From The Washington Post: U.S. spy agencies have built an intelligence-gathering colossus since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, but remain unable to provide critical information to the president on a range of national security threats, according to the government’s top-secret budget.
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From The Switch blog at Washington Post: After a legal battle that went on over a year, the federal government was forced to reveal a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Court (FISC) opinion that showed the National Security Agency (NSA) engaged in unconstitutional surveillance practices, including the collection of tens of thousands of Americans’ online communications.
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Read More… from How privacy advocates shined light on NSA’s unconstitutional surveillance
From Electronic Frontier Foundation: For over a year, EFF has been fighting the government in federal court to force the public release of an 86-page opinion of the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC). Issued in October 2011, the secret court's opinion found that surveillance conducted by the NSA under the FISA Amendments Act was unconstitutional and violated "the spirit of" federal law.
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Read More… from Secret Court opinion finding NSA surveillance unconstitutional released
From the Washington Post: The chief judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court said the court lacks the tools to independently verify how often the government’s surveillance breaks the court’s rules that aim to protect Americans’ privacy. Without taking drastic steps, it also cannot check the veracity of the government’s assertions that the violations its staff members report are unintentional mistakes.
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Read More… from Ability to police U.S. spying program limited, says FISA court chief judge
From Bloomberg Businessweek: The secret U.S. court that rules on surveillance requests from intelligence agencies said it won’t stand in the way of an activist group’s lawsuit seeking the release of one of its nonpublic opinions.
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Read More… from U.S. surveillance court won’t stop release of secret ruling
From The Guardian: The National Security Agency has obtained direct access to the systems of Google, Facebook, Apple and other US internet giants, according to a top secret document obtained by the Guardian.
The NSA access is part of a previously undisclosed program called PRISM, which allows officials to collect material including search history, the content of emails, file transfers and live chats, the document says.
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Read More… from NSA taps in to user data of Google, Skype and others, secret files reveal
In the following statement issued today, NFOIC and its allies in the OpenTheGovernment.org coalition expressed outrage and demanded more answers regarding the FISA-court authorized data mining of Verizon customers' phone records.
Please see the full statement and additional links below.
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Read More… from Open government groups demand answers on domestic spying program
From Glenn Greenwald at The Guardian: The National Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon, one of America's largest telecoms providers, under a top secret court order issued in April.
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Read More… from NSA collecting phone records of millions of Verizon customers daily
