Posted on 07/07/2013 1:45:22 PM PDT by jazusamo
Leaks by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden have provided new insight into how the government monitors domestic and foreign communications for threats to national security.
Although the government has disclosed some additional details about the programs in response to the leaks, important questions remain about the nature and scope of the surveillance programs.
Without that additional information, it is impossible to know the extent to which the government is peering into the lives of Americans in the name of national security, according to privacy advocates.
1. What other data is being collected under the Patriot Act?
The first leak from Snowden was a secret court order demanding that Verizon turn over vast batches of “metadata” on its U.S. customers. The data included the time and duration of calls, as well as the phone numbers involved, but not the contents of the conversations. The data collection was authorized under Section 215 of the Patriot Act.
The Director of National Intelligence (DNI) clarified that while the government does obtain data on millions of U.S. phone calls (and from more companies than just Verizon), it only “queries” the database a limited number of times for specific national security reasons.
Michelle Richardson, a legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), questioned whether the NSA is using Section 215 to collect more than just phone records.
“Is it also financial data or Internet records or other things?” she asked. “Knowing now that the court has been so broad in its interpretation, it’s even more important to figure out what else they’re getting.”
Greg Nojeim, a senior counsel for the Center for Democracy and Technology, said the NSA is likely using the Patriot Act to collect the credit card records and IP addresses of millions of people within and outside of the United States.
2. How broad are the programs?
How many people have been spied on through the NSA programs remains unclear. According to the NSA, it queried its massive database of phone records fewer than 300 times in 2012. But the agency did not disclose figures on other years or how many phone numbers were accessed in those queries.
Richardson explained that a single query could be an algorithm that scans the database and returns information on many people.
The other major program revealed by Snowden is the NSA’s Internet surveillance program, called PRISM. Unlike the phone record collection program under the Patriot Act, the NSA uses PRISM to access the contents of communications, such as emails, video chats, photographs and other information.
According to the DNI, the NSA only accesses those online records if there is a “foreign intelligence purpose” and the target is “reasonably believed” to be outside of the U.S. The program is authorized by Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and the searches require approval by a secret FISA court.
The NSA has not disclosed how many people it has targeted under Section 702 or how many people were spied on incidentally as part of the program.
“We have no idea how many U.S. persons have had their communications swept up,” said Sharon Bradford Franklin, senior counsel for the Constitution Project.
3. What’s the legal rationale?
The NSA has insisted the surveillance programs comply with the law and are overseen by independent FISA courts. But the opinions of those courts are secret, so little is known about how the courts are enforcing privacy protections or why they signed off on certain surveillance methods.
Section 215 of the Patriot Act allows the government to collect business records if they are “relevant” to a terrorism investigation. The FISA courts have determined that that provision allows the NSA to collect records on virtually all phone calls within and outside of the U.S. Why the court determined that so much data is “relevant” to a terrorism investigation remains unclear.
“Generally we don’t know the legal rationale being offered by the administration and being accepted by the FISA court to justify these particular types of surveillance programs,” Bradford Franklin said. “We should not have secret law in a democracy.”
4. Is the NSA still collecting email records?
One of the latest leaks revealed that beginning in 2001, the NSA collected vast amounts of email records. The NSA was able to identify the email accounts that sent and received messages, as well as IP addresses. The data collection did not include the contents of the emails.
The Obama administration confirmed the existence of the program, but said it ended in 2011 for “operational and resource reasons.”
One major question, according to privacy advocates, is whether the government is still able to obtain similar email records through a separate program.
5. Are there other programs that we don’t know about?
Although the NSA has provided some details about the programs leaked by Snowden, it is unclear what other programs exist and how they work together as part of a broad surveillance strategy.
“There’s this giant surveillance superstructure out there that we’re finally getting glimpses of, but there’s still a lot of questions of how does the whole thing work,” Richardson said.
FISA - Unconstitutional court.
Are we now going to have coyote courts for coyotes?
