Mediaboss Marketing

The National Security Agency has decided to halt a controversial surveillance program, but this was just the tip of an iceberg of government abuses of privacy and due process.

The NSA said last week that it will no longer engage in warrantless spying on Americans digital communications that merely mention a foreign intelligence target, referred to in the intelligence community as about communications. The agency had claimed the authority to engage in such surveillance under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which allows it to target non-U.S. citizens or residents believed to be outside the country, although Americans communications are oftentimes swept up as well.

NSA will no longer collect certain internet communications that merely mention a foreign intelligence target, the agency announced in a statement. Instead, NSA will limit such collection to internet communications that are sent directly to or from a foreign target.

Even though NSA does not have the ability at this time to stop collecting about information without losing some other important data, the Agency will stop the practice to reduce the chance that it would acquire communications of U.S. persons or others who are not in direct contact with a foreign intelligence target, it continued.

It is a significant departure from previous assurances that the program was vital to national security, though many have forcefully disputed that claim. Its effectiveness has always been difficult to gauge, however, due to the lack of information the NSA has provided about it.

The agencys decision is certainly welcome, though we must make the perhaps generous assumption that it will do or not do, in this case what it says it will, and that it will not simply change its mind in the future. Our enthusiasm is also tempered by the realization that this is an agency, along with various other government intelligence agencies, that is built on deception and has repeatedly lied about its spying activities and violations of Americans constitutional rights.

We are reminded of the public testimony of then-National Intelligence Director James Clapper at a March 2013 Senate Intelligence Committee hearing. At one point, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., asked Clapper plainly, Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions, or hundreds of millions of Americans? Clapper then lied to his face, and the faces of all Americans, saying, No, sir, and then, Not wittingly.

Within a matter of months, news stories based on information from the Edward Snowden leaks would reveal the NSAs bulk collection of Americans phone metadata and internet communications.

Advertisement

Then there is the matter of the backdoor search loophole, by which the FBI or other agencies may search NSA databases for information about Americans collected under Section 702 without having to go through all that pesky business of obtaining a warrant. The loophole is sure to be a bone of contention during congressional debate over the reauthorization of Section 702, which is scheduled to expire at the end of the year.

Given the governments repeated abuses of Americans privacy through its snooping activities, those looking to reauthorize Section 702 have some serious questions to answer about how many Americans have been swept up in this supposed foreign surveillance, and how useful this intelligence actually is.

The Fourth Amendment is quite clear: Government searches require a warrant issued by a judge based on probable cause and describing the specific place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. New technology may make our communications quicker and more convenient as well as more easily recorded and stored but it does not alter that fundamental principle.

Follow this link:
NSA stops one abuse, but many remain - Los Angeles Daily News - LA Daily News

NSA mass gathering phone logs; getting called out by Congress. (WPEC)

Busted!

The National Security Agency is being called out by Congress, and it's because the NSA is still monitoring phone habits with jaw dropping frequency; around 151 million calls last year, and even after Capitol Hill told the agency to stop it.

CBS12 News is investigating, consulting with a former CIA analyst about the controversy, and asking why is it still happening.

She says because tracking threats from ISIS and lone wolves involves casting a wide net.

Putting one person under surveillance can then lead to a dozen more. But many Americans are understandably frustrated.

"Somebody like myself or yourself, I think we should be off the radar," said Doc Brown.

Brown is in liqueur sales. He says he gets about 100 phone calls a day. He's frustrated to think the government is spying on his calls. Marketing his rum is honest work.

"I don't think it is right," Brown said.

Lisa Ruth, is now a consultant, but she worked for the CIA for 16 years. She says intelligence agents follow paths to leads, and those paths can split off in many directions.

"It's very easy to think about the privacy side of this," she said. "What we're not thinking about is the terrorist side of this, and it's not as clean as saying one guy, 'We're just gonna look at one guy,' because if he is calling 27 people, you want to look at those 27 people."

After the Edward Snowden scandal, Congress ordered intelligence agencies to get warrants for phone monitoring. Those warrants need to be issued by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance court.

But the Director of National Intelligence has just come out with an annual report and only 42 such warrants were granted.

So how do you go from 42 to 151 million records?

The NSA Is dealing with that question.

These are not bugged calls but information about how often a number is being called and how long calls are lasting.

We wondered if Florida residents are more tolerant of this because of events like the Fort Lauderdale airport shooting and the Orlando nightclub shooting.

See the original post:
NSA mass gathering phone logs; getting called out by Congress ... - WPEC

By the look of things, the NSA will not give up its habits of collecting data about consumers anytime soon. Although a new law has gone into effect in 2015 the Freedom Act it has done very little to thwart NSAs mass surveillance techniques. In fact, the agency recorded 151 million phone calls in 2016 alone. The bigger question is what they plan to do with all of this data.

