. They search and evaluate the information and pass only the portions of phone calls or email that they decide is pertinent on to colleagues at the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other agencies. And before doing so, the N.S.A. takes steps to mask the names and any irrelevant information about innocent Americans.

The new system would permit analysts at other intelligence agencies to obtain direct access to raw information from the N.S.A.’s surveillance to evaluate for themselves. If they pull out phone calls or email to use for their own agency’s work, they would apply the privacy protections masking innocent Americans’ information — a process known as “minimization” — at that stage, Mr. Litt said.

Executive branch officials have been developing the new framework and system for years. President George W. Bush set the change in motion through a little-noticed line in a 2008 executive order, and the Obama administration has been quietly developing a framework for how to carry it out since taking office in 2009.

The executive branch can change its own rules without going to Congress or a judge for permission because the data comes from surveillance methods that lawmakers did not include in the main law that governs national security wiretapping, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA.

FISA covers a narrow band of surveillance: the collection of domestic or international communications from a wire on American soil, leaving most of what the N.S.A. does uncovered. In the absence of statutory regulation, the agency’s other surveillance programs are governed by rules the White House sets under a Reagan-era directive called Executive Order 12333.

Mr. Litt declined to make available a copy of the current draft of the proposed procedures.

“Once these procedures are final and approved, they will be made public to the extent consistent with national security,” Mr. Hale said. “It would be premature to draw conclusions about what the procedures will provide or authorize until they are finalized.”

Among the things they would not address is what the draft rules say about searching the raw data using names or keywords intended to bring up Americans’ phone calls or email that the security agency gathered “incidentally” under the 12333 surveillance programs — including whether F.B.I. agents may do so when working on ordinary criminal investigations.

Under current rules for data gathered under a parallel program — the no-warrant surveillance program governed by the FISA Amendments Act — N.S.A. and C.I.A. officials may search for Americans’ information only if their purpose is to find foreign intelligence, but F.B.I. agents may conduct such a search for intelligence or law enforcement purposes. Some lawmakers have proposed requiring the government to obtain a warrant before conducting such a search.

In 2013, The Washington Post reported, based on documents leaked by the former intelligence contractor Edward J. Snowden, that the N.S.A. and its British counterpart, Government Communications Headquarters, had tapped into links connecting Google’s and Yahoo’s data centers overseas and that the American spy agency had collected millions of records a day from them. The companies have since taken steps to encrypt those links.

That collection occurred under 12333 rules, which had long prohibited the N.S.A. from sharing raw information gathered from the surveillance it governed with other members of the intelligence community before minimization. The same rule had also long applied to sharing information gathered with FISA wiretaps.

But after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the Bush administration began an effort to tear down barriers that impeded different parts of the government from working closely and sharing information, especially about terrorism.

In 2002, for example, it won permission, then secret, from the intelligence court permitting the C.I.A., the F.B.I. and the N.S.A. to share raw FISA wiretap information. The government did not disclose that change, which was first reported in a 2014 New York Times article based on documents disclosed by Mr. Snowden.

In August 2008, Mr. Bush change d 12333 to permit the N.S.A. to share unevaluated surveillance information with other intelligence agencies once procedures were developed.

Intelligence officials began working in 2009 on how the technical system and rules would work, Mr. Litt said, eventually consulting the Defense and Justice Departments. This month, the administration briefed the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, an independent five-member watchdog panel, seeking input. Before they go into effect, they must be approved by James R. Clapper, the intelligence director; Loretta E. Lynch, the attorney general; and Ashton B. Carter, the defense secretary.

“We would like it to be completed sooner rather than later,” Mr. Litt said. “Our expectation is months rather than weeks or years.”

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Privacy Shield: dit houdt de datadeal tussen EU-VS in - rtlz.nl

Twee jaar werkten Europa en de Verenigde Staten aan een opvolger voor Safe Harbor, de afspraak waarmee Amerikaanse bedrijven data van Europeanen mochten verwerken en opslaan. Het Europees Hof verklaarde Safe Harbor vorig jaar ongeldig, nadat klokkenluider Edward Snowden de spionagepraktijken van de Amerikaanse geheime dienst NSA openbaarde.

Amerikaanse bedrijven raakten toen in paniek, omdat zij wettelijk gezien geen data van Europese gebruikers in de VS mochten verwerken. Met het Privacy Shield wordt dit weer mogelijk, maar zowel de Amerikaanse overheid als Amerikaanse bedrijven moeten zich voortaan aan striktere regels houden.

Dit is nieuw in Privacy Shield:

1. Amerikaanse bedrijven moeten zich registeren voor deelname aan het Privacy Shield
Dit klinkt een beetje als Safe Harbor 2.0: bedrijven moeten schriftelijk aantonen dat zij de privacy van Europese burgers waarborgen. Dat gebeurt elk jaar. Het Amerikaanse ministerie van Economische Zaken houdt er toezicht op dat bedrijven zich houden aan het Privacy Shield, en het zorgt voor een up-to-date lijst met aangesloten bedrijven. Als bedrijven zich toch niet aan het Privacy Shield houden, dan volgen er sancties.

In het Privacy Shield staat onder andere dat bedrijven data van Europese burgers alleen mogen verwerken voor 'gelimiteerde en gespecificeerde doeleinden' en dat individuen daarmee expliciet in moet stemmen. Ook moeten de data veilig worden opgeslagen zodat niet jan en alleman bij de data kan.

