Snowdon is a dummy

http://boingboing.net/2013/11/09/business-logic-of-cooperating.html


In an Atlantic editorial, Bruce Schneier discusses the post-Snowden business-climate. The NSA relied on Internet giants to do surveillance for them (surveillance being a major part of the Big Data business model), and pre-Snowden, there was no real downside to cooperating with illegal NSA spying requests -- in some cases, spooks would shower your company with money if it went along with the gag. Post-Snowden, all surveillance cooperation should be presumed to be destined to be made public, and that's changed the corporate calculus.

Pre-Snowden, there was no downside to cooperating with the NSA. If the NSA asked you for copies of all your Internet traffic, or to put backdoors into your security software, you could assume that your cooperation would forever remain secret. To be fair, not every corporation cooperated willingly. Some fought in court. But it seems that a lot of them, telcos and backbone providers especially, were happy to give the NSA unfettered access to everything. Post-Snowden, this is changing. Now that many companies' cooperation has become public, they're facing a PR backlash from customers and users who are upset that their data is flowing to the NSA. And this is costing those companies business.

How much is unclear. In July, right after the PRISM revelations, the Cloud Security Alliance reported that US cloud companies could lose $35 billion over the next three years, mostly due to losses of foreign sales. Surely that number has increased as outrage over NSA spying continues to build in Europe and elsewhere. There is no similar report for software sales, although I have attended private meetings where several large US software companies complained about the loss of foreign sales. On the hardware side, IBM is losing business in China. The US telecom companies are also suffering: AT&T is losing business worldwide.

This is the new reality. The rules of secrecy are different, and companies have to assume that their responses to NSA data demands will become public. This means there is now a significant cost to cooperating, and a corresponding benefit to fighting.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/08/net-us-usa-security-snowden-idUSBRE9A703020131108

Exclusive: Snowden persuaded other NSA workers to give up passwords - sources
BY MARK HOSENBALL AND WARREN STROBEL
WASHINGTON Thu Nov 7, 2013 10:07pm EST
NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, an analyst with a U.S. defence contractor, is seen in this still image taken from video during an interview by The Guardian in his hotel room in Hong Kong June 6, 2013. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro offered asylum to former U.S. intelligence contractor Edward Snowden on July 5, 2013 in defiance of Washington, which is demanding his arrest for divulging details of secret U.S. spy programs. f The Guardian/Handout via ReutersNSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, an analyst with a U.S. defence contractor, June 6, 2013. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro offered asylum to former U.S. intelligence contractor Edward Snowden on July 5, 2013 in defiance of Washington, which is demanding his arrest for divulging details of secret U.S. spy programs. Picture taken June 6,
(Reuters) - Former U.S. National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden used login credentials and passwords provided unwittingly by colleagues at a spy base in Hawaii to access some of the classified material he leaked to the media, sources said.

A handful of agency employees who gave their login details to Snowden were identified, questioned and removed from their assignments, said a source close to several U.S. government investigations into the damage caused by the leaks.

Snowden may have persuaded between 20 and 25 fellow workers at the NSA regional operations center in Hawaii to give him their logins and passwords by telling them they were needed for him to do his job as a computer systems administrator, a second source said.

The revelation is the latest to indicate that inadequate security measures at the NSA played a significant role in the worst breach of classified data in the super-secret eavesdropping agency's 61-year history.

Reuters reported last month that the NSA failed to install the most up-to-date, anti-leak software at the Hawaii site before Snowden went to work there and downloaded highly classified documents belonging to the agency and its British counterpart, Government Communication Headquarters.

It is not clear what rules the employees broke by giving Snowden their passwords, which allowed the contractor access to data that he was not authorized to see.

Snowden worked at the Hawaii site for about a month last spring, during which he got access to and downloaded tens of thousands of secret NSA documents.

COVERING TRACKS

"In the classified world, there is a sharp distinction between insiders and outsiders. If you've been cleared and especially if you've been polygraphed, you're an insider and you are presumed to be trustworthy," said Steven Aftergood, a secrecy expert with the Federation of American Scientists.

"What agencies are having a hard time grappling with is the insider threat, the idea that the guy in the next cubicle may not be reliable," he added.

Officials with the NSA and the Office of Director of National Intelligence declined to comment due to a criminal investigation related to Snowden, who disclosed previously secret U.S. government mass surveillance programs while in Hong Kong in June and then fled to Russia where he was granted temporary asylum.

People familiar with efforts to assess the damage to U.S. intelligence caused by Snowden's leaks have said assessments are proceeding slowly because Snowden succeeded in obscuring some electronic traces of how he accessed NSA records.

The sources did not know if the NSA employees who were removed from their assignments were given other duties or fired.

While the U.S. government now believes it has a good idea of all the data to which Snowden could have accessed, investigators are not positive which and how much of that data Snowden actually downloaded, the sources said.

