#501 2014-05-07 23:16:39
The debate: Hayden and Dershowitz vs. Greenwald and Ohanian. Skip the first 29 minutes to get to the actual event.
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#502 2014-05-08 22:55:42
The Alexander bullshit parade continues.
Related: while Americans can feel safe and assured that NSA has sophisticated systems to keep careful watch over all its employees to make sure they don't look at anything they're not supposed to, they still have zero idea how many documents were copied by Snowden.
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#503 2014-05-10 21:30:47
#504 2014-05-13 00:54:26
Germany barks but ultimately Merkel is just a lapdog. She's not afraid to threaten parliamentarians who ask too many questions, though.
The expertise came from the Washington DC-based firm Rubin, Winston, Diercks, Harris & Cooke and essentially means that anyone who has anything to do with Snowden, even journalists, is a potential criminal. "We are of the opinion that if Snowden provides classified information or documents to the Bundestag [Parliament] or to German diplomats who interview Snowden, such acts give rise to criminal exposure under the laws of the United States. The United States would have jurisdiction to prosecute these acts regardless of where they occur," writes firm partner Jeffrey Harris.
Similar shenanigans in Britain, but the gloves aren't off just yet.
The cross-party report is the first British parliamentary acknowledgement that Snowden's disclosures of the mass harvesting of personal phone and internet data need to lead to serious improvements in the oversight and accountability of the security services.
The MPs call for radical reform of the system of oversight including the election of the membership of the intelligence and security committee, including its chairman, and an end to their exclusive oversight role. Its chairman should also be a member of the largest opposition party, the MPs say, in direct criticism of its current head, Sir Malcolm Rifkind, who is a former Conservative foreign secretary. . . .
Rifkind attempted to head off some of the MPs' conclusions by announcing that the ISC would conduct its own inquiry into personal privacy and state surveillance. He also attacked Snowden and his supporters for their "insidious use of language such as mass surveillance and Orwellian" - which, he argued, "blurs, unforgivably, the distinction between a system that uses the state to protect the people, and one that uses the state to protect itself against the people".
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#505 2014-05-13 10:01:05
#506 2014-05-15 00:51:27
Two for today.
Effectively, the DOJ and Solicitor General Verrilli -- whether on purpose or not -- misled the Supreme Court on two key aspects of the 702 collection program, and it appears that the Supreme Court relied, in part, on both of those misleading statements in coming to its decision. The fact that the DOJ still appears rather unconcerned about how its misrepresentations may have impacted the courts is immensely troubling, not just because it may have resulted in an illegal and unconstitutional surveillance program continuing for many extra years, but also because it highlights the mendacity of the DOJ in trying to win cases at all costs, rather than actually trying to make sure the law is applied appropriately.
.
In an opinion declassified in September, a surveillance judge stated that "to date" no company that had received a court order had challenged it. While technically true, Sprint attorney Michael A. Sussmann raised concerns in 2009 that the program violated the law and had prepared a lengthy legal challenge, according to the U.S. official, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the matter's sensitivity.
Last year, Sprint began to seek a way to counter the perception that no phone company had questioned the secret program's legal foundation. Sprint felt the judge's characterization was "unfair," the U.S. official said. "Their feeling was, 'Just because we didn't formally oppose it doesn't mean we didn't question it.'"
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#507 2014-05-18 03:02:33
#508 2014-05-18 03:49:54
#509 2014-05-22 09:48:42
#510 2014-05-22 10:37:04
Tall Paul wrote:
Who needs the NSA when you can opt for FaceBook to listen in to what you're doing?
Anyone still patronizes facebook now faces the same cornholed fate awaits every defective at the low end of the gene pool.
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#511 2014-05-22 12:09:44
choad wrote:
Tall Paul wrote:
Who needs the NSA when you can opt for FaceBook to listen in to what you're doing?
Anyone still patronizes facebook now faces the same cornholed fate awaits every defective at the low end of the gene pool.
