“There comes a time in the history of nations when fear and complacency allow power to accumulate and liberty and privacy to suffer.”
With those words, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul took to the Senate floor for an eleven hour unofficial filibuster to call out the dangers of the Patriot Act’s allowing the NSA to collect information about the phone calls of all Americans.
It marked the second time Paul had used the filibuster to bring attention to what he feels are the NSA’s illegal methods for collecting information on Americans.
The Patriot Act allows the government to collect “metadata” of every call made on American phones. While the government does not collect the actual content of the calls, the government knows who is on the phone calls and can track who an American is speaking with and for how long they speak.
The sections of the Patriot Act that allow for the bulk collection of the data expires on June 1 and while Republicans leaders in the Senate want to allow it to continue, the Senate is voting on a House-passed bill that removes the NSA authorization to collect bulk data versus a system that will allow surveillance only if a judge approves a specific request.
The Senate is scheduled to vote on whether to allow the bulk collection of American’s phone records to continue before Memorial Day.
The National Security Agency has a massive new program called “MonsterMind” that is aimed to be a main cyberweapon for the defense of America’s computer networks.
The revelation came from fugitive NSA leaker Edward Snowden in one of his first major public magazine interviews.
The interview, which will appear in the September issue of Wired magazine, has Snowden revealing that the program will not only capture all communications coming into the United States but that it could also mislead defense forces seeking out cybercriminals.
“You could have someone sitting in China, for example, making it appear that one of these attacks is originating in Russia,” Snowden said. “And then we end up shooting back at a Russian hospital. What happens next?”
Snowden said that what the NSA calls “analyzing traffic flows” means they’re spying on everyone.
“If we’re analyzing all traffic flows, that means we have to be intercepting all traffic flows,” he said. “That means violating the Fourth Amendment, seizing private communications without a warrant, without probable cause or even a suspicion of wrongdoing. For everyone, all the time.”
Wired magazine had traveled to Moscow for the interview that took place as Snowden was being given a three-year extension of his asylum.
The NSA would not respond to Snowden’s claims, telling Fox “”If Mr. Snowden wants to discuss his activities, that conversation should be held with the U.S. Department of Justice. He needs to return to the United States to face the charges against him.”
The Obama administration spied on Americans without warrants.
The head of U.S. intelligence admitted that the National Security Agency spied on ordinary Americans as part of their operations to target communications on foreigners located outside the United States.
“Senior officials have sometimes suggested that government agencies do not deliberately read Americans’ emails, monitor their online activity or listen to their phone calls without a warrant,” Democratic Sens. Ron Wyden of Oregon and Mark Udall of Colorado said in a joint statement. “However, the facts show that those suggestions were misleading, and that intelligence agencies have indeed conducted warrantless searches for Americans’ communications.”
Intelligence officials say the searches are necessary to try and detect terrorism activity by Americans living and working abroad.
“If a government agency thinks that a particular American is engaged in terrorism or espionage, the Fourth Amendment requires that the government secure a warrant or emergency authorization before monitoring his or her communications,” Wyden and Udall said.
In the latest salvo regarding the spying on ordinary Americans by the National Security Agency, the head of that group is saying that soldier’s lives will be put in danger if more documents are released to the public.
General Keith Alexander told Fox News that his “greatest concern” was the possible loss of life because of Snowden’s actions.
Gen. Alexander said the NSA has a “good assessment” of the remaining documents that Snowden stole before he fled to Russia and that many of those documents will compromise U.S. military actions around the world. Revealing those could put the lives of soldiers and possibly their family members in danger.
He also addressed comments from former President Jimmy Carter that he was concerned the NSA was monitoring e-mails by denying the NSA would do it.
“The reality is, we don’t do that. And if we did, it would be illegal and we’d be … held accountable and responsible,” Gen. Alexander said.
Not even a former President can avoid the NSA.
Former President Jimmy Carter told NBC’s Meet The Press that he avoids using electronic means of communications because he is suspicious that the NSA would spy on him. He said that if he wants to correspond with anyone, especially a foreign leader, he hand-writes a message and then sends it via snail mail.
