Tag: nsa

Former NSA Director Joins OpenAI; Will Serve On Board And “Security” Committee

Days after we noted that OpenAI is expanding its lobbying army to influence regulation, the company announced that former head of the National Security Agency (NSA) – and the longest-serving leader of USCYBERCOM, Paul M. Nakasone, has joined board – just four months after stepping down at the government’s top clandestine data monitoring organization.

Nakasone, a retired US Army general, was nominated to lead the NSA by former President Donald Trump. He directed the agency from 2018 until his departure in February of this year. AsThe Verge notes, Nakasone wrote a WaPo op-ed in support of renewing Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which was ultimately reauthorized by Congress in April – which contained a “terrifying” supercharged spying provision opposed by privacy advocates on both sides of the aisle in DC.

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Here’s How the CIA Plans To Use Your Ad Tracking Data

For years, the U.S. government has bought information on private citizens from commercial data brokers. Now, for the first time ever, American spymasters are admitting that this data is sensitive—but they’re leaving it up to the spy agencies on how to use it.

Last week, Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Avril Haines released a “Policy Framework for Commercially Available Information.” Her office oversees 18 agencies in the “intelligence community,” including the CIA, the FBI, the National Security Agency (NSA), and all military intelligence branches.

In the 2018 case Carpenter v. United States, the Supreme Court ruled that police need a warrant to obtain mobile phone location data from phone companies. (During the case, the Reason Foundation filed an amicus brief against warrantless snooping.) As a workaround, the feds instead started buying data from third-party brokers.

Haines’ new framework claims that “additional clarity” on the government’s policies will help protect Americans’ privacy. Yet the document is vague about the specific limits. It orders the agencies themselves to come up with “safeguards that are tailored to the sensitivity of the information” and write an annual report on how they use this data.

As national security journalist Spencer Ackerman points out in his Forever Wars newsletter, the framework doesn’t require the feds to delete old purchased data. Earlier this year, Sen. Ron Wyden (D–Ore.) called on the NSA to purge all data that it bought without a warrant and without following the Federal Trade Commission’s privacy policies.

“The framework’s absence of clear rules about what commercially available information can and cannot be purchased by the intelligence community reinforces the need for Congress to pass legislation protecting the rights of Americans,” Wyden tells Reason. “The DNI’s framework is nonetheless an important step forward in starting to bring the intelligence community under a set of principles and policies, and in documenting all the various programs so that they can be overseen.”

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Former NSA worker gets nearly 22 years in prison for selling secrets to undercover FBI agent

A former National Security Agency employee who sold classified information to an undercover FBI agent he believed to be a Russian official was sentenced Monday to nearly 22 years in prison, the penalty requested by government prosecutors.

U.S. District Judge Raymond Moore said he could have put Jareh Sebastian Dalke, 32, behind bars for even longer, calling the 262-month sentence “mercy” for what he saw as a calculated action to take the job at the NSA in order to be able to sell national security secrets.

“This was blatant. It was brazen and, in my mind, it was deliberate. It was a betrayal, and it was as close to treasonous as you can get,” Moore said.

Dalke‘s attorneys had asked for the Army veteran, who pleaded guilty to espionage charges last fall in a deal with prosecutors, to be sentenced to 14 years in prison, in part because the information did not end up in enemy hands and cause damage. Assistant federal public defender David Kraut also argued for a lighter sentence because he said Dalke had suffered a traumatic brain injury, had attempted suicide four times, and had experienced trauma as a child, including witnessing domestic violence and substance abuse. Research has shown that kind of childhood trauma increases the risk of people later engaging in dangerous behavior, he said.

Later, Dalke, who said he was “remorseful and ashamed”, told Moore he had also suffered PTSD, bipolar disorder and obsessive compulsive disorder.

He denied being motivated by ideology or earning money by agreeing to sell the secrets. Dalke also suggested he had an idea that he was actually communicating with law enforcement but was attracted to the thrill of what he was doing.

But Moore said he was skeptical of Dalke’s claims about his conditions since the defense did not provide any expert opinions or hospital records.

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NSA “Just Days Away From Taking Over The Internet” Warns Ed Snowden

The United States National Security Agency (NSA) is only days away from “taking over the internet” with a massive expansion of its surveillance powers, according to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

In an April 16 post to X, Snowden drew attention to a thread originally posted by Elizabeth Goitein — the co-director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice — that warned of a new bill that could see the U.S. government surveillance powers amplified to new levels.

