Obama's UN Ambassador Samantha Power had the power to unmask names in NSA intercepts?

Why? So she could make better UN speeches? Did the White House janitor also have unmasking power?

Via WSJ:

The committee has subpoenaed the National Security Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency for information about what is called “unmasking.” Republicans on the committee have been pushing for a thorough investigation of how the names of Trump campaign officials became exposed in classified intelligence reports based off intelligence community intercepts.
Those subpoenas seek information on requests made by former national security adviser Susan Rice, former CIA Director John Brennan and former United Nations Ambassador Samantha Power for names to be unmasked in classified material. The three didn’t personally receive subpoenas, the people familiar with the matter said. Mr. Brennan, Ms. Rice and Ms. Power didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

WSJ: Obama let NSA spy on communications between Netanyahu and Congress members

Would Obama do the same for the Muslim Brotherhood?

Via WSJ:

The National Security Agency’s targeting of Israeli leaders and officials also swept up the contents of some of their private conversations with U.S. lawmakers and American-Jewish groups. That raised fears—an “Oh-s— moment,” one senior U.S. official said—that the executive branch would be accused of spying on Congress.
White House officials believed the intercepted information could be valuable to counter Mr. Netanyahu’s campaign. They also recognized that asking for it was politically risky. So, wary of a paper trail stemming from a request, the White House let the NSA decide what to share and what to withhold, officials said. “We didn’t say, ‘Do it,’ ” a senior U.S. official said. “We didn’t say, ‘Don’t do it.’ ”

UN trying to decide how to respond to AT&T helping NSA spy on them...

Move. Please move...

Via Reuters

The United Nations said it expects member states to respect its right to privacy and is assessing how to respond to a report that telecommunications company AT&T Inc helped the U.S. National Security Agency spy on the world body’s communications.
The company gave technical assistance to the NSA in carrying out a secret court order allowing wiretapping of all Internet communications at the headquarters of the United Nations, an AT&T customer, the New York Times reported on Saturday.
The New York Times cited newly disclosed NSA documents that date from 2003 to 2013 and were provided by fugitive former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
“We obviously have security and safety measures in place including through … our information and technology department. We are looking at this and how best to respond,” U.N. spokeswoman Vannina Maestracci told reporters.
“The United States authorities had previously given us assurances as to the fact they are not and were not monitoring our communications,” she said.

Jeb Bush: NSA domestic spying is the "best part of the Obama administration."

WTH? Jeb is melting down as a candidate. 

Jeb Bush continues to defend the National Security Agency's unconstitutional domestic spying program, telling a conservative talk show host that this gross encroachment on the Fourth Amendment is the "best part of the Obama administration."
There's absolutely no evidence that the National Security Agency's domestic spying program has prevented a terrorist attack in the United States. This is a conclusion reached by the New America Foundation and the White House Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technology. The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board could "not identif[y] a single instance involving a threat to the United States in which the program made a concrete difference in the outcome of a counterterrorism investigation."
Bush, however, hails the massive expansion of the NSA and its domestic spying program. "I would say the best part of the Obama administration has been his continuance of the protections of the homeland using the big metadata programs, the NSA being enhanced," the former Florida governor told Michael Medved on Tuesday.

Interesting: NSA officials had the same concerns Snowden did about their collecting all your phone records...

The White House decided to do it anyway.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Dissenters within the National Security Agency, led by a senior agency executive, warned in 2009 that the program to secretly collect American phone records wasn't providing enough intelligence to justify the backlash it would cause if revealed, current and former intelligence officials say.

The NSA took the concerns seriously, and many senior officials shared them. But after an internal debate that has not been previously reported, NSA leaders, White House officials and key lawmakers opted to continue the collection and storage of American calling records, a domestic surveillance program without parallel in the agency's recent history.

The warnings proved prophetic last year after the calling records program was made public in the first and most significant leak by Edward Snowden, a former NSA systems administrator who cited the government's deception about the program as one of his chief motivations for turning over classified documents to journalists. Many Americans were shocked and dismayed to learn that an intelligence agency collects and stores all their landline calling records. Keep on reading...

Good News: The NSA may be storing your picture...

It not about catching terrorists, it's about control and it's dangerous in the wrong hands.

