quote:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Scores of low-flying planes circling American cities are part of a civilian air force operated by the FBI and obscured behind fictitious companies, The Associated Press has learned.

The AP traced at least 50 aircraft back to the FBI, and identified more than 100 flights in 11 states over a 30-day period since late April, orbiting both major cities and rural areas. At least 115 planes, including 90 Cessna aircraft, were mentioned in a federal budget document from 2009.

For decades, the planes have provided support to FBI surveillance operations on the ground. But now the aircraft are equipped with high-tech cameras, and in rare circumstances, technology capable of tracking thousands of cellphones, raising questions about how these surveillance flights affect Americans' privacy.

"It's important that federal law enforcement personnel have the tools they need to find and catch criminals," said Charles Grassley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. "But whenever an operation may also monitor the activities of Americans who are not the intended target, we must make darn sure that safeguards are in place to protect the civil liberties of innocent Americans."

The FBI says the planes are not equipped or used for bulk collection activities or mass surveillance. The surveillance equipment is used for ongoing investigations, the FBI says, generally without a judge's approval.

Tezzor posted:

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_FBI_SURVEILLANCE_FLIGHTS?SITE=KYB66

Rhesus Pieces posted:

I haven't seen much buzz on this story today. For some reason I have a feeling people would be in hysterics if we found out they were using unmanned drones rather than Cessnas to do the exact same thing.

quote:

The catalyst for Congress’ historic vote on NSA reform on Tuesday – the same person who led to a federal court to rule that NSA mass surveillance of Americans was illegal – remains exiled from the United States and faces decades in jail. The crime he’s accused of? Telling the American public the very truth that forced Congress to restrict, rather than expand, the spy agency’s power for the first time in over forty years.

The passage of the USA Freedom Act is quite simply a vindication of Edward Snowden, and it’s not just civil libertarians who have noticed: he’s forced even some of the most establishment-friendly commentators to change their opinions of his actions. But it’s a shame that almost everyone nonetheless ignores the oppressive law under which Snowden was charged or the US government’s outrageous position in his case: that if he were to stand trial, he could not tell the jury what his whistleblowing has accomplished.

The White House told reporters on Thursday that, despite the imminent passage of NSA reform, they still believe Edward Snowden still belongs in prison (presumably for life, given his potential charges), while at the same time, brazenly taking credit for the USA Freedom Act passing, saying that “historians” would consider it part of Obama’s “legacy.” Hopefully historians will also remember, as Ryan Lizza adeptly documented in the New Yorker, that Obama was handed every opportunity to reform the NSA before Edward Snowden, yet behind the scenes repeatedly refused to do so. Instead, the Obama administration was dragged kicking and screaming across the finish line by Snowden’s disclosures, all while engaging in fear-mongering that would make Dick Cheney proud.

Snowden is now the most influential whistleblower of his generation. Even his biggest detractors, the same people who once all but refused to utter his name, have recently had to concede his influence. Take, for example, this amusing article at the Huffington Post quoting various Senators across the political spectrum who were forced to begrudgingly admit that they wouldn’t even be having the debate over reforming the NSA’s surveillance practices if it wasn’t for Snowden. You can almost hear the contempt coming out of their mouths as you read their reactions.

Sadly, even those in Congress who were campaigning for stronger NSA reform than the bill that passed the Senate are afraid to directly credit Snowden and, in many cases, still condemn him. Some cling to the erroneous belief that Snowden should come back to the US if he’s really a whistleblower because he could “tell his story to a jury.” But since he was charged under the draconian Espionage Act – a World War I-era statute meant for spies, not leakers – Snowden would not even be able to utter the word “whistleblower” in court, let alone tell a jury why he did what he did. Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg explained in great detail how any evidence Snowden wanted to bring up to a judge would be ruled inadmissible, thanks to the incredibly restrictive way the Espionage Act is written.

And don’t kid yourselves when the White House talks about bringing Snowden to “justice”; his case has never been about “justice” when it comes to leaking government secrets to journalists. As US officials have shown repeatedly over the last year, they will happily leak classified details to newspapers more sensitive than what Snowden leaked if it means glorifying and defending their policies. Glenn Greenwald noted late last month that so many politicians and pundits in Washington DC seem to dislike Snowden not because what he leaked, but because he was able to shift the dominant narrative about national security away from the all-fear-all-the-time norm that so dominated in Washington for the last decade.

