Obama Administration NSA Spying on Americans

[American Patriot]

It's not the spirit in which you put it in place, Mr. President, it's the spirit in which it is abused by others that counts.


July 1st, 2013
08:44 AM ET


George W. Bush: Snowden damaged US; security programs protect civil liberties

CNN Anchor and Correspondent Robyn Curnow sits down with former President George W. Bush and Laura Bush to discuss their humanitarian mission in Zambia, where a clinic that helps diagnose and treat cervical cancer opens today. Curnow asked Bush about his thoughts on Nelson Mandela, Edward Snowden, privacy and his legacy.


On Edward Snowden, former President George W. Bush said, “I know he damaged the country and the Obama administration will deal with it.” He continued, “I think he damaged the security of the country.”


“I put the program in place to protect the country and one of the certainties is civil liberties were guaranteed,” Bush said.


Later in the interview, he added, “Ultimately, history will judge the decisions I made. I won’t be around because it’s going to take a while for the objective historians to show up. And so I’m pretty comfortable with it. I did what I did. I know the spirit in which I did it.”


The full interview airs today on The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer at 5pm ET on CNN.

[American Patriot]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-23138073

1 July 2013 Last updated at 13:31 ET Edward Snowden 'applies for asylum in Russia'



Vladimir Putin: "He should cease his work aimed at damaging our American partners"



US intelligence leaker Edward Snowden has applied to Russia for political asylum, Russian officials say.


Foreign ministry consul Kim Shevchenko said the request was made on Sunday night. The Kremlin has made no comment.


The 30-year-old former CIA analyst is believed to be holed up in a Moscow airport hotel.


Earlier, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Mr Snowden was welcome to stay as long as he stopped "inflicting damage on our American partners".


The US has not yet made any comment on the latest developments.


President Barack Obama, speaking earlier in Tanzania, said Washington and Moscow had held "high level" discussions about Mr Snowden.


"We are hopeful the Russian government makes decisions based on the normal procedures regarding international travel and the normal interactions law enforcement have," he told reporters.


According to Russia's Interfax news agency, Mr Snowden's application for asylum was handed to a consular official at Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport late on Sunday evening.


The application was delivered by Sarah Harrison, a member of the Wikileaks legal team acting as Mr Snowden's representative, Kim Shevchenko was quoted by the news agency saying.


Russia's Federal Migration Service has denied the report, which appeared in the New York Times earlier.

[vector7]

Companion Thread:

• Obama isolating America from its Allies

Berlin accuses Washington of cold war tactics over snooping

Reports of NSA snooping on Europe go well beyond previous revelations of electronic spying

• Ian Traynor in Brussels
• The Guardian, Sunday 30 June 2013 16.55 EDT

Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger: 'If the media reports are true, it is reminiscent of the actions of enemies during the cold war'. Photograph: Ole Spata/Corbis

Transatlantic relations plunged at the weekend as Berlin, Brussels and Paris all demanded that Washington account promptly and fully for new disclosures on the scale of the US National Security Agency's spying on its European allies.

As further details emerged of the huge reach of US electronic snooping on Europe, Berlin accused Washington of treating it like the Soviet Union, "like a cold war enemy".

The European commission called on the US to clarify allegations that the NSA, operating from Nato headquarters a few miles away in Brussels, had infiltrated secure telephone and computer networks at the venue for EU summits in the Belgian capital. The fresh revelations in the Guardian and allegations in the German publication Der Spiegel triggered outrage in Germany and in the European parliament and threatened to overshadow negotiations on an ambitious transatlantic free-trade pact worth hundreds of billions due to open next week.

The reports of NSA snooping on Europe – and on Germany in particular – went well beyond previous revelations of electronic spying said to be focused on identifying suspected terrorists, extremists and organised criminals.

Der Spiegel reported that it had seen documents and slides from the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden indicating that US agencies bugged the offices of the EU in Washington and at the UN in New York. They are also accused of directing an operation from Nato headquarters in Brussels to infiltrate the telephone and email networks at the EU's Justus Lipsius building in the Belgian capital, the venue for EU summits and home of the European council.