2. De Amerikaanse geheime dienst mag niet zomaar Europese burgers bespioneren
De Europese Commissie is tevreden met de schriftelijke garanties van de VS dat de Amerikaanse geheime dienst data van Europese burgers alleen aftapt als daar noodzaak voor is. Er zijn volgens de Europese Commissie 'duidelijke beperkingen, waarborgen en toezichtmechanismen' ingesteld voor spionage door de NSA.

Ook wordt er een onafhankelijke ombudsman in de VS aangesteld die klachten over de spionagepraktijken van de NSA behandelt. Hier kunnen Europese burgers met hun klachten terecht. Ook worden de praktijken van de geheime dienst elk jaar door de Europese Commissie opnieuw onder de loep genomen.

3. Amerikaanse bedrijven moeten klachten binnen 45 dagen in behandeling nemen
Als je een klacht indient bij een Amerikaans bedrijf over het verwerken van jouw data, moet de klacht binnen 45 dagen in behandeling worden genomen. Je kunt als gebruiker een klacht bij het bedrijf indienen of aankloppen bij de Nederlandse privacywaakhond Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens. Daarnaast krijgt het Privacy Shield een tool waarmee Europese burgers klachten over Amerikaanse bedrijven kunnen indienen. Ook wordt er een speciaal Europees panel opgericht dat dergelijke klachten in behandeling kan nemen.

4. Elk jaar wordt het Privacy Shield opnieuw beoordeeld
Het Privacy Shield wordt elk jaar door de Europese Commissie en het Amerikaanse ministerie van Economische Zaken opnieuw beoordeeld. Bij deze beoordeling worden ook de spionagepraktijken van de NSA meegenomen - en of de geheime dienst niet over de schreef is gegaan. Dat gebeurt onder andere met transparantierapporten van bedrijven, die publiceren hoe vaak ze door een overheid zijn benaderd om gegevens over te dragen.

'Een varken met tien lagen lippenstift'
Andrus Ansip, vicepresident van de Europese Commissie, is blij met de details van het Privacy Shield: "We blijven werken om het vertrouwen in de online wereld te versterken. Vertrouwen is een must, en dat wat onze digitale toekomst zal aandrijven."

Maar vertrouwen is volgens critici niet genoeg om de privacy van Europese burgers te beschermen. "De EU en VS proberen zo'n tien lagen lippenstift op een varken te smeren, maar de kernproblemen zijn duidelijk niet opgelost", schrijft Max Schrems (pdf). De Oostenrijker zorgde er met een rechtszaak tegen Facebook voor dat Safe Harbor werd afgeschaft. Schrems vindt dat zijn data op de Amerikaanse servers van Facebook niet veilig zijn, en het Europees Hof stelde hem in het gelijk.

Schrems: "De Europese Commissie claimt dat er geen 'bulkspionage' meer plaatsvindt, maar de documenten zeggen juist het tegenovergestelde." Hij doelt op een passage in het Privacy Shield, waarmee het in bulk verzamelen van data van Europese burgers door de NSA alleen is toegestaan onder zes specifieke voorwaarden, zoals omwille van counterterrorisme en cybersecurity.

Volgens Schrems zijn er genoeg mensen die met het Privacy Shield weer naar het Europees Hof stappen om de legaliteit van de afspraak te beproeven: "En ik kan zeker één van die mensen zijn."

De Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens komt vandaag met een officiële reactie op het Privacy Shield. De Nederlandse privacywaakhond moet, in samenwerking met de Artikel 29-werkgroep die bestaat uit de Europese privacytoezichthouders, nog zijn officiële goedkeuring geven.

Bron: www.rtlz.nl

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Snooper's charter: wider police powers to hack phones and access web history | World news | The Guardian

Latest version of investigatory powers bill will allow police to hack people’s computers and view browsing history


Powers for the police to access everyone’s web browsing histories and to hack into phones are to be expanded under the latest version of the snooper’s charter legislation.

The extension of police powers contained in the investigatory powers bill published on Tuesday indicates the determination of the home secretary, Theresa May, to get her legislation on to the statute book by the end of this year despite sweeping criticism by three separate parliamentary committees in the past month.

Related: Technology firms' hopes dashed by 'cosmetic tweaks' to snooper's charter

The bill is designed to provide the first comprehensive legal framework for state surveillance powers anywhere in the world. It has been developed in response to the disclosure of state mass surveillance programmes by the whistleblower Edward Snowden. The government hopes it will win the backing of MPs by the summer and by the House of Lords this autumn.

May said the latest version reflected the majority of the 122 recommendations made by MPs and peers, including strengthening safeguards, enhancing privacy protections and bolstering oversight arrangements.

She has, in particular, made changes to meet concerns within the technology industry that the surveillance law would undermine encryption. The latest draft makes clear that the government will take a pragmatic approach, and no company will be required to remove encryption of its own services if it is not technically feasible. The likely costs involved will also be taken into account.

But the publication of the detailed bill has also revealed that, far from climbing down over her proposals, May intends to expand the scope of its most controversial new powers – the collection and storage for 12 months of everyone’s web browsing history, known as internet connection records – and state powers to hack into computers and smartphones.

