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Yesterday, I noted that ODNI is withholding a supplemental opinion approved on August 20, 2008 that almost certainly approved the tracking of “correlations” among the phone dragnet (though this surely extends to the Internet dragnet as well). I pointed out that documents released by Edward Snowden suggest the use of correlations extends well beyond the […]
On August 18, 2008, the government described to the FISA Court how it used a particular tool to establish correlations between identifiers. (see page 12) A description of how [name of correlations tool] is used to correlate [description of scope of metadata included] was included in the government’s 18 August 2008 filing to the FISA Court, […]
The White House has rolled out the bare sketch of its proposal to fix the dragnet. The sketch says, the government will not collect these telephone records in bulk; rather, the records would remain at the telephone companies for the length of time they currently do today; absent an emergency situation, the government would obtain […]
It seems like aeons ago, but just a week ago, EFF and DOJ had a court hearing over preserving evidence in the EFF lawsuits (Shubert, Jewel, and First Unitarian Church v. NSA). As I noted in two posts, a week ago Monday DOJ surprised EFF with the news that it had been following its own […]
Dutch Ruppersberger has provided Siobhan Gorman with details of his plan to “fix” the dragnet — including repeating the laughable claim that the “dragnet” (which she again doesn’t distinguish as solely the Section 215 data that makes up a small part of the larger dragnet) doesn’t include cell data. Only, predictably, it’s not a “fix” […]
Yesterday, the Senate Armed Services Committee held a hearing for Vice Admiral Mike Rogers to serve as head of Cyber Command (see this story from Spencer about how Rogers’ confirmation as Cyber Command chief serves as proxy for his role as Director of National Security Agency because the latter does not require Senate approval). Many […]
When Bernie Sanders asked the NSA whether it spied on Members of Congress, Keith Alexander responded, in part, Among those protections is the condition that NSA can query the metadata only based on phone numbers reasonably suspected to be associated with specific foreign terrorist groups. For that reason, NSA cannot lawfully search to determine if […]
The FISA Court just released the January 3, 2014 phone dragnet order, DOJ’s motion to amend it to meet Obama’s new dragnet terms, and the approval for that. But those changes are of the least interest in these documents. I’ll explain the loophole to the changes tomorrow. For now, consider that the NSA reportedly can’t […]
There’s one more totally weedy change in the phone dragnet orders I wanted to point out: the flimsy way the program has, over time, tied into “foreign intelligence.” To follow along, it’s helpful to use the searchable versions of the phone dragnet orders ACLU has posted. Start by searching on this order — from December 11, 2008, just […]
PCLOB tells us that the FISA Court approved a new automated query system (versions appear to have been in development for years, and it replaced the automated alert system from 2009) in late 2012 that permitted all the 3-degree contact chains off all RAS-approved identifiers to be dumped into the corporate store at once where […]
