NSA admits its surveillance of Americans is much, much more invasive
As an aside during testimony on Capitol Hill today, a National Security Agency representative rather casually indicated that the government looks at data from a universe of far, far more people than previously indicated.
Chris Inglis, the agency's deputy director, was one of several government representatives—including from the FBI and the office of the Director of National Intelligence—testifying before the House Judiciary Committee this morning. Most of the testimony largely echoed previous testimony by the agencies on the topic of the government's surveillance, including a retread of the same offered examples for how the Patriot Act and Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act had stopped terror events.
But Inglis' statement was new. Analysts look "two or three hops" from terror suspects when evaluating terror activity, Inglis revealed. Previously, the limit of how surveillance was extended had been described as two hops. This meant that if the NSA were following a phone metadata or web trail from a terror suspect, it could also look at the calls from the people that suspect has spoken with—one hop. And then, the calls that second person had also spoken with—two hops. Terror suspect to person two to person three. Two hops. And now: A third hop.
Think of it this way. Let's say the government suspects you are a terrorist and it has access to your Facebook account. If you're an American citizen, it can't do that currently (with certain exceptions)—but for the sake of argument. So all of your friends, that's one hop. Your friends' friends, whether you know them or not—two hops. Your friends' friends' friends, whoever they happen to be, are that third hop. That's a massive group of people that the NSA apparently considers fair game.
For a sense of scale, researchers at the University of Milan found in 2011 that everyone on the Internet was, on average, 4.74 steps away from anyone else. The NSA explores relationships up to three of those steps. (See our conversation with the ACLU's Alex Abdo on this.)
Inglis' admission didn't register among the members of Congress present, but immediately resonated with privacy advocates online.
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2013/07/nsa-admits-it-analyzes-more-peoples-data-previously-revealed/67287/
Despite participation in PRISM, Microsoft warns of threat to Constitution:
“The Constitution is suffering.” That was the message sent July 16 by Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith in a letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder.
The purpose of the letter was to ask Holder “to get involved personally in assessing the Constitutional issues raised by Microsoft and other companies that have repeatedly asked to share publicly more complete information about how we handle national security requests for customer information.”
The “requests for customer information” referred to by Smith are part of the PRISM program exposed in the cache of National Security Agency (NSA) documents leaked by whistleblower and former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
Under PRISM, the NSA and the FBI are “tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies, extracting audio, video, photographs, e-mails, documents, and connection logs that enable analysts to track a person's movements and contacts over time,” as reported by the Washington Post.
Microsoft’s sudden concern for the health of the Constitution is curious given the substantial evidence of their covert collusion in the PRISM program.
Consider, for example, the information published by the Guardian (U.K.) on July 12:
Microsoft has collaborated closely with US intelligence services to allow users' communications to be intercepted, including helping the National Security Agency to circumvent the company's own encryption, according to top-secret documents obtained by the Guardian.
Following that claim, the paper then enumerates specific examples of Microsoft’s disregard for the very principles of liberty they purport to hold as “first and foremost” and that they seek protection of from Eric Holder. Here are some of the Guardian’s revelations:
The documents show that:
• Microsoft helped the NSA to circumvent its encryption to address concerns that the agency would be unable to intercept web chats on the new Outlook.com portal;
• The agency already had pre-encryption stage access to email on Outlook.com, including Hotmail;
• The company worked with the FBI this year to allow the NSA easier access via Prism to its cloud storage service SkyDrive, which now has more than 250 million users worldwide;
• Microsoft also worked with the FBI's Data Intercept Unit to "understand" potential issues with a feature in Outlook.com that allows users to create email aliases;• In July last year, nine months after Microsoft bought Skype, the NSA boasted that a new capability had tripled the amount of Skype video calls being collected through Prism;• Material collected through Prism is routinely shared with the FBI and CIA, with one NSA document describing the program as a "team sport".
In their own defense, the Microsoft missive to Holder insists that these disclosures have been “misinterpreted” in the media.
Then, Microsoft practically pleads with the Obama administration to allow it to publicly rend its garments and sit in sackcloth and ashes, demonstrating the sincerity of its repentance.
Should anyone disbelieve the length to which Microsoft is willing to go to deflect deeper inquiry by customers and journalists into the quantity and quality of personal information the Redmond, Washington, tech giant gave to federal snoops, consider the cloying tone in the following excerpt from the letter:
As I know you appreciate, the Constitution guarantees the fundamental freedom to engage in free expression unless silence is required by a narrowly tailored, compelling Government interest. It’s time to face some obvious facts. Numerous documents are now in the public domain. As a result, there is no longer a compelling Government interest in stopping those of us with knowledge from sharing more information, especially when this information is likely to help allay public concerns.
I feel very fortunate that we have both an Attorney General and a President with such longstanding knowledge of and appreciation for our Constitution. Put simply, we need you to step in to ensure that common sense and our Constitutional safeguards prevail.
The way, then, that Microsoft’s general counsel suggests for shoring up “Constitutional safeguards” is to go along for years with the government’s secret surveillance of its customers, then, when the heat is on, claim “the devil made me do it” and write letters lamenting their participation in the snooping and touting their love for liberty.
Then, to multiply the manifold embarrassments of its narrative, Microsoft betrays its sycophancy by praising the president’s commitment to the Constitution. This needs no elaboration in order to further prove the point.
In another section of the letter to Holder, Microsoft accuses the government of keeping the company from “making adequate progress” in its goal of complete disclosure of its dealing with the NSA. Then Microsoft hedges, applauding the “good faith in which the Government has dealt with us during this challenging period.”
One aspect of the purported “good faith” Microsoft (and many of its corporate colleagues) point to is the oversight of the FISA court, the secret court which rules on the legality of the federal government’s petitions for wiretapping warrants and other surveillance requests. The problem is that while in theory it functions as a check on unconstitutional surveillance, in reality the FISA court is its champion.
http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/constitution/item/16020-despite-participation-in-prism-microsoft-warns-of-threat-to-constitution