Coyotes: your honor, we need to raid this henhouse tonight.
Coyote court: I’ll grant that. Classify top secret so the chickens don’t find out until it’s too late.
What other secret courts exist? How do we know they don’t exist?
Great point and we don't know.
“We should not have secret law in a democracy.”
Sounds like double secret probation.
With thousands of pages of laws, rules, codes... Many are secret or very near secret.
I mean we have a freaking unconstitutional shadow government under the COG plans when our leaders are tucked away under Mount Weather, how many other secret courts, secret governments, secret unconstitutional things are going on now?
How about 15,000 Russian soldiers on US soil to “help in emergencies” bs? Those weren’t medics and doctors.
Here is something to keep in mind.
They have decided that collecting all data is just fine..as long as you don’t look at it until you get authorization.
There is something else they have almost certainly decided is acceptable. That it’s alright to compromise hardware as long as you don’t exploit the weaknesses unless authorized.
Pretty sobering thought isn’t it!?
NSA runs a state of the art chip fab. They’re not churning out 555 timer chips in there.
For you IT guys out there, imagine you had a chip fab and the means to place your doctored silicon onto hardware.. Just what would you chip to get the best bang for the buck?
I can think of several items that are ripe for chipping.... I bet I have it about right... I bet the hardware is compromised.
It is absolutely sobering, big brother has all our info recorded and can access it through a secret court whenever they feel like doing so.
2. How broad are the programs? Well, if anyone and everyone's information is scooped up and never discarded or rarely, you tell me.
3. What’s the legal rationale? Well, the STAR Chamber or FISA is the only one who could shed light on this but, that doesn't seem likely. It would run counter to Patriot Acts 1 & II. What is beyond the pale is to have a super secret court that can shut you down from communication anything about a Patriot Act action, including to your attorney. It's even more galling to know FISA is merely a rubber stamp bureaucracy but, is not responsible for seeing through the process of an investigation up to and including prosecution.
Further, I object to their use of "reasonable cause" when the 4th amendment calls for "probable cause"
4. Is the NSA still collecting email records?
Is that a trick question? Like Carnivore before PRISM, when one program "supposedly" ends another is started. Likely because the ability to collect information at ever great speed and volume becomes more capable. So yeah, they are still collecting.
5. Are there other programs that we don’t know about?
Sure. Of the many programs out there we have learned about over the years there would be others we don't know about and will continue until we figure out how to end this encroachment on freedeoms that asks only "If you don't have anything to hide, then what's the big deal?".
6. What does this cost?
Yep, that new NSA complex in Utah is tagged at $1.2 billion and that’s just a drop in the bucket. I will run into many many billions.
Bump.
Booz Allen the company that Ed Snowden worked for made nearly $6 billion in government contracts. Also kind of funny that no one notices that James Clapper was once an executive with Booz Allen.
We need to start by keeping the terrorists out. But given that some are already here, the best way to stop them is targeted investigations. The only possible argument for a priori collection is to look them up once they are targeted. But that minor amount of value (compared to intensive collection with ordinary court ordered warrants) does not justify the potential for abuse.
The idea that they can fish through this stuff to find terrorists is ludicrous and gets more ludicrous the more data they add. The basic problem is that trillions of records from ordinary Americans requires a trillions time trillions search algorithm to find anything.
Here’s a post to me on a thread I posted regarding Clapper from someone who was in a position to know and I believe every word:
To: jazusamo
As a former (several rungs down the chain) legal advisor of then-General Clapper, I can say he rarely listened to his lawyers then, either. He’s gotta be really scared for his political future at this point - that’s the only thing that seems to motivate him.
13 posted on Tuesday, July 02, 2013 2:08:25 PM by jagusafr
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3038341/posts?page=13#13
Yup. Secure the border and drop the pro muslim immigration policies. I’ll take care of my own security beyond that.
A 6-minute YouTube video by yours truly and Mark P. Ferri, about the loss of freedom in America.
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