Mass Surveillence

Front 1

Source: 1 Topic: Legality

"The panel of experts appointed by President Obama to review the Snowden revelations and the NSA's actions had a peek into the issue of "legality" and promptly raised seriousquestions —as did one of the two federal courts that recently ruled on some aspects of the issue "

Front 2

Source: 1 Topic: Metadata

• Such basic information can also provide geo-location information to track physical movements.

• Tracks phone calls, only three hops away from every person

• is important

Front 3

Source: 1 Topic: safety/legality

• Saying that it is necessary for safety is not true, shouldn't suspend habeas corpus

•Constitution and Bill of Rights has evolved with our nation- supposed to address abuses of government power and protect civil liberties

Front 4

Source: 1 Topic: terrorism

"For one thing, we already know that more NSA spying would not [57] have stopped 9/11; most of the needed information was alreadyheld by the US government and was simply not properly shared or acted upon. 9/11 was a policy failure, not a matter of too-little snooping."

Front 5

Source: 1 Topic: Legality

"The Fourth Amendment [20] guarantees a right to privacy. The Constitution does not ask if you want or need that right; it grants it to everyone, and demands that the government interfere with it only under specific circumstances."It does not matter if you have anything to hide or not- that is a distraction from the legality of the issue.

Front 6

Source: 1 Topic: legality

The secret Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Court (FISA) was set up to provide judicial oversight in a classified setting to the intelligence community. Theoretically, the government is required to make a compelling case for the issuance of orders authorizing electronic and other surveillance, physical searches, and compelled production of business records. That secret FISA court approved all 1,789 requests [31] submitted to it in 2012.

Front 7

Source: 1 Topic: terrorism

"There have been only about 20 [53] domestic terror-related deaths since 9/11. Your chances as an American of being killed by a terrorist (the figures are for the world, not just inside the US) are about 1 in 20 million"• Terrorism is not a threat to the US

Front 8

Source: 1 Topic: Money

"Instead of spending trillions of dollars on spying and domestic surveillance, we had spent that same money on repairing ourinfrastructure and improving our schools, wouldn't we now have a safer, stronger America?"

• Mass Surveillance is not the most effective method of strengthening America

Front 9

Source: 2 Topic: Safety

"We have learned through two decadesof trial and error that operationalizingour cyberdefenses by linking them tointelligence and information-assurancecapabilities is not only the best but alsothe only viable response to growing threats."

• New technology has the ability to make America safer and solve conflicts

Front 10

Source: 2 Topic: Safety

"Every nation has significant vulnerabilities that can beexploited in and through cyberspace; almost alone among nations, we have the ability to lessen ours dramatically."

•If we have the capacity and technology to lessen the threat on America- it would be detrimental to not use it

Front 11

Source: 3 Topic: Metadata

"The controversial bulk collection of American telephonemetadata, which includes the telephone numbers that originateand receive calls, as well as the time and date of those callsbut not their content, under Section 215 of the USA PATRIOTAct"

Front 12

Source: 3 Topic: Terrorism

"NSA programs involving thesurveillance of non-U.S. persons outside of the United Statesunder Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act played a rolein 4.4 percent of the terrorism cases we examined"

Front 13

Source: 3 Topic: Terrorism

"In a press conference in Germany back in June of 2013, Obamasaid they "know of at least 50 threats that have been avertedbecause of this information, not just in the United States but insome cases threats here in Germany."

Front 14

Source: 3 Topic: Terrorism

"Turning to the efficacy prong, the Government does not cite asingle instance in which analysis of the NSA's bulk metadatacollection actually stopped an imminent attack, or otherwise aidedthe Government in achieving any objective that was time- sensitivein nature," the judge wrote in a scathing opinion.

Front 15

Source: 3 Topic: Terrorism

"the government has alsoargued that it can't talk about the program's success because itrisks revealing sensitive sources and methods."

