how we crept into the total surveillance society

POSTED BY: 1kiki
UPDATED: Thursday, October 9, 2025 17:04
VIEWED: 6528
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1KIKI

Monday, July 1, 2013 10:56 PM

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/20/fisa-court-nsa-without-war
rant

The bulk collection of domestic call records, as first revealed by the Guardian earlier this month, takes place under rolling court orders issued on the basis of ... section 215 of the Patriot Act.

Checking the internet for the particular text of law got me this:

Access to Certain Business Records for Foreign Intelligence and
International Terrorism Investigations under FISA. Section 602
inserts a new title V to FISA, authorizing access to certain types of
business records for foreign intelligence and international terrorism
investigations. The new title:

– includes pertinent definitions (sec. 501 of FISA);
Access to certain business records pursuant to court order.

– authorizes the Director of the FBI or his designee no lower in
rank than Assistant Special Agent in Charge to apply for an order
from a FISA court judge or a U.S. magistrate judge publicly
designated by the Chief Justice of the U.S. to hear applications
and grant orders on behalf of a FISA court judge authorizing a
common carrier, public accommodation facility, physical storage
facility, or vehicle rental facility to release records in its
possession for an investigation to gather foreign intelligence
information or an investigation concerning international terrorism
conducted by the FBI under Attorney General guidelines
approved pursuant to E.O. 12333 or a successor order.

So the procedure started when the government was allowed bulk collection of 'business records' on any common carrier, public accommodation facility, physical storage facility, or vehicle rental facility as long as it was related to fighting terrorism.

But

Top secret documents submitted to the court that oversees surveillance by US intelligence agencies show the judges have signed off on broad orders which allow the NSA to make use of information "inadvertently" collected from domestic US communications without a warrant.

The Guardian is publishing in full two documents submitted to the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (known as the Fisa court), signed by Attorney General Eric Holder and stamped 29 July 2009 ...

The documents show that even under authorities governing the collection of foreign intelligence from foreign targets, US communications can still be collected, retained and used.

...The documents also show that discretion as to who is actually targeted under the NSA's foreign surveillance powers lies directly with its own analysts, without recourse to courts or superiors – though a percentage of targeting decisions are reviewed by internal audit teams on a regular basis.

And there's the trail of how we got where we are today. Despite our constitutional protections, it didn't take much.

NEWOLDBROWNCOAT

Monday, July 1, 2013 11:14 PM

A more detailed analysis of the pre-FISA days, beginning Oct 4, 2001 can be found at:

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/frame_game/2013/07/nsa
_history_how_bureaucrats_leaks_and_courts_tamed_government_surveillance.html

Saletan argues, of course, that "it started under Bush", but he has a fair amount of sympathy, and he argues that it "got better", i.e, there were more people reviewing it and more courts involved, under Obama.

BYTEMITE

Monday, July 1, 2013 11:24 PM

Uhhhh... That's what the media is going with? I am disappoint.

This cloak and dagger shit's been going on since the Alien and Sedition Acts shortly after the constitution was verified. It's been festering passively under our skin ever since, let the government contract out to the Pinkertons in the middle 1800s, who became union busters along with the US Nat'l Guard when that was formed, and got really bad with Japanese internment in WW2. Then Hoover took power and a new level of black ops nonsense started up.

Where is gets ridiculous is that they admit to stuff and then redact it not five minutes later, like the "news" that our government was involved in black ops sabotaging Iran and their nuclear program was made public in 2007. But all of a sudden that's all classified, like how the PUBLIC RECORD stuff in the Patriot Act about all the surveillance is also suddenly classified?

What the hell is this? Are they losing track of what they've already leaked, are they that incompetent at cover-up, or is this some new gaslighting-style technique they've developed to discredit already known and verified information?

Whatever the case, they obvious don't have much respect for the attention span of the average population. Frankly, I'm offended they think so little of us.

1KIKI

Monday, July 1, 2013 11:47 PM

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/wyden-warns-clapper-americans-strai
ght-answers-spying-154640996.html

... in March ... (Senator) Wyden asked (Director of National Intelligence) Clapper: "Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?" Clapper replied: "No, sir." Wyden followed up: "It does not." Clapper went on: "Not wittingly. There are cases where they could inadvertently perhaps collect, but not wittingly."

In the aftermath of the revelation that the NSA vacuums up the telephone records of millions of Americans with near-routine frequency and has programs for the surveillance of Internet activity, Clapper has tried to banish the impression that he misled Congress.