The bill will now allow police to access all web browsing records in specific crime investigations, beyond the illegal websites and communications services specified in the original draft bill.

It will extend the use of state remote computer hacking from the security services to the police in cases involving a “threat to life” or missing persons. This can include cases involving “damage to somebody’s mental health”, but will be restricted to use by the National Crime Agency and a small number of major police forces.

Four hours after the bill’s publication the Home Office issued a highly unusual “clarification” claiming that its official response published on Tuesday listing the powers to allow the police to use computer and phone hacking as a “key change” was because they had been missed out from the draft bill.

“Documents published alongside the bill today describe the position as having changed as it was not referenced in the draft bill. However it reflects current police practice. The fact that it was not included in the draft bill was an omission that is being corrected in the final bill.”

The Home Office said the hacking powers dated from the 1997 Police Act and would most likely only be used in “exceptional circumstances” such as finding missing people. They would require a “double-lock” warrant with ministerial authorisation and judicial approval.

However evidence given to the scrutiny committee by the head of the Metropolitan police technical unit, Det Supt Paul Hudson, said such hacking powers were used “in the majority of serious crime cases” but refused to give further details in a public forum.

He described it as a “covert activity so nothing that we do under equipment interference would cause any damage or leave any trace, otherwise it would not remain covert for very long”. His colleague said they could provide MPs and peers with data on its use but it was “very confidential” and would have to remain unpublished.

Hudson acknowledged that the technology has long moved on since 1997. Legalised hacking now allows a third party to take remote control of a phone’s camera or microphone to record video and conversations taking place.

The Home Office’s claim that the legalised hacking powers had been missed out of the original draft bill and so escaped the process of pre-legislative scrutiny was greeted with scepticism by at least one member of the scrutiny committee.

The expansion of police powers to access web browsing history as part of their investigations follows pressure from the police, and the use of these powers does not need the “double-lock” ministerial authorisation.

The home secretary told MPs she had rejected the committees’ recommendations to exclude the use of state surveillance powers for the “economic wellbeing” of the UK. She also resisted their demand to scrap warrants allowing GCHQ to undertake bulk computer hacking, describing them as a “key operational requirement”.

May also underlined the “vital part” played by the security agencies’ “bulk powers” – the mass collection and storage of everyone’s communications data in Britain and the bulk interception of the content of communications of those based overseas to acquire intelligence.

The Home Office has made detailed tweaks to the original draft of the bill, including stronger protections for journalists and lawyers, six codes of practice setting out how the powers will be used, and the use of a “double-lock” authorisation of the most intrusive surveillance methods by a minister backed by the approval of a judicial commissioner.

The Home Office has acknowledged that the initial costing of the bill, at around £247m, is not set, and a final figure will be published after detailed consultations with industry.

Related: Home Office to publish revised draft of snooper's charter

May said: “This is vital legislation and we are determined to get it right. The revised bill we introduced today reflects the majority of the committees’ recommendations – we have strengthened safeguards, enhanced privacy protections and bolstered oversight arrangements – and will now be examined by parliament before passing into law by the end of 2016.

“Terrorists and criminals are operating online and we need to ensure the police and security services can keep pace with the modern world and continue to protect the British public from the many serious threats we face.”

As part of the pre-legislative process, the bill was examined by a draft scrutiny committee, the intelligence and security committee and the science and technology committee.

The MPs and peers called for a fundamental rewrite of the draft bill, with the ISC calling for privacy safeguards to be made the backbone of the legislation and the draft scrutiny committee saying the case had not yet been made for the introduction of new powers to store and access everyone’s web browsing history.

Eric King, director of the Don’t Spy On Us coalition, which includes Liberty, Privacy International and other privacy and digital rights groups, called for a rethink of the bill.

“Rather than a full redraft, we’ve been given cosmetic tweaks to a heavily criticised, deeply intrusive bill,” he said. “Reshuffling safeguards without meaningfully improving protections, authorisations or oversight does nothing to address widespread concerns about mass surveillance. The unsettling absence of a robust, technical, detailed evaluation of those bulk powers means the case still hasn’t been made, and parliament won’t have the information it needs to do its job.

“There simply isn’t time for proper scrutiny of all these powers in the time frame proposed. More than 100 experts called on the Home Office to put on the brakes. The government must think again.”

Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, said: “Less than three weeks ago MPs advised 123 changes to the majorly flawed draft bill. The powers were too broad, safeguards too few and crucial investigatory powers entirely missing.

“Minor Botox has not fixed this bill. Government must return to the drawing board and give this vital, complex task appropriate time. Anything else would show dangerous contempt for parliament, democracy and our country’s security.”

Related: The Guardian view on surveillance: keep a vigilant eye on the snoopers | Editorial

Lord Strasburger, a Liberal Democrat member of the scrutiny committee on the draft bill, said nothing had changed since the committee published its report three weeks ago: “The Home Office just doesn’t do privacy. It does security and ever more intrusive powers they claim will make us safer, but not privacy. The fact that they see simply changing the name of one section to include the word ‘privacy’ as addressing the fundamental concerns about privacy protections in this bill is breath-taking,” he said.