• debating the effectiveness in preventing terrorist attacks- government claims that revealing specific attacks would be harmful to the program

Front 16

Source: 4 Topic: Terrorism

"The nonprofit think tank New America Foundation published a report today after investigating the 227 Al Qaeda-affiliated people or groups that have been chargedfor committing an act of terrorism in the US since 9/11. It found just 17 of the cases werecredited to NSA surveillance."

Front 17

Source: 4 Topic: Terrorism-9/11

"But even though the attack on the World Trade Center was used as justification forexpanding the intelligence community's powers in the first place, the new report suggeststhat the 9/11 hijackers didn't succeed by totally blindsiding the US, but because thegovernment bungled the early warnings."

• Even with evidence the government might screw it up

Front 18

Source: 4 Topic: Metadata

"The overall problem for US counterterrorism officials is not that they need theinformation from the bulk collection of phone data, but that they don’t sufficientlyunderstand or widely share the information they already possess that is derived fromconventional law enforcement and intelligence techniques,"

• If the problem is not understanding data- why would less data be in any way beneficial??

Front 19

Source: 5 Topic: Safety

The FederalistPapers — the bible of the Constitution’s meaning — warn at the outset (No. 1) of those who invokesupposed rights of the people to oppose the government’s efforts to defeat an enemy seeking to destroyus

•Safety is the number one priority

Front 20

Source: 5 Topic: Metadata/Legality

Its (the NSA) surveillanceprogram violates no constitutional provision. It examines only the addressee and sender on e-mails, andtelephone numbers called and called from. The Supreme Court has long held that such information isnot privacy-protected by the Fourth Amendment.

Front 21

Source: 5 Topic: Terrorism

"That enemy exists, the evidence for itconsisting of 3,000 lives lost on 9/11, the Boston Marathon massacre, and even the unsuccessfulterrorist attacks on our airplanes and at Times Square. The NSA program is logical. Our intelligencepeople know phone numbers or area codes used by terrorists in various world locations."

Front 22

Source: 5 Topic: Terrorism

"If this program had been applied to identify the Boston bombers, that attack could have beenprevented."

Front 23

Source: 5 Topic: Legality

"Apparently recognizing that their constitutional argument on the NSA program itself is meritless, manyopponents insist on a slippery slope of imagined horribles. They assert that, while using sender andrecipient identities for security purposes is lawful, possessing the content of the messages would enablethat to be used too, unconstitutionally — despite NSA’s denial that it has been done, and despite theabsence of contrary evidence."

Front 24

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court has rejectedonly 11 of nearly 34,000 Justice Department applications since 1979requesting permission for government agencies to conduct electronicsurveillance. The requests soared after passage of the USA Patriot Actin October 2001. Enacted in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks,the law significantly relaxed restrictions on intelligence gatheringinside the United States.

Front 25

Source: 6 Topic: Snowden

Snowden said he went public outof concern that the programs are adangerous form of surveillance. Hisflight from justice as he sought asylum overseas became a worldwide storyfor weeks while the nation debatedwhether he was a patriot or a traitor.

Front 26

Source: 6 Topic: Legality

Even the FISA court has objectedto the NSA’s surveillance practices. De-classified documents released in Au-gust showed the agency collected asmany as 56,000 emails and other communications from Americans for threeyears, despite limits in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act against suchpractices. After the court issued a secretruling in 2011 that such methods wereunconstitutional, the NSA changed itscollection patterns.

Front 27

Source: 6 Topic: Safety

Gen. Keith Alexander, the NSA’s director, said theprograms helped to foil 54 terrorism plots against the United States and itsallies. Documents leaked by Snowdenshowed that the XKeyscore programalone had helped to capture 300 terrorists by 2008. 16

Front 28

Source: 6 Topic: Safety

Eliminating theprograms “would place this nation injeopardy,” said Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Feinstein. 18 HouseSpeaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, saidthe Snowden disclosures “put Americans at risk.” 19

Front 29

Source: 6 Topic: Safety/Secrecy

• Critics say it is impossible to gaugesafety because so many details of theprograms remain classified.

