Tag Archives: surveillance

A state agency filed a complaint against the security company that tracked and targeted DAPL opponents.

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A state agency filed a complaint against the security company that tracked and targeted DAPL opponents.

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Former Trump Adviser Can’t Recall If He Discussed Sanctions With Russians

Mother Jones

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Did Carter Page, a Trump campaign adviser, speak to anyone in Russia about the United States potentially lifting sanctions imposed on Vladimir Putin’s government when he was in Moscow during the campaign last summer? Not at all, but, then again, maybe.

That’s what Page said during an interview with George Stephanopoulos on Good Morning America Thursday.

Page’s comments came days after the Washington Post reported that the FBI had obtained a secret order from a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to monitor Page’s communications last summer. To obtain that warrant, known as a FISA warrant, the FBI would have had to persuade a judge that there was probable cause to suspect that Page had been acting as an agent of the Russia government. The Post described the revelation as the “clearest evidence so far that the FBI had reason to believe during the 2016 presidential campaign that a Trump campaign adviser was in touch with Russian agents.” Page has not been accused of any crimes, and he has repeatedly denied he ever acted as an agent for any foreign power.

Page visited Russia last July—reportedly with approval from the Trump campaign—and gave a speech at the New Economic School in Moscow criticizing US policy toward Russia. He left the campaign in September amid allegations that he had privately communicated with Russian officials during the trip. Page denied those allegations. On ABC Thursday, Page acknowledged that he briefly said “hello” to one of the school’s board members, when Stephanopoulos asked whether he had met with anyone in the Russia government or connected to Russian intelligence.

Stephanopoulos also asked Page whether he had ever told any Russians in the United States or abroad that Trump “would be open to easing sanctions on Russia.”

“Absolutely not,” Page replied at first.

Stephanopoulos followed up: “Never? Not once?”

“I never offered that,” Page said again. “Nothing along those lines. Absolutely not.”

Then Page seemed to reconsider his response. “I mean—it may—topics—I don’t remember—we’ll see what comes out in this FISA transcript,” he said. “I don’t recall every single word that I ever said. But I would never make any offer or intimate anything.”

“But it sounds like from what you’re saying it’s possible that you may have discussed the easing of sanctions,” said Stephanopoulos.

“Something may have come up in a conversation,” Page responded. “I have no recollection, and there’s nothing specifically that I would have done that would have given people that impression.”

Pressed again by Stephanopoulos on whether he had discussed easing sanctions with any Russians, Page said, “Someone may have brought it up—I have no recollection. And if it was, it was not something I was offering or that someone was asking for.”

Page’s comments on ABC follow an interview he gave Wednesday to CNN’s Jake Tapper, in which Page said that during his Russia trip he spoke with students, scholars, and business people about the 2016 campaign. Page told Tapper that he had never had any “direct conversations” with anyone in Russia about the possibility of Trump ratcheting back on sanctions:

TAPPER: When you went to Russia last summer, did you ever talk to any Russian about the Trump campaign or about the Clinton campaign or about the 2016 election in general?

PAGE: No Russian official. I was speaking at a university, and I spoke with many scholars and students and parents that were at the graduation celebrating their kids’ achievements. Other than that, nothing.

TAPPER: I didn’t ask Russian official, I just asked any Russian because obviously, Russians, as you know in Russia, people are affiliated with private industry but they also do work with the government, et cetera.

PAGE: Sure.

TAPPER: So—but you did not talk to any Russian at all other than students and parents and scholars about the presidential election?

PAGE: I met a few business people, but no negotiations about anything in terms of anything related to the campaign whatsoever.

TAPPER: Well, I’m not talking about negotiations, but as long as you bring it up, I mean, have you ever conveyed to anyone in Russia that you think President Trump might have been more willing to get rid of the sanctions that were imposed against Russia after they invaded and seized Crimea, which I know are sanctions that you oppose and you think are ineffective. Did you ever talk with anyone there about maybe President Trump, if he were elected—then-candidate Trump, would be willing to get rid of the sanctions?

PAGE: Never any direct conversations such as that. I mean, look, it’s—

TAPPER: What do you mean direct conversations? I don’t know what that mean, direct conversations.

PAGE: Well, I’m just saying no—that was never—I’ve never said, no.

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Former Trump Adviser Can’t Recall If He Discussed Sanctions With Russians

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Use Your Seat Belt!

Mother Jones

And now, from the Department of Random Stuff, we have seat belt use in the 50 states. Christopher Ingraham writes about this today over at Wonkblog, and his map showed shockingly low seat belt use. There were quite a few areas with seat belt use around 50 percent, and more than half the country was under 70 percent. Can that be true?

