decoration decoration
Stories

GROKLAW
When you want to know more...
decoration
For layout only
Home
Archives
Site Map
Search
About Groklaw
Awards
Legal Research
Timelines
ApplevSamsung
ApplevSamsung p.2
ArchiveExplorer
Autozone
Bilski
Cases
Cast: Lawyers
Comes v. MS
Contracts/Documents
Courts
DRM
Gordon v MS
GPL
Grokdoc
HTML How To
IPI v RH
IV v. Google
Legal Docs
Lodsys
MS Litigations
MSvB&N
News Picks
Novell v. MS
Novell-MS Deal
ODF/OOXML
OOXML Appeals
OraclevGoogle
Patents
ProjectMonterey
Psystar
Quote Database
Red Hat v SCO
Salus Book
SCEA v Hotz
SCO Appeals
SCO Bankruptcy
SCO Financials
SCO Overview
SCO v IBM
SCO v Novell
SCO:Soup2Nuts
SCOsource
Sean Daly
Software Patents
Switch to Linux
Transcripts
Unix Books

Gear

Groklaw Gear

Click here to send an email to the editor of this weblog.


You won't find me on Facebook


Donate

Donate Paypal


No Legal Advice

The information on Groklaw is not intended to constitute legal advice. While Mark is a lawyer and he has asked other lawyers and law students to contribute articles, all of these articles are offered to help educate, not to provide specific legal advice. They are not your lawyers.

Here's Groklaw's comments policy.


What's New

STORIES
No new stories

COMMENTS last 48 hrs
No new comments


Sponsors

Hosting:
hosted by ibiblio

On servers donated to ibiblio by AMD.

Webmaster
Interview with NSA whistleblower William Binney | 457 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Director of National Intelligence: Reports About PRISM Contain “Numerous Inaccuracies”
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, June 07 2013 @ 01:37 AM EDT
The U.S.’s Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper just released an official statement. According to Clapper, “The Guardian and The Washington Post articles refer to collection of communications pursuant to Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. They contain numerous inaccuracies.”

Clapper argues that Section 702 is meant to ” facilitate the acquisition of foreign intelligence information concerning non-U.S. persons located outside the United States.” It is not meant to be used to “intentionally” target any U.S. citizens (though the statement leaves a door open for an admittance of “unintentional” spying).

Given the outright denials of all the tech firms accused of participating in this program, including Google, Facebook and Apple, it remains unclear if the accusation that these companies knew about the program is one of the “inaccuracies.”

Frederic Lardinois, TechCrunch

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

The Guardian's coverage
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, June 07 2013 @ 01:41 AM EDT
The National Security Agency has obtained direct access to the systems of Google, Facebook, Apple and other US internet giants, according to a top secret document obtained by the Guardian.

The NSA access is part of a previously undisclosed program called PRISM, which allows officials to collect material including search history, the content of emails, file transfers and live chats, the document says.

The Guardian has verified the authenticity of the document, a 41-slide PowerPoint presentation – classified as top secret with no distribution to foreign allies – which was apparently used to train intelligence operatives on the capabilities of the program. The document claims "collection directly from the servers" of major US service providers.

Glenn Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill, The Guardian

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

What's he gonna tell Mr Xi tomorrow?
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, June 07 2013 @ 02:11 AM EDT
The DNI didn't deny it in his first statement, merely niggling about
inaccuracies, and in the supplementary statement more or less
admitted it was happening, but it was very, very naughty to say so.
Those asked at "the big companies" may have had good reason to
deny knowledge if they didn't know, but somebody who doesn't
talk to the newspapers does know. I'm pondering the possibility
that this was such a secret spook operation that POTUS himself
didn't know. Whatever, he's got an awful lot of egg to wash off
his chin before he talks to the Chinese President about cyber espionage.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Freedom Box FTW
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, June 07 2013 @ 02:58 AM EDT
I've often wondered where is the physical location of the servers for
apple.co.nz, google.co.nz, etc. I suspect that they reside in an Akamai
rack somewhere in Auckland. I've always considered that using my
gmail account to send a message across town could implicate me
in some activity such as PRISM. But I would regard any tampering with
the domain registration or routing for them by US authorities to be
a hostile act. Does this make me a terrorist? Without yet taking up arms
against them?

I've been watching Freedom Box for a while with half an eye.
Looks like now's the time to get serious. It's our 'net, not theirs.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

'Yes, we scan."
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, June 07 2013 @ 04:44 AM EDT
@ Wash DC: Thank you for the valueable information...

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Big Brother is Watching You!
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, June 07 2013 @ 09:54 AM EDT
If the Big Brother were not both suffering from paranoia and narapoia it might
even be scary.
The Land of the Free-roaming Snoop. We the people hail you.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

EFF Timeline of NSA Domestic Spying
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, June 07 2013 @ 10:43 AM EDT
mirror of infographic http://i.imgur.com/xKHKmpC.jpg

slow EFF original https://www.eff.org/nsa-spying/timeline

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

PRISM - Fuss crosses Atlantic
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, June 07 2013 @ 12:47 PM EDT
The Grauniad is now claiming that Britains GCHQ has received a lot of the data gathered. They are also making clear that the gathering is contrary to the rules on Data protection used throughout Europe and if it was gathered in Europe then the action was illegal.