• The NSA programs “demonstrate an-other problem with U.S. counterterrorism policy: excessive secrecy thatundermines accountability,”

Front 30

Source: 6 Topic: Legality

Obama emphasized that safeguardsexist to prevent abuses, such as requiring approvals from judges andscrutiny from congressional intelligencecommittees. He noted that the NSAcollection program is authorized underthe 2001 Patriot Act — enacted in theaftermath of 9/11 to beef up the gov-ernment’s authority to fight terrorism

Front 31

Source: 6 Topic: Metadata

Responding to the NSA revelations,Obama declared, “Nobody is listeningto your telephone calls.” 29 He andother officials stress that NSA surveil-lance has been focused on “metadata”— large amounts of phone-number-to-phone-number records — and that in2012 the records of fewer than 300people were actually examined.

Front 32

Source: 6 Topic: Metadata

Civil libertarians also say the NSA’scollection of “metadata” isn’t as innocuousas Obama and others portray it. Bystudying whom a person calls andwhen they call, intelligence agenciesneed not rely on the content of thecalls.

Front 33

Source: 9 Topic: Terrorists

We were shaken by the signs we had missed leading up to the attacks—how the hijackers had made phone calls to known extremists, and travelled to suspicious places. So we demanded that our intelligence community improve its capabilities, and that law enforcement change practices to focus more on preventing attacks before they happen than prosecuting terrorists after an attack.

Front 34

Source: 9 Topic: Safety

far more than the traditional mission of monitoring hostile powers and gathering information for policymakers—instead, they were asked to identify and target plotters in some of the most remote parts of the world, and to anticipate the actions of networks that,by their very nature, cannot be easily penetrated with spies or informants.

Front 35

Source: 9 Topic: Privacy

And yet, in our rush to respond to very real and novel threats, the risks of government overreach—the possibility that we lose some of our core liberties in pursuit of security—became more pronounced.

Front 36

Source: 9 Topic: Safety

First, the same technological advances that allow U.S. intelligence agencies to pin-point an al Qaeda cell in Yemen or an email between two terrorists in the Sahel, also mean that many routine communications around the world are within our reach. At a time when more and more of our lives are digital, that prospect is disquieting for all of us.

Front 37

The legal safeguards that restrict surveillance against U.S. per-sons without a warrant do not apply to foreign persons overseas. This is not unique to America; few, if any,spy agencies around the world con-strain their activities beyond their own borders. And the whole point of intelligence is to obtain information that is not publicly available. But America’s capabilities are unique. And the power of new technologies means that there are fewer and fewer technical constraints on what we can do.

Front 38

Source: 9 Topic: Secrecy

intelligence agencies cannot function without secrecy, which makes their work less subject to public de-bate.

Front 39

Source: 9 Topic: Privacy Rights

As the nation that developed the Internet, the world expects us to en-sure that the digital revolution works as a tool for individual empowerment rather than government control.Having faced down the totalitarian dangers of fascism and communism,the world expects us to stand up for the principle that every person has the right to think and write and form relationships freely—because individual freedom is the well spring of human progress.

Front 40

Source: 9 Topic: Safety

Our capabilities help protect not only our own nation,but our friends and allies as well. Our efforts will only be effective if ordinary citizens in other countries have confidence that the United States respects their privacy too.

Front 41

Source: 11 Topic: Legality

He arguedthat the National Security Agency is not a rogue outfit, that it plays by the rules and is staffed bypatriotic men and women. But in an important admission, he also made clear that after 9/11, theNSA and American intelligence efforts in general went too far.

Front 42

Source: 11 Topic: Legality/Snowden

Many voices have begun arguing that Edward Snowden'srevelations show that U.S. intelligence operations have run amok and are illegal andunconstitutional and that Snowden deserves to be pardoned and treated like a hero. The factualbasis for every one of these claims is weak. A large number of Snowden's revelations involve notdomestic surveillance but foreign intelligence operations, a standard role for U.S. spy agencies.

Front 43

Source: 11 Topic: Safety

The U.S.--itsgovernment, businesses and people--is under massive, sustained surveillance from and infiltrationby criminals, terrorists and foreign governments.

It would be impossible to defend against these attacks without allowing intelligence agencies tospy on foreign governments and groups abroad.