Source: Edward Snowden

The bill in question reforms and extends a part of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) known as Section 702.

Currently, the NSA can force internet service providers such as Google and Verizon to hand over sensitive data concerning NSA targets.

However, Goitein claims that through an “innocuous change” to the definition of “electronic communications surveillance provider” in the FISA 702 bill, the U.S. government could go far beyond its current scope and force nearly every company and individual that provides any internet-related service to assist with NSA surveillance.

“That sweeps in an enormous range of U.S. businesses that provide wifi to their customers and therefore have access to equipment on which communications transit. Barber shops, laundromats, fitness centers, hardware stores, dentist’s offices.”

Additionally, the people forced to hand over data would be unable to discuss the information provided due to hefty gag order penalties and conditions outlined in the bill, added Goitein.

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Tucker Carlson Met with Joe Biden’s Rape Victim Tara Reade and NSA Whistleblower Edward Snowden While in Moscow

On February 5th Citizen Free Press noted that Tucker Carlson may also interview Edward Snowden and Biden rape accuser Tara Reade while in Moscow.

Semafor reported on this earlier.

Tucker Carlson has kept a busy agenda in Moscow, meeting with two key American figures living in exile there.

The former Fox News host met for hours Thursday with the NSA leaker Edward Snowden, Semafor has learned. While the former NSA whistleblower was a regular figure in the press in the years after he fled to Russia, he has largely receded from public appearances in recent years, citing the desire for wanted greater privacy for his family.

The Snowden interview was not for Carlson’s video program, but he did tape an interview with Tara Reade, a former junior Senate aide who decades later accused President Joe Biden of sexual assault (an allegation he denied). Reade moved to Russia last year after several years of increasingly speaking out in support of pro-Russian policies. In 2022, the Russian delegation to the United Nations called her to speak in 2022 on “weapons diversion,” and hosted Russia’s Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations on her YouTube channel. When she made her allegations in 2020, Carlson stood out on the right for his skepticism.

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NSA secretly buying Americans’ data without a warrant

The National Security Agency has secretly been buying Americans’ internet records and using them for spying purposes without obtaining a warrant, a senior senator revealed Thursday.

Sen. Ron Wyden, Oregon Democrat, said the practice had been a “legal gray area,” with data brokers quietly obtaining and reselling the internet “metadata” without the users’ consent. He said the NSA has been trying to keep the whole thing under wraps.

In a letter to Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, the senator said the government needs a “wake-up call,” and he called for new rules limiting purchases only to data that Americans have consented to be sold.

He also asked for Ms. Haines to take an inventory of what the government already has and toss out any information that doesn’t meet the standard of consent.

“The U.S. government should not be funding and legitimizing a shady industry whose flagrant violations of Americans’ privacy are not just unethical, but illegal,” he said.

He released a letter from Army General Paul M. Nakasone, director of the NSA, detailing and justifying the agency’s actions.

Gen. Nakasone said it acquires what it calls “commercially available information” but said the acquisitions are limited. They don’t include location data from phones “known to be used in the United States,” and they don’t buy or use location data from automobiles in the U.S.

They do buy “non-content” data “where one side of the communication is a U.S. Internet Protocol address and the other is located abroad.”

The general said that information was critical for “the U.S. Defense Industrial Base.”

“NSA understands and greatly values the congressional and public trust it has been granted to carry out its critical foreign intelligence and cybersecurity missions on behalf of the American people,” Gen. Nakasone wrote.

In a separate letter, Under Secretary of Defense Ronald S. Moultrie defended the legality.

“I am not aware of any requirement in U.S. law or judicial opinion … that DoD obtain a court order in order to acquire, access or use information, such as CAI, that is equally available for purchase to foreign adversaries, U.S. companies and private persons as it is to the U.S. government,” he wrote.

Mr. Wyden, though, says the legal landscape may have just changed.

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Leaked NSA Doc Reveals Massive Woke Glossary Pushing Critical Race Theory, Gender Ideology At Intel Agency

The National Security Agency, responsible for monitoring threats both foreign and domestic for the U.S. military, assumed a new responsibility under the Biden administration — creating a massive glossary of woke terms for employees, ranging from “anti-racist” to the gender-neutral pronouns “ze” and “zir.”

