To Justify Dragnet, FBI Implies It Can't File 300 More NSLs in a Year
So Mark Hosenball just reported this, uncritically.
The U.S. government only searched for detailed information on calls involving fewer than 300 specific phone numbers among the millions of raw phone records collected by the National Security…
PRISM: The Difference between Orders and Directives
The AP has a story that lays out the architecture of how PRISM fits in with the rest of the government surveillance programs. The short version is, as much prior reporting supports, it uses PRISM to target communications it has collected, as…
The Inefficacy of Big Brother: Associations and the Terror Factory
The WSJ has a fascinating story, responding to (but not linking) this post, trying to address the question of whether the NSA programs we've learned about are efficient.
But some statisticians and security experts have raised another objection:…
Al Gore: Get Your Hands Off of My (Our?) Internet
Working on posts and then will have my sis-in-law in to watch the Grand Rapids Griffins defeat her Syracuse Crush tonight in hockey. (Really!)
But I did like this Al Gore interview:
Gore said he was not persuaded by the argument that the…
Russ Feingold: Yahoo Didn't Get the Info Needed to Challenge the Constitutionality of PRISM
The NYT has a story that solves a question some of us have long been asking: Which company challenged a Protect America Act order in 2007, only to lose at the district and circuit level?
The answer: Yahoo.
The Yahoo ruling, from 2008, shows…
What Does NCTC Do with NSA and FBI's Newly Disclosed Databases?
The discussion about the various "NSA" programs we've seen so far have discussed only how NSA works with FBI. FBI requests the dragnet phone information and hands it over to NSA. NSA negotiates direct access to internet companies that allow…
Robert Mueller's Claims to Be Ignorant about Geolocation Probably Bullshit
As I laid out in this Guardian column on today's House Judiciary Committee hearing, after citing Smith v. Maryland a bunch of times to justify getting all Americans' phone records, FBI Director Robert Mueller went on to pretend not to know whether…
DOD, in 2015, after Next Big Leak: No More Removable Media
In 2008, DOD's computers in Iraq were infected with malware introduced via a thumb drive.
The order went out: no more removable media.
In 2009-10, Bradley Manning downloaded entire databased onto a Lady Gaga CD.
The order went out:…
House Intelligence Parrot: These Programs Are Not Secret...
... but it's a grave danger for you to know about them.
Bob Minehart, a staffer for Democrats (presumably Dutch Ruppersberger) on the House Intelligence Committee, has put together a pair of talking point documents for members of the House…
Who Are the Potential Targets of the OTHER Section 215 Program(s)
There are several small, but significant, discrepancies between what Dianne Feinstein and Keith Alexander said in yesterday's Senate Appropriation Committee hearing on cyber and what others have said. As one example, last week James Clapper…
BREAKING: Iran Is a Terrorist Organization
I'm trying to sort through the irreconcilable claims about the Section 215 and PRISM/702 programs made in today's Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on cyber.
But for now, I want to post Dianne Feinstein's statement about what Section…
NSA PRISM Slides: Notice Anything Unusual or Missing?
We haven't seen (and likely will never see) all of the NSA slides former Booz Allen employee Edward Snowden shared with the Guardian-UK and the Washington Post. But the few that we have seen shared by these two news outlets tell us a lot —…
Is the Section 215 Dragnet Limited to Terrorism Investigations?
Unlike PRISM, most public discussions about the Section 215 dragnet program suggest that it is tied to terrorism. It's a claim, for example, that Charlie Savage makes in this story, which he traces back to this statement from Director of National…
The Section 215 Dragnet Started as Abusive Exigent Letter Practice Wound Down
Julian Sanchez (who, if you're not already following, you should, @normative) just made an important observation about the Section 215 collection that collects metadata on all phone calls every day.
Carriers keep call detail records for years.…
Exigent Letters Timeline
July 2002: CAU formed
March 14, 2003: First exigent letter issued in NY
May 2003: First contract with telecom for onsite exigent assistance
March 2004: Last contract with telecom for onsite exigent assistance
February 2, 2005: Operation…
Have Clapper, Feinstein, and Rogers Confused the Distinct Issues of Section 215 and PRISM? Or Are They Indistinct?
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Last year, when Pat Leahy tried to switch the FISA Amendments Act reauthorization to a 3 year extension instead of 5, which would have meant PATRIOT and FAA would be reconsidered together in 2015, the White…
ACLU, Another Civil Liberties Narcissist, Defends Its Own Freedom of Assembly, Speech
Since the Edward Snowden leaks first started, many have called him and Glenn Greenwald narcissists (as if that changed the dragnet surveillance they exposed).
If that's right, I can think of nothing more narcissistic than ACLU, which is a…
Google Begs for Transparency
However annoying Googe's recent software changes have been, it is true that they have been more aggressive about protecting privacy than most other companies. They fought a broad subpoena from DOJ for URLs and search returns in 2006. And it…
Still No Answer on How Minh Quang Pham Materially Supported Terror While in Custody
The WaPo has an interesting story about US intelligence efforts to disrupt the most recent release of Inspire magazine. While the confirmation that the US was responsible for the recent disrupted release is not surprising, I find this rather…
Clapper Couldn't Even Do Better Than "Least Untruthful" with a Day's Notice
As I noted yesterday, when Andrea Mitchell asked James Clapper about his lie to Ron Wyden earlier this year, Clapper offered a baloney answer, admitting both that he gave the "least untruthful" answer and that he had been "too cute by half."
First–…