Free Republic

If you have been following Glenn since his days at Fox News, you may remember the expose he did on Obama ‘regulatory czar’ Cass Sunstein and his nudge theory. One of Sunstein’s more disturbing ideas involved government operatives infiltrating online communities in order to disseminate false information. As Glenn describes it, the goal was to “pose, infiltrate, and discredit.” Anyone who actually took Sunstein’s words at face value were mocked and labeled conspiracy theorists. But, as it turns out, it was all true. “The English version of the NSA is the GCHQ… The English NSA has now revealed that that’s...

Whether Democrat or Republican, do you really want your private tax information leaked with impunity? On March 9, 2010, around 10 a.m., I announced my plans to run for senate representing Delaware. Later that same day, my office received a call from a reporter asking about my taxes. It’s since come out, after a halting and unenthusiastic investigation, that a Delaware Department of Revenue employee named David Smith accessed my records that day at approximately 2 p.m. — out of curiosity, he says. That these records ended up in the hands of the press is just a coincidence, the IRS...

Angry over revelations of National Security Agency surveillance and frustrated with what they consider outdated digital privacy laws, state lawmakers around the nation are proposing bills to curtail the powers of law enforcement to monitor and track citizens. Their efforts in at least 14 states are a direct message to the federal government: If you don’t take action to strengthen privacy, we will. “We need to stand up and protect our liberty,” said Republican Missouri state Sen. Rob Schaaf, author of a digital privacy bill. Police groups, however, say the moves will in some cases hinder efforts to deter or...

Tightening the reins on the nation’s sweeping surveillance operations, President Barack Obama on Friday ordered new limits on the way intelligence officials access phone records from hundreds of millions of Americans—and moved toward eventually stripping the massive data collection from the government’s hands. But Obama’s highly anticipated intelligence recommendations left many key details unresolved, most notably who might take over as keeper of the vast trove of U.S. phone records. Final decisions on that and other major questions were left to the Justice Department and to intelligence agencies that oppose changing surveillance operations, and to a Congress that is divided...

President Barack Obama’s blueprint for overhauling the government’s sweeping surveillance program is just the starting point. The reality is few changes could happen quickly without unlikely agreements from a divided Congress and federal judges. The most contentious debate probably will be over the future of the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of telephone records from millions of Americans. In his highly anticipated speech on Friday, Obama is expected to back the idea of changing the program. But he’ll leave the specifics to Congress, according to U.S. officials briefed on the White House review. …

The release of names is a big mistake, say some lawyers, based on the court not knowing the difference between streaming and downloading copyrighted material.Thousands of porn watchers have had their personal details released by a German court. Some 20,000 people who watched porn on a U.S.-based website have had their names and addresses released by a court and could end up paying a fine. Cease and desist letters were sent to people who had accessed the smut site, Redtube. They were traced after a German court released their personal details in a case where people were claiming videos had...

MOSCOW—The space race may be over but Russia hopes the smartphone race has just begun. Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev was among the first to receive a YotaPhone—the country’s first foray into the hyper-competitive smartphone market—and was told industry pace-setter Apple Inc. better watch its back. “Is Apple concerned about our smartphone?” he asked Sergey Chemezov, the head of Russia’s state-run defense corporation, Rostec, who gave him the phone on Wednesday hours after it hit the market. “Definitely,” Mr. Chemezov replied, according to a transcript of the exchange posted on the government’s website.....

While European leaders are busy expressing public indignation over reports of American espionage operations in the European Union, the European Parliament is quietly considering a proposal that calls for the direct surveillance of any EU citizen suspected of being “intolerant.” Critics say the measure—which seeks to force the national governments of all 28 EU member states to establish “special administrative units” to monitor any individual or group expressing views that the self-appointed guardians of European multiculturalism deem to be “intolerant”—represents an unparalleled threat to free speech in a Europe where citizens are already regularly punished for expressing the “wrong” opinions,...

Secretary of State John Kerry’s remark that some National Security Agency surveillance “reached too far” was the first time a high-ranking Obama administration official acknowledged that U.S. snooping abroad might be seen as overzealous. After launching into a vigorous defense of surveillance as an effective counterterror tool, Kerry acknowledged to a video conference on open government in London that “in some cases, I acknowledge to you, as has the president, that some of these actions have reached too far, and we are going to make sure that does not happen in the future.” …

The White House and State Department signed off on surveillance targeting phone conversations of friendly foreign leaders, current and former U.S. intelligence officials said Monday, pushing back against assertions that President Obama and his aides were unaware of the high-level eavesdropping. Professional staff members at the National Security Agency and other U.S. intelligence agencies are angry, these officials say, believing the president has cast them adrift as he tries to distance himself from the disclosures by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden that have strained ties with close allies. The resistance emerged as the White House said it would curtail foreign...

