A really important film in progress on the topic of NSA surveillance programs: The Program If it was possible to embed the video clip here, I would, but you'll have to see it on the nytimes site- it's about 8 minutes long and really worthwhile. The article itself is also a good read explaining the details of the film. The director of the film is Laura Poitras, someone who has repeatedly been subject to detention at the boder, an issue that Glenn Greenwald wrote about here.
since obama isn't running for re election anymore do you think he will be more aggressive in protecting american's rights?
And let's not forget this.. <iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/toEjMwMdVd4" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> The Patriot Act and National Defense Authorization Act trashed our 4th, 5th, 6th Amendments right under our noses. Unlawful arrest, no trial, no judge, no jury, indefinite imprisonment without legal representation. These were protections were hardwired into our Constitution's Bill of Rights for a reason- to protect us from a tyrannical government. However, these acts just protect the government from us. Anyone who is subjectively considered a threat, including Americans, are fair game. It's one step closer to fascism. Someone protesting the government can simply disappear of the map without recourse. http://www.activistpost.com/2011/12/10-ridiculous-things-that-make-you.html You can be considered a terrorist threat if: - you have more than seven days’ worth of food in your house - you own firearms - you’re missing any fingers on your hands - buy Flashlights or night-vision devices - pay cash at hotels - own precious metals - believe in conspiracies - text privately in public places - are an activist Btw, I believe these acts would have been passed even if Romney won.
This is a troubling aspect of President Obama's time in office, but a Republican would have been worse, in my opinion. We're damned either way, apparently. I posted in this thread 4 times already, so I'm not going to repeat myself now. If anyone here doesn't know, you can click on the number of replies by each thread title and it will list the members who posted in the thread, and a link to each post. Do it, and you'll find my opinions about this topic.
Why do you think Obama's about-face on civil liberties after 2008 had anything to do with trying to get re-elected? He was, after all, elected while promising to get rid of the worst abuses of the Bush administration. If anything, following through on that (instead of becoming Bush 2.0) would have made his re-election easier (only anecdotal, but he probably wouldn't have lost my vote).
Without a doubt. To me, this topic is the most troubling issue of them all and Dems & Repubs are similarly aligned on the issue. The emergence of a 3rd party with this topic (among others) as a differentiator would be nice.
I am a member of that sad and lonely group of people who votes for 3rd parties in every election, desperately hoping that they'll get enough votes that the bi-partisan debates commission will either have to include them or, very publicly, change their own rules to continue excluding them. Yeah ... Obama/Romney are of one mind on this issue.
This was missed a few months ago. Strange. http://www.aclu.org/blog/national-s...stice-department-documents-show-huge-increase ACLU: Obama Has Quadrupled Warrantless Wiretaps <h3 class="title"><a href="/blog/national-security-technology-and-liberty/new-justice-department-documents-show-huge-increase" rel="bookmark" title="New Justice Department Documents Show Huge Increase in Warrantless Electronic Surveillance ">New Justice Department Documents Show Huge Increase in Warrantless Electronic Surveillance</a></h3> <div class="blog-author"> By <a href="/blog/author/naomi-gilens">Naomi Gilens</a>, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 1:32pm </div> <div class="body clear-block"> <p>Justice Department <a href="https://www.aclu.org/technology-and-liberty/pen-register-trap-and-trace-foia-request-documents-released-department">documents </a>released today by the ACLU reveal that federal law enforcement agencies are increasingly monitoring Americans’ electronic communications, and doing so without warrants, sufficient oversight, or meaningful accountability.</p> <p>The documents, handed over by the government only after months of <a href="http://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/aclu-sues-doj-ignores-surveillance-transparency-law">litigation</a>, are the attorney general’s 2010 and 2011 reports on the use of “pen register” and “trap and trace” surveillance powers. The reports show a dramatic increase in the use of these surveillance tools, which are used to gather information about telephone, email, and other Internet communications. The revelations underscore the importance of regulating and overseeing the government’s surveillance power. (Our original <a href="https://www.aclu.org/files/assets/pen_register-trap_and_trace_foia_request.pdf">Freedom of Information Act request</a> and our legal <a href="https://www.aclu.org/files/assets/2012_05_03_-_filed_complaint.pdf">complaint</a> are online.)