Duh, Anyone Who Is Watching What Is Going On With ISIS, Obama, And The US Knows, Bad Things Are Headed Our Way. "New Normal" Is An Excuse For NOT Doing The Right Things!

Michael Hayden: Deadly Terror Attacks on US Soil Are 'New Normal'

Tuesday, 02 Jun 2015 07:54 PM

By Cathy Burke

America is experiencing "a new normal" with deadly plots hatched by homegrown, self-radicalized lone wolves, Gen. Michael Hayden told Newsmax TV Tuesday.

In a chilling interview with "Newsmax Prime" host J.D. Hayworth, the retired Air Force general and former NSA and CIA head said attacks like that in Garland, Texas, last month and the the fatal shooting Tuesday of a man in Boston who'd been under 24-hour surveillance by anti-terrorism authorities should serve as warning of what lies ahead.

"This is another example of the new normal," he said of the latest case. "I'm afraid we're just going to have to get used to this a bit. We're entering into a bit of a difficult period, a period of at least slightly increased danger."

Story continues below video.

He also decried that such homegrown terrorists are "using an ISIS narrative" for their violence.
"What ISIS has done has created a narrative that there is unrelenting hostility between Islam and the West, between Islam and Christianity," he said. "What we're now seeing are some folks isolated, depressed, otherwise lacking meaning in their lives, grabbing onto that narrative and using that ISIS narrative, unrelenting hostility between Islam and the West to explain their own situation and perhaps to motivate their own actions."

"We're entering into a period in which we're going to see, unfortunately, more of these kinds of events," he predicted.

Hayden also warned that America is "stepping into the unknown" with passage of the USA Freedom Act Tuesday, which reverses security policy that's been in place since shortly after the 9/11 terror attacks.

"So what I hope is that we keep a careful watch on how good plan B is," he said.

The new law would require telephone companies to collect and store telephone "metadata" the same way that they do now for billing purposes. But instead of routinely feeding U.S. intelligence agencies such data, the companies would be required to turn it over only in response to a government request approved by the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

"It remains to be seen if the phone companies will keep the data, how long they will keep it, and how easy or difficult it will be for NSA to query it under these new circumstances," Hayden said, adding he hopes the intelligence community, once the new law is up and running, will give Congress and the public "a candid view."

Hayden also weighed in on a new report that the Iranian stockpile of nuclear fuel has actually increased 20 percent over the last 18 months, saying it reflects an unhealthy dynamic in play with talks underway to keep Iran from making a nuclear bomb.

On "the political level," he said, "we may want to deal more than the Iranians want to deal. At a tactical level … I fear we've gone from that old mantra where we used to say, no deal is better than a bad deal, to a circumstance now where any deal is better than no deal."

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NSA Spying Includes Pictures Of Ordinary People Doing Very Ordinary Things. Do You Still Think It Is Harmless?

NSA Spying: Now It’s Personal

July 14, 2014 by Electronic Frontier Foundation 

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This article first appeared July 11 on the website of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

By Eva Galperin and Nadia Kayyali

Imagine that you watched a police officer in your neighborhood stop ten completely ordinary people every day just to take a look inside their vehicle or backpack. Now imagine that nine of those people are never even accused of a crime. They just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Even the most law-abiding person would eventually protest this treatment. In fact—they have.

Now replace police officers with the NSA. The scenario above is what the NSA is doing with our communications, under cover of its twisted interpretation of Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act. The Washington Post has revealed that “Nine of 10 account holders found in a large cache of intercepted conversations, which former NSA contractor Edward Snowden provided in full to The Post, were not the intended surveillance targets.” Additionally, “[n]early half of the surveillance files, a strikingly high proportion, contained names, e-mail addresses or other details that the NSA marked as belonging to U.S. citizens or residents.”

