Surveillance

How Jeffrey Sterling Took On The CIA — And Lost Everything

June 22, 2015 Peter Maass, www.firstlook.org Educate! CIA, FBI, Law, Surveillance

By Peter Maass in The Intercept - Sterling’s battle against the government had begun more than 15 years earlier, when he was still at the CIA. After he lodged a racial discrimination complaint, he was fired by the agency and filed two federal lawsuits against it, one for retaliation and discrimination, another for obstructing the publication of his autobiography. He also spoke as a whistleblower to Congress. Soon, his savings ran out and he became all but homeless, driving around the country, lost in despair. He eventually returned to his hometown near St. Louis and rebuilt his life, finding the woman who became his wife and landing a job he thrived at. His new life was torn apart when FBI agents came to his workplace in 2011, placing him in handcuffs and parading him past his colleagues. A few days later, still in jail, he was fired because he had not shown up for work. The drama ended in a wood-paneled courtroom in Alexandria, Virginia on a warm afternoon in May, after Sterling finished his brief statement to the judge.

6 Tips For Protecting Your Communications From Prying Eyes

June 21, 2015 Julia Angwin, www.propublica.org Educate! Media, Privacy, Surveillance

By Julia Angwin in ProPublica. It's easy to feel hopeless about privacy these days. In the post-Snowden era, we have learned that nearly every form of communication-from emails, phone calls, to text messages – can leave a digital trace that can and likely will be analyzed by commercial data-gatherers and governments. Here are some ways to keep those communications private. While these tips were designed for journalists and confidential sources, they're just as useful for protecting any private communications, such as a conversation between family members, or a confidential business dealing. Some tactics are more difficult than others, but the good news is that not all of them require technical skills. The key is to figure out your communication strategy.

Google Handed Over Journalist’s Data To Wikileaks Grand Jury

June 21, 2015 Kevin Gosztola, www.firedoglake.com Educate! Google, Privacy, Surveillance, Wikileaks

By Kevin Gosztola in FireDogLake. United States - Google released another legal disclosure notice related to the United States government’s ongoing grand jury investigation into WikiLeaks. It informed journalist and technologist Jacob Appelbaum, who previously worked with WikiLeaks, that Google was ordered to provide data from his account. The disclosure suggests the grand jury investigation may have sought Appelbaum’s data because the US government believed data would contain details on WikiLeaks’ publication of State Department cables. Appelbaum has been under investigation because of his connection to WikiLeaks for four to five years.

UK Police Scan More Than 100,000 Faces At Music Festival

June 17, 2015 Joe Zadeh, www.noisey.vice.com Educate! Music, Privacy, Surveillance

By Joe Zadeh in Vice - This weekend’s Download Festival will be subjected to strategic facial recognition technology by Leicestershire Police, making those 100,000 plus attendees the first music fans to ever be monitored to this extent at a UK music festival, according to UK police news and information website Police Oracle. Globally, it’s not the first time festival attendees have been heavily surveilled at a music festival, usually without their prior knowledge. After the Boston Marathon bombing of April 2013, the subsequent Boston Calling festival was subject to heavy but discreet forms of facial recognition surveillance (as covered here by Noisey US).

Should A Secret Security Court Make Freedom Of Speech Decisions?

June 16, 2015 Hannah Bloch-Wehba and Bruce Brown, www.theguardian.com Educate! Freedom of Speech, Law, Surveillance, Twitter

By Hannah Bloch-Wehba and Bruce Brown in The Guardian - Can a case about the freedom of speech be resolved in a secret court? In a widely publicized case, Twitter sued the Obama administration in a federal district court in California. The company wished to release a transparency report relating to the user information it is forced to turn over to the government under various surveillance collection programs, including the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (Fisa) and the National Security Letter statutes. The government’s preferred venue for resolving Twitter’s First Amendment claim, though, resembles a black box more than an American court. According to the government, the Fisa court in Washington, DC should adjudicate Twitter’s constitutional claim about its right to speak.