Citing documents it said it had "partly seen", the magazine reported that more than five years ago security officers at the EU had noticed several missed calls apparently targeting the remote maintenance system in the building that were traced to NSA offices within the Nato compound in Brussels.

Less than three months before a German general election, the impact of the fresh disclosures is likely to be strongest in Germany which, it emerged, is by far the biggest target in Europe for the NSA's Prism programme scanning phone and internet traffic and capturing and storing the metadata.

The documents reviewed by Der Spiegel showed that Germany was treated in the same US spying category as China, Iraq or Saudi Arabia, while the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand were deemed to be allies not subject to remotely the same level of surveillance.

Germany's justice minister, Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, called for an explanation from the US authorities. "If the media reports are true, it is reminiscent of the actions of enemies during the cold war," she was quoted as saying in the German newspaper Bild. "It is beyond imagination that our friends in the US view Europeans as the enemy."

France later also asked the US for an explanation. The foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, said: "These acts, if confirmed, would be completely unacceptable.

"We expect the American authorities to answer the legitimate concerns raised by these press revelations as quickly as possible."

Washington and Brussels are scheduled to open ambitious free-trade talks next week after years of arduous preparation. Senior officials in Brussels are worried that the talks will be setback by the NSA scandal. "Obviously we will need to see what is the impact on the trade talks," said a senior official in Brussels.

A second senior official said the allegations would cause a furore in the European parliament and could then hamper relations with the US.
However, Robert Madelin, one of Britain's most senior officials in the European commission, tweeted that EU trade negotiators always operated on the assumption that their communications were listened to.

A spokesman for the European commission said: "We have immediately been in contact with the US authorities in Washington and in Brussels and have confronted them with the press reports. They have told us they are checking on the accuracy of the information released yesterday and will come back to us."

There were calls from MEPs for Herman Van Rompuy, president of the European council – who has his office in the building allegedly targeted by the US – and José Manuel Barroso, president of the European commission, to urgently appear before the chamber to explain what steps they were taking in response to the growing body of evidence of US and British electronic surveillance of Europe through the Prism and Tempora operations.

Guy Verhofstadt, the former Belgian prime minister and leader of the liberals in the European parliament, said: "This is absolutely unacceptable and must be stopped immediately. The American data-collection mania has achieved another quality by spying on EU officials and their meetings. Our trust is at stake."

Luxembourg's foreign minister, Jean Asselborn, told Der Spiegel: "If these reports are true, it's disgusting." Asselborn called for guarantees from the highest level of the US government that the snooping and spying be halted immediately.

Martin Schulz, the head of the European parliament, said: "I am deeply worried and shocked about the allegations of US authorities spying on EU offices. If the allegations prove to be true, it would be an extremely serious matter which will have a severe impact on EU-US relations.
"On behalf of the European parliament, I demand full clarification and require further information speedily from the US authorities with regard to these allegations."

There were also calls for John Kerry, the US secretary of state on his way back from the Middle East, to make a detour to Brussels to explain US activities.

"We need to get clarifications and transparency at the highest level," said Marietje Schaake, a Dutch liberal MEP. "Kerry should come to Brussels on his way back from the Middle East. This is essential for the transatlantic alliance."

The documents suggesting the clandestine bugging operations were from September 2010, Der Spiegel said.

Der Spiegel quoted the Snowden documents as revealing that the US taps half a billion phone calls, emails and text messages in Germany a month. "We can attack the signals of most foreign third-class partners, and we do," Der Spiegel quoted a passage in the NSA document as saying.

It quoted the document from 2010 as stating that "the European Union is an attack target".

On an average day, the NSA monitored about 15m German phone connections and 10m internet datasets, rising to 60m phone connections on busy days, the report said.

Officials in Brussels said this reflected Germany's weight in the EU and probably also entailed elements of industrial and trade espionage. "The Americans are more interested in what governments think than the European commission. And they make take the view that Germany determines European policy," said one of the senior officials.

Jan Philipp Albrecht, a German Green party MEP and a specialist in data protection, told the Guardian the revelations were outrageous. "It's not about political answers now, but rule of law, fundamental constitutional principles and rights of European citizens," he said.

"We now need a debate on surveillance measures as a whole looking at underlying technical agreements. I think what we can do as European politicians now is to protect the rights of citizens and their rights to control their own personal data."

