Category: Surveillance State

Uh oh

~ susie

The old “ask for forgiveness instead of permission” philosophy?

SCOTUS takes cellphone tracking case

~ susie

The U.S. Supreme Court

This will be interesting. Is it search and seizure? We’ll see:

The Supreme Court has agreed to decide how much privacy Americans are entitled to in cellphone tracking data that can reflect their location and movement.

The justices announced Monday that they will rule on whether a search warrant should be required before authorities obtain information from mobile-phone companies that can reflect a user’s approximate movements in the past. The method traces which phone tower a device was connected to and which set of antennas on the tower were used.

The case was brought by a man convicted in a string of armed robberies in Michigan based on “cell site location information” the FBI obtained with a court order, but without a warrant requiring probable cause. The Trump administration had urged the justices not to hear the case, which will likely be argued in the fall, but civil liberties and privacy advocates encouraged the court to take up the issue.

Lower courts have generally ruled that a warrant is not required for such data because it is voluntarily shared by users with third parties, namely the telephone companies. Critics say the precedents behind those decisions are outdated in light of the realities of life in the digital age.

What the NSA has on Trump

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

Intelligence Chiefs Tell Trump to Take a Hike

Former NSA analyst John Schindler writes about an unusual townhall held by director Mike Rogers this week:

This week’s town hall event, which was broadcast to agency facilities worldwide, was therefore met with surprise and anticipation by the NSA workforce, and Rogers did not disappoint. I have spoken with several NSA officials who witnessed the director’s talk and I’m reporting their firsthand accounts, which corroborate each other, on condition of anonymity.

In his town hall talk, Rogers reportedly admitted that President Trump asked him to discredit the FBI and James Comey, which the admiral flatly refused to do. As Rogers explained, he informed the commander in chief, “I know you won’t like it, but I have to tell what I have seen”—a probable reference to specific intelligence establishing collusion between the Kremlin and Team Trump.

Rogers then added that such SIGINT exists, and it is damning. He stated, “There is no question that we [meaning NSA] have evidence of election involvement and questionable contacts with the Russians.” Although Rogers did not cite the specific intelligence he was referring to, agency officials with direct knowledge have informed me that DIRNSA was obviously referring to a series of SIGINT reports from 2016 based on intercepts of communications between known Russian intelligence officials and key members of Trump’s campaign, in which they discussed methods of damaging Hillary Clinton.

NSA employees walked out of the town hall impressed by the director’s forthright discussion of his interactions with the Trump administration, particularly with how Rogers insisted that he had no desire to “politicize” the situation beyond what the president has already done. America’s spies are unaccustomed to playing partisan politics as Trump has apparently asked them to do, and it appears that the White House’s ham-fisted effort to get NSA to attack the FBI and its credibility was a serious mistake.

It’s therefore high time for the House and Senate intelligence committees to invite Admiral Rogers to talk to them about what transpired with the White House. It’s evident that DIRNSA has something important to say. Since Mike Rogers is said to have kept notes of the president’s effort to enlist him in Trump’s personal war with the FBI, as any seasoned Beltway bureaucrat would do, his account ought to be impressively detailed.

Can customs and border officials search your phone? These are your rights

~ susie

McCaskill Gets Firsthand Look at Security Efforts Along U.S.-Mexico Border

A NASA scientist heading home to the U.S. said he was detained in January at a Houston airport, where Customs and Border Protection officers pressured him for access to his work phone and its potentially sensitive contents. Last month, CPB agents checked the identification of passengers leaving a domestic flight at New York’s John F. Kennedy… Continue reading “Can customs and border officials search your phone? These are your rights” →