Tag Archives: NSA

Edward Snowden, Featured, Technology

U.S. Government Sues Snowden Over Memoir Release

Leave a comment

Note: links in this post include affiliate links.

The U.S. government took swift legal action against famed NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden after the release of his memoir, “Permanent Record.”

The government’s complaint, filed September 17th, alleges that Snowden, a former CIA employee and former contractor for the NSA, violated non-disclosure agreements with the NSA and CIA by publishing his book without first submitting it for prepublication review “in violation of his express obligations under the agreements he signed.” The government also claims that Snowden has violated NDAs by giving speeches without first providing materials for prepublication review. The book’s publishers are also named in the lawsuit.

The lawsuit does not seek a halt in publication, but it argues that all profits from “Permanent Record” belong to the government.

“Intelligence information should protect our nation, not provide personal profit,” G. Zachary Terwilliger, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, said in a statement. “This lawsuit will ensure that Edward Snowden receives no monetary benefits from breaching the trust placed in him.”

The ACLU responded to the suit criticizing the prepublication review, claiming that it’s “a process that prohibits millions of former intelligence-agency employees and military personnel from writing or speaking about topics related to their government service without first obtaining government approval.”

“This book contains no government secrets that have not been previously published by respected news organizations. Had Mr. Snowden believed that the government would review his book in good faith, he would have submitted it for review. But the government continues to insist that facts that are known and discussed throughout the world are still somehow classified,” said Ben Wizner, an attorney for Snowden.

Snowden himself responded via Twitter that “It is hard to think of a greater stamp of authenticity than the US government filing a lawsuit claiming your book is so truthful that it was literally against the law to write.”

Snowden also wrote that “the very book the government does not want you to read just became the #1 best-selling book in the world.”

“Permanent Record” is available to purchase by clicking here.

Civil Liberties, Featured, Government Accountability, Privacy

Former NSA Director Says ‘Golden Age Of Electronic Surveillance’ Is Coming To An End, NSA Numbers Show He’s Wrong

Leave a comment

(DCNF) Former National Security Agency and Central Intelligence Agency director Michael Hayden said in a podcast on Monday that the “golden age of electronic surveillance” is coming to an end, despite reports that indicate the opposite is true.

“Now we might be actually seeing another shift,” Hayden said on the podcast “Recode Decode,” citing the Christopher Steele dossier, adding that the new era will include “all human-sourced” information.

The NSA tripled its collection of American phone calls in 2017, going from 383 million records in 2016 to 534 million records in 2017, according to a U.S. intelligence agency report published on May 4. (RELATED: NSA Tripled The Amount Of Surveillance It Conducted In 2017)

Hayden, who was appointed Director of the NSA by both former presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, made clear he was talking about “legitimate targets, and legitimate targeting,” implicitly trying to distant himself from the NSA’s collection of U.S. citizens’ data. “But it was the golden age of that,” he added.

But U.S. agencies also spied on more non-U.S. citizens living abroad in 2017 than in 2016, according to the same report. U.S. authorities spied on more than 129,000 non-U.S. citizens living abroad in 2017, which was 22,000 more than the previous year. The surveillance of foreigners increased about 45 percent in the past five years.

The U.S. government is not the only entity that conducts electronic surveillance — tech giants have come under fire recently for their role in collecting users’ data. Companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter and Amazon have all been scrutinized for either collecting phone calls, messages or even listening to conversations.

A Portland, Ore., family discovered their Amazon Echo listened, recorded and sent a private conversation to a person on their contacts list. Amazon said in a statement to The Daily Caller News Foundation on May 25 that the device allegedly “woke up due to a word in background conversation sounding like (the wake-up word) ‘Alexa.’ Then, the subsequent conversation was heard as a ‘send message’ request. At which point, Alexa said out loud ‘To whom?’ At which point, the background conversation was interpreted as a name in the customer’s contact list.”

Civil Liberties, Edward Snowden, Featured, Politics, Privacy, States Rights, US

Five Years After Snowden, Michigan Set to Be First State to Impede NSA’s Warrantless Surveillance

Leave a comment

On the heels of the fifth anniversary of whistleblower Edward Snowden’s disclosure of classified National Security Agency (NSA) documents to journalists, one state legislature has recently taken steps to hold the government agency accountable for its warrantless surveillance programs by making it illegal for state and local governments, including law enforcement and public utilities, to support the NSA’s warrantless spying on American citizens.

According to Michigan’s Fourth Amendment Rights Protection Act, also known as Public Act 71 of 2018, state and local governments can only assist or provide support to the federal government’s collection of data if there is a search warrant or the informed consent of the targeted party. The bill is set to take effect in just a few weeks on June 17th.

While the NSA has no publicly disclosed facility in the state, the bill’s proponents have asserted that it sends a clear message to the federal government regarding the lack of popularity for its warrantless wiretapping of millions of Americans in violation of the legal protections granted to them by the Constitution.

“It hangs up a sign on Michigan’s door saying, ‘No violation of the Fourth Amendment, look elsewhere’,” said Republican state Rep. Martin Howrylak, the bill’s author, according to the Washington Examiner. “Democrats as well as Republicans would certainly stand very strong in our position on what this law means.”

“This new law guarantees no state resources will be used to help the federal government execute mass warrantless surveillance programs that violate the Fourth Amendment protections enshrined in the U.S. Constitution,” Howrylak said soon after the bill was first passed earlier this year in March.

“Michigan will not assist the federal government with any data collection unless it is consistent with the constitution,” he added.

The Michigan law seeking to condemn the NSA’s most controversial program is not the first of its kind. However, it is the first to have been passed successfully without having been  subsequently watered down. For instance, in 2014, state lawmakers in Maryland sought to shut off power and water to NSA headquarters but many of its sponsors dropped their support of the bill after a powerful political backlash. A similar bill was floated in Utah’s state legislature at the same time, but went nowhere after it was rejected by the state’s governor.

“It hangs up a sign on Michigan’s door saying, ‘No violation of the Fourth Amendment, look elsewhere.'”

The only state to have passed a bill similar to Michigan’s is California, which passed the Fourth Amendment Protection Act in 2014. However, that piece of legislation protects the Fourth Amendment in name only as it bans local assistance “in response to a request from a federal agency” and “if the state has actual knowledge that the request constitutes an illegal or unconstitutional collection.”

Despite the efforts being made by state legislatures to restore the Fourth Amendment, such efforts have been largely absent at the national level in recent years. Earlier this year, in January, Congress voted to extend the government’s warrantless surveillance of American citizens for another six years. However, Congress’ reauthorization of the program was more than a mere extension of the program as it actually helped expand the NSA’s authority by codifying some of the more controversial aspects of the program, suggesting that interest in protecting and restoring the Constitution is largely found at the state and local levels of government.

