tagged w/ National Security Agency
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A federal appeals court in New York has ruled that US government agencies may now refuse to confirm or deny the existence of records when faced with a Freedom of Information Act request that might disclose sensitive intelligence activities, sources, or methods.A federal appeals court in New York has ruled that US government agencies may now... more
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The Iranian regime has developed one of the worlds most sophisticated mechanisms for controlling and censoring the Internet.The Iranian regime has developed one of the worlds most sophisticated mechanisms for... more
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Open ID is now being used by Facebook, Yahoo, Flickr, Paypal, Google, Microsoft, AOL, MySpace, IBM, LiveJournal and VeriSign, among many others.
OpenID is a distributed single sign on solution that allows people to sign into different services with the same login credentials.
Simply put, one cracked OpenID site (by hackers, the government, parents, etc) could result in total profile information access and/or one's identity being abused over several other OpenID sites.
The creator of OpenID currently works at Google.
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenID#Security_and_phishingOpen ID is now being used by Facebook, Yahoo, Flickr, Paypal, Google, Microsoft, AOL,... more
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American spymasters snooped on the private life of Tony Blair, according to reports in the U.S.
Mr Blair was given the code name 'Anchory' as his private telephone calls were routinely listened into and recorded.
A file containing personal information about him is said to have been compiled at a giant U.S. listening post run by the secretive National Security Agency.
The extraordinary claim was made by a former Navy communications operator who worked at a listening post in Fort Gordon, Georgia.
David Murfee Faulk told American TV network ABC News that he had seen a file on the 'private life' of Mr Blair in 2006.
He said his security clearance at the National Security Agency base allowed him access to top-secret information.
Faulk declined to reveal the exact contents of the file, other than to say it contained information of a 'personal nature'.
Faulk said U.S. spymasters also 'bugged' telephone calls made by Iraq's first interim president, Ghazi al-Yawer.
Mr Al -Yawer and Mr Blair were considered two of America's biggest allies in the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
The admissions will cause huge embarrassment to the U.S.American spymasters snooped on the private life of Tony Blair, according to reports in... more
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The National Security Agency said on Thursday it was investigating allegations that intelligence officials listened to personal phone calls from military officers, journalists and other Americans living outside the United States.
The comments followed media reports that U.S. agents intercepted calls from U.S. citizens using satellite phones to call friends and relatives back home even though they were clearly not terrorism suspects.
"Some of these allegations have been investigated and found to be unsubstantiated. Others are in the investigation process," the agency said in a statement.
The allegations, reported by ABC News earlier on Thursday, were made by two former military linguists who said calls from Americans, including aid workers, were monitored as part of the Bush administration's controversial surveillance program.
Intelligence operators routinely shared details with each other from the intercepted calls, especially those including intimate conversations, one linguist told ABC.
Administration officials have said the program is used narrowly to protect the country against possible attack, but human rights groups and others say it threatens citizens' privacy.
Congress allowed the program to continue earlier this year, giving authorities the power to eavesdrop on people outside the United States without a court order, while including rules aimed at minimizing such surveillance.
Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller said his panel would examine the allegations and requested related information from the White House.
"There are strict procedures in place governing intelligence surveillance when it involves U.S. persons. The Committee will take whatever action is necessary to ensure those rules are followed and any violations are addressed," the West Virginia Democrat said.
Opponents of the program said the allegations showed the rules were inadequate.
"Today's report is an indictment not only of the Bush administration, but of all of those political leaders, Democratic and Republican, who have been saying that the executive branch can be trusted with surveillance powers that are essentially unchecked," said Jameel Jaffer, head of the American Civil Liberties Union's National Security Project.The National Security Agency said on Thursday it was investigating allegations that... more
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"Congress is looking into allegations that National Security Agency linguists have been eavesdropping on Americans abroad.
Government linguists say the U.S. eavesdropped on Americans, including military officers serving in Iraq.
The congressional oversight committees said Thursday that the Americans targeted included military officers in Iraq who called friends and family in the United States.
The allegations were made by two former military intercept operators on a television news report Thursday evening.
A terrorist surveillance program instituted by the Bush administration allows the intelligence community to monitor phone calls between the United States and overseas without a court order -- as long as one party to the call is a terror suspect.
