nsa – The News Desk

A Civil Rights Firestorm Erupts Around a Looming Surveillance Power Grab

29Nov

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Technology

A Civil Rights Firestorm Erupts Around a Looming Surveillance Power Grab

United States lawmakers are receiving a flood of warnings from across civil society not to be bend to the efforts by some members of Congress to derail a highly sought debate over the future of a powerful but polarizing US surveillance program.House and Senate party leaders are preparing to unveil legislation on Wednesday directing the spending priorities of the US military and its $831 billion budget next year. Rumors, meanwhile, have been circulating on Capitol Hill about plans reportedly hatched by House speaker Mike Johnson to amend the bill in an effort to extend Section 702, a sweeping surveillance program drawing fire from a large contingent of Democratic and Republican lawmakers favoring privacy reforms.WIRED first reported on the rumors on Monday, citing senior congressional aide...

Senate Leaders Plan to Prolong NSA Surveillance Using a Must-Pass Bill

10Nov

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Technology

Senate Leaders Plan to Prolong NSA Surveillance Using a Must-Pass Bill

Leaders in the United States Senate have been discussing plans to extend Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) beyond its December 31 deadline by amending must-pass legislation this month.A senior congressional aide tells WIRED that leadership offices and judiciary sources have both disclosed that discussions are underway about saving the Section 702 program in the short term by attaching an amendment extending it to a bill that is sorely needed to extend federal funding and avert a government shutdown one week from now.The program, last extended in 2018, is due to expire at the end of the year. Without a vote to reauthorize 702, the US government will lose its ability to obtain year-long “certifications” compelling telecommunications companies to wiretap oversea...

Government Surveillance Reform Act of 2023 Seeks to End Warrantless Police and FBI Spying

8Nov

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Technology

Government Surveillance Reform Act of 2023 Seeks to End Warrantless Police and FBI Spying

In 1763, the radical journalist and colonial sympathizer John Wilkes published issue no. 45 of North Briton, a periodical of anonymous essays known for its virulent anti-Scottish drivel—and for viciously satirizing a British prime minister until he quit his job. The fallout from the subsequent plan of the British king, George III, to see Wilkes put in irons for the crime of being too good at lambasting his own government reverberates today, particularly in the nation whose founders once held Wilkes up as an idol, plotting a revolt of their own.Wilkes’ arrest boiled the Americans’ blood. Reportedly, the politician-cum-fugitive had invited the king’s men into his home to read the warrant for his arrest aloud. He quickly tossed it aside. At trial, Wilkes explained its most insidious feature:...

A Powerful Tool US Spies Misused to Stalk Women Faces Its Potential Demise

24Oct

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Technology

A Powerful Tool US Spies Misused to Stalk Women Faces Its Potential Demise

A federal law authorizing a vast amount of the United States military’s foreign intelligence collection is set to expire in two months, pulling the plug on history’s most prolific eavesdropping operation and the primary means by which US spies intercept the private communications of people deemed threatening, or simply interesting, by the US government—the world’s foremost surveillant.The US National Security Agency (NSA) relies heavily on the statute, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, when compelling the cooperation of communications giants that oversee huge swaths of the world’s internet traffic, intercepting hundreds of millions of phone calls and email messages each year, and eavesdropping on the personal conversations of targeted foreign individuals and anyone...

The NSA has a new security center specifically for guarding against AI

2Oct

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Technology

The NSA has a new security center specifically for guarding against AI

The National Security Agency (NSA) is starting a dedicated artificial intelligence security center, This move comes after the government has begun to increasingly rely on AI, integrating multiple algorithms into defense and intelligence systems. The security center will work to protect these systems from theft and sabotage, in addition to safeguarding the country from external AI-based threats.The NSA’s recent move toward AI security was announced Thursday by outgoing director General Paul Nakasone. He says that the division will operate underneath the umbrella of the pre-existing Cybersecurity Collaboration Center. This entity works with private industry and international partners to protect the US from cyberattacks stemming from China, Russia and other countries with active malware and...

Top US Spies Meet With Privacy Experts Over Surveillance ‘Crown Jewel’

9Sep

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Technology

Top US Spies Meet With Privacy Experts Over Surveillance ‘Crown Jewel’

Senior United States intelligence officials met privately in Virginia yesterday with over a dozen civil liberties groups to field concerns about domestic surveillance operations that have drawn intense scrutiny this summer among an unlikely coalition of Democratic and Republican lawmakers in the US Congress.The closed-door session, convened at the Liberty Crossing Intelligence Campus—a sprawling complex housing the bulk of the nation’s counterterrorism infrastructure—comes amid a backdrop of political furor over past misuses of a powerful surveillance tool by, principally, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Republican lawmakers, who remain aggrieved over the FBI’s botched operation to surveil a former Trump campaign aide amid its 2016 Russia investigation, have formed an extraordi...

The NSA Is Lobbying Congress to Save a Phone Surveillance ‘Loophole’

28Jul

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Technology

The NSA Is Lobbying Congress to Save a Phone Surveillance ‘Loophole’

The US Supreme Court has previously ordered the government to obtain search warrants before seeking information that may “chronicle a person’s past movements through the record of his cell phone signals.” In the landmark Carpenter v. United States decision, the court found that advancements in wireless technology had effectively outpaced people’s ability to reasonably appreciate the extent to which their private lives are exposed.A prior ruling had held that Americans could not reasonably expect privacy in all cases while also voluntarily providing companies with stores of information about themselves. But in 2018 the court refused to extend that thinking to what it called a “new phenomenon”: wireless data that may be “effortlessly compiled” and the emergence of technologies capable of gr...