Cryptocurrency, Edward Snowden, Featured, Government Accountability, Politics, Privacy, Technology

Snowden Documents: NSA Worked to Track Bitcoin Users

Leave a comment

A new report from The Intercept reveals that the National Security Agency has been able to track users of the popular cryptocurrency Bitcoin since at least 2013. The revelation is detailed in newly released classified documented obtained by whistleblower Edward Snowden and provided to the The Intercept. The documents show the agency accessing the fiber-optic cables which allow internet traffic to travel around the world in order to gain access to private information of bitcoin users.

The Intercept reported:

“Classified documents provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden show that the National Security Agency indeed worked urgently to target Bitcoin users around the world — and wielded at least one mysterious source of information to “help track down senders and receivers of Bitcoins,” according to a top-secret passage in an internal NSA report dating to March 2013. The data source appears to have leveraged the NSA’s ability to harvest and analyze raw, global internet traffic while also exploiting an unnamed software program that purported to offer anonymity to users, according to other documents.”

An internal NSA report from March 15, 2013 stated that the agency was interested in monitoring traffic for other cryptos; however, “Bitcoin is #1 priority”. Another memo from March 29, 2013 indicated that the NSA collected users’ passwords, internet history, and a unique device identification number known as a MAC address. The memo suggests analysts were also tracking internet users’ internet addresses, network ports, and timestamps. The documents also indicate the use of the NSA’s powerful internal search engine, XKeyScore.

“As of 2013, the NSA’s Bitcoin tracking was achieved through program code-named OAKSTAR, a collection of covert corporate partnerships enabling the agency to monitor communications, including by harvesting internet data as it traveled along fiber optic cables that undergird the internet,” The Intercept wrote. The NSA used a sub-program of OAKSTAR – known as MONKEYROCKET – to gather data from the Middle East, Europe, South America, and Asia.

MONKEYROCKET is also apparently falsely promoted to the public as a tool for anonymity. The documents describe MONKEYROCKET as a “non-Western Internet anonymization service” with a “significant user base” in Iran and China. One document notes that the goal of MONKEYROCKET was to “attract targets engaged in terrorism, [including] Al Qaida” to use the “browsing product,” which “the NSA can then exploit.”  This is known as a honey pot in computer security. The NSA deceives users into believing they are secure and anonymous and then uses the program to track the activities of users. The documents do not clarify what type of program or software MONKEYROCKET actually is, but the description aligns with a virtual private network, or VPN, which is designed to encrypt and mask internet traffic.

Matthew Green, assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins University Information Security Institute, told The Intercept that the revelations are “bad news for privacy.” Green also said he is “pretty skeptical” that using Tor, the popular browser which promises anonymity, could escape the eyes and ears of the NSA. Green’s comments are bolstered by recently released documents which indicate that the TOR project is nearly entirely funded by agencies with connections to the U.S. government.

Another disturbing aspect of the latest Snowden revelation is the possibility that this program may have been used to illegally gather information in the Silk Road trial. In that trial, Ross Ulbricht was sentenced to three life sentences after the court was convinced he was the accused mastermind who created the Silk Road website which allowed drugs to be purchased using Bitcoin. Ulbricht’s attorneys attempted to have the charges thrown out throughout his trial because they believed the U.S. government had illegally obtained access to Ulbricht’s computers and property. The judge overruled such objections, and the entire premise was dismissed as a conspiracy. The Intercept noted that “although the documents leaked by Snowden do not address whether the NSA aided the FBI’s Silk Road investigation, they show the agency working to unmask Bitcoin users about six months before Ulbricht was arrested.”

These new documents show that the NSA had access to Bitcoin users around the world around the same time that Ulbricht’s case was heating up, pointing to plausibility that the NSA used this program (or another still secret tool) go gain access to the private documents of Ross Ulbricht. The question remains as to how many other Bitcoin and cryptocurrency users’ information was accessed by the NSA or other agencies of the U.S. government. Until there is a transparent investigation with subpoena power that looks into the hidden activities of the NSA and other intelligence agencies, the American public remains in the dark regarding the depth and nature of the American surveillance state.

Featured, Government Accountability, Privacy, Technology

Apple: Founding Fathers ‘Would Be Appalled,’ Accuses DoJ of Trying to ‘Rewrite History’

Leave a comment

In preparation for next week’s hearing, Apple Inc. submitted a court filing Tuesday criticizing the United States Department of Justice, claiming that the U.S. founding fathers “would be appalled” at the department’s order.

The company first brought attention to the conflict in February, when a U.S. magistrate judge ordered Apple to create the software to decrypt the iPhone 5c used by San Bernardino shooting suspect Syed Farook.

Apple CEO Tim Cook argued that creating software to override the iPhone’s encryption “has implications far beyond the legal case at hand,” and could set a precedent for future cases.

[RELATED: Apple Rejects Government Order to Create ‘Backdoor’ for iPhone]  

In the court filing released Tuesday, Apple’s lawyers argued that the DoJ and the FBI are “seeking an order from this Court that would force Apple to create exactly the kind of operating system that Congress has thus far refused to require,” and that in doing so, “they are asking this Court to resolve a policy and political issue that is dividing various agencies of the Executive Branch as well as Congress. “

The DoJ has used the All Writs Act of 1789 as justification for its order. The act states that “The Supreme Court and all courts established by Act of Congress may issue all writs necessary or appropriate in aid of their respective jurisdictions and agreeable to the usages and principles of law” and that “an alternative writ or rule nisi may be issued by a justice or judge of a court which has jurisdiction.”

[RELATED: NY Judge: DoJ Cannot Force Apple To Extract Data from Locked iPhone in Drug Case]

Apple is currently facing 12 orders from the DoJ to provide data from iPhones in various cases. On Feb. 29, Brooklyn Magistrate Judge Orenstein became the first federal judge to rule that the All Writs Act does not justify “imposing on Apple the obligation to assist the government’s investigation against its will” in a criminal drug case.

Apple argued that the court should reject the DoJ’s order in the San Bernardino case because the All Writs Act “cannot be stretched to fit this case,” claiming that by using it, the government “attempts to rewrite history.”

[pull_quote_center]This Court should reject that request, because the All Writs Act does not authorize such relief, and the Constitution forbids it. The All Writs Act cannot be stretched to fit this case because to do so ‘would be to usurp the legislative function and to improperly extend the limited federal court jurisdiction.’ …The government attempts to rewrite history by portraying the Act as an all-powerful magic wand rather than the limited procedural tool it is.[/pull_quote_center]

“According to the government, short of kidnapping or breaking an express law, the courts can order private parties to do virtually anything the Justice Department and FBI can dream up,” Apple argued. “The Founders would be appalled.”

[RELATED: FBI Director Admits Apple’s ‘Backdoor’ Could Be Used for Other iPhones]

Apple also criticized comments made by FBI Director James Comey during a recent congressional hearing from March 1, and questioned why the DoJ has not gone to the NSA, if it is just wanting to hack into the one iPhone in question.