Front 44

Source: 11 Topic: Legality

After 9/11, theNSA and American intelligence efforts in general went too far. Taking advantage of its uniquetechnological capabilities, the U.S. government did whatever it could, rarely asking whether itshould. The President proposed some new checks on decisions to collect data and newconstraints on how it is stored and when it can be accessed.

Front 45

Source: 12 Topic: Terrorism

The current threat by al Qaeda and jihadists is one that requires aggressive intelligence collection andefforts. One has to look no further than the disruption of the New York City subway bombers (the onebeing touted by DNI Clapper) or the Boston Marathon bombers to know that the war on al Qaeda iscoming home to us, to our citizens, to our students, to our streets and our subways.

Front 46

Source: 12 Topic: Privacy

An open society,such as theUnited States, ironically needs touse thistechnology toprotect itself. Thistruth is naturallyuncomfortable fora country with aConstitution thatprevents thefederalgovernment fromconducting"unreasonablesearches andseizures."

Front 47

Source: 12 Topic: Privacy

However, when we hear of programs such PRISM, or the Department of Justice getting phone records ofscores of citizens without any signs of suspicious activities nor indications of probable cause that theymight be involved in terrorist related activities, the American demand for privacy naturally emerges tochallenge such "trolling" measures or data-mining.

Front 48

Source: 12 Topic: Snowden

Working together, the two branches canensure that both legally, and by policy, this is what the citizens desire of their government -- and that leakssuch as Snowden's won't have the impact and damage that his leaks are likely to cause.

Front 49

Source: 17 Topic: Metadata

President Obama signed the USA Freedom Act, which ends bulk collection of domestic phone data by the government (but not the collection of other data, like emails and the content of Americans' international phone calls) and requires the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to make its most significant rulings available to the public.

Front 50

Source: 17 Topic: Terrorism

These reforms are only a modest improvement on the Patriot Act, but the intelligence community saw them as a grave impediment to antiterror efforts. In his comments Monday, Mr. Brennan called the attacks in Paris a ''wake-up call,'' and claimed that recent ''policy and legal'' actions ''make our ability collectively, internationally, to find these terrorists much more challenging.''

Front 51

Source: 17 Topic: Legality

The intelligence agencies' inability to tell the truth about surveillance practices is just one part of the problem. The bigger issue is their willingness to circumvent the laws, however they are written. The Snowden revelations laid bare how easy it is to abuse national-security powers, which are vaguely defined and generally exercised in secret.

Front 52

Source: 17 Topic: Legality

In truth, intelligence authorities are still able to do most of what they did before -- only now with a little more oversight by the courts and the public. There is no dispute that they and law enforcement agencies should have the necessary powers to detect and stop attacks before they happen. But that does not mean unquestioning acceptance of ineffective and very likely unconstitutional tactics that reduce civil liberties without making the public safer.

Front 53

Source: 17 Topic: Legality/Snowden

What he calls ''hand-wringing'' was the sustained national outrage following the 2013 revelations by Edward Snowden, a former National Security Agency contractor, that the agency was using provisions of the Patriot Act to secretly collect information on millions of Americans' phone records.

Front 54

Source: 18 Topic: Legality

A federal judge on Monday partly blocked the National Security Agency's program that systematically collects Americans' domestic phone records in bulk just weeks before the agency was scheduled to shut it down and replace it. The judge said the program was most likely unconstitutional.

Front 55

Source: 18 Topic: Legality

After substantial debate, Congress in June enacted the U.S.A. Freedom Act, which banned bulk collection under the Patriot Act after Nov. 29, and established a system under which the bulk data will stay with the phone companies but the N.S.A. can swiftly access it.

Front 56

Source: 18 Topic: Legality

Judge Leon's ruling that the bulk collection of calling records most likely violated the Constitution was novel because in 1979, the Supreme Court held that call logs or metadata -- records showing who called whom and when, but not the content of what they said -- was not protected by the Fourth Amendment.