“The speed with which the home secretary is trying to force this bill through parliament shows no respect to the joint committee and ISC who worked so hard to give them workable solutions to problems in the draft bill, to parliament, or to the British people.”
Bron: www.theguardian.com

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Marechaussee onderzocht afgelopen jaar flink meer telefoons | NOS

Het afgelopen jaar heeft de Koninklijke Marechaussee een recordaantal telefoons en simkaarten onderzocht. Dat blijkt uit een WOB-verzoek (.pdf) van Freedom Inc, een organisatie die zich inzet voor de rechten van burgers.

In totaal werden 3387 telefoonchecks uitgevoerd, anderhalf keer zoveel als vorig jaar. In 2008 werden er slechts 900 checks uitgevoerd.

"Het gaat om de telefoons van mensen die we verdenken van een strafbaar feit", zegt woordvoerder Alfred Ellwanger. "Dat kan het bijvoorbeeld gaan om drugssmokkel, mensensmokkel of terrorisme. Daarnaast checken we telefoons van vreemdelingen die Nederland binnen komen, als we vermoeden dat ze door mensensmokkelaars zijn binnengebracht."

Speciale teams onderzoeken vervolgens de telefoons. "Ze kunnen nummers van mensensmokkelaars achterhalen, maar ook sms’jes of WhatsApp-berichten. Alle informatie op zo’n telefoon kan van belang zijn."

De stijging komt volgens de marechaussee doordat er op gebied van mensensmokkel meer verdachten zijn aangehouden. Verder ziet de dienst een relatie met de toename van het aantal vluchtelingen. De marechaussee benadrukt dat ze niet aan de telefoons van normale reizigers komen.

Bron: nos.nl

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It Took a FOIA Lawsuit to Uncover How the Obama Administration Killed FOIA Reform

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The Obama administration has long called itself the most transparent administration in history. But newly released Department of Justice (DOJ) documents show that the White House has actually worked aggressively behind the scenes to scuttle congressional reforms designed to give the public better access to information possessed by the federal government.

The documents were obtained by the Freedom of the Press Foundation, a nonprofit organization that supports journalism in the public interest, which in turn shared them exclusively with VICE News. They were obtained using the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) — the same law Congress was attempting to reform. The group sued the DOJ last December after its FOIA requests went unanswered for more than a year.

The documents confirm longstanding suspicions about the administration's meddling, and lay bare for the first time how it worked to undermine FOIA reform bills that received overwhelming bipartisan support and were unanimously passed by both the House and Senate in 2014 — yet were never put up for a final vote.

Moreover, a separate set of documents obtained by VICE News in response to a nearly two-year-old FOIA request provides new insight into how the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also tried to disrupt Congress's FOIA reform efforts, which would have required those agencies to be far more transparent when responding to records requests.

The disclosures surface days before Sunshine Week, an annual celebration of open government, and a renewed effort by the House and Senate to improve the FOIA by enacting the very same reforms contained in the earlier House and Senate bills — the seventh attempt in at least 10 years by lawmakers to amend the transparency law. But the administration is again working to derail the legislation, according to congressional staffers.

The FOIA Oversight and Implementation Act of 2014, co-sponsored by then–House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa and ranking member Elijah Cummings, would have codified into law Obama's presidential memorandum, signed on his first day in office in 2009, that instructed all government agencies to "adopt a presumption in favor of disclosure, in order to renew their commitment to the principles embodied in FOIA, and to usher in a new era of open Government." (Attorney General Eric Holder issued a set of guidelines to federal agencies a couple of months later that explained how the presumption of disclosure should be implemented.)

Additionally, the legislation called for the implementation of a centralized online portal, overseen by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), to handle all FOIA requests and required government agencies to update their FOIA regulations. The bill unanimously passed by a vote of 410-0, one of the few pieces of legislation during President Barack Obama's tenure to receive bipartisan support.

Related: There Are 1,800 Reasons Why the Controversy Over Hillary Clinton's Emails Is Far From Over

But the administration "strongly opposed passage" of the House bill and opposed nearly every provision that would have made it easier for journalists, historians, and the public to access government records. The White House claimed it would increase the FOIA backlog, result in astronomical costs, and cause unforeseen problems with processing requests, according to a secret six-page DOJ set of talking points turned over to the Freedom of the Press Foundation along with 100 pages of internal DOJ emails about the FOIA bill.

"The Administration views [the House bill] as an attempt to impose on the Executive Branch multiple administrative requirements concerning its internal management of FOIA administration, which are not appropriate for legislative intervention and would substantially increase costs and cause delays in FOIA processing," the talking points say. "The Administration believes that the changes… are not necessary and, in many respects, will undermine the successes achieved to date by diverting scarce processing resources."

quote:

Notably, the DOJ's talking points also shed light on the ongoing turf war between the Office of Information Policy and the independent Office of Government Information Services (OGIS), also known as the FOIA ombuds office, which provides requesters with mediation services. Congressional efforts to expand OGIS's role, as cited in the bill, were interpreted by DOJ to be an encroachment on its powers. The DOJ went so far as to claim that empowering another agency to improve FOIA administration was unconstitutional.

quote:

But everything died in the House in December 2014 after then-Speaker John Boehner failed to bring up the final version for a vote. Rumors soon began to surface that the DOJ, the SEC, and the FTC, prodded by banking lobbyists, worked behind the scenes and lobbied lawmakers not to bring the legislation up for a vote. The DOJ used the same talking points to sound alarm bells about the Senate bill.