The thousands of pages of documents that provide that basis for the article are not raw content. Rather, as Barton Gellman, one of the authors of the article states in a follow uppublished several days later states: “Everything in the sample we analyzed had been evaluated by NSA analysts in Hawaii, pulled from the agency’s central repositories and minimized by hand after automated efforts to screen out U.S. identities.”

What that means is that if you’re on the Internet, you’re in the NSA’s neighborhood—whether you are in the U.S. or not. And like those who protest unjust policies like stop and frisk in their cities, you should be protesting this treatment.

This revelation is significant because it proves the point privacy and civil liberties advocates have been making for years: NSA surveillance is not narrowly targeted. EFF’s legal fight against the NSA’s warrantless mass surveillance program has been ongoing since 2006, butThe Washington Post’s statistics about 160,000 intercepts they have analyzed from the Snowden files indicate that even what the NSA calls “targeted” surveillance is far from narrow in scope.  In fact, it is so bloated that we should all be questioning its necessity and efficacy at this point. Taken hand in hand with The Intercept’s article outlining the targeting of five civil rights and political leaders from the Muslim-American community, our outrage should be palpable.

What’s more, the report comes on the heels of a debate specifically about Section 702 that has been brewing in Congress for months, as civil liberties champions like Senator Ron Wyden and Representative Zoe Lofgren question and work to address how the NSA uses this authority. This revelation should make it clear to the Senate when it considers the USA FREEDOM Act: Section 702 needs to be reformed. Cosmetic changes to NSA spying, or even substantive changes to Section 215 bulk telephone records collection, are insufficient. Unbridled, unconstitutional collection of the contents of communications needs to end.

The Washington Post article is based on a comprehensive review of thousands of pages of documents. In fact, as the article points out: “No government oversight body, including the Justice Department, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, intelligence committees in Congress or the president’s Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, has delved into a comparably large sample of what the NSA actually collects.” What’s more, these are documents that government officials have repeatedly insisted Edward Snowden would never have been able to access.

Regardless of the government’s denials, Snowden did have these documents, and now we know at least some of what they contained. So does Congress. So there’s no excuse anymore for the type of maneuvering that led to the gutting of USA FREEDOM in the House.  More importantly, there’s no excuse for the Senate to ignore Section 702 when it considers USA FREEDOM.

Real NSA reform from Congress will, among other things, shut the backdoor that allows the NSA to access American’s communications. It will also end collection of communications “about” a target.

Of course, none of this solves the problem of how NSA surveillance affects non-U.S. persons. One of the shocking things about The Washington Post’s article is its description of the communications intercepted:

Scores of pictures show infants and toddlers in bathtubs, on swings, sprawled on their backs and kissed by their mothers. In some photos, men show off their physiques. In others, women model lingerie, leaning suggestively into a webcam or striking risque poses in shorts and bikini tops.

We are no longer talking about statistics. We are talking about real people going about their daily lives. It is not surprising to learn that in the course of its investigations, the NSA gathers up a considerable number of communications that prove to be insignificant, irrelevant, or (as is the case with communications between US persons) outside the scope of their work. What is shocking is that the NSA keeps this enormous trove of personal data about people it should not be watching in the first place. It appears that the unspoken coda to General Alexander’s “collect it all” motto is “and never throw it away.”

The bottom line is this: The Internet is a global neighborhood. We shouldn’t feel unsafe there. But the NSA doesn’t seem to care.

The good news is, we can do something. Take action now. Go tohttps://www.standagainstspying.org and see how your elected representative stacks up when it comes to reforming the NSA, tweet at them, and send a letter to President Obama urging him to use his executive authority to reform the NSA now. You can also take action by contacting lawmakers here. If you are overseas, you can sign the letter to President Obama. You can also endorse the Necessary and Proportionate principles. Take back the Internet.

To Expedite Passage Of Bill, Critical Amendments Are Eliminated. USA Freedom Act Will Not Solve NSA Spying Crisis!

NSA-Reforming USA Freedom Act Passes House Committee

More stringent protections against domestic surveillance spiked in interest of speed.

Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., swatted back five proposed amendments to the USA Freedom Act from Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., during a Wednesday hearing of the House Judiciary Committee.

By Steven NelsonMay 7, 2014Leave a Comment SHARE

After a significant amount of grandstanding and a round-robin of complimenting one another, members of the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday unanimously approved the USA Freedom Act, which would scale back the U.S. government’s domestic surveillance programs.

A rival bill written by the National Security Agency’s most vocal supporters will be heard behind closed doors Thursday morning by the House Intelligence Committee.

If passed into law, the USA Freedom Act – as amended in committee – would allow the NSA to collect the phone records of individuals and two “hops” through their contacts if officials can convince a judge there’s reasonable suspicion a targeted individual is a terrorist. The bill would ban the government from invoking pen register or National Security Letter statutes to conduct bulk phone-record collection.

The rival bill would not require judicial approval before records are taken from phone companies.

[RELATED: Obama Publicly Neutral As Dueling NSA Bills Advance]

The NSA currently collects and stores all American phone records for about five years. Exiled whistleblower Edward Snowden exposed that collection program – which featured warrantless database searches – in June 2013.

Primary bill sponsor, Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., urged his colleagues to accept a 35-page package of changes unveiled Monday that rewrote much of the bill in order to win approval from committee leaders. Changes to the phone record part of the bill were made following meetings with Obama administration officials. 

After debating proposed amendments, all 32 voting committee members endorsed sending the bill to the House floor.

Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., declined to quietly accept the compromise rewrite of the bill, warning repeatedly that loopholes and vagueness could result in creative interpretations and abuses.

[EARLIER: Supreme Court Turns Down NSA Challenge]

“We don't want to end up in the same situation a few years from now as we are today, finding out that we have failed to define terms and have allowed for the kind of unwarranted bulk collection that we are seeking to end today,” Lofgren said.

Sensenbrenner, author of the 2001 USA Patriot Act – which NSA attorneys secretly convinced the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to interpret as allowing dragnet phone surveillance – rebutted Lofgren's amendments, saying they would jeopardize the bill’s chances and slow down the process.

One of Lofgren’s amendments would have required a probable cause standard for seizing phone records – more stringent than the proposed reasonable suspicion standard.

“The creative interpretation of language has led the nation to places where in some places we were surprised to find ourselves,” she said.

[MORE: DOJ Apologizes Twice for Misleading Surveillance Court]

Sensenbrenner scoffed that the amendment “would raise a routine request for information to the standard of a search warrant.”

“I fear this may blow up the fast-tracked passage that this bill appears to be having,” he said.

The amendment was soundly defeated by a voice vote.

Another of Lofgren’s amendments would have removed foreign affairs from the definition of foreign intelligence information in Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

It “invites abusive practices, using foreign affairs as an excuse” to collect electronic communications, she said.

Sensenbrenner opposed the change, conceding that while NSA surveillance of ordinary Americans was a problem he “would certainly not want to hamper the ability of the government … to deal with non-terrorist spying.”

That amendment also failed.

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More NSA Relevations Make The Agency Very Scary. Its Activities Are Illegal And Unconstitutional.

EFF: The Way The NSA Uses Section 702 Is Deeply Troubling; Here’s Why

May 9, 2014 by Electronic Frontier Foundation 

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The most recent disclosure of classified National Security Agency documents revealed that the British spy agency GCHQ sought unfettered access to NSA data collected under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act. Not only does this reveal that the two agencies have a far closer relationship than GCHQ would like to publicly admit, it also serves as a reminder that surveillance under Section 702 is a real problem that has barely been discussed, much less addressed, by Congress or the President.

In fact, the “manager’s amendment” to the USA FREEDOM Act, which passed unanimously out of the House Judiciary Committee, has weakened the minimal changes to Section 702 that USA FREEDOM originally offered. Although Representative Zoe Lofgren — who clearly understands the import of Section 702 — offered several very good amendments that would have addressed these gaps, her amendments were all voted down. There’s still a chance, though. As this bill moves through Congress, it can be strengthened by amendments from the floor.

