Free Republic

For years Americans' right to privacy, as granted by the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, has come under threat as the country's surveillance systems have grown. After intelligence leaks by former National Security Agency employee Edward Snowden, however, the NSA's domestic dragnet is finally getting the attention that many people feel it deserves.

The National Security Agency contractor who leaked a top secret report about Russian activities during the election told FBI agents that she was upset with her employer because Fox News was played on TVs at her office. “I’ve filed formal complaints about them having Fox News on, you know?” Reality Winner, the contractor, told FBI agents during a June 3 interview at her home in Augusta, Ga. “Uh, just at least, for God’s sake, put Al Jazeera on, or a slideshow with people’s pets. I’ve tried everything to get that changed.” Federal prosecutors disclosed the interview transcript in a court...

Germany and the US appear to be edging closer to political confrontation. The Federal Prosecutor says there is sufficient evidence to open a politically explosive investigation into NSA spying on Chancellor Angela Merkel’s mobile phone. […] In the close to eight months that have passed since the first reports were published about the National Security Agency’s massive spying operations, the only things Germany has been given by the US are well-meaning assurances. Last summer, the German government sent a list of questions about their surveillance programs to the Americans and the British, whose GCHQ intelligence agency has likewise been accused...

A judge on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has ordered the Obama administration to review for possible public release legal opinions issued by the secret court dealing with the constitutionality of the widespread collection of phone records by the National Security Agency. Friday’s ruling by one of the FISC judges, F. Dennis Saylor IV, a US district judge in Boston, is important, because it could mark a new willingness by the court to permit a level of public scrutiny of its decisions.

Individuals with connections to al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations repeatedly tried to obtain jobs in US intelligence community; 'One of five CIA applicants has connections to hostile groups'

Edward Snowden accessed some secret national security documents by assuming the electronic identities of top NSA officials, said intelligence sources. “Every day, they are learning how brilliant [Snowden] was,” said a former U.S. official with knowledge of the case. “This is why you don’t hire brilliant people for jobs like this. You hire smart people. Brilliant people get you in trouble.”

What's the NSA to say when they illegally and unconstitutionally snarf up emails they have no business looking at? Ooops: For several years, the National Security Agency unlawfully gathered tens of thousands of e-mails and other electronic communications between Americans as part of a now-revised collection method, according to a 2011 secret court opinion. The redacted 85-page opinion, which was declassified by U.S. intelligence officials on Wednesday, states that, based on NSA estimates, the spy agency may have been collecting as many as 56,000 "wholly domestic" communications each year. "For the first time, the government has now advised the court...

On Aug. 9, the Obama administration released a previously secret legal interpretation of the Patriot Act that it used to justify the bulk collection of every American's phone records. The strained reasoning in the 22-page memo won't survive long in public light, which is itself one of the strongest arguments for transparency in government. As the late Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis wrote, "Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants." Recent revelations by the Washington Post emphasize the need for greater transparency. The National Security Agency failed to report privacy violations that are serious infringements of constitutional rights....

The National Security Agency has broken privacy rules or overstepped its legal authority thousands of times each year since Congress granted the agency broad new powers in 2008, according to an internal audit and other top-secret documents. Most of the infractions involve unauthorized surveillance of Americans or foreign intelligence targets in the United States, both of which are restricted by law and executive order. They range from significant violations of law to typographical errors that resulted in unintended interception of U.S. e-mails and telephone calls. [....] The NSA audit obtained by The Post, dated May 2012, counted 2,776 incidents in...

The White House dismissed the bulk of President Barack Obama’s premier panel of outside intelligence advisers earlier this year, leaving the blue-ribbon commission largely vacant as the public furor built over the National Security Agency’s widespread tracking of Americans’ telephone calls. The President’s Intelligence Advisory Board stood 14 members strong through 2012, but the White House website was recently updated to show the panel’s roster shrinking to just four people. In the past four years, the high-powered group has waded into the implications of WikiLeaks for intelligence sharing, and urged retooling of America’s spy agencies as the United States withdraws...

A pair of civil-liberties Democrats whom the White House tried to appease in a closed-door meeting warned today that fresh reports of thousands of privacy violations by the National Security Agency are just the “tip of a larger iceberg.” On Thursday, the Washington Post published its report of a May 2012 audit leaked by former contractor Edward Snowden that found 2,776 violations over the previous year of executive orders and Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act provisions governing spying on Americans or foreign targets in the U.S. These included both computer and operator errors. Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Mark Udall (D-Colo.)...

