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US Senate rejects metadata surveillance compromise
Early this morning, the US Senate voted 57-42 to stop the advancement of the USA Freedom Act, seen as a compromise to ending metadata surveillance under Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act by domestic...
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Patriot Act provisions expire; asshattery still wins
Last week, the US Senate voted 57-42 against the USA Freedom Act, a once marginally acceptable piece of proposed legislation that had been so diluted as it worked its way through the congressional...
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AT&T’s highly collaborative relationship with the NSA
On 15 December 2005, James Risen and Eric Lichtblau writing for the New York Times broke the story that then-President George W. Bush had secretly authorized the US National Security Agency (NSA) to...
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DC appeals court finds lack of standing in NSA’s bulk phone data collection case
A three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia has ruled that in order to sue the US federal government or any of its agencies for unlawful surveillance, a plaintiff must...
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The failure of the surveillance state
Instead of providing anything that looks like an answer (or apology or promise to do better) for its abject failure to prevent the 13 November 2015 atrocities in Paris, the surveillance state has gone...
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EFF announces Security Vulnerability Disclosure Program
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has announced its Security Vulnerability Disclosure Program for reporting bugs in software with which the EFF is associated (HTTPS Everywhere and Let’s Encrypt...
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US adds more surveillance legislation
In mid-December, the US Congress passed the US$1.15 trillion Omnibus Appropriations Bill (.pdf; 3.1MB) including the warrantless surveillance provisions of the controversial Cybersecurity Information...
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EFF to conduct discovery against the NSA in Jewel v. NSA
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) announced yesterday that Judge Jeffrey White for the US District Court for the Northern District of California has authorized the civil liberty defense...
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FISC approves changes to how FBI can use NSA data
New rules for how the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) can use data it obtains from the US National Security Agency (NSA) were recently approved by the secret US Foreign Intelligence...
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And so crypto wars 2.0 begins
On 21 March, the prosecutors for the US Department of Justice (DOJ) asked the US District Court for the Central District of California to vacate its order to compel Apple to assist in decrypting the...
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Dominant culture ideology wins again: Knowledge of surveillance stifles dissent
When Edward Snowden disclosed classified information in 2013 about the US National Security Agency’s (NSA) surveillance activities, common speculation was that knowledge of the surveillance alone was...
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FISC rules FBI can use intelligence databases for crime information not...
In November 2015, Thomas F. Hogan, the chief judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) ruled that the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was legally permitted to search...
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The FISC rubber stamp
For the entire calendar year of 2015, the US Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) received 1,457 electronic surveillance requests, and granted every single one of them. Dustin Volz writing...
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Walter Mondale convinced he can re-bottle FISA-FISC lightning
Walter Mondale, a former US senator and vice president was central in the construction of the US Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC). The court was established — under the Foreign...
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NSA gets hacked, stockpiles exploits
Last weekend, the US National Security Agency (NSA) was hacked and a collection of advanced weaponized hacking tools released by an organization known as Shadow Brokers. The organization claimed to...
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What the hell happened to WikiLeaks?
What emerged in 2006 as a noble (or, in hindsight, at least meaningful) effort at radical transparency using emerging technologies as a platform and distribution medium, WikiLeaks has taken a hard...
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Washington Post calls for prosecution of its most important source
This week, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch launched the pardonsnowden.org website to urge President Barack Obama to pardon Edward Snowden...
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Yahoo reportedly built email surveillance software for US government
Early this week, Joseph Menn writing for Reuters broke a story reporting that in 2015, Yahoo built a secret “custom software program to search all of its customers’ incoming emails for specific...
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NSA has another contractor leak
Last August, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) arrested Harold T. Martin III, a former contractor for the US National Security Agency (NSA), on charges that he stole highly classified...
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ACLU challenges FISC use of secret law
After Edward Snowden began leaking documents in 2013 about the US National Security Agency’s (NSA) surveillance activities, the Obama administration was cornered into at least making an appearance of...
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Even more NSA hacking tools leaked
When Michael Rogers took over as director of the US National Security Agency (NSA) in 2014, his appointment was largely intended to present a kinder, gentler NSA in the wake of the agency’s...
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President Obama: Please pardon Edward Snowden
In mid-November, President Barack Obama sat for a lengthy interview with Klaus Brinkbaumer and Sonia Seymour Mikich for Der Spiegel. The most interesting bit was the last question; Obama was asked if...
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FBI secret operations manuals leaked
On 31 January 2017, The Intercept published an exhaustive package of articles under the umbrella title of The FBI’s Secret Rules. The extensively researched and documented article package details the...
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Alleged CIA hacking documents released by WikiLeaks
On 7 March 2017, WikiLeaks released thousands of classified pages documenting sophisticated software and techniques used by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to hack almost any networked device...
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NSA ends some domestic warrantless surveillance
On 28 April 2017, the US National Security Agency (NSA) published a statement indicating that it had ceased warrantless surveillance of Americans’ electronic communications with people outside the US,...
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WannaCry ransomware originated with the NSA
Ransomware — the extortive taking of control of another’s website, encrypting its content, holding it hostage until the website owner pays the ransom, and threatening to delete it if the ransom is not...
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Whistleblower leaks NSA report on Russian cyberattack
According to a top secret report by an analyst at the US National Security Agency (NSA) that was leaked by an anonymous whistleblower to the Intercept, the Russian Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU)...
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Meet the new DNI, same as the old DNI
For years, the US Congress — led mostly by US Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) — has been asking (and then demanding) the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) to disclose how many American citizens’...
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Why does the US tolerate secret law?
A recently released 2014 US Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) ruling by Judge Rosemary M. Collyer is so heavily redacted that we don’t know if an “American communications company” is one...
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WannaCry ransomware mere diversion for DoublePulsar attack
Two weeks before the WannaCry ransomware attack began on 12 May 2017, hackers using stolen US National Security Agency (NSA) cyberweapons attacked IDT Corporation. Golan Ben-Oni, the company’s global...
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Yet another cyberattack courtesy of the NSA
On 27 June 2017, computer systems across the globe were, once again, subject to an international cyberattack. The attack appeared to begin as an assault on Ukrainian business and government computer...
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Spy v. spy v. spy
On 5 October 2017, Gordon Lubold and Shane Harris writing for the Wall Street Journal ($$) broke the story that hackers, working for the Russian government, stole the US National Security Agency’s...
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US Congress interprets Fourth Amendment as damage and routes around it
On 11 January 2018, the US House of Representatives voted 256–164 to extend the US National Security Agency’s (NSA) warrantless surveillance program, commonly known as Section 702 of the Foreign...
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NSA destroyed surveillance data it was ordered to preserve
Since 2007, the US National Security Agency (NSA) has been under court order to preserve information about parts of its surveillance activities. The court order was a consequence after disclosures that...
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US Supreme Court rules that cell tower records require warrant
In a 5–4 decision (.pdf; 508KB) — with Chief Justice John Roberts siding with the so-called “liberal” arm of the court — the US Supreme Court has ruled that government authorities must obtain a...
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