Germany has some of the toughest data privacy laws in Europe, with the issue highly sensitive not least because of the comprehensive surveillance by the Stasi in former communist east Germany as well as the wartime experience with the Gestapo under the Nazis.

Der Spiegel noted that so far in the NSA debacle, the chancellor, Angela Merkel, had asked only "polite" questions of the Americans but that the new disclosures on the sweeping scale of the surveillance of Germany could complicate her bid for a third term in September.

[Phil Fiord]

Yep. This administration has truly made our country the most hated we have ever been and being what has been said in the past, that is a huge achievement. I mean, when George W was President, he was called many things, but we still had our allies. Now not so much.

[American Patriot]

3 Big Revelations From The Newly Leaked NSA Documents

Posted by The Eye is Watching on July 2, 2013
Posted in: Ramblings, World News. Tagged: ed snowden, Edward snowden, NSA, NSA files, nsa privacy, sheeple, socialism. Leave a Comment

The United States has allegedly been spying on its own allies, according to a new report from theGuardian


The EU embassy in Washington, D.C., was allegedly a target for surveillance, according to new NSA documents.


Facebook.com/EUintheUS





Over the weekend, the Washington Post published four new slides detailing how the National Security Agency collects its data under the PRISM system, while the Guardian released new documents leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden. Here, in no particular order, are three things we learned:


1. The U.S. is allegedly spying on its allies

Perhaps the most damning new revelation is that the U.S. government may have been spying on friends as well as foes. Thirty-eight embassies and missions are outlined as “targets” on one document, reports the Guardian. The document details the range of spying techniques employed, “from bugs implanted in electronic communications gear to taps into cables to the collection of transmissions with specialized antennae.” Along with “traditional ideological adversaries” and “sensitive Middle Eastern countries,” the unofficial roster of spy targets includes French, Italian, and Greek embassies, as well as Japan, Mexico, South Korea, India, and Turkey.


One method, codenamed Dropmire, involves a surveillance tap planted in a “commercially available encrypted fax machine” used at the EU embassy in Washington, D.C. If the allegations are indeed legitimate, German justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger says the United States’ behavior is “reminiscent of the actions of enemies during the cold war.” Similarly, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius tells CNN that “these acts, if they are confirmed, would be absolutely unacceptable.”


2. The PRISM system’s target-selection process is murky

New slides released by the Washington Post highlight what is termed the PRISM system’s “tasking process,” or how new foreign targets are selected to spy upon. To add new targets to the list, an NSA analyst must show “reasonable belief” that the “specified target is a foreign national who is overseas at the time of the collection,” notes the Post. According to the slides, “reasonable belief” is defined as “51 percent confidence” that the analyst believes the target to be culpable. What factors go into formulating that percentage are, at the moment, unclear.


3. PRISM allegedly collects data from companies in real time

The Post suggests the FBI uses “government equipment on private company property” to retrieve information on a specified target, before it is then passed on to “customers” in either the NSA, CIA, or FBI. If true, this ostensibly allows the government’s data collection to proceed in real time. To refresh your memory: Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, PayTalk, AOL, Skype, and YouTube were all reported to be taking part in the PRISM program.


And yet, all the companies have “strenuously denied” involvement, says Mike Masnick atTechDirt, which doesn’t jibe with the Post‘s own annotations. Based on the slides, “it’s not at all clear” that Data Intercept Technology Units (DITU) are physically located on private the premises of private companies:


Google has said in the past that when it receives a valid FISA court order under the associated program it uses secure FTP to ship the info to the government. From that, it seems like the “DITU” could just be a government computer somewhere, not on the premises of these companies, and info is uploaded to those servers following valid FISC orders. [TechDirt]

[American Patriot]

Rafael Correa: we helped Snowden by mistake

Ecuador's president reveals the whistleblower was granted a temporary travel card at 4am 'without authorisation or validity'

• Rory Carroll in Quito
  
• guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 2 July 2013 09.42 EDT

Ecuador's president Rafael Correa said Snowden 'must be on Ecuadorean territory' to make an asylum request. Photograph: Martin Mejia/AP



Ecuador is not considering Edward Snowden's asylum request and never intended to facilitate his flight from Hong Kong, president Rafael Correa said as the whistleblower made a personal plea to Quito for his case to be heard.