The Washington Post´s article detailing the fourth amendment abuses by the NSA got some push back from the administration who attempted to "edit" the article before publication. The internal audit referenced in the article was obtained by the WaPo from Edward Snowden. The details of the audit indicated repeated and growing privacy violations by the NSA, violations which included obtaining thousands of American citizen´s communications records and using methods of information collection that were later deemed unconstitutional by a court. The Post was able to interview John Delong, NSA director of compliance for the article and they were initially

President Barack Obama privately derided the controversy over the blockbuster June 6 revelation of the National Security Agency’s far-reaching capabilities as “noise rather than something that’s real and meaningful,” said Education Secretary Arne Duncan. Duncan revealed Obama’s dismissive attitude to the dramatic claims by a former defense contractor, Edward Snowden, in a Washington Post report on a White House program to increase Internet use in schools. Obama made the remark to Duncan on June 6, as they were flying on Air Force One to visit a school in Mooresville, N.C., according to the last few paragraphs of the Post’s Aug....

The National Security Agency, hit by disclosures of classified data by former contractor Edward Snowden, said Thursday it intends to eliminate about 90 percent of its system administrators to reduce the number of people with access to secret information. Keith Alexander, the director of the NSA, the U.S. spy agency charged with monitoring foreign electronic communications, told a cybersecurity conference in New York City that automating much of the work would improve security. "What we're in the process of doing - not fast enough - is reducing our system administrators by about 90 percent," he said. The remarks came as...

n a rare diplomatic snub, President Obama is canceling plans to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow next month. The decision reflects both U.S. anger over Russia's harboring of National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden and growing frustration within the Obama administration over what it sees as Moscow's stubbornness on other key issues, including missile defense and human rights. Obama will still attend the Group of 20 economic summit in St. Petersburg, Russia, but a top White House official said the president had no plans to hold one-on-one talks with Putin while there. Instead of visiting Putin in...

Summary: Revelations of the U.S. government's spying programs could have a massive impact on the U.S. cloud industry, which stands to lose vast sums over the next three years as a result — compounded by other countries bankrolling efforts to combat U.S. market leadership. The U.S.' dominance in the cloud space may soon be challenged by rival countries, particularly those in the European Union, as the global surveillance scandal threatens to wipe up to $35 billion off the U.S. cloud slate. A new report by non-profit group the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation claims that Europeans are attempting to nudge...

<p>Members of Congress have been repeatedly thwarted when attempting to learn basic information about the National Security Agency (NSA) and the secret FISA court which authorizes its activities, documents provided by two House members demonstrate.</p> <p>From the beginning of the NSA controversy, the agency's defenders have insisted that Congress is aware of the disclosed programs and exercises robust supervision over them. "These programs are subject to congressional oversight and congressional reauthorization and congressional debate," President Obama said the day after the first story on NSA bulk collection of phone records was published in this space. "And if there are members of Congress who feel differently, then they should speak up."</p>

Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) said on Sunday that he believes National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden is a whistleblower, not a traitor. "He may be doing things overseas that we would find problematic, that we would find dangerous," Amash said on Fox News Sunday. "But as far as Congress is concerned, sure he is a whistleblower. He told us what we need to know." Amash explained that although members of the intelligence committees were informed of the details of the NSA's surveillance, most lawmakers were in the dark about the programs. "Without his doing what he did, members of Congress...

Until Wednesday morning, you'd probably never heard of something called "XKeyscore," a program that the National Security Agency itself describes as its "widest reaching" means of gathering data from across the Internet. According to reports shared by NSA leaker Edward Snowden with the Guardian, is that in addition to all of the other recent revelations about the NSA's surveillance programs, by using XKeyscore, "analysts can also search by name, telephone number, IP address, keywords, the language in which the Internet activity was conducted or the type of browser used." David Brown, who co-authored the recent book "Deep State: Inside the...

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration on Wednesday released formerly classified documents outlining a once-secret program of the National Security Agency that is collecting records of all domestic phone calls in the United States, as top officials testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee. As the hearing began, The Guardian newspaper published another document from the archives of Top Secret surveillance matters leaked to it by the former N.S.A. contractor Edward J. Snowden. It was a 32-page presentation describing the N.S.A.´s XKeyscore program, by which N.S.A. analysts can mine vast databases of phone and Internet information the agency has vacuumed up.