I just ran across this fascinating article on what might be considered the British version of the Snowden and the NSA surveillance stories. I haven’t read the entire article, but I think it might be more accurately characterized as the British perspective on those stories. Plus, great photos . . .
The Supreme Court has been asked to review a case involving surveillance of cell phone location. The story appeared in ars technica:
Warrantless mobile phone location tracking heads to Supreme Court
Will the justices rule for the government or Fourth Amendment privacy
by David Kravets
The US Supreme Court is being asked to resolve once and for all whether the authorities need a court warrant under the Fourth Amendment to obtain a suspect’s cell-site location data records.
The case the justices were asked to review Friday concerns a Florida man who got a life term for several robberies in a 2012 case built with his mobile phone’s location data the police obtained without a warrant.
The case has big privacy implications for anybody who carries a mobile phone. According to the government, that device may be tracked at will without the Fourth Amendment’s probable cause standard being met.
What’s more, the petition to the high court from defendant Quartavious Davis comes as cell-site tracking has become a choice surveillance tool in the aftermath of a Supreme Court ruling that said the authorities needed a warrant to affix GPS trackers to vehicles. In that 2012 decision, the high court declared that the government’s act of affixing a GPS device on a vehicle was the equivalent of a search usually requiring a warrant.
The American Civil Liberties Union is representing Davis and wants the high court to overturn a March decision (PDF) from the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled against Davis based on precedent from the analog age.
According to ACLU attorney Nathan Freed Wessler:
… the Eleventh Circuit relied on Supreme Court cases from the 1970s that held that certain limited information that people voluntarily share with third-party businesses can be accessed by law enforcement without a warrant. But the logic behind those precedents, known collectively as the “third-party doctrine,” has not held up well in the digital age.
The petition (PDF) to the Supreme Court says:
It is virtually impossible to participate fully in modern life without leaving a trail of digital breadcrumbs that create a pervasive record of the most sensitive aspects of our lives. Ensuring that technological advances do not ‘erode the privacy guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment’ requires nuanced applications of analog-age precedents.
In a string of federal appellate court decisions, the government had successfully argued that cell-site records are not constitutionally protected and instead are business records that telcos may hand over if the government asserts that reasonable grounds exist to believe the data is relevant to an investigation.
In all the decisions, the appellate courts and the government cited US Supreme Court precedent known as Smith v. Maryland—the same 1979 decision that paved the way for the National Security Agency’s telephone metadata snooping program that Edward Snowden exposed.
Given that no federal appeals court has sided with the Fourth Amendment on the issue, there’s a slim likelihood the Supreme Court would intervene at this juncture. However, a California federal judge ruled (PDF) this week that warrants were required for such data. If that is upheld on appeal, that could create the appellate court split that would make the issue ripe for the Supreme Court.
In the case pending before the Supreme Court, the data at issue encompasses MetroPCS records from August 1, 2010 to October 6, 2010. Davis, the defendant, made dozens of calls daily.
The data given to the government includes the dialed numbers of calls made by and to his phone. It also shows whether calls were incoming or outgoing and includes the date, time and duration of calls.
The key dispute involves the data about the cell tower that wirelessly connected the calls from and to Davis, and the location of those towers.
by Julia Hattem
The Senate advanced legislation 77-17 to reform the National Security Agency on Sunday, but parts of the Patriot Act will nonetheless lapse for a few days amid opposition from Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.).
The legislation, called the USA Freedom Act, will not reach President Obama’s desk until after the three measures expire at midnight, meaning that the provisions will expire until the bill is passed by the Senate and signed by Obama later this week.
“The Patriot Act will expire tonight,” Paul declared triumphantly from the Senate floor during a rare Sunday evening vote. “It will only be temporary. They will ultimately get their way.”
By Ellen Nakashima
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell introduced a bill Tuesday night to extend through 2020 a controversial surveillance authority under the Patriot Act.
The move comes as a bipartisan group of lawmakers in both chambers is preparing legislation to scale back the government’s spying powers under Section 215 of the Patriot Act.
It puts McConnell (R-Ky.) and Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.), the bill’s co-sponsor, squarely on the side of advocates of the National Security Agency’s continued ability to collect millions of Americans’ phone records each day in the hunt for clues of terrorist activity.
That NSA program was revealed publicly almost two years ago by a former agency contractor, Edward Snowden. The disclosure touched off a global debate over the proper scope of surveillance by U.S. spy agencies and led President Obama to call for an end to the NSA’s collection of the records.
In filing the bill, McConnell and Burr invoked a Senate rule that enabled them to bypass the traditional committee vetting process and take the bill straight to the floor. No date has been set for such consideration.
The move provoked a swift response from Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (Vt.), the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, who has been working with other panel members on legislation to end the government’s mass collection of phone and other records for national security purposes.
“Despite overwhelming consensus that the bulk collection of Americans’ phone records under Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act must end, Senate Republican leaders are proposing to extend that authority without change,” he said in a statement Tuesday night. “This tone deaf attempt to pave the way for five and a half more years of unchecked surveillance will not succeed. I will oppose any reauthorization of Section 215 that does not contain meaningful reforms.”
A bipartisan group of lawmakers on the House Judiciary Committee has been working with Leahy and his colleagues to craft a new version of the Freedom Act, legislation to end bulk record collection that failed to pass the Senate last year.
They may introduce their bill Wednesday. The current Section 215 authority expires on June 1.
It is far from certain that supporters of a “clean” reauthorization have the votes to prevail. Some veteran Hill aides say such a prospect is highly unlikely — especially in the House — given the number of libertarians who have been highly critical of government surveillance powers.
Indeed, McConnell’s move puts him at odds with the candidate he has endorsed for president, Sen. Rand Paul, a fellow Kentucky Republican, who pledged to end the NSA program — which he called “unconstitutional surveillance” — if elected.
Under the program, the NSA gathers from U.S. phone companies phone data, including numbers dialed, call times and dates, but not the content. Following the outcry over the program, the Obama administration added some additional protections such as requiring a judge to approve each phone number before the agency can run a search on it in its database.
The Guardian is first to reveal the identify of it’s source, Edward Snowden:
Edward Snowden: the whistleblower behind the NSA surveillance revelations
The Guardian’s story was the culmination of several weeks of investigation, interviews, and source work:
The individual responsible for one of the most significant leaks in US political history is Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old former technical assistant for the CIA and current employee of the defence contractor Booz Allen Hamilton. Snowden has been working at the National Security Agency for the last four years as an employee of various outside contractors, including Booz Allen and Dell.
The Guardian, after several days of interviews, is revealing his identity at his request. From the moment he decided to disclose numerous top-secret documents to the public, he was determined not to opt for the protection of anonymity. “I have no intention of hiding who I am because I know I have done nothing wrong,” he said.
Snowden will go down in history as one of America’s most consequential whistleblowers, alongside Daniel Ellsberg and Bradley Manning. He is responsible for handing over material from one of the world’s most secretive organisations – the NSA.
The Guardian broke the very first story to expose the NSA’s bulk surveillance program:
NSA collecting phone records of millions of Verizon customers daily
The first few paragraphs of the story:
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.
The order, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian, requires Verizon on an “ongoing, daily basis” to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the US and between the US and other countries.
The document shows for the first time that under the Obama administration the communication records of millions of US citizens are being collected indiscriminately and in bulk – regardless of whether they are suspected of any wrongdoing.
the docket 