Snowden was Russia's responsibility and would have to reach Ecuadorean territory before the country would consider any asylum request, the president said in an interview on Monday.


"Are we responsible for getting him to Ecuador? It's not logical. The country that has to give him a safe conduct document is Russia."


The president, speaking to the Guardian at the presidential palace in Quito, said his government did not intentionally help Snowden travel from Hong Kong to Moscow with a temporary travel pass. "It was a mistake on our part," he added.


The comments clashed with expressions of gratitude the 30-year-old fugitive issued hours later, before Correa's views had been published.


"I must express my deep respect for your principles and sincere thanks for your government's action in considering my request for political asylum," said a letter, in Spanish and attributed to Snowden.


"There are few world leaders who would risk standing for the human rights of an individual against the most powerful government on earth, and the bravery of Ecuador and its people is an example to the world."


The former NSA contractor contrasted the silence of governments afraid of US retaliation with Ecuador's help in his flight to Moscow on 22 June. A temporary Ecuadorean travel document substituted for his cancelled US passport.


"The decisive action of your consul in London, Fidel Narvaez, guaranteed my rights would be protected upon departing Hong Kong – I could never have risked travel without that. Now, as a result, and through the continued support of your government, I remain free and able to publish information that serves the public interest."


The letter will boost Ecuador's reputation with Snowden's supporters but sat awkwardly with the president's attempt to distance Quito from the saga. Correa said Quito respected the right of asylum and appreciated Snowden exposing the extent of US spying, but will not consider an asylum request unless he made it to an Ecuadorean embassy or the country itself – a remote possibility while he remains reportedly marooned in Sheremetyevo airport's transit lounge. "He must be on Ecuadorean territory," the president said.


Correa added his government had not, and would not, give Snowden an authorised travel document to extract himself from the airport. "The right of asylum request is one thing but helping someone travel from one country to another — Ecuador has never done this. "


He said the temporary travel document issued by his London consul on 22 June – and publicly disowned five days later — was a blunder.


"It was a mistake on our part. Look, this crisis hit us in a very vulnerable moment. Our foreign minister was touring Asia. Our deputy foreign minister was in the Czech Republic. Our US ambassador was in Italy."


Narvaez and Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder who has sheltered at Ecuador's London embassy for the past year to escape extradition, took matters into their own hands because they feared Snowden risked capture, said Correa.


"The consul, in his desperation, probably he couldn't reach the foreign minister, it was four in the morning, and he issued a safe conduct document without validity, without authorisation, without us even knowing."


The president said Narvaez would be "sanctioned" but that he understood the consul and Assange acted in good faith. Quito's appreciation for Assange had not been damaged, he said.


Correa, a standard bearer for the left in Latin America, softened his denunciations of the US over the weekend and praised vice president Joe Biden for a gracious phone call, saying he would consider Washington's request to refuse any asylum claim from Snowden while retaining Ecuador's sovereignty. Asked if he thought Snowden would ever make it to Quito, he said he did not know.

[Malsua]

Oh boy, now this should make Mr. Snowden pucker up if he ever gets on an airplane.

I bet there's some red faced intelligence agents right about now...also, this stinks of a KGB ruse. Leak out that he's on the Bolivian presidents plane and while the intelligence agencies are looking at that...fly him the other direction.

---------------------
http://mobile.reuters.com/article/id...30703?irpc=932


Top News
Bolivia angered by search of president's plane, no sign of Snowden
Wed, Jul 03 06:49 AM EDT
image
1 of 4

By Michael Shields

VIENNA (Reuters) - Bolivia accused Austria of an act of aggression by searching President Evo Morales' plane on Wednesday and blamed Washington for its forced landing in Vienna over suspicions that former U.S. spy agency contractor Edward Snowden was on board.

Morales' plane was stranded at Vienna airport for several hours after Portugal and France abruptly canceled air permits for it to fly through their airspace, but eventually resumed its flight home form an energy meeting in Moscow.