No one in the United States should consider themselves safe from mass surveillance by the NSA right now. The new report issued by the Office of the Director of national intelligence confirms as much. Despite the USA Freedom Act of 2015 going into effect a while ago, the agency still collects phone records and calls without batting an eye. That is quite a problematic development, as it is a clear invasion of consumer privacy.

The numbers for 2016 are quite worrisome, to say the least. Considering how only 42 terrorist suspects have been identified by the NSA in 2016, they collected over 150 million phone records. The ration of found suspects to the amount of phone calls collected is unjustifiably low. This goes to show the NSA is still performing its mass surveillance even though the USA Freedom Act of 2015 was designed and approved to put an end to these actions. So far, that law has had no immediate impact.

Moreover, this goes to show the NSA does not play by everyones rulebook either. Court orders were issued for surveillance of these terrorist suspects alone. Every other phone record not related to these individuals is unlawful evidence collected by the government agency, which seemingly continues to act without oversight. If even US laws cant stop the agency from doing as they please, it is doubtful anyone else on the planet will be able to have more success in this regard.

The news comes at a critical time in US history, as Congress is planning to reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign intelligence Surveillance Amendments Act. To be more specific, this section controls the warrantless surveillance program. While this law should expire at the end of 2017, that may not be the case in a few months.

This particular section lets agencies collect information on US citizens as long as the target of such an investigation is a foreigner in communication with someone in the states. Having this law reinstated for another few years will only allow the NSA to conduct even more surveillance. Speaking of which, the agency claims a large portion of their 2016 contain duplicates, although privacy advocates do not pay much attention to that claim.

It is intriguing to note how the NSA claims they halted the warrantless collection of Americans emails late last week. However, it appears they still kept tabs on phone records, which makes them one of the largest surveillance entities in the entire world. It is evident something needs to change sooner or later, yet it is doubtful that will be the case in the long run.

If you liked this article, follow us on Twitter @themerklenews and make sure to subscribe to our newsletter to receive the latest bitcoin, cryptocurrency, and technology news.

Visit link:
NSA Collected 151 Million Phone Records in 2016 - The Merkle

Before we dive into the latest IC transparency report [PDF] from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, let's take a moment to recognize the small miracle that it even exists. If NSA contractor Ed Snowden hadn't decided to color outside the official whistleblowing lines, we'd still be expected to put our complete trust in the government with zero evidentiary support.

That being said, the transparency report is still several steps removed from actual transparency, but it will have to do for now. What can we learn from it, even with many of the numbers being seemingly meaningless thanks to purposefully-missing context? Several things, actually. Marcy Wheeler has torn apart the report across four posts, each dealing with the report's fuzzy numbers (or, in the case of the CIA's contribution, a lack thereof).

One of the first misleading numbers in the report is the supposed single search of the NSA's 702 collections by the FBI for non-terrorism-related purposes. According to the report, this happened exactly once. But that's actually not true. The FBI makes far more frequent use of NSA data for non-terrorism investigations. It just does it in a way that won't show up in the IC's transparency report. Parallel construction is the FBI's friend.

FBIs querying system can be set such that, even if someone has access to 702 data, they can run a query that will flag a hit in 702 data but wont actually show the data underlying that positive return. This provides one way for 702-cleared people to learn that such information is in such a collection and if they want the data without having to report it may be able to obtain it another way. It is distinctly possible that once NSA shares EO 12333 data directly with FBI, for example, the same data will be redundantly available from that in such a way that would not need to be reported to FISC.

So, there's that bit of obfuscation right off the top. And the FBI isn't the only agency using an ostensibly foreign-facing collection to obtain information about US persons. The CIA -- an ostensibly foreign-facing agency -- does this as well. The FBI doesn't count its dips into the NSA haystacks. Neither does the CIA. The report shows 30,000 searches of unminimized US persons' data occurred last year. That number doesn't include the FBI's searches (because the FBI doesn't report its searches) and is quite possibly much, much higher than what's reported. This is only a good faith estimate by the IC, using software, rather than any form of reporting from the CIA.

NSA will rely on an algorithm and/or a business rule to identify queries of communications metadata derived from the FAA 702 [redacted] and telephony collection that start with a United States person identifier. Neither method will identify those queries that start with a United States person identifier with 100 percent accuracy.

As Wheeler points out, it could be 30,000 or 3 million or 3 billion searches. No one knows. By the time the CIA's required to count its US persons searches, it will likely perform most of its searches under Executive Order 12333 authorities, rather than the more closely-watched Section 702.