Adrienne Kinne, a former U.S. Army Reserves Arab linguist, told ABC News the NSA was listening to the phone calls of U.S. military officers, journalists and aid workers overseas who were talking about "personal, private things with Americans who are not in any way, shape or form associated with anything to do with terrorism."
David Murfee Faulk, a former U.S. Navy Arab linguist, said in the news report that he and his colleagues were listening to the conversations of military officers in Iraq who were talking with their spouses or girlfriends in the United States.
According to Faulk, they would often share the contents of some of the more salacious calls stored on their computers, listening to what he called "phone sex" and "pillow talk."
Both Kinne and Faulk worked at the NSA listening facility at Fort Gordon, Georgia. They told ABC that when linguists complained to supervisors about eavesdropping on personal conversations, they were ordered to continue transcribing the calls.
NSA spokeswoman Judith Emmel said the agency's Inspector General has investigated some of the allegations and found them "unsubstantiated." Other accusations are still being looked at, she said.
The NSA operates in "strict accordance with U.S. laws and regulations," she said. "Any allegation of wrongdoing by employees is thoroughly investigated" and if misconduct is discovered, "we take swift and certain remedial action."
CIA Director Mike Hayden, who was the head of the NSA when the terrorist surveillance program began, has always maintained that private conversations of Americans are not intercepted and if it should happen inadvertently, the name is removed from the record.
"At NSA, the law was followed assiduously," said Hayden's spokesman, Mark Mansfeld. "The notion that Gen. Hayden sanctioned or tolerated illegalities of any sort is ridiculous on its face."
Author Jim Bamford was the first to interview the two former NSA linguists for his new book, "The Shadow Factory," which will be published next week. Bamford told CNN the accounts from the whistle-blowers demonstrate the NSA was listening to the private conversations of Americans, transcribing them and keeping them.
"They don't delete them," he said.
Bamford has written two other books on the NSA and was a party to an unsuccessful ACLU lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the Terrorist Surveillance Program."
More at link, what do you think?"Congress is looking into allegations that National Security Agency linguists... more
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The eight Congressmen from New York were originally against voting for any bill that gave immunity to the telecoms AT&T and Verizon, but when it came time for the vote this week four of the congressmen voted for the bill.
Could it be related to the lobbying and contributions by AT&T and Verizon to these four congressmen?
The passing of the bill has now allowed for any lawsuit against AT&T or Verizon for allowing the NSA to tap wireless phones, which is illegal, are now cancelled. The wonder is what other Democrats did the telecoms pay for the bill to be passedThe eight Congressmen from New York were originally against voting for any bill that... more
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The American Civil Liberties Union has uncovered details pertaining to a secret Justice Department memo from October 2001 that reveals the Bush administration effectively suspended the Fourth Amendment where domestic counter terrorism operations are concerned.
The ACLU reports that the memo states the "Fourth Amendment had no application to domestic military operations." after 9/11. In other words, the DOJ gave the White House a green light to effectively shelve Constitutional protection against unreasonable searches and seizures in the wake of the terror attacks.
The memo was written by then deputy assistant attorney general John Yoo, also the co-author of the PATRIOT Act and author of the now notorious torture memos.
It is almost certain that Yoo's memo was written to provide a legal basis for the NSA, a military intelligence agency, to begin its warrantless wiretapping program, which was initiated in the same month.
Just days after the memo's delivery to the White House, Dick Cheney and other administration officials briefed four House and Senate leaders on the NSA's secret terrorist surveillance program for the first time.
The existence of the 2001 memo came to light via a newly declassified March 2003 document from the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) entitled Military Interrogation of Alien Unlawful Combatants Held Outside the United States, which makes reference to the previous memo. The American Civil Liberties Union has uncovered details pertaining to a secret... more
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jubal
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added this
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3 years ago
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The republicans have managed to gather enough support to go forward with a bill that will give immunity to telecom companies that helped with the Bush regime's illegal domestic spying program. Woe is us...The republicans have managed to gather enough support to go forward with a bill that... more
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Two months after insisting that they would roll back broad eavesdropping powers won by the Bush administration, Democrats in Congress appear ready to make concessions that could extend some crucial powers given to the National Security Agency.Two months after insisting that they would roll back broad eavesdropping powers won by... more
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khsing
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added this
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4 years ago
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