Via The New York Times:

The National Security Agency is harvesting huge numbers of images of people from communications that it intercepts through its global surveillance operations for use in sophisticated facial recognition programs, according to top-secret documents.

The spy agency’s reliance on facial recognition technology has grown significantly over the last four years as the agency has turned to new software to exploit the flood of images included in emails, text messages, social media, videoconferences and other communications, the N.S.A. documents reveal. Agency officials believe that technological advances could revolutionize the way that the N.S.A. finds intelligence targets around the world, the documents show. The agency’s ambitions for this highly sensitive ability and the scale of its effort have not previously been disclosed.

The agency intercepts “millions of images per day” — including about 55,000 “facial recognition quality images” — which translate into “tremendous untapped potential,” according to 2011 documents obtained from the former agency contractor Edward J. Snowden. While once focused on written and oral communications, the N.S.A. now considers facial images, fingerprints and other identifiers just as important to its mission of tracking suspected terrorists and other intelligence targets, the documents show.

Snowden/Greenwald finale: Reveal names of US citizens targeted by their own government

This could cause an uproar...

(RCP)- The man who helped bring about the most significant leak in American intelligence history is to reveal names of US citizens targeted by their own government in what he promises will be the “biggest” revelation from nearly 2m classified files.

Glenn Greenwald, the journalist who received the trove of documents from Edward Snowden, a former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor, told The Sunday Times that Snowden’s legacy would be “shaped in large part” by this “finishing piece” still to come.

His plan to publish names will further unnerve an American intelligence establishment already reeling from 11 months of revelations about US government surveillance activities.

Greenwald, who is promoting his book No Place To Hide and is trailed by a documentary crew wherever he goes, was speaking in a boutique hotel near Harvard, where he was to appear with Noam Chomsky, the octogenarian leftist academic.

“One of the big questions when it comes to domestic spying is, ‘Who have been the NSA’s specific targets?’," he said.

NSA spied on lawyers representing foreign countries in economic disputes...

NSA spying isn't about al Qaeda. It's about government control.  

Via The NYT:

The list of those caught up in the global surveillance net cast by the National Security Agency and its overseas partners, from social media users to foreign heads of state, now includes another entry: American lawyers.
A top-secret document, obtained by the former N.S.A. contractor Edward J. Snowden, shows that an American law firm was monitored while representing a foreign government in trade disputes with the United States. The disclosure offers a rare glimpse of a specific instance in which Americans were ensnared by the eavesdroppers, and is of particular interest because lawyers in the United States with clients overseas have expressed growing concern that their confidential communications could be compromised by such surveillance.
The government of Indonesia had retained the law firm for help in trade talks, according to the February 2013 document. It reports that the N.S.A.’s Australian counterpart, the Australian Signals Directorate, notified the agency that it was conducting surveillance of the talks, including communications between Indonesian officials and the American law firm, and offered to share the information.

Obama's NSA is using your smartphone apps to spy on you...

Is it time to just dump our smartphones?

Via The Guardian: 

The National Security Agency and its UK counterpart GCHQ have been developing capabilities to take advantage of "leaky" smartphone apps, such as the wildly popular Angry Birds game, that transmit users' private information across the internet, according to top secret documents.
The data pouring onto communication networks from the new generation of iPhone and Android apps ranges from phone model and screen size to personal details such as age, gender and location. Some apps, the documents state, can share users' most sensitive information such as sexual orientation – and one app recorded in the material even sends specific sexual preferences such as whether or not the user may be a swinger.

Snowden: NSA uses data it collects for economic purposes

But we were told they were only trying to keep us safe... 

Berlin (AFP) - The US National Security Agency (NSA) sometimes uses data it collects for economic purposes, intelligence leaker Edward Snowden reveals in an extract of an interview with a German television chain to be broadcast Sunday.

"If there is information, for example on Siemens, which is in the national interest, but has nothing to do with national security, they will still use this information," said Snowden, according to the German translation of the interview on public television ARD. 

The interview was carried out by a journalist for NDR, a regional chain belonging to the broadcaster that has analysed secret documents that Snowden leaked to journalists.

Under top secrecy, the chain this week in Moscow filmed the first interview with Snowden since he left Hong Kong in 2013 to seek refuge in Russia.

Here is the list of 29 things we know the NSA can do.

Obama only addressed two?

