The pervasive bulk surveillance performed by the NSA and other government agencies that’s been revealed in recent weeks relies on court orders, as do other kinds of legal access operations, such as wiretapping or lawful intercepts. Those orders are shrouded in secrecy and the organizations that receive them often comply immediately without asking any questions, a response that can sometimes be a mistake.
The House rejected the Amash amendment to the Department of Defense Appropriations Act that would have severed funding for the NSA’s data collection surveillance activities.
A small group of Congressmen is trying to cut off the funding for the NSA’s widespread collection of phone and Internet records under the “business records” collection provision of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
Congress is mad.
Maybe it’s the heat. Or maybe it’s them wanting to get it all out of their systems before the August recess. But whatever the case, there are some genuinely angry politicians in Washington right now, trying to figure who they should yell at next for making them deal with the fallout from the leaks perpetrated by Edward Snowden.
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 when section 215 expires in two years, it won’t be renewed.
Microsoft, responding to allegations that the company has helped the NSA circumvent encryption in Skype and Outlook.com and provided direct access to data from those and other services, says that it does none of those things and is petitioning the government for permission to publish more information about how it handles requests for customer data from government agencies.
A former Cal State San Marcos student was sentenced to a year in prison this week for election tampering by using keystroke loggers to grab student credentials and then vote for himself.
The EFF has sued the NSA over its PRISM and metadata collection programs revealed by Edward Snowden.
The Social Security Numbers of tens of thousands of Americans ended up in a searchable public database that provides access to the tax filing applications of Section 527 political organizations on the Internal Revenue Service’s website.
Google and Microsoft have joined forces with a number of civil liberties groups in requesting that a gag order be lifted allowing the tech companies to disclose how many FISA requests they receive for user data.
Infosec Insider content is written by a trusted community of Threatpost cybersecurity subject matter experts. Each contribution has a goal of bringing a unique voice to important cybersecurity topics. Content strives to be of the highest quality, objective and non-commercial.
Sponsored Content is paid for by an advertiser. Sponsored content is written and edited by members of our sponsor community. This content creates an opportunity for a sponsor to provide insight and commentary from their point-of-view directly to the Threatpost audience. The Threatpost editorial team does not participate in the writing or editing of Sponsored Content.
