Archive for the ‘NSA’ Category

NSA Backtracks on Sharing Number of Americans Caught In Warrantless Spying – Fortune

The National Security Agency (NSA) headquarters at Fort Meade, Maryland, as seen from the air, January 29, 2010. Saul LoebAFP/Getty Images

For more than a year, U.S. intelligence officials reassured lawmakers they were working to calculate and reveal roughly how many Americans have their digital communications vacuumed up under a warrant-less surveillance law intended to target foreigners overseas.

This week, the Trump administration backtracked, catching lawmakers off guard and alarming civil liberties advocates who say it is critical to know as Congress weighs changes to a law expiring at the end of the year that permits some of the National Security Agency's most sweeping espionage.

"The NSA has made Herculean, extensive efforts to devise a counting strategy that would be accurate," Dan Coats, a career Republican politician appointed by Republican President Donald Trump as the top U.S. intelligence official, testified to a Senate panel on Wednesday.

Coats said "it remains infeasible to generate an exact, accurate, meaningful, and responsive methodology that can count how often a U.S. person's communications may be collected" under the law known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

He told the Senate Intelligence Committee that even if he dedicated more resources the NSA would not be able to calculate an estimate, which privacy experts have said could be in the millions.

The statement ran counter to what senior intelligence officials had previously promised both publicly and in private briefings during the previous administration of President Barack Obama, a Democrat, lawmakers and congressional staffers working on drafting reforms to Section 702 said.

Representative John Conyers, the top Democrat in the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee, said that for many months intelligence agencies "expressly promised" members of both parties to deliver the estimated number to them.

Senior intelligence officials had also previously said an estimate could be delivered. In March, then NSA deputy director Rick Ledgett, said "yes" when asked by a Reuters reporter if an estimate would be provided this year.

"Were working on that with the Congress and we'll come to a satisfactory resolution, because we have to," said Ledgett, who has since retired from public service.

The law allows U.S. intelligence agencies to eavesdrop on and collect vast amounts of digital communications from foreign suspects living outside of the United States, but often incidentally scoops up communications of Americans.

The decision to scrap the estimate is likely to complicate a debate in Congress over whether to curtail certain aspects of the surveillance law, congressional aides said. Congress must vote to renew Section 702 to avoid its expiration on Dec. 31.

Privacy issues often scramble traditional party lines, but there are signs that Section 702's renewal will be even more politically unpredictable.

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Some Republicans who usually support surveillance programs have expressed concerns about Section 702, in part because they are worried about leaks of intercepts of conversations between Trump associates and Russian officials amid investigations of possible collusion.

U.S. intelligence agencies last year accused Russia of interfering in the 2016 presidential election campaign, allegations Moscow denies. Trump denies there was collusion. Intelligence officials have said Section 702 was not directly connected to surveillance related to those leaks.

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"As big a fan as I am of collection, incidental collection, I'm not going to reauthorize a program that could be politically manipulated," Senator Lindsey Graham, usually a defender of U.S. surveillance activities, told reporters this week.

Graham was among 14 Republican senators, including every Republican member of the intelligence panel, who on Tuesday introduced a bill supported by the White House and top intelligence chiefs, that would renew Section 702 without changes and make it permanent.

Critics have called the process under which the FBI and other agencies can query the pool of data collected for U.S. information a "backdoor search loophole" that evades traditional warrant requirements.

"How can we accept the government's reassurance that our privacy is being protected when the government itself has no idea how many Americans' communications are being swept up and stored?" said Liza Goitein, a privacy expert at the Brennan Center for Justice.

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NSA Backtracks on Sharing Number of Americans Caught In Warrantless Spying - Fortune

WikiLeaks founder supporting NSA leak suspect in Georgia – Atlanta Journal Constitution

Augusta

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has called on his supporters to rally to the side of the 25-year-old suspect in the National Security Agency leak investigation here.

Assange, who has drawn a mixture of praise and scorn for his role in the disclosure of highly classified U.S. intelligence information, tweeted this week: Alleged NSA whistleblower Reality Leigh Winner must be supported. She is a young women [sic] accused of courage in trying to help us know. He also tweeted that Winner, a U.S. Air Force veteran, is against the wall for talking to the press.

It doesn't matter why she did it or the quality (of) the report, said Assange, who jumped his bail and sought asylum in Ecuador to avoid extradition to Sweden on rape accusations. Swedish prosecutors have since announced they were dropping the rape inquiry and no longer seeking to extradite him. Assange has denied the allegations. Acts of non-elite sources communicating knowledge should be strongly encouraged.