Finally, there's a really big number contained in the report. It looks amazingly high, but might be indicative of not much surveillance activity at all, at least not in the entire scheme of things. According to the report, the NSA was able to scoop up 151 million "call detail records (CDRs)" using only 42 selectors.

Read in the (lack of) context in the report, this would look like pure bullshit. There's no way 42 terrorism suspects (and their 3,150 one-hop "friends") are making 130 calls a day. (Or, if they're only talking to each other, 65 calls a day.)

As Wheeler points out, call records are not just records about phone calls. They also pick up records on text messages.

If these were phone calls between just two people, then if our terrorist buddies only spoke to each other, each would be responsible for 24,000 calls a year, or 65 a day, which is certainly doable, but would mean our terrorist suspects and their friends all spent a lot of time calling each other.

The number becomes less surprising when you remember that even with traditional telephony call records can capture calls and texts. All of a sudden 65 becomes a lot more doable, and a lot more likely to have lots of perfectly duplicative records as terrorists and their buddies spend afternoons texting back and forth with each other.

With this, 151 million records looks less like full-blown exploitation of this surveillance authority and something possibly more targeted than the NSA's used to. Then again, it could mean the NSA is sweeping up 65 innocent Americans every day of the year with its CDR demands. There's simply no way to tell.

But CDRs include all "call events," which include a whole lot of related metadata having nothing to do with voice calls.

A CDR is defined as session identifying information (including an originating or terminating telephone number, an International Mobile Subscriber Identity (IMSI) number, or an International Mobile Station Equipment Identity (IMEI) number), a telephone calling card number, or the time or duration of a call.

Further trimming down this seemingly large number are two other aspects of the collection. Records obtained previously by the agency are included in this count, as well as junk metadata related to past selectors that may not be returning any current records.

That means our 3,192 targets and friends might only have had 48 calls or texts a day, without any duplication.

Which is a completely believable number of calls and texts between surveillance targets. The breathtaking 151 million records is suddenly a more manageable number that actually *gasp* looks as though the NSA is engaging in truly targeted collection.

But before we get carried away with the NSA's new "maybe collect a little less than it all" approach to surveillance, we need to remember this only covers a very small part of the NSA's collection activities.

[W]e need to understand the 65 additional texts or anything else available only in the US from a large number of electronic communications service providers that might be deemed a session identifier a day from 42 terrorists and their 3150 buddies [is] on top of the vast store of EO 12333 records that form the primary basis here.

Because (particularly as the rest of the report shows continually expanding metadata analysis and collection) this is literally just the tip of an enormous iceberg, 151 million edge cases to a vast sea of data.

That's what we're really dealing with here, unprecedented transparency or no: there is a vast surveillance apparatus operating in near-complete darkness, authorized by a presidential executive order and subject to almost zero oversight. Whatever concessions the NSA makes in relation to Section 702 in the upcoming months, its biggest collections will remain untouched. Unless something changes dramatically, the potential for constitutional violations and agency abuse remains unchanged. And, unless something changes dramatically, it will remain unseen.

Go here to see the original:
NSA's New Transparency Report Contains Just Enough Info To Be Dangerous, Not Nearly Enough To Be Truly ... - Techdirt

In 2016, the National Security Agency collected more than 151 million records about Americans phone calls, despite Congress passing a law the previous year the USA Freedom Act intended to curb bulk surveillance. These records are comprised of metadata about calls (which includes time, duration, and the numbers of both recipient and caller) and their collection was revealed in an annual transparency report, published on Tuesday by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

The report is the first assessment the public has seen of the impact of the USA Freedom Act, and shows the difficulty the NSA has reining in surveillance while continuing to collect useful intelligence. This Freedom Act was passed in 2015 after the Snowden revelations, and limits the NSA to collecting call metadata about individuals suspected of having ties to terrorism. The report shows that in 2016 the NSA received warrants to collect such information on only 46 terrorism suspects.

According to Reuters, officials from the NSA defended the report by saying that the figure of 151 million records was tiny compared to the scope of US surveillance pre-Snowden. (At that time the agency could scoop up billions of records per day, said one 2014 study.) The figure of 151 million is also misleading, said the NSA, as it counts multiple calls made to or from the same phone number. This, said the agency, explains the discrepancy between the small number of warrants and the huge number of records. However, the NSA did not provide a breakdown of the exact number of individuals caught up in the surveillance program, and many privacy advocates will be angered by the huge number of records still being collected.

Link:
NSA collected 151 million phone records in 2016, despite surveillance law changes - The Verge