Surveillance

Tracking Calls Failed To Prevent 9/11, US Tracked Billions Before Event

April 10, 2015 Brad Heath, www.wtsp.com Educate! Law, Privacy, Surveillance

The U.S. government started keeping secret records of Americans' international telephone calls nearly a decade before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, harvesting billions of calls in a program that provided a blueprint for the far broader National Security Agency surveillance that followed. For more than two decades, the Justice Department and the Drug Enforcement Administration amassed logs of virtually all telephone calls from the USA to as many as 116 countries linked to drug trafficking, current and former officials involved with the operation said. The targeted countries changed over time but included Canada, Mexico and most of Central and South America. Federal investigators used the call records to track drug cartels' distribution networks in the USA, allowing agents to detect previously unknown trafficking rings and money handlers.

Barrett Brown Stripped Of Prison Email After Talking To Media

April 8, 2015 Cyrus Farivar, www.arstechnica.com Resist! Freedom of Expression, Prison, Privacy, Surveillance

Barrett Brown, the brash journalist and former member of Anonymous who was sentenced in January 2015 to over five years in federal prison, had his e-mail privileges suddenly revoked, seemingly for corresponding with journalists. On Sunday, Brown’s supporters published his account of the punishment, describing how he suddenly lost access to his prison-supplied e-mail account on March 31. In the ensuing days, Brown attempted to contact various prison officials to get further information, including someone named “Trust Fund Manager Coleman.” As Ars reported previously, in April 2014 Brown took a plea deal admitting guilt on three charges: “transmitting a threat in interstate commerce,” interfering with the execution of a search warrant, and being "accessory after the fact in the unauthorized access to a protected computer."

On the Lam With Bank Robber Enric Duran

April 8, 2015 Nathan Schneider, www.vice.com Create! Banking, Law, Surveillance

Being underground is not a condition Enric Duran always takes literally, but one night in late January he went from basement to basement. At a hackerspace under a tiny library just south of Paris, he met a group of activists from across France and then traveled with them by bus and Métro to another meeting place, in an old palace on the north end of the city. On the ground floor it felt like an art gallery, with white walls and sensitive acoustics, but the basement below was like a cave, full of costumes and scientific instruments and exposed masonry. There, Duran arranged chairs in a circle for the dozen or so people who'd made the journey. As they were settling in and discussing which language they'd speak, a woman from upstairs, attending an event about open licenses, peeked in through the doorway.

Erie County Sheriff Records Reveal Invasive Use Of “Stingray” Tech

April 8, 2015 NYCLU, www.nyclu.org Educate! Law, New York (NY), Surveillance, Wars and Militarism

The New York Civil Liberties Union released today records it received from the Erie County Sheriff’s Office on its use of ”stingrays,” devices that can track and record New Yorkers’ locations via their cell phones. The records showed that of the 47 times the Sheriff’s Office used stingrays in the past four years, it apparently only once obtained a court order, contradicting the sheriff’s own remarks. Stingrays can collect information on all cell phones in a given area as well as precisely track particular phones, locating people within their own home, at a doctor’s office, at a political protest or in a church.

Artists Battle NYPD Over Edward Snowden Memorial In Brooklyn

April 7, 2015 Bucky Turco, www.animalnewyork.com Resist! Brooklyn, Park, Snowden, Surveillance

In a statement about the project, which they have entitled, “Prison Ship Martyrs Monument 2.0,” they wrote: Fort Greene’s Prison Ship Martyrs Monument is a memorial to American POWs who lost their lives during the Revolutionary War. We have updated this monument to highlight those who sacrifice their safety in the fight against modern-day tyrannies. It would be a dishonor to those memorialized here to not laud those who protect the ideals they fought for, as Edward Snowden has by bringing the NSA’s 4th-Amendment-violating surveillance programs to light. All too often, figures who strive to uphold these ideals have been cast as criminals rather than in bronze. Our goal is to bring a renewed vitality to the space and prompt even more visitors to ponder the sacrifices made for their freedoms. We hope this inspires them to reflect upon the responsibility we all bear to ensure our liberties exist long into the future.

Cop Cams Will Change Policing, But Not The Way You Think

April 6, 2015 Matt Sledge and Hunter Stuart, www.huffingtonpost.com Educate! Criminal Justice, Media, Police the Police, Surveillance

There is significant evidence that cop cams cut down on most civilian complaints. But a close examination of violent encounters with the police caught on tape suggests that even with seemingly incontrovertible video evidence, questions will often linger. The kind of sea change that police reform activists desire will still likely escape them. "I don't think anything is as good as having a camera," said John Burris, an Oakland civil rights attorney who represented both Rodney King and the family of Oscar Grant, who was killed by an officer in an Oakland train station while he was lying face-down on the ground. But, Burris added, "The realities of the world are police get the benefit of the doubt."

How The CIA Infiltrated The National Students Association

April 4, 2015 Elias Isquith, www.salon.com Educate! CIA, NSA, Student Activism, Surveillance

At this point in our history, most Americans are quite familiar with the Central Intelligence Agency’s habit of being creative with (or, depending on your ideological leanings, outright contemptuous of) the rule of law. But although it was certainly the case by the late 1960s that Americans were beginning to look askance on their government like never before, a bombshell report from Ramparts Magazine in 1967, which found that the CIA had infiltrated and co-opted the National Student Association (NSA), still came to many as a shock. In a post-”enhanced interrogation” world, that might seem a little quaint; but a better angle might be to see it as a warning, unheeded, of worse things to come. Recently, Salon spoke over the phone with Paget to discuss the NSA, the CIA’s involvement, and how the relationship between the two organizations evolved with and reflected the changing currents of the Cold War. Our conversation is below and has been edited for clarity and length.

