Tag: mass surveillance

The CIA Is Begging Congress to Please Keep Spying on U.S. Citizens Legal

High-level officials from the CIA, FBI, and NSA are testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee today, asking Congress to continue allowing the agency to spy on the communications of US citizens. They are urging Congress to reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)—one of the nation’s most hotly contested government surveillance programs. Intelligence agencies have long cited the powerful 2008 FISA provision as an invaluable tool to effectively combat global terrorism, but critics, including an increasing number of lawmakers from both parties, say those same agencies have morphed the provision into an unchecked, warrantless domestic spying tool. The provision is set to expire at the end of this year.

Federal agents urged lawmakers to reauthorize 702 without adding new reforms that could potentially slow down or impair operators’ access to intelligence. The officials danced around advocates’ concerns of civil liberty violations and instead chose to focus on a wide array of purported national security threats they say could become reality without the “model piece of legislation.” Multiple intelligence agents speaking Tuesday invoked the specter of September 11th and warned lawmakers new safeguards limiting agents’ ability to rapidly access and share intelligence on Americans could risk a repeat scenario.

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The US Is Openly Stockpiling Dirt on All Its Citizens

THE UNITED STATES government has been secretly amassing a “large amount” of “sensitive and intimate information” on its own citizens, a group of senior advisers informed Avril Haines, the director of national intelligence, more than a year ago. 

The size and scope of the government effort to accumulate data revealing the minute details of Americans’ lives are described soberly and at length by the director’s own panel of experts in a newly declassified report. Haines had first tasked her advisers in late 2021 with untangling a web of secretive business arrangements between commercial data brokers and US intelligence community members. 

What that report ended up saying constitutes a nightmare scenario for privacy defenders. 

“This report reveals what we feared most,” says Sean Vitka, a policy attorney at the nonprofit Demand Progress. “Intelligence agencies are flouting the law and buying information about Americans that Congress and the Supreme Court have made clear the government should not have.” 

In the shadow of years of inaction by the US Congress on comprehensive privacy reform, a surveillance state has been quietly growing in the legal system’s cracks. Little deference is paid by prosecutors to the purpose or intent behind limits traditionally imposed on domestic surveillance activities. More craven interpretations of aging laws are widely used to ignore them. As the framework guarding what privacy Americans do have grows increasingly frail, opportunities abound to split hairs in court over whether such rights are even enjoyed by our digital counterparts.

“I’ve been warning for years that if using a credit card to buy an American’s personal information voids their Fourth Amendment rights, then traditional checks and balances for government surveillance will crumble,” Ron Wyden, a US senator from Oregon, says. 

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) did not immediately respond to a request for comment. WIRED was unable to reach any members of the senior advisory panel, whose names have been redacted in the report. Former members have included ex-CIA officials of note and top defense industry leaders.

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The Bizarre Reality of Getting Online in North Korea

FOR 25 MILLION North Koreans, the internet is an impossibility. Only a few thousand privileged members of the hermit kingdom’s society can access the global internet, while even the country’s heavily censored internal intranet is out of reach for the majority of the population. Getting access to free and open information isn’t an option.

New research from South Korea-based human rights organization People for Successful Corean Reunification (Pscore) details the reality for those who—in very limited circumstances—manage to get online in North Korea. The report reveals a days-long approval process to gain internet access, after which monitors sit next to people while they browse and approve their activities every five minutes. Even then, what can be accessed reveals little about the world outside North Korea’s borders.

Documentation from the NGO is being presented today at the human rights conference RightsCon and sheds light on the regime with the most limited internet freedoms, which fall far below the restrictive and surveilled internet access in China and Iran. For millions of people in North Korea, the internet simply doesn’t exist.

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Why Are So Many Younger Americans Okay with Big Brother Monitoring Their Homes?

The good news is that “only” a minority of younger American adults favor Big Brother-style surveillance of our home life. The bad news is that we’re discussing this because it’s a disturbingly large share supporting such a totalitarian intrusion. Worse, the idea seems to be gaining acceptance. We either need to get a handle on what’s going on here, or else potentially suffer lives monitored by unblinking eyes of the state, imposed by popular demand.