Front 57

Source: 19 Topic: Legality

The three-judge panel on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit had ruled in May that the once-secret bulk phone records program was illegal. But by allowing the program to continue until Nov. 29, when it will expire under a bill passed by Congress, the court avoided making a definitive assessment of whether such bulk collection violates Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures.

Front 58

Source: 19 Topic: Metadata/Privacy

At issue is the question of whether modern technology has changed the meaning of privacy rights since the Supreme Court decided in 1979 that the Constitution did not protect phone metadata -- logs showing who contacted whom, but not what was said.

Front 59

Source: 19 Topic: Legality

'We agree with the government that we ought not meddle with Congress's considered decision regarding the transition away from bulk telephone metadata collection, and also find that addressing these issues at this time would not be a prudent use of judicial authority,'' Judge Gerard E. Lynch wrote. ''We need not, and should not, decide such momentous constitutional issues based on a request for such narrow and temporary relief.''

Front 60

Source: 19 Topic: Legality/Metadata

•Question over whether fourth amendment applies to metadata or emails

• Can fourth amendment be overruled for the sake of safety?

Front 61

Source: 13 Topic: Secrecy

So secret was the NSA that its existence was not even mentioned indirectly by U.S. government organizational manuals until 1957 when a reference appeared to an organization performing that performed specialized technical and coordinating functions for national security.

Front 62

Source: 13 Topic: Metadata

NSA is a collector of raw information. The job of translating that information into intelligence falls upon the analytic agencies such as the Central Intelligence Agency. The line between collecting SIGINT and interpreting it is a fine one and in reality analysis does take place. Often this creates tension in the intelligence community when the results of NSA information gathering/analysis can be presented directly to policy makers and not filtered through other agencies.

Front 63

Source: 13 Topic: Secrecy

Since 9/11, NSA surveillance operations inside the United States have raised questions over the proper balance of privacy, government surveillance, and national security, but the discussion has been limited by the secrecy of the agency's operations.

Front 64

Source: 14 Topic: Legality

After the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush authorized a program which permitted the National Security Agency (NSA) to eavesdrop on conversations of anyone in the United States with possible connections to terrorism. The wiretapping program revealed in 2005 was controversial because it enabled the government to eavesdrop without a constitutionally mandated warrant, but its proponents argued that the program fell completely within the president's legal powers.

Front 65

Source: 14 Topic: Legality

He reaffirmed the statements made by President Bush, arguing that the president had the authority under the Patriot Act and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to authorize the program. The U.S. Congress had passed FISA in 1978 following allegations of domestic spying by U.S. intelligence agencies. The act prohibited the conducting of electronic surveillance in the United States without proper warrants.

Front 66

Source: 16 Topic: Snowden

On June 14, federal prosecutors in the United States announced that Snowden was being charged violating the 1917Espionage Act and with stealing government property. The U.S. government then asked officials in Hong Kong to detain Snowden so he could be extradited.

Front 67

Source: 16 Topic: Metadata

The first revelation was a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court order requiring Verzion to turn over "metadata" (information about length, location, and numbers dialed) for all calls made on the company's network. Experts speculated that Verizon was not the only company subject to such an order and that the collection of metadata was an ongoing program.

Front 68

Source: 16 Topic: Privacy Rights, Snowden

The revelations angered many U.S. allies who were subject to surveillance as well as civil rights and privacy advocates, who argued that the government had exceeded its constitutional authority. While some politicians called Snowden a traitor for revealing intelligence secrets, others considered him a hero for pointing out large-scale abuses

Front 69

Source 20 Topic: Metadata

To surveil the Internet, it helps to have control over the physical nodes in the network. Indeed, wherever our data passes through cables or servers that are bolted to a particular country's territory, it is vulnerable to that government's control.

Front 70

Source 20 Topic: Legality

In the meantime, American technology companies should be free to comply directly with foreign government requests for data, as long as that access is warranted and meets international standards of due process and human rights. If America fails to allow such access, it will happen anyway in a brute and extralegal manner -- and the result will be a less secure, less efficient Internet.