The Triumph Of Occupy, & The Costs To The Occupiers

June 15, 2015 Jay Elias, www.dailykos.com Strategize! Criminal Justice, Law, Occupy, Surveillance

By Jay Elias in Daily Kos - What took a lot longer to reach the public eye, and did so after the cameras were largely off the Occupy movement, was the lengths, many of which were illegal, that the Federal and local governments went to spy on the Occupy movement, to use anti-terrorism powers against them, and to share information about their activities with those whom Occupy was protesting. In 2012, Rolling Stone reported on the Department of Homeland Security’s surveillance of the Occupy movement, which began no less than a month after the protests began in 2011. The DHS report stated that the NYPD was sharing information on the protesters and their plans with landlords and business owners, including according to the DHS memo “large banks”. Rolling Stone also reported that information about the locations and times of protests and gatherings nationwide was “borrowed, improbably enough, from the lefty blog Daily Kos.”

The Sunday Times’ Snowden Story Is Journalism At Its Worst

June 15, 2015 Glenn Greenwald, www.firstlook.org Educate! Edward Snowden, Journalism, Media, Surveillance

By Glenn Greenwald in Firstlook - Western journalists claim that the big lesson they learned from their key role in selling the Iraq War to the public is that it’s hideous, corrupt and often dangerous journalism to give anonymity to government officials to let them propagandize the public, then uncritically accept those anonymously voiced claims as Truth. But they’ve learned no such lesson. That tacticcontinues to be the staple of how major US and British media outlets “report,” especially in the national security area. And journalists who read such reports continue to treat self-serving decrees by unnamed, unseen officials – laundered through their media – as gospel, no matter how dubious are the claims or factually false is the reporting.

FBI Behind Mysterious Surveillance Aircraft Over US Cities

June 11, 2015 Jack Gillum, Eileen Sullivan and Eric Tucker, www.AP.org Educate! Cities, Drones, Surveillance, usa

By Jack Gillum, Eileen Sullivan and Eric Tucker for AP - Scores of low-flying planes circling American cities are part of a civilian air force operated by the FBI and obscured behind fictitious companies, The Associated Press has learned. The AP traced at least 50 aircraft back to the FBI, and identified more than 100 flights in 11 states over a 30-day period since late April, orbiting both major cities and rural areas. At least 115 planes, including 90 Cessna aircraft, were mentioned in a federal budget document from 2009. For decades, the planes have provided support to FBI surveillance operations on the ground. But now the aircraft are equipped with high-tech cameras, and in rare circumstances, technology capable of tracking thousands of cellphones, raising questions about how these surveillance flights affect Americans' privacy.

Life After Snowden: Journalists’ New Moral Responsibility

June 10, 2015 Alan Rusbridger, www.cjr.org Educate! Edward Snowden, Journalism, Media, Surveillance

By Alan Rusbridger in CJR - JOURNALISM AFTER SNOWDEN? Two very big questions linger on—one about whether the very technologies Edward Snowden revealed are compatible with independent, inquiring reporting; and one crucial question about journalism itself, which could be boiled down to: “What is it supposed to be, or do?” The technologies first. Any journalist with even a cursory understanding of the Snowden stories published by The Guardian and The Washington Post would have come to an understanding that states—even liberal democracies—have the ability to intercept, store and analyse virtually all forms of electronic communication.

TSA Has No Excuse To Continue Groping

June 7, 2015 James Bovard, www.usatoday.com Educate! Surveillance, TSA

By James Bovard in USAToday. Last August, Transportation Security Administrationchief John Pistole attacked an article I wrote, stating that it was "Misleading, inaccurate and unfairly disparages the dedicated (TSA) workforce. … We will not sit back and allow misinformation and conjecture to malign our employees." Pistole resigned last December — in time to miss the uproar this week about TSA agents failing to detect 95% of the weapons and bombs smuggled past them by Inspector General testers. While Pistole is leading the PR pushback to absolve his former agency, the I.G. report is the latest confirmation that TSA continues blindly blundering and pointlessly abusing Americans' rights and privacy.

