NSA monitoring all Verizon users

[c1ue]

This is just lovely...

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/06...er_data_tonsa/

The USA's National Security Agency (NSA) has harvested all the call data from US mobile provider Verizon since April, according to a secret court order leaked to The Guardian.

The order was granted by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on April 25 and instructs Verizon to hand over the "session identifying information (e.g., originating and terminating telephone number, International Mobile Subscriber Identity (IMSI) number, International Mobile station Equipment Identity (IMEI) number, etc.), trunk identifier, telephone calling card numbers, and time and duration of call."

The three month order is set to terminate on July 19 but it may be part of a rolling court requirement for Verizon and could be renewed. It is not known if other US telecommunication companies are operating under similar strictures and handing over their customer data, but such orders usually bar the recipient from discussing their imposition.

"We've certainly seen the government increasingly strain the bounds of 'relevance' to collect large numbers of records at once - everyone at one or two degrees of separation from a target - but vacuuming all metadata up indiscriminately would be an extraordinary repudiation of any pretence of constraint or particularized suspicion," said Julian Sanchez, a surveillance expert with the Cato Institute.

The month after the September 11 attacks then-President George W. Bush ordered the NSA to start surveillance of US phone records and phone companies like AT&T had uplinks installed at their exchanges to funnel data to the electronic spying agency. Bush also retroactively granted the telecommunications industry immunity from litigation after the news leaked out.

It now appears that the NSA is instead simply getting telecos to hand over the information wholesale, using the "business records" provision of the Patriot Act, 50 USC section 1861. This allows the seizure of "including books, records, papers, documents, and other items" without the authorities having to provide any evidence that the target is committing an offence, and was renewed by President Obama in 2011.

"Under Section 215 the FBI can investigate United States persons (citizens and legal residents) based at least in part on their exercise of First Amendment rights, and can investigate non-U.S. persons based solely on their free speech activities or religious practices," said the EFF.

"You could be investigated based on the political or religious meetings you attend, the websites you visit or even the books that you read. Already, attendance at and donations to mosques have dropped significantly, as many Muslims reasonably fear that they will be targeted for investigation based solely on their religious beliefs."
Verizon has said it has no comment on the matter, nor too does the White House, the Department of Justice, or the NSA itself. El Reg would suspect a fair few Americans will have plenty of comments, but sadly they won’t be printable.

[shiny!]

Re: NSA monitoring all Verizon users

This is really upsetting. In my lifetime we have gone from living in freedom to living in an elaborate illusion of freedom. We're in a large, beautiful, glittering ballroom, but pull back the curtains to look outside and all you will find are brick walls instead of windows.

Why Verizon and only Verizon? Unless they're doing this with all the carriers but Verizon is the only one that came to light. Because it makes no sense to do this unless they do it 100%. It makes no sense to do this anyway. From a security standpoint, having too much data to sift through is as useless as having too little.

I wonder if they're collecting data from landline POTS calls as well?

[jk]

Re: NSA monitoring all Verizon users

Why Verizon and only Verizon?

trial run on a [still massive] subset?

[goadam1]

Re: NSA monitoring all Verizon users

only the guilty will be punished.

How far are we from a future crime division. You show patterns of illegal activity. We found your dna where it wasn't supposed to be.

Who else would have access to the data? Would you be not eligible for a job because of observed behavior "problems."

[Thailandnotes]

Re: NSA monitoring all Verizon users

The guardian broke this story and Greenwald's been all over it for months. It's not just Verizon. ATT admitted doing the same thing.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/glenn-greenwald

Hopefully, the mother of all whistle blowers will step forward.

[santafe2]

Re: NSA monitoring all Verizon users

trial run on a [still massive] subset?

This is a good time for Americans to start looking at their options. I've already warned GRG that a family of Americans are scouting out eastern Canada this summer.

[astonas]

Re: NSA monitoring all Verizon users

This is a good time for Americans to start looking at their options. I've already warned GRG that a family of Americans are scouting out eastern Canada this summer.

I was just wondering if GRG would come to regret his open invitation for Americans to come on up... The way things are heading, he might be getting more than he bargained for.

I've been talking to one of my friends with both US and Canadian passports. She is already considering a move up, and she isn't even as aware of the depth of the US's problem as this community is. (Good engineer, too. I don't think she'd have any trouble making the transition.)

[don]

Re: NSA monitoring all Verizon users



The National Security Agency has obtained direct access to the systems of Google, Facebook, Apple and other US internet giants, according to a top secret document obtained by the Guardian.

The NSA access is part of a previously undisclosed program called PRISM, which allows officials to collect material including search history, the content of emails, file transfers and live chats, the document says.