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UK setting bad example on surveillance, says UN privacy chief | World news | The Guardian

Special rapporteur Joseph Cannataci says Britain should be oulawing bulk data collection rather than legitimising it

Special rapporteur Joseph Cannataci says Britain should be oulawing bulk data collection rather than legitimising it

The UK is setting a bad example to the rest of the world with proposed changes to the law on surveillance, the United Nations special rapporteur on privacy has said.

The criticism by rapporteur Joseph Cannataci is made in a report presented to the UN Human Rights Council. The report deals with privacy concerns worldwide but Cannataci, concerned about developments in the UK, has devoted a section to the British bill.

He says the British government has failed to recognise the consequences of legitimising bulk data collection or mass surveillance. Instead of legitimising it, the government should be outlawing it, he says.

MPs are scheduled to vote on the second reading of the investigatory powers bill next week. The bill is in part a response to the revelations of whistleblower Edward Snowden in 2013 about the scale of bulk data collection by intelligence agencies in the UK and US.

The bill enshrines in law a host of surveillance powers the intelligence services had kept largely hidden from the public for the last two decades, including computer hacking. In contrast with the US, which last year banned bulk data phone collection, the UK is keeping all its surveillance powers.

Cannataci, in the report, expresses serious concern and calls on MPs to use their influence to ensure “that disproportionate, privacy-intrusive measures such as bulk surveillance and bulk hacking as contemplated in the investigatory powers bill be outlawed rather an legitimised.”

He notes the influence the UK has over the commonwealth and calls on it to step back from taking disproportionate measures which could have “negative ramifications beyond the shores of the United Kingdom”.

He also urges the UK to show greater commitment to privacy and “to desist from setting a bad example to other states by continuing to propose measures, especially bulk interception and bulk hacking” which run counter to recent European court judgments and “undermine the spirit of the very right to privacy”.

Jim Killock, executive director of the Open Rights Group, welcomed the report and described the bill as deeply flawed.

“The special rapporteur’s report is yet another damning criticism of the investigatory powers bill. Not only does it call for the disproportionate powers in the bill to be outlawed rather than legitimised, it points out that the bill does not comply with recent human rights rulings, which means it could be open to legal challenges.

“The report voices another serious concern – that the impact of this extreme legislation will be felt around the world, and copied by other countries.”

Bron: www.theguardian.com

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Als het aan Obama ligt, mag de FBI z'n gang gaan - rtlz.nl

President Obama liet het eerder al doorschemeren, maar nu zegt hij ook het terwijl de hele techwereld toekijkt.

"Als jouw argument is dat sterke encryptie boven alles gaat, en dat we in feite black boxes zullen creëren. Dat komt volgens mij niet overeen met de soort van balans waarin we al zo'n 200 tot 300 jaar leven." Was getekend Obama, afgelopen nacht op de tech- en muziekconferentie SXSW. Met andere woorden: de FBI moet in sommige gevallen bij je spullen kunnen. "Het fetisjeert onze telefoons boven elke andere waarde. Dat kan niet het goede antwoord zijn."

Apple versus FBI
Obama weigerde in te gaan op de zaak van de FBI tegen Apple, maar aan zijn antwoorden was wel af te leiden aan welke kant hij staat. Verder dreigde hij dat als de techwereld niet een manier vindt om de wet te dienen, dat dit juist zou kunnen leiden tot minder encryptie. "Als de tech-community zich zo blijft verzetten en er gebeurt iets echt ergs, dan zal de politiek terugslaan en slordig en gehaast worden."

Dus als de techwereld een vorm van encryptie wil bewaren, moet het maar eens starten met het tonen van goede wil. Bekijk het interview met Obama (vanaf minuut 41:21).

Bron: www.rtlz.nl

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In the Apple Case, a Debate Over Data Hits Home

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WASHINGTON — Three years ago, reeling from Edward J. Snowden’s disclosure of the government’s vast surveillance programs and uncertain how to respond, President Obama said he welcomed a vigorous public debate about the wrenching trade-offs between safeguarding personal privacy and tracking down potential terrorists.

“It’s healthy for our democracy,” he told reporters at the time. “I think it’s a sign of maturity.”

But the national debate touched off this winter by the confrontation between the Justice Department and Apple over smartphone security is not exactly the one Mr. Obama had in mind.

Mr. Snowden’s revelations produced modest changes and a heightened suspicion of the government’s activities in cyberspace. Because the issue now centers on a device most Americans carry in their pockets, it is concrete and personal in a way that surveillance by the National Security Agency never was.

The trade-offs seem particularly stark because they have been framed around a simple question: Should Apple help the F.B.I. hack into an iPhone used by a gunman in the massacre last December in San Bernardino, Calif.?

Law enforcement officials have been adamant they must be able to monitor the communications of criminals. They received a vote of confidence from Mr. Obama on Friday, when he said the “absolutist” position taken by companies like Apple is wrong. But the pushback has been enormous.

In the month since a judge ordered Apple to comply with the F.B.I., the debate has jumped from the tech blogs to the front pages of daily newspapers and nightly newscasts. Supporters of the company’s position have held rallies nationwide. Late-night comedians have lampooned government snoopers. Timothy D. Cook, the usually publicity-shy Apple chief executive, pleaded his case on “60 Minutes” last December. On Twitter, “#encryption” fills the screen with impassioned debate on both sides.