Snowden and some of his interlocutors, such as former Guardian writer Glenn Greenwald, have said that Snowden provided NSA secrets only to media representatives such as Greenwald, filmmaker Laura Poitras, and a reporter with the British newspaper.

They have emphatically denied that he provided any classified material to countries such as China or Russia.

The revelation that Snowden got access to some of the material he leaked by using colleagues' passwords surfaced as the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee approved a bill intended in part to tighten security over U.S. intelligence data.

One provision of the bill would earmark a classified sum of money - estimated as less than $100 million - to help fund efforts by intelligence agencies to install new software designed to spot and track attempts to access or download secret materials without proper authorization.

The bill also requires that the Director of National Intelligence set up a system requiring intelligence contractors to quickly report to spy agencies on incidents in which data networks have been penetrated by unauthorized persons.

(Editing by Alistair Bell and Paul Simao)

Republican Senator John McCain: "If you believe that Mr. Snowden didn't give the Russians information that he has, then you believe that pigs can fly."

http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/11/13/judge-could-torpedo-nsa-surveillance-programs-monday

Judge Could Torpedo NSA Surveillance Programs Monday
Bold legal record, pre-hearing statements by judge may hint at outcome


Next week two federal courts are considering demands for the NSA to unplug surveillance programs.
Next week two federal courts are considering demands for the NSA to unplug surveillance programs.
A federal judge could grant a preliminary injunction blocking some National Security Agency surveillance programs as early as Monday.

U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon will consider oral arguments for and against a broad preliminary injunction request Nov. 18 in Washington, D.C., during a hearing that pits Department of Justice lawyers against Larry Klayman, a former Reagan administration prosecutor who leads the advocacy group Freedom Watch.

Leon expressed a sense of urgency in scheduling the hearing and made comments that could be construed as favorable to opponents of NSA surveillance.

Klayman filed two class-action lawsuits in June after documents leaked by Edward Snowden revealed the NSA collects the phone records of millions of Americans using secret court orders and vast quantities of Web data with its PRISM program.

[CONGRESSMAN: Obama Should Say If NSA Reporter Faces Arrest]

During an Oct. 31 status conference Leon told government lawyers: "I don't want to hear anything about vacations, weddings, days off. Forget about it. This is a case at the pinnacle of public national interest, pinnacle. All hands 24/7. No excuses."

He brushed off an apparent government bid to slow the case, saying: "the Department of Justice, the NSA and the allied government agencies that have an interest in this have had four months to think through its position. That's a lot of time."

But there are also signs Leon may not grant an injunction.

Klayman was unable to travel from California to D.C. in time for the Oct. 31 status conference and a transcript of the hearing makes clear Leon's annoyance with his solo preparation. Leon noted he had denied requests by Klayman for continuances.

[RELATED: NSA Surveillance Spurs Tech Giants to Add Encryption]

The American Civil Liberties Union is also suing to stop the NSA phone-record collection.

Leon scheduled the Nov. 18 hearing after U.S. District Court Judge William Pauley scheduled Nov. 22 oral arguments for the ACLU's preliminary injunction request.

The ACLU case, which is being heard in New York, is more tailored. That lawsuit objects to the collection of Verizon phone metadata by the NSA.

Both the ACLU and Klayman argue the NSA is exceeding its authority under the law. Section 215 of the Patriot Act is used by the government to justify its collection of all Americans' phone records. Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is cited to justify the PRISM program.

NSA surveillance programs are already reviewed by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, but all relevant case documents and rulings were secret until the Snowden leaks. Many remain classified.

A common criticism of FISC is that it produces secret legal interpretations that are not even available to lawmakers who wrote the legislation decisions are based on. Patriot Act author Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wisc., for example, says the NSA lacks authority under his 2001 law to collect the phone records of all Americans and he's sponsoring legislation to explicitly forbid it.

"I am going to be very curious to hear the arguments about the authority this court has to review or overrule a decision by another court," Leon said Oct. 31. "I don't know what Mr. Klayman's theory is going to be just yet, but we will see."

Nick Dranias, director of the Goldwater Institute's Center for Constitutional Government, says Leon likely does have the power to review FISC cases.

"I don't think the court should have any problem taking jurisdiction over this," Dranias said. "I would think you could make a pretty plausible argument that a genuine full-fledged Article III court would have primary jurisdiction over constitutional issues, particularly when you have real litigation going on, as opposed to a more administrative judicial role."

Another bid for judicial review of the FISC's approval of phone record collection is being pursued by the Electronic Privacy Information Center. The U.S. Supreme Court is considering during a Friday conference meeting a request for direct intervention from EPIC that would bypass lower courts.

