NSA Has Full "Back Door" Access To iPhone, BlackBerry And Android Smartphones - page 2
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Isn't it a bit too late to ask questions like that? They should have prevented it and now when everybody knows it, they are pretending to be ignorant of the whole thing. Ignorants, yes. But they knew it all the time what is going on
Senator presses NSA to reveal whether it spies on members of Congress
A US senator has bluntly asked the National Security Agency if it spies on Congress, raising the stakes for the surveillance agency’s legislative fight to preserve its broad surveillance powers.
Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent and socialist, asked army general Keith Alexander, the NSA’s outgoing director, if the NSA “has spied, or is the NSA currently spying, on members of Congress or other American elected officials”.
Sanders, in a letter dated 3 January, defined “spying” as “gathering metadata on calls made from official or personal phones, content from websites visited or emails sent, or collecting any other data from a third party not made available to the general public in the regular course of business”.
The NSA collects the records of every phone call made and received inside the United States on an ongoing, daily basis, a revelation first published in the Guardian in June based on leaks from whistleblower Edward Snowden. Until 2011, the NSA collected the email and internet records of all Americans as well.
On Saturday, the NSA released a statement in response to Sanders' letter, which said: “NSA’s authorities to collect signals intelligence data include procedures that protect the privacy of US persons. Such protections are built into and cut across the entire process. Members of Congress have the same privacy protections as all US persons.
“NSA is fully committed to transparency with Congress. Our interaction with Congress has been extensive both before and since the media disclosures began last June. We are reviewing Senator Sanders’s letter now, and we will continue to work to ensure that all Members of Congress, including Senator Sanders, have information about NSA’s mission, authorities, and programs to fully inform the discharge of their duties.”
Hours after Sanders sent his letter on Friday, the office of the director of national intelligence, James Clapper, announced that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (Fisa) Court had renewed the domestic phone records collection order for another 90 days.
This is the first time the order has been renewed since two competing rulings in the last month, one from a federal judge in Washington who declared the program "likely unconstitutional" and another in New York who said that it was lawful.
In a statement, ODNI spokesman Shawn Turner said the renewal of the order under Section 215 of the Patriot Act had been declassified "to provide the public a more thorough and balanced understanding of the program".
He continued: "It is the administration's view, consistent with the recent holdings of the United States District Courts for the Southern District of New York and Southern District of California, as well as the findings of 15 judges of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on 36 separate occasions over the past seven years, that the telephony metadata collection program is lawful."
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The NSA Responds To Bernie Sanders Whether It Spies on Congress
Yesterday, in what we characterized as an episode of a "real life magic-mushroom, banana dictatorship envisioned by George Orwell" gone full retard, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders asked the NSA point blank whether it has "spied, or is the NSA currently spying, on members of Congress or other American elected officials?" Today, via the Bezos Post, we got the answer: "Members of Congress have the same privacy protections as all U.S. persons," the spokesman said, which thanks to Edward Snowden, we now know for a factor are precisely none (for those still unconvinced, please see: "The Complete Guide To How The NSA Hacked Everything"). "We are reviewing Sen. Sanders’s letter now, and we will continue to work to ensure that all members of Congress, including Sen. Sanders, have information about NSA’s mission, authorities, and programs to fully inform the discharge of their duties." In other words, of course.
More from WaPo:
Of course, it is no surprise that the US superspies spy on Congress. After all they spy on everyone. But the bigger question is if the NSA is itself, by implication, above the checks and balances of the US legislative apparatus, just who is in charge of determining the targets of the most powerful spying agency in the history of the world? In other words, who watches the watchmen? And just how is any of this even remotely legal?
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..."Members of Congress have the same privacy protections as all U.S. persons,"...
Considering what was actually told, this is probably the most dangerous sentence I have ever heard about a political system in the US. It is declaring the end of anything resembling a democracy in the US. NSA should be responsible to the Congress for goods sake!
NSA Data Has ‘No Discernible Impact’ on Terrorism: Report
A public policy group says a review of U.S. terrorist arrests shows the government’s collection of bulk phone records does little to prevent terrorism, adding fuel to a debate over whether the spy program should be ended.
The nonprofit New America Foundation, based in Washington, analyzed cases involving 225 people recruited by al-Qaeda or other terrorist groups and charged in the U.S. since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The majority of cases started with traditional techniques, such as use of “informants, tips from local communities, and targeted intelligence operations,” according to a report today from the group, which has been critical of the NSA spy programs.
“Our investigation found that bulk collection of American phone metadata has had no discernible impact on preventing acts of terrorism and only the most marginal of impacts on preventing terrorist-related activity, such as fundraising for a terrorist group,” Peter Bergen, director of the foundation’s national security program, said in a statement.
The National Security Agency’s collection and use of bulk phone records, such as numbers dialed and call durations, is one of several surveillance programs exposed by former government contractor Edward Snowden. The disclosures have prompted calls both domestically and overseas for the U.S. to discontinue or alter the programs.
Obama Decisions
President Barack Obama plans on Jan. 17 to announce his decisions on whether to alter spy programs, which could include requiring Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ), AT&T Inc. (T) and other phone companies to retain phone records for the government.
New America Foundation receives funding from both public and private sources, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the U.S. Department of State, according to the group’s website. The foundation researches and analyzes a range of topics, including the inner workings of al-Qaeda, global economics and the U.S. education system. The Open Technology Institute, its technology arm, is in a coalition of privacy groups opposed to NSA’s data collection programs.