Establishment DC, by and large, still hates him because he has continued to not only participate, but thrive in the debate about US national security, despite being exiled from his home country. How he managed to do so is remarkable in itself: thanks to technology, Snowden can appear at Princeton one day and Sweden the next and comment on the day’s news and developments, instead of being gagged from speaking to the press like Chelsea Manning was while she was tortured, awaiting her court martial. Snowden is cracking jokes on Reddit instead of rotting in solitary confinement at a maximum security prison.

Without Edward Snowden, there would be no debate about the mass surveillance of Americans by the NSA. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals would not have ruled such surveillance illegal, tech companies would not encrypt our phone calls and text messages, and Congress certainly would not have passed the USA Freedom Act - no matter how meager its reforms actually are. Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which the NSA used to secretly vacuum up every American’s phone records, would have been renewed in a landslide with little fanfare – it always was in the past – and the American people would have been none the wiser.

But there also might have not been an Edward Snowden if it wasn’t for the whistleblowers who risked it all before him. Lost in the national discussion about Snowden’s leaks and NSA reforms has been the US government’s deplorable treatment of the NSA whistleblowers who came before Snowden: Thomas Drake, Bill Binney, J Kirk Wiebe, Diane Roark and others. They were investigated, had their phones wiretapped, were pulled out of their houses at gunpoint, and in one case, was charged under the Espionage Act for internally protesting the NSA’s illegal and unconstitutional actions after 9/11. The USA Freedom Act vote was just as much vindication for those men and women whose lives were destroyed for telling the truth but who never became household names.

It is an ongoing travesty that the Espionage Act – a bill meant to punish spies who sell secrets to foreign governments – can be used in such a vindictive and draconian way against someone who wanted to hand the truth to the American people. Snowden told the Guardian two weeks ago that he saw the USA Freedom Act as the beginning and not the end of NSA reform. Hopefully Congress will one day soon also have the courage to give whistleblowers their normally-guaranteed right to defend themselves in court, and not send them to straight to jail or worse.

Michael Steinbach posted:

“When a company, a communications company or a ISP or social media company elects to build in its software encryption, end-to-end encryption, and leaves no ability for even the company to access that, we don’t have the means by which to see the content”, he added.

“When we intercept it, we intercept encrypted communications. So that’s the challenge: working with those companies to build technological solutions to prevent encryption above all else.

“We are striving to ensure appropriate, lawful collection remains available.”

quote:

Greenwald @ggreenwald
Citing the 180-day "transition" of the USA Freedom Act, Obama DOJ seeks renewal of NSA domestic bulk collection http://www.fisc.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/Misc%2015-01%20Memorandum%20of%20Law.pdf …

quote:

Greenwald ‏@ggreenwald
1) Appellate court rules bulk collection illegal; 2) Both houses of Congress vote to end it; 3) Obama DOJ seeks re-authorization for it.

quote:

Spencer Ackerman @attackerman
June 2, 6:03pm: Obama says he'll sign law banning bulk collection.
June 2 9:50pm: DOJ asks secret court for 180 more days of bulk collection

Main Paineframe posted:

Looks solid to me. The USA FREEDOM Act provided for 180 more days of Section 215 collection. It "bans" the mass collection and invalidates Section 215 in 180 days, but not before, so the government is - quite correctly - asserting that they are allowed to continue Section 215 collection for those 180 days. It arguably doesn't even go against the intent of that provision, which was to provide the NSA a transition period in which they can continue the old-style collection while they set up a new collection infrastructure and manufacture new legal justifications for the new-style collection.

In fact, the DoJ is in a better position to request this because of the USA FREEDOM Act than they would have been if Congress had done nothing, because the Section 215 authority would have expired on June 1st - along with the rest of the PATRIOT Act - if Congress hadn't gone out if their way to extend it like this!

olin posted:

Just wondering about the consensus of the readers of this thread; is truecrypt still the best open source option for full disk encryption for Windows? Is this site a safe place to download it from?

