Current and former government officials have been pointing to the terror attacks in Paris as justification for mass surveillance programs. CIA Director John Brennan accused privacy advocates of “hand-wringing” that has made “our ability collectively internationally to find these terrorists much more challenging.” Former National Security Agency and CIA director Michael Hayden said, “In the wake of Paris, a big stack of metadata doesn’t seem to be the scariest thing in the room.”
Over half of all requests for personal information from Twitter came from the United States, and that doesn't even include requests made under the 'national security' designation that forbids Twitter from releasing that information. And overall requests continue to increase.
For years, Colorado U.S. Senator Mark Udall was a lonely critic on Capitol Hill of anti-terror surveillance laws he said were ripe for abuse. He teamed with Oregon Democratic Senator Ron Wyden to demand lawmakers redraft the Patriot Act to bolster civil-liberty protections. Those efforts got a boost in 2011 when Kentucky Republican Rand Paul joined them, and their small movement took off when NSA contractor Edward Snowden last year leaked vast digital evidence that the abuses the senators were warning against were a reality that had to be addressed.
The White House wants the National Security Agency to get out of the business of sweeping up and storing vast amounts of data on Americans' phone calls. The Obama administration this week is expected to propose that Congress overhaul the electronic surveillance program by having phone companies hold onto the call records as they do now.
The endless tide of NSA revelations has made us all too familiar with government agencies’ hunger for personal information, especially in the context of national security. But we’re also seeing surveillance systems being set up by smaller, less newsworthy agencies to monitor our day-to-day activities.
"If you have nothing to hide than you have nothing to worry about" is a great defense for NSA spying if the person in charge of the country is your guy. But, what if he's not?
The National Security Agency's metadata – the information gleaned from indiscriminate trolling of the nation's communication networks – is being used in the United States' drone program. The near constant revelations of new, and possibly illegal, uses of that metadata have rocked the NSA in the last year.
Back in 2012, the ACLU of Massachusetts published a report called 'Policing Dissent', exposing the Boston Police Department's 'red squad' surveillance operations, directed at antiwar and economic justice organizers. =
Technology companies and privacy advocates are praising a new government compromise that will allow the Internet's leading companies to disclose more information about how often they are ordered to turn over customer information to the government in national security investigations.