To find out, I headed over to the Owellian-named Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System at the CDC and created my own map. Here it is:

This doesn’t look so bad. The Dakotas are laggards at 70 percent, but most of the country is between 75-90 percent, with 11 states over 90 percent. The national average is 86.4 percent. I sort of assumed that after all these years, seat belt use was pretty much automatic for nearly everyone, but I guess not. Especially in the Dakotas.

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Use Your Seat Belt!

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Six Agencies Are Investigating Trump-Russia Ties

Mother Jones

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McClatchy has the latest on the investigation into ties between Russia and the Trump team:

The FBI and five other law enforcement and intelligence agencies have collaborated for months in an investigation into Russian attempts to influence the November election….The agencies involved in the inquiry are the FBI, the CIA, the National Security Agency, the Justice Department, the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network and representatives of the director of national intelligence, the sources said.

….One of the allegations involves whether a system for routinely paying thousands of Russian-American pensioners may have been used to pay some email hackers in the United States or to supply money to intermediaries who would then pay the hackers, the two sources said….A key mission of the six-agency group has been to examine who financed the email hacks of the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.

….The working group is scrutinizing the activities of a few Americans who were affiliated with Trump’s campaign or his business empire and of multiple individuals from Russia and other former Soviet nations who had similar connections, the sources said.

….The BBC reported that the FBI had obtained a warrant on Oct. 15 from the highly secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court allowing investigators access to bank records and other documents about potential payments and money transfers related to Russia. One of McClatchy’s sources confirmed the report.

That’s an awful lot of agencies investigating an awful lot of allegations against an awful lot of people. And as the article says, you can’t get a warrant unless you can demonstrate at least some kind of plausible probable cause. That means these folks are working off a lot more than just the famous dossier produced by the ex-MI6 spy.

At this point, I flatly don’t know what I believe anymore. This is all crazy stuff, but a whole bunch of investigators don’t seem to be treating it as crazy. Either way, though, the guy at the center of all this is going to become president of the United States in two days.

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Six Agencies Are Investigating Trump-Russia Ties

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Why Fireworks Are Even More Dangerous This Year

Mother Jones

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For years, teenagers from the Southern United States have made a trip to South Carolina to stop at the dozens of shops, stands, and warehouses that sell fireworks with names like “Red, White, and Boom,” “Bad Blonde Joke,” and “One Bad Mother-in-law.” The Palmetto State has long been a destination for pyro-loving patriots because of its lax fireworks laws: The minimum age to buy celebratory explosives is 16, and nearly every type of firework is for sale.

But crossing state lines for July Fourth party favors may not be as common this year. States are increasingly relaxing their fireworks laws, by dropping the minimum age requirement below 18 or allowing a wider variety of backyard explosives to be sold. Georgia, West Virginia, and New York are among the states that have made changes to the laws over the past year.

The looser laws haven’t come without controversy. Fireworks are notoriously dangerous (remember last year when two NFL players lost fingers during fireworks accidents?), and child safety groups are raising concerns that allowing minors to get hold of fireworks will lead to more firework-related injuries around the summer holiday.

There’s some evidence backing that worry. Twelve-year-olds are injured by fireworks more than any other age group, according to an analysis by StatNews. And boys are mostly to blame: Of the 225 12-year-olds injured by fireworks between the late ’90s and 2015, only 50 were girls.

Source: National Electronic Injury Surveillance System Chart by Natalia Bronshtein/Statnews

A recent study by pediatric researchers at the University of Louisville found that the severity of firework burns in kids has increased over the last decade, and that the average age of kids burned decreased from 12 to 11 years old. Though he can’t pin it completely on changes in the law, the study’s lead author, Dr. John Myers, says there’s definitely a connection.

“When states switched from 18 to 16, that’s the big difference we’ve seen,” Myers said. “We advocate states to go back to 18.”

Source: National Electronic Injury Surveillance System Chart by Natalia Bronshtein/StatNews

Other groups oppose fireworks for reasons other than the injuries they cause. The National Fire Protection Association takes an avid stance against the use of any backyard firework because of their link to summer fires. According to the association, fireworks caused an estimated 15,600 fires in 2013. Nearly 30 percent of all firework-caused blazes between 2009 and 2013 happened on July Fourth.

On the other side of the debate are advocates for backyard fireworks, who argue that people will mess around with the things whether or not they’re allowed to. Julie Heckman, executive director of the American Pyro Association, which represents various firework and pyrotechnic companies, says the at-home explosives are actually more dangerous when they’re illegal because people use even less caution.

“Independence Day is so recognized as the holiday that people use backyard consumer fireworks—it’s part of our American culture,” Heckman said. “In the areas that have prohibition, people choose to use them anyway…They are very careless.”