1KIKI

Tuesday, July 2, 2013 12:05 AM

https://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/05/29-3

"The group of about 10 (anti-fracking) professionals - engineers, nurses and teachers - began meeting in the basement of a member's home. As their numbers grew, they moved to a local church. In an effort to raise public awareness about the risks of hydraulic fracturing or fracking they attended township meetings, zoning and ordinance hearings and gas-drilling forums. They invited speakers from other states affected by gas drilling to talk with Pennsylvania residents. They held house-party style screenings of documentary films.

Since the group had never engaged in any kind of illegal activity or particularly radical forms of protest, it came as a shock when GDAC members learned that their organization had been featured in intelligence bulletins compiled by a private security firm, The Institute of Terrorism Research and Response (ITRR). Equally shocking was the revelation that the PENNSYLVANIA DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY had distributed those bulletins to local police chiefs, state, federal and private intelligence agencies, and the security directors of the natural gas companies, as well as industry groups and public relations firms. News of the surveillance broke in September 2010 when the director of the Pennsylvania Department of Homeland Security, James Powers, mistakenly sent an email to an anti-drilling activist he believed was sympathetic to the industry, warning her NOT TO POST THE BULLETINS ONLINE.

(In another instance) Ben Kessler, a Texas-based activist, told the Post that the FBI had received an anonymous tip to look into his activities. ... About a month after he was approached by the FBI, Briggle received a notice from his employer, the University of North Texas, asking him to turn over all emails and other written correspondence "pursuant to City of Denton natural gas drilling ordinances and the ‘Denton Stakeholder Drilling Advisory Group,'" an organization Briggle founded in July 2011 whose mission is similar to that of GDAC. The university had received a request under the state's Public Information Act and Briggle was forced to hand over more than 1,300 emails. He was later told that the request had been made by Peggy Venable, Texas Director of AFP (Americans for Prosperity, a Koch brothers organization).

...

As early as 2004, in a report titled The Surveillance Industrial Complex, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) warned that the "U.S. security establishment is making a systematic effort to extend its surveillance capacity by pressing the private sector into service to report on the activities of Americans."

1KIKI

Tuesday, July 2, 2013 12:15 AM

http://news.yahoo.com/us-officials-long-denied-massive-data-trawling-1
93155111.html

Bush, Obama officials long denied massive data trawling

""When the American people find out how their government has secretly interpreted the Patriot Act, they will be stunned and they will be angry," Wyden said during a floor speech in May 2011. He added: "Many members of Congress have no idea how the law is being secretly interpreted by the executive branch, because that interpretation is classified.""

Bush, Obama officials long denied massive data trawling

During a March 2006 appearance at the City Club of Cleveland, Bush described the NSA effort only as "a program that will enable us to listen from a known al-Qaida person and/or affiliate from making a phone call outside the United States in or inside the United States out, with the idea of being able to pick up quickly information for which to be able to respond in the environment we're in." He added: "I believe what I'm doing is constitutional, and I know it's necessary. And so we're going to keep doing it."

Several top Bush administration officials adamantly insisted that the government was not engaged in mass data-trawling as part of its secret NSA programs.

After a New York Times expose raised concerns about NSA targeting Americans' phone records, Hayden told a National Press Club audience in January 2006 that there was no effort to cast a wide net over communications data.

"This is targeted and focused," said Hayden, the principal deputy director of national intelligence at the time. "This is not about intercepting conversations between people in the United States. This is hot pursuit of communications entering or leaving America involving someone we believe is associated with al-Qaida."

Bush's attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, also minimized the reach of the NSA data-gathering, telling a Senate Judiciary hearing in February 2006 that "this surveillance is narrowly focused and fully consistent with the traditional forms of enemy surveillance found to be necessary in all previous armed conflicts."

Bush administration officials were repeatedly pressed by Congress about the NSA efforts in 2005 and 2006, as the Senate and House debated whether to extend the Patriot Act and many of its provisions that gave the government broad power to conduct surveillance and data collection. But once the Patriot Act's main provisions were reauthorized and signed into law by Bush in March 2006, public congressional concerns over the NSA's authority seemed to dissipate.

It was not until May 2011, as the Patriot Act again faced another reauthorization, that the NSA's secret programs began to receive cryptic attention from two Democratic senators, Ron Wyden of Oregon and Mark Udall of Colorado. Hobbled by the classified nature of the secret programs, the two senators offered up only guarded warnings.

"When the American people find out how their government has secretly interpreted the Patriot Act, they will be stunned and they will be angry," Wyden said during a floor speech in May 2011. He added: "Many members of Congress have no idea how the law is being secretly interpreted by the executive branch, because that interpretation is classified."