Austria found no sign of Snowden on board. He is believed to still be in the transit area of a Moscow airport, where he has been trying since June 23 to find a country that will protect him from prosecution in the United States on espionage charges.

The diversion and search of Morales' plane were the latest turns in the 30-year-old Snowden's bid to escape the clutches of the United States since he divulged details of a secret U.S. government surveillance program, Prism.

Bolivian Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca blamed the forced stopover in Vienna on "unfounded suspicions that Mr Snowden was on the plane".

"We don't know who invented this lie," Choquehuanca said in La Paz. "We want to express our displeasure because this has put the president's life at risk."

Bolivia's ambassador to the United Nations told reporters in Geneva that Austria's decision to search the plane was an act of aggression and a violation of international law.

The envoy, Sacha Llorentty Soliz, said he had no doubt that the orders to divert Morales' plane came from the United States.

Austria's deputy chancellor, Michael Spindelegger, confirmed Snowden had not been stowed away after Austrian authorities inspected Morales' government plane but said the search had been permitted by Morales.

"Our colleagues from the airport had a look and can give assurances that no one is on board who is not a Bolivian citizen," Spindelegger told reporters at the airport.

"Morales agreed to a voluntary inspection," he added.

Austrian President Heinz Fischer said Spanish airspace was open to Morales' plane.

The plane eventually left Vienna about noon on Wednesday, an airport spokesman said.

Bolivia is among more than a dozen countries where Snowden has sought asylum and Morales has said he would consider granting the American refuge if requested.

Snowden's options have narrowed since he arrived in Moscow from Hong Kong with no valid travel documents after the United States revoked his passport.

U.S. President Barack Obama has warned that an offer of asylum from a country would carry serious costs.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is unwilling to send Snowden to the United States, a move that could make it look weak, and it has no extradition treaty with Washington. But he also does not want to damage ties with the United States over a man for whom Putin, a former KGB spy, has little sympathy.

Five countries have rejected granting Snowden asylum, seven have said they would consider a request if made on their soil, and eight said they had either not made a decision or not received a request.

[American Patriot]

Wow... could you imagine them accidentally on purpose downing an aircraft that MIGHT have someone like Snowden on it, but actually having, say... a world leader aboard?

[American Patriot]

https://optin.stopwatching.us/?r=eff








[The National Security Agency's] capability at any time could be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would be no place to hide.
Senator Frank Church, 1975




Stop Watching Us.

The revelations about the National Security Agency's surveillance apparatus, if true, represent a stunning abuse of our basic rights. We demand the U.S. Congress reveal the full extent of the NSA's spying programs.

Close Letter Dear Members of Congress,
We write to express our concern about recent reports published in the Guardian and the Washington Post, and acknowledged by the Obama Administration, which reveal secret spying by the National Security Agency (NSA) on phone records and Internet activity of people in the United States.


The Washington Post and the Guardian recently published reports based on information provided by an intelligence contractor showing how the NSA and the FBI are gaining broad access to data collected by nine of the leading U.S. Internet companies and sharing this information with foreign governments. As reported, the U.S. government is extracting audio, video, photographs, e-mails, documents, and connection logs that enable analysts to track a person's movements and contacts over time. As a result, the contents of communications of people both abroad and in the U.S. can be swept in without any suspicion of crime or association with a terrorist organization.


Leaked reports also published by the Guardian and confirmed by the Administration reveal that the NSA is also abusing a controversial section of the PATRIOT Act to collect the call records of millions of Verizon customers. The data collected by the NSA includes every call made, the time of the call, the duration of the call, and other "identifying information" for millions of Verizon customers, including entirely domestic calls, regardless of whether those customers have ever been suspected of a crime. The Wall Street Journal has reported that other major carriers, including AT&T and Sprint, are subject to similar secret orders.


This type of blanket data collection by the government strikes at bedrock American values of freedom and privacy. This dragnet surveillance violates the First and Fourth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution, which protect citizens' right to speak and associate anonymously, guard against unreasonable searches and seizures, and protect their right to privacy.


