PRISM

[Lamplighter]

Snowden is singing a special song:
"Please pass the salt... I've got a lot of rubbing to do"

National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden wrote an open letter
to the people of Brazil published in a Brazilian newspaper on Tuesday.

In the letter, he said he would be willing to help the country
investigate NSA spying on its soil in exchange for political asylum.

Brazil, including President Dilma Rousseff, has been a major target of NSA spying
and has complained vehemently in the international community. Snowden has temporary asylum...

Snowden wants to help Brazil fight NSA surveillance

[Griff]

NSA program stopped no terror attacks, says White House panel member

A member of the White House review panel on NSA surveillance said he was “absolutely” surprised when he discovered the agency’s lack of evidence that the bulk collection of telephone call records had thwarted any terrorist attacks.

Color me less surprised.

[Lamplighter]

Good catch, Griff

[Lamplighter]

It’s already in Wikipedia (here), and was reported as an "exclusive" by Reuters on 12/20/13,
but here is a shorter version:

Mother Jones
Kevin Drum
Dec. 21, 2013

NSA Paid Security Company to Adopt Weakened Encryption Standards

Undisclosed until now was that RSA received $10 million in a deal that set
the NSA formula as the preferred, or default, method for number generation
in [ RSA Security LLC's ] BSafe software, according to two sources familiar with the contract.

Although that sum might seem paltry, it represented more than a third of the revenue
that the relevant division at RSA had taken in during the entire previous year, securities filings show.

....Most of the dozen current and former RSA employees interviewed said that
the company erred in agreeing to such a contract, and many cited RSA's corporate evolution
away from pure cryptography products as one of the reasons it occurred.

But several said that RSA also was misled by government officials,
who portrayed the formula as a secure technological advance.
"They did not show their true hand," one person briefed on the deal said of the NSA,
asserting that government officials did not let on that they knew how to break the encryption.

However, the Wiki version speaks more along the lines that the "random number generator"
that was preferred by NSA was already well known among cryptologists as being one that could be broken
... and so leaves the impression that the RSA cryptologists knew, or should have known,
what was involved for the $10 million contract.

.

[busterb]

Now the VA, banks and others have stopped even leaving messages on your answer machine.
I happened to be home when my DR's nurse called, said she had been calling for days. Hello, I have an answer machine. can't leave any messages. Same for bank.
I live alone, so the chance of anyone hearing anything is nil. More likely someone getting something out of my mail box. Thank you assholes.

[Lamplighter]

Did you really think this thread was dead ? Don't be silly.


ACLU: Snowden Proved NSA Internet Spying Harms Americans
ABC News — Mar 10, 2015, 4:58 PM ET
By JULIET LINDERMAN Associated Press

The American Civil Liberties Union and other groups sued the National Security Agency
and the Justice Department on Tuesday, challenging the government's practice of collecting
personal information from vast amounts of data harvested directly from the Internet's infrastructure.

The suit filed in federal court in Maryland accuses the NSA of harvesting virtually* everything
sent via the Internet between Americans and people outside the United States,
and then using search terms or identifiers to identify and monitor foreign intelligence targets.<snip>

The suit's other plaintiffs include The Wikimedia Foundation, Human Rights Watch,
Amnesty International USA, the Rutherford Institute, PEN American Center,
The Nation magazine, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers,
Global Fund for Women and Washington Office on Latin America.<snip>

A similar challenge was turned away by the U.S. Supreme Court,
which said the plaintiffs couldn't prove they'd been harmed.
This lawsuit says that's changed since the government confirmed
the surveillance after its scope and details were leaked by former
government contractor Edward Snowden in 2013.
<snip>

* ... a rare and surprisingly appropriate use of the word.

.

[Lamplighter]

John Oliver talks about renewal of the US Patriot Act which is up for renewal on June 1st this year.

But, this 33 min video is also his interview with Edward Snowden.
So you can skip to about the 18 min mark for the best/most entertaining part.

NSFW if a discussion of NSA's "dick pic" program is not to your liking

[BigV]

very good find Lamplighter.

I found the segment starting at 12:02 to be the very best part though.



The CNN clip is excruciating. It makes me want to cry.

[Lamplighter]

My reaction too.

But Andrea has been a disappointment to me for some time now... and getting worse !

[Lamplighter]

Zengum and Edward Snowden should be very proud today...

Repeated studies found no evidence of intentional abuse for personal or political gain,
but also found no evidence that it [*| had ever thwarted a terrorist attack.

[*] the the bulk collection of phone records program


U.S. Surveillance in Place Since 9/11 Is Sharply Limited
NY Times - JENNIFER STEINHAUER and JONATHAN WEISMANJUNE 2, 2015

WASHINGTON — In a significant scaling back of national security policy formed after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks,
the Senate on Tuesday approved legislation curtailing the federal government’s sweeping surveillance
of American phone records, and President Obama signed the measure hours later.

The passage of the bill — achieved over the fierce opposition of the Senate majority leader — will allow the government to restart surveillance operations, but with new restrictions.

The legislation signaled a cultural turning point for the nation, almost 14 years after the Sept. 11 attacks heralded the construction of a powerful national security apparatus. The shift against the security state began with the revelation by Edward J. Snowden, a former National Security Agency contractor, about the bulk collection of phone records. The backlash was aided by the growth of interconnected communication networks run by companies that have felt manhandled by government prying.

The storage of those records now shifts to the phone companies, and the government must petition a special federal court for permission to search them.
<snip>
The [new] legislation’s goals are twofold: to rein in aspects of the government’s data collection authority and to crack open the workings of the secret national security court that oversees it. After six months, the phone companies, not the N.S.A., will hold the bulk phone records — logs of calls placed from one number to another, and the time and the duration of those contacts, but not the content of what was said. A new kind of court order will permit the government to swiftly analyze them.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, for the first time, will be required to declassify some of its most significant decisions, and outside voices will be allowed to argue for privacy rights before the court in certain cases.