Mediaboss Marketing

The U.S. National Security Agencys surveillance programs are legal and under close scrutiny by other parts of the government, the agencys internal privacy watchdog said Monday in an online Q&A.

NSA surveillance and data collection programs conform to the U.S. Constitution, Rebecca Richards, the agencys first civil liberties and privacy director, wrote during an hour-plus Q&A on Tumblr.

The NSA operates under rules that ensure that its activities fall within the parameters of the Constitution, Richards wrote when asked why she believes the surveillance programs are constitutional.

The oversight regime governing NSA is extensive, spanning all three branches of government, she added. The fact that NSA created my job highlights the value and importance NSA leadership places on privacy and civil liberties protections.

Critics have said some NSA surveillance programs violate the Constitutions Fourth Amendment, prohibiting unreasonable searches and seizures by the government.

One Q&A participant asked if U.S. residents fears of being discreetly spied on are merited.

The fears are not merited, Richards wrote. NSA is a foreign intelligence agency, she wrote. Our mission is to collect critical intelligence on foreign powers or their agents necessary to defend the country.

U.S. law requires that the NSA, when targeting a U.S. citizen for foreign intelligence purposes, to obtain a court order based on a finding of probable cause to believe the intended target is a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power, she added.

One participant paraphrased Benjamin Franklin to Richards: He who gives up freedom for safety deserves neither. The questioner then asked whether the NSAs erosion of the Fourth Amendment is fair and righteous, in regard to the principles on which the United States were founded?

Richards again defended the NSA: Intelligence agencies, just like other government agencies, have a responsibility to protect privacy and civil liberties, she wrote. In the course of our operations, we take great care to protect and safeguard personal privacy.

Read this article:
NSA privacy director defends agency's surveillance

Provided by National Journal NSA reforms

Privacy advocates, facing an uphill battle in a Republican-controlled Congress next year, will have to make a difficult choice.

Some argue that their best shot to curb the National Security Agency's powers will be to kill core provisions of the USA Patriot Act altogether. But other reformers aren't ready to take the post-9/11 law hostage.

The debate over whether to let the Patriot Act provisions expire in June threatens to splinter the surveillance-reform coalition. If the tech industry, privacy groups, and reform-minded lawmakers can't coalesce around a strategy soon, they may have little hope of reining in the surveillance state.

And with outrage over the Snowden revelations fading and fear over the Islamic State rising, the push for reform appears to have already lost its momentum.

The NSA critics are still licking their wounds after Senate Republicans blocked the USA Freedom Act last week. The bill, authored by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, would have prohibited the government's carte blanche collection of U.S. phone metadatathe numbers and time stamps of phone calls but not their actual contents.

The bill would have also extended key provisions of the Patriot Act for two years, including the controversial Section 215, which the NSA uses to justify its phone record collection program. But that wasn't enough for Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Sen. Marco Rubio, and most of the Republican caucus, who warned that the bill would have helped terrorists kill Americans.

"This is the worst possible time to be tying our hands behind our backs. The threat from ISIL is real," McConnell said in a statement, using an alternative name for the Islamic State.

With the Republicans winning the Senate, McConnell is about to become the majority leader, giving him control over the chamber's agenda. Given his aggressive last-minute whipping against the Freedom Act, privacy advocates say it is difficult to imagine him pushing anything more than cursory changes to the NSA.

But with so many ways to block legislation in Congress, it's always easier to stop something than to pass it. That reality has already led some privacy advocates to want to kill any reauthorization of the Patriot Act that doesn't include substantial reforms to the government's spying powersa viewpoint that has already spawned a #Sunset215 hashtag.

Here is the original post:
Patriot Act Deadline Threatens to Splinter NSA Reformers

Efforts to curb the National Security Agencys bulk collection of American phone metadata were dealt a blow with the defeat of the USA Freedom Act on Nov. 18. With a 58-42 vote, the bill failed to attract the 60 votes necessary to clear the Senate filibuster.

With Republicans taking control of Congress in January, privacy advocates are concerned that the vote represented the last chance to enact surveillance reform. Experts say its too close to call whether the new, GOP-controlled Congress will maintain the status quo or look to pass legislation that accomplishes some of the Freedom Acts objectives.

Theres enough uneasiness and opposition to the NSA that the GOP is split over what to do next, said Robert Jervis, a professor of political science and international affairs at Columbia University. Still, theres a broad political coalition thats in favor of surveillance, said Abraham Newman, an associate professor at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.

