What Can You Do to Stop NSA Spying? Michael MaharreyActivist Post Rosa Parks faced what likely seemed a hopeless situation at the time. Majority opinion, backed by the strong arm of government, relegated her to second-class citizenship. In that day, who imagined it would ever change? Parks was riding the Cleveland Avenue bus home from work in Montgomery, Alabama on Dec. 1, 1955, when the white only seats in the front filled with passengers. Bus driver James Blake moved the “colored” section sign behind the row Parks was sitting in and demanded that she move to seats in the rear of the bus to accommodate the white riders.
She said, “No.” “People always say that I didn’t give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn’t true. Parks’ actions that day sparked the Montgomery bus boycott and ignited the civil rights movement. Today, we also face a seemingly hopeless situation with our own government relentlessly spying on us. No Exceptions Note the Fourth Amendment includes NO exceptions. None. We could wait on Congress. 1. 2. 3. How the NSA Gets Away With Domestic Spying. NSA Data Storage Installation Newly leaked National Security Agency documents published by the Guardian reveal that the NSA can scour vast databases of personal information by searching for the names, email addresses and other identifiers of United States citizens. More than two months after the Guardian first published leaked NSA files attributed to former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, the paper wrote Friday that their source has also supplied documents showing that the US intelligence community can conduct warrantless searches of communications tied to Americans that are collected under legal authority provided through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
Changes made to FISA in 2008, specifically Section 702, gave US investigators the ability to collect the communications of Americans if one of the parties involved was reasonable suspected to be overseas. The Guardian’s latest revelation comes but three days after Pres. NSA at work? Writer says house raided after online browsing. Music writer Michele Catalano wrote Thursday about a personal experience that may show, to bizarre but chilling effect, the government’s online surveillance in action.
Catalano writes that her home was visited and searched by members of the Joint Terrorist Task Force — a fact she attributes to having searched online for pressure cookers, while her husband searched for backpacks. Of course, there is no way to verify why Catalano’s home was selected for a raid — national security agencies are hardly free with such information. But based on questions posed by the government agents to her husband (she was not home at the time ), Catalano pieced together that a “confluence” of Internet searches — activity we now know to be tracked and hoarded on databases by the NSA — brought a SWAT team to her door.
She had searched for pressure cookers, her husband had searched for back packs. They mentioned that they do this about 100 times a week. And that 99 of those visits turn out to be nothing. Update: FAA Responds To Drone Hunting: “Could Result in Criminal or Civil Liability” Mac SlavoActivist Post In response to overwhelming public support for a new ordinance in the small Colorado town of Deer Trail, which would issue hunting licenses and bounties for shooting down unmanned aerial vehicles, the Federal Aviation Administration has warned that penalties for those who engage drones could be severe. The FAA released a statement in response to questions about an ordinance under consideration in the tiny farming community of Deer Trail, Colo., that would encourage hunters to shoot down drones. The administration reminded the public that it regulates the nation’s airspace, including the airspace over cities and towns.
A drone “hit by gunfire could crash, causing damage to persons or property on the ground, or it could collide with other objects in the air,” the statement said. He dismissed the FAA’s warning. The FAA is working on regulations to safely integrate drones into the skies over the U.S., where manned aircraft are prevalent. NSA Leaker Edward Snowden In His Own Words: "You’re Being Watched"
Obama Admin Faces Diplomatic Uproar as Massive Surveillance of EU Governments, Citizens Exposed. This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form. AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! , democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Aaron Maté. Over the weekend, the German magazine Der Spiegel revealed the NSA spied on European Union offices in Brussels, Washington and at the United Nations.
To talk about these NSA spying revelations in Europe, we’re joined by Malte Spitz. Malte, welcome to Democracy Now! MALTE SPITZ: Yes. AARON MATÉ: Speaking on Monday, Secretary of State John Kerry echoed President Obama’s comments downplaying reports of U.S. spying on the EU. SECRETARY OF STATE JOHN KERRY: I will say that every country in the world that is engaged in international affairs of national security undertakes lots of activities to protect its national security, and all kinds of information contributes to that. AARON MATÉ: That’s Secretary of State John Kerry. MALTE SPITZ: Yeah. AMY GOODMAN: Malte, if you could talk about this map that you made?
SEN. SEN. Edward Snowden reveals himself as NSA whistleblower. Edward Snowden, a former computer security administrator for the CIA and current contractor for the NSA, has outed himself as the source of a string of explosive documents describing NSA surveillance activities against US citizens and foreign targets. The 29-year-old, who now works for the defence contractor Booz Allen Hamilton on projects for the NSA in Hawaii, revealed himself as the source of documents provided to the Guardian and Washington Post about the NSA's collection of phone records belonging to millions of Americans as well as a surveillance programme called Prism that targets the internet communications and activities of foreign targets.
Snowden made the revelations in a lengthy story and video published by the Guardian on 9 June. "I have no intention of hiding who I am because I know I have done nothing wrong," Snowden said in the interview, conducted on 6 June in Hong Kong where he was in hiding at the time the leaks were published. His route to the CIA was circuitous. Web companies and civil liberties groups launch anti-US surveillance campaign. A broad coalition of more than 80 web companies and civil liberties organisations -- including Mozilla, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Reddit -- has formed to demand the NSA stop spying on everyone. Called StopWatching.Us, its members have signed an open letter to Congress calling on it "to take immediate action to halt this surveillance and provide a full public accounting of the NSA's and the FBI's data collection programmes".
