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A smoke rises as Iraqi forces fight Islamic State militants in western Mosul, Iraq, April 29, 2017. REUTERS/Danish Siddiqui

Mosul (IraqiNews.com) A map released by the Iraqi military media on Thursday suggested that government troops became in control over 90 percent of western Mosul.

The map, posted by the Defense Ministrys War Media Cell, shows that only 10 percent remain under Islamic State militants control as the forces opened a new front of operations last week targeting the IS-held Old City from the northwestern direction. Military officials, who said earlier this month they control 70 percent of the region, have yet to confirm the maps accuracy.

Also on Thursday, Ali al-Jaff, a lieutenant at the armys elite Counter-Terrorism Service, was quoted by Shafaaq news website saying his forces cleared six IS snipers positions in al-Islah al-Zeraee district.

Head of the CTS special operations, Maan al-Saadi, also said in statements that he predicts al-Islah al-Zeraee district to be fully recaptured on Thursday. He said his forces invaded the district on Wednesday and took over 30 percent of it, adding that it overlooks other major districts such as 17 Tamuz, al-Arabi and al-Refaie.

Earlier on Thursday, Federal Police chief, Shaker Jawdat, said in statements that the Interior Ministrys Rapid Response forces, backed by Federal Police armored vehicles, made an incursion Thursday at al-Ektesadiyn district, an area to which Islamic State fled over the past few days as Iraqi forces advanced, according to field commanders.

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Military media map suggests only 10% of western Mosul under IS control - Iraqi News

A newly released court opinion from the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) shows that for years the NSA improperly and perhaps illegally surveilled Americans. The court order triggered the surprise announcement two weeks ago that the agency would be severely scaling back its domestic surveillance and destroying previously collected data on Americans.

Thursday, the Department of Justice released the 99-page court opinion from last month that ordered the National Security Agency to delete much of its surveillance on American people, which was collected improperly and in potential violation of the Fourth Amendment. The DOJ released the opinion as part of a 2015 plan to be more transparent.

The NSA collected data about Americans if they even mentioned a foreign target.

The opinion is a rebuke of many of the NSA's surveillance collection practices under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the powers of which were expanded under the US Patriot Act. According to the opinionparts of which are redactedthe NSA improperly collected untold numbers of "multi-communications transactions" (MCTs) as they were in transit around the internet. The NSA is intentionally vague about what MCTs are, but they are believed to be groups of emails, metadata, screenshots of your inbox, and still-classified types of digital information (here's the best primer explaining MCTs).

Under Section 702, the NSA is allowed to collect domestic communication if Americans are communicating directly with a "foreign intelligence target" as approved by the FISC court. According to the opinion, the NSA had been collecting information if a foreign target was merely mentioned in the communication.

"Upstream collection could acquire an entire MCT for which the active user was a nontarget and that mostly pertained to non-targets, merely because a single discrete communication within the MCT was to, from or contained a reference to a tasked selector," Judge Rosemary Collyer wrote. "Such acquisitions could take place even if the non-target active user was a U.S. person in the United States and the MCT contained a large number of domestic communications that did not pertain to the foreign intelligence target."

Collyer's opinionwhich is worth reading in full if you're at all interested in privacycontains a number of other important details:

Earlier this month, the NSA announced that it would stop this type of collection and would delete data that was collected improperly. Now we know that at least part of that announcement was made because the FISC court ordered the agency to, because the NSA could not prove that the surveillance was legal under the Fourth Amendment. The court order says that the NSA must delete this information within one year.

'Compliance problems' also led to collection of data about Americans.

According to the order, in 2016, the FISC asked the NSA to prove that Section 702 collection involving Americans was legal under the Fourth Amendment. It also asked the US government for internal reviews about the program, which it did not initially disclose: "The Court ascribed the government's failure to disclose those reviews at the October 4, 2016 hearing to an institutional 'lack of candor' on NSA's part and emphasized that 'this is a very serious Fourth Amendment issue,' Collyer wrote.