The Guardian has verified the authenticity of the document, a 41-slide PowerPoint presentation – classified as top secret with no distribution to foreign allies – which was apparently used to train intelligence operatives on the capabilities of the program. The document claims "collection directly from the servers" of major US service providers.

Although the presentation claims the program is run with the assistance of the companies, all those who responded to a Guardian request for comment on Thursday denied knowledge of any such program.

In a statement, Google said: "Google cares deeply about the security of our users' data. We disclose user data to government in accordance with the law, and we review all such requests carefully. From time to time, people allege that we have created a government 'back door' into our systems, but Google does not have a back door for the government to access private user data."

Several senior tech executives insisted that they had no knowledge of PRISM or of any similar scheme. They said they would never have been involved in such a program. "If they are doing this, they are doing it without our knowledge," one said.
An Apple spokesman said it had "never heard" of PRISM.

The NSA access was enabled by changes to US surveillance law introduced under President Bush and renewed under Obama in December 2012.



The program facilitates extensive, in-depth surveillance on live communications and stored information. The law allows for the targeting of any customers of participating firms who live outside the US, or those Americans whose communications include people outside the US.

It also opens the possibility of communications made entirely within the US being collected without warrants.

Disclosure of the PRISM program follows a leak to the Guardian on Wednesday of a top-secret court order compelling telecoms provider Verizon to turn over the telephone records of millions of US customers.

The participation of the internet companies in PRISM will add to the debate, ignited by the Verizon revelation, about the scale of surveillance by the intelligence services. Unlike the collection of those call records, this surveillance can include the content of communications and not just the metadata.

Some of the world's largest internet brands are claimed to be part of the information-sharing program since its introduction in 2007. Microsoft – which is currently running an advertising campaign with the slogan "Your privacy is our priority" – was the first, with collection beginning in December 2007.

It was followed by Yahoo in 2008; Google, Facebook and PalTalk in 2009; YouTube in 2010; Skype and AOL in 2011; and finally Apple, which joined the program in 2012. The program is continuing to expand, with other providers due to come online.
Collectively, the companies cover the vast majority of online email, search, video and communications networks.




The extent and nature of the data collected from each company varies.

Companies are legally obliged to comply with requests for users' communications under US law, but the PRISM program allows the intelligence services direct access to the companies' servers. The NSA document notes the operations have "assistance of communications providers in the US".

The revelation also supports concerns raised by several US senators during the renewal of the Fisa Amendments Act in December 2012, who warned about the scale of surveillance the law might enable, and shortcomings in the safeguards it introduces.

When the FAA was first enacted, defenders of the statute argued that a significant check on abuse would be the NSA's inability to obtain electronic communications without the consent of the telecom and internet companies that control the data. But the PRISM program renders that consent unnecessary, as it allows the agency to directly and unilaterally seize the communications off the companies' servers.

A chart prepared by the NSA, contained within the top-secret document obtained by the Guardian, underscores the breadth of the data it is able to obtain: email, video and voice chat, videos, photos, voice-over-IP (Skype, for example) chats, file transfers, social networking details, and more.



The document is recent, dating to April 2013. Such a leak is extremely rare in the history of the NSA, which prides itself on maintaining a high level of secrecy.

The PRISM program allows the NSA, the world's largest surveillance organisation, to obtain targeted communications without having to request them from the service providers and without having to obtain individual court orders.

With this program, the NSA is able to reach directly into the servers of the participating companies and obtain both stored communications as well as perform real-time collection on targeted users.

The presentation claims PRISM was introduced to overcome what the NSA regarded as shortcomings of Fisa warrants in tracking suspected foreign terrorists. It noted that the US has a "home-field advantage" due to housing much of the internet's architecture. But the presentation claimed "Fisa constraints restricted our home-field advantage" because Fisa required individual warrants and confirmations that both the sender and receiver of a communication were outside the US.

"Fisa was broken because it provided privacy protections to people who were not entitled to them," the presentation claimed. "It took a Fisa court order to collect on foreigners overseas who were communicating with other foreigners overseas simply because the government was collecting off a wire in the United States. There were too many email accounts to be practical to seek Fisas for all."

The new measures introduced in the FAA redefines "electronic surveillance" to exclude anyone "reasonably believed" to be outside the USA – a technical change which reduces the bar to initiating surveillance.

The act also gives the director of national intelligence and the attorney general power to permit obtaining intelligence information, and indemnifies internet companies against any actions arising as a result of co-operating with authorities' requests.