Closed source options seem kinda silly to me and truecrypt seems to be the only thing available that has undergone an audit. It seems pretty obvious that anything available to the public can't beat the NSA as even truecrypt, most likely, has been cracked, but is there really anything better?

olin posted:

Just wondering about the consensus of the readers of this thread; is truecrypt still the best open source option for full disk encryption for Windows? Is this site a safe place to download it from?

Closed source options seem kinda silly to me and truecrypt seems to be the only thing available that has undergone an audit. It seems pretty obvious that anything available to the public can't beat the NSA as even truecrypt, most likely, has been cracked, but is there really anything better?

Tezzor posted:

No one is disputing that they have some rationale for continuing to break the law.

Main Paineframe posted:

It's not breaking the law, though. The law explicitly made that sort of collection legal and approved for the next six months. Otherwise, it would be illegal by now.

ProfessorCurly posted:

No, that's actually happened in a few cases. The Middle East thread had a thing on them a week or so ago. I won't say it is common, though.

quote:

The National Security Agency’s ability to spy on vast quantities of Internet traffic passing through the United States has relied on its extraordinary, decades-long partnership with a single company: the telecom giant AT&T.

While it has been long known that American telecommunications companies worked closely with the spy agency, newly disclosed N.S.A. documents show that the relationship with AT&T has been considered unique and especially productive. One document described it as “highly collaborative,” while another lauded the company’s “extreme willingness to help.”

AT&T’s cooperation has involved a broad range of classified activities, according to the documents, which date from 2003 to 2013. AT&T has given the N.S.A. access, through several methods covered under different legal rules, to billions of emails as they have flowed across its domestic networks. It provided technical assistance in carrying out a secret court order permitting the wiretapping of all Internet communications at the United Nations headquarters, a customer of AT&T...

...In 2011, AT&T began handing over 1.1 billion domestic cellphone calling records a day to the N.S.A. after “a push to get this flow operational prior to the 10th anniversary of 9/11,” according to an internal agency newsletter. This revelation is striking because after Mr. Snowden disclosed the program of collecting the records of Americans’ phone calls, intelligence officials told reporters that, for technical reasons, it consisted mostly of landline phone records....

...Because domestic wiretapping laws do not cover foreign-to-foreign emails, the companies have provided them voluntarily, not in response to court orders, intelligence officials said. But it is not clear whether that remains the case after the post-Snowden upheavals...

“We do not voluntarily provide information to any investigating authorities other than if a person’s life is in danger and time is of the essence,” Brad Burns, an AT&T spokesman, said. He declined to elaborate.

ComradeCosmobot posted:

Jeb Bush has implicitly sided with FBI Head Clapper in wanting to regulate encryption technology and is now on record saying that the NSA did nothing wrong.

ComradeCosmobot posted:

quote:

The Intercept, along with the Greek newspaper Kathimerini, interviewed over two dozen people familiar with the wiretapping case, ranging from U.S. intelligence officials and Greek government officials to those involved in the investigation and its aftermath. Many of those interviewed agreed to talk on condition that their names not be used, fearing criminal prosecution for speaking on intelligence matters or professional retribution. While some questions remain, the evidence points to a massive illegal eavesdropping program that may have led to Costas’ tragic death.

Nektu posted:

Seriously, I have no loving clue what america has been turning into this last decade, but you people should take a good hard look at yourselves. Because poo poo like that will turn sour earlier or later.

FlamingLiberal posted:

I was going to say, spying on some people pales in comparison to supporting regimes in Saudi Arabia, the Shah of Iran, Nicaragua, etc, etc.

The Cold War was a great excuse to support some of the worst dictators on the planet for us.

Rhesus Pieces posted:

It allows anyone to rate, rank and evaluate any other random person and post it for the world to see. It's basically Yelp for human beings, and nobody can opt out of it.

Rhesus Pieces posted:

As if unchecked government surveillance wasn't chilling enough, a pair of bubbly lunatics is pitching "Peeple" to Silicon Valley venture capitalists and tech bros.

It allows anyone to rate, rank and evaluate any other random person and post it for the world to see. It's basically Yelp for human beings, and nobody can opt out of it.

I can't see how this can possibly be abused by trolls and assholes to harass, stalk or ruin people and drive them to suicide.

Nintendo Kid posted:

In order to stalk or harass people with it, they'd first have to care about it during the likely 5 month span of time before their non-existent business model collapses due to no new money flowing in.