6-7-2013 But now, vast swathes of data — in some cases entire databases — from nine major technology companies are being extracted from central servers based at these companies' headquarters, including but not limited to audio, video, photos, emails, documents, and related metadata. Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, and Apple have all denied the claims in respective releases. Microsoft and Apple, as noted, were quick to deny the claims. It sounds farfetched, even at a deep level, that these private firms that generate vast amounts of money would sacrifice so much for apparently no return.
But it sheds a bright new light on the way that the U.S. government conducts itself to the very people who hold it accountable.... The U.S. government has given itself carte blanche to access what it wants, when it wants, and for whatever reason. FISA has a bit to do with it, but, in a practical sense, it actually has very little to do with it. FISA wasn't enough on its own. And the law and the U.S. government's often secret interpretations of the law permits it, as long as it falls within the scope of "reasonable suspicion."
But it's all done in secrecy. At least now, it's not so much. The Verizon story blew the lid on the whole thing, and we suspect that other cell networks are under the same or similar orders. The scope in which this new range of orders goes is unimaginably large, and could affect every single U.S. citizen and resident while in the country and abroad. According to the data, more than 2,000 PRISM reports are generated every month, or more than 24,000 per year — an increase of more than one quarter year over year. ...
The slide deck also shows that the FBI acts as a "middle man" between federal government agencies and the tech companies. It also notes that it relies on Internet service providers (ISPs) for access, claiming that "access is 100 percent dependent on ISP provisioning." The scope of the allegations will have — if proven to be accurate and truthful — massive effects on the constitutional rights of almost every U.S. resident. http://www.zdnet.com/article/obamas-legacy-domestic-spying-scandal-that-could-prove-greater-than-watergate-wikileaks/
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3-19-14 NSA general counsel Rajesh De told the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board on Wednesday that tech titans were aware that the NSA was collecting communications and related metadata both for the NSA's "PRISM" program and for "upstream" communications crossing the Internet. https://www.cnet.com/news/nsa-top-lawyer-says-tech-giants-knew-about-data-collection/........................................................................................................................................
12-5-17 From the moment Donald Trump secured the Republican nomination and then the presidency, national security officials under President Obama have shown themselves to be intense adversaries in public and behind the scenes.
In the latest development, special counsel Robert Mueller’s top-gun prosecutor, Andrew Weissmann, praised acting Attorney General Sally Yates, a Trump nemesis, for refusing a White House order to defend the president’s travel ban on Muslim-majority countries, according to internal emails. Mr. Weissmann made it clear whose side he was on....
The Weissmann emails and others from Obama political appointees praising Ms. Yates were unearthed in a Freedom of Information Act request by the conservative government watchdog Judicial Watch. Mr. Trump fired Ms. Yates as she became a hero to Mr. Weissmann and other liberals.
The anti-Trump moves by Obama aides began in July 2016 during his campaign for the presidency....James R. Clapper, Mr. Obama’s director of national intelligence, has suggested that Mr. Trump is on the way out and calls him unfit for office. “I really question his … fitness to be in this office,” Mr. Clapper told CNN after a fiery Trump speech in August. ...
J.D. Gordon, a former Defense Department spokesman and Trump campaign national security adviser. “That said, based on the flood of leaks across the government, what we’re seeing today more closely resembles a stealth coup. Certainly nothing passive about it.”
Mr. Brennan has not shied away from depicting Mr. Trump as an awful president or disclosing his own role in driving the FBI to investigate Mr. Trump during the campaign. “I wanted to make sure that every information and bit of intelligence that we had was shared with the [FBI] so that they could take it,” Mr. Brennan told the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in May. “It was well beyond my mandate as director of CIA to follow on any of those leads that involved U.S. persons. But I made sure that anything that was involving U.S. persons, including anything involving the individuals involved in the Trump campaign, was shared with the Bureau....
To Republicans, one of the most curious decisions by Mr. Comey was not to seize the Democratic Party computer servers hacked by two Russian cybercells. Instead, in one of the most important criminal investigations ever, Mr. Comey left it up to the private firm CrowdStrike to conduct a cybersecurity investigation and report to the FBI. CrowdStrike employs former FBI agents and is funded in part by Google, a strong Democratic Party supporter.
If the Obama national security state declared war on Mr. Trump, it seems the FBI waged peace with Mrs. Clinton during the probe into her handling of classified material on her home email server during her tenure as secretary of state. Mr. Comey, the Senate Judiciary Committee discovered, wrote an exoneration statement months before the investigation was concluded, even before interviewing the Democratic candidate.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/dec/5/barack-obamas-team-worked-against-donald-trump/
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6-8-13 (36 year NSA veteran William) Binney explained that the government is taking the position that it can gather and use any information about American citizens living on U.S. soil if it comes from:
Any service provider … any third party … any commercial company – like a telecom or internet service provider, libraries, medical companies – holding data about anyone, any U.S. citizen or anyone else.
I followed up to make sure I understood what Binney was saying, asking whether the government’s secret interpretation of Section 215 of the Patriot Act was that the government could use any information as long as it came from a private company … foreign or domestic. In other words, the government is using the antiquated, bogus legal argument that it was not using its governmental powers (called “acting under color of law” by judges), but that it was private companies just doing their thing (which the government happened to order all of the private companies to collect and fork over).
Binney confirmed that this was correct. This is what the phone company spying program and the Prism program – the government spying on big Internet companies – is based upon. http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/06/exclusive-top-nsa-whistleblower-spills-the-beans-on-the-real-scope-of-the-spying-program.html
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1-17-18 The bill would renew a key surveillance authority for the National Security Agency until 2023 and consolidate the FBI’s power to search Americans’ digital communications without a warrant.
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1-17-18 The bill would renew a key surveillance authority for the National Security Agency until 2023 and consolidate the FBI’s power to search Americans’ digital communications without a warrant.
The motion, which passed 60-38, virtually guarantees that the final bill will pass likely later this week and quashes any opportunity to debate whether protections should be added. Eighteen Democrats — including Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who had previously proposed an amendment to restrict the FBI’s surveillance authority — voted in support of the motion. They were joined by 41 Republicans and one independent...
Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, lobbied for the bill’s passage on the Senate floor alongside his Republican counterpart from North Carolina, Richard Burr, and Republican leader Mitch McConnell. Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats stood outside the Senate chamber; he had come in person to convince any skeptics of the bill’s merits, Burr said. https://theintercept.com/2018/01/17/fisa-section-702-nsa-internet-surveillance-senate/
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