“Discussing the case with my friends has become a touchy subject,” said Matthew Montoya, 19, a computer science major at the University of Texas, El Paso. “We’re a political bunch with views from all across the spectrum.”

Like many of her friends, Emi Kane, a community organizer in Oakland, Calif., recently found herself arguing via Facebook with a family friend about the case. Ms. Kane thought Apple was right to refuse to hack the phone; her friend, a waitress in Delaware, said she was disgusted by Apple’s lack of patriotism.

After exchanging several terse messages, they agreed to disagree. “It was a hard conversation,” Ms. Kane said.

The novelist Russell Banks, who signed a letter to Attorney General Loretta Lynch on behalf of Apple, said he had spoken with more than a dozen people about the case just in the last week.

“It’s not just people in the tech industry talking about this,” Mr. Banks, the author of “Affliction” and “The Sweet Hereafter,” said. “It’s citizens like myself.”

That may be because the Apple case involves a device whose least interesting feature is the phone itself. It is a minicomputer stuffed with every detail of a person’s life: photos of children, credit card purchases, texts with spouses (and nonspouses), and records of physical movements.

Mr. Obama warned Friday against “fetishizing our phones above every other value.” After avoiding taking a position for months, he finally came down on the side of law enforcement, saying that using technology to prevent legal searches of smartphones was the equivalent of preventing the police from searching a house for evidence of child pornography.

“That can’t be the right answer,” he said at the South by Southwest festival in Texas, even as he professed deep appreciation for civil liberties and predicted both sides would find a way to cooperate. “I’m confident this is something that we can solve.”

But polls suggest the public is nowhere near as certain as Mr. Obama. In surveys, Americans are deeply divided about the legal struggle between the government and one of the nation’s most iconic companies. The polls show that Americans remain anxious about both the threat of terrorist attacks and the possible theft of personal digital information.

A Wall Street Journal/NBC News survey released last week found that 42 percent of Americans believed Apple should cooperate with law enforcement officials to help them gain access to the locked phone, while 47 percent said Apple should not cooperate. Asked to weigh the need to monitor terrorists against the threat of violating privacy rights, the country was almost equally split, the survey found.

That finding may have seemed unlikely in the wake of terrorist attacks last year in Paris and San Bernardino. In December, eight in 10 people said in a New York Times/CBS News survey that it was somewhat or very likely that there would be a terrorist attack in the United States in the coming months. A CNN poll the same month found that 45 percent of Americans were somewhat or very worried that they or someone in their family would become a victim of terrorism.

But despite the fears about terrorism, the public’s concern about digital privacy is nearly universal. A Pew Research poll in 2014 found more than 90 percent of those surveyed felt that consumers had lost control over how their personal information was collected and used by companies.

The Apple case already seems to have garnered more public attention than the Snowden revelations about “metadata collection” and programs with code names like Prism and XKeyscore. The comedian John Oliver once mocked average Americans for failing to know whether Mr. Snowden was the WikiLeaks guy or the former N.S.A. contractor (he was the latter).

Now, people are beginning to understand that their smartphones are just the beginning. Smart televisions, Google cars, Nest thermostats and web-enabled Barbie dolls are next. The resolution of the legal fight between Apple and the government may help decide whether the information in those devices is really private, or whether the F.B.I. and the N.S.A. are entering a golden age of surveillance in which they have far more data available than they could have imagined 20 years ago.

“It’s an in-your-face proposition for lots more Americans than the Snowden revelation was,” said Lee Rainie, director of Internet, science and technology research at Pew Research Center.

Cindy Cohn, executive director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said: “Everyone gets at a really visceral level that you have a lot of really personal stuff on this device and if it gets stolen it’s really bad. They know that the same forces that work at trying to get access to sensitive stuff in the cloud are also at work attacking the phones.”

For the F.B.I. and local law enforcement agencies, the fight has become a high-stakes struggle to prevent what James B. Comey, the bureau’s director, calls “warrant-free zones” where criminals can hide evidence out of reach of the authorities.

Officials had hoped the Apple case involving a terrorist’s iPhone would rally the public behind what they see as the need to have some access to information on smartphones. But many in the administration have begun to suspect that the F.B.I. and the Justice Department may have made a major strategic error by pushing the case into the public consciousness.

Many senior officials say an open conflict between Silicon Valley and Washington is exactly what they have been trying to avoid, especially when the Pentagon and intelligence agencies are trying to woo technology companies to come back into the government’s fold, and join the fight against the Islamic State. But it appears it is too late to confine the discussion to the back rooms in Washington or Silicon Valley.

The fact that Apple is a major consumer company “takes the debate out of a very narrow environment — the universe of technologists and policy wonks — into the realm of consumers where barriers like the specific language of Washington or the technology industry begins to fall away,” said Malkia Cyril, the executive director of the Center for Media Justice, a grass-roots activist network.

That organization and other activist groups like Black Lives Matter have seized on the issue as important for their members. In February the civil liberties group Fight for the Future organized the day of protest against the government order that resulted in rallies in cities nationwide.

