Privacy

Privacy Groups Urge Stopping Facebook From Collecting Data

July 30, 2014 Trans Atlantic Consumer Dialogue, www.tacd.org Resist! Facebook, Privacy, Surveillance

TACD calls on regulators to stop Facebook collecting web browsing data TACD has written to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and the Irish Data Protection Commissioner to urge them to take action and halt a recently announced change in Facebook’s business practices. Facebook announced in June 2014 that it plans to increase the amount of data that it collects from users. The company is planning to collect more information about the web browsing activities of Internet users for the purposes of targeted advertising. Facebook already installs cookies and pixel tags on users’ computers to track browsing activity on Facebook.com and Facebook apps, however the proposed change would meant that those cookies and pixel tags will also track users’ browsing activity on any website that includes a few lines of Facebook code. TACD is calling on regulators to require Facebook to suspend this change in policy and determine whether it complies with current U.S. and EU law.

Highlights From The Edward Snowden Interview

July 23, 2014 Ewen MacAskill and Alan Rusbridger, www.theguardian.com Educate! Edward Snowden, NSA, Privacy, Russia, Surveillance

Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four: "Actually quite some time ago. Contrary to popular belief I don’t think we are exactly in the Nineteen Eighty-Four universe. The danger is that we can see how [Orwell’s] technologies that are [in] Nineteen Eighty-Four now seem unimaginative and quaint. They talked about things like microphones implanted in bushes and cameras in TVs that look back at us. Nowadays we’ve got webcams that go with us everywhere. We buy cell phones that are the equivalent of a network microphone that we carry around in our pockets with us voluntarily as we go from place to place and move about our lives."

Edward Snowden Urges Professionals To Encrypt Client Communications

July 17, 2014 Alan Rusbridger and Ewen MacAskill, www.theguardian.com Educate! Edward Snowden, Encryption, Prison, Privacy, Surveillance

The NSA whistleblower, Edward Snowden, has urged lawyers, journalists, doctors, accountants, priests and others with a duty to protect confidentiality to upgrade security in the wake of the spy surveillance revelations. Snowden said professionals were failing in their obligations to their clients, sources, patients and parishioners in what he described as a new and challenging world. "What last year's revelations showed us was irrefutable evidence that unencrypted communications on the internet are no longer safe. Any communications should be encrypted by default," he said. The response of professional bodies has so far been patchy. A minister at the Home Office in London, James Brokenshire, said during a Commons debate about a new surveillance bill on Tuesday that a code of practice to protect legal professional privilege and others requiring professional secrecy was under review. Snowden's plea for the professions to tighten security came during an extensive and revealing interview with the Guardian in Moscow.

Germany May Revert To Typewriters To Counter Hi-Tech Espionage

July 17, 2014 Philip Oltermann, www.theguardian.com Educate! Germany, Politics, Privacy, Surveillance, Technology

German politicians are considering a return to using manual typewriters for sensitive documents in the wake of the US surveillance scandal. The head of the Bundestag's parliamentary inquiry into NSA activity in Germany said in an interview with the Morgenmagazin TV programme that he and his colleagues were seriously thinking of ditching email completely. Asked "Are you considering typewriters" by the interviewer on Monday night, the Christian Democrat politican Patrick Sensburg said: "As a matter of fact, we have – and not electronic models either". "Really?" the surprised interviewer checked. "Yes, no joke," Sensburg responded. "Unlike other inquiry committees, we are investigating an ongoing situation. Intelligence activities are still going on, they are happening," said Sensburg. Last week, Merkel's government asked the CIA's station officer in Germany to leave the country after an employee of the German intelligence agency BND confessed to passing confidential documents to the US secret service. The ongoing investigation prompted speculation that the CIA may have actively targeted the Bundestag's NSA inquiry committee. Last year, the Russian government reportedly took similar measures after the extent of US electronic surveillance was revealed by the whistleblower Edward Snowden. The federal guard service, a powerful body tasked with protecting Russia's highest-ranking officials, put in an order for 20 Triumph Adler typewriters, which create unique "handwriting", that allows the source of any documents created on them to be traced.

UN Human Rights Commissioner: Snowden Should Not Face Trial

July 17, 2014 Reuters, www.theguardian.com Educate! Edward Snowden, Human Rights, Privacy, Surveillance, UN

The United Nations's top human rights official has suggested that the United States should abandon its efforts to prosecute Edward Snowden, saying his revelations of massive state surveillance had been in the public interest. The UN high commissioner for human rights, Navi Pillay, credited Snowden, a former US National Security Agency contractor, with starting a global debate that has led to calls for the curtailing of state powers to snoop on citizens online and store their data. "Those who disclose human rights violations should be protected: we need them," Pillay told a news conference. "I see some of it here in the case of Snowden, because his revelations go to the core of what we are saying about the need for transparency, the need for consultation," she said. "We owe a great deal to him for revealing this kind of information." The United States has filed espionage charges against Snowden, charging him with theft of government property, unauthorised communication of national defence information and wilful communication of classified communications intelligence to an unauthorised person.