“The government does not deny that there may be other agencies in the government that could assist it in unlocking the phone and accessing its data; rather, it claims, without support, that it has no obligation to consult other agencies,” Apple wrote, noting that former National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection and Counter-terrorism, Richard Clarke said, “Every expert I know believes that NSA could crack this phone.”

The court hearing is scheduled for March 22, and in its court filing, Apple’s lawyers argued that the DoJ’s order is far from what the government has described as a “modest” rule only applying to a “single iPhone.”

“Instead, this case hinges on a contentious policy issue about how society should weigh what law enforcement officials want against the widespread repercussions and serious risk their demands would create,” Apple wrote.

Follow Rachel Blevins on Facebook and Twitter.

Election, Featured, Politics

Ex-CIA Chief: ‘American Armed Forces Would Refuse to Act’ If Trump Ordered Torture

Video Leave a comment

“I would be incredibly concerned if a President Trump governed in a way that was consistent with the language [on military tactics] that candidate Trump expressed during the campaign,” said former National Security Agency and Central Intelligence Agency director Michael Hayden.

In the above-embedded clip from Friday’s episode of Real Time with Bill Maher, Hayden specifically pointed to Trump’s advocacy of the use of enhanced interrogation techniques that he described as “worse than waterboarding” and the killing of terror suspect’s families as examples of policies that would violate international norms and drive American soldiers and intelligence agents to refuse orders.

“Look, we did tough stuff,” said Hayden. However, he said that extremes like killing terrorists’ non-combatant family members were not options that even crossed his mind as an intelligence chief.

[RELATED: Reality Check: Why Donald Trump’s South Carolina Win Was A Historic Defeat of NeoCons]

“If he were to order that once in government, the American armed forces would refuse to act,” he said.

Hayden concluded, “[U.S. military personnel] are not required — in fact you are required not to follow an unlawful order. That would be in violation of all the international laws of armed conflict.”

In an interview with CNN, Hayden said of Trump’s military tactics rhetoric and Ted Cruz’s advocacy of carpet bombing to deal with ISIS, “We have taken … very complicated, serious issues and we’ve pushed them down to the level of bumper stickers. That scares me and I’m sure it scares a lot of the rest of the world.”

[RELATED: What the Media Missed When Trump Brought Up ‘Very Secret’ Papers]

Ex-CIA attorney John Rizzo said that intelligence agents who participated in enhanced interrogation techniques have turned against using them after feeling the backlash of a shift in public opinion.

Rizzo told NBC News, “The political winds changed, they were vilified as ‘torturers’ and ‘war criminals,’ — just for doing their thankless and dangerous jobs to keep the country safe. And now, under a Trump administration, many of these same CIA career officers would be ordered to go down — perhaps double down — on that perilous path again? Who could blame for them for refusing to expose themselves and their families to a reprise someday of the ordeal they have had to endure? I hope and trust no CIA director — or its lawyer — would countenance such an order.”

For more 2016 election coverage, click here.

Follow Barry Donegan on Facebook and Twitter.

Edward Snowden, Featured, Government Accountability, International, Technology

NSA’s SKYNET Program May Be Killing Innocent People

Leave a comment

In 2015, The Intercept published documents from whistleblower Edward Snowden which detailed the National Security Agency’s SKYNET program. These documents detail how SKYNET engages in mass surveillance of Pakistan’s wireless network, and then uses an algorithm on the cell network metadata in an attempt to rate every member of the population regarding their likelihood of being a terrorist.

Patrick Ball, a data scientist and the director of research at the Human Rights Data Analysis Group, is now stating that he believes a flaw in how the NSA trains SKYNET’s algorithm could be leading to mistakes and improper surveillance. Ball has provided testimony for war crimes tribunals in the past, and he told Ars Technica that the NSA’s methods are “completely bullshit” and called the algorithm scientifically unsound.

Ars Technica reported:

“Somewhere between 2,500 and 4,000 people have been killed by drone strikes in Pakistan since 2004, and most of them were classified by the US government as ‘extremists,’ the Bureau of Investigative Journalism reported. Based on the classification date of ‘20070108’ on one of the SKYNET slide decks (which themselves appear to date from 2011 and 2012), the machine learning program may have been in development as early as 2007.”

Based on Ball’s assessment, it is likely that thousands of innocent people in Pakistan may have been labelled as terrorists and possibly murdered based on the “scientifically unsound” algorithm that SKYNET employs.

SKYNET operates by collecting and storing metadata on the NSA cloud servers before extracting “relevant information” and then using the algorithm to determine possible leads for targeted assassination. These assassinations may be carried out by the “Find-Fix-Finish” strategy implementing Predator drones or “on-the-ground death squads.“

SKYNET’s analysis of metadata likely provides the program with details about people who may travel and sleep together, visits to other countries, and contact information. The slides released by Snowden reveal that the NSA machine learning algorithm uses more than 80 different categories to rate people as possible terrorists.

One large problem is that SKYNET relies on the user to provide the machine with examples of “known terrorists” in order to teach the algorithm to look for similar qualities. Ars Technica noted that since most terrorists are unlikely to take a survey from the NSA, the agency relies on possibly faulty indicators of what a terrorist’s behavior will look like. SKYNET’s algorithm analyzes metadata and compares that against a “known terrorist” and then produces a threat score for each individual.

But what happens if the algorithm makes a mistake?

“If they are using the same records to train the model as they are using to test the model, their assessment of the fit is completely bullshit,” says Patrick Ball. “The usual practice is to hold some of the data out of the training process so that the test includes records the model has never seen before. Without this step, their classification fit assessment is ridiculously optimistic.”

The reality is that as long as the people of the United States allow agencies of the U.S. government to operate largely in secret, we will never know what type of programs and criteria are used to judge and analyze our behavior. How long will it be before SKYNET applies its algorithm to the American people?

Edward Snowden, Featured, International

Documents: CIA Flew ‘Rendition Flight’ in Attempt to Capture Edward Snowden

Leave a comment

The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency flew a “rendition flight” in an attempt to detain National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden, according to documents released by the Danish news outlet Denfri.dk.

While the documents, which were obtained by Denfri after the organization filed a Freedom of Information Act suit in August 2015, were heavily redacted, they confirmed that the Copenhagen airport was used to hold an American rendition plane in June 2013.

Denfri applied for access to the documents in August 2015, after a Gulfstream V with registration number N977GA was reportedly spotted flying over Scotland to Copenhagen.

The Register noted that the “secret U.S. government jet” was previously used by the CIA for “rendition flights on which terror suspects disappeared into invisible ‘black’ imprisonment.”

The CIA’s reported attempt to capture Snowden occurred in the same month that the former NSA contractor was granted political asylum in Moscow, Russia, after he revealed that the NSA was collecting bulk metadata from American citizens.

