Surveillance

The Dream Of Internet Freedom Doesn’t Have To Die

August 7, 2015 Jennifer Granick, www.justsecurity.org Resist! Cybersecurity, Internet Freedom, Privacy, Surveillance

By Jennifer Granick for Just Security - Today, the dream of Internet Freedom that brought me to my first Def Con is dying. The dream is dying because, for better or for worse, we’ve prioritized things like security, online civility, user interface, and intellectual property interests above freedom and openness. As a result, the Internet is less open and more centralized. It’s more regulated. And increasingly it’s less global, and more divided. These trends: centralization, regulation, and globalization are accelerating. And they will define the future of our communications network, unless something dramatic changes. Let’s take a quick look at just a few of the things likely to happen if these trends continue.

In Canada, Officials Keep Close Watch On Environmental Activists

August 6, 2015 Travis Lupick, www.america.aljazeera.com Resist! Activism, Canada, Environment, Surveillance

By Travis Lupick in Al Jazeera - According to Sean Devlin, an activist who has spent the last two years working on a documentary about Canadian government surveillance, both the shooting and Blaney’s remarks are consistent with a larger government crackdown on environmental activists. “They are using violence to intimidate those who oppose [projects like the Site C Dam],” Devlin said, adding that what the country’s conservative government tolerates as legitimate dissent is shrinking. Nowhere is this tension felt more acutely than in British Columbia, where the province’s premier, Christy Clark, has staked her legacy on transforming the region into a global hub for liquefied natural gas. In addition to megaprojects like the Site C dam, two pipelines are under discussion that would carry massive amounts of heavy crude from the Athabasca oil sands in central Alberta to the coast of British Columbia.

Senate Fails On CISA Before Recess; Grassroots Opposition Grows

August 6, 2015 Staff, http://tumblr.fightforthefuture.org Resist! Cyber Security, Internet, Internet Freedom, Privacy, Surveillance

By Staff for Fight For The Future - Senate leadership had intended to move CISA to a cloture vote yesterday afternoon, but failed to strike a deal as more and more members raised concerns with the bill in the wake of two weeks of intense grassroots action that flooded Senate offices with more than 6.2 million faxes in addition to tens of thousands of emails, phone calls, and tweets. Most of the action came through FaxBigBrother.com a viral web page launched by Fight for the Future with a broad coalition of privacy and civil liberties groups. Senate leadership had intended to move CISA to a cloture vote yesterday afternoon, but failed to strike a deal as more and more members raised concerns with the bill in the wake of two weeks of intense grassroots action that flooded Senate offices with more than 6.2 million faxes in addition to tens of thousands of emails, phone calls, and tweets. Most of the action came through FaxBigBrother.com a viral web page launched by Fight for the Future with a broad coalition of privacy and civil liberties groups. Senate leadership had intended to move CISA to a cloture vote yesterday afternoon, but failed to strike a deal as more and more members raised concerns with the bill in the wake of two weeks of intense grassroots action that flooded Senate offices with more than 6.2 million faxes in addition to tens of thousands of emails, phone calls, and tweets. Most of the action came through FaxBigBrother.com a viral web page launched by Fight for the Future with a broad coalition of privacy and civil liberties groups. “The delay is good news, but Internet users are outraged that Congress is even considering this dangerous and unpopular legislation, and even more outraged at the Web companies who stand to benefit financially from CISA’s sweeping legal immunity who have remained silent, putting all of their users’ privacy at risk,” said Evan Greer, Fight for the Future’s campaign director.

During B’more Uprising, City Officials Criminalized Hashtags

August 4, 2015 Kevin Gosztola, www.shadowproof.com Educate! Baltimore, Black Lives Matter (BLM), police brutality, Surveillance, Uprising

By Kevin Gosztola in Shadow Proof - The surveillance by the city, a security company, and a corporation reflects how scared everyone was of the protesting. The uneasiness was used to justify the bolstering of security, even though there was only one day in the beginning where riots occurred. Such monitoring, much of which was aimed at protesters, fits in with DHS’s practice of tracking “Black Lives Matter” demonstrations closely since Michael Brown was gunned down by Officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri. The FBI has used its Joint Terrorism Task Force to provide support to the Mall of America for a Black Lives Matter protest on December 20. Mall of America security have catfishedBlack Lives Matter activists in order to collect intelligence against them.