Wonder which other NATO countries received some data ?

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

NYT Gives Damning-With-Faintest-Praise-Possible Profile of Glenn Greenwald After Scoops
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, June 07 2013 @ 08:19 PM EDT
The Grey Lady roused itself to profile Glenn Greenwald after his blockbuster stories of the last two days: the first on a secret court order now in effect for Verizon to provide the NSA on all telephone records in its systems, the second on the PRISM program, which has given the NSA direct access to servers of information giants including Google, Facebook, and Microsoft, since 2007.

But the piece is mean-spirited, underplaying Greenwald’s credentials and coming too close for comfort to character sniping.

Yves Smith, Naked Capitalism

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Anonymous Just Leaked a Trove of NSA Documents
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, June 07 2013 @ 09:15 PM EDT
In the wake of last night’s revelation that everyone in the world has a creepy NSA-shaped stalker, defenders of online liberty and generally angry internet people Anonymous have leaked a treasure trove of NSA documents, including seriously important stuff like the US Department of Defense’s ‘Strategic Vision’ for controlling the internet.

The documents — 13 in total — were [.PDF] posted online, along with an accompanying message full of the normal Anonymous bluster: people won’t be silenced, they have the memory of trivia-master elephants, the governments of the world will fall, your average press release really.

The documents seem to mostly relate to PRISM and supporting operations, and mostly date from around 2008, supposedly not long after PRISM first reared its ugly head.

Chris Mills, Gizmodo

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

PRISM - Google's Larry Page, CEO, and David Drummond, Chief Legal Officer, Respond
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, June 07 2013 @ 11:24 PM EDT
First, we have not joined any program that would give the U.S. government—or any other government—direct access to our servers. [...]

Second, we provide user data to governments only in accordance with the law. [...]

Finally, this episode confirms what we have long believed—there needs to be a more transparent approach. [...]

http://googleblog.blogspot.ca/2013/06/what.html

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

NSA sucks in data from 50 companies
Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, June 08 2013 @ 11:36 AM EDT
Analysts at the National Security Agency can now secretly access real-time user data provided by as many as 50 American companies, ranging from credit rating agencies to internet service providers, two government officials familiar with the arrangements said.

Several of the companies have provided records continuously since 2006, while others have given the agency sporadic access, these officials said. These officials disclosed the number of participating companies in order to provide context for a series of disclosures about the NSA's domestic collection policies. The officials, contacted independently, repeatedly said that "domestic collection" does not mean that the target is based in the U.S. or is a U.S. citizen; rather, it refers only to the origin of the data.

Marc Ambinder, The Week

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Co.'s Built Segregated Systems For NSA Instead Of Firehoses To Protect Innocent Users From PRISM
Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, June 08 2013 @ 01:24 PM EDT
My sources confirm that the NSA did not have direct access or any special instant access to data or servers at the PRISM targets, but instead had to send requests to the companies for the data. These requests must be complied with by law, but only if the government narrowly defines what it’s looking for. The government may have initially requested a firehose of data, and was happy to take this full data dump from the tech companies and sort it itself. Had the tech giants simply accepted these requests at the minimum level required by law, many innocent citizens’ data could have been monitored.

By working to create “a locked mailbox and give the government the key” which the New York Times reported, rather than allowing widespread monitoring, the firehose is restricted to a trickle of specific requests. When the NSA has specific people they want to data about, they make a specific, legal request for that data that the tech companies are required to comply with. Google or Facebook then puts the specific requested data into the locked mailbox where the government can access it. This keeps requested data about suspected terrorists or other people who are threats to national security segregated from that of innocent users.

By cooperating, companies can better ensure that each request is valid, and narrow enough in its scope. If the request is too broad, the tech companies can send it back and ask for a narrower pull. The method also ensure the data is securely transferred from the companies to the government, opposed to being more forcibly pulled by the NSA in ways that could have left it open for exploit by third-parties.

Josh Constine, TechCrunch

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Interview with NSA whistleblower William Binney
Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, June 08 2013 @ 03:21 PM EDT
http://libertasutah.org/interview/nsa-whistleblower-speaks-out-on-verizon-prism- and-the-utah-data-center/

if the site is still down you can try this screen shot:
http://i.imgur.com/pv8aAV4.jpg

William Binney - Wikipedia

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

BOUNDLESS INFORMANT - the NSA's secret tool to track global surveillance data
Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, June 08 2013 @ 10:25 PM EDT
The National Security Agency has developed a powerful tool for recording and analysing where its intelligence comes from, raising questions about its repeated assurances to Congress that it cannot keep track of all the surveillance it performs on American communications.

The Guardian has acquired top-secret documents about the NSA datamining tool, called Boundless Informant, that details and even maps by country the voluminous amount of information it collects from computer and telephone networks.

The focus of the internal NSA tool is on counting and categorizing the records of communications, known as metadata, rather than the content of an email or instant message.

The Boundless Informant documents show the agency collecting almost 3 billion pieces of intelligence from US computer networks over a 30-day period ending in March 2013.

Glenn Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill, The Guardian

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Groklaw © Copyright 2003-2013 Pamela Jones.
All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners.
Comments are owned by the individual posters.

PJ's articles are licensed under a Creative Commons License. ( Details )