Although access to many of the documents were denied, CPH Post reported that the released documents “confirm that the Gulfstream aircraft used Danish airspace and landed at Kastrup,” and included “an overflying and landing permission for a USA state flight.”

RT reported that the documents also contained “a batch of heavily redacted emails indicating communications between senior officials in Denmark’s police, Foreign Ministry and Justice Ministry,” with messages from Anders Herping Nielsen, an official who is responsible for determining the extradition of individuals for trial in foreign countries.

The Post also claimed that in an email to Denfri, the Justice Ministry explained the heavily redacting documents by writing, “Denmark’s relationship with the USA would be damaged if the information becomes public knowledge.”

WikiLeaks posted a link to a report on the documents, noting that both Scotland and Denmark were used for a “U.S. failed Edward Snowden rendition flight mission”

Snowden chimed in on Twitter, writing, “Remember when the PM Rasmussen said Denmark shouldn’t respect asylum law in my case? Turns out he had a secret.”

 

Civil Liberties, Featured, Government Accountability, Privacy

Why is the House Judiciary Committee Meeting in Private to Discuss the FISA Act?

Leave a comment

On January 27, 26 civil liberties, human rights, and transparency organizations sent a letter to the House Judiciary Committee demanding that an upcoming “members only” meeting on surveillance be made public.

The hearing is scheduled for February 2, and is currently classified and for members only.  The committee will be discussing Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Amendments Act, the law that the NSA uses for its PRISM surveillance program and to tap into the so-called backbone of the Internet. Both programs were revealed to the public by whistleblower Edward Snowden.

Judiciary Committee member and “original author of the USA Patriot Act” Jim Sensenbrenner, (R-Wisc.) said in a statement to The Intercept that “Closed briefings are necessary for members of Congress to ask questions about classified information.”

“However, I would support a subsequent open hearing on Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act because transparency and public discussion are critical to the reform and reauthorization of Section 702,” Sensenbrenner also said in his statement.

The letter calls on House Judiciary Committee to open the hearing on Section 702 up to the public. The organizations write:

“We believe that robust congressional oversight of the implementation of this statute, which is used to acquire the communications of Americans and people around the world alike without a warrant, is critical. We were surprised when we recently learned that you may soon hold a hearing in a classified format, outside of public view.”

The groups say that holding a closed hearing “continues the excessive secrecy” that has become the norm during the Obama administration and “contributed to the surveillance abuses we have seen in recent years.”

The letter also notes that the Intelligence, Armed Services, and the Judiciary Committees have previously held public sessions on matters of national security. The Senate Judiciary Committee has itself held several public hearings on NSA surveillance programs following the release of documents by Snowden.

The organizations also note that the way in which Section 702 is applied “also affects journalists who interact with confidential sources to report on issues in the public interest, and criminal defendants whose prosecutions may involve the use of evidence derived from intelligence surveillance.”

The full list of the participating organizations appears below.

Access Now

American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC)

American Civil Liberties Union

American Library Association

Amnesty International USA

Brennan Center for Justice

Californians Aware

Center for Democracy &Technology

Constitutional Alliance

The Constitution Project

Cyber Privacy Project

Electronic Frontier Foundation

Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC)

Essential Information

Free Press Action Fund

Government Accountability Project

Human Rights Watch

National Coalition Against Censorship

National Security Archive

New America’s Open Technology Institute

Niskanen Center

OpenTheGovernment.org

Project On Government Oversight

Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press

Restore The Fourth

R Street Institute

Featured, Foreign Policy, Government Accountability, Politics

Report: NSA Spied on Israel’s Private Talks with U.S. Lawmakers about Iran Nuclear Deal

Leave a comment

The United States National Security Agency reportedly spied on Israeli lawmakers and ended up obtaining information from private conversations with U.S. lawmakers during negotiations about the Iran Nuclear Deal.

According to a report from the Wall Street Journal, President Obama monitored the activities of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu because it served a “compelling national security purpose,” which ultimately gave the White House insight into Israel’s campaign to combat a nuclear deal with Iran.

The White House reportedly let the NSA decide “what to share and what to withhold,” and as a result it learned that  Netanyahu and his advisors “leaked details of the U.S.-Iran negotiations—learned through Israeli spying operations- to undermine the talks; coordinated talking points with Jewish-American groups against the deal; and asked undecided lawmakers what it would take to win their votes.”

As previously reported, in March, both Netanyahu and former U.S. House Speaker John Boehner denied allegations that Israel spied on nuclear negotiations between the United States and Iran, and then gave the stolen classified information to Congressional Republicans to sway their vote.

Following the revelation from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden that the NSA was spying on and collecting metadata from innocent Americans in June 2013, Obama promised that the U.S. “will not eavesdrop on the heads of state or government of close U.S. friends and allies, unless there is a compelling national security purpose” in Jan. 2014.

While diplomats such as French President François Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel made Obama’s “protected list,” the WSJ’s report noted that Netanyahu and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan did not.

According to the report, a former Obama administration official claimed that the NSA was “so proficient at monitoring heads of state that it was common for the agency to deliver a visiting leader’s talking points to the president in advance.” 

After Boehner invited Netanyahu to address Congress in January 2015 without consulting the White House, the NSA reportedly realized that it was collecting data from Israeli lawmakers’ conversations with U.S. congress members. The report noted that while NSA rules require all names be changed to “U.S. person” in intelligence reports, senior U.S. officials can still request the names directly.

Activism, Featured, Privacy, Technology

Surveillance Bill Masked as ‘Cybersecurity’ Close to Completion

Leave a comment

The Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA) was officially approved by the Senate back in October. Since that time, the bill has languished in committee as lawmakers sought to align the Senate bill with the versions passed by the House of Representatives in April.

CISA is designed to allow private companies to easily share threat intelligence with government agencies. Sharing of intelligence is supposed to be voluntary. Critics of the bill say the provisions will only increase the indiscriminate monitoring of legal activity by giving companies immunity from lawsuits for sharing information with the government.

Before the Senate vote, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) introduced an amendment which would require companies to adhere to their own terms of service with customers. However, this amendment failed after only receiving 32 votes. Senator Paul’s presidential campaign website says that the bill “would transform websites into government spies.”

The bill may face a final vote in the House and the Senate as soon as next week. However, there are reports that the cybersecurity bill could be added as a provision to the budget bill which is supposed to keep the federal government running through 2016.

“It’s either this scenario or we wait until early 2016, and chamber members definitely prefer seeing passage sooner rather than later,” said Matthew Eggers, senior director of the National Security and Emergency Preparedness Department at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, told USA Today.

Reuters reports that a vote on the budget will happen on Friday before the midnight deadline for funding the federal government. According to Reuters, “lawmakers have been unable to reach agreement on a number of policy ‘riders’ some lawmakers would like to add to the bill.” These “riders” include the CISA provision.

On Wednesday, a coalition of 19 civil liberties groups sent a letter to President Obama and congressional leaders calling for stricter privacy protections and warning that such protections are being “stripped” from the House Homeland Security Committee version of the bill.