No shit! You must hand it to them though. Coming up with a tool to allow everyone (well, not quite) to willingly volunteer every detail about themselves so FB can resell the information. Genius.
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#512 2014-05-22 22:55:20
Tall Paul wrote:
Who needs the NSA when you can opt for FaceBook to listen in to what you're doing?
Current mood: nauseated 
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#513 2014-05-22 22:58:19
The three-hour Frontline documentary. If you haven't been paying attention so far, this is a very good introduction to what's going on.
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#514 2014-05-24 21:10:56
I unintentionally asshatted square's previous post in large part because my eyes are failing with alarming speed and I inhabit an increasingly hazy world of no health care. Tough toenails, right? Life is short.
Auto-edited on 2020-08-02 to update URLs
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#515 2014-05-24 22:49:01
So... why didn't you sign up for Obama care?
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#516 2014-05-24 23:30:15
Dmtdust wrote:
So... why didn't you sign up for Obama care?
Don't need to here, we have Romney-care...
...oh wait, that's the same thing isn't it?
Last edited by Emmeran (2014-05-24 23:30:45)
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#517 2014-05-25 01:46:44
I'll figure it out, another way of saying anything I say here can and will come back to bite me.
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#518 2014-05-27 04:59:30
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#520 2014-05-27 08:46:09
XregnaR wrote:
https://www.privacyinternational.org/blog/what-does-gchq-know-about-our-devices-that-we-dont
Sweet, kind of the way I would have done it if I was into the spying on people thing.
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#521 2014-05-31 00:51:59
Warning: the NBC web site is laden with a bunch of flashy crappy Javascript and media, such that it caused my browser to freeze. You may want to exercise caution when visiting the first link.
NBC News interviews Snowden, who (among many other things) states that he raised legal concerns numerous times within the NSA.
"Aha!", say the spooks, "We searched through all our stuff, and there was just one e-mail message, which only asked a question and didn't make a complaint."
Apparently they're not so good at rummaging through their own data.
Edward Snowden wrote:
The NSA's new discovery of written contact between me and its lawyers - after more than a year of denying any such contact existed - raises serious concerns. It reveals as false the NSA's claim to Barton Gellman of the Washington Post in December of last year, that "after extensive investigation, including interviews with his former NSA supervisors and co-workers, we have not found any evidence to support Mr. Snowden's contention that he brought these matters to anyone's attention."
Today's release is incomplete, and does not include my correspondence with the Signals Intelligence Directorate's Office of Compliance, which believed that a classified executive order could take precedence over an act of Congress, contradicting what was just published. It also did not include concerns about how indefensible collection activities - such as breaking into the back-haul communications of major US internet companies - are sometimes concealed under E.O. 12333 to avoid Congressional reporting requirements and regulations.
If anyone finds a better source for the interview video, please post a link.
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#522 2014-06-02 01:16:03
#523 2014-06-04 01:17:06
The National Security Agency is harvesting huge numbers of images of people from communications that it intercepts through its global surveillance operations for use in sophisticated facial recognition programs, according to top-secret documents...
The agency intercepts "millions of images per day" -- including about 55,000 "facial recognition quality images" -- which translate into "tremendous untapped potential," according to 2011 documents obtained from the former agency contractor Edward J. Snowden.
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#524 2014-06-04 01:35:00
What the UK government pressured the Guardian not to publish:
Above-top-secret details of Britain’s covert surveillance programme - including the location of a clandestine British base tapping undersea cables in the Middle East - have so far remained secret, despite being leaked by fugitive NSA sysadmin Edward Snowden. Government pressure has meant that some media organisations, despite being in possession of these facts, have declined to reveal them. . . .
It is located at Seeb, on the northern coast of Oman, where it taps in to various undersea cables passing through the Strait of Hormuz into the Persian/Arabian Gulf. Seeb is one of a three site GCHQ network in Oman, at locations codenamed “TIMPANI”, “GUITAR” and “CLARINET”. . . .
