Spying and Surveillance
Today, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) finally did what he had been threatening to do for months: He officially filed a class-action lawsuit against the Obama administration, the National Security Agency and a host of other security officials regarding a US surveillance program that collects information on millions of American citizens.
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper has publicly acknowledged the supposedly covert CIA drone program. The CIA has denied a Freedom of Information Act request made by the ACLU about details of its targeting killing program. But Clapper indirectly acknowledged the CIA program at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Tuesday
The National Security Agency is using complex analysis of electronic surveillance, rather than human intelligence, as the primary method to locate targets for lethal drone strikes – an unreliable tactic that results in the deaths of innocent or unidentified people.
In a House Intelligence Committee hearing looking into worldwide threats to U.S. national security on Tuesday, Chairman Mike Rogers (R-MI) suggested that journalists brokering leaked documents from National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden are breaking the law. Later, Rogers called investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald, one of the reporters who first broke the NSA leak story, a thief for stealing government information. Greenwald responded on Twitter, saying, “Maybe there’s something that has become pretty sick about DC political culture if the idea of prosecuting journalists is now this mainstream.” RT’s Liz Wahl talks to WikiLeaks spokesman Kristinn Hrafnsson to see if journalists reporting on leaked documents are accomplices to treason, as some US government officials have suggested, or merely participating in their First Amendment rights to freedom of the press.
On Monday, an Arizona state senate committee became the first legislative body in the country to pass a bill designed to thwart surveillance programs from the National Security Agency (NSA). Senate Bill 1156 (SB1156), the Arizona 4th Amendment Protection Act, was introduced by Sen. Kelli Ward and 14 other sponsors and co-sponsors.
In one of the latest revelations based on the leaks of Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency spied on foreign governments before and during the 2009 U.N. climate summit in Copenhagen. An internal NSA document says its analysts and foreign partners briefed U.S. negotiators on other countries’ “preparations and goals,” saying, “signals intelligence will undoubtedly play a significant role in keeping our negotiators as well informed as possible throughout the two-week event.” We speak to Erich Pica, president of Friends of the Earth.
Snowden Leak: Canada Spied on Airport Travelers Who Used Wi-Fi For Days After They Left the Terminal
The Canadian version of the National Security Agency used information from airport Internet hotspots to track the wireless devices of thousands of airline passengers for days after they left the airport, according to the latest leaks by former government contractor Edward Snowden.
The British government gave the U.S. lessons in how to spy on users of popular websites, including YouTube and Facebook, in real-time and without the consent of users or cyber companies. This is according to a report released Monday afternoon by a team of NBC journalists, including Glenn Greenwald who is listed as a special contributor, based on NSA documents exposed by whistleblower Edward Snowden.
National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden held an online question-and-answer session on Thursday. Many people asked Snowden about his response to President Barack Obama’s speech that outlined his proposals to reform the NSA.
On February 11, the world will demand an end to mass surveillance in every country, by every state, regardless of boundaries or politics. The SOPA and ACTA protests were successful because we all took part, as a community. As Aaron Swartz put it, everybody “made themselves the hero of their own story.” We can set a date, but we need everyone, all the users of the Global Internet, to make this a movement.
Chris Hedges on what Obama really meant in his NSA speech: Throughout American history, intelligence services often did little more than advance and protect corporate profits and solidify state repression and imperialist expansion. War, for big business, has always been very lucrative and used as an excuse to curtail basic liberties and crush popular movements.
President Barack Obama announced reforms to the way the National Security Agency collects digital information in a speech at the Justice Department on Friday. The proposed changes include more oversight by the Executive Branch, reworking national security letters that force private companies to turn over customers’ information to the NSA and an end to Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which allows for bulk metadata collection.
Earlier today, President Obama outlined reforms of America’s controversial surveillance tactics – which had ensnared millions of people’s phone calls, texts and emails around the globe. After praising the NSA and its importance to security, he admitted it made mistakes in its collection of private data. President Obama also asked the Congress to establish an independent privacy defender in the federal courts, to increase the supervision of intelligence work. Michael Ratner: By portraying NSA surveillance as “patriotic,” President Obama ignores the violations of Americans’ constitutional rights. Julian Assange: This president has been dragged kicking and screaming to today’s address. He’s been very reluctant to make any concrete reforms. Unfortunately today, we also see very few concrete reforms…
Newly leaked documents reveal the NSA collects hundreds of millions of text messages a day. The NSA and its UK sister-agency, the GCHQ, pair two previously unreported and top-secret national security programs to collect in bulk and then analyze millions of SMS text messages and other digital data sent around the world each day by mobile phones. Edward Snowden, the former NSA contractor who left the US last year with a trove of sensitive intelligence documents, supplied the news agencies with the evidence, both outlets reported on Thursday.
No matter which government conducts mass surveillance, they do it to crush dissent and then give a false rationale for why they’re doing it.