Assistant U.S. attorney Jennifer Solari highlighted Assanges support for Winner while pushing Thursday to keep her in jail until her trial. U.S. Magistrate Judge Brian Epps ultimately denied Winners release on bond, citing the nature of the crime, the weight of the evidence, her history and the potential danger to the community.

A federal grand jury has indicted Winner on a single count of "willful retention and transmission of national defense information. Winner faces up to 10 years in prison and $250,000 in fines, plus up to three years of supervised release and a $100 special assessment. Winner pleaded not guilty to the charge Thursday.

Filed this week, the six-page federal indictment says Winner worked as a federal contractor at a U.S. government agency in Georgia between February and June and had a top-secret security clearance. On about May 9, the indictment says, Winner printed and removed a May 5 report on intelligence activities by a foreign government directed at targets within the United States. Two days later, she sent a copy of the report to an online news outlet.

The U.S. Justice Department announced Winners arrest Monday, about an hour after The Intercept reported that it had obtained a top-secret NSA report about Russias interference in the 2016 presidential election. The report says Russian military intelligence officials tried to hack into the U.S. voting system just before last Novembers election.

Reality Leigh Winner is the first person to be charged with leaking confidential information during the Trump administration.

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WikiLeaks founder supporting NSA leak suspect in Georgia - Atlanta Journal Constitution

Rand Paul argues Flynn leaks highlight need to rein in NSA … – Washington Times

Sen. Rand Paul said Friday that the Russia and Flynn investigation also needs to look into reining in leaks at the National Security Agency.

We need to get to the bottom of who was listening to General Flynns conversations because leaking that is a felony and very dangerous to the republic,the Kentucky Republican said on Fox News.

I hope the special counsel will also be looking at this because I dont think Americans want to live in a society where the government becomes so powerful that its listening to all of our phone calls or reading all of our emails.

Mr. Paul said he hoped that special counsel Robert Mueller would be able to answer who leaked such information since the investigation would take place in a private setting.

Im guessing the special counsels ability to bring people in can be better than a committee. And sometimes you can find the truth a little better because a grand jury or a special counsel works behind closed doors.

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Rand Paul argues Flynn leaks highlight need to rein in NSA ... - Washington Times

NSA director explains unmasking – Washington Post


Washington Post
NSA director explains unmasking
Washington Post
June 7, 2017 11:18 AM EDT - NSA director Mike Rogers explained the limited process of revealing the identity of Americans subject to incidental surveillance, during a hearing Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on June 7 at the Capitol. (Reuters ...

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NSA director explains unmasking - Washington Post

Trump nemesis Rosie O’Donnell donates $1000 to NSA leak suspect – Atlanta Journal Constitution

A Trump basher in serious hot water is getting help from the presidents arch-nemesis, Rosie ODonnell.

The TV comedian has donated $1,000 to a GoFundMe campaign for Reality Leigh Winner, the 25-year-old federal contractor charged with leaking classified documents to an online media outlet.

Brave young patriot, ODonnell tweeted Wedesday, with a link to Winners GoFundMe page.

ODonnell has been feuding with Trump for more than a decade. She called him a snake-oil salesman on The View, and over the years hes called her a loser, crude, fat and dumb. Confronted with his belittling comments about women during a presidential debate, Trump interrupted, Only Rosie ODonnell.

Winner is the first person to be prosecuted for leaking under a president who has been vowing a crackdown on leaks for months.On her social media feeds, Winner didnt hide her disdain for Trump, calling him an orange fascist and Tangerine in Chief. Trump supporters have assailed her online, calling her a traitor, calling for her execution and even mocking her parents.

Via Twitter, ODonnell confirmed for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution late Wednesday that she made the $1,000 donation and said shes willing to do more. I would love to help her and her family, she said. I would love to talk to the mother and offer any help.

The GoFundMe account has raised more than $14,000.

It wasset up Monday by Shirley Fink, of Fairfax, Va., to assist with loss of wages, counseling from this traumatic experience and to be able to recover from this as Reality & her family rebuilds their lives. Its also for possible expenses for travel for the family and anything they might need to help them through these troubled times.

Winner is being held in the Lincoln County jail, about 40 miles from Augusta, with a bond hearing scheduled Thursday. Before her arrest, shehad access to classified National Security Agency material as an employee of government contractor Pluribus International, working at Fort Gordon.

Shes accused of printing out and mailing a secret intelligence report on Russian meddling in the 2016 election toThe Intercept, an online publication focused on national security and surveillance.

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Trump nemesis Rosie O'Donnell donates $1000 to NSA leak suspect - Atlanta Journal Constitution