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Imagine this: the government, for reasons you don't know, thinks you're a spy. You go on vacation and, while you're away, government agents secretly enter your home, search it, make copies of all your electronic devices, and leave. Those agents then turn those devices upside down, looking through decades worth of your files, photos, and online activity saved on your devices. They don't find any evidence that you're a spy, but they find something elseevidence of another, totally unrelated crime. You're arrested, charged, and ultimately convicted, yet you're never allowed to see what prompted the agents to think you were a spy in the first place.

Sounds like something from dystopian fiction, right? Yet it's exactly what happened to Keith Gartenlaub. In January 2014, the FBI secretly entered Gartenlaub's home while he and his wife were on vacation in China. Agents scoured the home, taking pictures, searching through boxes and books, andcriticallymaking wholesale copies of his hard drives.

Agents were authorized by the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court ("FISC") to search for evidence that Gartenlaub was spying for the Chinese government. Theres only one problem with that theory: the government has never publicly produced any evidence to support it. Nevertheless, Gartenlaub now sits in jail. Not for spying, but because the FBIs forensic search of his hard drives turned up roughly 100 files containing child pornography, buried among thousands of other files, saved on an external hard drive.

Gartenlaub was tried and convicted, and he appealed his conviction to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. EFF (along with our friends at the ACLU) recently filed an amicus brief in support of his appeal.

There are plenty of troubling aspects to Gartenlaubs prosecution and conviction. For one, and unlike normal criminal prosecutions, neither Gartenlaub nor his lawyers have ever seen the affidavit and order issued by the FISC that authorized the search of his home. There are also legitimate concerns about the sufficiency of the evidence used to convict him.

But we got involved for a different reason: to weigh in on the Fourth Amendment implications of the FBIs searches of Gartenlaubs electronic devices. The unusual facts of this case gave us an unusually good opportunity to push for greater Fourth Amendment protections in all searches of electronic devices.

Heres why: when agents copied and searched Gartenlaubs devices, they were only authorized to search for national security-related information. But the prosecution that resulted from those searches and seizures had nothing to do with national security at all. So, either the FBI seized information that was outside of the warrant (which the Fourth Amendment prohibits); or it was relying on an exception to the warrant requirement, like plain viewan exception that allows law enforcement to seize immediately obvious contraband when the government is in a place to lawfully observe it.

Plain view makes sense in the physical world. If cops are executing a search warrant for a home to search for drugs, they shouldnt have to ignore the dead body lying in the living room. But the way plain view works in the digital contextespecially forensic computer searchesis not at all clear. How far can cops rummage around our computers for the evidence theyre authorized to look for? Does a warrant to search for evidence of drug dealing allow cops to open all the photos stored on our computer? Does an order authorizing a search for national security information let the government rifle through a digital porn collection? And where do we draw the line between a specific search, based on probable cause for specific information stored on a computerwhich the Fourth Amendment allows and a general search for evidence of criminal activitywhich the Fourth Amendment prohibits?

Our electronic devices contain decades' worth of personal information about us. And, in many ways, searches of our electronic devices can be more intrusive than searches of our homes: there is information stored on our phones, computers, and hard drives, about our interests, our political thoughts, our sexual orientations, or religious beliefs, that might never have been previously stored in our homesor, for that matter, anywhere at all. Because of the sensitivity of this data, we need clear restrictions on law enforcement searches of our electronic devices, so that every search doesn't turn into the type of general rummaging the Fourth Amendment was designed to prevent.

In our brief, we argued this case gave the Court a perfect opportunity to set a clear rule. We argued that the FBIs search of Gartenlaubs hard drives for evidence of regular, domestic crimes violated the Fourth Amendment, and we urged the Court to adopt a rule that would prohibit the FBI from using evidence that it obtained that was outside the scope of the initial search authorization. This would be a promising first step in limiting law enforcements electronic search powers and in protecting our right to privacy in the digital age.

Read more from the original source:
Secret Court Orders Aren't Blank Checks for General Electronic Searches - EFF

Republicans have long supported the sweeping surveillance capabilities of the NSA and have insisted theyre vitally important to national security. But with their man Trump caught up in multiple scandals that may involve intelligence services targeting his communications, privacy is suddenly a top priority.

