5th Amendment Silence: One Day In Salinas We Let It Slip Away
There is a famous line in the famous Kris Kristofferson song "Me and Bobby McGee" that reads:
Then somewhere near Salinas, Lord, I let her slip away
Today the United States Supreme Court let a bit of the 5th Amendment backbone right to…
Edward Snowden: Congress Has Immunity from Spying, But You Don't
I'll admit from the start that the Snowden chat at the Guardian was a brilliant journalistic and technical feat. At the same time, it's clear that Snowden is still closely following the news, and presumably shaping his answers for maximal political…
War Criminal Afghan Army Chief of Staff Dostum Opens Fire on Member of Own Political Party
As Afghanistan careens toward presidential elections next April and the end of authorized NATO presence in Afghanistan at the end of next year, we are beginning to see jockeying for position among the same set of militia strongmen who never…
James Clapper Throws a Concentrated Nugget of Orwellian Turd-Splat
Hooboy.
I was going to leave the whole CNET thing well enough alone after Jerry Nadler issued a statement retracting his sort-of suggestion that the NSA could wiretap Americans without a warrant (more on that below).
But I can't remember…
Seeing Through the Blizzard to Utah: How Much Space Does Metadata Need
In the blizzard of half-truths, dissembling, and prevarications about the nature of the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs, it’s easy to lose sight of the obvious. In this case, the obvious is about one million square feet…
The CNET "Bombshell" and the Four Surveillance Programs
CNET is getting a lot of attention for its report that NSA, "has acknowledged in a new classified briefing that it does not need court authorization to listen to domestic phone calls."
In general, I'm just going to outsource my analysis…
Shell Games: How to Keep Doing Internet Data Mining and Avoid the Courts
As I noted, the WaPo makes it clear one of the most sensitive parts of the government's surveillance programs is the collection of Internet metadata.
But the thing is, it doesn't come out and explain whether and if so how it continues to…
Telecoms Versus the Toobz: The Source of the Legal Troubles
In this important piece on overbroad surveillance programs under Presidents Bush and Obama, the WaPo reveals that the program James Comey almost resigned over in 2004 involved sucking Internet metadata off telecom switches owned by the telecoms.
Telephone…
NSA Spying: The Oversight of the Passive Voice
In a white paper claiming "the American people deserve to know what we are doing to protect both" privacy and liberty, and security, the government (Ellen Nakashima, at least, doesn't specify which agency generated this) also includes this assertion:
The…
To Justify Dragnet, FBI Implies It Can't File 300 More NSLs in a Year
So Mark Hosenball just reported this, uncritically.
The U.S. government only searched for detailed information on calls involving fewer than 300 specific phone numbers among the millions of raw phone records collected by the National Security…
PRISM: The Difference between Orders and Directives
The AP has a story that lays out the architecture of how PRISM fits in with the rest of the government surveillance programs. The short version is, as much prior reporting supports, it uses PRISM to target communications it has collected, as…
The Inefficacy of Big Brother: Associations and the Terror Factory
The WSJ has a fascinating story, responding to (but not linking) this post, trying to address the question of whether the NSA programs we've learned about are efficient.
But some statisticians and security experts have raised another objection:…
Al Gore: Get Your Hands Off of My (Our?) Internet
Working on posts and then will have my sis-in-law in to watch the Grand Rapids Griffins defeat her Syracuse Crush tonight in hockey. (Really!)
But I did like this Al Gore interview:
Gore said he was not persuaded by the argument that the…
Russ Feingold: Yahoo Didn't Get the Info Needed to Challenge the Constitutionality of PRISM
The NYT has a story that solves a question some of us have long been asking: Which company challenged a Protect America Act order in 2007, only to lose at the district and circuit level?
The answer: Yahoo.
The Yahoo ruling, from 2008, shows…
What Does NCTC Do with NSA and FBI's Newly Disclosed Databases?
The discussion about the various "NSA" programs we've seen so far have discussed only how NSA works with FBI. FBI requests the dragnet phone information and hands it over to NSA. NSA negotiates direct access to internet companies that allow…
Robert Mueller's Claims to Be Ignorant about Geolocation Probably Bullshit
As I laid out in this Guardian column on today's House Judiciary Committee hearing, after citing Smith v. Maryland a bunch of times to justify getting all Americans' phone records, FBI Director Robert Mueller went on to pretend not to know whether…
DOD, in 2015, after Next Big Leak: No More Removable Media
In 2008, DOD's computers in Iraq were infected with malware introduced via a thumb drive.
The order went out: no more removable media.
In 2009-10, Bradley Manning downloaded entire databased onto a Lady Gaga CD.
The order went out:…
House Intelligence Parrot: These Programs Are Not Secret...
... but it's a grave danger for you to know about them.
Bob Minehart, a staffer for Democrats (presumably Dutch Ruppersberger) on the House Intelligence Committee, has put together a pair of talking point documents for members of the House…
Who Are the Potential Targets of the OTHER Section 215 Program(s)
There are several small, but significant, discrepancies between what Dianne Feinstein and Keith Alexander said in yesterday's Senate Appropriation Committee hearing on cyber and what others have said. As one example, last week James Clapper…
BREAKING: Iran Is a Terrorist Organization
I'm trying to sort through the irreconcilable claims about the Section 215 and PRISM/702 programs made in today's Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on cyber.
But for now, I want to post Dianne Feinstein's statement about what Section…