We are calling on Congress to take immediate action to halt this surveillance and provide a full public accounting of the NSA's and the FBI's data collection programs. We call on Congress to immediately and publicly:

1. Enact reform this Congress to Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act, the state secrets privilege, and the FISA Amendments Act to make clear that blanket surveillance of the Internet activity and phone records of any person residing in the U.S. is prohibited by law and that violations can be reviewed in adversarial proceedings before a public court;
2. Create a special committee to investigate, report, and reveal to the public the extent of this domestic spying. This committee should create specific recommendations for legal and regulatory reform to end unconstitutional surveillance;
3. Hold accountable those public officials who are found to be responsible for this unconstitutional surveillance.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

[American Patriot]

June 27, 2013 | By Rainey Reitman


Campaign to End NSA Warrantless Surveillance Surges Past 500,000 Signers

Tim Berners-Lee, Inventor of the World Wide Web, Joins Half Million Users in Opposing NSA Dragnet Surveillance

Over five hundred thousand people have signed onto the Stop Watching Us campaign, a nonpartisan, grassroots campaign opposing the dragnet surveillance programs of the National Security Agency (NSA). Galvanized by newly surfaced evidence confirming the NSA’s surveillance of the phone records and Internet activity of individuals in the United States and abroad, the Stop Watching Us coalition is seeking public accountability and tangible reform to rein in unconstitutional surveillance.




Since launching just over two weeks ago, the campaign has already garnered the support of Internet companies like Namecheap, reddit, and Mozilla as well as dozens of advocacy organizations from across the political spectrum.


Yesterday, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, also added his support to the campaign. He was joined by internationally renowned artist Ai Weiwei. Other prominent supporters include Icelandic Parliamentarian Birgitta Jónsdóttir, author Cory Doctorow, Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, and actor John Cusack.
Sir Tim Berners-Lee in 2008 (CC BY Knight Foundation) and Ai Weiwei in 2007 (CC BY Hafenbar)

"This campaign has been lightening-fast. Hundreds of thousands of people have now called on Congress to provide a full accounting of the National Security Agency’s powerful and frankly unsettling spying practices," said EFF Staff Attorney Mark Rumold, "Now all eyes are turned on Congress to see if they’ll do the right thing and be responsive to the will of the people."


Every time a person signs onto the stopwatching.us site, emails opposing dragnet surveillance are sent to that individual’s elected officials or to the president. These emails call for a full investigation and public accounting of the National Security Agency’s spying practices, reform to the law to prevent such surveillance, and holding public officials accountable for the role they played.


In addition to signing onto Stop Watching Us, individuals who oppose NSA spying can call their members of Congress using the dedicated call line 1-STOP-323-NSA (1-786-732-3672). Read more about contacting Congress, including more privacy-friendly ways of calling Congress. You can also visit stopwatching.us to add your name to the campaign.

[American Patriot]

Reddit, Mozilla to stage Fourth of July protest against NSA spying ~ The Hill

By mrdsk on July 3, 2013

SEE ALSO: Overwhelm The NSA With Vice’s New Spam Generator (Popsci)
by Jennifer Martinez
The Hill
Reddit, Mozilla and a host of other websites are planning to launch an online protest this Fourth of July against the National Security Agency’s (NSA) sweeping surveillance of telephone records and Internet traffic.
The participating sites, including 4chan and WordPress, will display anti-NSA spying messages on their home pages. They will also direct people to the site CallForFreedom.org, where supporters can donate money to help fund TV ads against the intelligence programs and press for action from lawmakers.
The Internet Defense League, a coalition of online activists and websites that banded together after the wave of protests against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), is organizing the anti-NSA surveillance campaign.
The group is billing the July 4th online protest as its biggest one since SOPA, and estimates that thousands of sites will participate — though it’s unclear whether the effort will have the same success in Washington.
FULL ARTICLE @ THE HILL

[American Patriot]

Reddit, Mozilla to stage Fourth of July protest against NSA spying

By Jennifer Martinez - 07/02/13 01:53 PM ET
Tweet
Reddit, Mozilla and a host of other websites are planning to launch an online protest this Fourth of July against the National Security Agency's (NSA) sweeping surveillance of telephone records and Internet traffic.


The participating sites, including 4chan and WordPress, will display anti-NSA spying messages on their home pages. They will also direct people to the site CallForFreedom.org, where supporters can donate money to help fund TV ads against the intelligence programs and press for action from lawmakers.