Normally hawkish Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, voted for the bill.

Incoming Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., referring to the terrorist group ISIS, said now is the worst time to tie our hands behind our backs and voted against it.

Incoming Senate judiciary chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, voted against the bill. Rand Paul, R-Ky., a front-runner for the GOP 2016 presidential nomination, voted against it because of a provision to extend Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which provides the legal foundation for the data collection. It will expire on June 1 next year if not renewed.

The very likely outcome is that it will be renewed, Newman said, adding that a provision could be attached to another bill in the weeks before the June 1 deadline. Many provisions of the Patriot Act have sunset clauses, but, if you look, very few of them have ever actually sunset. It could be reauthorized through some omnibus legislation.

The USA Freedom Act proposed an end to the indiscriminate collection of American phone metadata and would have installed a privacy watchdog within Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court deliberations.

The USA Freedom Act would have also forced the NSA to reveal how many Americans are inadvertently ensnared in the investigation of foreign suspects and given technology companies the ability to be more transparent on the number of data requests they are forced to comply with.

If passed, the act would have ensured that the NSA still had access to phone metadata while keeping those records in the hands of phone companies. That raised eyebrows from the civil liberties community, with critics pointing to the recent news of Verizons nearly undetectable tracking cookie as proof that the corporate world is hardly a better privacy safeguard than the NSA.

Read more:
NSA Reform Could Pit GOP Hawks Against Partys Libertarian Wing

The U.S. is citing the threat posed by Islamic State in a bid to block an anti-surveillance resolution backed by Germany and Brazil at the United Nations, diplomats said.

The two countries are seeking a vote today in the General Assemblys human rights committee on a nonbinding resolution to condemn the mass collection of metadata, such as the bulk records of phone calls that are gathered by the U.S. National Security Agency.

In response, the Obama administration is arguing that such intelligence is needed by the U.S.-led coalition that is fighting the Sunni extremists in Iraq and Syria and faces the threat of foreign fighters come home to stage terrorist attacks in Europe or the U.S., according to two UN diplomats involved in the negotiations who asked not to be identified commenting on private consultations.

The lobbying by American diplomats is a shift from the low-key approach they took last year to minimize a political backlash after disclosures by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden of U.S. surveillance at home and abroad. Last year, the General Assembly adopted by consensus a resolution that condemned the mass collection of personal data generally.

Brazil and Germany led the effort then, too, after the disclosure that the NSA may have tapped German Chancellor Angela Merkels mobile phone and eavesdropped on Brazilian President Dilma Rousseffs private communications.

Metadata include the dates and time stamps of communications, such as how long calls lasted, when and where an e-mail account was accessed, or which websites were visited and when, without disclosing the contents of the communications.

A third UN diplomat said the U.S. may have shifted its negotiating tactics because of a separate provision in the draft resolution, which says governments should exercise regulatory jurisdiction over companies that control data to ensure compliance with human-rights obligations.

Last week, the U.S. Senate voted against taking up a measure that would limit the NSAs bulk collection of phone records, saying it would restrict the intelligence communitys ability to prevent terrorist attacks. The legislation was backed by a coalition of Internet and technology companies, which include Google Inc. (GOOG) and Twitter Inc. (TWTR)

To contact the reporter on this story: Sangwon Yoon in United Nations at syoon32@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: John Walcott at jwalcott9@bloomberg.net Larry Liebert, Michael Shepard

See the original post:
U.S. Said to Cite Islamic State Fight to Block UN Spying Text

Taking a page from reddit's ask-me-anything feature and other live Q&A sessions, the country's most popular spies are burnishing their image today with a little direct outreach.

On Tumblr, Rebecca Richards the National Security Agency's civil liberties and privacy officer is tossing out casual, Internetty answers to mostly softball questions like "What is your first priority as Privacy Director?" and "What is involved in your typical day of work?"

The answers consist mainly of abstract buzzwords like "protect and safeguard personal privacy" without going into specifics.

The chat, if you can call it that, is only one hour long and was first promoted by the NSA about six hours ago. It would've been easy to miss unless you already follow the NSA closely. So far, Richards hasn't addressed last week's USA Freedom Act vote in Congress, or any other substantive policy issues which left some visibly frustrated over the event.

Richards has taken one question from Gellman and one from another journalist, but didn't directly address the first and offered few specifics on the second.

Brian Fung covers technology for The Washington Post.

More:
Shock: The NSAs live Q&A is totally devoid of substance