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A New Material Promises NSA-Proof Wallpaper

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Your next tinfoil hat will won’t be made of tinfoil. A small company called Conductive Composites out of Utah has developed a flexible material — thin and tough enough for wallpaper or woven fabric — that can keep electronic emissions in and electromagnetic pulses out.

There are a few ways to snoop on electronic communications. You can hack into a network or you can sniff out radio emissions. If you want to defend against the latter, you can enclose your electronic device or devices within a structure of electrically conductive, (probably metallic) material. The result is something like a force field. The conductive material distributes the electromagnetic energy away from the target in every direction — think of the *splat* you get when you hurl a tomato at a wall. These enclosures are sometimes called Faraday cages after the 18th-century British scientist who discovered electrolysis.

Today, Faraday cages are all over the place. In 2013, as the College of Cardinals convened to elect a new Pope, the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel was converted into a Faraday cage so that news of the election couldn’t leak out, no matter how hard the paparazzi tried, and how eager the cardinals were to tweet the proceedings. The military also uses Faraday cages for secure communications: Sensitive Compartmented Information Facilities or SCIFs are Faraday cages. You’ll need to be in one to access the Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communication System, or JWICS, the Defense Department’s top-secret internet . . .

The material also holds promise for a scalable defense against an electromagnetic pulse weapon. EMPs are a rising concern for the national security community, but not a new one. Soviet research into electromagnetic pulse weapons goes back to 1949, and active experimentation back to the 1970s. EMPs entered the public eye via the 2005 James Bond movie GoldenEye, in which an EMP caused massive blackouts and widespread fried electronics. Two years later, Army Lt. Gen. Robert Schweitzer testified before the House Joint Economic Committee that such weapons might help fulfill Sun Tzu’s dictum to conquer an enemy without fighting. “If you can take out the civilian economic infrastructure of a nation, then that nation, in addition to not being able to function internally, cannot deploy its military by air or sea, or supply them with any real effectiveness,” he said. Translation: EMPs offer all the victory at a fraction of the cost. (Read more from “A New Material Promises NSA-Proof Wallpaper” HERE)

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Judge Eager to Re-Enter NSA Surveillance Fight

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Larry KlaymanWarning that the constitutional rights of tens of millions of Americans are being violated, a federal judge said Wednesday that he’s eager to expedite a lawsuit seeking to shut down the National Security Agency’s controversial program to collect data on large volumes of U.S. telephone calls.

During an hourlong hearing in U.S. District Court in Washington, Judge Richard Leon repeatedly urged the conservative lawyer who brought the suit to take steps to allow the case to move forward quickly by asking a federal appeals court to formally relinquish control over an appeal in the case.

Leon noted that the so-called bulk collection program is set to shut down on November 29 as part of a transition to a new system where queries will be sent to telephone companies rather than to a central database stored at the NSA.

“The clock is running and there isn’t much time between now and November 29,” Leon told conservative gadfly Larry Klayman. “This court believes there are millions and millions of Americans whose constitutional rights have been and are being violated, but the window…for action is very small….It’s time to move.”

Leon also told Justice Department lawyers that he was intent on moving the case forward and would not countenance any stalling aimed at preventing him from acting in the case before the program, aimed at aiding terrorism investigations, ends. (Read more from “Judge Eager to Re-Enter NSA Surveillance Fight” HERE)

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Obama Administration Wins Ruling in NSA Data Collection Case

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M_Id_442490_NSAA challenge to the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of telephone-call data was dealt a setback Friday when a U.S. appeals court said a judge shouldn’t have moved to block the program, which he called “almost Orwellian.”

U.S. District Judge Richard Leon in 2013 granted legal activist Larry Klayman’s request for an order to halt the NSA’s collection of his data. Leon then put that ruling on hold pending a government appeal.

A divided three-judge panel Friday overturned Leon’s order while saying Klayman’s case can still go forward. The judges all agreed Klayman hadn’t shown he is likely to succeed, but two of them said he should have the opportunity.

One of the two, U.S. Circuit Judge Janice Rogers Brown, said it was entirely possible the Obama administration may rightfully refuse to turn over the information Klayman requests.