Finally, the court gave the US government a January 31, 2017 deadline to prove the constitutionality of its program; the government asked for an extension to May 26. The court granted a shorter extension to April 28. Rather than prove the constitutionality of the program, the court opinion noted that the NSA instead had "chosen a new course:" The destruction of improperly collected data and the narrowing of its collection practices.

The NSA will continue collecting data under Section 702 of the Patriot Act, but the FISC court ordered that the NSA must "limit all acquisitions to communications to or from an authorized 702 target" in order to comply with the Fourth Amendment. The NSA will also no longer be able to share 702 surveillance with the FBI, CIA, or other intelligence agencies unless they follow specific data minimization procedures.

The court order gives us more background and specifics on what we already knew: Much of the NSA's surveillance of Americans was unconstitutional, and the agency regularly collected things it wasn't supposed to.

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This Is the Secret Court Order That Forced the NSA to Delete the Data It Collected About You - Motherboard

NSA Director Adm. Mike Rogers cast a dash of doubt Tuesday on the intelligence community's conclusion that Russia-tied hackers sought to help Donald Trump in the 2016 election, explaining for the first time in public testimony why his agency had only "moderate confidence" in that judgment.

Testifying before a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, Rogers affirmed he and the NSA were highly confident the Russians sought to hurt Hillary Clinton in the election. But Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., asked Rogers who also heads U.S. Cyber Command -- why the NSA differed on the related conclusion about Trump in the Jan. 6 intelligence report on alleged Russian interference in the election.

That conclusion stated that the Russian government aspired to help President-elect Trumps election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to him.

The FBI and CIA backed that with high confidence, but the NSA only held that judgment with moderate confidence.

Cotton noted that fellow Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., during the hearing called Trump Russias preferred candidate and asked Rogers to explain the discrepancy.

I wouldnt call it a discrepancy, Id call it an honest difference of opinion between three different organizations and in the end I made that call, Rogers said.

He added that when he looked at the data, for each of the other judgments there were multiple sources and he could exclude every other alternative rationale. But for this particular conclusion, it didnt have the same level of sourcing and the same level of multiple sources, he said.

He noted that he still agreed with the judgment, but he wasnt at the same confidence level as CIA Director John Brennan and FBI Director James Comey.

Probed further by Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va. -- who was Clintons running mate Rogers clarified that while he was highly confident the Russians wanted to prevent Clinton from winning, and to undercut her effectiveness if she did win, he was only moderately confident the Russians actively wanted Trump to win.

The FBI, CIA and NSA were all in complete agreement about the Clinton-related conclusion in the report, which stated: Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election. Russias goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency.

Earlier at Monday's hearing, Rogers also testified that there has been no reduction in Russian efforts to affect the outcome of other countries' elections, and warned about the dangers of state and non-state actors moving from data "extraction" to data "manipulation."

Chairman John McCain, R-Ariz., asked Rogers if he had seen a reduction in Russian efforts to meddle in elections and pointed toward alleged interference in Sundays French presidential race.

No I have not, Rogers said, adding that U.S. needs to publicly out Russian behavior.

They need to know we will publicly identify this behavior, he said.

Emmanuel Macron, the eventual winner of the French election, was hit by a hack Friday which revealed a number of his campaign team's emails. It was not clear who was behind the hack, but it was reminiscent of hacks that hit the 2016 U.S. election that exposed Democratic National Committee staff emails, and the private emails of Clinton campaign Chairman John Podesta. Both the Clinton campaign and the Obama administration have blamed Russia for those hacks.

Rogers was also asked by lawmakers to lay out his worst-case scenario for future cyber attacks. Rogers said he was concerned about outright destructive activity on critical infrastructure as well as cyberattacks moving from the obtaining and revealing data to data manipulation on a massive scale.

Such as changing voter rolls? asked McCain.

Yes, said Rogers. Thats a very different kind of challenge for us.

He also warned about a possible situation in which, as the effectiveness of cyberattacks becomes clearer, non-state actors decide cyber is an attractive weapon with which to destroy the status quo.