In short, where previously the NSA needed individual authorisations, and confirmation that all parties were outside the USA, they now need only reasonable suspicion that one of the parties was outside the country at the time of the records were collected by the NSA.

The document also shows the FBI acts as an intermediary between other agencies and the tech companies, and stresses its reliance on the participation of US internet firms, claiming "access is 100% dependent on ISP provisioning".

In the document, the NSA hails the PRISM program as "one of the most valuable, unique and productive accesses for NSA".

It boasts of what it calls "strong growth" in its use of the PRISM program to obtain communications. The document highlights the number of obtained communications increased in 2012 by 248% for Skype – leading the notes to remark there was "exponential growth in Skype reporting; looks like the word is getting out about our capability against Skype". There was also a 131% increase in requests for Facebook data, and 63% for Google.

The NSA document indicates that it is planning to add Dropbox as a PRISM provider. The agency also seeks, in its words, to "expand collection services from existing providers".

The revelations echo fears raised on the Senate floor last year during the expedited debate on the renewal of the FAA powers which underpin the PRISM program, which occurred just days before the act expired.

Senator Christopher Coons of Delaware specifically warned that the secrecy surrounding the various surveillance programs meant there was no way to know if safeguards within the act were working.

"The problem is: we here in the Senate and the citizens we represent don't know how well any of these safeguards actually work," he said.

"The law doesn't forbid purely domestic information from being collected. We know that at least one Fisa court has ruled that the surveillance program violated the law. Why? Those who know can't say and average Americans can't know."

Other senators also raised concerns. Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon attempted, without success, to find out any information on how many phone calls or emails had been intercepted under the program.

When the law was enacted, defenders of the FAA argued that a significant check on abuse would be the NSA's inability to obtain electronic communications without the consent of the telecom and internet companies that control the data. But the PRISM program renders that consent unnecessary, as it allows the agency to directly and unilaterally seize the communications off the companies' servers.

When the NSA reviews a communication it believes merits further investigation, it issues what it calls a "report". According to the NSA, "over 2,000 PRISM-based reports" are now issued every month. There were 24,005 in 2012, a 27% increase on the previous year.

In total, more than 77,000 intelligence reports have cited the PRISM program.

Jameel Jaffer, director of the ACLU's Center for Democracy, that it was astonishing the NSA would even ask technology companies to grant direct access to user data.

"It's shocking enough just that the NSA is asking companies to do this," he said. "The NSA is part of the military. The military has been granted unprecedented access to civilian communications.

"This is unprecedented militarisation of domestic communications infrastructure. That's profoundly troubling to anyone who is concerned about that separation."

A senior administration official said in a statement: "The Guardian and Washington Post articles refer to collection of communications pursuant to Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. This law does not allow the targeting of any US citizen or of any person located within the United States.

"The program is subject to oversight by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the Executive Branch, and Congress. It involves extensive procedures, specifically approved by the court, to ensure that only non-US persons outside the US are targeted, and that minimize the acquisition, retention and dissemination of incidentally acquired information about US persons.

"This program was recently reauthorized by Congress after extensive hearings and debate.

"Information collected under this program is among the most important and valuable intelligence information we collect, and is used to protect our nation from a wide variety of threats.

"The Government may only use Section 702 to acquire foreign intelligence information, which is specifically, and narrowly, defined in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. This requirement applies across the board, regardless of the nationality of the target."

Additional reporting by James Ball and Dominic Rushe

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013...rail:Position1

[raja]

Re: NSA monitoring all Verizon users

Maybe I'm wrong about this . . . but I want the authorities to be vigilant.

With the possibility of a nuclear bomb being set off in a major city, and the fact that there are Muslim radicals around the world that would like to kill us, I'm happy that the government is trying to detect terrorism before it happens.

Like any tool, surveillance can be misused. But the bad guys use telecommunications to organize their mayhem, and looking for patterns in phone calls seems a logical way find them before the terrorists kill another 3,000 Americans . . . or next time maybe 30,000,000.

We need to be vigilant about government activities, and when it goes to far, we must stop it. But so far, I don't think it's gone too far.

[jiimbergin]

Re: NSA monitoring all Verizon users

Maybe I'm wrong about this . . . but I want the authorities to be vigilant.

With the possibility of a nuclear bomb being set off in a major city, and the fact that there are Muslim radicals around the world that would like to kill us, I'm happy that the government is trying to detect terrorism before it happens.

Like any tool, surveillance can be misused. But the bad guys use telecommunications to organize their mayhem, and looking for patterns in phone calls seems a logical way find them before the terrorists kill another 3,000 Americans . . . or next time maybe 30,000,000.

