• chevron_right

      What is Fisa, and what does it mean for no-warrant spying?

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · 7 days ago - 19:41

    After a week of debate, Congress on Friday reauthorized section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act

    Congress spent the past week in a fractious debate over a major government surveillance program that gives US authorities the ability to monitor vast swaths of emails, text messages and phone calls without a warrant. In a vote on Friday, lawmakers ultimately decided to keep that warrantless surveillance intact and passed a two-year reauthorization of the law, known as section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or Fisa.

    The law has long been contentious among both progressives and libertarian-leaning conservatives who view it as a violation of privacy rights and civil liberties. Donald Trump has likewise lambasted it out of personal grievance. Its defenders, which include intelligence agencies and Joe Biden’s administration, argue that it is an important tool in stopping terrorist attacks, cybercrime and the international drug trade.

    Continue reading...
    • Sc chevron_right

      NSA Buying Bulk Surveillance Data on Americans without a Warrant

      news.movim.eu / Schneier · Monday, 29 January - 20:19

    It finally admitted to buying bulk data on Americans from data brokers, in response to a query by Senator Weyden.

    This is almost certainly illegal, although the NSA maintains that it is legal until it’s told otherwise.

    Some news articles .

    • chevron_right

      Le renseignement américain achète des données personnelles récupérées sur le web

      news.movim.eu / Numerama · Monday, 29 January - 09:34

    Un sénateur américain a fourni plusieurs témoignages indiquant que la NSA, une branche du renseignement américain spécialisée dans le cyber, achète des informations personnelles auprès de courtiers en données sur le web.

    • chevron_right

      NSA finally admits to spying on Americans by purchasing sensitive data

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Friday, 26 January - 20:36

    NSA finally admits to spying on Americans by purchasing sensitive data

    Enlarge (credit: NurPhoto / Contributor | NurPhoto )

    The National Security Agency (NSA) has admitted to buying records from data brokers detailing which websites and apps Americans use, US Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) revealed Thursday.

    This news follows Wyden's push last year that forced the FBI to admit that it was also buying Americans' sensitive data . Now, the senator is calling on all intelligence agencies to "stop buying personal data from Americans that has been obtained illegally by data brokers."

    "The US government should not be funding and legitimizing a shady industry whose flagrant violations of Americans' privacy are not just unethical but illegal," Wyden said in a letter to Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Avril Haines. “To that end, I request that you adopt a policy that, going forward," intelligence agencies "may only purchase data about Americans that meets the standard for legal data sales established by the FTC.”

    Read 16 remaining paragraphs | Comments

    • Sc chevron_right

      Secret White House Warrantless Surveillance Program

      news.movim.eu / Schneier · Thursday, 23 November - 02:03

    There seems to be no end to warrantless surveillance :

    According to the letter, a surveillance program now known as Data Analytical Services (DAS) has for more than a decade allowed federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies to mine the details of Americans’ calls, analyzing the phone records of countless people who are not suspected of any crime, including victims. Using a technique known as chain analysis, the program targets not only those in direct phone contact with a criminal suspect but anyone with whom those individuals have been in contact as well.

    The DAS program, formerly known as Hemisphere, is run in coordination with the telecom giant AT&T, which captures and conducts analysis of US call records for law enforcement agencies, from local police and sheriffs’ departments to US customs offices and postal inspectors across the country, according to a White House memo reviewed by WIRED. Records show that the White House has, for the past decade, provided more than $6 million to the program, which allows the targeting of the records of any calls that use AT&T’s infrastructure—­a maze of routers and switches that crisscross the United States.