“Americans under the age of 30 stand out when it comes to 1984‐​style in‐​home government surveillance cameras. 3 in 10 (29 percent) Americans under 30 favor ‘the government installing surveillance cameras in every household’ in order to ‘reduce domestic violence, abuse, and other illegal activity,'” the Cato Institute’s Emily Ekins and Jordan Gygi wrote last week. “Support declines with age, dropping to 20 percent among 30–44 year olds and dropping considerably to 6 percent among those over the age of 45.”

The survey in question focused on central bank digital currencies (CBDCs)—government-sponsored alternatives to such digital money as bitcoin. CBDCs would offer the convenience of digital payments, but potentially without privacy protections, and could empower the state to control what people buy and sell.

“Interestingly, more than half (53 percent) of those who support the United States adopting a CBDC are also supportive of government surveillance cameras in homes, while only 2 percent of those who oppose a CBDC feel the same,” add Ekins and Gygi. “This suggests there may be a common consideration that is prompted by both issues. Likely, it has to do with willingness to give up privacy in hopes of greater security.”

If that’s the case, it may be a growing willingness to prioritize security over privacy. Note not just the 29 percent support for in-home surveillance among the youngest cohort, but also the 20 percent support among those 30–44. Six percent support among older cohorts is the sort of random approval for any crazy idea that you’d expect to see in a population. The jump to 20 percent and then 29 percent looks like something different. But what?

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Congress To Investigate WHO Plans To Use “Listening Surveillance Systems” To Identify “Misinformation”

If you’ve been following our reporting on the issue, you’ll already know that the new World Health Organization (WHO) pandemic prevention initiative, the Preparedness and Resilience for Emerging Threats (PRET), recommends using “social listening surveillance systems” to identify “misinformation.” But as more people are learning about how unelected bodies are being used to suppress speech and potentially override sovereignty, it’s starting to get more pushback.

According to documents from the UN agency, PRET aims to “guide countries in pandemic planning” and work to “incorporate the latest tools and approaches for shared learning and collective action established during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

The PRET document describes misinformation as a “health threat,” and refers to it as an “infodemic.”

“Infodemic is the overabundance of information – accurate or not – which makes it difficult for individuals to adopt behaviors that will protect their health and the health of their families and communities. The infodemic can directly impact health, hamper the implementation of public health countermeasures and undermine trust and social cohesiveness,” the document states.

However, it continues to recommend invasive methods of countering the spread of misinformation.

“Establish and invest in resources for social listening surveillance systems and capacities to identify concerns as well as rumors and misinformation,” the WHO wrote in the PRET document.

“To build trust, it’s important to be responsive to needs and concerns, to relay timely information, and to train leaders and HCWs in risk communications principles and encourage their application.

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Facial Recognition Shows Up in Public Housing, Small Cities

The race to make biometric surveillance commonplace is only getting faster, with systems going up in public housing and municipalities far from city crime.

With the growth comes a mission that residents worldwide have often been told is off the table, that of the all-seeing, always analyzing sentinel that never stops recording what happens in the community.

The issue is again in the news, this time following a lengthy article in The Washington Post reporting on facial recognition systems being used in United States public housing.

Also, Context, a Thomson Reuters Foundation analytical publication, has shown how surveillance vendors are selling smaller cities on big-city facial recognition systems – and how residents are being cajoled into linking their own cameras to police networks.

Post reporters said they found six public housing centers whose boards have purchased surveillance cameras and computer servers. Some of those on the list also use biometric surveillance algorithms.

They were the Cincinnati Metropolitan Housing, Omaha Housing, Scott County (Virginia) Redevelopment & Housing, Jefferson County (Ohio) Housing and Grand Rapids (Michigan) Housing agencies.

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E-Verify Is Deeply Dangerous 

The e-verify program is one of those subtle Trojan Horses that government is so good at.

It starts with a widely perceived problem that has widespread support: that the country is full of illegal workers. 

Whether or not this is actually a problem is a matter that can be debated, but that’s not actually the relevant bit. The relevant bit is that it’s popularly seen as such in many quarters.