Front 71

Source: 21 Topic: Legality

"There is a huge difference between targeting suspected spies and terrorists, and sweeping up phone records from millions of law-abiding Americans," said Sen. Ron Wyden (D., Ore.). "This is exactly why surveillance reform is so urgently needed -- to preserve the authorities that law-enforcement agencies actually need, while ending dragnet surveillance that violates Americans' privacy without making our country any safer."

Front 72

Source: 21 Topic: Legality

WASHINGTON—U.S. officials and some lawmakers are worried that key tools used to hunt down terrorists and spies could fall victim to the fight over the government's controversial phone-surveillance program.

Front 73

Source: 21 Topic: FBI, Safety

FBI officials are concerned it would be much more difficult to get that kind of information without the current authority, these people said. The FBI could fall back to using an older surveillance law that allows for the collection of a more limited range of records, and use grand-jury subpoenas more often, but officials view both of those options as significantly more risky, because professional spies or terrorists are more likely to get wind of investigators.

Front 74

Source: 21 Topic: FBI

The possibility of losing its spy and terror hunting tools is of great concern to FBI officials, who view the NSA phone program as providing far less value than the other intelligence-gathering work the section allows, according to current and former officials.

Front 75

Source: 21 Topic: FBI

•NSA Reforms could possibly affect the FBI's ability to gather evidence to prosecute

•Senior lawmakers are aware that if public opposition sinks the phone-surveillance program, the other intelligence work could become an accidental casualty of that decision, aides said.

Front 76

Source: 21 Topic: Legality

Long before the Snowden revelations, Section 215 of the Patriot Act was controversial. Critics contended it was so broadly written it was ripe for abuse, and authorized almost any kind of intelligence-gathering, up to and including the books people read at libraries.

Front 77

Source: 21 Topic: Metadata

That program has come under intense scrutiny from lawmakers, civil-liberties groups and others following 2013 revelations by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden that the U.S. built a vast database of millions of Americans' phone records. The database includes the time, duration and number of each call, and investigators can use it to try to find terror suspects' associates.

Front 78

Source: 22 Topic: Terrorism

Following the leaks by Edward Snowden beginning in June last year of highly classified intelligence gathering techniques, the former head of the National Counterterrorism Center, Matthew Olsen, disclosed in September that terrorists tracked by U.S. intelligence services have started encrypting their communications in ways that defeat detection, and that the government has lost track of several.

Front 79

Source: 22 Topic: Metadata

For starters, the bill ends the National Security Agency's bulk collection of what is called telephone metadata. This includes the date, time, duration and telephone numbers for all calls, but not their content or the identity of the caller or called, and is information already held by telephone companies.

Front 80

Source: 22 Topic: Metadata

Proponents say this change is necessary to allay fears that the NSA could use telephone metadata to construct an electronic portrait of an American citizen's communications, and determine whether that person has, say, consulted a psychiatrist, or called someone else's spouse.

Front 81

Source: 22 Topic: Legality

This bill redefines the FISA court, which was never meant to be an adversary tribunal and was imposed simply as an added safeguard in the 1970s, without regard to its history or its purpose. Worse, it is a three-headed constitutional monster: It is a violation of both the separation of powers principle and the Constitution's appointments clause by having judges rather than the president appoint the public advocate, and then it has the advocate litigate against the Justice Department when both executive offices are supposed to be controlled by the president.

Front 82

Source: 22 Topic: Metadata

The bill's imposition of the warrant requirement on the NSA would be more burdensome than what any assistant U.S. attorney must do to get metadata in a routine criminal case, which is simply to aver that the information is needed in connection with a criminal investigation -- period.

Front 83

Source: 22 Topic: Metadata/Legality

However, only 22 people at the NSA are permitted access to metadata, and only upon a showing of relevance to a national-security investigation, and they are barred from any data-mining whatsoever even in connection with such an investigation.

Front 84

Source: 23 Topic: Privacy Rights, Safety

•"If we want to live in a free society, then we are going to have to protect ourselves from people who would take it from us at the point of a gun," wrote Hodges. In his view, if that means giving the government more latitude in surveillance of email and other communications, so be it.

