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Some NSA Opponents Want to ‘Nullify’ Surveillance With State Law (+video)

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Photo Credit: US News The National Security Agency has an Achilles heel, according to some anti-surveillance activists. The key vulnerability, according to members of the OffNow coalition of advocacy groups: The electronic spy agency’s reliance on local utilities.

The activists would like to turn off the water to the NSA’s $1.5 billion Utah Data Center in Bluffdale, Utah, and at other facilities around the country.

Dusting off the concept of “nullification,” which historically referred to state attempts to block federal law, the coalition plans to push state laws to prohibit local authorities from cooperating with the NSA.

Draft state-level legislation called the Fourth Amendment Protection Act would – in theory – forbid local governments from providing services to federal agencies that collect electronic data from Americans without a personalized warrant.

No Utah lawmaker has came forward to introduce the suggested legislation yet, but at least one legislator has committed to doing so, according to Mike Maharrey of the Tenth Amendment Center. He declined to identify the lawmaker before the bill is introduced.

Read more from this story HERE.

NSA ‘Collected Details of Online Sexual Activity’ of Islamist Radicals

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Photo Credit: Patrick Semansky/APThe NSA has been collecting details about the online sexual activity of prominent Islamist radicals in order to undermine them, according to a new Snowden document published by the Huffington Post.

The American surveillance agency targeted six unnamed “radicalisers”, none of whom is alleged to have been involved in terror plots.

One document argues that if the vulnerabilities they are accused of were to be exposed, this could lead to their devotion to the jihadist cause being brought into question, with a corresponding loss of authority.

As an example of vulnerabilities, it lists: “Viewing sexually explicit material online or using sexually persuasive language when communicating with inexperienced young girls.”

The names of the six targeted individuals have been redacted. One is listed as having been imprisoned for inciting hatred against non-Muslims. Under vulnerabilities, the unnamed individual is listed as being involved in “online promiscuity” as well as possibly misdirecting donations.

Read more from this story HERE.

Canada Allowed Widespread NSA Surveillance at 2010 G20 Summit

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Photo Credit: REUTERSCanada allowed the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) to conduct widespread surveillance during the 2010 Group of 20 summit in Toronto, according to a media report that cited documents from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

The report by the Canadian Broadcasting Corp is the latest potential embarrassment for the NSA as a result of Snowden’s leaks, although it remains unclear precisely what information the agency was looking for during the summit.

Snowden has already revealed the agency spied on close allies such as Germany and Brazil, prompting heated diplomatic spats with Washington.

The CBC report, first aired late on Wednesday, cited briefing notes it said showed the United States turned its Ottawa embassy into a security command post during a six-day spying operation by the top-secret U.S. agency as President Barack Obama and other world leaders met that June.

Reuters has not seen the documents and cannot verify their authenticity. One of the bylines on the CBC report was Glenn Greenwald, the U.S. journalist who has worked with Snowden on several other NSA stories.

Read more from this story HERE.

Map Shows the NSA’s Massive Worldwide Malware Operations

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Photo Credit: APA new map details how many companies across the world have been infected by malware by the National Security Agency’s team of hackers, and where the companies are located.

Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad reports the NSA uses malware to infect, infiltrate and steal information from over 50,000 computer networks around the globe. This new, previously unreported scope of the NSA’s hacking operation comes from another PowerPoint slide showing a detailed map of every infection leaked by former contractor Edward Snowden.

The practice is called “Computer Network Exploitation,” or CNE for short, and it’s carried out by the NSA’s Tailored Access Operations team. A yellow dot on the map signifies a CNE infection. The NSA plants malware within a network that can flipped on or off at any time. Once a network is infected, the malware gives the NSA unfiltered access to the network’s information whenever it’s most convenient. The Washington Post previously profiled the team of “elite hackers” who make up the NSA’s TAO division.

The British intelligence service liked this strategy too, NRC Handelsblad reports, because they successfully duped a Belgium telecom company with a fake LinkedIn account. A strip at the bottom says the map is relative to relative to the U.K., Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, the “Five Eyes” nations that share intelligence.

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A Constitutional Strategy to Stop NSA Spying

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Photo Credit: APThe National Security Agency looks at literally millions of phone records. It captures millions of e-mails. It sifts through millions of megabytes of private data.

And it does this all without following the requirements of the Fourth Amendment.