The Internet Defense League, a coalition of online activists and websites that banded together after the wave of protests against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), is organizing the anti-NSA surveillance campaign.

The group is billing the July 4th online protest as its biggest one since SOPA, and estimates that thousands of sites will participate — though it's unclear whether the effort will have the same success in Washington.


This time around, protesters won't have the heft of Google, Wikipedia and some of the other Web companies that participated in the Internet blackout last January.


“The NSA programs that have been exposed are blatantly unconstitutional, and have a detrimental effect on free speech and freedom of press worldwide. This is going to be our biggest protest since SOPA, and it should be no surprise," said Tiffiniy Cheng, a spokeswoman for the Internet Defense League, in a statement.


"You can’t disregard people’s privacy, invade their personal lives on a daily basis, and not expect them to fight back.”


Mozilla, the maker of the popular Firefox Web browser, and advocacy groups Free Press, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, ColorofChange.org and Restore the Fourth also announced Tuesday that rallies will be held in major cities across the United States, including Washington and San Francisco, on July 4th to protest the surveillance programs and call for more government accountability.


"We need to bring these government and corporate activities into the light of day," said Craig Aaron, CEO of Free Press, on a conference call with reporters.


The revelations over NSA surveillance have sparked outrage among privacy and civil liberties activists, who argue that Edward Snowden's leaks about the programs have revealed the government is flouting the Fourth Amendment's protections against unreasonable searches and seizures.


The groups said the protests are intended to push the government to curb these programs.


"At its core, we see this kind of activity [as] undermining the trust and fabric of what an open Internet can and should be," said Harvey Anderson, senior vice president of business and legal affairs at Mozilla, which is known for producing open-source Web software.


Mozilla has not been linked to the NSA surveillance program PRISM, which is used to monitor Internet traffic, unlike its other Web peers Google, Microsoft and Facebook.


When asked why Mozilla hasn't been approached by the NSA to hand over data, Anderson said he was unsure, but noted the company generally tries to minimize the collection of people's data online.


"It's unclear why we weren't approached," Anderson said. "I really don't know, other than the fact that we really don't collect a lot of data."


Lending his star power to the cause, actor John Cusack also participated on the call. Cusack, who serves as a Freedom of Press Foundation board member, lambasted the media and government for focusing too much attention on Snowden and his whereabouts rather than looking at the information in the documents he leaked.


"We've shifted the conversation to almost anything but the revelations that are there," Cusack said.


Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/hillicon-va...#ixzz2Xzbrw6XL
Follow us: @thehill on Twitter | TheHill on Facebook

[Malsua]

Every time a person signs onto the stopwatching.us site

I went to that site and signed it. The EFF is a good organization.

[American Patriot]

I signed.

I'm not sure that any of these "petitions" do or mean jack. I sign them from time to time to make it known we as a people are pissed off an want a hearing on it.

We are allowed to petition our government, by the Constitution and sometimes the mechanism is questionable, but somewhere, sometime there must be someone reading this stuff, even if they are pooh-poohing it, they saw it and know in their heart of hearts We the people are severely pissed.

[Malsua]

This particular one has weight because so many foundations are behind it.

[American Patriot]

Let us hope... for change... /chuckles

So much is cliche now, isn't it?

[Phil Fiord]

My pondering today had me consider Congress has about 6% approval. How can Congress even think they are doing the "will of the people"?

[Phil Fiord]

I found this and thought it was pretty good.

[Toad]

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/07/us....html?hpw&_r=1&

ERIC LICHTBLAU, The New York Times, July 6, 2013

WASHINGTON — In more than a dozen classified rulings, the nation’s surveillance court has created a secret body of law giving the National Security Agency the power to amass vast collections of data on Americans while pursuing not only terrorism suspects, but also people possibly involved in nuclear proliferation, espionage and cyberattacks, officials say.

The rulings, some nearly 100 pages long, reveal that the court has taken on a much more expansive role by regularly assessing broad constitutional questions and establishing important judicial precedents, with almost no public scrutiny, according to current and former officials familiar with the court’s classified decisions.