Via wNYC:

• It can track the numbers of both parties on a phone call, as well location, time and duration. (More)
• It can hack Chinese phones and text messages. (More)
• It can set up fake internet cafes. (More)
• It can spy on foreign leaders' cell phones. (More)
• It can tap underwater fiber-optic cables. (More)
• It can track communication within media organizations like Al Jazeera. (More)
• It can hack into the UN video conferencing system. (More)
• It can track bank transactions. (More)
• It can monitor text messages. (More)
• It can access your email, chat, and web browsing history. (More)
• It can map your social networks. (More)
• It can access your smartphone app data. (More)
• It is trying to get into secret networks like Tor, diverting users to less secure channels. (More)
• It can go undercover within embassies to have closer access to foreign networks. (More)
• It can set up listening posts on the roofs of buildings to monitor communications in a city. (More)
• It can set up a fake LinkedIn. (More)
• It can track the reservations at upscale hotels. (More)
• It can intercept the talking points for Ban Ki-moon’s meeting with Obama. (More)
• It can crack cellphone encryption codes. (More)
• It can hack computers that aren’t connected to the internet using radio waves. (Update: Clarification -- the NSA can access offline computers through radio waves on which it has already installed hidden devices.) (More)
• It can intercept phone calls by setting up fake base stations. (More)
• It can remotely access a computer by setting up a fake wireless connection. (More)
• It can install fake SIM cards to then control a cell phone. (More)
• It can fake a USB thumb drive that's actually a monitoring device. (More)
• It can crack all types of sophisticated computer encryption. (Update: It is trying to build this capability.) (More)
• It can go into online games and monitor communication. (More)
• It can intercept communications between aircraft and airports. (More)
• (Update) It can physically intercept deliveries, open packages, and make changes to devices. (More) (h/t)
• (Update) It can tap into the links between Google and Yahoo data centers to collect email and other data. (More) (h/t)

NSA official claims, "U.S. has already become a full-blown police state."

Most thoughtful Americans already realized we were living in a police state when their local police department got an ninja suits and APC to go serve warrants with...

Via CNS:.

Last year, high-ranking NSA official Bill Binney said, “We are, like, that far from a turnkey totalitarian state.” Now, Binney says that the U.S. has already become a full-blown police state.

Binney told Washington’s Blog on Wednesday that:

“The main use of the collection from these [NSA spying] programs [is] for law enforcement. [See the 2 slides below].”

“These slides give the policy of the DOJ/FBI/DEA etc. on how to use the NSA data. In fact, they instruct that none of the NSA data is referred to in courts – cause it has been acquired without a warrant.”

NSA’s phone collection program has no discernible impact on preventing acts of terrorism

Barack Obama hardest hit...

Via Hot Air

Consider this confirmation of an earlier analysis reported by the Washington Post and NBC in the pre-Christmas doldrums. Despite repeated claims by the White House that the NSA’s phone collection program may have prevented as many as 50 terrorist attacks against the US, another independent study found that the surveillance “has had no discernible impact on preventing acts of terrorism” (via the Daily Beast):
An analysis of 225 terrorism cases inside the United States since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks has concluded that the bulk collection of phone records by the National Security Agency “has had no discernible impact on preventing acts of terrorism.”
In the majority of cases, traditional law enforcement and investigative methods provided the tip or evidence to initiate the case, according to the study by the New America Foundation, a Washington-based nonprofit group.
The study, to be released Monday, corroborates the findings of a White House-appointed review group, which said last month that the NSA counterterrorism program “was not essential to preventing attacks” and that much of the evidence it did turn up “could readily have been obtained in a timely manner using conventional [court] orders.” Keep on reading

Should Snowden be given amnesty to stop his leaks?

Hmm...

Via CBS News:

CBS News learned Thursday that the information National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden has revealed so far is just a fraction of what he has. In fact, he has so much, some think it is worth giving him amnesty to get it back.
Rick Leggett is the man who was put in charge of the Snowden leak task force by Gen. Keith Alexander, who heads the NSA. The task force's job is to prevent another leak like this one from happening again. They're also trying to figure out how much damage the Snowden leaks have done, and how much damage they could still do.
Snowden, who is believed to still have access to 1.5 million classified documents he has not leaked, has been granted temporary asylum in Moscow, which leaves the U.S. with few options.

The NSA really likes your cookies...