Section 702 has been used by the NSA to justify mass collection of phone calls and emails by collecting huge quantities of data directly from the physical infrastructure of communications providers. Here’s what you should know about the provision and why it needs to be addressed by Congress and the President:

• Most of the discussion around the NSA has focused on the phone records surveillance program. Unlike that program, collection done under Section 702 captures content of communications. This could include content in emails, instant messages, Facebook messages, Web-browsing history and more.

• Even though it’s ostensibly used for foreign targets, Section 702 surveillance indiscriminately sweeps up everyone’s communication, including the communications of Americans. The NSA has a twisted, and incredibly permissive, interpretation of targeting. As John Oliver put it in his interview with former NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander: “No, the target is not the American people, but it seems that too often you miss the target and hit the person next to them going, ‘Whoa, him!’”

• The NSA has confirmed that it is searching Section 702 data to access American’s communications without a warrant, in what is being called the “back door search loophole.”  In response to questions from Senator Ron Wyden, Alexander admittedhttp://www.wyden.senate.gov/news/press-releases/wyden-udall-on-revelations-that-intelligence-agencies-have-exploited-foreign-intelligence-surveillance-act-loophole that the NSA specifically searches Section 702 data using “U.S. person identifiers,” for example email addresses associated with someone in the U.S.

• The NSA has used Section 702 to justify programs like PRISM, allowing the NSA to “siphon off large portions of Internet traffic directly from the Internet backbone.” PRISM exploits the structure of the Internet, in which a significant amount of traffic from around the world flows through servers in the United States. According to The Washington Post, it gives the NSA direct access to servers of major American companies like Facebook and Google.

• Section 702 is likely used for computer warfare, including activities targeting computers in the United States. We know that the NSA’s hacking outfit, the Tailored Access Operations Unit, needs information like that collected by PRISM to function, and Richard Ledgett, deputy director of NSA, noted the use of intelligence authorities to mitigate cyberattacks.

• The FISA Court has little opportunity to review Section 702 collection. The court approves procedures for 702 collection for up to a year. This is not approval of specific targets, however; “court review [is] limited to ‘procedures’ for targeting and minimization rather than the actual seizure and searches.” This lack of judicial oversight is far beyond the parameters of criminal justice.

• Not only does the FISA Court provide little oversight,Congress is largely in the dark about Section 702 collection as well. NSA spying defenders say that Congress has been briefed on these programs. But other members of Congress have repeatedly noted that it is incredibly difficult to get answers from the intelligence community, and that attending classified hearings means being unable to share any information obtained at such hearings. What’s more, as Senator Barbara Mikulski stated: “‘Fully briefed’ doesn’t mean that we know what’s going on.” Without a full picture of Section 702 surveillance, Congress simply cannot provide oversight.

• Section 702 is not just about keeping us safe from terrorism. It’s a distressingly powerful surveillance tool. While the justification we’ve heard repeatedly is that NSA surveillance is keeping us safer, data collected under Section 702 can be shared in a variety of circumstances, such as ordinary criminal investigations. For example, the NSA has shared intelligence with the Drug Enforcement Agency that has led to prosecutions for drug crimes, all while concealing the source of the data.

• The President has largely ignored Section 702. While the phone records surveillance program has received significant attention from President Barack Obama, in hisspeeches and his most recent proposal, Section 702 remains nearly untouched.

• The way the NSA uses Section 702 is illegal and unConstitutional — and it violatesinternational human rights law. Unlike searches done under a search warrant authorized by a judge, Section 702 has been used by the NSA to get broad FISA court authorization for general search and seizure of huge swathes of communications. The NSA says this is OK because Section 702 targets foreign citizens. The problem is, once Constitutionally protected communications of Americans are swept up, the NSA says these communications are “fair game” for its use.

