NSA's Notion of Regaining Confidence
In my apparent never-ending job of documenting all the lies, half truths, and misrepresentations the Intelligence Community has told Congress, I wanted to look at one more document from the chunk the I Con released last week: the briefing…
DiFi's "Surveillance" Dictionary Makes Her Beloved Phone Dragnet Illegal
Ut oh.
Dianne Feinstein's been writing op-eds again.
This one mostly rehashes the old arguments.
There's the claim that stopping a guy less dangerous than Peter King once was is worth creating a database of all the phone-based relationships…
Raj De and the Back-Door Loophole
As I already noted, NSA General Counsel lied in today's PCLOB hearing when he said the use of Section 215 to conduct a phone dragnet had the indicia of legitimacy because Congress twice reauthorized the PATRIOT after the executive had given…
DOJ Did Not Fulfill Legally Required Disclosure on Section 215 to Congress Until After PATRIOT Reauthorization
In the Guardian's superb summary of the importance of the NSA leaks, Zoe Lofgren challenges the claims that Congress has received all the documents NSA claims it has gotten.
I do serve on the Judiciary Committee and various statements have…
Crazy Posturing Over Hakimullah Mehsud Drone Killing Drowns Out Key Question: Why Now?
We are awash in analyses of the drone killing on Friday of Hakimullah Mehsud, who was the leader of Pakistan's Taliban. Declan Walsh in the New York Times captures much of the puzzlement in the DC establishment over why Pakistan is responding…
Anonymous Aide Pushback Strengthens Case that DiFi Bill Supports Backdoor Searches
Ellen Nakashima wrote a truly remarkable article on the DiFi Fake FISA Fix, in which she quotes the following critics of the bill:
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.)
Elizabeth Goitein, co-director of the Brennan Center for Justice’s Liberty and National…
Drowning in Haystacks
The NYT and Guardian have similar stories out today describing the sheer breadth of NSA's spying. The Guardian describes how NSA gleefully embraced change because it presented more opportunities for SIGINT collection.
n one of the leaked 'State…
BIG CHEESE AND TUNDRA Mitten and Seminole Trash Talk
MOVED UP AND FEATURED BITCHEZZ!!! FOR THE OBLITERATION OF TEH BEARZZ.
This ain't no party, This ain't no disco. This ain't no fooling around. We got some big ass state rivalries starting this weekend. Since the Red Sawx Nation has already…
DiFi's Fake FISA Fix: The Roamer Pre-Emergency Exigent Excuse To Be Used on Internet Content
There's one more aspect of Dianne Feinstein's Fake FISA Fix bill that doesn't make any sense: it's proposed solution to the "roamer problem."
Roamers are, at least as the NSA's internal review explains them, when a foreign target with a GSM…
DiFi's Fake FISA Fix Appears to Further Extend Searches on US Persons Under Section 702
There's a section of DiFi's FakeFISAFix bill, called "Restrictions on the Querying of the Contents of Certain Communications," that purports to put new limits on the searches of data collected under Section 702 for US person information.
(m)…
It Was Verizon, with the Fiber Cable, Under the Atlantic
Egads. Nate is right. The SZ report is old -- from August. Folks were chatting about it, I think, in conjunction with the new attention on the 12333 collection overseas, which is why I pointed to it. Thanks for pointing it out.
Remember when…
NSA Apologists Now Blaming Snowden for NSA's Own Cyberdefense Failures
Read this claim about NSA spying, but don't laugh.
"None of what the U.S. is doing is benefiting American business."
Did you manage not laughing at the notion that the US is spending $70 billion a year on spying and none of it -- not one little…
Dianne Feinstein Opens the Tech Back Door to the Dragnet Database Even Wider
I've been writing for months about the great big loophole providing access to the phone dragnet database.
Basically, the NSA needs someone to massage the dragnet data before analysts do queries on it, to take out high frequency call numbers…
Robert Litt: Isn't Weakening Encryption Our Job?
Office of the Director of National Intelligence General Counsel Robert Litt gave a speech to the American Bar Association's National Security Law conference yesterday. It's full of lots of patent bullshit, as you might expect, including misrepresenting…
How Ridiculous is Pakistan's New Civilian Drone Victim Estimate? Terrorist Okra-Picking Grandma!
On October 24, 2012, Nabila Rehman, who was eight years old at the time, was helping her grandmother pick vegetables in the family's garden in North Waziristan. Here is her description of what happened next:
[youtuber youtube='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDlvGqQ7VUo']
Remarkably,…
Feinstein's Fake Fix May Expand Use of the Phone Dragnet
Dianne Feinstein and 10 other Senate Intelligence Committee members approved a bill yesterday that purports to improve the dragnet but actually does almost nothing besides writing down the rules the FISA Court already imposed on the practice.
I'll…
What's the Relationship Database About?
Atrios asks what the whole dragnet is about.
It's actually a serious question. Maybe it's just a full employment program for spooks. Maybe they just do it because they can. But the only "real" point to such an extensive surveillance system…
Angry Mom and First Principles: What is the Nature of a Broken Lock?
This won’t be a cool, calm, collected post like Marcy writes, because it’s me, the angry mom. You might even have seen me Tuesday afternoon in the school parking lot waiting to pick up a kid after sports practice. I was the one gripping…
What Are NSA's Standards for Surveilling Transnational Crime Organizations?
Yesterday, the Italian magazine Panorama claimed that the NSA had wiretapped the Vatican.
I have some questions about the veracity of the report. NSA has denied it more vigorously than other allegations of tapping world leaders. Panorama…
The Smartest European Blowback In the World
For the record, I think European and Brazilian efforts to crack down on US cloud companies -- especially Google -- are mostly just an effort to gain further access to the data themselves and create more competitive conditions for their countries'…