"This type of blanket data collection by the government strikes at bedrock American values of freedom and privacy," they write. "This dragnet surveillance violates the First and Fourth Amendments of the US Constitution, which protect citizens' right to speak and associate anonymously and guard against unreasonable searches and seizures that protect their right to privacy. " Accompanying the letter is a call for others to sign a petition that will also be delivered to Congress. The site has gathered 27,000 signatures as of the time of writing. Google sends Prism data to NSA by secure FTP or 'by hand' Google does not participate in any government program involving a lockbox or other equipment installed at its facilities to transfer court-ordered data to the government, a company spokesman says, refuting with some finality one of the lingering theories about the NSA's Prism program.
Instead the company transmits FISA information the old fashioned way: by hand, or over secure FTP. "When required to comply with these requests, we deliver that information to the US government -- generally through secure FTP transfers and in person," Google spokesman Chris Gaither told Wired.com. "The US government does not have the ability to pull that data directly from our servers or network. " Secure FTP is a standard utility on Unix and Linux system for transferring files over an encrypted channel. But Gaither asserted that the company had no such equipment installed. Microsoft was the first to acquiesce to the program in 2007, and Google followed in 2009 according to the slides the paper obtained. MEPs lambast Prism, will demand EU citizen protection at EU-US summit. European Parliamentarians have banded together to demand answers from the US on Prism's far-reaching surveillance, and assurances that EU citizens' digital privacy is safeguarded.
Speaking at a European Parliament meeting held days ahead of the 14 June EU-US summit to be headed up by President Obama and the President of the European Commission, Health Commissioner Tonio Borg said: "The commission is asking for clear commitments from the United States as to the respect of the fundamental right of EU citizens to data protection and as to access to judicial redress in the same way as it is afforded to US residents. " Most US statements that have come out of the scandal distinctly address the benefits and protections afforded to US citizens -- whether or not the US has been respecting international law, and the rights of EU citizens, remains a mystery. More pointedly, the EU will demand answers as to exactly how personal data is filtered. Opinion: Massive spying on Americans is outrageous. Coleen Rowley: Surveillance programs create huge profit for private contractors Rowley: More importantly, stopping terrorists through mass data collection doesn't work She says just look at how the Bush administration failed on 9/11 despite early warningsRowley: Secretive spying programs harm national security and threaten democracy Editor's note: Coleen Rowley, a FBI special agent for almost 24 years, was legal counsel to the FBI Field Office in Minneapolis from 1990 to 2003.
She wrote a whistle-blower memo in May 2002 and testified to the Senate Judiciary on some of the FBI's pre-9/11 failures. She writes and speaks about ethical decision-making and civil liberties issues. (CNN) -- "Everything secret degenerates, even the administration of justice; nothing is safe that cannot bear discussion and publicity. " -- Lord Acton Coleen Rowley These programs falsely purport to get "novel intelligence from massive data. " But there's no evidence the NIMD theory has worked.
It has happened before. Convicted U.S. spy: 'Snowden is doomed' Former spy and fugitive Christopher Boyce sold U.S. state secrets to the Soviets in the 1970sOn the run for two years, he was eventually arrested and jailed for 40 years for espionageOut on parole in 2003 after serving 25 years, he is currently writing his memoirsHe says NSA leaker Edward Snowden is 'doomed' and has entered a world where he can trust no one Editor's note: Convicted spy Christopher Boyce was jailed for 40 years for espionage in 1977 after selling U.S. secrets to the Soviet Union. In 1985, his story was turned into a Hollywood film -- "The Falcon and the Snowman" - starring Sean Penn and Timothy Hutton. Released in 2003, Boyce is currently working on his memoirs "The Falcon and The Snowman: American Sons.
" (CNN) -- Sitting alone in a hotel room, unable to contact friends or family or even walk the teeming streets of Hong Kong without looking over his shoulder, there can be few who can claim to know the fear and isolation that NSA leaker Edward Snowden is living through. Web companies and civil liberties groups launch anti-US surveillance campaign.
Opinion: Massive spying on Americans is outrageous. Coleen Rowley: Surveillance programs create huge profit for private contractors Rowley: More importantly, stopping terrorists through mass data collection doesn't work She says just look at how the Bush administration failed on 9/11 despite early warningsRowley: Secretive spying programs harm national security and threaten democracy Editor's note: Coleen Rowley, a FBI special agent for almost 24 years, was legal counsel to the FBI Field Office in Minneapolis from 1990 to 2003. She wrote a whistle-blower memo in May 2002 and testified to the Senate Judiciary on some of the FBI's pre-9/11 failures. She writes and speaks about ethical decision-making and civil liberties issues. (CNN) -- "Everything secret degenerates, even the administration of justice; nothing is safe that cannot bear discussion and publicity.
" -- Lord Acton Coleen Rowley These programs falsely purport to get "novel intelligence from massive data. " But there's no evidence the NIMD theory has worked. It has happened before. Deibert: Why NSA spying scares the world. Ronald Deibert: For non-Americans, NSA's massive surveillance is unsettling Deibert: While cyberspace may be global, its infrastructure most definitely is not He says much of global Internet traffic flows through networks controlled by the U.S. Deibert: U.S. needs to rethink the global implications of its domestic surveillance policies Editor's note: Ronald Deibert is a professor of political science at the University of Toronto, where he is director of the Canada Centre for Global Security Studies and the Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs.
He is author of "Black Code: Inside the Battle for Cyberspace" (Signal/McClelland & Stewart, 2013). (CNN) -- In 2011, I was on a panel, organized by the security company RSA, with two retired National Security Agency directors, Michael Hayden and Kenneth Minihan. As jarring as his response was, the fact of the matter is when it comes to communications, he's right. Ronald Deibert Opinion: Massive spying on Americans is outrageous.