Spy Agencies Have Tools To Manipulate Internet

July 15, 2014 Glenn Greenwald, www.firstlook.org Educate! FCC, Internet Freedom, Privacy, Surveillance

The secretive British spy agency GCHQ has developed covert tools to seed the internet with false information, including the ability to manipulate the results of online polls, artificially inflate pageview counts on web sites, “amplif[y]” sanctioned messages on YouTube, and censor video content judged to be “extremist.” The capabilities, detailed in documents provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, even include an old standby for pre-adolescent prank callers everywhere: A way to connect two unsuspecting phone users together in a call. The tools were created by GCHQ’s Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group (JTRIG), and constitute some of the most startling methods of propaganda and internet deception contained within the Snowden archive. Previously disclosed documents have detailed JTRIG’s use of “fake victim blog posts,” “false flag operations,” “honey traps” and psychological manipulation to target online activists, monitor visitors to WikiLeaks, and spy on YouTube and Facebook users.

The Senate Is Secretly Giving More Power To The NSA

July 14, 2014 Trevor Trimm, www.theguardian.com Educate! CISPA, Internet Freedom, Privacy, Surveillance

One of the most underrated benefits of Edward Snowden's leaks was how they forced the US Congress to shelve the dangerous, privacy-destroying legislation– then known as Cispa – that so many politicians had been so eager to pass under the guise of "cybersecurity". Now a version of the bill is back, and apparently its authors want to keep you in the dark about it for as long as possible. Now it's called the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (Cisa), and it is a nightmare for civil liberties. Indeed, it's unclear how this kind of law would even improve cybersecurity. The bill was marked up and modified by the Senate intelligence committee in complete secrecy this week, and only afterward was the public allowed to see many of the provisions passed under its name. Cisa is what Senator Dianne Feinstein, the bill's chief backer and the chair of the committee, calls an "information-sharing" law that's supposed to help the government and tech and telecom companies better hand information back and forth to the government about “cyberthreat” data, such as malware.

Snowden Condemns Surveillance Bill

July 14, 2014 Ewen MacAskill, www.theguardian.com Educate! Britain, Edward Snowden, Privacy, Surveillance

The NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has condemned the new surveillance bill being pushed through the UK's parliament this week, expressing concern about the speed at which it is being done, lack of public debate, fear-mongering and what he described as increased powers of intrusion. In an exclusive interview with the Guardian in Moscow, Snowden said it was very unusual for a public body to pass an emergency law such as this in circumstances other than a time of total war. "I mean we don't have bombs falling. We don't have U-boats in the harbour." Suddenly it is a priority, he said, after the government had ignored it for an entire year. "It defies belief." He found the urgency with which the British government was moving extraordinary and said it mirrored a similar move in the US in 2007 when the Bush administration was forced to introduce legislation, the Protect America Act, citing the same concerns about terrorist threats and the NSA losing cooperation from telecom and internet companies.

Citizens Sue Over Suspicious Activity Program

July 12, 2014 Kevin Gosztola, www.dissenter.firedoglake.com Resist! ACLU, Law, Privacy, Surveillance, Terrorism

The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit on behalf of five United States citizens challenging a domestic surveillance program, which involves the collection of “suspicious activity reports” on individuals. The federal government has a National Suspicious Activity Reporting Initiative (NSI) that, according to the ACLU’s filed complaint [PDF], “encourages state and local law enforcement agencies as well as private actors to collect and report information that has a potential nexus to terrorism in the form of so-called ‘suspicious activity reports [SARs].’” Any individual who is flagged as having a “potential nexus to terrorism” will automatically be subject to “law enforcement scrutiny, which may include intrusive questioning by local or federal law enforcement agents.” Plus, “Even when the Federal Bureau of Investigation concludes that the person did not have any nexus to terrorism, a SAR can haunt that individual for decades, as SARs remain in federal databases for up to 30 years.”

There Might Be A Second Edward Snowden Out There

July 11, 2014 Tom McKay, www.mic.com Educate! Edward Snowden, Internet Freedom, NSA, Privacy, Surveillance

The news: Newly leaked source code has revealed just what the NSA considers justification for storing your web browsing data indefinitely — and it probably didn't come from Edward Snowden. Lena Kampf, Jacob Appelbaum and John Goetz (who are all associated with the Tor Project) wrote on the German site Tagessschau that they have seen the "deep packet inspection" rules used in the NSA's XKeyScore program to determine which targets are worthy of deep surveillance. The rules are much broader than the NSA would like you to believe; for example, the NSA targets anyone who searches for information online about Tails or Tor. Anyone using Tor is also flagged for long-term surveillance. People deemed worthy of such intensive surveillance never have their data removed from NSA servers. What is the NSA trying to do? Their main goal seems to be separating the technological know-hows from folks who wouldn't know what an Onion router was if it hit them in the face. After making this distinction, the NSA will keep track of the former group, in case they ever become a potential threat.

Who Was The NSA Spying On?