The 11-member Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, known as the FISA court, was once mostly focused on approving case-by-case wiretapping orders. But since major changes in legislation and greater judicial oversight of intelligence operations were instituted six years ago, it has quietly become almost a parallel Supreme Court, serving as the ultimate arbiter on surveillance issues and delivering opinions that will most likely shape intelligence practices for years to come, the officials said.

Last month, a former National Security Agency contractor, Edward J. Snowden, leaked a classified order from the FISA court, which authorized the collection of all phone-tracing data from Verizon business customers. But the court’s still-secret decisions go far beyond any single surveillance order, the officials said.

“We’ve seen a growing body of law from the court,” a former intelligence official said. “What you have is a common law that develops where the court is issuing orders involving particular types of surveillance, particular types of targets.”

In one of the court’s most important decisions, the judges have expanded the use in terrorism cases of a legal principle known as the “special needs” doctrine and carved out an exception to the Fourth Amendment’s requirement of a warrant for searches and seizures, the officials said.

The special needs doctrine was originally established in 1989 by the Supreme Court in a ruling allowing the drug testing of railway workers, finding that a minimal intrusion on privacy was justified by the government’s need to combat an overriding public danger. Applying that concept more broadly, the FISA judges have ruled that the N.S.A.’s collection and examination of Americans’ communications data to track possible terrorists does not run afoul of the Fourth Amendment, the officials said.

That legal interpretation is significant, several outside legal experts said, because it uses a relatively narrow area of the law — used to justify airport screenings, for instance, or drunken-driving checkpoints — and applies it much more broadly, in secret, to the wholesale collection of communications in pursuit of terrorism suspects. “It seems like a legal stretch,” William C. Banks, a national security law expert at Syracuse University, said in response to a description of the decision. “It’s another way of tilting the scales toward the government in its access to all this data.”

[American Patriot]

Court Rejects State Secrets Defense in Dragnet Surveillance Case

• By David Kravets
• 07.08.13
• 7:05 PM

• Follow @dmkravets

The National Security Agency allegedly siphoned Americans’ communications from this room at an AT&T office in San Francisco. Photo: Mark Klein.

A federal judge today rejected the assertion from President Barack Obama’s administration that the state secrets defense barred a lawsuit alleging the government is illegally siphoning Americans’ communications to the National Security Agency.
U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White in San Francisco, however, did not give the Electronic Frontier Foundation the green light to sue the government in a long-running case that dates to 2008, with trips to the appellate courts in between.
The EFF’s lawsuit accuses the federal government of working with the nation’s largest telecommunication companies to illegally funnel Americans’ electronic communications to the National Security Agency — a surveillance program the EFF said commenced under the President George W. Bush administration following 9/11. The allegations were based on a former AT&T technician’s documents that outline a secret room in an AT&T San Francisco office that routes internet traffic to the NSA.
The decision (.pdf) comes a month after the Guardian leaked documents that seemingly support the EFF’s allegations.
The state secrets doctrine was first recognized by the Supreme Court in the McCarthy era, and is asserted when the government claims litigation threatens national security and might expose state secrets. Judges routinely dismiss cases on that assertion alone.
Still, the judge also ruled that the a domestic surveillance law known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, in many instances, did not allow the government to be sued for illegally spying in Americans. White said that the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last year that when Congress wrote the law regulating eavesdropping on Americans and spies, it never waived sovereign immunity in the section prohibiting targeting Americans unlawfully.
The appeals court also said the FISA law removed the government’s ability to assert the state secrets defense.
“That is huge,” Cindy Cohn, the EFF’s legal director, said in a telephone interview. “That was the centerpiece of the government’s defense.”
While the judge dismissed a slew of counts challenging the spying, he declined to rule on the constitutional issues of whether the alleged spying breached the First Amendment and Fourth Amendment. He ordered further briefing on that issue, including whether FISA preempts the state secrets privilege on those claims, and whether the suit can continue “without resulting in impermissible damage to ongoing national security efforts.”
White ruled that “the potential risk to national security may still be too great to pursue confirmation of the existence or facts relating to the scope of the alleged governmental program.” Yet the judge also wanted briefing on how the Guardian’s publication of snippets about the program affected national security.
A hearing has been set for August 23 in San Francisco.