</p> <p>Pen register and trap and trace devices are powerfully invasive <a href="https://ssd.eff.org/wire/govt/pen-registers">surveillance tools</a> that were, <a href="http://openjurist.org/60/f3d/1314/united-states-v-r-fregoso">twenty years ago</a>, physical devices that attached to telephone lines in order to covertly record the incoming and outgoing numbers dialed. Today, no special equipment is required to record this information, as interception capabilities are built into phone companies’ call-routing hardware.</p> <p>Pen register and trap and trace devices now generally refer to the surveillance of information <i>about</i>—rather than the contents of—communications. Pen registers capture outgoing data, while trap and trace devices capture incoming data. This still includes the phone numbers of incoming and outgoing telephone calls and the time, date, and length of those calls. But the government now also uses this authority to intercept the “to” and “from” addresses of email messages, records about instant message conversations, non-content data associated with social networking identities, and at least some information about the websites that you visit (it isn't entirely clear where the government draws the line between the content of a communication and information about a communication when it comes to the addresses of websites).</p> <p><b>Electronic Surveillance Is Sharply on the Rise</b></p> <p>The reports that we received document an enormous increase in the Justice Department’s use of pen register and trap and trace surveillance. As the chart below shows, between 2009 and 2011 the combined number of original orders for pen registers and trap and trace devices used to spy on phones increased by 60%, from 23,535 in 2009 to 37,616 in 2011.</p> <p><b></b></p> <p>During that same time period, the number of people whose telephones were the subject of pen register and trap and trace surveillance more than tripled. <b>In fact, more people were subjected to pen register and trap and trace surveillance in the past two years than in the entire previous decade.</b></p> <p><b></b></p> <p>During the past two years, there has also been an increase in the number of pen register and trap and trace orders targeting email and network communications data. While this type of Internet surveillance tool remains relatively rare, its use is increasing exponentially. The number of authorizations the Justice Department received to use these devices on individuals’ email and network data increased 361% between 2009 and 2011.</p> <p><b></b></p> <p>The sharp increase in the use of pen register and trap and trace orders is the latest example of the skyrocketing spying on Americans’ electronic communications. Earlier this year, the <i>New York Times</i> <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/09/us/cell-carriers-see-uptick-in-requests-to-aid-surveillance.html?pagewanted=all">reported</a> that cellphone carriers received 1.3 million demands for subscriber information in 2011 alone. And an ACLU public records project <a href="http://www.aclu.org/protecting-civil-liberties-digital-age/cell-phone-location-tracking-public-records-request">revealed</a> that police departments around the country large and small engage in cell phone location tracking.</p> <p><b>Legal Standards For Pen Register And Trap And Trace Orders Are Too Low</b></p> <p>Because these surveillance powers are not used to capture telephone conversations or the bodies of emails, they are classified as “non-content” surveillance tools, as opposed to tools that collect “content,” like wiretaps. This means that the legal standard that law enforcement agencies must meet before using pen registers is <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith_v._Maryland">lower</a> than it is for wiretaps and other content-collecting technology. Specifically, in order to wiretap an American’s phone, the government must convince a judge that it has sufficient probable cause and that the wiretap is essential to an investigation. But for a pen register, the government need only submit certification to a court stating that it seeks information relevant to an ongoing criminal investigation. As long as it completes this simple procedural requirement, the government may proceed with pen register or trap and trace surveillance, without any judge considering the merits of the request. As one court <a href="http://openjurist.org/60/f3d/1314/united-states-v-r-fregoso">noted</a>, the judicial role is purely “ministerial in nature.”</p> <p>The content/non-content distinction from which these starkly different legal requirements arise is based on an erroneous factual premise, specifically that individuals lack a privacy interest in non-content information. This premise is false. Non-content information can still be extremely invasive, revealing who you communicate with in real time and painting a vivid picture of the private details of your life. If reviewing your social networking contacts is sufficient to <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/6213590/Gay-men-can-be-identified-by-their-Facebook-friends.html">determine your sexuality</a>, as found in an MIT study a few years ago, think what law enforcement agents could learn about you by having real-time access to whom you email, text, and call. But the low legal standard currently applied to pen register and trap and trace devices allows the government to use these powerful surveillance tools with very little oversight in place to safeguard Americans’ privacy.