“Such is the nature of the government’s privileged control over certain classes of information,” she wrote. “Regulations of this sort may frustrate the inquisitive citizen, but that does not make them illegal or illegitimate.” (Read more from “Obama Administration Wins Ruling in NSA Data Collection Case” HERE)

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Jeb Bush: NSA Needs Broader Powers to Combat ‘Evildoers’

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Jeb BushRepublican presidential hopeful Jeb Bush said Tuesday that the government should have broad surveillance powers of Americans and private technology firms should cooperate better with intelligence agencies to help combat “evildoers.”

At a national security forum in the early voting state of South Carolina, Bush put himself at odds with Republican congressional leaders who earlier this year voted to end the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of phone records.

The former Florida governor said Congress should revisit its changes to the Patriot Act, and he dismissed concerns from civil libertarians who say the program violated citizens’ constitutionally protected privacy rights. (Read more from “Jeb Bush: NSA Needs Broader Powers to Combat ‘Evildoers'” HERE)

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Possible Pentagon Destruction of Evidence in NSA Leak Case Probed

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The PentagonTwo government watchdog agencies are investigating whether the Pentagon inspector general destroyed evidence improperly during the high-profile leak investigation of former National Security Agency senior official Thomas Drake.

The Justice Department acknowledged the probes in a letter last week to a federal magistrate judge who recently received the allegations from Drake’s lawyers. The judge is determining whether she should take further action in a case that ended in 2011 when Drake pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge.

The Justice Department told the judge the inquiries are being conducted by a committee that looks into allegations of misconduct by inspectors general offices and the Office of Special Counsel, a federal agency that investigates whistleblower complaints.

“DOD OIG’s handling of documents … is within the scope of an ongoing inquiry by the Office of Special Counsel (OSC),” Raymond Hulser, the chief of the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section, wrote to U.S. Magistrate Judge Stephanie Gallagher in a letter dated June 11. “In the event that OSC finds evidence of criminal conduct during the course of its work, it will refer that evidence to the Department of Justice for appropriate action.”

The pair of executive branch probes renews questions about the federal government’s controversial pursuit of Drake on charges that he improperly retained classified information under the Espionage Act. (Read more from “Possible Pentagon Destruction of Evidence in NSA Leak Case Probed” HERE)

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Hunting for Hackers, NSA Secretly Expands Internet Spying at U.S. Border

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Photo Credit: NY Times By Charlie Savage, Julia Angwin, Jeff Larson and Henrik Moltke. Without public notice or debate, the Obama administration has expanded the National Security Agency‘s warrantless surveillance of Americans’ international Internet traffic to search for evidence of malicious computer hacking, according to classified N.S.A. documents.

In mid-2012, Justice Department lawyers wrote two secret memos permitting the spy agency to begin hunting on Internet cables, without a warrant and on American soil, for data linked to computer intrusions originating abroad — including traffic that flows to suspicious Internet addresses or contains malware, the documents show.

The Justice Department allowed the agency to monitor only addresses and “cybersignatures” — patterns associated with computer intrusions — that it could tie to foreign governments. But the documents also note that the N.S.A. sought permission to target hackers even when it could not establish any links to foreign powers.

The disclosures, based on documents provided by Edward J. Snowden, the former N.S.A. contractor, and shared with The New York Times and ProPublica, come at a time of unprecedented cyberattacks on American financial institutions, businesses and government agencies, but also of greater scrutiny of secret legal justifications for broader government surveillance.

While the Senate passed legislation this week limiting some of the N.S.A.’s authority, the measure involved provisions in the U.S.A. Patriot Act and did not apply to the warrantless wiretapping program. (Read more from “Hunting for Hackers, N.S.A. Secretly Expands Internet Spying at U.S. Border” HERE)

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The NSA’s Bulk Collection Is Over, but Google and Facebook Are Still in the Data Business

By Kaveh Waddell. Don’t be fooled: Congress may have finally passed the bill reining in the National Security Agency’s bulk-surveillance programs, but your data is still being collected on the Internet.

Lost in the debate over the NSA is the fact that companies like Google and Facebook continue to vacuum up vast troves of consumer data and use it for marketing.

The private-sector tech companies that run the social networks and email services Americans use every day are relatively opaque when it comes to their data-collection and retention policies, which are engineered not to preserve national security but to bolster the companies’ bottom lines.

Critics say the consumer data that private companies collect can paint as detailed a picture of an individual as the metadata that got caught up in the NSA’s dragnets. Companies like Google and Facebook comb through customers’ usage statistics in order to precisely tailor marketing to their users, a valuable service that advertisers pay the companies dearly to access.