Not just on foreign shores.
Snowden’s leaks reveal that every time GCHQ wanted to tap a new international optical fibre cable, engineers from “REMEDY” (BT) would usually be called in to plan where the taps or “probe” would physically be connected to incoming optical fibre cables, and to agree how much BT should be paid. The spooks' secret UK access network feeds Internet data from more than 18 submarine cables coming into different parts of Britain either direct to GCHQ in Cheltenham or to its remote processing station at Bude in Cornwall.
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#525 2014-06-04 01:43:48
The difference between Edward Snowden and the wonderful people working for the government is that he's a lawless fugitive and they scrupulously adhere to the law.
"The court has issued a number of preservation orders over the years, but the government decided -- without consent from the judge or even informing EFF -- that those orders simply don't apply," said EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn. "Regular civil litigants would face severe sanctions if they so obviously destroyed relevant evidence."
Yes, they would never do anything to defy justice.
One week after the Obama administration said it would comply with a federal appeals court ruling ordering it to make public portions of a Justice Department memo that signed off on the targeted killing of a United States citizen, the administration is now asking the court for permission to censor additional passages of the document.
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#526 2014-06-04 17:41:15
A routine request in Florida for public records regarding the use of a surveillance tool known as stingray took an extraordinary turn recently when federal authorities seized the documents before police could release them.
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#527 2014-06-04 20:07:52
square wrote:
The National Security Agency is harvesting huge numbers of images of people from communications that it intercepts through its global surveillance operations for use in sophisticated facial recognition programs, according to top-secret documents...
The agency intercepts "millions of images per day" -- including about 55,000 "facial recognition quality images" -- which translate into "tremendous untapped potential," according to 2011 documents obtained from the former agency contractor Edward J. Snowden.
I call bullshit. I'm sure that there are more than 500,000 selfies taken every day. That's what, like three middle schools?
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#528 2014-06-04 21:37:09
phreddy wrote:
A routine request in Florida for public records regarding the use of a surveillance tool known as stingray took an extraordinary turn recently when federal authorities seized the documents before police could release them.
Who needs the NSA when we have our own local cops running Warrantless Cellphone Tracking.
This is the root issue the ACLU are trying to flush out.
Holy moley, how in the world do you even defend against secret wireless spying leading to no warrant searches. When even the judge is prevented from learning that the warrantless spying occurred.
The ACLU now suspects these police departments may have all signed non-disclosure agreements with the vendor and used the agreement to avoid disclosing their use of the equipment to courts.
...“No, no, no, no, no,” he said. “I think this record makes it very clear they were not going to get a search warrant because they had never gotten a search warrant for this technology.”
His fellow judge then interjected loudly, “Two-hundred times they have not.”
The ACLU was surprised by the admission.
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#529 2014-06-05 08:14:42
The most transparent administration in history.
The still-secret Office of Legal Counsel memo was sent to the Department of Commerce and regards US Census data--detailed information on the living conditions, family situation, and income of millions of citizens. The Census data is supposed to be kept secret, even from other government agencies. "Did they say Section 215 trumps the Census rules?" asked Rumold.
The judiciary is infected as well.
Serving as an outgoing United States magistrate judge, Brian Owsley had decided that one of his final judicial acts would be to unseal more than 100 of his own judicial orders involving digital surveillance that he himself had sealed at the government's request.
But not long after Owsley's move last year, a US district judge vacated Owsley's order and resealed them all. That order itself was then sealed. . . .
Those orders initially had been sealed as they had involved forms of digital surveillance that the government doesn't want revealed, including the use of pen/trap orders, tower dumps, and stingrays (devices that act as fake cell phone towers).
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#530 2014-06-05 15:37:02
Johnny_Rotten wrote:
Who needs the NSA when we have our own local cops running Warrantless Cellphone Tracking.