“I have felt that my own communications are probably monitored,” President Carter said. “I believe if I send an e-mail, it will be monitored.”
Carter also took issue with the use of electronic surveillance by the NSA and the use of drones by intelligence services. Carter said the policies regarding the use of those spy planes “has been extremely liberalized” and he added that he believes intelligence services have abused the tools that had been given to them.
The latest NSA revelation revealed they obtained access to multiple systems by targeting the system administrator for hacking and surveillance.
The document from fugitive NSA leaker Edward Snowden revealed that the NSA would target the personal Facebook and emails of system administrators to hack their personal computers to gain information on corporate systems.
One of the documents released was actually titled “I hunt sys admins.”
The NSA targeted more than passwords once they obtained system access. They would obtain customer lists, network maps, business correspondence and even information described as “pictures of cats in funny poses with amusing captions.”
The document also showed the NSA targeting users of the TOR web browsing system that has higher levels of security than the normal systems.
The National Security Agency has a program that is so powerful it can record all the phone calls coming out of a nation and provide them the chance to play them back over the course of a month.
A manager for the NSA compared the program to a “time machine” and said that any individual recorded by the machine can be listened to without that person’s permission or a warrant from a court.
The program is called MYSTIC and started in 2009. The program has a component called RETRO, which stands for “retrospective retrieval”, which allows the user to search and play back phone calls from the previous month.
The program was initially proposed as a one-off operation but according to last year’s intelligence budget, five countries have come under the MYSTIC program and a sixth country was scheduled to be put in place by the end of 2013.
The program was disclosed by the Washington Post who withheld the names of the country confirmed to be under surveillance at the request of the government who claimed national security issues.
The latest release from fugitive NSA leaker Edward Snowden shows that the National Security Agency used a website that looked almost identical to Facebook as a way to plant malware on computers.
The deception was part of a program codenamed TURBINE that would plant malware on computers allowing the NSA access to the computer’s microphone and camera without the user’s knowledge.
The report said that as many as 100,000 computers worldwide have been infected with the NSA’s spying software using the false Facebook page.
In addition to allowing video and audio surveillance of the computer user, the NSA would be able to track internet browsing history, login details and passwords for websites, keystrokes by the users and could corrupt files on the user’s system.
The report says the system is so sophisticated that many people will never be able to spot the fake website.
Fugitive NSA leaker Edward Snowden told members of the European Parliament that many more spy operations are yet to be revealed that could show major violations of the rights of EU citizens.
Snowden said he’s going to allow the journalists to whom he’s given classified information to decide which operations are released to the public.
“I don’t want to outpace the efforts of journalists,” Snowden testified, “but I can confirm that all documents reported thus far are authentic and unmodified, meaning the alleged operations again Belgacom, SWIFT, the EU as an institution, the United Nations, UNICEF and others based on documents I have provided have actually occurred. I expect similar operations will be revealed in the future that affect many more ordinary citizens.”
Snowden testified that he still loves the United States and that the government likely missed terror plots because they were busy collecting large amounts of information and not taking the time to monitor it all.
Snowden invoked the Boston Marathon attack in his testimony, claiming the Russians had warned U.S. intelligence about one of the bombers but the FBI did only cursory investigations.
Kentucky Senator Rand Paul announced that he has filed one of the largest class-action lawsuits in history in response to spying operations by the National Security Agency against American citizens.
The suit was joined by the conservative advocacy group FreedomWorks and filed in the U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia.
The suit claims the NSA’s program that collects the metadata of American’s phone calls violates the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution. The lawsuit wants the court to rule the program unconstitutional and order the government to immediately stop the program.
“There’s a huge and growing swell of protest in this country of people who are outraged that their records would be taken without suspicion, without a judge’s warrant and without individualization,” Sen. Paul told reporters.
A Justice Departments spokesman said that they expect to win the case because at least 15 other judges have ruled the program legal.