Posts Tagged ‘NSA surveillance’

 

RNC goes Daisy

The Republican National Committee has a new ad warning that Harry Reid, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama are playing into terrorists’ hands by trying to block permanent changes to surveillance law. Not that Republicans haven’t been playing tough over this issue. They’ve also tried to assert that if the Protect America Act is allowed to […]

Read the rest of this entry »

Security risks in FISA reform

Several noted computer security experts have an interesting paper in the current issue of IEEE Security & Privacy Magazine. Rather than critique the civil liberties implications of the Protect America Act, the “fix” to intelligence wiretapping and surveillance law being debated in Congress, the experts examine potential security weaknesses in the surveillance system run by […]

Read the rest of this entry »

Cyber Cold War gets its battle plans

President Bush has signed a directive that formally kicks off what intelligence reporters have been chronicling for months: The National Security Agency, the nation’s electronic eavesdropping agency, will take a new, presumably aggressive role in responding to Internet-based attacks against government agencies. The Washington Post broke news of Bush’s directive on Friday, and the Baltimore […]

Read the rest of this entry »

FISA has hit political rock bottom

The Protect America Act, a six-month modification to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that directly affects the National Security Agency’s terrorist surveillance program, expires on Feb. 1. It’s looking more and more like the Congress will punt on this one, passing another temporary extension–perhaps as short as one month–while lawmakers try and sort out a […]

Read the rest of this entry »

Fixing FISA

Just when you thought it was safe to go on vacation… Congress and the administration have been busy bees the past week, haggling over modifications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The new law effectively legalizes much of what the National Security Agency has been doing since 9/11 under the so-called Terrorist Surveillance Program. Intelligence […]

Read the rest of this entry »

Talk of the Nation–assessing the latest FISA fix

I joined two members of Congress today to discuss the latest change to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Read the rest of this entry »

Wire tapping, and more

No big surprise here, but an important admission from Mike McConnell, the Director of National Intelligence. In a letter to Arlen Specter (Penn.), the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, McConnell acknowledges that the president authorized the National Security Agency to undertake “various intelligence activities,” after the 9/11, aimed at preventing another terrorist attack. […]

Read the rest of this entry »

NSA and TIA

With all the recent attention on the National Security Agency’s surveillance program–particularly that it was the so-called “data mining” aspects that drew Alberto Gonzales and Andrew Card to John Ashcroft’s hospital room back in 2004–I thought it was a good time to recall a story I wrote last summer. This story goes into considerable detail […]

Read the rest of this entry »

Can the government spy on foreign communications inside the United States?

Members of the House Intelligence Committee have been engaged in a boisterous debate the past few days over how to change the law that governs electronic surveillance. Republicans are calling for an overhaul backed by the Director of National Intelligence, and Democrats are pushing back, saying that the administration’s proposed changes would eliminate many of […]

Read the rest of this entry »

Why was Al Gonzales in John Ashcroft’s hospital room?

That’s what Senators want to know. Gonzales is testifying right now before the Judiciary Committee–not exactly his favorite audience–about a host of issues. But earlier, Senators grilled him over the famous nighttime visit Gonzales and then White House Chief of Staff Andy Card paid to John Ashcroft, back in March 2004, when the attorney general […]

Read the rest of this entry »