The solution looks simple: create e-verify. 

All employers are required to check citizenship/work eligibility when hiring.

It seems simple, straightforward, and people will support it because it does not harm them, it keeps others from competing with them. we’re simply solving the problem of “stop flooding into work, there are no jobs for you any more.” (Well, except in agriculture which is being carved out because no one is crazy enough to block that and let crops rot in fields or field lie fallow.)

But there is a much more subtle twist here: it’s a classic trojan framing. 

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King Charles III’s coronation is a surveillance nightmare

On Wednesday, the London (Metropolitan) police appeared to still be considering using its live facial recognition system during the coronation of the UK’s new king, and only a short while later – in fact, the same day – they confirmed that this would actually be the case.

This form of mass surveillance will be used in central London during the ceremony and will mostly consist of technology provided by Hikvision, a controversial company due to its tech being used in labor camps in China.

Ahead of the confirmation of this news, UK civil liberties nonprofit Big Brother Watch said on Twitter the police were “testing public opinion” by making the announcement about the possible deployment of the tech.

“The Government’s decision to install 38 Hikvision cameras along the Coronation route shows a staggering lack of judgment, especially given that Hikvision is already banned from many Government sites. It is grossly inappropriate, deeply insensitive, and a stain on our country’s record that Chinese state-owned companies closely linked to grave human rights abuses will have their surveillance tech at the heart of this historic event,” Big Brother Watch said in a statement.

If that was the case, the “testing phase” was over quickly, as on Wednesday the London police website detailed all the actions they would be undertaking during the coronation.

Among those details was the statement that facial recognition would be used in central London. The plan to use the technology was explained as utilizing the “watch list” that will focus on persons whose presence “would raise public protection concerns.”

This “class” of citizen includes those with outstanding warrants against them, or those undergoing “relevant offender management programs.”

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Over 10,000 FBI Agents Can Access Data From Secretive Surveillance Program: Inspectors General

More than 10,000 federal employees could have access to data revealed by a secretive government surveillance program that has come under scrutiny because of alleged abuses, lawmakers were told by U.S. inspectors general.

At an April 27 House Judiciary subcommittee hearing, lawmakers heard from a panel of three witnesses associated with the U.S. Office of the Inspector General (OIG) responsible for oversight of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). The legislation gives intelligence agencies broad powers to conduct surveillance on foreigners suspected of spying for a foreign power or belonging to a terrorist group.

However, bipartisan concerns have been raised because the program also has the ability to collect information about U.S. citizens.

During the hearing, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) queried panelists about how many FBI agents could have access to FISA-acquired data.

A court-ordered report released in May 2022 revealed that the FBI had made more than 3.3 million queries of Americans under FISA authority. This, in turn, prompted a crisis of confidence in the FBI’s respect for civil liberties among members of both parties.

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Over One Million Secret FBI Searches Made in Error: Watchdog

More than one million secret searches of Americans conducted by the FBI were made erroneously, a watchdog testified to Congress on April 27.

Around 30 percent of the approximately 3.4 million searches were done in error, Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz testified.

“It’s obviously very concerning that there’s that volume of searches,” Horowitz told a U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee, adding that he was particularly concerned with the high error rate.

The searches in question were conducted by FBI personnel with authority under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). The bill enables U.S. authorities to gather information on U.S. citizens suspected of being involved with possible spies or terrorists.

Some 3.39 million searches were conducted by the FBI in 2021, U.S. intelligence officials have said. That was up from just 1.2 million in 2020.

Sharon Bradford Franklin, chair of the U.S. Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, told members that Congress should pass new legislation imposing greater safeguards into the system to protect Americans. That should include requiring probable cause or court review for each query of an American, she said.

“Congress certainly has the authority to do that. And I think that’s one of the key issues for this committee in the Congress to consider,” Horowitz said. Adding new requirements, though, could increase the FBI’s workload, he said.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) indicated support for adding new requirements.

“The solution is simple right? Require probable cause if you’re going to query this database on American citizens,” he said.

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