The Intercept: “The United Kingdom’s top surveillance agency has acted unlawfully by keeping details about the scope of its Internet spying operations secret, a British court ruled in an unprecedented judgment issued on Friday. Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ, was found to have breached human rights laws by concealing information about how it accesses surveillance… Continue Reading
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Council of Europe Report on Mass Surveillance
Provisional version – Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights – Mass surveillance. Rapporteur: Mr Pieter Omtzigt, Netherlands, Group of the European People’s Party. “Our freedom is built on what others do not know of our existences” Alexandr Solzhenitsyn. A Draft resolution 1. The Parliamentary Assembly is deeply concerned about mass surveillance practices disclosed since… Continue Reading
The Digital Arms Race: NSA Preps America for Future Battle
Spiegel Online – The NSA’s mass surveillance is just the beginning. Documents from Edward Snowden show that the intelligence agency is arming America for future digital wars — a struggle for control of the Internet that is already well underway, by Jacob Appelbaum, Aaron Gibson, Claudio Guarnieri, Andy Müller-Maguhn, Laura Poitras, Marcel Rosenbach, Leif Ryge,… Continue Reading
Prying Eyes: Inside the NSA’s War on Internet Security
By SPIEGEL Staff: “…Software giant Microsoft, which acquired Skype in 2011, said in a statement: “We will not provide governments with direct or unfettered access to customer data or encryption keys.” The NSA had been monitoring Skype even before that, but since February 2011, the service has been under order from the secret US Foreign… Continue Reading
Congress Tells DoD to Report on Leaks
Secrecy News – Steven Aftergood: For the next two years, Congress wants to receive quarterly reports from the Department of Defense on how the Pentagon is responding to leaks of classified information. The reporting requirement was included in the pending National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2015 (Sec. 1052). “Compromises of classified information cause indiscriminate and… Continue Reading
Report claims NSA has operatives in foreign communications companies
“The National Security Agency has had agents in China, Germany, and South Korea working on programs that use “physical subversion” to infiltrate and compromise networks and devices, according to documents obtained by The Intercept. The documents, leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, also indicate that the agency has used “under cover” operatives to gain access to… Continue Reading
A Public Accountability Defense for National Security Leakers and Whistleblowers
A Public Accountability Defense for National Security Leakers and Whistleblowers, Yochai Benkler. The Harvard Law & Policy Review, Vol 8 No 2. July 2014. “In June 2013 Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, and Barton Gellman began to publish stories in The Guardian and The Washington Post based on arguably the most significant national security leak in American history. By leaking… Continue Reading
Treasure Map: The NSA Breach of Telekom and Other German Firms
Spiegel Online – Andy Müller-Maguhn, Laura Poitras, Marcel Rosenbach and Michael Sontheimer: [Treaure Map] “is the mandate for a massive raid on the digital world. It aims to map the Internet, and not just the large traffic channels, such as telecommunications cables. It also seeks to identify the devices across which our data flows, so-called routers. Furthermore, every single end… Continue Reading
International Law and Secret Surveillance: Binding Restrictions upon State Monitoring of Telephone and Internet Activity
CDT: “In the year that has followed Edward Snowden’s first disclosures concerning secret US and UK surveillance practices, many governments, human-rights groups, and UN bodies have debated—and at times disagreed sharply—about whether the Internet and telephone surveillance practices that governments employ today are consistent with international law. With a view to informing these discussions, this… Continue Reading
Newly Revealed NSA Program ICREACH Extends the NSA’s Reach Even Further
EFF: Turns out, the DEA and FBI may know what medical conditions you have, whether you are having an affair, where you were last night, and more—all without any knowing that you have ever broken a law. That’s because the DEA and FBI, as part of over 1000 analysts at 23 U.S. intelligence agencies, have the ability… Continue Reading
The executive order that led to mass spying, as told by NSA alumni
Cyrus Farivar – Ars Technica: [Executive Order] 12333 is used to target foreigners abroad, and collection happens outside the US,” whistleblower John Tye, a former State Department official, told Ars recently. “My complaint is not that they’re using it to target Americans, my complaint is that the volume of incidental collection on US persons is unconstitutional.” The document, known in… Continue Reading
Investigative Report – NSA created ‘google-like search’ engine – shared access with other agencies
“Data available through ICREACH appears to be primarily derived from surveillance of foreigners’ communications, and planning documents show that it draws on a variety of different sources of data maintained by the NSA. Though one 2010 internal paper clearly calls it “the ICREACH database,” a U.S. official familiar with the system disputed that, telling The Intercept that while “it… Continue Reading
