America #39;s Forum | Gen. Michael Hayden, Former Director of the NSA and the CIA
Former Director of the NSA and the CIA talks about the Iran nuclear deal especially as the deadline is coming up in a couple of weeks. He also discusses Boko Haram and other terrorist groups...
By: NewsmaxTV
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America's Forum | Gen. Michael Hayden, Former Director of the NSA and the CIA - Video
NSA San Antonio PD harassed illegally detained me for snapping a photo of the NSA building
DHS "see something say something" program unfairly targets people for many reasons including photography. On (02/19/15) I was illegally stopped by NSA San Antonio PD for what NSA claims ...
By: crojas9962
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NSA & San Antonio PD harassed & illegally detained me for snapping a photo of the NSA building - Video
Md. man charged with shooting at NSA building, Md. drivers denied bail
Bail was denied Monday for the man charged with shooting at five public places in Maryland, including a National Security Agency building. http://bit.ly/1FBHOji.
By: ABC7 WJLA
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Md. man charged with shooting at NSA building, Md. drivers denied bail - Video
The Wikimedia Foundation argues that the NSA's full-scale seizure of Internet communications is a violation of its First and Fourth Amendment rights.
The NSA is in hot water yet again. Declan McCullagh/CNET
The Wikimedia Foundation, the organization that operates the wildly popular online encyclopedia Wikipedia, says user privacy has been violated and that it's going to court to try to fix it.
Wikimedia filed a lawsuit on Tuesday in the US District Court for the District of Maryland against the National Security Agency and the US Department of Justice for allegedly violating its constitutional rights on Wikipedia. The organization argues that an NSA program collecting information wholesale across the Internet, known as upstream surveillance, is a violation of its First Amendment right of free speech and a violation of the Fourth Amendment's ban on unreasonable search and seizure.
Wikimedia said it is joined by eight other organizations, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, and represented by The American Civil Liberties Union. Wikimedia has been working on the lawsuit for "approximately one year," said its general counsel, Geoff Brigham.
"Privacy is the bedrock of individual freedom. It is a universal right that sustains the freedoms of expression and association," Wikimedia wrote Tuesday on its blog. "These principles enable inquiry, dialogue, and creation and are central to Wikimedia's vision of empowering everyone to share in the sum of all human knowledge. ... If people look over their shoulders before searching, pause before contributing to controversial articles, or refrain from sharing verifiable but unpopular information, Wikimedia and the world are poorer for it."
Wikipedia is the world's most comprehensive online encyclopedia. The service comprises editable wikis that allow users to correct misinformation and add details on individuals, events, organizations and ideas. More than 500 million people worldwide visit Wikipedia each month, and at least 75,000 people around the globe add or edit the content.
In 2013, one-time NSA contractor Edward Snowden leaked information revealing Wikipedia was a target of government surveillance. According to Snowden, the US government taps the Internet's "backbone" (the core data routes between large, interconnected network centers) to capture communication with "non-U.S. persons." Part of that surveillance is authorized by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) that Congress amended in 2008, which supports US spy agencies to collect Internet information at will. (A large component in the NSA's mission stems from a 1981 executive order that legalized surveillance of foreigners living outside the US.)
Since Snowden's leaks began, the US government has shied away from claims that it may be intercepting communications and information from Americans. FISA does not authorize spying on US citizens. The ACLU and Wikimedia believe surveillance agencies are violating that regulation.
"In the course of its surveillance, the NSA copies and combs through vast amounts of Internet traffic, which it intercepts inside the United States with the help of major telecommunications companies," the ACLU said in a statement on Tuesday. "It searches that traffic for keywords called 'selectors' that are associated with its targets. The surveillance involves the NSA's warrantless review of the emails and Internet activities of millions of ordinary Americans."
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Wikipedia parent sues to stop NSA's massive surveillance ...
The nonprofit behind Wikipedia, the Wikimedia Foundation, is suing the National Security Agency and the Department of Justice over a government surveillance program. The suit challenges a program that collects databy tapping into the infrastructure, or backbone, the Web is built on.
"We are asking the court to order an end to the NSA's dragnet surveillance of Internet traffic," Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales wrote in a New York Times opinion piece about the suit.
The Justice Department spokesperson said the agency isreviewing the complaint. TheNSA did not immediately respond a request for comment about the suit.
The suit allegesthat the government has been tappinginto cables that are part of the Internet's infrastructure, a practice often called "Upstream" collection, which violates the First and Fourth Amendments, according to a blog post from Wikimedia.
Such programs have been targeted in other lawsuits,including the long-running Jewel v. NSA case, which was originallybased on documents from aAT&T technician in San Francisco.Some cases about government surveillance have either been thrown out or stalled after failing to prove they were specifically targetedby thegovernment surveillance programs.
But that may be less of an issue for Wikimedia, which has based its case largely on informationdisclosed byNSA contractor Edward Snowden. Some Snowden documentsappearedto showthat the government is tapping into cables that connect the United States to the rest of the online world. One government slide disclosed by Snowdensuggested that Wikipedia and its userswere targeted as part of government surveillance programs, the lawsuit alleges.
However, there may be other legal hurdles. Last month, Jewel v. NSA hit a significant roadblock when a federal judge sided with the government's state secret defense -- ruling that the plaintiffscould not win their challenge over NSA tapping of the Internet backbone without disclosing information that would harm national security.
The type and amount of data collected as part of these programs are unclear. But the data could reveal details about people's browsing history, scaring somefrom using the Internet freely, privacy advocates have argued.
By tapping the backbone of the internet, the NSA is straining the backbone of democracy, Wikimedia Foundation executive director Lila Tretikov said in a blog post about the suit. Wikipedia is founded on the freedoms of expression, inquiry, and information. By violating our users privacy, the NSA is threatening the intellectual freedom that is central to peoples ability to create and understand knowledge.
The American Civil Liberties Union is representing plaintiffs inWikimedia v. NSA, a group that includesHuman Rights Watch, Amnesty International USA, Global Fund for Women, and The Nation Magazine among others.
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Wikipedia is suing the NSA over online spying