    • Sc chevron_right

      New NSA Information from (and About) Snowden

      news.movim.eu / Schneier · Wednesday, 25 October - 01:00 · 1 minute

    Interesting article about the Snowden documents, including comments from former Guardian editor Ewen MacAskill

    MacAskill, who shared the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service with Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras for their journalistic work on the Snowden files, retired from The Guardian in 2018. He told Computer Weekly that:

    • As far as he knows, a copy of the documents is still locked in the New York Times office. Although the files are in the New York Times office, The Guardian retains responsibility for them.
    • As to why the New York Times has not published them in a decade, MacAskill maintains “this is a complicated issue.” “There is, at the very least, a case to be made for keeping them for future generations of historians,” he said.
    • Why was only 1% of the Snowden archive published by the journalists who had full access to it? Ewen MacAskill replied: “The main reason for only a small percentage—though, given the mass of documents, 1% is still a lot—was diminishing interest.”

    […]

    The Guardian’s journalist did not recall seeing the three revelations published by Computer Weekly , summarized below:

    • The NSA listed Cavium, an American semiconductor company marketing Central Processing Units (CPUs)—the main processor in a computer which runs the operating system and applications—as a successful example of a “SIGINT-enabled” CPU supplier. Cavium, now owned by Marvell, said it does not implement back doors for any government.
    • The NSA compromised lawful Russian interception infrastructure, SORM. The NSA archive contains slides showing two Russian officers wearing jackets with a slogan written in Cyrillic: “You talk, we listen.” The NSA and/or GCHQ has also compromised key lawful interception systems.
    • Among example targets of its mass-surveillance programme, PRISM, the NSA listed the Tibetan government in exile.

    Those three pieces of info come from Jake Appelbaum’s Ph.D. thesis.

    • chevron_right

      Instead of obtaining a warrant, the NSA would like to keep buying your data

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Saturday, 29 July, 2023 - 11:23

    National Security Agency headquarters.

    National Security Agency headquarters. (credit: Trevor Paglen, Wikimedia Commons )

    An effort by United States lawmakers to prevent government agencies from domestically tracking citizens without a search warrant is facing opposition internally from one of its largest intelligence services.

    Republican and Democratic aides familiar with ongoing defense-spending negotiations in Congress say officials at the National Security Agency (NSA) have approached lawmakers charged with its oversight about opposing an amendment that would prevent it from paying companies for location data instead of obtaining a warrant in court.

    Introduced by US representatives Warren Davidson and Sara Jacobs, the amendment, first reported by WIRED , would prohibit US military agencies from “purchasing data that would otherwise require a warrant, court order, or subpoena” to obtain. The ban would cover more than half of the US intelligence community, including the NSA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the newly formed National Space Intelligence Center, among others.

    Read 15 remaining paragraphs | Comments

    • chevron_right

      Pourquoi faudrait-il éteindre son smartphone pendant 5 min chaque nuit ?

      news.movim.eu / Numerama · Friday, 23 June, 2023 - 16:39

    Redémarrer régulièrement son téléphone suffit-il à tenir éloignés les pirates ? Dans certains cas, la mesure a un intérêt. Mais elle n'est pas une protection absolue. Il faut la combiner à un ensemble de règles en hygiène informatique. Et surtout : tout dépend du type de menace. [Lire la suite]

    Abonnez-vous aux newsletters Numerama pour recevoir l’essentiel de l’actualité https://www.numerama.com/newsletter/

    • chevron_right

      NSA’s “state secrets” defense kills lawsuit challenging Internet surveillance

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Wednesday, 22 February, 2023 - 17:36

    Digital illustration of an eye as an abstract representation Internet surveillance.

    Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | kontekbrothers)

    The US Supreme Court yesterday denied a petition to review a case involving the National Security Agency's surveillance of Internet traffic, leaving in place a lower-court ruling that invoked "state secrets privilege" to dismiss the lawsuit.

    The NSA surveillance was challenged by the Wikimedia Foundation, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. The Supreme Court's denial of Wikimedia's petition for review (formally known as "certoriari") was confirmed in a long list of decisions released yesterday.

    "As a final development in our case, Wikimedia Foundation v. NSA , the United States Supreme Court denied our petition asking for a review of the National Security Agency's (NSA) mass surveillance of Internet communications and activities. This denial represents a big hit to both privacy and freedom of expression," the Wikimedia Foundation said yesterday .

    Read 13 remaining paragraphs | Comments