Heckman points out that in the three states that have a complete ban on consumer fireworks—Massachusetts, Delaware, and New Jersey—firework-related injuries still occur. For example, the Massachusetts Fire Incident Reporting System found there were 775 fire-related incidents over a 10-year period, with 15 people injured. Those numbers still pale in comparison to numbers from states that have more relaxed laws: In South Carolina, 182 people were injured by fireworks in 2010 alone.

Either way, states are moving ahead and making it easier for teens to get hold of sparklers and other fireworks. The big bucks they’ll rake in as a result can’t hurt: In New York, which just relaxed its firework laws in some counties, tax revenue from firework sales could reach as much as $2 million.

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Why Fireworks Are Even More Dangerous This Year

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Judge Orders Apple to Help FBI Crack San Bernardino iPhone

Mother Jones

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A federal judge wants Apple to build a “back door” that allows it to access encrypted data on the iPhone belonging to the San Bernardino attackers. Apple is resisting:

The order, signed Tuesday by a magistrate judge in Riverside, Calif., does not ask Apple to break the phone’s encryption but rather to disable the feature that wipes the data on the phone after 10 incorrect tries at entering a password. That way, the government can try to crack the password using “brute force” — attempting tens of millions of combinations without risking the deletion of the data….Federal prosecutors stated in a memo accompanying the order that the software would affect only the seized phone.

In theory, this should be little more than a macabre joke. If Apple is truly using strong encryption, it wouldn’t take ten million tries to crack the password, it would take more tries than there are atoms in the universe.

Unless, of course, the attackers are really stupid and used “123456” or “Jihad Forever” as their password. Which they very well might have. Folks like this aren’t always especially bright.

In any case, I find it hard to side with Apple here. It’s one thing for Apple to implement strong encryption that even Apple itself can’t break. It’s another to deny law enforcement the ability to even try to break the encryption. My initial reaction—which I admit might change if I think about this further—is that liberals have never opposed the right of the government to execute a search. We just want them to get a warrant first, and we want it particularized to a specific case. So we object to warrantless searches and we object to mass collection of surveillance data. A court order that applies to a specific case shouldn’t be a problem.

Apple, of course, is arguing that if they create a special FBI version of iOS, it can be used anytime and anywhere, with or without a warrant. So that’s the question for the court. If they compel Apple to create a version of iOS that can be hacked, are there legally enforceable restrictions on its use? Or does it become a permanent plaything for anyone who can issue a national security letter—which appears to include practically the entire FBI? This will be an interesting case going forward.

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Judge Orders Apple to Help FBI Crack San Bernardino iPhone

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The NSA Has Access to Your Cell Phone’s Encryption Key. And Everyone Else’s Too.

Mother Jones

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The surveillance state, it turns out, is even bigger and badder than we thought. Previously, the story from the NSA has been: yes, we have access to petabytes of telephone metadata (who you called, what time you called, etc.), but we don’t have routine access to your actual conversations. And this even made a kind of sense: telephone companies store bulk metadata and can make it available to the NSA. They don’t record phone conversations. Besides, on cell phones those conversations are encrypted anyway.

But guess what? That encryption depends on a key stored on the SIM card inside your cell phone. If you have access to the key, you can listen in to all the conversations you want.

You know what’s coming next, don’t you? Here is Jeremy Scahill at the Intercept:

American and British spies hacked into the internal computer network of the largest manufacturer of SIM cards in the world, stealing encryption keys used to protect the privacy of cellphone communications across the globe, according to top-secret documents provided to The Intercept by National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden. The hack was perpetrated by a joint unit consisting of operatives from the NSA and its British counterpart Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ.

….The company targeted by the intelligence agencies, Gemalto, is a multinational firm incorporated in the Netherlands that makes the chips used in mobile phones and next-generation credit cards. Among its clients are AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, Sprint and some 450 wireless network providers around the world.

….According to one secret GCHQ slide, the British intelligence agency penetrated Gemalto’s internal networks, planting malware on several computers, giving GCHQ secret access….Most significantly, GCHQ also penetrated “authentication servers,” allowing it to decrypt data and voice communications between a targeted individual’s phone and his or her telecom provider’s network. A note accompanying the slide asserted that the spy agency was “very happy with the data so far and was working through the vast quantity of product.”

The folks at Gemalto say they had no idea any of this had happened. Apparently it was a very stealthy hack indeed. As you might expect, there is much, much more at the link.

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The NSA Has Access to Your Cell Phone’s Encryption Key. And Everyone Else’s Too.