During further questioning, Rogers said the National Security Agency became aware of Russian attempts to interfere with political institutions in the summer of 2015.

He said that when he came aware of Russian actions, he informed the FBI, and also in his role as head of the U.S. Cyber Command, informed the Pentagon to make sure its systems were optimized in order to be able to withstand such an attack.

Adam Shaw is a Politics Reporter and occasional Opinion writer for FoxNews.com. He can be reached here or on Twitter: @AdamShawNY.

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NSA chief explains 'discrepancy' over claim that Russia ...

New York Times

How Trump's NSA Came to End a Disputed Type of Surveillance New York Times The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court was delaying its annual reauthorization because the N.S.A. had discovered widespread violations of a rule for how analysts could handle Americans' emails collected under the program. Now, the agency director, ... This Is the Secret Court Order That Forced the NSA to Delete the Data It Collected About YouMotherboard Election Hack: NSA Chief Says FISA Revealed Russian Interference ...Fortune Their View: NSA stops one abuse, but many remainHesperia Star all 5 news articles »

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How Trump's NSA Came to End a Disputed Type of Surveillance - New York Times

Despite plentiful advice online about how to protect your privacy and keep your data safe, we all make mistakes now and then. We leave that text file of passwords in our Dropbox folder. We forget the password of our home router set to 'password.' But at least most of us can say we never left extensive software and documentation for one of the most powerful codebreaking systems in the worlda supercomputer collaboration between IBM, NYU and the Department of Defensecasually lying around on a completely unsecured public server. That's a pretty big oops, especially when someone finds it.

The Intercept published a fascinating story today about WindsorGreen, an encryption-breaking computer designed by brilliant mathematicians and likely used by the NSA. Specifically, the fascinating part is how easily a security researcher, with a hobby of poking around the internet looking for out-of-place files, found some pretty high-level Department of Defense stuff. Under the alias Adam, he told The Intercept "The fact that this software, these spec sheets, and all the manuals to go with it were sitting out in the open for anyone to copy is just simply mind blowing."

"All of this leaky data is courtesy of what I can only assume are misconfigurations in the IMAS (Institute for Mathematics and Advanced Supercomputing) department at NYU. Not even a single username or password separates these files from the public internet right now. Its absolute insanity," Adam wrote to The Intercept over email.

The only tool Adam used to find the NYU trove was Shodan.io, a website thats roughly equivalent to Google for internet-connected, and typically unsecured, computers and appliances

Adam didn't find this server full of secrets by hacking through NYU firewalls or anything so complex. According to The Intercept, "the only tool Adam used to find the NYU trove was Shodan.io, a website thats roughly equivalent to Google for internet-connected, and typically unsecured, computers and appliances around the world, famous for turning up everything from baby monitors to farming equipment. Shodan has plenty of constructive technical uses but also serves as a constant reminder that we really ought to stop plugging things into the internet that have no business being there."

That last line is the kicker here. You may have read about how botnets comprised of Internet of Things devices are being used in massive DDOS attacks, like the ones instigated by squabbles over Minecraft servers last year. Shodan.io is a reminder that anyone could easily find a hole through your weak home router, and more importantly, your internet-connected refrigerator or lightbulbs could someday be used to DDOS a website you care about, like Steam.

In other words, Juicero wasn't just a sign that Silicon Valley spends millions of dollars reinventing basic shit we already have, but with internet connectivity. It's a harbinger of a bleak, bleak future where your coffee maker and your $400 juice bot can and will be taken hostage by a 17-year-old and next thing you know we're living a version of Maximum Overdrive we made for ourselves.

Adam informed NYU about the unsecured server and the files were removed, but experts have reviewed the documentation (which was the property of IBM and didn't appear to be classified by the DOD) and suggested that WindsorGreen is likely the best cryptography system in the world. The NSA is doubtless giving it a workout.

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Man finds NSA supercomputer info sitting on an unsecured server ... - PC Gamer