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After writing intensely, even obsessively, for years about government surveillance and the prosecution of journalists, Glenn Greenwald has suddenly put himself directly at the intersection of those two issues, and perhaps in the cross hairs of federal prosecutors.
Greenwald, a lawyer and longtime blogger, published an article in the British newspaper The Guardian about the existence of a top-secret court order allowing the National Security Agency to monitor millions of telephone logs. The article, which included a link to the order, is expected to attract an investigation from the Justice Department, which has aggressively pursued leakers. Greenwald followed up with an article written with a Guardian reporter, Ewen MacAskill, that exposed an N.S.A. program, Prism, that has gathered information from the nation’s largest Internet companies going back nearly six years.
“The N.S.A. is kind of the crown jewel in government secrecy. I expect them to react even more extremely,” Greenwald said in a telephone interview. He said that he had been advised by lawyer friends that “he should be worried,” but he had decided that “what I am doing is exactly what the Constitution is about and I am not worried about it.”
Blogger, With Focus on Surveillance, Is at Center of a Debate
Senior Administration officials said ConnectED would require a one-time infusion of capital that would cost individual Americans little.
Administration officials expect to pay for part of the program through savings rung out of the Universal Service Fund. That most likely isn’t going to be enough to increase capacity for all the schools and educational institutions that may want it, according to Federal Communications Commission sources. Requests from schools already exceed the amount available from the $2.3 billion-dollar E-Rate fund. E-Rate is part of the Universal Service Fund, which is designed to give all Americans access to telecommunications. Administration officials conceded to reporters that the program could bump up the Universal Service Fund charge on customers’ monthly phone bills by no more than 40 cents.
Education Secretary Arne Duncan said it’s not clear that the telephone charge would have to go up, or by how much, until the Federal Communications Commission looks more closely at existing funding streams and the needs of the initiative.
Cost could complicate school broadband plan
[Commentary] During a Free State Foundation panel, I stated that one of my five priorities as Federal Communications Commission chair would be to “[e]nsure that the agency has authority to protect consumers and competition with regard to broadband Internet access, depending on the DC Circuit’s decision in the open Internet case.” This, and comments from the other panelists, precipitated a question as to what we would do if the FCC were to lose Verizon’s legal challenge to the FCC’s open Internet rules.
My response was clear. I said that Title II of the Communications Act was the most legally defensible way to preserve the FCC’s authority over broadband Internet access, and that former Chairman Genachowski should have classified broadband Internet access as a “telecommunications service” under Title II when promulgating the open Internet rules, rather than trying to find the remaining threads of ancillary authority left to the agency under the DC Circuit’s Comcast decision. I also reminded the audience that to the extent that Verizon is challenging the FCC’s authority, it puts not only the open Internet rules at risk, but all other rules the FCC might promulgate that affect broadband competition and consumer protection. However, the Verizon case is now before the DC Circuit, and while I do believe the FCC has a pretty weak case, it has been significantly strengthened by Justice Scalia and the Supreme Court’s decision in Arlington County v. FCC, which held that a court must give an agency discretion as to the agency’s determination of the scope of its own authority. As I said on the panel, had the Supreme Court gone the other way, it would have been “game, set, match” for Verizon and the Arlington decision “breathes life into the FCC’s case.”
Clarifying What I Would Do If I Were FCC Chair
When President Barack Obama begins two days of meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Southern California on June 7, in part to discuss China's alleged computer thefts of some of this nation's most sensitive secrets, many Silicon Valley businesses will be monitoring the talks with intense interest.
This area is widely considered a key battleground in the country's war on cybercrime, and while skeptical of the meeting's outcome, many Silicon Valley executives hope Obama will win concessions from Xi to help halt the attacks. In recent years, tech companies here have been targeted by hackers, and reports that some of the computerized break-ins have been directed by Chinese authorities has corporate officials throughout Silicon Valley worried.
"They are freaking out," said Patrick Peterson, CEO of Palo Alto-based Agari, one of the legions of security companies in the region that offer software and other products to deter hackers. "It's a flaming-hot issue, which has the industry extremely concerned all the way up to the board level."
The meetings are likely to cover a variety of topics, ranging from economic issues to the threat posed by North Korea's nuclear weapons. But White House officials say cybersecurity will be a major focus, and they expect the two nations to form a working group to begin wrestling with the problem in detail in July.
U.S.-China cybersecurity meetings have Silicon Valley anxious
More than a year ago, the European Union’s top justice official proposed a tough set of measures for protecting the privacy of personal data online. But because of intense lobbying by Silicon Valley companies and other powerful groups in Brussels, several proposals have been softened, no agreement is in sight and governments are openly sparring with one another over how far to go in protecting privacy.
On June 6, justice ministers from the European Union’s 27 member states agreed to a business-friendly proposal that what companies do with personal data would be scrutinized by regulators only if there were “risks” to individuals, including identity theft or discrimination. The ministers debated a proposal that would no longer require companies to obtain “explicit” consent from users whose personal data they collect and process, instead of “unambiguous” consent, which is considered to be a lower legal threshold. And they discussed a proposal on balancing an individual’s right to data protection with other rights, including the freedom to do business. The ministers deferred discussion of the other most fractious provision, the so-called right to be forgotten. But in recent weeks, public comments by lawmakers and draft language suggested a softening of approach.