“Let me be clear that we do not support any of the three bills and believe that cybersecurity legislation could actually make us more vulnerable to cyber attacks by housing more personal information with government agencies that aren’t good at protecting it,” said Evan Greer, campaign director of Fight for the Future, organizer of the letter. “But, of the three bills, the House Homeland Security Committee’s bill had the strongest privacy protections and was sort of the least terrible.”

Fight for the Future was joined by the American Library Association, Demand Progress, and Free Press Education Fund to FreedomWorks, Campaign for Liberty, and R-Street.

The organizations say that CISA would “reduce privacy protections for Americans’ personal information” and “overexpand the term ‘cyber threat’ to facilitate the prosecution of crimes unrelated to cybersecurity.”

The letter comes one day after The Hill reported on additional changes to the bill. According to the Hill, “it now appears the final language is unlikely to include notable privacy provisions that digital rights and civil liberties groups insist are necessary to reduce the odds the bill enables greater government surveillance.”

The Hill also confirmed that “lawmakers are aiming to vote on the final cyber bill as part of an omnibus budget deal that is expected before the end of the year.”

USA Today reported that House Homeland Security Chairman Michael McCaul “said he would prefer to wait and have a formal conference committee made up of House members and senators negotiate a final bill rather than relying on staff talks to try to speed legislation through Congress in the next few days.”

McCaul told USA Today he warned Republican House leaders that they could lose votes on the 2016 government budget if they attempt to add on CISA without strong privacy protections.

As Truth In Media recently reported, the supposedly “voluntary” aspects of the bill are not voluntary at all and amount to surveillance of private customer information.

“Number one, it’s not voluntary for their customers, millions and millions of customers,” Senator Ron Wyden, a long-time opponent of CISA told the Daily Dot. “And number two, to get the liability protection, the companies have got to say that they didn’t find anything personal and unrelated in a knowing fashion. And that’s going to be a pretty easy bar because they don’t have to do much to look!” 

Civil Liberties, Police State, Politics

NSA Metadata Collection Has Come To An ‘Official End’

Leave a comment

WASHINGTON, November 30, 2015– When the clock struck 12:00 AM on Thanksgiving weekend’s Sunday morning, the National Security Agency (NSA) was forced to end virtually all metadata collection of phone calls made in the United States. Key word: virtually.

In June, Congress passed the USA Freedom Act, which was signed by President Obama. The legislation vested the responsibility of data collection and storage with telecom companies, rather than a government agency.

Still, on both sides of the issue, some remain skeptics of the USA Freedom Act.

Judge Andrew Napolitano says nothing substantial has changed and that claims made by politicians that a ‘court order’ is needed under the USA Freedom Act, whereas one was not previously required, are misleading.

“When politicians tell you that the NSA needs a court order in order to listen to your phone calls or read your emails, they are talking about a FISA court order that is based on government need- not a constitutional court order, which can only be based on probable cause,” said Napolitano. “This is an insidious and unconstitutional bait and switch.”

However, even the most minuscule changes within the USA Freedom Act were enough for United States Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) to fight against until the very last moments. The two attempted to use the Paris terror attacks as warrant for extending and strengthening the current NSA spy program.

Meanwhile, United States Congressman Justin Amash (R-Mich.) was an original co-sponsor of the legislation, but backed out of supporting the bill and actually voted against the final version because it was stripped down and “looked little like the original bill” he had worked to draft and lobby for.

Amash posted a lengthy explanation on Facebook in May:

“I am an original cosponsor of the Freedom Act, and I was involved in its drafting. At its best, the Freedom Act would have reined in the government’s unconstitutional domestic spying programs, ended the indiscriminate collection of Americans’ private records, and made the secret FISA court function more like a real court—with real arguments and real adversaries.

I was and am proud of the work our group, led by Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, did to promote this legislation, as originally drafted.

However, the revised bill that makes its way to the House floor this morning doesn’t look much like the Freedom Act.

This morning’s bill maintains and codifies a large-scale, unconstitutional domestic spying program. It claims to end “bulk collection” of Americans’ data only in a very technical sense: The bill prohibits the government from, for example, ordering a telephone company to turn over all its call records every day.

But the bill was so weakened in behind-the-scenes negotiations over the last week that the government still can order—without probable cause—a telephone company to turn over all call records for “area code 616” or for “phone calls made east of the Mississippi.” The bill green-lights the government’s massive data collection activities that sweep up Americans’ records in violation of the Fourth Amendment.

The bill does include a few modest improvements to current law. The secret FISA court that approves government surveillance must publish its most significant opinions so that Americans can have some idea of what surveillance the government is doing. The bill authorizes (but does not require) the FISA court to appoint lawyers to argue for Americans’ privacy rights, whereas the court now only hears from one side before ruling.

But while the original version of the Freedom Act allowed Sec. 215 of the Patriot Act to expire in June 2015, this morning’s bill extends the life of that controversial section for more than two years, through 2017.

I thank Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte for pursuing surveillance reform. I respect Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner and Rep. John Conyers for their work on this issue.

It’s shameful that the president of the United States, the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and the leaders of the country’s surveillance agencies refuse to accept consensus reforms that will keep our country safe while upholding the Constitution. And it mocks our system of government that they worked to gut key provisions of the Freedom Act behind closed doors.

The American people demand that the Constitution be respected, that our rights and liberties be secured, and that the government stay out of our private lives. Fortunately, there is a growing group of representatives on both sides of the aisle who get it. In the 10 months since I proposed the Amash Amendment to end mass surveillance, we’ve made big gains.

We will succeed.”

FOLLOW MICHAEL LOTFI ON Facebook, Twitter & LinkedIn.

Opinion, Politics, Privacy, Technology

New Documents Reveal the NSA is Still Collecting Americans’ Emails

Leave a comment

New records obtained by the New York Times via Freedom of Information Act requests reveal that the National Security Agency’s mass collection of email communications likely continues using different methods which are not restricted by the law.

The new details, part of a report from the NSA’s inspector general, reveal at least four reasons why the NSA ended the email program. Three of these reasons are redacted but the fourth states “other authorities can satisfy certain foreign intelligence requirements” that the bulk email records program “had been designed to meet.”

The report also details two other legal ways the government may acquire the data. First, the NSA may gather Americans’ data that has been gathered in other countries by examining the fiber optic cables which power the internet. As the New York Times writes, these activities “are largely not subject to regulation by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.” The NSA was previously not allowed to gather domestic data using this procedure, but that rule was changed in November 2010.

The other method for spying on Americans which the NSA may legally employ involves the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Amendments Act of 2008, which allows for warrantless domestic surveillance.

These revelations come on the eve of the end of another program which allows the collection of Americans’ phone records. Under the recently passed USA Freedom Act the NSA can still access the records in the pursuit of terrorists, but the records remain with the telecommunications companies.