“What both types of information collection show is that metadata—data about data—can in many cases be more revelatory than content,” said Gabe Rottman, legislative counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union. “You see that given the granularity with which private data collection can discern very intimate details about your life.” (Read more from this story HERE)

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DEA Eavesdropping Tripled, Bypassed Federal Courts [+video]

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By Brad Heath. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration more than tripled its use of wiretaps and other types of electronic eavesdropping over the past decade, largely bypassing federal courts and Justice Department lawyers in the process, newly obtained records show.

The DEA conducted 11,681 electronic intercepts in the fiscal year that ended in September. Ten years earlier, the drug agency conducted 3,394.

Most of that ramped-up surveillance was never reviewed by federal judges or Justice Department lawyers, who typically are responsible for examining federal agents’ eavesdropping requests. Instead, DEA agents now take 60% of those requests directly to local prosecutors and judges from New York to California, who current and former officials say often approve them more quickly and easily.

Drug investigations account for the vast majority of U.S. wiretaps, and much of that surveillance is carried out by the DEA. Privacy advocates expressed concern that the drug agency had expanded its surveillance without going through internal Justice Department reviews, which often are more demanding than federal law requires.

Wiretaps — which allow the police to listen in on phone calls and other electronic communications — are considered so sensitive that federal law requires approval from a senior Justice Department official before agents can even ask a federal court for permission to conduct one. The law imposes no such restriction on state court wiretaps, even when they are sought by federal agents. (Read more from “DEA Eavesdropping Tripled, Bypassed Federal Courts” HERE)

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Judge Probes Destruction of Evidence in NSA Leak Prosecution

By Marisa Taylor. A federal judge is investigating allegations that the government may have improperly destroyed documents during the high-profile media leak investigation of National Security Agency whistleblower Thomas Drake.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Stephanie Gallagher’s inquiry was launched after Drake’s lawyers in April accused the Pentagon inspector general’s office of destroying possible evidence during Drake’s criminal prosecution, which ended almost four years ago, McClatchy has learned.

In a May 13 letter, Gallagher told Justice Department lawyers that the judge who had presided over the case asked her to evaluate the allegations from Drake’s lawyers “for further investigation and to make recommendations as to whether any action by the court is warranted or appropriate.”

The allegations raise new questions about a prosecution that had been excoriated by the presiding judge after the Justice Department’s case against Drake unraveled and resulted in the former senior NSA official pleading guilty to a misdemeanor charge.

As a result of the controversial prosecution, Drake became a symbol of the dangers whistleblowers can face when they help the media, Congress and government watchdogs investigate wrongdoing at intelligence agencies. (Read more from this story HERE)

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Patriot Act Showdown: Surveillance Powers Lapse With No Deal in Senate [+video]

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Here’s what happens now that the Patriot Act provisions expired

By Erin Kelly. The Senate voted Sunday to move forward with consideration of the USA Freedom Act, a measure that would end the controversial bulk collection of phone metadata. However, Senate leaders were unable to reach a deal to avoid the expiration of key provisions of the Patriot Act before the midnight deadline. Here are some of the immediate impacts:

• The “lone wolf” provision of the law has expired. This allows U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies to target surveillance at suspected terrorists who are acting alone without any direct ties to terrorist groups or rogue nations. It specifically says that it does not apply to U.S. citizens. It has never actually been used, White House officials said.

• The “roving wiretap” provision has expired. This allows federal agencies to monitor a person rather than a specific phone or electronic device. The government can keep track of suspected terrorists regardless of how many cell phones they use and throw away. Approval for the surveillance must be obtained from a federal court.

• Section 215 of the Patriot Act had expired. (Read more on the Patriot Act showdown HERE)

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By Associated Press. The National Security Agency will lose its authority at midnight to collect Americans’ phone records in bulk, after an extraordinary Sunday Senate session failed to produce an 11th-hour deal to extend the fiercely contested program.

Intelligence officials warned that the outcome amounts to a win for terrorists. But civil liberties groups applauded the demise, at least temporarily, of the once-secret post-Sept. 11 program made public by NSA contractor Edward Snowden, which critics say is an unconstitutional intrusion into Americans’ privacy.