The latest Edward Snowden revelation...

The National Security Agency is secretly piggybacking on the tools that enable Internet advertisers to track consumers, using "cookies" and location data to pinpoint targets for government hacking and to bolster surveillance.
The agency's internal presentation slides, provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, show that when companies follow consumers on the Internet to better serve them advertising, the technique opens the door for similar tracking by the government. The slides also suggest that the agency is using these tracking techniques to help identify targets for offensive hacking operations.
For years, privacy advocates have raised concerns about the use of commercial tracking tools to identify and target consumers with advertisements. The online ad industry has said its practices are innocuous and benefit consumers by serving them ads that are more likely to be of interest to them.
The revelation that the NSA is piggybacking on these commercial technologies could shift that debate, handing privacy advocates a new argument for reining in commercial surveillance.

NSA infiltrates online gaming...

Your privacy isn't safe anywhere anymore...

To the National Security Agency analyst writing a briefing to his superiors, the situation was clear: their current surveillance efforts were lacking something. The agency's impressive arsenal of cable taps and sophisticated hacking attacks was not enough. What it really needed was a horde of undercover Orcs.
That vision of spycraft sparked a concerted drive by the NSA and its UK sister agency GCHQ to infiltrate the massive communities playing online games, according to secret documents disclosed by whistleblower Edward Snowden.
The files were obtained by the Guardian and are being published on Monday in partnership with the New York Times and ProPublica.
The agencies, the documents show, have built mass-collection capabilities against the Xbox Live console network, which has more than 48 million players. Real-life agents have been deployed into virtual realms, from those Orc hordes in World of Warcraft to the human avatars of Second Life. There were attempts, too, to recruit potential informants from the games' tech-friendly users.

Shocking: Obama's NSA tracking 5 billion people's cellphone location daily...

Can you imagine the liberal outrage if Bush were President?

Via The Guardian: 

The National Security Agency is reportedly collecting almost 5 billion cell phone records a day under a program that monitors and analyses highly personal data about the precise whereabouts of individuals, wherever they travel in the world.
Details of the giant database of location-tracking information, and the sophisticated ways in which the NSA uses the data to establish relationships between people, have been revealed by the Washington Post, which cited documents supplied by whistleblower Edward Snowden and intelligence officials.
The spy agency is said to be tracking the movements of “at least hundreds of millions of devices” in what amounts to a staggeringly powerful surveillance tool. It means the NSA can, through mobile phones, track individuals anywhere they travel – including into private homes – or retrace previously traveled journeys.
The data can also be used to study patterns of behaviour to reveal personal information and relationships between different users.

Flashback Video: Obama promises "No more Illegal Wire Tapping of American Citizens"

Heh.

Tweets of the Day: #handygate

In Germany, “Handy” refers to cell phone. “#Handygate” means cellphonegate.

#handygate. pic.twitter.com/ppF9Wf3gqi
— Ralf Fastner (@rfastner) October 26, 2013

Ozapft is! #merkelphone #handygate @BarackWatchingU pic.twitter.com/OcLK1bbgbY
— Timo Brückel (@timo_brueckel) October 27, 2013

Is it OK for the Obama administration to spy on our friends and allies?

According to this CS Monitor article, we spy because we can and we sometimes have competing interests with our allies.

As the scandal over the United States spying on friends and allies expands beyond German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cell phone to perhaps dozens of other countries, one question lingering in the background is: Why spy on friends anyway?
The basic answer, some national intelligence and security experts say, is that relations among countries are essentially based on interests, and no matter how friendly countries may be, their interests are rarely exactly the same.
“We and Germany don’t always see eye-to-eye on some important issues,” says James Lewis, director of the Technology and Public Policy Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “One way to reassure yourself about the direction an ally like Germany is heading on one of those issues is to know what Germany is saying.”

Is this OK? The short answer is no. The long answer is also no. Aside from the problems it causes when you get caught, it's unethical. Let's compare this to an ordinary citizen's situation. A man is getting a divorce and in an ugly custody and property battle with his wife. He suspects his wife is talking about the divorce with his best friend. Is it OK for him to tap his friends phone if he can? Not only would that be wrong, it would be a felony in the U.S. If the friend lived in a foreign country, it might not be a crime, but it would still be wrong. You don't spy on your best friends.