Timothy Edgar, a privacy official in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence with both the George W. Bush and Obama administrations who is now a teacher at Brown University, told the New York Times that “The document makes it clear that NSA is able to get all the Internet metadata it needs through foreign collection.”

If Americans were hopeful that the USA Freedom Act was going to stop the bulk collection of data, they are in for disappointment. As long as the state has the technology and the resources (funded via tax dollars), they will use whatever tools they have at their disposal to monitor innocent individuals as the march towards complete loss of civil liberties continues.

Featured, Opinion, Politics

LOTFI: News You May Have Missed While Media Obsessed Over Starbucks

Leave a comment

NOVEMBER 10, 2015– Over the past several days, the media has been obsessing over Starbucks’ decision to use plain red coffee cups with their green logo rather than their traditional holiday season coffee cups which are typically embellished with winter-type scenes.

Calling for a boycott, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump decided to get in on the Starbucks action as he threatened to cancel the company’s lease in his New York Trump Tower.

One Christian group says the move by the coffee giant is part of the “War on Christmas”. The media has been obsessing ever since.

As a former employee of Starbucks, I can tell you that the company has never recognized Christmas as anything other than a marketing opportunity. They’ve never had strong “Christ-centered” messages on their Christmas season products, so red cups are nothing new. What’s more, I can’t quite comprehend why anyone is upset over this. Would the same people force a boycott against a Jewish owned business for not celebrating Christmas? Not likely.

Last time I checked, the snowmen, reindeer and wrapped presents Starbucks featured on their cups in the past have nothing to do with Christmas. Besides, if what’s on a coffee cup makes or breaks your Christmas, you’re probably not doing it right. By the way, Starbucks still has a slew of products with the word “Christmas” written all over them.

Meanwhile, here is some actual news…

Ben Carson Isn’t A Liar

Just before the media started obsessing over the color of cup Starbucks uses, they were obsessing over ways to destroy GOP presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson. They just couldn’t wait to get their hands on some juicy information to slam Carson into the ground as he continues his ascent to the top of the 2016 GOP field. Since they couldn’t find any such damning information, they simply made it up.

Truth In Media’s Barry Donegan wrote:

[pull_quote_center]Political journalism organization Politico has come under fire this week after it published an article that first accused Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson of lying about being verbally offered a scholarship by a West Point recruiter before it was edited to reflect the fact that Politico’s confirmation that Carson did not follow through with the admissions process at West Point does not itself constitute proof that Carson lied about anything.[/pull_quote_center]

Carson proved them wrong and demanded an apology. Politico made a slight edit to their story, but never apologized.

Of course, the damage was already done. Thousands of headlines across the country accused Carson of being a liar and fabricating his story. Media never ran thousands of headlines damning Politico for what Carson referred to as “tabloid journalism”. Instead, the they decided to focus on coffee cups.

Federal Judge Halts NSA Data Collection

On Monday, Federal District Court Judge Richard Leon issued an injunction against the National Security Agency (NSA), which temporarily put an end to the agency’s bulk metadata collection.

According to US News, Leon is the first and only district court judge to rule against the NSA program.

Feds Train Syrian Rebels With A Price Tag of $2 Million Per Rebel

Congress recently passed a bill that allocated $500 Million to train a new fighting force of more than 3,000 “pro-American” Syrian rebels.

As it turns out, only 190 rebels were trained at a cost of $2 million per rebel. After spending $384 Million of the $500 Million, the program was abandoned last month. Approximately 95 of those trained actually ended up fighting in Syria. The rest are unaccounted for.

The Pentagon has recently vowed to spend even more tax dollars by providing new weapons to Syrian rebels.

United States Senator and Republican Presidential candidate Rand Paul (Ky.) has been a vocal critic of arming the Syrian rebels.

Just recently, large swaths of these U.S. backed rebels switched their allegiance, taking with them all of the weapons and training funded by American tax-payers.

Guantanamo Bay Prison Closing?

A Republican controlled Congress recently passed a $670-billion defense bill that provides aid to Kiev and Syrian rebels. However, there’s one provision of the bill that President Obama isn’t happy with. The bill keeps GITMO open.

The White House is planning to push an Executive Order forward in order to shut down GITMO regardless of what Republicans have called for. Although the White House admits it’s not quite certain whether or not the Executive Order is even constitutional, they plan to push forward anyway.

“The focus of our efforts right now is on Congress and there are members of Congress who share this goal [closing GITMO] and who have indicated at least an openness to working with the administration to achieve this goal. That’s the focus of our efforts right now. I’m not aware of any ongoing effort to devise a strategy using only the President’s executive authority to accomplish this goal, but I certainly wouldn’t take that option off the table,” White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest told reporters on Monday. “There are a wide range of thorny, legal questions that are raised by this ongoing effort to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay. I wouldn’t sort of speculate on those right now. These are obviously, in some cases because of the unique nature of this facility, in some cases we’re in uncharted legal waters here but, the President made clear from his first week in office that closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay is a national security priority.”

Bonus

Have you heard the media reporting the fact that Bill Clinton is an honorary co-chair of the Commission on Presidential Debates? No? Didn’t think so…

FOLLOW MICHAEL LOTFI ON Facebook, Twitter & LinkedIn.

Editor’s Pick, Featured, US

Federal Judge Stops NSA’s Mass-Collection Program

Leave a comment

By Steve Ambrose Federal District Court Judge Richard Leon issued an injunction Monday against the National Security Agency, stopping the agency’s bulk collection of telephone metadata. (RELATED: U.S. Court Rules NSA Can Resume Bulk Collection Of Phone-Call Records)

Plaintiff’s attorney Larry Klayman represented the subscribers of the Verizon Wireless Business Network.

According to The Washington Times, during arguments on Oct. 8 Klayman asked Leon to declare the entire USA Freedom Act unconstitutional and disband the bulk collection practice.

“Congress does not have the right to violate the Constitution,” Klayman said at the time. (RELATED: Wikipedia Tells Reddit Why It Thinks It Can Win Its Lawsuit Against NSA)

During a hearing on Sept. 2, Leon told the attorneys the “clock is running and there isn’t much time between now and November 29 … this court believes there are millions and millions of Americans whose constitutional rights have been and are being violated, but the window … for action is very small. … It’s time to move.”

According to US News, Leon is the first and only district court judge to rule against the NSA program.

The NSA metadata collection program operates under a provision of Section 215 of the Patriot Act and must be renewed every three months.

“The program is intended to enable the government to identify communications among known and unknown terrorism suspects, particularly those located in the United States,” said a report from the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board.

When the NSA identifies communications that may be associated with terrorism, it issues intelligence reports to other federal agencies …[ the law] authorized the NSA to collect nearly all call detail records generated by certain telephone companies in the United States, and specifies detailed rules for the use and retention of these records. Call detail records typically include … the date and time of a call, its duration, and the participating telephone numbers …The records collected by the NSA under this program do not, however, include the content of any telephone conversation.