NSA Spies On Japanese Cabinet And Corporations

August 1, 2015 Wikileaks, www.wikileaks.org Educate! Japan, NSA, Surveillance

By Wikileaks - The list indicates that NSA spying on Japanese conglomerates, government officials, ministries and senior advisers extends back at least as far as the first administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, which lasted from September 2006 until September 2007. The telephone interception target list includes the switchboard for the Japanese Cabinet Office; the executive secretary to the Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga; a line described as "Government VIP Line"; numerous officials within the Japanese Central Bank, including Governor Haruhiko Kuroda; the home phone number of at least one Central Bank official; numerous numbers within the Japanese Finance Ministry; the Japanese Minister for Economy, Trade and Industry Yoichi Miyazawa; the Natural Gas Division of Mitsubishi; and the Petroleum Division of Mitsui.

OpenTheGovernment.Org Joins Protest Opposing Cybersecurity Bill

July 29, 2015 Open The Government, www.openthegovernment.org Resist! Cyber Security, Protest, Surveillance

By Open The Government - As the U.S. Senate prepares to take up the Cybersecurity Information Sharing (“CISA”) Act, S. 754, open government organizations, privacy and civil liberties defenders, security experts, and tech companies are mobilizing to voice opposition to the bill. OpenTheGovernment.org is particularly concerned with the harm the bill would do to the Freedom of Information Act and transparency more generally. Open government organizations sent letters to Congress in June, and in March of this year, calling on the Senate to oppose the bill. CISA would add a new exemption to the Freedom of Information Act for the first time since 1967. Section 10 of the bill provides that any and all “information shared with or provided to the Federal Government pursuant to the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015” is exempt from disclosure under FOIA—even if it is private information unrelated to a cybersecurity threat.

U.K. Police Confirm Criminal Probe Of Snowden Leak Journalists

July 28, 2015 Ryan Gallagher, www.firstlook.org Educate! Journalism, Police, Snowden, Surveillance, United Kingdom (UK)

By Ryan Gallagher in The Intercept - A secretive British police investigation focusing on journalists working with Edward Snowden’s leaked documents remains ongoing two years after it was quietly launched, The Intercept can reveal. London’s Metropolitan Police Service has admitted it is still carrying out the probe, which is being led by its counterterrorism department, afterpreviously refusing to confirm or deny its existence on the grounds that doing so could be “detrimental to national security.” The disclosure was made by police in a letter sent to this reporter Tuesday, concluding a seven-month freedom of information battle that saw the London force repeatedly attempt to withhold basic details about the status of the case. It reversed its position this week only after an intervention from the Information Commissioner’s Office, the public body that enforces the U.K.’s freedom of information laws.

Feds Monitored #BlackLivesMatter Since Ferguson

July 26, 2015 George Joseph, www.firstlook.org Educate! #BlackLivesMatter, Black Lives Matter (BLM), Surveillance

By George Joseph for the Intercept - The Department of Homeland Security has been monitoring the Black Lives Matter movement since anti-police protests erupted in Ferguson, Missouri last summer, according to hundreds of documents obtained by The Interceptthrough a Freedom of Information Act request. The documents, released by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Operations Coordination, indicate that the department frequently collects information, including location data, on Black Lives Matter activities from public social media accounts, including on Facebook, Twitter, and Vine, even for events expected to be peaceful. The reports confirm social media surveillance of the protest movement and ostensibly related events in the cities of Ferguson, Baltimore, Washington, DC, and New York.

UK High Court Rules Surveillance Law Unconstitutional

July 24, 2015 Marianne Franklin, www.theconversation.com Resist! Europe, Law, Surveillance, United Kingdom (UK)

By Marianne Franklin in The Conversation - Controversial surveillance legislation hustled through parliament last summer has been ruled unlawful by the UK High Court, which argued that the vague terms and descriptions of powers in the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act 2014 (DRIPA) renders the act incompatible with human rights under European law. In a 44-page ruling, Lord Justice David Bean and Mr Justice Andrew Collins criticised the lack of clarity and detail in spelling out the terms and conditions under which communications data can be intercepted by police and intelligence agencies, declaring the act “incompatible with the British public’s right to respect for private life and communications and to protection of personal data under Articles 7 and 8 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights”.

Snowden: Make An Internet For People Not Spies

July 22, 2015 Kieren McCarthy, www.theregister.co.uk Create! Internet, Snowden, Surveillance

By Kieren McCarthy in The Register - NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has urged the world's leading group of internet engineers to design a future 'net that puts the user in the center, and so protects people's privacy. Speaking via webcast to a meeting in Prague of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the former spy talked about a range of possible changes to the basic engineering of the global communications network that would make it harder for governments to carry out mass surveillance. The session was not recorded, but a number of attendees live-tweeted the confab. It was not an official IETF session, but one organized by attendees at the Prague event and using the IETF's facilities.

