Surveillance

Introducing Judge Brett Kavanaugh: Siding with Big Business and Big Brother

On July 9, President Donald Trump nominated Judge Brett Kavanaugh to fill the Supreme Court vacancy left by the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy. This week, we examine some of Judge Kavanaugh’s decisions on key communications policy issues, like net neutrality, the First Amendment, and surveillance. At 53, Kavanaugh is relatively young, consistent with President Trump's desire to appoint judges who can serve on the High Court for decades. Since 2006, Kavanaugh has served on the U.S.

Surveillance is one of Kavanaugh’s four hurdles to the Supreme Court

On his first day as a newly minted nominee to the Supreme Court, more than a half-dozen swing senators made clear that Judge Brett Kavanaugh will have to say the right things on their policy priorities if he wants to get confirmed. Judge Kavanaugh will have to work to gain the vote of a skeptical Sen Rand Paul (R-KY) over the government’s surveillance powers. Sen Paul is never one to give up his vote easily. And he has serious concerns with Kavanaugh’s views on government surveillance.

Judge Brett Kavanaugh decided against net neutrality and for NSA surveillance

Judge Brett Kavanaugh's past rulings suggest a reliably conservative voice on tech. His addition to the highest court in the country could vastly reshape the digital landscape. 

NSA Purges Hundreds of Millions of Call and Text Records

The National Security Agency has purged hundreds of millions of records logging phone calls and texts that it had gathered from American telecommunications companies since 2015.

Senator Wyden to FCC: How much do police stingrays drain a cellphone battery?

In a new letter to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai, Sen Ron Wyden (D-OR) submitted a slew of new questions concerning how the controversial stingray devices interact with the 911 emergency system. His inquiries come on the heels of efforts in May to scrutinize what the Department of Justice knows about the secretive use of these devices. In addition, Sen Wyden got a new amendment into an appropriations bill that was approved by the Senate on June 25.

The Supreme Court just struck a blow against mass surveillance

[Commentary] The Supreme Court decided June 22 that cell-site location information is protected by the Fourth Amendment’s guarantee against unreasonable searches and seizures. Carpenter v. United States offers a rare bright spot in the uphill battle for digital privacy. Even more significant than the ruling is the reasoning: The Supreme Court has finally rejected the outdated idea that we voluntarily surrender our privacy simply because we own a digital device.

The Wiretap Rooms: The NSA's Hidden Spy Hubs In Eight U.S. Cities

The secrets are hidden behind fortified walls in cities across the United States, inside towering windowless skyscrapers and fortress-like concrete structures that were built to withstand earthquakes and even nuclear attack. Thousands of people pass by the buildings each day and rarely give them a second glance, because their function is not publicly known. They are an integral part of one of the world’s largest telecommunications networks – and they are also linked to a controversial National Security Agency surveillance program.

Privacy advocates want Congress to fix gaps in Carpenter ruling

The Supreme Court’s recent ruling that police must get a warrant to access the vast trove of location information wireless carriers collect on their customers marks a breakthrough for privacy rights. But the majority in Carpenter v. United States sidestepped key issues about whether police can still access location data in real time or for short periods without a warrant. These gaps will likely give rise to a flurry of new legal challenges --- and are already sparking calls for Congress to step in to fix potential loopholes.

Supreme Court rules that warrant is needed to access cell tower records

In a major win for privacy rights, the Supreme Court put new restraints on law enforcement’s access to the ever-increasing amount of private information about Americans available in the digital age. In the specific case before the court, the justices ruled that authorities generally must obtain a warrant to gain access to cell-tower records that can provide a virtual timeline and map of a person’s whereabouts. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the 5 to 4 decision, in which he was joined by the court’s liberal members.

The Unexpected Fallout of Iran's Telegram Ban

Seven weeks after Iran's conservative-led judiciary banned the secure communications app Telegram inside the country, Iranians are still reeling from the change. Though Telegram has critics in the security community, it has become wildly popular in Iran over the last few years as a way of communicating, sharing photos and documents, and even doing business. The service is streamlined for mobile devices, and its end-to-end encryption stymies the Iranian government's digital surveillance and censorship regime.

Apple to Close iPhone Security Hole That Police Use to Crack Devices

Apple has long positioned the iPhone as a secure device that only its owner can open. That has led to battles with law enforcement officials who want to get information off them, including a well-publicized showdown with the FBI in 2016 after Apple refused to help open the locked iPhone of a mass killer. The FBI eventually paid a third party to get into the phone, circumventing the need for Apple’s help. Since then, law enforcement agencies across the country have increasingly employed that strategy to get into locked iPhones they hope will hold the key to cracking cases.

White House warns Congress against trying to block ZTE deal

The White House pushed back on legislative efforts to reverse President Donald Trump’s deal with China that eases penalties on Chinese telecommunications giant ZTE, helping to revive the company. White House deputy press secretary Hogan Gidley defended the administration's agreement to impose lessened penalties on the company, maintaining that the punishment was "massive" and "historic." “This will ensure ZTE pays for its violations and gives our government complete oversight of their future activity without undue harm to American suppliers and their workers," Gidley said.