</p> <p><b>Failure to Share These Reports with the Public Frustrates Democratic Oversight</b></p> <p>In order to maintain a basic measure of accountability, Congress <a href="http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/3126">requires</a> that the attorney general submit annual reports to Congress on the Justice Department’s use of these devices, documenting:</p> <div style="display: list-item; list-style-position: outside; margin-left: 25px; margin-bottom: 15px;">The period of interceptions authorized by each order and the number and duration of any extensions of each order</div> <div style="display: list-item; list-style-position: outside; margin-left: 25px; margin-bottom: 15px;">The specific offenses for which each order was granted</div> <div style="display: list-item; list-style-position: outside; margin-left: 25px; margin-bottom: 15px;">The total number of investigations that involved orders</div> <div style="display: list-item; list-style-position: outside; margin-left: 25px; margin-bottom: 15px;">The total number of facilities (like phones) affected</div> <div style="display: list-item; list-style-position: outside; margin-left: 25px; margin-bottom: 15px;">The district applying for and the person authorizing each order.</div> <p>As my colleague Chris Soghoian has <a href="http://paranoia.dubfire.net/2010/06/dojs-surveillance-reporting-failure.html">noted</a>, however, the Justice Department has routinely failed to submit the required reports. In fact, the Justice Department repeatedly failed to submit annual reports to Congress between 2000 and 2008 (submitting them instead as “document dumps” covering four years’ worth of surveillance in 2005 and 2009). The department’s repeated failure to follow the law led the Electronic Privacy Information Center to write a <a href="http://epic.org/privacy/wiretap/ltr_pen_trap_leahy_final.pdf">letter of complaint</a> to Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) in 2009.</p> <p>Unfortunately, even when the Justice Department does turn over the reports, they have disappeared “into a congressional void,” as Professor Paul Schwartz has put it, instead of being released to the public. The reports for 1999-2003 were <a href="https://www.eff.org/foia/pen-registers">obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation</a> through a FOIA request. Chris Soghoian obtained the 2004-2009 reports through the same process.</p> <p>When no reports surfaced in 2010 and 2011, the ACLU filed a <a href="https://www.aclu.org/files/assets/pen_register-trap_and_trace_foia_request.pdf">FOIA request</a> to obtain them. After our request received no response, we <a href="https://www.aclu.org/files/assets/2012_05_03_-_filed_complaint.pdf">filed suit</a> to enforce it.</p> <p>Although the Justice Department has in the past repeatedly failed to submit the annual reports to Congress, it appears that it has now cleaned up its act. Both the 2010 and 2011 reports were submitted to Congress in compliance with the reporting requirement. Unfortunately, Congress has done nothing at all to inform the public about the federal government's use of these invasive surveillance powers. Rather than publishing the reports online, they appear to have filed them away in an office somewhere on Capitol Hill.</p> <p>This is unacceptable. Congress introduced the pen register reporting requirement in order to impose some transparency on the government’s use of a powerful surveillance tool. For democracy to function, citizens must have access to information that they need to make informed decisions—information such as how and to what extent the government is spying on their private communications. Our representatives in Congress know this, and created the reporting requirement exactly for this reason.</p> <p>It shouldn’t take a FOIA lawsuit by the ACLU to force the disclosure of these valuable reports. There is nothing stopping Congress from releasing these reports, and doing so routinely. They could easily be posted online, as the ACLU has done today.</p> <p>Even though we now have the reports, much remains unknown about how the government is using these surveillance tools. Because the existing reporting requirements apply only to surveillance performed by the Department of Justice, we have no idea of how or to what extent these surveillance powers are being used by other law enforcement agencies, such as the Secret Service, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or state and local police. As a result, the reports likely reveal only a small portion of the use of this surveillance power.