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Twitter Reveals All It Can Tell You About Government Surveillance of Users

Mother Jones

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On Monday morning, Twitter released its most recent transparency report. Every 6 months, the company voluntarily discloses its data on government and law enforcement requests for information about Twitter users. However, the government has barred Twitter from sharing much of anything about its secret surveillance requests. These include national security letters, or secret requests for information, and subpoenas obtained under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Twitter sued the US government in October to allow it to release more information (the case is still pending), and today, the government allowed Twitter to publish a heavily redacted version of a letter the company drafted to inform its users about surveillance requests. The letter states that the government surveillance authorized by national security letters and FISA orders has been “quite limited.” According to a Twitter spokesman, parts of the letter were redacted but it was otherwise unchanged by the government (including the handwritten parts). Read part of the letter below:

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Twitter Reveals All It Can Tell You About Government Surveillance of Users

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Here Are Two Videos of NYPD Officers Pummeling Teenagers Suspected of Weed Possession

Mother Jones

Two videos emerged this week capturing officers of the New York City Police Department beating two reportedly unarmed teenagers suspected of marijuana possession.

The first recording is of surveillance footage showing officers swiftly approaching 16-year-old Kahreem Tribble after he was seen tossing a black bag onto a Brooklyn street. The video appears to show Tribble then slowing down, attempting to surrender.

Tribble puts his hands in the air, but the officers ignore him and begin pistol-whipping him in the face. He reportedly suffered cracked teeth, bruises, and bleeding in the mouth.

One officer has been suspended without pay; another placed on modified duty.

The second video, reported today, just one day after Tribble’s incident was uncovered, shows 17-year-old Marcel Hamer lying on the street while being placed under arrest. Hamer can be heard screaming, “Mister! It was just a cigarette!”

The arresting officer proceeds to punch Hamer in the face, who is immediately knocked out and appears lifeless on the street.

“Yeah, get it on film,” the officer can be heard taunting onlookers.

Hamer’s family says he now has brain damage.

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Statistics to keep in mind as you sit there bewildered and disgusted: New York City is home to 30,000-50,000 marijuana arrests a year, despite repeated calls to decriminalize low-level pot possession. Studies have shown time and time again, blacks are no more likely to smoke weed than whites. But data from 2002 to 2012 indicate an overwhelming 87 percent of those arrested for possession are either black or Latino youths.

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Here Are Two Videos of NYPD Officers Pummeling Teenagers Suspected of Weed Possession

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Will the Washington Post Destroy "Incidental" NSA Intercepts When It’s Done With Them?

Mother Jones

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A couple of days ago the Washington Post published an article based on a cache of thousands of surveillance intercepts that it got from Edward Snowden. That produced the suggestion—not widespread, I think, but still out there—that the Post was now violating privacy just like the NSA has been. Glenn Greenwald thought this was pretty dumb, but Julian Sanchez wasn’t so sure:

Doesn’t seem TOTALLY frivolous. I hope you & WaPo are destroying copies of intimate communications once reporting’s done.

This is actually….a good point. The charge against the NSA isn’t just that it ends up surveilling thousands of innocent people who are merely innocent bystanders in court-approved investigations. Even critics concede that this is inevitable to some extent. The problem is that once the NSA has collected all these “incidental” intercepts, they keep them forever in their databases and make them available to other law enforcement agencies for whatever use they want to make of them. At the very least, privacy advocates would like these incidental collections to be destroyed after they’ve served their immediate purpose.

So will the Post do this? Once they’ve finished their immediate reporting on this, will they destroy these intercepts? Or will they keep them around for the same reason the NSA does: because, hey, they have them, and you never know if they might come in handy some day?

There’s always been a tension inherent in Edward Snowden’s exposure of the NSA’s surveillance programs: Who gets to decide? You may think, as I do, that the government has repeatedly shown itself to be an unreliable judge of how much the public should know about its mass surveillance programs. But who should it be instead? Snowden? Glenn Greenwald? The Washington Post? Who elected them to make these decisions? Why should we trust their judgment?

It’s not a question with a satisfying answer. Sometimes you just have to muddle along and, in this case, hope that the whistleblowers end up producing a net benefit to the public discourse. But in this case, we don’t have to muddle. This is a very specific question, and we should all be interested in the answer. Do Greenwald and the Post plan to destroy these private communications once they’re done with them? Or will they hold on to them forever, just like the NSA?

POSTSCRIPT: Yes, there’s a difference here. On the one hand, we have the government, with its vast law-enforcement powers, holding onto massive and growing amounts of incidental surveillance. On the other we have a private actor with a small sample of this surveillance. We should legitimately be more concerned with possible abuses of power by the government, both generally, and in this case, very specifically. But that’s a starting point, not the end of the conversation. Sanchez is still asking a good question.

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Will the Washington Post Destroy "Incidental" NSA Intercepts When It’s Done With Them?

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