Black America’s State Of Surveillance

March 31, 2015 Malkia Amala Cyril, www.progressive.org Educate! Racial Justice, Surveillance

Ten years ago, on Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, my mother, a former Black Panther, died from complications of sickle cell anemia. Weeks before she died, the FBI came knocking at our door, demanding that my mother testify in a secret trial proceeding against other former Panthers or face arrest. My mother, unable to walk, refused. The detectives told my mother as they left that they would be watching her. They didn’t get to do that. My mother died just two weeks later. My mother was not the only black person to come under the watchful eye of American law enforcement for perceived and actual dissidence. Nor is dissidence always a requirement for being subject to spying.

Was I A CIA Spy? 50 Years On, I Still Don’t Know

March 30, 2015 Jeff Greenfield, www.thedailybeast.com Educate! CIA, Surveillance

So for 30 days, a dozen of us traveled to Hong Kong, the Philippines, Indonesia, Singapore, and Malaysia. We met with government officials, got briefings from officials at various American embassies, and had conversations with fellow students that stretched far into the night. On one occasion, in Manila, we met a close friend of the son of then-Philippine President Macapagal, who was clearly well to the left of the government. As we did throughout the trip, my fellow Americans and I wrote extensive memos about who we met and what we talked about, and mailed them to NSA headquarters in Philadelphia. It was, I knew, another way of establishing links between our independent student group and young compatriots all over the world.

Putin: Western Intel Services Aiming To Destabilize Russia

March 28, 2015 Voice of America News, www.voanews.com Educate! Russia, Surveillance

President Vladimir Putin said Western intelligence services have set it as their goal to destabilize Russia especially during upcoming elections, according to the Kremlin’s website. In a speech Thursday in Moscow before top officials of the Federal Security Service, he said non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and politicized groups will take the lead in this effort. “[We are seeing that] to attain their goals, Western intelligence services are unceasingly using civic non-governmental organizations and politicized associations, above all to discredit the government and destabilize the domestic situation in Russia, whereby operations are already planned for the upcoming 2016-2018 election campaigns,” Putin told officials of the KGB successor agency, according to a transcript of his speech posted by the Kremlin.

Documents Show Canadian Spying On Enviros Went Too Far

March 27, 2015 Jim Bronskill, www.huffingtonpost.ca Educate! Canada, Environment, Surveillance, Terror

A civil liberties group says newly disclosed Canadian Security Intelligence Service records on protest surveillance bolster its formal complaint that spies went too far in eyeing environmental activists. The British Columbia Civil Liberties Association has asked the Security Intelligence Review Committee to consider the documents — which reveal CSIS deliberations on the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline — as it investigates the spying allegations. The association filed a complaint with the review committee in February 2014 after media reports suggested that CSIS and other government agencies consider opposition to the petroleum industry a threat to national security.

Bi-Partisan Surveillance State Repeal Act Introduced

March 26, 2015 Representative Mark Pocan, Representative Thomas Massie, www.media-alliance.org Educate! Congress, Surveillance

Today, U.S. Reps. Mark Pocan (D-WI) and Thomas Massie (R-KY) introduced the Surveillance State Repeal Act. The legislation would repeal dragnet federal surveillance laws, while overhauling the NSA’s domestic surveillance program. “The warrantless collection of millions of personal communications from innocent Americans is a direct violation of our constitutional right to privacy,” said Rep. Pocan. “Revelations about the NSA’s programs reveal the extraordinary extent to which the program has invaded Americans’ privacy. I reject the notion that we must sacrifice liberty for security- we can live in a secure nation which also upholds a strong commitment to civil liberties. This legislation ends the NSA’s dragnet surveillance practices, while putting provisions in place to protect the privacy of American citizens through real and lasting change.”

Oakland Has Read 4.6 Million License Plates Tracking People

March 26, 2015 Cyrus Farivar, www.arstechnica.com Educate! Oakland, Police, Surveillance

If you have driven in Oakland any time in the last few years, chances are good that the cops know where you’ve been, thanks to their 33 automated license plate readers (LPRs). Now Ars knows too. In response to a public records request, we obtained the entire LPR dataset of the Oakland Police Department (OPD), including more than 4.6 million reads of over 1.1 million unique plates between December 23, 2010 and May 31, 2014. The dataset is likely one of the largest ever publicly released in the United States—perhaps in the world. After analyzing this data with a custom-built visualization tool, Ars can definitively demonstrate the data's revelatory potential.

US Accuses Israel Of Spying On Nuclear Talks With Iran

March 26, 2015 Julian Borger, Mairav Zonszein, and Sabrina Siddiqui, www.theguardian.com Educate! Iran, Israel, Nuclear, Surveillance, usa

The Wall Street Journal cited senior administration officials as saying the Israeli espionage operation began soon after the US opened up a secret channel of communications with Tehran in 2012, aimed at resolving the decade-long standoff over Iran’s nuclear aspirations. The apparent decision by the White House to leak the allegations is the latest symptom of the growing gulf between Barack Obama’s administration and Binyamin Netanyahu’s government over the Iran talks, in which the Israeli leader suspects US officials of being ready to make too many concessions at the expense of Israeli security. Intelligence

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