Since Spying to Benefit Monsanto Is Not Industrial Espionage, It's Okay
One of the examples I often raise to show how our government likely uses SIGINT to advantage specific businesses is the way the government helps Monsanto budge into markets uninterested in its products.
One WikiLeaks cable showed the US embassy…
On the Definition of Dragnet "Identifier"
Last month, I noted that ODNI failed to redact a reference to Verizon in one of the phone dragnet primary orders, which helped to confirm that Verizon was the provider ordered to provide only its domestic or one-end domestic call records to…
Today's NSA-Related Orwellianism: "Derived From"
As I noted in this post, the government has submitted its response to Mohamed Osman Mohamud's motion for discovery on how DOJ came to forget to tell him he had been discovered through the use of Section 702 spying.
The bulk of their argument…
If One Judge Gives FISA Review, and Another Judge Gives FISA Review, All Hell Will Break Loose!
There have been a couple of developments on the government's effort to continue its practice of shielding its dragnet from adversarial legal review behind the screen of FISA.
First, the 7th Circuit appears to want to punt on the question…
White House, Congress Arguing Over Which Senate Committee Should Fail in Drone Oversight
Ken Dilanian has a very interesting article in the Los Angeles Times outlining the latest failure in Congress' attempts to exert oversight over drones. Senator Carl Levin had the reasonable idea of calling a joint closed session of the Senate…
Obama's New Phone Dragnet Pre-Review Policy Supports Dragnet-as-Index Understanding
As I noted, yesterday the FISA Court released the motion and approval reflecting the changes to accessing the dragnet reflecting Obama's promises from last month.
Effective immediately, we will only pursue phone calls that are two steps removed…
Congress Currently Has Access to the Phone Dragnet Query Results
When Bernie Sanders asked the NSA whether it spied on Members of Congress, Keith Alexander responded, in part,
Among those protections is the condition that NSA can query the metadata only based on phone numbers reasonably suspected to be associated…
Disappeared Pakistani Drone Activist Planned ICC Testimony
[youtuber youtube='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqX1jLSw3t0']
Update February 14: Khan has been freed! The Express Tribune reports that he was beaten and tortured, but is now free after being blindfolded and pushed out of a van.
In…
Is Hemisphere Creating Problems for the Phone Dragnet?
You are all probably bored with my repeated posts about why the claim that NSA only collects 30% of US data is probably only narrowly true.
So I won't discuss how absurd it would be to argue that the terrorist dragnet drawing on the records…
Omaha! Omaha! The Alert that Won't Alert
The FISA Court just released the January 3, 2014 phone dragnet order, DOJ's motion to amend it to meet Obama's new dragnet terms, and the approval for that.
But those changes are of the least interest in these documents. I'll explain the…
PCLOB Chair David Medine on the 30% Claims
As Ken Dilanian pointed out in his story on the claim that NSA only collects 30% of phone records, in his testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, David Medine suggested "virtually all telephone records of every American" are collected…
US Decries Rule of Law in Afghanistan While Calling for Overruling Afghan Attorney General
Update: Reuters is reporting that the 65 prisoners were released on February 13.
Without a single hint of awareness of the irony involved, the US military yesterday released a statement decrying Afghanistan's decision calling for the imminent…
NSA's Single Section 215 Success Would Probably Be Impossible If NSA's Latest Claims Were True
It looks increasingly like the sole Section 215 success the FBI has had would be impossible under the claims about limits to dragnet collection NSA leaked last week.
Last week, four journalists reported that the NSA doesn't collect cell phone…
On the Day Ron Wyden Asked Whether NSA Complied with US v. Jones, It Collected 4 Billion Cell Location Records
As part of my new focus on leaked claims that the NSA can't collect call call data because of problems stripping out cell location data, I want to look at the two exchanges Ron Wyden and James Clapper have had about cell location data.
First,…
Section 215 FISC Orders Specifically Included Mobile Phone IDs Starting in 2008
I've been obsessing on when and whether telecoms turn over cell phone data under Section 215 and EO 12333 for the last several days. So I want to point out a change in the FISC orders for the Section 215 phone dragnet starting in 2008.
Here's…
Is There a 702 Certificate for Transnational Crime Organizations?
Update, 9/8/15: We've subsequently learned that in 2015, the third certificate in 2011 was a vaguely defined "foreign government" one, which has been used very broadly (and lied about by the government on multiple occasions). NSA was contemplating…
Least Surprising Appeal Ever: Back Door Search Edition
In thoroughly unsurprising news, DOJ has informed the 7th Circuit it will appeal Judge Sharon Coleman's decision giving attorneys for Adel Daoud an opportunity to review the FISA materials used to identify him.
While we don't know what exotic…
Iran-Pakistan Border Incidents Continue
The last time we checked in on the ongoing incidents along the Iran-Pakistan border, fourteen Iranian border guards had been killed on October 25 in an attack and Iran had promptly executed sixteen prisoners the next day in retaliation. A subgroup…
Ed Felten on the 30% Collection Claim and Technical Debt
Ed Felton has his own take on last week's claims that the NSA was only collecting 30% of phone data.
He suggests my observation--which he calls an argument--that the dragnet combines data from multiple sources is unlikely because it would…
In Cut and Paste Tumblr Post, James Clapper Describes Who We Can Spy on without Discriminants
As part of his Presidential Policy Directive on Signals Intelligence, Obama said this about bulk collection:
In particular, when the United States collects nonpublicly available signals intelligence in bulk, it shall use that data only for…