Snowdon is a dummy

The National Security Agency's vast data collection program targeting foreign nationals is a largely legal, valuable tool in fighting terrorism, a watchdog panel said.


The panel, which earlier this year issued a sharp rebuke of domestic surveillance efforts, said in a preliminary report that the foreign intelligence efforts are generally in line with the US constitution, while raising some concerns about unintentional data gathering of Americans.

"The program has proven valuable in the government's efforts to combat terrorism as well as in other areas of foreign intelligence," said the report from the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, a panel created on the recommendation of the 9/11 Commission.

The report released as a draft, subject to a vote on Wednesday of the panel, appears to vindicate at least some aspects of the vast NSA data sweep, while sidestepping questions on whether privacy protections of US law should be extended to "non-US persons."

The panel was largely supportive of the NSA's handling of the programs authorized by Section 702 or the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act -- the opposite of its conclusion in January of the huge telephone metadata collection effort by the intelligence agency.

"Presently, over a quarter of the NSA's reports concerning international terrorism include information based in whole or in part on Section 702 collection, and this percentage has increased every year since the statute was enacted," the report said.

NSA data sweep helpful

This effort "has enabled the government to learn how they operate, and to understand their priorities, strategies, and tactics. In addition, the program has led the government to identify previously unknown individuals who are involved in international terrorism, and it has played a key role in discovering and disrupting specific terrorist plots aimed at the United States and other countries," it added.

The panel noted however that some aspects of the Section 702 program are "close to the line of constitutional reasonableness," notably the incidental collection of communications of Americans and a broad interpretation of Internet data that may be searched.

The panel began its review last year of the programs revealed in materials leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, which led to a firestorm of criticism both at home and abroad.

The panel examined the program dubbed PRISM which collects data from major Internet companies as well as a separate "upstream: collection via Internet backbone firms.

The review said that unlike the phone monitoring, this type of surveillance without a warrant has generally been accepted under a foreign intelligence exception. And it noted that the programs did have some court supervision, through the secret FISA court.

It said surveillance of foreign targets "raises important but difficult legal and policy questions" but did not make specific recommendations on this.

Instead, the panel said it would participate in a review ordered by President Barack Obama on whether foreign nationals should be accorded similar privacy protections.

"Privacy is a human right that has been recognized most prominently in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights," it said.

But the board said "it can make its most productive contribution in assessing these issues" in the context of the presidential review process.

A separate White House-appointed panel in December called for major reforms of US eavesdropping programs, and Obama has pledged to make changes, US lawmakers are also debating efforts to curb the NSA's capabilities.

The latest Snowden revelations, reported by The Washington Post this week, indicated the United States used broad authority to intercept information from most countries, but had "no-spying arrangements" with Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

http://rt.com/usa/168948-eff-nsa-utah-blimp/

The airship belongs to the environmentalist organization Greenpeace and was flown early Friday over the NSA’s newly completed data center as a demonstration waged collectively by that group and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a California-based advocacy group that defends digital rights and has fought tooth-and-nail against the United State intelligence community’s surveillance programs since before former contractor Edward Snowden began to leak classified secrets about those operations last year. The Tenth Amendment Center, “a national think tank that works to preserve and protect the principles of strictly limited government through information, education and activism,” also participated in the unannounced flight.

An investigation by the German broadcasters ARD and WDR has apparently demonstrated the targeting by the NSA of a German student called Sebastian Hahn, who runs a node on the anonymization network Tor. It has also shown that anyone searching for “privacy-enhancing software tools” online may be marked for surveillance.

The NSA has been revealed to mark and consider potential "extremists" all users of the internet anonymizer service Tor. Among those are hundreds of thousands of privacy concerned people like journalists, lawyers and rights activists.
[...]
There are indications that NSA may be collecting not only the metadata of the people on the list, but also read their email exchanges with Tor.

An interest in Tor is not the only way to make it to NSA’s watch list. Even web searches for other encryption software makes you a target as well, the report said.

Disturbingly, NSA programmer comments in the source code label those picked up by the American system “extremists.”

The report says XKeyscore marks all people that hit the red light on its grid, with the exception of those connecting from members of the Five Eyes, a group of countries cooperating in intelligence gathering, namely the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
[...]
Ironically, Tor was originally created for the US Navy and still receives a major part of its funding from the US government - the same government that considers its users "extremists".

Today, the former NSA agent and whistleblower William Binney testified before the German parliamentary committee, branding the NSA approach "totalitarian" and "a system like in a dictature".

Spy agencies are gonna spy. Get over it.

Since this seems have happened in co-operation with our own agencies - it's an attack on the foundations of our country.

Frank Apisa wrote:
Spy agencies are gonna spy. Get over it.

As long as it's done legally - no problem.

Frank Apisa wrote:

Spy agencies are gonna spy. Get over it.

As long as it's done legally - no problem.
A foreign spy agency spying on Germans is a serious criminal offense here.
And if it's done from the bureau here in Germany, it's very serious.

Since this seems have happened in co-operation with our own agencies - it's an attack on the foundations of our country.

Quote:

Frank Apisa wrote:
Spy agencies are gonna spy. Get over it.

As long as it's done legally - no problem.

Target spying is one thing random and massive spying is another thing be the target allies nations or our own nation or others. Spying that as the blimp view about show take large scale many billions plant with a not small percent of the total area water supply being needed to cool all the spinning hard drives.

There no reason to allow NSA the funding to do such massive spying just to start with and Walter I wonder how fast Frank is going to get over the fairly large part of our economic going belly up as nations such as your stop buying US hardware, software or internet services due to lack of trust in them.

For myself for example I would on generate principle never purchase VPN services from a US base firm and I am an American citizen.

Any laws that say "It is illegal to spy on me"...is RIGHTLY going to be laughed at.

Frank Apisa wrote:

Any laws that say "It is illegal to spy on me"...is RIGHTLY going to be laughed at.

Like 18 U.S. Code Chapter 37 - ESPIONAGE AND CENSORSHIP

As long as it's done legally - no problem.

It is going to be laughed at.

You wrote,

Quote:

As long as it's done legally - no problem.

I agree totally with this, but Frankie boy doesn't mind because he has nothing to hide.

He seems ignorant about the right to privacy and our Constitution.

Frank Apisa wrote:

It is going to be laughed at.

Interesting opinion. And yet you want Snowden to have a fair trial according to laws under under the Espionage Act of 1917

en.wikipedia.org/.../Capital_punishment_by_the_United_State...
Wikipedia
The United States federal government (in comparison to the separate states) applies the death penalty for certain crimes: treason, espionage, federal murder, ..