Europe Continues Wrestling With Online Privacy Rules
President Barack Obama unveiled a bold, new initiative called ConnectED to connect 99 percent of America’s students to the Internet through high-speed broadband and high-speed wireless within 5 years, calling on the Federal Communications Commission to modernize and leverage its existing E-Rate program to meet that goal. The President also directed the federal government to make better use of existing funds to get Internet connectivity and educational technology into classrooms, and into the hands of teachers trained on its advantages. And he called on businesses, states, districts, schools and communities to support this vision. This ambitious initiative does not require Congressional action.
Millions of students lack high-speed broadband access and fewer than 20 percent of educators say their school’s Internet connection meets their teaching needs. ConnectED will bring high-speed Internet within their reach, with a particular benefit for rural communities that have lagged behind in connectivity. In addition to connecting America’s students, ConnectED harnesses the ingenuity of the American private sector get new technologies into students’ hands and support digital learning content. ConnectED also better invests existing federal funds to ensure that every educator in America receives support and training in using education technology tools to improve student learning. The ambitious new vision for digital, connected learning builds on work the Administration has done over the past four years to increase broadband access across the country.
President Obama Unveils ConnectED Initiative to Bring America’s Students into Digital Age What is ConnectEd? (White House blog) Bringing America’s Students into the Digital Age (White House blog II) ConnectED: President Obama’s Plan for Connecting All Schools to the Digital Age (White House fact sheet) Statement (FCC Chairwoman Clyburn) Statement (FCC Commissioner Rosenworcel) President Calls for High-Speed Broadband in 99% of Schools/Libraries (Multichannel News) Obama Promises to Have High-Speed Internet in Most Schools in 5 Years (NYTimes) Obama Goal: High-Speed Internet for Most Schools (WSJ)
The National Security Agency (NSA) obtained bulk phone records for Verizon's customers on a daily basis. Each day, the NSA would receive a massive flood of data from Verizon. This dataset documents which phone numbers their customers call or are called from, alongside some identifying metadata.
Judge Roger Vinson authorized the NSA on April 25 to obtain unlimited data for a three-month period from Verizon. While phone calls themselves were not monitored under the terms of the court order, related metadata were. The data Verizon handed over to the NSA covered both domestic and international phone activity going through their network. The kicker, however, is that circumstantial evidence implies the NSA has been monitoring Verizon phone calls in bulk for years. Evidence in on-the-record court orders, found by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), found that mass communications spying had been taking place for at least seven years. This spying also includes AT&T landline and mobile customers, and could include customers of all major telecommunications providers.
How the NSA Monitors America’s Phone Traffic
Officially, telecom giant Verizon has no comment about turning over millions of customers call logs to the government. But behind the scenes, the company is vetting requests from senior Capitol Hill aides and others, asking Obama Administration officials for political cover, and relying on its lawyers to craft the company’s messaging.
Verizon circulated a company memo from General Counsel Randy Milch that laid out its position, including that it would be legally obligated to respond to government requests like these and that it takes steps to protect customers’ private information. The memo went out internally and then it was sent to consultants to use as talking points. “You may have seen stories in the news about a top secret order Verizon allegedly received to produce certain calling information to the U.S. Government,” Verizon’s Milch wrote. “We have no comment on the accuracy of The Guardian newspaper story or the documents referenced, but a few items in these stories are important. The alleged court order that The Guardian published on its website contains language that: compels Verizon to respond; forbids Verizon from revealing the order’s existence; and excludes from production the ‘content of any communication … or the name, address, or financial information of a subscriber or customer.’” The memo also states that Verizon takes measures to protect customers’ privacy, but if the company “were to receive such an order, we would be required to comply.”
Verizon on offense behind the scenes
Suddenly implicated in a plot to monitor Americans, Silicon Valley’s premier Internet companies denied knowledge of an ongoing operation by the National Security Administration and the FBI to invade their servers.
The data — everything from e-mails to video — has allowed analysts to track movements and contacts over an extended period of time, according to two newspapers that secured classified information. This marks the first time the secret program, nicknamed PRISM and established in 2007, has been made public. The companies read like a who’s who of the tech industry — Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube and Apple — companies whose products and services reach millions of Americans. The news capped a day the Obama Administration spent fielding charges that it secretly obtained records for millions of Verizon phone calls. And it fed growing concerns that Americans have sacrificed civil liberties to the mantle of security.
Internet giants push back on NSA tapping reports
Fresh disclosures about the U.S. National Security Agency's vast data-gathering operation have cast a new spotlight on the difficult balancing act for telecommunications providers as they try to maintain customers' trust while complying with extensive government requests for information about their activity.
Carriers like Verizon Communications are the guardians of sensitive data about their customers, including who they call and where they are located. But it is precisely that information that security officials are interested in as they try to hunt down potential or suspected terrorists. Cooperating with government demands for phone data got carriers into hot water in the middle of the past decade, when the legality of the government's requests hadn't been established. Verizon and AT&T faced dozens of lawsuits stemming from their participation in the highly classified program. Carriers were let off the hook by a sweeping rewrite of U.S. domestic spying laws in 2008, which expanded the government's power to monitor calls and gave telecom companies immunity for previous cooperation. But the issue re-emerged after Britain's Guardian newspaper on Wednesday published a secret court order requiring Verizon to turn over data about all calls within, to and from the U.S. to the NSA. Verizon general counsel Randy Milch said in a memo to employees Thursday that the company takes steps to safeguard its customers' privacy but has to turn over information when ordered to do so by a federal court. He didn't confirm the existence of the order, which Verizon is forbidden from revealing, according to the order, but said that Verizon, in general, is compelled to respond in such cases.
Disclosures Spotlight Tightrope for Phone Firms When NSA Calls, Companies Answer (WSJ)