The program is all but certain to be revived in a matter of days, although it also looks certain to be completely overhauled under House-passed legislation that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell reluctantly blessed in an about-face Sunday evening. With most senators opposed to extending current law unchanged, even for a short time, McConnell said the House bill was the only option left other than letting the program die off entirely. The Senate voted 77-17 to move ahead on the House-passed bill.

But no final action was expected before Sunday’s midnight deadline after McConnell’s fellow Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul served notice that he would assert his prerogatives under Senate rules to delay a final vote for several days.

“This is what we fought the revolution over, are we going to so blithely give up our freedom? … I’m not going to take it anymore,” Paul declared on the Senate floor, as supporters wearing red “Stand With Rand” T-shirts packed the spectator gallery. (Read more from “Patriot Act Showdown: Surveillance Powers Lapse With No Deal in Senate” HERE)

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Pressure on US Senate to Act Before NSA Spy Programs Expire

By Michael Mathes. CIA chief John Brennan warned Sunday that allowing vital surveillance programs to lapse could increase terror threats, as the US Senate scrambled to renew the controversial provisions hours before their expiration.

With key counterterrorism programs under threat of suspension at midnight Sunday, the top intelligence official made a final pitch for Senate action, arguing that the bulk data collection of telephone records of millions of Americans unconnected to terrorism has not abused civil liberties and only serves to safeguard citizens.

“This is something that we can’t afford to do right now,” Brennan said of allowing the counterterrorism provisions to expire at midnight Sunday.

“Because if you look at the horrific terrorist attacks and violence being perpetrated around the globe, we need to keep our country safe, and our oceans are not keeping us safe the way they did century ago,” he said on CBS talk show “Face the Nation.”

Brennan added that groups like Islamic State have followed the developments “very carefully” and are “looking for the seams to operate.” (Read more from this story HERE)

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House Republicans to McConnell: Pass Our NSA Bill or Programs ‘Go Dark’

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Photo Credit: AP House and Senate Republicans were locked in an escalating standoff Friday over legislation reining in the National Security Agency, with lawmakers warning surveillance programs could “go dark” in a matter of days if they don’t reach an agreement . . .

With Patriot Act authorization for NSA data collection set to expire on June 1, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell is pushing a two-month extension to keep the programs running. But the House already has passed a separate bill, called the USA Freedom Act, that would end the NSA’s bulk collection of domestic phone metadata, while replacing it with case-by-case searches, and extend two other expiring surveillance provisions used by the FBI.

The House has since left town for the holiday break, and House lawmakers are putting heavy pressure on the Senate to just accept their bill — or else.

“The NSA programs will lapse if the Senate doesn’t take our bill,” a senior House GOP source told Fox News . . .

House lawmakers have leverage because if the Senate goes with McConnell’s two-month extension, and not the House-passed version, sources say the House would not come back in session to deal with it before June 1. That would leave an unfinished bill hanging on Capitol Hill over the holiday. (Read more from “House Republicans to McConnell: Pass Our NSA Bill or Programs ‘Go Dark'” HERE)

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Former NSA Lawyer: Keeping Bulk Collection Was a Mistake, It was All VP Dick Cheney’s Fault

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AP879019945768-1-e1431713059844-article-display-bThe Bush administration’s decision to keep bulk collection of domestic phone records a secret was a strategic mistake, former NSA Inspector General Joel Brenner told his former colleagues on Friday.

But in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Vice President Dick Cheney’s office was so determined to assert untrammeled executive power that any internal debate about going public or telling Congress was “academic” at the time, said Brenner, who served as the agency’s in-house watchdog from 2002 to 2006.

Brenner published his prepared remarks Friday morning, just before delivering them at the National Security Agency headquarters at an event marking the 40th Anniversary of the Church Committee, the special congressional committee that exposed surveillance abuse and led to the passage of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).

Brenner concluded that the program blatantly violated FISA, and he recalled asking his NSA colleagues why the White House didn’t just go to Congress and get the law changed. But, he noted: “This was actually an academic question, because policy was being driven, and driven hard, by [Cheney legal counsel David] Addington, who detested the FISA statute.”

Brenner said bulk collection was a part of the now “mostly declassified” program called STELLAR WIND, which “was run directly by the Office of the Vice President and put under the direct personal control of the Vice President’s counsel, David Addington.” (Read more from “Former NSA Lawyer: Keeping Bulk Collection Was a Mistake” HERE)

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