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The United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court is a U.S. federal court established under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA) to oversee requests for surveillance warrants against foreign spies inside the United States by federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Such requests are made most often by the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Congress created FISA and its court as a result of the recommendations by the U.S. Senate's Church Committee.
Surveillance is the monitoring of behavior, many activities, or information for the purpose of information gathering, influencing, managing or directing. This can include observation from a distance by means of electronic equipment, such as closed-circuit television (CCTV), or interception of electronically transmitted information like Internet traffic. It can also include simple technical methods, such as human intelligence gathering and postal interception.
Computer and network surveillance is the monitoring of computer activity and data stored locally on a computer or data being transferred over computer networks such as the Internet. This monitoring is often carried out covertly and may be completed by governments, corporations, criminal organizations, or individuals. It may or may not be legal and may or may not require authorization from a court or other independent government agencies. Computer and network surveillance programs are widespread today and almost all Internet traffic can be monitored.
Mass surveillance is the intricate surveillance of an entire or a substantial fraction of a population in order to monitor that group of citizens. The surveillance is often carried out by local and federal governments or governmental organizations, such as organizations like the NSA and the FBI, but it may also be carried out by corporations. Depending on each nation's laws and judicial systems, the legality of and the permission required to engage in mass surveillance varies. It is the single most indicative distinguishing trait of totalitarian regimes. It is also often distinguished from targeted surveillance.
NSA warrantless surveillance — also commonly referred to as "warrantless-wiretapping" or "-wiretaps" — refers to the surveillance of persons within the United States, including U.S. citizens, during the collection of notionally foreign intelligence by the National Security Agency (NSA) as part of the Terrorist Surveillance Program. In late 2001, the NSA was authorized to monitor, without obtaining a FISA warrant, the phone calls, Internet activity, text messages and other communication involving any party believed by the NSA to be outside the U.S., even if the other end of the communication lay within the U.S.
Parallel construction is a law enforcement process of building a parallel, or separate, evidentiary basis for a criminal investigation in order to conceal how an investigation actually began.
Michael Vincent Hayden is a retired United States Air Force four-star general and former Director of the National Security Agency, Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence, and Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Hayden currently co-chairs the Bipartisan Policy Center's Electric Grid Cyber Security Initiative. In 2017, Hayden became a national security analyst for CNN.
MAINWAY is a database maintained by the United States' National Security Agency (NSA) containing metadata for hundreds of billions of telephone calls made through the four largest telephone carriers in the United States: AT&T, SBC, BellSouth and Verizon.
Techdirt is an American Internet blog that reports on technology's legal challenges and related business and economic policy issues, in context of the digital revolution. It focuses on intellectual property, patent, information privacy and copyright reform in particular.
Sqrrl Data, Inc. is an American company founded in 2012 that markets software for big data analytics and cyber security. The company has roots in the United States Intelligence Community and National Security Agency. Sqrrl was involved in the creation of, and actively contributes to Apache Accumulo and other related Apache projects. Sqrrl’s primary product is its threat hunting platform, designed for active detection of advanced persistent threats.
PRISM is a code name for a program under which the United States National Security Agency (NSA) collects internet communications from various U.S. internet companies. The program is also known by the SIGAD US-984XN. PRISM collects stored internet communications based on demands made to internet companies such as Google LLC under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 to turn over any data that match court-approved search terms. Among other things, the NSA can use these PRISM requests to target communications that were encrypted when they traveled across the internet backbone, to focus on stored data that telecommunication filtering systems discarded earlier, and to get data that is easier to handle.
The practice of mass surveillance in the United States dates back to wartime monitoring and censorship of international communications from, to, or which passed through the United States. After the First and Second World Wars, mass surveillance continued throughout the Cold War period, via programs such as the Black Chamber and Project SHAMROCK. The formation and growth of federal law-enforcement and intelligence agencies such as the FBI, CIA, and NSA institutionalized surveillance used to also silence political dissent, as evidenced by COINTELPRO projects which targeted various organizations and individuals. During the Civil Rights Movement era, many individuals put under surveillance orders were first labelled as integrationists, then deemed subversive, and sometimes suspected to be supportive of the communist model of the United States' rival at the time, the Soviet Union. Other targeted individuals and groups included Native American activists, African American and Chicano liberation movement activists, and anti-war protesters.
Ongoing news reports in the international media have revealed operational details about the Anglophone cryptographic agencies' global surveillance of both foreign and domestic nationals. The reports mostly emanate from a cache of top secret documents leaked by ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden, which he obtained whilst working for Booz Allen Hamilton, one of the largest contractors for defense and intelligence in the United States. In addition to a trove of U.S. federal documents, Snowden's cache reportedly contains thousands of Australian, British and Canadian intelligence files that he had accessed via the exclusive "Five Eyes" network. In June 2013, the first of Snowden's documents were published simultaneously by The Washington Post and The Guardian, attracting considerable public attention. The disclosure continued throughout 2013, and a small portion of the estimated full cache of documents was later published by other media outlets worldwide, most notably The New York Times, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Der Spiegel (Germany), O Globo (Brazil), Le Monde (France), L'espresso (Italy), NRC Handelsblad, Dagbladet (Norway), El País (Spain), and Sveriges Television (Sweden).