“When we heard the news and made a call for nationwide rallies, one happened in San Francisco that same day,” said Tiffiniy Cheng, co-founder of Fight for the Future. “Things like that almost never happen.”

Ms. Cyril says the public angst about the iPhone case feels more urgent than did the discussion about government surveillance three years ago.

“This is one of those moments that defines what’s next,” she said. “Will technology companies protect the privacy of their users or will they do work for the U.S. government? You can’t do both.”

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Beveiligde e-maildienst ProtonMail nu voor iedereen te gebruiken

quote:

Na twee jaar heeft de beveiligde e-maildienst ProtonMail zijn deuren geopend. Iedereen kan een gratis account aanmaken.

E-mailverkeer is lastig te beveiligen, maar de Zwitserse start-up ProtonMail wil daar verandering in brengen. In 2014 haalde het bedrijf een half miljoen dollar op om een dienst te maken die net zo gemakkelijk is als Gmail, maar ook zo veilig is dat zelfs NSA-klokkenluider Edward Snowden het kan gebruiken. Nu opent ProtonMail voor iedereen zijn deuren.

End-to-end-encryptie
ProtonMail maakt gebruik van end-to-end-encryptie, waardoor de inhoud van een e-mail alleen voor de ontvanger is in te zien. Dit gebeurt automatisch bij e-mailtjes tussen ProtonMail-gebruikers, maar de functie is ook in te schakelen als je een e-mail stuurt naar bijvoorbeeld een Gmail-adres. De ontvanger wordt dan naar een pagina geleid waar degene een wachtwoord in moet vullen om de e-mail te lezen en te reageren. Het wachtwoord kan via een andere veilige verbinding worden gegeven, zoals de chat-app Signal.

Daarnaast versleutelt ProtonMail de inhoud van je inbox. Elke gebruiker logt in met een e-mailadres en wachtwoord, maar moet na het inloggen nog een extra wachtwoord invullen om toegang te krijgen tot de inbox. Alle e-mails, bijlages en informatie staan versleuteld op de servers van ProtonMail, en alleen jij hebt het wachtwoord om de versleuteling op te heffen.

Betaalde accounts
Iedereen kan bij ProtonMail een gratis account aanmaken, maar er is ook een optie voor twee betaalde varianten. De goedkoopste kost 5 euro per maand of 48 euro per jaar en biedt de optie om een eigen domein te gebruiken, zoals jouwnaam@jouwdomein.nl, en 5GB opslag. De duurste versie kost 30 euro per maand of 288 euro en biedt ondersteuning voor tien verschillende domeinnamen en 20GB opslag.

Naast het beschikbaar maken van de e-maildienst brengt ProtonMail ook officieel zijn Android- en iOS-app uit. De start-up groeit hard, want ProtonMail heeft inmiddels een miljoen gebruikers. Dat komt onder andere omdat de dienst prominent in beeld kwam tijdens de hackerserie Mr. Robot.

Voor iedereen toegankelijk maken
"ProtonMail is ontwikkeld om je te beschermen tegen massasurveillance", zei oprichter Andy Yen eerder in een gesprek met RTL Z. "Om dit te bewerkstelligen, is het belangrijk om encryptie voor iedereen toegankelijk en gemakkelijk in gebruik te maken."

"We zijn echt niet een e-maildienst voor iedereen, maar wel voor de grote groep mensen die het niet eens is met de massaspionage door overheden."

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Na Brussel willen EU-ministers directe toegang tot data - rtlz.nl

Europese ministers willen een nieuwe wet waarmee inlichtingendiensten en politie direct toegang krijgen tot telecommunicatie en online data. Daarmee moeten terreurverdachten sneller worden opgespoord.

De Europese ministers van Veiligheid en Justitie zouden de eerste versie van de wet in juni van dit jaar presenteren. "In het licht van de gebeurtenissen (in Brussel) zijn we overtuigd dat het noodzakelijk is om [...] manieren te vinden om digitaal bewijs sneller en effectiever te verkrijgen en veilig te stellen", staat in de verklaring van de ministers na afloop.

Europese communicatiedienstverleners moeten volgens de conceptwet 'directe toegang' bieden aan wetshandhavingsinstanties. Dit betekent bijvoorbeeld dat een telecomprovider als KPN of Vodafone nauwer moeten samenwerken met de AIVD en politie om toegang te geven tot hun data. Daarnaast wil de EU ook het Midden-Oosten aansporen om hulp te bieden waar nodig.

Gezamenlijk platform
Naast directere toegang pleiten de Europese ministers voor een betere samenwerking tussen de inlichtingendiensten van Europese landen. Zo zouden alle inlichtingendiensten een gezamenlijk platform moeten krijgen waarmee ze direct data met elkaar kunnen delen.

Parijs
Na de aanslagen in Parijs stelde de Franse regering soortgelijke wetten voor. Naast Frankrijk is ook het Verenigd Koninkrijk voorstander voor verscherpte surveillancewetten.

In Nederland wordt er gewerkt aan twee nieuwe wetten waarmee de AIVD en politie meer bevoegdheden krijgen. De AIVD kan met de nieuwe surveillancewet op grotere schaal digitale informatie aftappen, de politie krijgt met het wetsvoorstel Wet Computercriminaliteit III de bevoegdheid om verdachten te hacken.

