Thanks to Edward Snowden, we know that the National Security Agency collects the phone records of every American in order to keep the country safe from terrorism.
But for the past eight months a group of artists claiming to work for the NSA on "a freelance, pro bono basis" have been recording people's private conversations in popular bars, restaurants, and gyms in Lower Manhattan to ensure that no actionable intelligence falls through the cracks. None of the recordings contain any last names or other forms of information that would allow the people in the recordings to be directly identified, but first names flow freely.
Read moreA soupçon of America’s vast surveillance powers has been temporarily suspended with the Senate’s inability to renew them, partly thanks to a stand taken by Senator Rand Paul, who blocked attempts at an extension of the Patriot Act during a Sunday session.
The affected legislation consists of the Patriot Act’s Section 215, one of the most controversial part of the law that allowed for the bulk collection of Americans’ phone calls, and Section 206, the “roving wiretap” that granted US authorities the power to carry out surveillance on all phone and internet communications used by a suspect with a single warrant, regardless of who else was using them.
Read moreThe US Senate failed to pass the Freedom Act, as a vote fell three votes shy of the 60 needed to bring the measure to the Senate floor. Other measures to replace or revise the expiring Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act also were blocked, marking a temporary setback for efforts to continue the bulk collection.
Promoters of the USA Freedom Act, approved by the US House of Representatives earlier, claim that the law would have ended bulk collection of telephone records and metadata carried out under Section 215, which empowers the NSA, FBI, and other government agencies to seize and spy on telephone records.
Read moreCanada and its spying partners exploited weaknesses in one of the world's most popular mobile browsers and planned to hack into smartphones via links to Google and Samsung app stores, a top secret document shows.
Electronic intelligence agencies began targeting UC Browser in late 2011 after discovering it leaked revealing details about its half-billion users. Their goal, in tapping into UC Browser and also looking for larger app store vulnerabilities, was to collect data on suspected terrorists and other intelligence targets — and, in some cases, implant spyware on targeted smartphones. The surveillance agencies exploited the weaknesses in certain mobile apps.
Read moreEven the US government are fans of Arnold Schwarzenegger's futuristic sci-fi film series The Terminator – the NSA has apparently named one of its secret surveillance programs after the evil artificial intelligence system Skynet.
According to documents provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden, Skynet is a cloud analytics program that analyses call records to gather metadata and the location of a target, in order to decide whether they are a suspicious person of interest. In a presentation, the NSA specifically singles out Ahmad Muaffaq Zaidan, a prominent journalist, as a terrorist.
Read moreThe House overwhelmingly approved legislation to end the federal government’s bulk collection of phone records, exerting enormous pressure on the Senate majority leader, who insists that dragnet sweeps continue in defiance of many of those in his Republican Party.
Under the bipartisan bill, the Patriot Act would be changed to prohibit bulk collection by the National Security Agency of metadata charting telephone calls made by Americans. However, while the House version of the bill would take the government out of the collection business, it would not deny it access to the information.
Read moreThe German secret service BND has pulled the plug on the internet surveillance program for the US National Security Agency amid the growing scandal over its extent of cooperation in spying on its EU partners.
The German Federal Intelligence Service stopped sharing internet surveillance data with the NSA on Monday. Berlin has demanded that the US spy agency first file an official request explaining the need for the internet-based data from Germany’s Bad Aibling listening post in Bavaria, where 120 BND employees and some NSA technicians work. The NSA has reportedly refused to comply with the security request due to short notice.
Read moreA federal appeals court has ruled that the National Security Agency program to collect information on billions of telephone calls made or received by Americans is illegal.
A law Congress passed allowing collection of information relevant to terrorism investigations does not authorize the so-called “bulk collection” of phone records on the scale of the NSA program. The judges did not address whether the program violated the Constitution. Writing for a unanimous panel, Judge Gerard Lynch said allowing the government to gather data in a blanket fashion was not consistent with the statute used to carry out the program.
Read moreDocuments from the trove of the former NSA contractor shine a light on the US government’s use of sophisticated computer programs to monitor, record, transcribe and analyse all sorts of speech.
The NSA has increased the capabilities of speech recognition software and for years has relied on systems alleged to give investigators the ability to scan millions of recorded conversations and query keywords for specific content. Snowden documents show that programs used by the NSA automatically recognize the content within phone calls by creating rough transcripts and phonetic representations that can be easily searched and stored.
Read moreGermany's intelligence service has been helping the NSA spy on European politicians and companies for years. The NSA has been sending lists of "selectors" to the BND, which then provides related information that it holds in its surveillance databases.
The NSA sent selector lists several times a day, and altogether 800,000 selectors have been requested. Investigators found that the BND had provided information on around 2,000 selectors that were clearly against European and German interests. Not only were European businesses such as the giant aerospace and defense company EADS targeted, so were European politicians.
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