• Innocent non-Americans don’t even get the limited and much abused protections the NSA promises for Americans. Under international human rights law, to which the United States is a signatory, the United States must respect the rights of all persons. With so many people outside the United States keeping their data with American companies and so much information being swept up through mass surveillance, that makes Section 702 the loophole for the NSA to violate the privacy rights of billions of Internet users worldwide.

The omission of Section 702 reform from the discourse around NSA surveillance is incredibly concerning, because this provision has been used to justify some of the most invasive NSA surveillance. That’s why EFF continues to push for real reform of NSA surveillance that includes an end to Section 702 collection. You can help by educating yourself and engaging your elected representatives. Print out our handy one-page explanation of Section 702.Contact your members of Congress today and tell them you want to see an end to all dragnet surveillance, not just bulk collection of phone records.

You Know Information Security Is An Important Issue When Libraries (Government Entities) Are Concerned With Keeping Data Safe From The Government!

Libraries Are Fighting To Protect User Information From Government Spies

December 5, 2013 by Sam Rolley

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A growing number of Americans are concerned about privacy following the National Security Agency whistle-blower Edward Snowden’s leaks over the summer — but it isn’t just individuals who are concerned. America’s libraries are urging lawmakers to produce legislation to curb the NSA’s spying authority in an effort to protect the freedom of citizens to read and research without concern for government scrutiny.

Government spying on library patrons is nothing new. In 2001, the American Library Association expressed vocal opposition to the passage of the Patriot Act, fearing that the government would use individual library activity logs to profile Americans. The anti-terror law indeed gave the FBI the ability to force libraries to hand over user data.

With Snowden’s revelations, the ALA renewed its efforts to curtail government spying on library patrons.

“The library community welcomes a renewed public debate on how to balance the need to fight terrorism and the need to protect personal privacy and civil liberties,” ALA President Maureen Sullivan said in June. “Millions of innocent customers, at least Verizon’s, have had their personal phone records released to the government without their knowledge and without allegations of specific facts supporting the relevance of their records to a federal terrorism investigation. We must demand more accountability and transparency in all of these surveillance issues. Our nation’s libraries are a tremendous information resource for those who want to better understand the issues and a place to begin debates about these issues.”

ALA director of government relations Lynne Bradley recently noted that the NSA’s practices go far beyond the privacy abuses green-lighted by the Patriot Act, revealing an “almost ravenous hunger” for information on Americans.

Especially appalling to the ALA are reports of heavy focus on collecting “metadata” because, as the organization’s director of the Office for Information Technology Policy Alan Inouye toldThe Hill, “[L]libraries are all about metadata.”

In June, the ALA called on the Senate to make legislative efforts to strengthen privacy protections for library patrons, including the following:

A requirement that information shared with the government as part of a cybersecurity information sharing program be directed only to civilian agencies – recent disclosures about the NSA’s misuse of the Patriot Act and the FISA Amendments Act to justify broad and intrusive surveillance programs make it clear that the NSA should not be the direct recipient of private sector cybersecurity information and that strong protections must be built into the law;

Strict limits to prevent information collected under cybersecurity programs to be used for general criminal prosecutions or national security purposes unrelated to cybersecurity;

A requirement that companies make reasonable efforts to remove personally identifiable information that is irrelevant to cyber threats before they share threat information;

Robust oversight and accountability provisions such as independent audits and reports

After receiving a $1 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to increase its lobbying presence in Washington, ALA representatives say that the organization is heavily supporting Representative James Sensenbrenner’s (R-Wis.) anti-NSA legislation known as the USA Freedom Act. The bill, which already has the support of a number of privacy advocates, would curb much of the NSA’s power and lift the gag order that comes with information requests from the agency.

“We don’t want [library patrons] being surveilled because that will inhibit learning, and reading, and creativity,” Inouye told The Hill.