The global surveillance disclosure released to media by Edward Snowden has caused tension in the bilateral relations of the United States with several of its allies and economic partners as well as in its relationship with the European Union. In August 2013, U.S. President Barack Obama announced the creation of "a review group on intelligence and communications technologies" that would brief and later report to him. In December, the task force issued 46 recommendations that, if adopted, would subject the National Security Agency (NSA) to additional scrutiny by the courts, Congress, and the president, and would strip the NSA of the authority to infiltrate American computer systems using "backdoors" in hardware or software. Geoffrey R. Stone, a White House panel member, said there was no evidence that the bulk collection of phone data had stopped any terror attacks.
The USA Freedom Act is a U.S. law enacted on June 2, 2015, that restored and modified several provisions of the Patriot Act, which had expired the day before. The act imposes some new limits on the bulk collection of telecommunication metadata on U.S. citizens by American intelligence agencies, including the National Security Agency. It also restores authorization for roving wiretaps and tracking lone wolf terrorists. The title of the act is a ten-letter backronym that stands for Uniting and Strengthening America by Fulfilling Rights and Ensuring Effective Discipline Over Monitoring Act of 2015.
The FISA Improvements Act is a proposed act by Senator Dianne Feinstein, Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Prompted by the disclosure of NSA surveillance by Edward Snowden, it would establish the surveillance program as legal, but impose some limitations on availability of the data. Opponents say the bill would codify warrantless access to many communications of American citizens for use by domestic law enforcement.
Proposed reforms of mass surveillance by the United States are a collection of diverse proposals offered in response to the Global surveillance disclosures of 2013.
U.S. president Barack Obama has received widespread criticism due to his support of government surveillance. President Obama had released many statements on mass surveillance as a result.
Targeted surveillance is a form of surveillance, such as wiretapping, that is directed towards specific persons of interest, and is distinguishable from mass surveillance. Both untargeted and targeted surveillance is routinely accused of treating innocent people as suspects in ways that are unfair, of violating human rights, international treaties and conventions as well as national laws, and of failing to pursue security effectively.
References
- ↑ "Transparency Toolkit". GitHub . Retrieved February 22, 2017.
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Joseph Cox (May 7, 2015). "This Database Gathers the Resumes of 27,000 Intelligence Workers". Vice.com. Motherboard. Retrieved February 22, 2017.
- ↑ Barton Gellman (June 15, 2013). "U.S. surveillance architecture includes collection of revealing Internet, phone metadata". The Washington Post . Retrieved February 26, 2017.
- ↑ Mike Masnick (June 17, 2013). "Why The NSA and President Bush Got the FISA Court to Reinterpret the Law in Order to Collect Tons of Data". Techdirt. Retrieved February 26, 2017.
- ↑ Christopher Soghoian (June 15, 2013). "Tweet by @csoghoian". Twitter. Retrieved February 26, 2017.
Linkedin profiles of people in Maryland that mention MARINA & NUCLEON have some fun other codenames like TRAFFICTHIEF
- ↑ Mike Masnick (June 18, 2013). "Discovering Names of Secret NSA Surveillance Programs Via LinkedIn". Techdirt. Retrieved February 26, 2017.
- 1 2 Rob O'Neill (May 6, 2015). "LinkedIn serves up resumes of 27,000 US intelligence personnel". ZDNet. Retrieved February 22, 2017.
- ↑ Kalev Leetaru (August 13, 2016). "Is Government Secrecy Dead in the Internet and Social Media Era?". Forbes. Archived from the original on February 22, 2017. Retrieved February 22, 2017.
Last year the Transparency Toolkit released ICWATCH, a searchable database of more than 27,000 intelligence community employees, culled entirely from keyword searches of information IC employees uploaded themselves to LinkedIn. Indeed, ICWATCH demonstrated that myriad highly classified programs were openly listed on LinkedIn profiles, often with enough contextual information to at least guess at their application area.
- ↑ Gallagher, Ryan (Aug 25, 2014). "The Surveillance Engine: How the NSA Built Its Own Secret Google". The Intercept .
- ↑ M.C. McGrath (Shidash) (August 23, 2014). "First version". GitHub.
- ↑ M.C. McGrath (May 6, 2015). "ICWATCH". Transparency Toolkit. Retrieved February 22, 2017.
- 1 2 Ian Paul (May 7, 2015). "New database taps LinkedIn to watch the NSA watchers". PCWorld. Retrieved February 22, 2017.
- 1 2 Rob O'Neill (May 19, 2015). "Death threat, FBI complaint greet launch of intelligence community database". ZDNet. Retrieved February 22, 2017.
- ↑ "The Kill List: ICWatch Uses LinkedIn Account Info to Out Officials Who Aided Assassination Program". Democracy Now!. May 28, 2015. Retrieved February 22, 2017.
- ↑ Kate Conger (August 15, 2016). "LinkedIn sues anonymous data scrapers". TechCrunch . Retrieved February 22, 2017.
- ↑ "ICWATCH". Transparency Toolkit. Retrieved February 22, 2017.