•Such arguments, equally relevant in the United States, understandably infuriate civil libertarians, who argue that if we surrender our privacy out of fear, we are likely to end up with less freedom but not more safety.

Front 85

Source: 23 Topic: Safety

While spying by the National Security Agency raises disturbing questions about official accountability and the limits of surveillance, the reality is that a cybercriminal is probably more likely to snoop on your email than the government. What's more, while the government would pay a devastating price if it were caught using compromising material obtained through NSA spying to embarrass or pressure a gadfly journalist or political activist, hackers could do so with impunity.

Front 86

Source: 23 Topic: Legality

An authoritarian government is more dangerous to freedom than freelance tyrants, because it usually has more power and resources. A government limited by constitutional rights and by checks and balances is capable of abuses, as we know all too well; but its ability to do damage is severely circumscribed.

Front 87

Source: 23 Topic: Safety

•Other people breaking the law pose a much bigger threat then the government

•You are way more threatened by an internet criminal with no restrictions then the gov't

Front 88

Source: 24 Topic: Privacy, Metadata

A federal study released on Thursday concluded that there was no effective alternative to the government's "bulk collection" of basic information about every telephone call made in the United States, a practice that civil rights advocates call overly intrusive.

Front 89

Source: 24 Topic: Privacy, Metadata

On Thursday, the National Academy of Sciences, in a detailed report that brought together communications and cybersecurity experts and former senior intelligence officials, said that "no software-based technique can fully replace the bulk collection of signals intelligence." But it also concluded that there were ways to "control the usage of collected data" and to make sure that once it is in the government's hands, there are stronger privacy protections.

Front 90

Source: 24 Topic: Metadata

"From a technological standpoint, curtailing bulk data collection means analysts will be deprived of some information," said Robert F. Sproull, the chairman of the committee that examined the problem and a former director of Oracle's Sun Labs. But, he said, that "does not necessarily mean that current bulk collection must continue."

Front 91

Source: 24 Topic: Terrorism

She added that the report did not contradict findings of groups that have concluded that "the domestic bulk call record program has not helped stop an act of terrorism." But she noted that the report "does importantly acknowledge that there are additional steps that the intelligence community can take to increase transparency, improve oversight, and limit the use of information collected."

Front 92

Source: 24 Topic: Privacy

"There is no doubt that bulk collection of signals intelligence leaves many uncomfortable," the report said. "Various courts have indeed questioned whether such collection is constitutional." But in the end, the committee concluded, the United States should focus on putting limits on how the data is viewed and used -- and by whom -- rather than limiting how much of it is collected.

Front 93

Source: 24 Topic: Terrorism, Snowden

Since the uproar over Mr. Snowden's revelations and the program's effect on Americans' privacy, the politics of mass data collection have shifted. Terrorist attacks like the ones that killed 17 people in Paris last week, along with the rise of the Islamic State, have led to calls for more vigilance by intelligence agencies, swinging the pendulum back.

Front 94

Source: 25 Topic: Secrecy

The secrecy surrounding the National Security Agency's post-9/11 warrantless surveillance and bulk data collection program hampered its effectiveness, and many members of the intelligence community later struggled to identify any specific terrorist attacks it thwarted, a newly declassified document shows.

Front 95

Source: 25 Topic: Terrorism

Shortly after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, President George W. Bush secretly told the N.S.A. that it could wiretap Americans' international phone calls and collect bulk data about their phone calls and emails without obeying the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Over time, Stellarwind's legal basis evolved, and pieces of it emerged into public view, starting with an article in The Times about warrantless wiretapping in 2005.

Front 96

Source: 25 Topic: Secrecy

The report said that the secrecy surrounding the program made it less useful. Very few working-level C.I.A. analysts were told about it. After the warrantless wiretapping part became public, Congress legalized it in 2007; the report said this should have happened earlier to remove "the substantial restrictions placed on F.B.I. agents' and analysts' access to and use of program-derived information due to the highly classified status" of Stellarwind.