Bron: www.rtlz.nl

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A Conversation on Privacy

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The balance between national security and government intrusion on the rights of private citizens will be the topic of a panel discussion featuring renowned linguist and MIT professor Noam Chomsky, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, and Intercept co-founding editor Glenn Greenwald. Nuala O’Connor, president and CEO of the Center for Democracy and Technology, will act as moderator.

Chomsky and Greenwald will appear in person at the event, hosted in Tucson by the University of Arizona College of Behavioral Sciences, while Snowden will appear via videoconference.

The Intercept is streaming the event live on this page, and the conversation will be archived here in full.

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Mass surveillance silences minority opinions, according to study

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A new study shows that knowledge of government surveillance causes people to self-censor their dissenting opinions online. The research offers a sobering look at the oft-touted "democratizing" effect of social media and Internet access that bolsters minority opinion.

The study, published in Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, studied the effects of subtle reminders of mass surveillance on its subjects. The majority of participants reacted by suppressing opinions that they perceived to be in the minority. This research illustrates the silencing effect of participants’ dissenting opinions in the wake of widespread knowledge of government surveillance, as revealed by whistleblower Edward Snowden in 2013.

The “spiral of silence” is a well-researched phenomenon in which people suppress unpopular opinions to fit in and avoid social isolation. It has been looked at in the context of social media and the echo-chamber effect, in which we tailor our opinions to fit the online activity of our Facebook and Twitter friends. But this study adds a new layer by explicitly examining how government surveillance affects self-censorship.

Participants in the study were first surveyed about their political beliefs, personality traits and online activity, to create a psychological profile for each person. A random sample group was then subtly reminded of government surveillance, followed by everyone in the study being shown a neutral, fictional headline stating that U.S. airstrikes had targeted the Islamic State in Iraq. Subjects were then asked a series of questions about their attitudes toward the hypothetical news event, such as how they think most Americans would feel about it and whether they would publicly voice their opinion on the topic. The majority of those primed with surveillance information were less likely to speak out about their more nonconformist ideas, including those assessed as less likely to self-censor based on their psychological profile.

Elizabeth Stoycheff, lead researcher of the study and assistant professor at Wayne State University, is disturbed by her findings.

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The most wanted man in the world

^{By James Banford}

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I’ve had several occasions to stay at the Metropol during my three decades as an investigative journalist. I stayed here 20 years ago when I interviewed Victor Cherkashin, the senior KGB officer who oversaw American spies such as Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen. And I stayed here again in 1995, during the Russian war in Chechnya, when I met with Yuri Modin, the Soviet agent who ran Britain’s notorious Cambridge Five spy ring. When Snowden fled to Russia after stealing the largest cache of secrets in American history, some in Washington accused him of being another link in this chain of Russian agents. But as far as I can tell, it is a charge with no valid evidence.

I confess to feeling some kinship with Snowden. Like him, I was assigned to a National Security Agency unit in Hawaii—in my case, as part of three years of active duty in the Navy during the Vietnam War. Then, as a reservist in law school, I blew the whistle on the NSA when I stumbled across a program that involved illegally eavesdropping on US citizens. I testified about the program in a closed hearing before the Church Committee, the congressional investigation that led to sweeping reforms of US intelligence abuses in the 1970s. Finally, after graduation, I decided to write the first book about the NSA. At several points I was threatened with prosecution under the Espionage Act, the same 1917 law under which Snowden is charged (in my case those threats had no basis and were never carried out). Since then I have written two more books about the NSA, as well as numerous magazine articles (including two previous cover stories about the NSA for WIRED), book reviews, op-eds, and documentaries.

quote:

And there’s another prospect that further complicates matters: Some of the revelations attributed to Snowden may not in fact have come from him but from another leaker spilling secrets under Snowden’s name. Snowden himself adamantly refuses to address this possibility on the record. But independent of my visit to Snowden, I was given unrestricted access to his cache of documents in various locations. And going through this archive using a sophisticated digital search tool, I could not find some of the documents that have made their way into public view, leading me to conclude that there must be a second leaker somewhere. I’m not alone in reaching that conclusion. Both Greenwald and security expert Bruce Schneier—who have had extensive access to the cache—have publicly stated that they believe another whistle-blower is releasing secret documents to the media.

In fact, on the first day of my Moscow interview with Snowden, the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel comes out with a long story about the NSA’s operations in Germany and its cooperation with the German intelligence agency, BND. Among the documents the magazine releases is a top-secret “Memorandum of Agreement” between the NSA and the BND from 2002. “It is not from Snowden’s material,” the magazine notes.

Some have even raised doubts about whether the infamous revelation that the NSA was tapping German chancellor Angela Merkel’s cell phone, long attributed to Snowden, came from his trough. At the time of that revelation, Der Spiegel simply attributed the information to Snowden and other unnamed sources. If other leakers exist within the NSA, it would be more than another nightmare for the agency—it would underscore its inability to control its own information and might indicate that Snowden’s rogue protest of government overreach has inspired others within the intelligence community. “They still haven’t fixed their problems,” Snowden says. “They still have negligent auditing, they still have things going for a walk, and they have no idea where they’re coming from and they have no idea where they’re going. And if that’s the case, how can we as the public trust the NSA with all of our information, with all of our private records, the permanent record of our lives?”