Follow Steve Ambrose on Twitter

Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Election, Featured, Politics, Privacy, Technology

Rand Paul Explains Why He Would Not Pardon Edward Snowden

Video Leave a comment

GOP presidential candidate Sen. Rand Paul said on Friday that he would not pardon NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, and would instead seek a compromise that involved Snowden serving some jail time.

During a convention of the Republican Liberty Caucus in Nashua, New Hampshire, Paul was asked if he would pardon Edward Snowden, who is currently in Russia and reportedly contemplating a return to the U.S.

Snowden is facing felony charges for leaking documents that revealed the U.S. government is spying on innocent Americans and collecting their phone records using the NSA’s mass surveillance program.

Paul, who has rallied against the NSA’s program on several occasions, said that while he partially wants to pardon Snowden, he also believes that the country has to have a set of rules that cannot be broken.

[pull_quote_center]I know most people would want me to say yes, and part of me says yes, and part of me says that we cannot have no rules. So for example, we do have secrets, maybe too many, but we do have secrets that need to be protected. We have operatives who try to risk their lives to defend our country and you know, he didn’t reveal that, but you don’t want people to reveal things like that.[/pull_quote_center]

Paul noted that Snowden did reveal a program that was not known to the American people before, and that might have stayed under the radar, due to the Obama administration’s treatment of whistleblowers.

“He revealed a program that we probably would have never known about, had he not revealed it because the government was lying,” Paul said. “So in many ways you could call him a whistleblower.”

[RELATED: Obama Has Sentenced Whistleblowers to 10x the Jail Time of All Prior U.S. Presidents Combined]

Paul said he believes the U.S. should come to a compromise with Snowden, in which he serves some sort of a sentence that is “reasonable and negotiated.”

[pull_quote_center]I think the best compromise on it is that there would be some penalty. But the people who are going nuts, which includes half of the people in our party, wanting to execute him, shoot him, chop his head off, all of these crazy stuff, they are completely wrong, and I think there could be some accommodation. And I think he would actually serve some sentence, if it were reasonable and negotiated.[/pull_quote_center]

In an interview with BBC that aired Monday, Snowden said that he is willing to serve jail time in order to return to the U.S.

“I’ve volunteered to go to prison with the government many times,” Snowden said. “What I won’t do is I won’t serve as a deterrent to people trying to do the right thing in difficult situations.”

There has yet to be a presidential candidate who has said that he or she would pardon Snowden, pending his return to the U.S.

Carly Fiorina described Snowden as “terribly destructive,” Ben Carson said that Snowden “did our nation a tremendous amount of damage” and should be punished, and Donald Trump said that Snowden is a “traitor” and should be killed.

For more election coverage, click here.

Election, Privacy

Did Carly Fiorina Disclose Classified Information When Revealing Her Ties to the NSA?

Leave a comment

In a recent interview, GOP presidential candidate and former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina revealed her connection to the NSA and in doing so, she may have disclosed classified information about the launch of the agency’s warrantless wiretapping program.

Fiorina recently said that she redirected trucks of HP servers from retail stores to the NSA’s headquarters after receiving a call from former NSA director Michael Hayden shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, asking her to “quickly provide his agency with HP computer servers for expanded surveillance.”

[RELATED: Carly Fiorina Defends CIA Torture, Handed HP Servers to NSA]

Hayden confirmed the request, and said that the HP servers were used to implement STELLARWIND, the controversial warrantless wiretapping program that is used to collect Americans’ bulk phone records.

Fiorina’s involvement with the NSA was not widely known prior to her interview with Yahoo News in September, and VICE’s Motherboard suggested that this may be due to the fact that the information Fiorina shared was classified.

Paul Dietrich, an activist and independent researcher, noted on Twitter that Fiorina’s claim is backed up in an NSA Inspector General report on STELLARWIND that was leaked by Edward Snowden in 2013.

The report refers to an order of 50 “computer servers to store and process data acquired under the new authority,” and in a footnote it says that “because of the heightened terrorist threat,” a vendor “diverted a shipment of servers intended for other recipients” to the NSA on Oct. 13, 2001.

Although the report was partially classified by the NSA in April, the page that referenced the transfer of the computer servers remained blacked out, suggesting that the information it contains is still considered classified.

While the report does not exclusively name HP as the company that sent the servers, Dietrich told Motherboard that this was because the NSA “REALLY HATES talking about corporate relationships.”

The NSA has yet to confirm whether Fiorina leaked classified information when revealing her company’s ties to the implementation of STELLARWIND.

In May, Fiorina told CNN that she has little sympathy for Edward Snowden, who is known for leaking documents that revealed the U.S. government is spying on innocent Americans and collecting their phone records.

“I think Edward Snowden has been terribly destructive,” Fiorina said. “He has been less than forthcoming. It was a very slanted portrayal about what the NSA does, and he knows it.”

For more election coverage, click here.

Edward Snowden, Election, Featured, Privacy

George Pataki Calls for Twitter CEO to Shut Down Edward Snowden’s Account

Leave a comment

Former NSA contractor-turned-whistleblower Edward Snowden joined Twitter on Tuesday, and in addition to gaining 1 million followers in less than 24 hours after he posted his first tweet, his presence was openly criticized by one presidential hopeful who asked Twitter’s co-founder to shut down Snowden’s account.

GOP candidate and former New York Gov. George Pataki responded to Snowden’s first Tweet, which said, “Can you hear me now?” with criticism, calling Snowden a “traitor who put American lives at risk.”

 

 

Snowden is known for leaking documents which revealed that the U.S. government is spying on innocent Americans and collecting their phone records using the NSA’s mass surveillance program, which was once a guarded secret before Snowden’s actions exposed the agency.

[RELATED: Dishonesty, Deceptiveness, and Disservice – Why Snowden Chose to Become a Whistleblower]

Since the documents were published in June 2013, Snowden has yet to return to the United States and is currently in an undisclosed location in Russia. If and when he returns to the U.S., he will face felony charges of theft, “unauthorized communication of national defense information” and “willful communication of classified communications intelligence information to an unauthorized person.”

In addition to retweeting comments from Twitter users who agreed with his original statement, Pataki posted a second tweet addressing Snowden, this time calling on Twitter co-founder and interim CEO Jack Dorsey to shut down Snowden’s account.

Dorsey did not respond to Pataki on Tuesday, but he did respond earlier to Snowden’s initial tweet, welcoming him to Twitter.

Dorsey also retweeted a tweet from Snowden, which addressed the label of “traitor.” The word was mentioned in each of the Tweets Pataki posted that referenced Snowden.

Pataki’s final tweet mentioning Snowden was in response to a user who said that a “great American company gives voices a chance to speak, not silences them.”

Investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald, who published documents leaked by Snowden in the The Guardian in 2013, chimed in on Twitter with posts that appeared to be aimed at Pataki’s comments.

https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/648976330202198016

After posting his first Tweet on Tuesday morning, Snowden gained 1 million followers in less than 24 hours. Greenwald noted that this was over 10 times more than Pataki, who currently has about 53,300.

https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/648975963011829760

Snowden also gained attention for following only one account on Twitter: the NSA. In addition to greatly surpassing Pataki in number of followers, Snowden also surpassed the NSA, which has less than 100,000.

Civil Liberties, Election, Featured, Privacy

Carly Fiorina Defends CIA Torture, Handed HP Servers To NSA

Leave a comment

GOP presidential candidate and former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina defended the torture tactics used by the CIA in the aftermath of 9/11, and revealed her direct involvement in aiding the NSA’s bulk collection of Americans’ data.

In an interview with Yahoo News published on Monday, Fiorina insisted that the methods of torture used by the CIA to attempt to extract information from suspected Al-Qaeda operatives after 9/11, such as waterboarding, helped “keep our nation safe.”

“I believe that all of the evidence is very clear — that waterboarding was used in a very small handful of cases [and] was supervised by medical personnel in every one of those cases,” Fiorina said. “And I also believe that waterboarding was used when there was no other way to get information that was necessary.”

[RELATED: Report Claims Medical Professionals In CIA Torture Program May Have Committed War Crimes]

A heavily redacted summary of the Senate report on the torture methods, or “enhanced interrogation tactics,” was released in December 2014, and found that the program was abused and mishandled by the CIA.

The report claimed that the CIA misled government officials on the level of brutality being used in its torture program, and the effectiveness of the techniques used.

[RELATED: Senate Torture Report Bombshell: CIA Lied to Lawmakers, Used Techniques More Brutal Than Claimed]

Fiorina also said that she had received a phone call from former NSA director Michael Hayden shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, asking her to “quickly provide his agency with HP computer servers for expanded surveillance.”

[RELATED: Former NSA Director Heckled For Calling Himself A ‘Libertarian’]

Hayden told Yahoo News that he used the HP servers to implement Stellar Wind, “the controversial warrantless wiretapping program, including the bulk collection of American citizens’ phone records and emails, that had been secretly ordered by the Bush White House.”

“I felt it was my duty to help, and so we did,” said Fiorina, confirming that she redirected a truck of HP servers from retail stores to the NSA’s headquarters.

“They were ramping up a whole set of programs and needed a lot of data crunching capability to try and monitor a whole set of threats,” Fiorina said. “What I knew at the time was our nation had been attacked.”

Fiorina also said that she has advised the NSA and the CIA to be “transparent as possible about as much as possible,” and that while she supports checks and balances, she is “not aware of circumstances” in which NSA surveillance “went too far” in its collection of Americans’ data.

Fiorina noted that she had once made a recommendation that former CIA Counterterrorism Center chief Jose Rodriguez, who was subjected to a criminal investigation after directing the destruction of videotapes showing waterboarding of detainees, should become a spokesman for the CIA. According to Yahoo News, Rodriguez was “very impressed with her then — and now.”

For more election coverage, click here.

Activism, Civil Liberties

New Documentary ‘Imminent Threat’ Calls for Alliance of Progressives and Libertarians

Leave a comment

The documentary film Imminent Threat is hoping to increase dialogue regarding the impacts of the War on Terror and possibly foster alliances between the Progressive “Left” and Libertarian “Right.”

Imminent Threat examines Edward Snowden’s revelations about NSA spying, the drone war, the war on journalism and other threats to civil liberties. The film also aims to show how these threats to Americans’ rights were started during the Bush administration and expanded by the Democratic establishment under President Obama.

The film was released on September 4th and is directed by Janek Ambros and executive produced by Academy award nominee James Cromwell. Ambros has previously worked on documentaries covering current events, including 2012’s “Closing Bell”, which examined the 2008 financial collapse and bank bailout through the eyes of a Wall Street broker.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfTdLFo6QSM

Truth In Media’s Derrick Broze caught up with Ambros to discuss his film and what he hopes to achieve.

Broze: What was the biggest challenge to making this film?

Ambros: Logistically, the biggest challenge of the film was getting all the stock footage. I wanted to use archival footage as a creative asset to the film to experiment with fast cutting, mostly influenced by Sergei Eisenstein and Thelma Schoonmaker. From there, I went on to try to break conventions of editing by freeze frames, sped up shots, dropping frames, dissolves, and various editing techniques.

Content wise, the most challenging was creating a more broad approach to the War on Terror. This isn’t necessarily an investigative documentary, but more a macro look at the longest and most ambiguous War on U.S. history and the impact on civil liberties and law. For this reason, structure (similar to structure of a thesis statement or even a narrative screenplay for that matter) was absolutely key and had to convey the overall point of these issues not being left vs right, rather establishment vs non-establishment
politics.

Broze: The film looks at a possible alliance between left and right. What were the challenges in approaching that situation?

Ambros: The most challenging was to remain totally neutral in terms of ‘progressives’ and ‘libertarian.’  The film purposely has three interviewees who are unabashed progressives and three libertarians. This, once again, was essential to make the point that these two cohorts can work together because they have so much overlap in terms of civil liberties and foreign policy.

Broze: Many Americans are familiar with the topics in the film, including the failures of the United State’s foreign policy, the impact of the War on Terror, and the Surveillance State revealed by Edward Snowden. However, unlike other nations, we do not see millions Americans marching in the streets calling for reform. Do you think there is apathy towards awareness of the issues raised in your film?

Ambros: The film focuses on legalities rather than morals. It points out that the Bill of Rights is being abused – whether or not the audience cares about that is hard for me determine. However, through the use of archival, music, atmosphere, and tone, the definitely attempts to convey the importance of civil liberties, rule of law, and a more limited foreign policy. Of course, I was not attempting to make propaganda, but this movie definitely has a point of view and I’ll be the first to admit it.

Broze: If there was to be an alliance of activists and citizens on the left and
right of the political spectrum, what issues do you think would unite these
groups?

Ambros: This is the most important element of the film because this is not talked about much. Other than Ralph Nader’s book, I haven’t seen much on the idea of an alliance between progressives and libertarians on specific issues. The issues they overlap on are civil liberties and limited foreign policy. After that, there is not much they agree on and they’re extreme opposites with economics — one more fearful of government, the other more fearful of corporations.

Broze: Is there hope to reform the growing American police and surveillance
states?

Ambros: I think if there are more people willing to put aside differences and focus on specific issues on at a time, then there could be change. But until then, we’ll have the same monotonous argument between the left and right and nothing will ever get done, not just in terms of civil liberties and foreign policy, but in terms of a plan for the U.S. to move forward and
become a genuine leader in the world for peace and prosperity.

Imminent Threat is now available on iTunes and Amazon.