A copy of the NSA’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Glossary obtained and verified by The Daily Wire shows the agency now provides definitions for terms such as “queer theory” and “white fragility,” as part of its expansive guide to 327 social justice terms that blame “white Europeans” for engaging in “settler colonialism” and warn of “transmisogyny.”

The 34-page document, published internally on May 6th, 2022, but never released publicly before The Daily Wire’s investigation, pushes blatantly left-wing views on race and sex. It explicitly endorses the tenets of Critical Race Theory and Queer Theory, both of which are included as terms on the glossary.

The leaked, unclassified NSA document identifies itself as a “a glossary of terms and language commonly used in dialogue regarding diversity, equity, inclusion, and social justice” and cites radical Critical Race Theory educators such as Robin DiAngelo and Ibram X. Kendi.

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NSA ORDERS EMPLOYEES TO SPY ON THE WORLD “WITH DIGNITY AND RESPECT”

THE NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY, the shadowy hub for the United States’ electronic and cyber spying, has instructed its employees that foreign targets of its intelligence gathering “should be treated with dignity and respect,” according to a new policy directive. The directive, released this summer as internal guidance, is for the NSA’s vaunted signals intelligence, or SIGINT, division, which is responsible for covert surveillance and data collection worldwide.

“In recognition that SIGINT activities must take into account that all persons should be treated with dignity and respect, regardless of their nationality or wherever they might reside,” says the previously unreported directive, which was issued by NSA Director Gen. Paul Nakasone. 

Civil liberties experts say the PR-friendly directive is an attempt to mollify European partners and American critics amid a simmering congressional debate over whether to reauthorize the NSA’s broad surveillance authorities. Experts also pointed to the absurdity that the NSA, an intelligence agency that specializes in electronic eavesdropping including the interception of text messages and emails, could do so respectfully.

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The NSA’s Intellipedia Decision: A Precedent for Reduced Transparency?

In a recent development that has raised eyebrows among transparency advocates, the National Security Agency (NSA) has taken a firm stance against the release of information from Intellipedia, the Intelligence Community’s collaborative platform. This decision comes as a stark departure from the agency’s previous protocol, which for over a decade allowed the release of records from this platform under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

The Appeal and the NSA’s Response

As first reported by The Black Vault, this issue came to light when a series of FOIA requests were recently closed by the NSA, all seeking information from Intellipedia. The newly found stance produced a “GLOMAR Response” in each case where the agency could “neither confirm nor deny the existence or nonexistence of any responsive material contained within the Intellipedia collaborative platform.” However, for more than a decade, The Black Vault received a long list of Intellipedia entries released by the NSA.

There have been 130 appeals submitted by The Black Vault fighting this obfuscation.

The first of these 130 appeals has now had a decision rendered, and it was met with a response that has set a concerning precedent for future requests along with the remaining 129 appeals that are still being processed.

The NSA stated, “Based on my review, the appropriate response in this case is to neither confirm nor deny the existence or nonexistence of any responsive material contained within the Intellipedia collaborative platform.”

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Federal Agencies Routinely Spy On Phone Calls, Texts, Emails Of American Citizens, Experts Say

Despite the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment, which prohibits warrantless government searches, U.S. agencies are proving to be ever more intrusive in their routine surveillance of Americans’ speech and activities.

Often working in collaboration with private companies and banks, agencies like the FBI have been misusing laws against foreign terrorism to vacuum up and sift through the private data of millions of Americans without a warrant or any evidence of a crime.

As Congress now debates reauthorizing relevant sections of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) that are set to expire this year, the libertarian Cato Institute held a four-day conference last week, which featured calls for major legal reforms by conservative and liberal speakers alike.

“The violations that we’ve seen have not just been epic in scale, but they’ve also been persistent, over and over again,” Jake Laperruque, a deputy director at the Center for Democracy and Technology, told attendees.

“To put a human scale on this, what we’re talking about is not just random typos or wrong clicks; we’re looking at things like pulling up batches of thousands of political donors in one go, without any suspicion of wrongdoing,” Laperruque said. “We’ve had reports of journalists, political commentators, a domestic political party; these compliance violations are the most worrisome type of politically focused surveillance.”

In 2001, Congress passed the PATRIOT Act as a means to combat foreign terrorism after the Sept. 11 attacks. In 2008, Congress added an amendment to FISA, Section 702, which authorized warrantless surveillance of non-U.S. persons located outside the country. This amendment, which critics say is the source of much of the abuse, is scheduled to “sunset” on Dec. 31.

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