The NSAs Prism and upstream data collection programs first hit the public consciousness when Edward Snowden fled the country and revealed extensive details about the agencys enormous powers to intercept foreign and domestic communications. The programs fall under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act which is up for renewal at the end of the year. Just last week, officials from the Trump administration said that the White House supports the clean reauthorization [of Section 702] and the administration believes its necessary to protect the security of the nation. But that may have changed.

Devin Nunes is the Republican chairman of the House intelligence committee. He was part of the Trump transition team and has reportedly developed a close relationship with the president. He also is one of the few members of congress that seems to take Trumps allegation that Obama illegally wiretapped him seriously. Asked today about the renewal of Section 702 in the midst of continued intelligence leaks about Trump and Russia, Nunes said, I think its very problematic.

Many people feel that the investigation of the Trump campaigns relationship with Russia should be handled by an independent commission, rather than the House intelligence committee. Nunes has fought back against that suggestion. They can say whatever they want, but at the end of the day, I hold the gavel, theyre in the minority and were going to do what we want to do, he told CNN. We are not going to give up that jurisdiction to anyone else as long as Im here.

Nunes absolute refusal to acknowledge the growing body of evidence that Trump and his team have repeatedly lied about contacts with the Russian government has led to the impression that he is acting as a shield for the administration. And now, he thinks that the NSAs ability to surveil foreign powers and any American communications that might come up in that surveillance might be a problem. He elaborated at todays press conference:

Ive expressed this concern to the IC [intelligence community]. We have sent them many followup questions as it relates to intelligence thats been collected. And we expect prompt answers. I think we also expect unprecedented answers from them of the information that were going to be asking for.

Democrats have typically agreed with Republicans that the NSA programs are necessary and that doesnt seem to have changed. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee, told the Guardian today that Section 702 has been a far more impactful and important counterterrorism program and tool. But, That doesnt mean though that we shouldnt explore whether there are ways to improve any of the protections in existing law or whether there are any changes that we need to make to the structure of the program.

No one knows how many American citizens communications have been caught up in the NSAs net at this point. In 2014, The Guardian found tens of thousands of Americans emails were intercepted under one program. Lawmakers have shown little concern. Maybe Trumps relentless self-interest will finally result in something good being done about this egregious overreach. More likely hell find a way to make it more horrible, if not through intent, through incompetence.

[The Guardian]

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Republicans Starting to Think the NSA Has Too Much Surveillance Power - Gizmodo

Two days after researchers exposed aNational Security Agency-tied hacking group that operated in secret for more than a decade, CIA hackers convened an online discussion aimed at preventing the same kind of unwelcome attention. The thread, according to a document WikiLeaks published Tuesday, was titled "What did Equation do wrong, and how can we avoid doing the same?"

Equation Group eventually came to light because of a handful of errors its members made over the years. One was the widespread use of a distinctive encryption function that used the RC5 cipher with negative programming constantsrather than with the positive constants favored by most developers. The nonstandard practice made it easier to identify Equation Group tools. Another mistake: failing to scrub variable names, developer account names, and similar fingerprints left in various pieces of Equation Group malware. A third error was the failure to renew some of the domain name registrations Equation Group-infected computers reported to. When Kaspersky Lab obtained the addresses, the researchers were shocked to find some machines infected by a malware platform abandoned more than 10 years earlier were still connecting to it.

It was this intrigue that set the stage for the online discussion about how CIA hackers could avoid the same pitfalls.

"As for what 'Equation' did wrong... All their tools shared code," one user, who like all the others was identified only by a unique identifier WikiLeaks used in place of a username, concluded on February 18, 2015, two days after the Kaspersky Lab findings were published. "The custom RC5 was everywhere. The techniques for positive ID (hashing) was used in the same way in multiple tools across generations."

The person continued:"The shared code appears to be the largest single factor is [sic] allowing [Kaspersky Lab] to tie all these tools together. The acquisition and use of C&C domains was probably number 2 on the list, and I'm sure the [CIA's computer operations group] infrastructure people are paying attention to this."

The person also suggested peers avoid using non-standard crypto functions, avoid using custom names in code, and scrub code clean of any PDB database information provided by Microsoft's Visual Studio debugger feature. The person wrote:

1. I would argue using custom crypto is always a mistake for two reasons. First, for the obvious problem described in the report. It makes your code look strange on deep RE inspection. Second, a custom routine greatly increases the odds you implemented the algorithm incorrectly and end up with a much weaker encryption scheme than intended.

