national

Senators call for end to Justice Department's 'secret law'

Eight U.S. senators today seized on leaks from the National Security Agency to call for an end to a "secret law" that governs how intelligence agencies electronically spy on Americans.

Secret laws may seem like Kafkaesque jurisprudence borrowed from Soviet Russia, but last week's leak of a secret court order revealed the Obama administration has a secret interpretation of the Patriot Act that allows it to vacuum up logs of all domestic phone calls on a daily basis.

"It is impossible for the American people to have an informed public debate about laws that are … Read more

Google to feds: Let us talk about government surveillance, please

Google today asked the U.S. government to lift a legal gag order and let it clear up speculation and erroneous reports about what information it's forced to turn over to the feds.

In an open letter to Attorney General Eric Holder and FBI Director Robert Mueller asking for "transparency," the Mountain View, Calif.-based company is effectively applying an unusual amount of public pressure to the Obama administration. President Obama has claimed to have "the most transparent administration in history," though critics have argued otherwise.

Google, Apple, Yahoo, Microsoft, Facebook, and other Internet companies … Read more

U.S. government targets ex-contractor over NSA leaks

Edward Snowden, the 29-year old government contractor who took credit for disclosing a top-secret National Security Agency document, has become the target of condemnation by U.S. politicians and a leak investigation by federal police.

A day after The Guardian published a video featuring Snowden being interviewed in a Hong Kong hotel room and alleging NSA illegalities, the former Booz Allen Hamilton employee has emerged as probably an even more polarizing figure than Bradley Manning.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, head of the Senate Intelligence committee, said Monday that Snowden was guilty of "an act of treason." A Fox News … Read more

No evidence of NSA's 'direct access' to tech companies

Update, June 8 at 2:45 p.m. PT: In response to outcry over PRISM, the U.S. director of national intelligence has released some details. Among other things, he says the government "does not unilaterally obtain information from the servers of U.S. electronic communication service providers" and that PRISM-related activities are conducted "under court supervision." More here.

The National Security Agency has not obtained direct access to the systems of Apple, Google, Facebook, and other major Internet companies, CNET has learned.

Recent reports in The Washington Post and The Guardian claimed a classified program … Read more

Google CEO on NSA spy program: We're definitely not involved

Google CEO Larry Page has flatly denied involvement in a secret spy program operated by the National Security Agency, calling into question recent news reports that alleged the company gave spooks a backdoor into its servers.

Page said in a statement on the company's official blog today, which we're reproducing in full:

You may be aware of press reports alleging that Internet companies have joined a secret U.S. government program called PRISM to give the National Security Agency direct access to our servers. As Google's CEO and Chief Legal Officer, we wanted you to have the … Read more

Uproar over PRISM government surveillance

CNET Update is reading 1984:

This episode of Update, get a better understanding of the controversy around the National Security Agency's PRISM program. Thanks to broadly defined security laws, the government is gathering intelligence with data from Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, AOL, Facebook, Apple and other big tech companies. The U.K.'s government is also tapped into the PRISM program. President Obama has defended PRISM and NSA gathering phone records from Verizon, AT&T and Sprint.

And that's not the only controversial tech news. Microsoft's Xbox One console will make it complicated to loan a game to a friend, … Read more

Obama defends secret NSA spy program: Trust us!

President Obama offered a lawyerly defense of the National Security Agency this morning that can be summarized in two words: Trust us.

"The people involved in America's national security they take this work very seriously," he said. "The last thing they'd be doing is taking programs like this to listen to people's phone calls."

The president, whose administration has been buffeted by a series of disclosures in the last two days about warrantless NSA surveillance, was supposed to be speaking to reporters in the Fairmont Hotel in San Jose, Calif., about health care. … Read more

Privacy group calls NSA Verizon surveillance illegal

The Electronic Privacy Information Center Friday asked Congress to begin a series of oversight hearings on whether the National Security Agency's telephone surveillance scheme was legal.

A letter (PDF) from the group says a secret court "went beyond its legal authority when it sanctioned a program of domestic surveillance unrelated to the collection of foreign intelligence."

The disclosure of the court order, which The Guardian newspaper did late Wednesday, has roiled Washington, D.C. officialdom -- but most of the debate has centered on the political fallout, not whether the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court order was legal … Read more

NSA has backdoor access to Internet companies' databases

Update, June 7, 2013: The National Security Agency has not obtained direct access to the companies' systems, contrary to earlier claims, CNET is reporting.

A top-secret surveillance program gives the National Security Agency surreptitious access to customer information held by Microsoft, Yahoo, Apple, Google, Facebook, and other Internet companies, according to a pair of new reports.

The program, code-named PRISM, reportedly allows NSA analysts to peruse exabytes of confidential user data held by Silicon Valley firms by typing in search terms. PRISM reports have been used in 1,477 items in President Obama's daily briefing last year, according to … Read more

NSA secretly vacuumed up Verizon phone records

The National Security Agency is vacuuming up records of millions of phone calls made inside the United States, a top secret court order reveals.

A top secret order that was released this afternoon requires Verizon to hand over to the NSA "on an ongoing daily basis" information about all domestic and overseas calls -- "including local telephone calls."

The FBI obtained the secret order, which was disclosed by The Guardian newspaper, from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which meets behind closed doors and whose proceedings rarely become public. It was signed by FISC Judge Roger … Read more