Tag Archives: Dianne Feinstein

Bipartisan Senators to Introduce Bill Forcing Companies to Override Encryption

Mar 15, 2016 Rachel Blevins Leave a comment

A bipartisan team of United States senators is reportedly close to introducing a controversial bill that would let law enforcement force companies to comply with court orders seeking access to encrypted data.

Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Richard Burr (R-N.C.), both members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, began working on the bill after mass shootings occurred in Paris in November, and in San Bernardino, California, in December.

Following the shootings, Feinstein said she was “going to seek legislation if nobody else is,” and she claimed that it was in sync with the changing world.

“I think this world is really changing in terms of people wanting the protection and wanting law enforcement, if there is conspiracy going on over the Internet, that that encryption ought to be able to be pierced,” Feinstein said.

One of Feinstein’s aides reportedly said that while the bill will require companies to decrypt previously encrypted data and turn it over to law enforcement, it does not list a specific penalty for noncompliance, which would leave the punishment up to the courts.

While the bill could be introduced this week, Feinstein told The Hill she passed the text along to the White House, leaving the timing of the introduction up to President Obama, and Burr said it “depends on how fast the White House gets back to us.”

The bill has received criticism from Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who told the Huffington Post that he believes it will give tech companies few options, and as a result, “the American people will be less safe and less secure in their homes and neighborhoods.”

“I will do anything necessary to block a bill that weakens strong encryption,” Wyden said. “I will use every procedural tool in the Senate to block a bill that weakens strong encryption because I believe that weakening strong encryption will leave millions of Americans less safe and less secure.”

The introduction of Feinstein and Burr’s bill comes at a time when Apple Inc. is pushing back against the Department of Justice on 12 different court orders that would require the company to go from extracting contacts photos and call records from an iPhone, to designing new software that would let the government override the iPhone’s encryption altogether.

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Featured, Foreign Policy, Politics

Clinton, Bipartisan Senators Push for New War Powers Against ISIS

Nov 20, 2015 Rachel Blevins Leave a comment

In the wake of recent terrorist attacks in Paris, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton joined a bipartisan group of Senators in calling for an updated authorization of military force against Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria.

A possible vote on military authorization would be the first war vote in 13 years, as up until now, President Obama has used the congressional authorizations given to former President George W. Bush during the invasion of Iraq after 9/11.

During a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, on Thursday, Clinton called for a new phase in the war against ISIS, and said she thinks the U.S. should lead the fight.

“It’s time to begin a new phase and intensify and broaden our efforts to smash the would-be caliphate,” Clinton said. “This is a worldwide fight, and America must lead it.”

While Clinton called for the U.S. to increase its efforts to defeat ISIS, she said she does not believe ground troops will be necessary.

“That is just not the smart move to make here,” Clinton said. “If we have learned anything from 15 years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, it’s that local people and nations have to secure their own communities. We can help them, and we should, but we cannot substitute for them.”

Instead, Clinton said she thinks the U.S. should send more elite commanders to work with rebel forces. “We may have to give our own troops advising and training the Iraqis greater freedom of movement and flexibility, including embedding in local units and helping target airstrikes,” she said.

Clinton also called for a no-fly zone over Syria. “We should also work with the coalition and the neighbors to impose no-fly zones that will stop Assad from slaughtering civilians and the opposition from the air. Opposition forces on the ground, with material support from the coalition, could then help create safe areas where Syrians could remain in the country, rather than fleeing toward Europe,” Clinton said.

Indicating support for arming Sunni and Kurdish fighters, Clinton said that “Baghdad needs to accept, even embrace, arming Sunni and Kurdish forces in the war against ISIS. But if Baghdad won’t do that, the coalition should do so directly.”

“One thing that I believe we haven’t done yet is make it clear to Baghdad that we are going to be arming Sunni tribes and Kurds if they don’t, because at some point, they have to be in the fight,” she later remarked.

Clinton’s comments come after the Obama administration announced that it was ending the $500 million program training and equipping moderate Syrian rebels in October, after it was ultimately deemed a failure.

On Wednesday, GOP presidential candidate Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) promised to introduce a new Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF). He said he believes the U.S. has two choices when it comes to the Islamic State: “fight them in their backyard or fight them in ours.”

“We must allow this President and every future President to do whatever is necessary to destroy ISIL before they hit us here at home,” Graham said. “This authorization will mirror the approach we took against al-Qaeda after 9/11.”

Graham’s measure against ISIS, which he promises to introduce after the Thanksgiving recess, could be as broad as the 2001 AUMF granted to Bush, which justifies U.S. military force anytime, anywhere, against anyone believed to be connected to Al-Qaeda.

On Saturday, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, spoke out against the current U.S. strategy, and said she believes “we need to further increase our efforts in Syria and Iraq directly and expand our support to partner nations in other countries” where the Islamic State is operating.

“It has become clear that limited air strikes and support for Iraqi forces and the Syrian opposition are not sufficient to protect our country and our allies,” Feinstein said. “This is a war that affects us all, and it’s time we take real action to confront these monsters who target innocent civilians.”

Investigative journalist Ben Swann reported on the origin of ISIS in March, and he noted that while the perception has been created that the group is the “creation of American inaction,” the reality is that they are the “product of direct action.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6kdi1UXxhY

Activism, Privacy, Technology

Activists To Bombard Congress With Faxes To Fight Cybersecurity Bill

Jul 28, 2015 Annabelle Bamforth 6 Comments

“CISPA is back,” warns the website of Fight For The Future, an advocacy group that has challenged controversial bills like CISPA, SOPA, and PIPA in the past. Senate Bill 754, known as CISA, is one of the latest cybersecurity bills and is reportedly headed to the Senate floor as early as next month.