Not Just The NSA — IRS Is Reading Your Emails Too

July 18, 2015 Thor Benson, www.truthdig.com Educate! IRS, Law, NSA, Surveillance

By Thor Benson in TurthDig - According to Rottman, who is a legislative counsel and policy adviser at the ACLU’s Washington Legislative Office, “this bill would make that modest but essential change, and bring our email privacy laws into the age of broadband and cloud computing.” Without such a change in the ECPA, however, agencies like the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the IRS and others can simply obtain data stored in the cloud by sending a company like Google a subpoena demanding access to that data when it is 180 days old or older. Users might not even realize their privacy had been breached, because the government can deal directly with the email service providers. On the other hand, if these agencies want the same data before it is 180 days old, they need to obtain a warrant.

Laura Poitras Sues US Government For Repeated Border Stops

July 15, 2015 Jenna McLaughlin, www.firstlook.org Resist! Law, NSA, Privacy, Surveillance

By Jenna McLaughlin in The Intercept - Over six years, filmmaker Laura Poitras was searched, interrogated and detained more than 50 times at U.S. and foreign airports. When she asked why, U.S. agencies wouldn’t say. Now, after receiving no response to her Freedom of Information Act requests for documents pertaining to her systemic targeting, Poitras is suing the U.S. government. In a complaint filed on Monday afternoon, Poitras demanded that the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence release any and all documentation pertaining to her tracking, targeting and questioning while traveling between 2006 and 2012. “I’m filing this lawsuit because the government uses the U.S. border to bypass the rule of law,” Poitras said in a statement. Poitras co-founded The Intercept with Glenn Greenwald and Jeremy Scahill.

Hackers Reveal Spying Software Used By Govt’s To Silence Dissent

July 9, 2015 Kit O'Connell, www.mintpressnews.com Resist! Anonymous, Freedom of Expression, Surveillance

By Kit O'Connell in MintPress News - Last weekend, news broke on social media of a massive hack against a major, controversial security software company that sold surveillance software to government agencies. A hacker who attacked another security firm last year is taking credit for the audacious break in that saw hundreds of gigabytes of stolen data leaked onto bittorrent. Hacking Team, the Italian software company that fell victim to the unknown hackers, proudly billed itself as avendor of surveillance software to police forces, with the motto, “Rely on us.” Reporters Without Borders hadalready cited Hacking Team as one of their “enemies of the Internet.” But, as the hack revealed, the corporation’s clients also included governments from countries to which sales are banned by the United Nations as a result of their repressive regimes’ repeated human rights’ violations.

Protest Is The New Terror: Law Enforcement Criminalizing Dissent

July 1, 2015 Derek Royden, www.occupy.com Resist! Freedom of Expression, police brutality, Protest, Social Change, Surveillance

By Derek Royden in Occupy - The unique moment created by anti-police brutality protests throughout the U.S. last year – and coming on the heels of a federally coordinated effort to dismantle Occupy encampments in 2011 – revealed that federal police agencies, especially the FBI, working with local police have directed their resources as much against protesters, dissenters and those practicing and civil disobedience as they have against the threat represented by terrorists, whether homegrown “lone wolves" or organized outside groups. While the recent NSA reform bill passed in Congress represents a victory for civil liberties and privacy advocates, there's still a ways to go. Because while the right to dissent remains a fundamental American freedom, the fear of terrorism being openly exploited by law enforcement has allowed police to resurrect COINTELPRO in all but name.

This Shadow Government Agency Is Scarier Than The NSA

June 26, 2015 William M. Arkin, www.phasezero.gawker.com Educate! Gawker, National Security, police brutality, Surveillance, Terrorism

By William M. Arkin in Gawker - If you have a telephone number that has ever been called by an inmate in a federal prison, registered a change of address with the Postal Service, rented a car from Avis, used a corporate or Sears credit card, applied for nonprofit status with the IRS, or obtained non-driver’s legal identification from a private company, they have you on file. They are not who you think they are. They are not the NSA or the CIA. They are the National Security Analysis Center (NSAC), an obscure element of the Justice Department that has grown from its creation in 2008 into a sprawling 400-person, $150 million-a-year multi-agency organization employing almost 300 analysts, the majority of whom are corporate contractors.

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