The preliminary injunction hearing on Monday will address both the Internet and phone-related lawsuits filed by Klayman. Although the two cases have not been joined, attorneys are filing one set of briefs in advance. Leon set a Nov. 11 deadline for the government to submit its arguments.

The preliminary injunction is sought pending final resolution of the cases, which demand a permanent end to the programs and steep financial penalties.

In addition to his pre-hearing comments, Leon's resume may also be seen by NSA opponents as a reason to be hopeful.


Several of Leon's well-known rulings have proscribed federal authority. In 2012 he ruled grisly Food and Drug Administration labels on cigarette packs would violate the First Amendment. In the first ruling of its kind Leon ordered in 2008 the release of five Algerian men held at Guantanamo Bay since 2002 after finding a lack of evidence they were terrorists. He dismissed the government's reliance on a classified document attributed to an unnamed source.

Leon was appointed to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in 2001 by President George W. Bush, and took office in 2002. He previously served as a top Justice Department official and as an attorney advising congressional probes into the Iran Contra scandal of the 1980s and the Whitewater controversy of the 1990s.

"We are hopeful that the court will preliminarily enjoin the government from continuing to perpetrate massive violations of the Constitution," Klayman told U.S. News. The NSA programs, he said, are "not focused solely on spying on terrorists and terrorist groups, but instead all of the citizenry."

More News:

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/11/peter-king-nsa-99811.html


Peter King gives pep talk to NSA workers
2


Rep. Peter King is pictured. | AP Photo
'They really feel that they’re under siege,' says after speaking to the group. | AP
By KATIE GLUECK | 11/13/13 3:10 PM EST
Embattled National Security Agency employees received a pep talk Wednesday from an unusual source: a congressman.

Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) spoke to about 300 NSA workers at headquarters, he told POLITICO, praising the efforts of an agency that has come under fire amid high-profile leaks from Edward Snowden.


“They really feel that they’re under siege,” he said in an interview following his remarks. “Whether from Snowden, politicians, the media, daily stories, daily attacks, very few people are publicly supporting them.”

(Also on POLITICO: White House: Transparency may hurt security)

King, a hawkish Republican who is mulling a long-shot presidential bid, called the NSA a “heavily scrutinized” organization with little record of “abuse.” But it’s taking heat from people on both sides of the aisle, he said.

“You have what you would expect with civil libertarians on the left,” along with conservative libertarians, he said. “And then you also have many Republicans who are anti-Obama, who when they’re talking about the IRS and the [General Services Administration scandal] and the NSA, it’s just the same thing … it gets lumped in with the scandals of the IRS.”

After meeting with NSA Director Keith Alexander, he aimed to offer a “morale boost” to employees, said King, who serves on the House’s intelligence and homeland security committees and spoke to employees for about 45 minutes before taking questions. In the past, he has called on President Barack Obama to stand up for the NSA, and he reiterated that in the interview.

(
“To me it would be very symbolic [for Obama] to go out there,” he said. “At the very least I think he owes them a full defense of what they’ve been doing, and should make clear this isn’t some rogue agency, they aren’t off on their own. He’s benefited so much from the intelligence they’ve found.”

He added, “since I said the president should go out, I thought at least I should.”

Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.)

Maybe the good people of the NSA should think about the ramifications of what they've been doing IN COMPLETE SECRECY all these many years.

They feel that they're under siege!?!?!?! Good. It's about friggin time!

Do you wish for innocent Americans to be killed in the most brutal and sadistic manner imaginable?

Those ramifications would be: Americans saved from horrendous terrorist massacres.

Nonsense invading my privacy and hundred of millions of others had not stop massacres!!!!!!!!

But if you feel that any lost of freedoms/rights is worthwhile if you can claim that maybe someone is not killed as a result of that lost of freedoms/rights then taking all the private firearms away would be the first priority would it not?

I do not perceive any loss of freedom or violation of rights in the fact that the NSA combs through every electronic signal on the planet.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

(Reuters) - U.S. technology companies including Cisco Systems Inc and IBM Corp are facing unprecedented difficulties selling their goods and services in China, as fallout from the U.S. spying scandal starts to take a toll.

Cisco said on Wednesday that its revenue would drop 10 percent this quarter, and continue to contract until the middle of 2014, in part due to a backlash in China against revelations about U.S. government surveillance programs worldwide.

"The U.S. government isn't doing any favors for Cisco," said Evercore Partners analyst Mark McKechnie, after the company's shares fell 10 percent in late trade.

In June, former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden revealed the spy agency had hacked network backbones around the world to gain access to sensitive information.

The leaks provoked a storm in the Chinese media and added urgency to Beijing's efforts to use its market power to create indigenous software and hardware capabilities, analysts and businessmen say.

I do not perceive any loss of freedom or violation of rights in the fact that the NSA combs through every electronic signal on the planet.