We need to be vigilant about government activities, and when it goes to far, we must stop it. But so far, I don't think it's gone too far.

I believe I tend to agree with you. I have assumed for a long time that nothing I post anywhere on the net is private, and I have assumed the same is true of cell phones.

[shiny!]

Re: NSA monitoring all Verizon users

Maybe I'm wrong about this . . . but I want the authorities to be vigilant.

With the possibility of a nuclear bomb being set off in a major city, and the fact that there are Muslim radicals around the world that would like to kill us, I'm happy that the government is trying to detect terrorism before it happens.

Like any tool, surveillance can be misused. But the bad guys use telecommunications to organize their mayhem, and looking for patterns in phone calls seems a logical way find them before the terrorists kill another 3,000 Americans . . . or next time maybe 30,000,000.

We need to be vigilant about government activities, and when it goes to far, we must stop it. But so far, I don't think it's gone too far.

In an ideal world the government would be staffed with intelligent people who have our (the citizens') best interests at heart. But look around at government. What do you see? People who work at the DMV, school district administrators, even the TSA which isn't really government but acts like it is. These are people who have no interest but keeping their jobs. And they rule over us. Instead of working for our behalf they rule over us.

Security, the War on Terror, is nothing more than theatre. After Pearl Harbor we got factories retooled within months to turn out ships, airplanes, you name it. In contrast, eleven years after 9/11, which our government treated as an act of war, they still haven't sealed the border! Instead, they've conditioned law-abiding citizens to bend over and humiliate themselves at every turn in the name of "keeping us safe". They didn't steal away our civil rights- we handed them over! Or, other people did. I didn't. I sit here and get grumpy but the people I talk too about it think I'm just being silly.

Just as gun control goes after law-abiding people who haven't committed any crimes, the War on Terror infringes the rights of law-abiding citizens rather than doing the hard work of sealing our borders and ports.

Those "others" that the War on Terror is supposed to keep us safe from? They haven't done nearly as much to destroy our Liberty as our own government has. And once you decide the government has gone too far, what exactly can you do to stop it? Absolutely nothing! As an experiment, just try to roll it back now. How would you do it? Go to your congressmen and ask them to represent our best interests? Ha! Protest in the streets? Ha! As Dr. Phil would say, "How's that working for you?" (By 'you' I mean plural, not you personally)

It's no accident that these revelations are being exposed in an English paper, not by the American press.

[shiny!]

Re: NSA monitoring all Verizon users

The problem with good people is that we have a hard time believing that people can be evil. Sociopaths prey on good people all the time because sociopathic thinking is beyond the ability of most people to fathom. When you have sociopaths running government, thinking that all will turn out well if we just let them protect us is just a comforting fantasy. It's living in denial.

[Prazak]

Re: NSA monitoring all Verizon users

It's no accident that these revelations are being exposed in an English paper, not by the American press.

The story about the Verizon records was, but the story about NSA accessing directly the servers of our major internet companies -- titled PRISM -- was broken this morning by the Washington Post. Don pasted it in above, but here's the link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/invest...497_story.html

Looks like a good old-fashioned whistle-blower leaking to the Post (a group in which I am a proud member emeritus, incidentally) apparently a former intelligence manager at either NSA or FBI. I hope this person knows how to cover his/her tracks, because that is one very valuable intelligence program that just got publicly outed -- the raw data of which comprises nearly 1 in 7 of all intelligence briefings, according to the article.

So if you think Bradley Manning is being crucified, wait til they get their hands on this guy.

I wonder why the WaPo decided to go forward with this piece?

[don]

Re: NSA monitoring all Verizon users

An Artist's Impression inside NSA's Control Room

(will they all be required to wear Google glasses?)

[LorenS]

Re: NSA monitoring all Verizon users

Maybe I'm wrong about this . . . but I want the authorities to be vigilant.

With the possibility of a nuclear bomb being set off in a major city, and the fact that there are Muslim radicals around the world that would like to kill us, I'm happy that the government is trying to detect terrorism before it happens.

Like any tool, surveillance can be misused. But the bad guys use telecommunications to organize their mayhem, and looking for patterns in phone calls seems a logical way find them before the terrorists kill another 3,000 Americans . . . or next time maybe 30,000,000.

We need to be vigilant about government activities, and when it goes to far, we must stop it. But so far, I don't think it's gone too far.

I would like for you to read a history of the 20th century. How many people died in Hiroshoma and Nagasaki vs the death camps in Germany?

Your concern for the highly unlikely is blinding you to the much more likely. This goes way beyond any legitimate law enforcement activity. As is already blindingly clear with the IRS abuse, any power will eventually be corrupted.