Front 97

Source: 25 Topic: Safety

Just 1.2 percent of the tips from 2001 to 2004 had made such a contribution. Two years later, the F.B.I. reviewed all the leads from the warrantless wiretapping part of Stellarwind between August 2004 and January 2006. None had proved useful.

Front 98

Source: 26 Topic: Legality

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court ruled late Monday that the National Security Agency may temporarily resume its once-secret program that systematically collects records of Americans' domestic phone calls in bulk.

•July 2015

Front 99

Source: 26 Topic: Legality

But, complicating matters, in May the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in New York, ruled in a lawsuit brought by the A.C.L.U. that Section 215 of the Patriot Act could not legitimately be interpreted as permitting bulk collection at all.

Front 100

Source: 26 Topic: Legality

Congress did not include language in the Freedom Act contradicting the Second Circuit ruling or authorizing bulk collection even for the six-month transition. As a result, it was unclear whether the program had a lawful basis to resume in the interim.

Front 101

Source: 26 Topic: Legality

"Neither the statute nor the Constitution permits the government to subject millions of innocent people to this kind of intrusive surveillance," Mr. Jaffer said. "We intend to ask the court to prohibit the surveillance and to order the N.S.A. to purge the records it's already collected."

Front 102

Source: 26 Topic: Legality

It remains unclear whether the Second Circuit still considers the surveillance program to be illegal during this six-month transition period. The basis for its ruling in May was that Congress had never intended for Section 215 to authorize bulk collection.

Front 103

Source: 26 Topic: Metadata

The bulk phone records program traces back to October 2001, when the Bush administration secretly authorized the N.S.A. to collect records of Americans' domestic phone calls in bulk as part of a broader set of post-Sept. 11 counterterrorism efforts.

Front 104

Source: 26 Topic: Legality

"Congress could have prohibited bulk data collection" effective immediately, he wrote. "Instead, after lengthy public debate, and with crystal-clear knowledge of the fact of ongoing bulk collection of call detail records," it chose to allow a 180-day transitional period during which such collection could continue, he wrote.

•Court implicitly authorized mass surveillance by allowing for a 6 month transition period

Front 105

Source: 26 Topic: Legality

The surveillance court is subject to review by its own appeals panel, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review. Both the Second Circuit and the surveillance review court are in turn subject to the Supreme Court, which resolves conflicts between appeals courts.

Front 106

Source: 14 Topic: Privacy Rights

This country was founded on the notion of liberty. It was the spark that started a revolution, the fire that forged our Constitution and the energy that has fueled our ascent to the great nation we are today.

•Comes down to privacy vs. safety

Front 107

Source: 14 Topic: Legality- Fourth Amendement

One of these protections - against unreasonable searches and seizures - is rooted in the Fourth Amendment. Despite the requirement that warrants must be specific and based on probable cause, the government's surveillance programs often undermine these constitutional standards.

Front 108

Source: 14 Topic: Legality

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court proceedings, where these warrants are granted, take place behind closed doors where records are hidden. These actions have essentially led to a rubber stamp for increased government surveillance on Americans. These secret, one-sided proceedings leave our citizens vulnerable, with no one to advocate on their behalf.

Front 109

Source: 14 Topic: Privacy Rights

We oppose the most recent, watered-down version of the USA Freedom Act because it does not protect our citizens against unconstitutional surveillance. We need to go back to the basics and use the Fourth Amendment as our guide. This would include ending bulk collection; increasing transparency; improving advocacy for privacy; and closing the Section 702 back-door loophole, to name a few.

Front 110

Source: 14 Topic: Legality

While we believe U.S. intelligence should keep a close watch on suspected terrorists, the U.S. Constitution should not be trampled in the process. We too want a strong national defense and believe we should actively pursue potential terrorists and threats - but we must do so within the bounds of the Constitution.

Front 111

Source: 14 Topic: Legality

Given the appeals court's recent ruling that bulk collection is illegal and was never intended by Congress, the law is firmly on our side. We do not have to choose between the bad and the worse. We fear that passage of the USA Freedom Act into law will provide the court with the statutory basis to continue this mass surveillance.