Senators Move to Sink Trump’s ZTE Deal

In a rare rebuke of President Donald Trump, Republican Senate leaders set up a vote for the week of June 11 that would undo the White House deal to revive Chinese telecommunications company ZTE Corp. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross was on Capitol Hill late June 11 to lobby against the move. But Democratic and Republican lawmakers said that an agreement had been reached to wrap into the National Defense Authorization Act an amendment that would ban ZTE from buying components from US suppliers.

Are any encrypted messaging apps fail-safe? Subjects of Mueller’s investigation are about to find out.

Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III's team is reportedly reviewing the encrypted messaging apps of witnesses in the Russia investigation. The team is looking at what experts say are some of the best apps at keeping messages private. Not all encrypted messaging apps disclose their user numbers, so it's hard to pinpoint just how prolific they have become. But the most popular among them, WhatsApp, claims 1.5 billion users around the world.

Rep Lieu Introduces Bill to Standardize National Encryption Policy

Reps Ted Lieu (D-CA), Mike Bishop (R-MI), Suzan DelBene (D-WA), and Jim Jordan (R-OH) reintroduced the Ensuring National Constitutional Rights for Your Private Telecommunications (ENCRYPT) Act. The legislation would preempt state and local government encryption laws to ensure a uniform, national policy for the interstate issue of encryption technology.

Senate Appropriations Committee Passes Ban on ZTE Tech Funding

Even as the Commerce Department was confirming a deal to remove an export ban affecting ZTE, Congress was moving to prevent government money to be used to buy ZTE equipment.

Special counsel Robert Mueller's team is requesting that witnesses turn in their personal phones to inspect their encrypted messaging programs

Apparently, special counsel Robert Mueller's team is requesting that witnesses turn in their personal phones to inspect their encrypted messaging programs and potentially view conversations between associates linked to President Donald Trump. Since as early as April, Mueller's team has been asking witnesses in the Russia probe to turn over phones for agents to examine private conversations on WhatsApp, Confide, Signal and Dust, apparently.  Fearing a subpoena, the witnesses have complied with the request and have given over their phones.

Edward Snowden Interview: "The people are still powerless, but now they're aware"

Edward Snowden has no regrets five years on from leaking the biggest cache of top-secret documents in history. He is wanted by the US. He is in exile in Russia. But he is satisfied with the way his revelations of mass surveillance have rocked governments, intelligence agencies and major internet companies.

How Americans have viewed government surveillance and privacy since Snowden leaks

In June 2013, news organizations broke stories about federal government surveillance of phone calls and electronic communications of US and foreign citizens, based on classified documents leaked by then-National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden. Here are some key findings about Americans’ views of government information-gathering and surveillance, drawn from Pew Research Center surveys since the NSA revelations:

How spies can use your cellphone to find you — and eavesdrop on your calls and texts

Surveillance systems that track the locations of cellphone users and spy on their calls, texts and data streams are being turned against Americans as they roam the country and the world, security experts and US officials say.  Federal officials acknowledged the privacy risk to Americans in a previously undisclosed letter from the Department of Homeland Security to Sen Ron Wyden (D-OR), saying they had received reports that "nefarious actors may have exploited" global cellular networks "to target the communications of American citizens." The letter, dated May 22, described surveillance syste

The GDPR transforms privacy rights for everyone. Without Edward Snowden, it might never have happened.

In June 2013, halfway through the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) negotiations, a National Security Agency contractor named Edward Snowden leaked documents on America’s global surveillance. The documents showed that the National Security Agency had backdoor deals with major Silicon Valley companies, allowing them to use consumer data as the basis of their counterintelligence operations.

Few Rules Govern Police Use of Facial-Recognition Technology

Police departments pay Amazon to use facial-recognition technology the company says can “identify persons of interest against a collection of millions of faces in real-time.”  More than two dozen nonprofits wrote to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos to ask that he stop selling the technology to police, after the ACLU of Northern California revealed documents to shine light on the sales.

NSA Triples Collection of Data From US Phone Companies

The National Security Agency vacuumed up more than 534 million records of phone calls and text messages from American telecommunications providers like AT&T and Verizon in 2017 — more than three times what it collected in 2016. Intelligence analysts are also more frequently searching for information about Americans within the agency’s expanding collection of so-called call detail records — telecom metadata logging who contacted whom and when, but not the contents of what they said.

Palantir Knows Everything About You

Founded in 2004 by Peter Thiel and some fellow PayPal alumni, Palantir cut its teeth working for the Pentagon and the CIA in Afghanistan and Iraq. The company’s engineers and products don’t do any spying themselves; they’re more like a spy’s brain, collecting and analyzing information that’s fed in from the hands, eyes, nose, and ears. The software combs through disparate data sources—financial documents, airline reservations, cellphone records, social media postings—and searches for connections that human analysts might miss.