It can be stopped. How that can be done in a moment — but first, a closer look at current strategies and roadblocks.

Defending Itself

In a recent press release, one spokesperson went so far as to call criticism of the NSA a “disservice to the nation.”

NSA conducts all of its activities in accordance with applicable laws, regulations, and policies – and assertions to the contrary do a grave disservice to the nation, its allies and partners, and the men and women who make up the National Security Agency.

Read more from this story HERE.

Snowden Reportedly Persuaded Other NSA Workers to Give Up Passwords

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Photo Credit: AFP-Getty ImagesFormer 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.

Read more from this story HERE.

Gun Rights Groups Throwing their Weight Behind Efforts to Rein In NSA

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Photo Credit: Getty ImagesThe National Rifle Association (NRA) is among a number of groups that have signed on to an American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) lawsuit against the secretive government agency.

The NRA has also endorsed bipartisan legislation proposed by House and Senate Judiciary committees that would end the NSA’s collection of bulk phone records.

Another Second Amendment advocate, the Gun Owners of America, expects to back NSA legislation as well.

“There are issues that, maybe at first blush, wouldn’t seem like a gun issue, but once you start looking closely at the issues, they really do affect our gun rights,” said Erich Pratt, the director of communications for Gun Owners of America.

Gun groups fear the NSA could have the authority under a section of the PATRIOT Act to collect information that could be used to create a federal gun database. They also fear the government could be spying on, or eventually targeting, gun owners.

Read more from this story HERE.

Rand Paul on NSA: “They Could Well Be Spying on the President, For All I Know”

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Photo Credit: National Review In light of a recent report, Senator Rand Paul (R., Ky.) fears the National Security Agency may be spying on President Barack Obama. “They could well be spying on the president, for all I know,” Paul says, in an interview with National Review Online. “He has a cell phone, and, in fact, my guess is that they have collected data on the president’s phone.”

Paul also believes the federal government may be tracking Pope Francis. “The most important question we need to ask the NSA is, ‘Are you telling us you’re collecting no data on the pope?’ And, ‘Did you collect any information on him when he was the archbishop, while staying in a certain residence in Rome at the time of the election?’ I don’t think they’re telling the truth.”

Read more from this story HERE.

NSA Secretly Tapped Google, Yahoo Data Centers Worldwide, New Report Claims

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Photo Credit: Fox News Massive cloud networks from companies like Google and Yahoo cache and serve up much of the data on the Internet — and the NSA has secretly tapped into the unencrypted links behind those company’s enormous servers, according to a new report from the Washington Post.

By tapping into that link, the NSA can collect data at will from hundreds of millions of user accounts, the Post reported — including not just foreign citizens and “metadata” but emails, videos and audio from American citizens.

Operation MUSCULAR, a joint program of the NSA and its British equivalent GCHQ, relies on an unnamed telecommunications provider outside of the U.S. to offer secret access to a cable or switch through with Google and Yahoo pass unencrypted traffic between their servers.

The massive servers run by the company are carefully guarded and strictly audited, the companies say; according to Google, buildings housing its servers are guarded around the clock by trained personnel, and secured with heat-sensitive cameras, biometric verification, and more.

Two engineers with close ties to Google exploded in profanity when they saw a drawing of the NSA’s hack revealed by Edward Snowden; the drawing includes a smiley face next to the point at which the agency apparently was able to tap into the world’s data.

Read more from this story HERE.

Democrat Senate Intelligence Chair Dianne Feinstein Calls for ‘Major Review’ of NSA Spying and Says it’s a ‘Big Problem’ if Obama was Unaware

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Photo Credit: APThe U.S. Senate’s top foreign intelligence official said Monday in a scathing statement that she is ‘totally opposed’ to spying of the sort that has gotten the Obama administration into hot water this week.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat who chairs the powerful Senate Intelligence Committee, seemed miffed at the idea that she and her colleagues were out of the loop when the president’s men conducted surveillance on foreign leaders in Europe and Latin America.

And she said President Obama’s lack of knowledge about monitoring of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s phones going back to 2002 posed ‘a big problem.’
So she’s tightening the leash.

‘The White House has informed me that collection on our allies will not continue, which I support,’ said Feinstein.

‘But as far as I’m concerned, Congress needs to know exactly what our intelligence community is doing. To that end, the committee will initiate a major review into all intelligence collection programs.’

Read more from this story HERE.