Bush-era Memos: President Can Wiretap Americans at all Times
Posted on September 7, 2014 by Kara Dunlap in Security
WASHINGTON – The US Justice Department has released two memos detailing the Bush administration’s legal justification for monitoring the phone calls and emails of Americans without a warrant.
The documents, released late Friday, relate to a secret program dubbed Stellar Wind that began after the September 11, 2001 attacks.
It allowed the National Security Agency to obtain communications data within the United States when at least one party was a suspected Al-Qaeda or Al-Qaeda affiliate member, and at least one party in the communication was located overseas.
“Even in peacetime, absent congressional action, the president has inherent constitutional authority … to order warrantless foreign intelligence surveillance,” then-assistant attorney general Jack Goldsmith said in a heavily redacted 108-page memo dated May 6, 2004.
“We believe that Stellar Wind comes squarely within the commander in chief’s authority to conduct the campaign against Al-Qaeda as part of the current armed conflict and that congressional efforts to prohibit the president’s efforts to intercept enemy communications through Stellar Wind would be an unconstitutional encroachment on the commander in chief’s power.”
The document was obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union rights group through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.
Goldsmith at the time also headed the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel under then-attorney general John Ashcroft and then-deputy attorney general James Comey, who now heads the FBI.
According to Goldsmith, Congress’s authorization for the use of force passed shortly after 9/11 provided “express authority” for Stellar Wind.
“In authorizing ‘all necessary and appropriate force,’ the authorization necessarily included the use of signals intelligence capabilities (wiretapping), which are a critical, and traditional, tool for finding the enemy so that destructive force can be brought to bear on him,” Goldsmith wrote.
He suggested that the congressional approval granted the president authority that “overrides the limitations” of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), a law requiring a court order to monitor the communications of any American or person on US soil.
The second memo, dated July 16, 2004, pointed to a Supreme Court decision handed down just over two weeks earlier as providing additional justification for Stellar Wind.
Goldsmith noted that five of the Supreme Court justices agreed that the detention of US citizen Yaser Esam Hamdi, who was captured while fighting in Afghanistan, was authorized because it was a “fundamental” and “accepted” incident of waging war.
“Because the interception of enemy communications for intelligence purposes is also a fundamental and long-accepted incident of war, the Congressional Authorization likewise provides authority for Stellar Wind targeted content,” he added.
The program was brought under FISA court supervision in 2007, six years into its existence. Its was first revealed by The New York Times in 2005.
© AFP 2013
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Secret Documents Say NSA Had Broad Scope, Scant Oversight: Report
Posted on July 1, 2014 by Kara Dunlap in Security
WASHINGTON – The US National Security Agency has been authorized to intercept information “concerning” all but four countries worldwide, top-secret documents say, according to The Washington Post.
“The United States has long had broad no-spying arrangements with those four countries – Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand,” the Post reported Monday.
Yet “a classified 2010 legal certification and other documents indicate the NSA has been given a far more elastic authority than previously known, one that allows it to intercept through US companies not just the communications of its overseas targets but any communications about its targets as well.”
The certification – approved by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and included among a set of documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden — says 193 countries are “of valid interest for US intelligence.”
The certification also let the agency gather intelligence about entities such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, European Union and the International Atomic Energy Agency, the report said.
“These documents show both the potential scope of the government’s surveillance activities and the exceedingly modest role the court plays in overseeing them,” Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union who had the documents described to him, told the Post.
The report stresses the NSA did not necessarily target nearly all countries but had authorization to do so.
It should come as cold comfort to Germany which was outraged by revelations last year that the NSA eavesdropped on Chancellor Angela Merkel’s mobile phone, as well as about wider US surveillance programs of Internet and phone communications.
Germany’s parliament is investigating the extent of spying by the US National Security Agency and its partners on German citizens and politicians, and whether German intelligence aided its activities.
The privacy issue is a particularly sensitive one in formerly divided Germany.
Ties between Washington and Europe more broadly, as well as other nations such as Brazil, have been strained since the revelations, despite assurances from US President Barack Obama that he is ending spy taps on friendly world leaders.
The Obama administration has insisted the NSA needs tools to be able to thwart terror attacks not just against the United States, but also its allies.
Snowden, a 30-year-old former NSA contractor was granted temporary asylum by Russia last August after shaking the American intelligence establishment to its core with a series of devastating leaks on mass surveillance in the US and around the world.
© AFP 2013
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NSA Scoops Up Images for Facial Recognition Programs: Report
Posted on June 1, 2014 by Kara Dunlap in Security
WASHINGTON – The US National Security Agency is scooping up large quantities of images of people for use in facial recognition programs, the New York Times reported Sunday, citing top secret documents.
The Times said documents, which were obtained from fugitive former US intelligence analyst Edward Snowden, show a significant increase in reliance on facial recognition technology at the agency over the past four years.
The report said the NSA was using new software to exploit a flood of images included in intercepted emails, text messages, social media posts, video conferences and other communications.
It cited leaked 2011 documents as saying the NSA intercepts “millions of images per day,” including 55,000 “facial recognition quality images.”
The images represented “tremendous untapped potential,” according to the report, which said NSA officials believe advances in technology could revolutionize the way the agency finds intelligence targets.
“It’s not just the traditional communications we’re after: It’s taking a full-arsenal approach that digitally exploits the clues a target leaves behind in their regular activities on the net to compile biographic and biometric information” that can help “implement precision targeting,” a 2010 document quoted by the newspaper said.
The Times said it wasn’t clear how many people, including how many Americans, had been caught up in the effort, but noted that neither US privacy laws nor US surveillance laws provide specific protections for facial images.
A NSA spokeswoman said, however, that the agency would be required to get court approval for imagery of Americans it collects through its surveillance programs.
The agency has been at the center of controversy over the scope of its global electronic surveillance program since they were first revealed by Snowden in June 2013.
The former intelligence contractor is in Russia, where he was granted temporary political asylum last year.
© AFP 2013
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