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House Passes Legislation Renewing Controversial NSA Surveillance Program

January 11, 2018

House Passes Legislation Renewing Controversial NSA Surveillance Program

Update 3: The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act has been renewed by the House of Representatives. Originally enacted in 1978, the act outlines the lawful procedure for collecting foreign intelligence. FISA Section 702 allows the US government to pull in communications from foreign nationals but does not permit surveillance of US citizens, even if they are suspected of criminality or terrorism. Ahead of a vote to extend FISA for six years, US President Donald Trump initially hit out at the key intelligence provision, although later updated his stance through a tweet declaring that the country needs FISA.

Donald J. Trump
✔@realDonaldTrump

“House votes on controversial FISA ACT today.” This is the act that may have been used, with the help of the discredited and phony Dossier, to so badly surveil and abuse the Trump Campaign by the previous administration and others?

Donald J. Trump
✔@realDonaldTrump

With that being said, I have personally directed the fix to the unmasking process since taking office and today’s vote is about foreign surveillance of foreign bad guys on foreign land. We need it! Get smart!

As Glenn Greenwald notes, this is the list of House Democrats who stood with Trump, Devin Nunes and the NSA to ensure ongoing warrantless eavesdropping on Americans, adding “Note how many of the leading #Resistance leaders are on this list.“

George Zornick
✔@gzornick

55 House Democrats – including Pelosi, Hoyer, Schiff – voted to kill a surveillance reform bill that would have (among other things) added a warrant requirement to 702 searches.

Full list of Dem ‘no’ votes:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Trump Administration Lobbying Hard for Sweeping Surveillance Law

September 29, 2017

Admiral Mike Rogers, Director of the National Security Agency (NSA), testifies about the Fiscal Year 2018 budget request for US Cyber Command during a House Armed Services Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, May 23, 2017. / AFP PHOTO / SAUL LOEB (Photo credit should read SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images)
Photo: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION is pushing hard for the reauthorization of a key 2008 surveillance law — section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, known as FISA — three months before it sunsets in December.

To persuade senators to reauthorize the law in full, the Trump administration is holding classified, members-only briefings for the entire House and Senate next Wednesday, with heavy hitters in attendance: Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, NSA Director Mike Rogers, and FBI Director Christopher Wray will give the briefings, according to an internal announcement of the meetings provided to The Intercept and confirmed by multiple sources on Capitol Hill.

Section 702 serves as the legal basis for two of the NSA’s largest mass surveillance programs, both revealed by Edward Snowden. One program, PRISM, allows the government to collect messaging data sent to and from foreign targets, from major internet companies like Google, Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft. The other, UPSTREAM, scans internet backbone sites in the U.S. and copies communications to and from foreign targets.

Both programs ostensibly only “target” foreigners, but likely collect massive amounts of Americans’ communications as well. And despite persistent questioning from members of Congress, the Obama and Trump administrations have repeatedly refused to provide an estimate of how many domestic communications the programs collect. Civil liberties advocates have long warned liberal defenders of the program under President Obama that one day the surveillance apparatus may fall into the hands of a president with little regard for rule of law or constitutional protections.

Privacy activists have also raised concerns about how the data is shared with law enforcement, and routinely used for purposes unrelated to national security. The FBI frequently conducts “backdoor searches” on the data during ordinary criminal investigations, which allows them access to Americans’ communications without having to get a warrant.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Trump Administration Urges Congress To Renew Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)

September 12, 2017

Trump Administration Urges Congress To Renew Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions is urging Congress to “promptly” reauthorize section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) scheduled to expire at the end of this year.

The Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Dan Coats also signed the letter, addressed to House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.

Section 702 of FISA “allows the Intelligence Community, under a robust regime of oversight by all three branches of government, to collect vital information about international terrorists, cyber actors, individuals and entities engaged in the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and other important foreign intelligence targets located outside the United States,” Sessions and Coats wrote.

They added: “Reauthorizing this critical authority is the top legislative priority of the Department of Justice and the Intelligence Community. As publicly reported by the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, information collected under one particular section of FAA, Section 702, produces significant foreign intelligence that is vital to protect the nation against international terrorism and other threats.”

FISA was enacted in 1978 as a response to illegal domestic surveillance operations revealed by two Senate committees in the 1970s, including President Richard Nixon’s use of federal intelligence agencies to monitor his political opponents. It was brought into law “to authorize electronic surveillance to obtain foreign intelligence information.”

The law requires the government to obtain a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court before setting up an electronic or physical wiretap targeted at foreigners and foreign agents.

Congress amended FISA in 2007 to let the government wiretap communications that either begin or end outside the United States jurisdiction without Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) approval; in a stronger  2008 overhaul, they further limited that power to non-U.S. persons. The last reauthorization of the act was in 2012, which set the current expiration date of Dec. 31, 2017.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

One Nation Under Surveillance – U.S. Government Pushed Tech Companies to Hand Over Source Code

March 18, 2016

One Nation Under Surveillance – U.S. Government Pushed Tech Companies to Hand Over Source Code

Screen Shot 2016-03-17 at 12.07.32 PM

Our founding fathers studied power structures over the millennia and knew exactly what they were doing when solidifying the Bill of Rights into the U.S. Constitution. All it took was a couple hundred years, an extraordinarily ignorant and apathetic American public, and a major terror attack to roll back this multi-generational gift.

For many years, I and countless others have been screaming from the rooftops that a society should never trade civil liberties for security. Life on earth has always been dangerous for us humans, and what has historically separated free and noble civilizations from stunted tyrannies is a willingness to acknowledge such a precarious existence while at the same time demanding and defending one’s dignity and liberty. In the aftermath of the attacks of 9/11, the American public has demonstrated no such strength of character or historical maturity, thus allowing a corrupt, deceptive and lawless government to run roughshod over freedom with very little resistance.

– From the post: War on Terror Turns Inward – NSA Surveillance Will Be Used Against American Citizens

Freedom? Liberty? Don’t be ridiculous.

It’s been a little while since I’ve updated readers on the shady, shameless surveillance practices of the U.S. government. As usual, it’s worse than we thought.

ZDNet reports:

NEW YORK — The US government has made numerous attempts to obtain source code from tech companies in an effort to find security flaws that could be used for surveillance or investigations.

The government has demanded source code in civil cases filed under seal but also by seeking clandestine rulings authorized under the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), a person with direct knowledge of these demands told ZDNet. We’re not naming the person as they relayed information that is likely classified.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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