New Bill Proposes NSA Surveillance Reforms

A newly-introduced bill is proposing sweeping privacy reforms to a controversial government surveillance program, which has been previously used by the National Security Agency NSA to vacuum up the call records of millions of Americans. The “Safeguarding Americans’ Private Records Act” was...

Evaluating the NSA's Telephony Metadata Program

Interesting analysis: "Examining the Anomalies, Explaining the Value: Should the USA FREEDOM Act's Metadata Program be Extended?" by Susan Landau and Asaf Lubin. Abstract: The telephony metadata program which was authorized under Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act, remains one of the most controversi...

NSA Says It Will End Access to 215 Records When Authority Ends in November

The National Security Agency says that once its legal authority to conduct Section 215 bulk telephone surveillance ends on Nov. 29, its analysts no longer will be allowed to access the database that holds all of the collected Section 215 records. In May, an appeals court ruled that bulk telephone...

Rights Groups Call for More Change Two Years After Snowden Revelations Began

It’s been two years now since the first stories about NSA surveillance capabilities began to appear, and the environment has shifted dramatically in that time. Awareness of and resistance to mass surveillance has increased greatly, but the changes to policy and laws that many observers had hoped...

Sunset of Section 215 Means All Eyes on USA FREEDOM Act

The sun may have set at midnight on Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act, putting a temporary halt to the NSA’s bulk collection of phone call metadata, but privacy champions and legal experts point to May 7 as the day the lights dimmed on that facet of the government’s surveillance efforts. On that...

Court's Ruling a 'Clear Signal' About Mass Surveillance Programs, Experts Say

The ruling last week by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals that the NSA’s years-long bulk collection of phone metadata is illegal is a “clear signal” that courts are moving in the direction of striking down some mass surveillance programs, experts say. The decision, issued Thursday, is among the...

Dennis Fisher and Mike Mimoso on the End of the Patch Tuesday Era, Section 215 and More

Dennis Fisher and Mike Mimoso talk about the end of the Patch Tuesday era for most Microsoft customers, the appeals court ruling on Section 215 metadata collection and Dennis’s idea for a security industry commission. Download: digitalunderground201.mp3 Music by Chris Gonsalves...

NSA Whistleblowers, Civil Liberties Groups Urge Congress to Oppose USA Freedom Act

As the expiration date for the controversial Section 215 of the Patriot Act draws near, the voices opposing a renewal of the surveillance powers the measure grants the NSA are growing louder. The latest entry is a letter sent to members of Congress by a long list of privacy, civil liberties, and...

Tech Companies, Privacy Advocates Call for NSA Reform

A group of technology companies, non-profits and privacy and human rights organizations have sent a letter to President Barack Obama, the director of national intelligence and a wide range of Congressional leaders, calling for an end to the bulk collection of phone metadata under Section 215 of t...

Of TrueCrypt and the Warrant Canary

Apple’s first transparency report, released last November, was one in a string of many released following the start of the Snowden leaks by technology companies trying to distance themselves from the tentacles of NSA surveillance. Apple’s report, however, contained two sentences that made it stan...

Metadata Program 'Not Uniquely Valuable'

In a mostly friendly and non-confrontational hearing on Tuesday, members of the Senate Judiciary Committee spent a couple of hours talking to members of the White House-appointed NSA review board about the extent of the agency’s surveillance and the panel’s recommendations for reform. The hearing...

NSA Metadata Program Likely Not Cost-Effective, Researchers Say

While much of the coverage of the surveillance programs revealed by Edward Snowden have focused on the legality and constitutionality of the collection of metadata and Internet traffic in the name of counter-terrorism and national security, the question of whether these programs are actually cost...

Apple Says It Has 'Never Received an Order Under Section 215'

In a new report detailing the number and kind of requests for user information it’s gotten from various governments, Apple said it has never received a request for information under Section 215 of the USA PATROT Act and would likely fight one if it ever came. The company also disclosed that it ha...

NSA Director Alexander Asked About Cell Location Collection

Did we hear the next shoe to drop in the NSA surveillance saga? Yesterday before a hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, asked some pointed questions of NSA director Gen. Keith Alexander regarding whether the agency collects cell tower location data in addition t...

Alexander: 'FISA is the Key to Connecting the Dots'

WASHINGTON–Faced with trying to accomplish its mission in an environment that suddenly has become quite hostile and inquisitive about its methods, the National Security Agency is becoming more and more public about the challenges that lie ahead and how the agency plans to address them. One of the...

FISC: No Phone Company Ever Challenged Metadata Collection Orders

A newly declassified opinion from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court from this summer shows the court’s interpretation of the controversial Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act that’s used to justify the National Security Agency’s bulk telephone metadata collections, and reveals that none ...

Government to Release Hundreds of Documents Related to NSA Surveillance

In response to a lawsuit by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Department of Justice is preparing to release a trove of documents related to the government’s secret interpretation of Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act. The declassified documents will include previously secret opinions of the...

NSA Director Alexander Defends Surveillance at Black Hat

LAS VEGAS –NSA director Gen. Keith Alexander’s keynote today at Black Hat USA 2013 was a tense confessional, an hour-long emotional and sometimes angry ride that shed some new insight into the spy agency’s two notorious data collection programs, inspired moments of loud applause in support of the...

Congress Warns Section 215 May Not Be Renewed

Incensed at the way that the Department of Justice and the intelligence community have used the controversial section 215 of the PATRIOT Act, members of the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday angrily questioned Justice and NSA officials about their surveillance of U.S. citizens and said that...

DNI Clapper Says Statement to Congress About NSA Data Collection Was 'Erroneous'

In a highly unusual move, James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, said Tuesday that he misspoke when he told a Congressional committee in March that the National Security Agency does not assemble dossiers on Americans. Clapper said at the time that the agency does not do so...