July 10, 2014 Glenn Greenwald and Murtaza Hussain, www.firstlook.org Educate! FBI, Muslim, NSA, Privacy, Surveillance

The National Security Agency and FBI have covertly monitored the emails of prominent Muslim-Americans—including a political candidate and several civil rights activists, academics, and lawyers—under secretive procedures intended to target terrorists and foreign spies. According to documents provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, the list of Americans monitored by their own government includes: • Faisal Gill, a longtime Republican Party operative and one-time candidate for public office who held a top-secret security clearance and served in the Department of Homeland Security under President George W. Bush; • Asim Ghafoor, a prominent attorney who has represented clients in terrorism-related cases; • Hooshang Amirahmadi, an Iranian-American professor of international relations at Rutgers University; • Agha Saeed, a former political science professor at California State University who champions Muslim civil liberties and Palestinian rights; • Nihad Awad, the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the largest Muslim civil rights organization in the country.

The Extent Of Electronic Communications Surveillance

July 9, 2014 Lauren Regan, www.monthlyreview.org Strategize! Internet Freedom, Law, Privacy, Surveillance

“I think you’re misunderstanding the perceived problem here, Mr. President. No one is saying you broke any laws. We’re just saying it’s a little bit weird that you didn’t have to.”—John Oliver on The Daily Show1 The government is collecting information on millions of citizens. Phone, Internet, and email habits, credit card and bank records—virtually all information that is communicated electronically is subject to the watchful eye of the state. The government is even building a nifty, 1.5 million square foot facility in Utah to house all of this data.2 With the recent exposure of the NSA’s PRISM program by whistleblower Edward Snowden, many people—especially activists—are wondering: How much privacy do we actually have? Well, as far as electronic privacy, the short answer is: None. None at all. There are a few ways to protect yourself, but ultimately, nothing in electronic communications is absolutely protected. In the United States, surveillance of electronic communications is governed primarily by the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 (ECPA), which is an extension of the 1968 Federal Wiretap act (also called “Title III”) and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Other legislation, such as the USA PATRIOT Act and the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), supplement both the ECPA and FISA.

The Latest Snowden Leak Is Devastating

July 8, 2014 Conor Friedersdorf, www.theatlantic.com Educate! Edward Snowden, NSA, Privacy, Surveillance

Consider the latest leak sourced to Edward Snowden from the perspective of his detractors. The National Security Agency's defenders would have us believe that Snowden is a thief and a criminal at best, and perhaps a traitorous Russian spy. In their telling, the NSA carries out its mission lawfully, honorably, and without unduly compromising the privacy of innocents. For that reason, they regard Snowden's actions as a wrongheaded slur campaign premised on lies and exaggerations. But their narrative now contradicts itself. The Washington Post's latest article drawing on Snowden's leaked cache of documents includes files "described as useless by the analysts but nonetheless retained" that "tell stories of love and heartbreak, illicit sexual liaisons, mental-health crises, political and religious conversions, financial anxieties and disappointed hopes. The daily lives of more than 10,000 account holders who were not targeted are catalogued and recorded nevertheless." The article goes on to describe how exactly the privacy of these innocents was violated. The NSA collected "medical records sent from one family member to another, résumés from job hunters and academic transcripts of schoolchildren.

NSA Spying: Ordinary Americans Far Outnumber Targets

July 7, 2014 Barton Gellman, www.washingtonpost.com Educate! Data, NSA, Privacy, Surveillance

Ordinary Internet users, American and non-American alike, far outnumber legally targeted foreigners in the communications intercepted by the National Security Agency from U.S. digital networks, according to a four-month investigation by The Washington Post. Nine of 10 account holders found in a large cache of intercepted conversations, which former NSA contractor Edward Snowden provided in full to The Post, were not the intended surveillance targets but were caught in a net the agency had cast for somebody else. Many of them were Americans. Nearly half of the surveillance files, a strikingly high proportion, contained names, e-mail addresses or other details that the NSA marked as belonging to U.S. citizens or residents. NSA analysts masked, or “minimized,” more than 65,000 such references to protect Americans’ privacy, but The Post found nearly 900 additional e-mail addresses, unmasked in the files, that could be strongly linked to U.S. citizens or U.S.residents. The surveillance files highlight a policy dilemma that has been aired only abstractly in public. There are discoveries of considerable intelligence value in the intercepted messages — and collateral harm to privacy on a scale that the Obama administration has not been willing to address.

NSA Authorized To Spy On Every Country

July 2, 2014 Ellen Nakashima and Barton Gellman, www.washingtonpost.com Educate! Foreign Policy, NSA, Privacy, Surveillance

Virtually no foreign government is off-limits for the National Security Agency, which has been authorized to intercept information “concerning” all but four countries, according to top-secret documents. The United States has long had broad no-spying arrangements with those four countries — Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand — in a group known collectively with the United States as the Five Eyes. But a classified 2010 legal certification and other documents indicate the NSA has been given a far more elastic authority than previously known, one that allows it to intercept through U.S. companies not just the communications of its overseas targets but any communications about its targets as well. The certification — approved by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and included among a set of documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden — lists 193 countries that would be of valid interest for U.S. intelligence. The certification also permitted the agency to gather intelligence about entities including the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the European Union and the International Atomic Energy Agency. The NSA is not necessarily targeting all the countries or organizations identified in the certification, the affidavits and an accompanying exhibit; it has only been given authority to do so

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