Liberty News

Lavabit has announced that it would shut down its encrypted email service rather than become complicit in crimes against the American people. Lavabit did not say what it had been asked to do, only that it was legally prohibited from sharing the events leading to its decision.

Lavabit was an email provider, apparently used by Edward Snowden along with other privacy sensitive users, with an avowed mission to offer an e-mail service that never sacrifices privacy for profits and promised to only release private information if legally compelled by the courts in accordance with the United States Constitution. It backed up this claim by encrypting all emails on Lavabit servers such that Lavabit did not have the ability to access a user's email, at least without that user's passphrase, which the email provider did not store.

Already, Lavabit's action has led to another company, Silent Circle, dropping its email service , saying We see the writing [on] the wall, and we have decided that it is best for us to shut down Silent Mail now. We have not received subpoenas, warrants, security letters, or anything else by any government, and this is why we are acting now.

The US House of Representatives has narrowly voted to continue snooping on US phone calls, in the first legislative move on the programme.

In a 205-217 vote, lawmakers rejected an effort to restrict the National Security Agency's (NSA) ability to collect electronic information.

The vote saw an unusual coalition of conservatives and liberal Democrats join forces against the programme.

The rejected amendment would have blocked funding for the NSA programme which gathers details of every call made by or to a US phone, unless the records were part of a specific investigation.

It was introduced by Michigan Republican Justin Amash, who warned during the debate that the proposal's critics would:

Use the same tactic every government throughout history has used to justify its violation of rights: fear. They'll tell you that the government must violate the rights of the American people to protect us against those who hate our freedom.

If anyone still doubts that they're being watched online by the U.S. intelligence services, say hello to a 28-year-old German man named Daniel Bangert.

Bangert made a joke on Facebook , setting up an event for an NSA spy-spotting nature walk around the so-called Dagger Complex, a U.S. military installation near Griesheim, south of Frankfurt.

Four days later, the German police showed up on Bangert's doorstep to question him about his demonstration and apparently non-existent anarchist links. He denied having any such links or planning any kind of demonstration, but the police told him to get a permit nonetheless. They asked him not to tell anyone online about their visit.

That clearly didn't work. After the story got reported by a local paper, it eventually made its way to Der Spiegel , which got confirmation from a police spokeswoman that the alarm had been raised by the U.S. Military Police. It seems the U.S. Military Police found Bangert's Facebook post and alerted the local authorities --- hence the visits to his house.

It's a story that's both funny and disturbing. Bangert is not a terrorist --- he's just an ordinary chap who was being sarcastic online. And even if he was being serious, all he was doing was threatening to go for a walk around the perimeter of a so-called top secret facility that's not actually top secret.

UK Border Agency staff use counter-terrorism laws to remove a mobile phone from any passenger they wish coming through UK air, sea and international rail ports and then scour their data.

The blanket power is so broad they do not even have to show reasonable suspicion for seizing the device and can retain the information for as long as is necessary .

Data can include call history, contact books, photos and who the person is texting or emailing, although supposedly not the contents of messages.

David Anderson QC, the independent reviewer of terrorism laws, is expected to raise concerns over the power in his annual report this week. He will call for proper checks and balances to stop this power being abused. He said:

Information downloaded from mobile phones seized at ports has been very useful in disrupting terrorists and bringing them to justice. But ordinary travellers need to know that their private information will not be taken without good reason, or retained by the police for any longer than is necessary.

It echoes concerns surrounding an almost identical power police can use on the streets of the UK, which is being reviewed by the Information Commissioner. However, in those circumstances police must have grounds for suspicion and the phone can only be seized if the individual is arrested.

Around 60,000 people a year are stopped and examined as they enter or return to the UK under powers contained in the Terrorism Act 2000. It is not known how many of those have their phone data taken.

As a result of revelations from former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, there has been an intensive debate about government snooping and its legality. But there is at least one clause of law that makes Americans legally vulnerable to unnecessary intrusions, is much more unsettling than a lot of the Snowden material and isn't getting much attention.

The Electronic Communications Privacy Act, is old, and technology has far surpassed the vision of the lawmakers who wrote and passed it in 1986. Almost no one used e-mail then, the online cloud didn't really exist, and storing personal information for long periods of time with a third party such as Google didn't seem to make any sense. So, the law says, if users keep e-mail on a third-party server for more than 180 days, they've abandoned the material and law enforcement can look at it armed merely with a subpoena, not a warrant from a judge.

Now Americans store years' worth of e-mail online, compose everything from professional documents to love letters on cloud-based word processors and keep all sorts of other files on remote hard drives owned by communications companies and located far away from their homes. It's not just metadata that's vulnerable here, it's the full contents of every stored e-mail and every cloud-based document.

The Newspaper Association of America is lobbying for a change to the law. For years, Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has been trying to do that. Though his updates would keep multiple exceptions for law enforcement, his reforms would at least require government investigators to obtain a search warrant when they want to obtain e-mail content of any vintage from third-party companies.

In the wake of revelations that the UK Government is accessing wide-ranging intelligence information from the US and is conducting mass surveillance on citizens across the UK, Privacy International has commenced legal action against the Government, charging that the expansive spying regime is seemingly operated outside of the rule of law, lacks any accountability, and is neither necessary nor proportionate.

The claim, filed in the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT), challenges the UK Government on two fronts. Firstly, for the failure to have a publicly accessible legal framework in which communications data of those located in the UK is accessed after obtained and passed on by the US National Security Agency through the Prism programme. Secondly, for the indiscriminate interception and storing of huge amounts of data via tapping undersea fibre optic cables through the Tempora programme.