Fight for the Future and other privacy advocates, frustrated with bills such as CISPA and CISA continuing to appear in legislation despite widespread public opposition and numerous deferments, are implementing a mostly obsolete method of data transmission to send a clear message to Congress.

Groups including Fight For The Future and Access have teamed up to initiate a large-scale campaign to send thousands of faxes to every member of the U.S. Senate. Eight phone lines have been programmed to convert emails and tweets with the hashtag FaxBigBrother into separate faxes to be sent to Congress.

“Groups like Fight for the Future have sent [Congress] millions of emails, and they still don’t seem to get it,” Fight for the Future’s Evan Greer told The Guardian.

[quote_center]“Maybe they don’t get it because they’re stuck in 1984, and we figured we’d use some 80’s technology to try to get our point across.”[/quote_center]

Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), a co-author of CISA and vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has called this bill “a critical step to confront one of the most dire national and economic threats we face: cyber attacks.” Feinstein claimed that CISA would protect against cyberattacks using “purely voluntary information sharing” between the private sector and the government regarding cybersecurity threats.

Senators Ron Wyden (D-Or.) and Mark Udall (D-Co.) have voiced their opposition to CISA, pointing out that in the past “the federal government has exploited loopholes to collect Americans’ private information in the name of security.” Wyden and Udall worried that CISA “lacks adequate protections for the privacy rights of law-abiding Americans, and that it will not materially improve cybersecurity.”

According to Fight For The Future, CISA is a “dirty deal between government and corporate giants.” The website FaxBigBrother describes CISA as “a massive bribe” from the federal government: “They will give corporations immunity for breaking virtually any law if they do so while providing the NSA, DHS, DEA, and local police surveillance access to everyone’s data in exchange for getting away with crimes, like fraud, money laundering, or illegal wiretapping.”

Politics, Technology, US

CIA Inspector General Who Revealed Hacking of Senate Computers, Resigns

Jan 6, 2015 Rachel Blevins 3 Comments

On Monday, the Central Intelligence Agency announced that Inspector General David Buckley, who revealed that the agency had hacked into computers used by the Senate Intelligence Committee to investigate the CIA’s post-9/11 torture program, will resign on January 31, to “pursue an opportunity in the private sector.

According to Reuters, officials at both the CIA and on Capitol Hill claimed Buckley’s departure was “unrelated to politics or anything he had investigated.”

However, Christopher Anders, the senior legislative counsel of the American Civil Liberties Union in Washington D.C., called the timing of Buckley’s resignation unfortunate.

“The CIA inspector general is one of the few people who has tried to impose some accountability on the CIA at a time when the White House and many in Congress are failing to do their oversight jobs,” Anders said.

The executive director of the Project on Government Oversight, Danielle Brian, agreed about the ill-timed departure, and said during his time as inspector general, Buckley “raised some serious concerns about the conduct of the CIA in trying to thwart the Senate Intelligence Committee.”

“The lack of repercussions is very troubling and his departure so soon afterwards is troublesome,” Brian said.

Reuters reported that Buckley’s “most public action as CIA inspector general” occurred last July when he issued a report on the dispute between CIA director John Brennan and Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Sen. Dianne Feinstein. Brennan had complained that Feinstein “acted in a manner inconsistent” with the understanding between the CIA and the committee, in order to access a “special computer network set up to share documents about the agency’s involvement in harsh treatment of detained militants.”

According to the National Journal, the release of Buckley’s report “represented a stunning rebuke of the CIA and Director Brennan, who had emphatically denied allegations” from Senator Feinstein that the agency had “accessed her panel’s computers in order to remove certain documents.”

Feinstein commended Buckley for serving with “distinction and integrity” during his four years as inspector general for the CIA. “It is critically important to have a strong, independent inspector general at the CIA due to the nature of the work done there,” said Feinstein. “Mr. Buckley filled the role admirably.”

Brennan released a statement, saying that Buckley’s resignation was planned, and that he was leaving the agency on good terms.

“David has served the CIA and the American public as our inspector general for more than four years,” said Brennan. “Throughout his tenure, he has demonstrated independence, integrity, and sound judgment in promoting efficiency, effectiveness, and accountability at CIA.”

International, Technology, US

Obama says Sony made a ‘mistake’ after canceling film release

Dec 19, 2014 Zach McAuliffe 4 Comments

President Obama, in his final press release for 2014, has said the cancellation of the film “The Interview” by Sony Pictures was a “mistake,” and the company should have talked to him before moving forward with their plans.

The president said he was sympathetic towards Sony, and all the employees who were threatened after the recent cyber attacks against the company, and understands their desire for safety. However, he then went on to say, according to ABC News, “I think they made a mistake,” with concern to the companies decision to cancel the release of the comedy movie.

Afterwards, the president stated, according to RT, “I wish they would’ve spoken with me first. I would have told them: do not get into a pattern in which you’re intimidated by these kinds of criminal attacks.”

The Sony hacks and cancellation of the film though, were also said to be an example of how the U.S. needs to pass a cybersecurity bill by Congress.

“In this interconnected digital world, there are going to be opportunities for hackers to engage in cyber-assaults both in the private sector and in the public sector… We need more rules about how the internet should operate,” the president said according to Boing Boing.

Representative Mike Rogers (R-Michigan) and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-California) echoed the president’s for more regulation over the internet.

“This is only the latest example of the need for serious legislation to improve the sharing of information between the private sector and the government to help companies strengthen cybersecurity,” said Sen. Feinstein. “We must pass an information sharing bill as quickly as possible next .”

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