</p> <p><b> Congress Should Pass a Law Improving the Reporting Requirements</b></p> <p>One member of Congress is attempting to overhaul our deeply flawed electronic surveillance laws. In August, Congressman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) <a href="http://www.pogowasright.org/wp-content/uploads/HR6339_ECPA.pdf">introduced a bill</a> to amend the <a href="http://www.aclu.org/technology-and-liberty/modernizing-electronic-communications-privacy-act-ecpa">Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986</a> to reflect advances in technology that have taken place since the law was passed over twenty-five years ago. One portion of Rep. Nadler’s bill addresses all of the major problems with the current reporting requirements for pen register and trap and trace surveillance. His bill would expand the reporting requirement to apply to all federal agencies, as well as state and local law enforcement. The bill would also shift the responsibility of compiling the reports from the attorney general to the Administrative Office of the United States Courts, which already completes the reporting requirements for the government’s use of wiretaps, and proactively posts those reports on its website each year.</p> <p><div class="take-action"><h4>Get Involved</h4><div class="title">It's Time to Modernize Our Privacy Law</div><div class="button"><a href="https://ssl.capwiz.com/aclu/issues/alert/?alertid=61012661&type=CO?s_src=UNW120001C00&ms=web_120911_ECPA_ac">Act Now</a></div></div>Congressman Nadler's bill is an opportunity to apply meaningful oversight to the government’s rapidly increasing use of a highly invasive surveillance power. These reforms are critical to protect our privacy and maintain an open and transparent government.</p> </div>
Just how big is the surveillance state? Former FBI Counterterrorisim specialist Tim Clemente answers: I doubt a "shadow internet" exists as he makes it seem (the storage requirements alone would be almost unbelievable), but the "tap" is there. In case you're still doubtful, recall that AT&T admitted that they had a splitter that dumped all their digital data to the feds - this was the reason for the retroactive immunity granted to the telcos (which, I will reiterate, Obama lied about his voting stance in regards to).
What I wonder is - any person aiming to harm national security would, by now, be idiotic to consider: - Having a telephone conversation - Carrying a phone with GPS technology all the time - Signing into web services which track your whereabouts - Posting information about themselves online - Using a regular internet line - Showing their face in public - etc. So really the surveillance is catching the small and stupid threats. Not sophisticated threats. ALmost all of what it's capturing is irrelevant, unnecessary. But someone has to review at least a sample to determine that, and what constitutes a legitimate suspicion is a controversial topic with little consensus among stakeholders. The costs are massive. The unfortunate consequence of that is the abuse of independence from businesses to minimize costs and pool resources. It does save money, but the money it saves doesn't cover the money poorly spent, and it creates a much larger problem in that those businesses gain an insane advantage over other "people". Overall a terrible situation. This seemingly giant leap in surveillance is a costly band aid for the taxpayer, and a profitable band aid for the friends (and future employers) of the tax collector. At its core, it's a bandaid. From first hand experience I can tell you a country can be amazingly incredibly safe and compliant with the law by placing dramatic surveillance on the population - but that's no way to live. You'd have to give up so much.
By "Capture" he is probably referring to that there are systems to review all calls and emails and then only ones that have certain keywords and/or phrases are copied. From that standpoint they don't need a whole shadow internet but just enough storage to copy down messages that are considered suspicious. Either way disconcerting.
If you want secure email or communication just encrypt your data. I doubt even the government could decrypt a a message encrypted with 2048bit key.
update: Bush-era EFF case proceeds again despite Obama admin's desperate attempts to follow the Bush method; judge throws out "state secrets" defense.
Bored and jet-lagged; just re-read this thread in entirety. Melding Snowden's recent proof of what most everyone suspected of the NSA with all the reporting above is rather sobering and/or depressing.
here rhad, this might make you perk up https://twitter.com/FISA_Court We the People of the ██████ ██████, ██ █████ ██ ████ █ ████ ███████ █████, █████████ ███████, ██████ ████████ ███████████. ████████ ███ █████ ████████ ███████████ ████ ██████ 4th Amendment █████████ ███ ███ █ ███████ ████████ LOL Bad news, America - we've decided that from this point forward, it's illegal to █████ █████ ██ ██████████. Sucks.
Exactly. It's hard to know who's happier about that insipid shiny-object "case": the feds, or the scum-sucking media overlords. "Oh, and look here! No, not at the encryption thing -- that's minor, trust us -- over HERE! A guy named Wiener texted pictures of his dong. LULZ! brb"
change.gov quietly goes offline. As someone on twitter said.... Obama: talks like an ACLU professor, acts like Dick Cheney.