Dinah Rose QC and Ben Jaffey from Blackstone Chambers and Dan Squires from Matrix Chambers were instructed by Bhatt Murphy Solicitors who are acting for Privacy International.

Reports state that the UK had access to the Prism programme since at least June 2010, and has generated 197 intelligence reports from the system in 2012. Without a legal framework, which would allow citizens to know the circumstances in which such spying would take place, the Government effectively runs a secret surveillance regime, making it nearly impossible to hold them accountable for any potential abuses. The absence of this legal framework appears to be in breach of the European Convention of Human Rights, Article 8, which provides the right to privacy and personal communications, and Article 10, which provides the right to freedom of expression.

Eric King, Head of Research at Privacy International said:

One of the underlying tenets of law in a democratic society is the accessibility and foreseeability of a law. If there is no way for citizens to know of the existence, interpretation, or execution of a law, then the law is effectively secret. And secret law is not law. It is a fundamental breach of the social contract if the Government can operate with unrestrained power in such an arbitrary fashion.

Mass, indiscriminate surveillance of this kind goes against the most basic fundamental human rights to privacy. The scope and scale of this program, which monitors the entire British public and much of the world, cannot be justified as necessary and proportionate.

Additionally, Privacy International is challenging the Government's Tempora operation, a programme that reportedly secretly conducts mass surveillance by tapping fibre optic cables, giving the Government access to huge amounts of data on both innocent citizens and targeted suspects. Tempora is the name of a core programme within Mastering the Internet, designed to intercept internet traffic that flows through the undersea fibre-optic cables that land in the UK. It is reported that the GCHQ project has, since 2008, steadily been building capability and now claims to provide the biggest internet access of any intelligence agency in the Five Eyes alliance of eavesdropping agencies in the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. According to the Guardian, in 2011 more than 39bn events in a 24-hour period were recorded producing larger amounts of metadata collection than the NSA .

The Tempora programme by its very nature appears to violate the underlying requirement for interception, which requires that surveillance is both necessary and proportionate under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA).

While Privacy International intended to file the Prism claim in the Administrative Court, which would have made the proceedings public, Government lawyers, upon receiving notice of our intention, vociferously notified us that we could not bring such a claim in the Administrative Court. Rather, the claim has been forced to be filed with the IPT, a secret tribunal that does not make its proceeding public or have to justify reasons for its decisions.

The European Parliament's Civil Liberties Committee is to hold an inquiry into claims that the United States has been engaged in surveillance of European citizens and diplomats. The inquiry is to report by the end of 2013.

The parliament also passed a resolution expressing serious concern over US surveillance programmes, and condemned spying on EU representations.

The parliament also declared its support for the rights of whistleblowers.

France's foreign intelligence service intercepts computer and telephone data on a vast scale, like the controversial US Prism programme, according to the French daily Le Monde.

It is not clear however whether the DGSE surveillance goes as far as Prism. So far French officials have not commented on Le Monde's allegations.

The DGSE allegedly analyses the metadata - not the contents of e-mails and other communications, but the data revealing who is speaking to whom, when and where. Other French intelligence agencies allegedly access the data secretly. Connections inside France and between France and other countries are all monitored, Le Monde reports.

The operation is outside the law, and beyond any proper supervision , Le Monde says.

Stop Watching Us.

The revelations about the National Security Agency's surveillance apparatus, if true, represent a stunning abuse of our basic rights. We demand the U.S. Congress reveal the full extent of the NSA's spying programs.

Sign the Petition: Stop Watching Us

Dear Members of Congress,

We write to express our concern about recent reports published in the Guardian and the Washington Post, and acknowledged by the Obama Administration, which reveal secret spying by the National Security Agency (NSA) on phone records and Internet activity of people in the United States.

The Washington Post and the Guardian recently published reports based on information provided by an intelligence contractor showing how the NSA and the FBI are gaining broad access to data collected by nine of the leading U.S. Internet companies and sharing this information with foreign governments. As reported, the U.S. government is extracting audio, video, photographs, e-mails, documents, and connection logs that enable analysts to track a person's movements and contacts over time. As a result, the contents of communications of people both abroad and in the U.S. can be swept in without any suspicion of crime or association with a terrorist organization.

Leaked reports also published by the Guardian and confirmed by the Administration reveal that the NSA is also abusing a controversial section of the PATRIOT Act to collect the call records of millions of Verizon customers. The data collected by the NSA includes every call made, the time of the call, the duration of the call, and other "identifying information" for millions of Verizon customers, including entirely domestic calls, regardless of whether those customers have ever been suspected of a crime. The Wall Street Journal has reported that other major carriers, including AT&T and Sprint, are subject to similar secret orders.

This type of blanket data collection by the government strikes at bedrock American values of freedom and privacy. This dragnet surveillance violates the First and Fourth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution, which protect citizens' right to speak and associate anonymously, guard against unreasonable searches and seizures, and protect their right to privacy.

We are calling on Congress to take immediate action to halt this surveillance and provide a full public accounting of the NSA's and the FBI's data collection programs. We call on Congress to immediately and publicly:

1. Enact reform this Congress to Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act, the state secrets privilege, and the FISA Amendments Act to make clear that blanket surveillance of the Internet activity and phone records of any person residing in the U.S. is prohibited by law and that violations can be reviewed in adversarial proceedings before a public court;
2. Create a special committee to investigate, report, and reveal to the public the extent of this domestic spying. This committee should create specific recommendations for legal and regulatory reform to end unconstitutional surveillance;
3. Hold accountable those public officials who are found to be responsible for this unconstitutional surveillance.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Sign the Petition: Stop Watching Us