The European Commission wants to fingerprint anyone who enters the EU under its “smart borders” proposal, but critics say it is too costly, disproportionate, and risks violating numerous privacy rights. The commission says the system is necessary to update border control checks, reduce waiting times, and help border guards better implement EU border rules by pooling the personal details of any non-EU citizen over the age of 12 into a database. All ten fingerprints would be scanned to ensure that anyone who tosses their ID can still be identified if necessary. The package includes the Entry/Exit system (EES) and the...

...[W]e ran a story in March 2012 which exposed the NSA's unprecedented domestic espionage project, codenamed Stellar Wind, and specifically the $1.4+ billion data center spy facility located in Bluffdale, Utah, which spans more than one million square feet, uses 65 megawatts of energy (enough to power a city of more than 20,000), and can store exabytes or even zettabytes of data (a zettabyte is 100 million times larger than all the printed material in the Library of Congress), consisting of every single electronic communication in the world, whether captured with a warrant or not. Yet despite all signs to...

A federal court should not permit five leading Internet companies to reveal how often they are ordered to turn over information about their customers in national security investigations, the government argued in papers released Wednesday. In a filing with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the government said that allowing the companies to release such detailed information “would be invaluable to our adversaries,” providing a clear picture of where the government’s surveillance efforts are directed and how its surveillance activities change over time, the court papers stated. Companies seeking to release the information about the orders received are Google Inc., Microsoft...

MIT Technology Review: Bruce Schneier – NSA Spying is Making Us Less Safe Prominent cryptographer and security expert Bruce Schneier, who has been working with The Guardian on the disclosures of NSA surveillance whistleblower Edward Snowden, gave an interview detailing what the disclosures have truly revealed, how the actions have made Americans less safe, that more huge revelations "might" be coming, and that the average person interested in privacy should advocate for political change. Also, the New York Times' editorial board has reacted to recent disclosures showing that the NSA weakened software encryption standards and apparently can decrypt anything. The...

1. Transparency uber alles. One of the main reasons that Barack Obama's approval ratings are in the crapper is because of his epic failure to live up to his promise to run what he guaranteed would be the most transparent administration EVAH. That's especially true when it comes to national security issues. Even the most hardened anti-terror hawks have been shocked by revelations of widespread secret drone strikes, extra-judicial kill lists, a war on leakers and journalists, and ubiquitous snooping on Americans.... 2. Legal authority is not optional. Whether we're discussing the use of drones, metadata dragnets, or anything else...

The government on Tuesday authorized establishment of a committee that will examine ways to eliminate cash from the Israeli economy—the better to prevent citizens from cheating on their taxes. The committee will be chaired by Harel Locker, director of the Prime Minister’s Office. Cash is easily passed from individual to individual, and transactions using cash can take place without the tax man’s supervision. Not so electronic transactions; with modern computers, banks can keep tabs on how much people deposit into their accounts and how much they withdraw, while credit card companies have an up-to-the-second record of how much people spend....

Facebook Inc is considering incorporating most of its 1 billion-plus members’ profile photos into its growing facial recognition database, expanding the scope of the social network’s controversial technology. The possible move, which Facebook revealed in an update to its data use policy on Thursday, is intended to improve the performance of its “Tag Suggest” feature. The feature uses facial recognition technology to speed up the process of labeling or “tagging” friends and acquaintances who appear in photos posted on the network. … The changes would come at a time when Facebook and other Internet companies’ privacy practices are under scrutiny,...

WASHINGTON—The National Security Agency—which possesses only limited legal authority to spy on U.S. citizens—has built a surveillance network that covers more Americans' Internet communications than officials have publicly disclosed, current and former officials say. The system has the capacity to reach roughly 75% of all U.S. Internet traffic in the hunt for foreign intelligence, including a wide array of communications by foreigners and Americans. In some cases, it retains the written content of emails sent between citizens within the U.S. and also filters domestic phone calls made with Internet technology, these people say. Details of these surveillance programs were gathered...

On Aug. 9, the Obama administration released a previously secret legal interpretation of the Patriot Act that it used to justify the bulk collection of every American's phone records. The strained reasoning in the 22-page memo won't survive long in public light, which is itself one of the strongest arguments for transparency in government. As the late Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis wrote, "Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants." Recent revelations by the Washington Post emphasize the need for greater transparency. The National Security Agency failed to report privacy violations that are serious infringements of constitutional rights....

A pair of civil-liberties Democrats whom the White House tried to appease in a closed-door meeting warned today that fresh reports of thousands of privacy violations by the National Security Agency are just the “tip of a larger iceberg.” On Thursday, the Washington Post published its report of a May 2012 audit leaked by former contractor Edward Snowden that found 2,776 violations over the previous year of executive orders and Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act provisions governing spying on Americans or foreign targets in the U.S. These included both computer and operator errors. Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Mark Udall (D-Colo.)...