They'd go harvesting for our WiFi too, if WPA2 hadn't been invented.
They may already be actively stealing anybody's WEP signals.
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#531 2014-06-05 22:17:00
#533 2014-06-06 00:20:26
And so do we still think Tor and Bitcoin are what they claim to be or are we just blowing smoke up our own asses?
Auto-edited on 2020-08-02 to update URLs
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#534 2014-06-06 18:43:25
Emmeran wrote:
SSL encryption is fine. Open Source Java SSL encryption is bullshit.
But, Hey, it's free!
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#535 2014-06-06 18:57:40
Baywolfe wrote:
But, Hey, it's free!
Isn't there some old-fashioned saying about getting what you pay for?
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#536 2014-06-06 19:52:17
Emmeran wrote:
Baywolfe wrote:
But, Hey, it's free!
Isn't there some old-fashioned saying about getting what you pay for?
My point exactly.
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#537 2014-06-07 19:01:52
#538 2014-06-07 21:16:50
#539 2014-06-09 11:45:07
The Domestic Terrorism Executive Committee I'm waiting for the bounty to go up a little higher before I turn fnord in.
Now, Mr. Holder said in a statement, "we also must concern ourselves with the continued danger we face from individuals within our own borders who may be motivated by a variety of other causes, from antigovernment animus to racial prejudice.''
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#540 2014-06-09 13:08:34
#541 2014-06-09 14:09:34
Where's Nixon?
He was a like little lap dog yapping at McCarty's heels and doing his bidding like the true minion he was.
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#542 2014-06-09 19:31:55
Baywolfe wrote:
Where's Nixon?
He was a like little lap dog yapping at McCarty's heels and doing his bidding like the true minion he was.
Under the table, gettin' busy.
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#543 2014-06-10 23:31:22
Five lies that don't get any truer with repetition.
1. The NSA has Stopped 54 Terrorist Attacks with Mass Spying
2. Just collecting call detail records isn’t a big deal
3. There Have Been No Abuses of Power
4. Invading Privacy is Okay Because It's Done to Prevent Terrorist Attacks
5. There's Plenty of Oversight From Congress, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, and Agency Watchdogs
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#544 2014-06-12 18:05:33
Local cops in 15 US states use cell tracking devices
US pushing local cops to stay mum on surveillance
Last edited by choad (2014-06-12 18:24:18)
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#545 2014-06-12 18:33:34
If you are stupid enough not to use a burner phone then you deserve to get busted, so basically this technology is only useful against the amateur criminal/terrorist.
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#546 2014-06-12 20:55:23
Emmeran wrote:
If you are stupid enough not to use a burner phone then you deserve to get busted, so basically this technology is only useful against the amateur criminal/terrorist.
Even burn phones can be location tracked when they're on, they just can't be tied back to you unless you still have it in your pocket.
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#547 2014-06-12 21:02:42
Baywolfe wrote:
Emmeran wrote:
If you are stupid enough not to use a burner phone then you deserve to get busted, so basically this technology is only useful against the amateur criminal/terrorist.
Even burn phones can be location tracked when they're on, they just can't be tied back to you unless you still have it in your pocket.
Buy it at the swap meet, pay cash, turn it on, make your call and then destroy and discard. If you need a call back use a second burner, leave the new number with each call. The things are cheap and if you are doing something that would require you to avoid tracking it's the proper approach.
And always leave your personal phone at home, "Off" doesn't always mean it can't be tracked anymore.
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#548 2014-06-13 07:07:03
#549 2014-06-14 09:25:22
The government must get
a warrant to demand your
information from an internet
provider, the Canadian Supreme Court ruled yesterday.
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#550 2014-06-20 03:40:43
Turns out all that "eavesdropping on Americans" stuff was just grinding to see how many Skilz points they could collect.
Auto-edited on 2020-08-02 to update URLs
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