Category: Spying

Amid Clinton Controversy, FBI Documents Show Why Americans Should Worry About Intelligence Gathering


Critics are right to be concerned about the FBI’s expanded power, especially when it comes to recruiting and deploying informants. That’s true regardless of why FBI Director James Comey acted as he did toward Hillary Clinton.

Source: Amid Clinton Controversy, FBI Documents Show Why Americans Should Worry About Intelligence Gathering

Three New Scandals Show How Pervasive and Dangerous Mass Surveillance Is in the West, Vindicating Snowden


Each new investigation and judicial inquiry proves Snowden’s core warnings were correct.

Source: Three New Scandals Show How Pervasive and Dangerous Mass Surveillance Is in the West, Vindicating Snowden

America has one month to stop the FBI getting its global license to hack • The Register


In one month, an obscure procedural rule tweak will come into effect allowing US cops and federal agents to hack any computer in the world using a single warrant issued anywhere in America.

No one in Congress has voted on this legal update. It means a warrant granted somewhere within the US can be executed on the other side of the country – or the other side of the planet.

The change, approved by the Supreme Court, is in Rule 41 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. Right now, if law enforcement wants to hack a PC, they have to ask a judge for a warrant in the jurisdiction where it is located. With the rule change, they could do this to any computer anywhere in the US or the world.

As a bonus, the change would also allow law enforcement – without a warrant – free rein to hack into computers that have already been hacked. So, for example, if you have a virus infection then law enforcement can go through your files at will.

Source: America has one month to stop the FBI getting its global license to hack • The Register

Meanwhile, in America: Half of adults’ faces are in police databases • The Register


‘It is out of control,’ think tank thinks

Source: Meanwhile, in America: Half of adults’ faces are in police databases • The Register

Court finds GCHQ and MI5 engaged in illegal bulk data collection • The Register


I don’t believe it! The mad lads have only gone and won a legal case against the spooks!

Source: Court finds GCHQ and MI5 engaged in illegal bulk data collection • The Register

US renews fight for the right to seize content from the world’s servers | Ars Technica


No access to world’s servers thwarts “criminal and national security investigations.”

Source: US renews fight for the right to seize content from the world’s servers | Ars Technica

Yahoo’s CISO resigned in 2015 over secret e-mail search tool ordered by feds | Ars Technica


Reuters: Yahoo “complied with a classified US government directive.”

Presuming that the report is correct, it would represent essentially the digital equivalent of a general warrant—which is forbidden by the Fourth Amendment

Source: Yahoo’s CISO resigned in 2015 over secret e-mail search tool ordered by feds | Ars Technica

Chelsea Manning Sentenced to Solitary Confinement for Suicide Attempt


Adding to the long list of mistreatments she has had to endure, the U.S. Army whistleblower now faces a punishment the U.N. recognizes as torture.

Source: Chelsea Manning Sentenced to Solitary Confinement for Suicide Attempt

Will The Washington Post Give Back Its Pulitzer And Stand Trial With Snowden? | Techdirt

In response to the campaign to pardon Snowden, the Washington Post has come out with a tone deaf editorial against pardoning Snowden, calling for him to be prosecuted, and insisting that Snowden caused real harm with the revelations. Here’s the really incredible part. The Post focuses its complaint on the revelation of the PRISM program — and that is the story that the Post broke. Glenn Greenwald and the Guardian had the first story, about the Section 215 mass phone records surveillance program. But it was the Post that had the first story about PRISM. And yet, the Washington Post now says that while revealing the 215 program may have been a public service, revealing PRISM was a crime.

Except it wasn’t Ed Snowden who publicly revealed information about PRISM. It was the Washington Post. And it won a freaking Pulitzer Prize for that reporting as well. And now it says that the revelation of that program should never have happened?

Source: Will The Washington Post Give Back Its Pulitzer And Stand Trial With Snowden? | Techdirt