Congress Did Not Pass An Anti-Surveillance Law

June 5, 2015 Kevin Gosztola, www.firedoglake.com Educate! NSA, Privacy, Surveillance, Wars and Militarism

By Kevin Gosztola in Firedoglake - When President Barack Obama signed the USA Freedom Act, it did not end bulk data collection or mass surveillance programs. It did not address many of the policies, practices or programs of the NSA, which NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed. It did not sharply limit surveillance nor was it an anti-surveillance law. The USA Freedom Act renewed Patriot Act provisions, which had sunset days ago. However, it is difficult to disagree with Snowden’s generally optimistic assessment. During an Amnesty International UK event, as the Senate was about to pass the law, Snowden declared, “For the first time in forty years of US history, since the intelligence community was reformed in the ’70s, we found that facts have become more persuasive than fear.”

USA Freedom Act Passes: Celebrate, Mourn, & Moving Forward

June 3, 2015 Cindy Cohn and Mark Jaycox, www.eff.org Resist! Internet, Law, Privacy, Reform, Surveillance

By Cindy Cohn and Mark Jaycox from EFF - The Senate passed the USA Freedom Act today by 67-32, marking the first time in over thirty years that both houses of Congress have approved a bill placing real restrictions and oversighton the National Security Agency’s surveillance powers. The weakening amendments to the legislation proposed by NSA defender Senate Majority Mitch McConnell were defeated, and we have every reason to believe that President Obama will sign USA Freedom into law. Technology users everywhere should celebrate, knowing that the NSA will be a little more hampered in its surveillance overreach, and both the NSA and the FISA court will be more transparent and accountable than it was before the USA Freedom Act.

Ellsberg Urges Snowden Receive Nobel Peace Prize

June 3, 2015 Ewen MacAskill, Dan Roberts, and Ben Jacobs, www.theguardian.com Resist! Law, Privacy, Surveillance

By Ewen MacAskill, Dan Roberts, and Ben Jacobs in the Guardian - NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden should be thanked for sparking the debate that forced Congress to change US surveillance law, Daniel Ellsberg, the man who leaked the Pentagon Papers, said Monday. Other prominent US whistleblowers also gave Snowden credit and argued that the curbs in the NSA’s surveillance powers by Congress – combined with a federal court ruling last month that bulk phone record collection is illegal – should open the way for him to be allowed to return to the US, although they conceded this was unlikely. Ellsberg, the former US military analyst who risked jail in 1971 by leaking Pentagon papers showing the White House lied about the Vietnam war, welcomed the concessions made by the Senate, limited as they are.

USA Freedom And The Surveillance State

June 2, 2015 BORDC Staff, www.bordc.org Resist! FBI, NSA, Privacy, Surveillance, Wars and Militarism

By BORDC Staff - Last night the Senate allowed Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act to expire, despite dire predictions of calamity, and will begin debate on a replacement, the USA Freedom Act, later today. The Bill of Rights Committee/Defending Dissent Foundation opposes the USA Freedom Act, and calls for a thorough congressional investigation into the surveillance authorities US intelligence agencies have claimed to gather the private information without a warrant of US persons who are not under suspicion of any crime. “Hundreds of thousands of Americans have joined the debate over unwarranted mass surveillance in the last two weeks, and over the last two years since the first Snowden revelation,” said Sue Udry, Executive Director of BORDC/DDF.

Gov’t Still Have Plenty Of Surveillance Power Without Sec. 215

June 2, 2015 Cindy Cohn and Andrew Crocker, www.eff.org Educate! Privacy, Surveillance, Wars and Militarism

By Cindy Cohn and Andrew Crocker for EFF - The story being spun by the defenders of Section 215 of the Patriot Act and the Obama Administration is that if the law sunsets entirely, the government will lose critical surveillance capabilities. The fearmongering includes President Obama, who said: “heaven forbid we’ve got a problem where we could’ve prevented a terrorist attack or could’ve apprehended someone who was engaged in dangerous activity but we didn’t do so.” So how real is this concern? Not very. Section 215 is only one of a number of largely overlapping surveillance authorities, and the loss of the current version of the law will leave the government with a range of tools that is still incredibly powerful. First, there’s the most famous use of Section 215—the bulk collection of telephone records by the NSA. . .

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