NSA Director Keith Alexander and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper had defended the use of bulk records as being essential to disrupting dozens of domestic and international terrorist plots when it was first exposed in June by Snowden. They since have backed off those claims.
Foiled Plots
Alexander told the Senate Judiciary Committee Oct. 2 that the program has helped stop only one or two terrorist plots inside the U.S. since it was begun in 2006. Clapper offered a new rationale for the program during the hearing, saying it can be used to provide “peace of mind” that there aren’t terrorist plots in the works.
A White House advisory panel appointed by Obama concluded in a Dec. 18 report the phone records program “was not essential to preventing attacks” and information needed to disrupt terrorist plots “could readily have been obtained in a timely manner using conventional” court orders.
The five members of the Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technology are scheduled to testify tomorrow before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
The review group recommended putting limits on the NSA, including prohibiting the agency from collecting and storing billions of phone records. Instead, the data should be held by Verizon, AT&T and other carriers or a third party and only accessed by the NSA with a court warrant, the panel said.
Senator Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has introduced legislation in line with the group’s recommendation.
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Terrorists probably don't even use smart phones (anymore)
they maybe a little bit daft, but most are not completely stupid
there are millions if not billions of old phones around without back doors
has the NSA never heard of pay as you go (or pay as you hide your identity)
time to get the old bricks out of the cupboards
Yahoo leads NSA-FBI account content data demands
Fresh disclosures about national security requests indicate that Yahoo was ordered to hand over content from more accounts than other tech firms during the first six months of 2013.
Yahoo said it was told to release content from between 30,000 and 30,999 accounts over the period under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (Fisa).
Microsoft, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google have also published new figures.
Reporting rules were relaxed last week.
Yahoo said the types of content that might be requested included words in an email or instant message, photos posted online via its Flickr website, Yahoo Address book entries, and appointments entered into its Calendar product.
The firm has also published a transparency report for its Tumblr blogging platform that states the unit had never received a Fisa order or NSL.
One campaigner suggested such information had limited use.
"Transparency reports for a long time were really insightful tools for us to see what governments were asking the tech companies," Privacy International's Mike Rispoli told the BBC.
"Now we know that the game has changed.
"Governments do not need to go to companies to get user data - they can directly intercept it. They do not need to go through the front door anymore, they have kicked down the back door."
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The Most Evil And Disturbing NSA Spy Practices To-Date Have Just Been Revealed
Submitted by Mike Krieger of Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,
The man-in-the-middle tactic can be used, for instance, to covertly change the content of a message as it is being sent between two people, without either knowing that any change has been made by a third party.
- From Glenn Greenwald’s latest article: How the NSA Plans to Infect Millions of Computers with Malware
The latest piece from Greenwald and company on the unconstitutional spy practices of the NSA may represent the most dangerous and disturbing revelations yet. It’s hard for shadiness at the NSA to surprise me these days, but there was only one word that kept repeating over and over in my head as I read this: EVIL.
As a quick aside, Greenwald points out in the quote above how spam emails are used by the NSA to bait you into clicking dangerous links. This is a timely revelation considering I received one such email yesterday from a friend of mine. The email was sent to a wide list of let’s say “liberty-minded people” and webmasters associated with very popular sites. The link seemed shady so I texted him to ask if he had sent it. He hadn’t.
Earlier this week, during a talk at SXSW, Edward Snowden pleaded with people to use encryption. While he admitted if the NSA targeted you individually they could almost certainly “own your computer,” he stated that if people use encryption on a massive scale it makes the NSA’s attempts to monitor everyone at the same time much more difficult.
Apparently, the NSA is well aware of this threat. Which is why we now know that the agency has been dedicating significant amounts of taxpayer dollars toward an attempt to infect millions of computers with malware in an attempt at “industrial-scale exploitation,” which would lead to them “owning the net.”
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Merkel ally says U.S. assurances on NSA spying 'insufficient'
A leading ally of Angela Merkel has criticized the United States for failing to provide sufficient assurances on its spying tactics and said bilateral talks were unlikely to make much progress before the German leader visits Washington next month.
Reports last October - based on disclosures by former U.S. intelligence contractor Edward Snowden - that Washington had monitored Merkel's mobile phone caused outrage in Germany, which is particularly sensitive about surveillance because of abuses under the East German Stasi secret police and the Nazis.
Berlin subsequently demanded talks with Washington on a "no-spy" deal, but it has become clear in recent months that the United States is unwilling to give the assurances Germany wants.
"The information we have so far is insufficient," Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere, one of Merkel's closest cabinet allies, told German weekly magazine Der Spiegel.
"U.S. intelligence methods may be justified to a large extent by security needs, but the tactics are excessive and over-the-top," de Maiziere added.
Asked if he expected progress before Merkel pays a visit to President Barack Obama in early May, de Maiziere said: "My expectations of what further talks will yield are low."
Obama visited Europe late last month, saying one of his aims was to reassure allies that he was acting to meet their concerns on the scope of U.S. data gathering.
In January, Obama banned U.S. eavesdropping on the leaders of close allies and began reining in the vast collection of phone data on Americans. But he also said U.S. intelligence agencies would continue to gather information about the intentions of other governments.
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