Still hamstrung by the programs' security classification in 2013, Wyden pressed National Intelligence Director James Clapper at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing in March about the NSA. "Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?" he asked.

"No, sir," Clapper replied. He added: "Not wittingly. There are cases where they could inadvertently perhaps collect but not wittingly."

1KIKI

Tuesday, July 2, 2013 12:47 AM

"The NSA is prohibited from spying on Americans or anyone inside the United States. That's the FBI's job and it requires a warrant.

Despite that prohibition, shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, President George W. Bush secretly authorized the NSA to plug into the fiber optic cables that enter and leave the United States, knowing it would give the government unprecedented, warrantless access to Americans' private conversations."

... interviews with more than a dozen current and former government and technology officials and outside experts show that, while Prism has attracted the recent attention, the program actually is a relatively small part of a much more expansive and intrusive eavesdropping effort.

Americans who disapprove of the government reading their emails have more to worry about from a different and larger NSA effort that snatches data as it passes through the fiber optic cables that make up the Internet's backbone. That program, which has been known for years, copies Internet traffic as it enters and leaves the United States, then routes it to the NSA for analysis.

Whether by clever choice or coincidence, Prism appears to do what its name suggests. Like a triangular piece of glass, Prism takes large beams of data and helps the government find discrete, manageable strands of information.

The fact that it is productive is not surprising; documents show it is one of the major sources for what ends up in the president's daily briefing. Prism makes sense of the cacophony of the Internet's raw feed. It provides the government with names, addresses, conversation histories and entire archives of email inboxes.

Deep in the oceans, hundreds of cables carry much of the world's phone and Internet traffic. Since at least the early 1970s, the NSA has been tapping foreign cables. It doesn't need permission. That's its job.

But Internet data doesn't care about borders. Send an email from Pakistan to Afghanistan and it might pass through a mail server in the United States, the same computer that handles messages to and from Americans. The NSA is prohibited from spying on Americans or anyone inside the United States. That's the FBI's job and it requires a warrant.

Despite that prohibition, shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, President George W. Bush secretly authorized the NSA to plug into the fiber optic cables that enter and leave the United States, knowing it would give the government unprecedented, warrantless access to Americans' private conversations.

Tapping into those cables allows the NSA access to monitor emails, telephone calls, video chats, websites, bank transactions and more. It takes powerful computers to decrypt, store and analyze all this information, but the information is all there, zipping by at the speed of light.

"You have to assume everything is being collected," said Bruce Schneier, who has been studying and writing about cryptography and computer security for two decades.

The New York Times disclosed the existence of this effort in 2005. In 2006, former AT&T technician Mark Klein revealed that the company had allowed the NSA to install a computer at its San Francisco switching center, a spot where fiber optic cables enter the U.S.

The Bush administration called it the "Terrorist Surveillance Program" and said it was keeping the United States safe.

"This program has produced intelligence for us that has been very valuable in the global war on terror, both in terms of saving lives and breaking up plots directed at the United States," Vice President Dick Cheney said at the time.

The government has said it minimizes all conversations and emails involving Americans. Exactly what that means remains classified. But former U.S. officials familiar with the process say it allows the government to keep the information as long as it is labeled as belonging to an American and stored in a special, restricted part of a computer.

The government doesn't automatica

SIGNYM

Tuesday, July 2, 2013 12:52 AM

BYTE- You're right, this has been going on for decades. About ten years ago, environmentalists were finding GPS devices attached to the undersides of their cars. Thirty years ago, Nixon was following anti-war activists by satellite. The only thing that protected large numbers of people from the eye of Sauron was poor technology.

People are already forgetting about Snowden. Privacy means nothing to them, and protest is completely ineffective... so, why bother? I know people who are leftish but so trusting, or complacent, or something, that they think this is for their protection!. I've tried to tell them... hey, you think YOU'RE safe from this?? But, yanno, terrorism extends to causing financial harm so... what if you protest fracking or clear-cutting old-growth forests and cause a delay in activity? That's "financial harm", right? (Oregon is thinking of criminalizing timbering protests) Well, that's enough to get you on somebody's list, right? Or maybe you know somebody who knows somebody? Or you provide an analysis that tanks a corporation's stock prices? Or you provide whistleblowing information that wrecks a company's profits?

1KIKI

Tuesday, July 2, 2013 12:53 AM

SNOWDEN IS A FUCKING HERO

PIRATENEWS

Tuesday, July 2, 2013 5:38 AM

In Firefly the Alliance merged the US flag with the flag of Communist China

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