2. Named kernel objects in general provide an easy signature for detection because it's usually a unique name. Using the same name in multiple tools is catastrophic.

3. This is PDB string, right? The PDB path should ALWAYS be stripped (I speak from experience. Ask me about Blackstone some time.). For Visual Studio user mode stuff, the /DEBUG linker switch should NOT be used. For drivers, it's a bit harder to avoid it, but a post-build step using binplace will strip the path information.

4. For other strings generally, yeah, search the binary for them. Don't use internal tool names in your code. It's less of a problem if leave-behind code doesn't have any exploit code in it.

The person went on to say, "The 'custom' crypto is more of [an] NSA falling to its own internal policies/standards which came about in response to prior problems. The problems included misconfigured crypto implementations that were corrected by using a single, optimized library.

"Unfortunately, this implementation used the pre-computed negative versions of constants instead of the positive constants in the reference implementation," the person wrote. "I think this is something we need to really watch and not standardize our selves into the same problem."

Other suggestions included the use, when possible, of publicly available crypto libraries, such as Microsoft Encryption Libraries, OpenSSL, and PolarSSL; creating a warning that would be displayed when unique names are embedded in the final binary file; and using a tool that would scan binaries for any usernames used on the local network.

The thread is part of a cache of 8,761 documents and files that WikiLeaks said were "obtained from an isolated, high-security network situated inside the CIA's Center for Cyber Intelligence in Langley, Virginia." The discussion provides a fly-on-the-wall account of some of the reactions to what must have been one of the more embarrassing exposures of NSA hacking. It wouldn't be surprising if members of NSA hacking units are having discussions of their own speculating on the cause of Tuesday's leak.

Read more here:
After NSA hacking expos, CIA staffers asked where Equation ... - Ars Technica

Former CIA and NSA director Gen. Michael Hayden said Tuesday there was no body of evidence for President Trump to make the claim that former President Barack Obama ordered wiretaps of his phones during the election.

What was claimed is inconsistent with the way I know the system works, Hayden told FOX Business Neil Cavuto.

According to Hayden, the president hasnt had the authority to order a wiretap since the 1970s. Instead, the request would need to go through a court, he said.

Since the president took office, the White House has been plagued with intel leaks. Hayden, who took over as CIA director in May 2006, said he faced a similar issue.

"One of the biggest problems we had was leaks. And my first speech to the workforce was: this is stopping. We are out of this as source or subject, Hayden said, adding that he does not believe people within the intelligence community should immediately be blamed.

I would not automatically assume that the source of this are intel people, even when the data being leaked is intelligence, he said.

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Furthermore, Hayden offered advice to the administration, based on his past experience.

My tool though wasnt a vendetta, wasnt an investigation, wasnt beating people up, he said. My tool was openness within the agency, so that people actually felt they had a place in which their views were valued. Id suggest that approach for the administration.

He added: What youve got is a situation that we as Americans have to agree is really bad. We cannot have the permanent government at war with the incoming administration. Both sides need to step back, take a breath.

Go here to see the original:
No Evidence for Trump's Wiretap Claims, Former CIA, NSA Chief Says - Fox Business

CNN's Jim Acosta confronts Donald Trump at a White House press conference (screen grab)

Former NSA analyst John Schindler, who now is a national security columnist for the Observer, reported on Tuesday that his sources in the intelligence community believe that President Donald Trumps White House is colluding with Russian intelligence to target journalists.

In a tweet on Tuesday, Schindler revealed: Learned fm very reliable IC sources that Trump WH, w/help fm Russian intel, is targeting US journalists.

Learned fm very reliable IC sources that Trump WH, w/help fm Russian intel, is targeting US journalists. Rough road ahead. Get ready, peeps

John Schindler (@20committee) March 7, 2017

Although Schindler provided no additional details, its no secret that Trump has all but declared war on the media during his first 45 days in office. However, the president has embraced conservative media sources like Fox News, Breitbart and various right-wing blogs.

In one case, the White House tried to punish Politico reporter Alex Isenstadt by planting a false story accusing him of laughing at the death of a Navy SEAL. Trump has called the media fake news and an enemy of the people.

The fake news doesnt tell the truth, Trump told a group of conservatives last month. It doesnt represent the people, it doesnt and never will represent the people, and were going to do something about it.

Go here to see the original:
Ex-NSA analyst: Intel sources say White House 'targeting journalists' with 'help from Russian intel' - Raw Story