Surveillance

The American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico has sued the city of Albuquerque, seeking records by the city’s police department about its use of stingrays, also known as cell-site simulators. In May 2017, the ACLU of New Mexico filed a public records request to the Albuquerque Police Department (which has been under federal monitoring for years), seeking a slew of information about stingrays. The requested info included confirmation on whether the police had stingrays, "policies and procedures," and contracts with the Harris Corporation, among other materials. Albuquerque denied many of these requests, citing a state law that allows some public records to be withheld on the grounds that they reveal "confidential sources, methods." So, the week of July 3, the ACLU of New Mexico sued.

Tech companies -- including Facebook, Twitter and Microsoft -- are fighting gag orders from US courts preventing them from talking about government surveillance of their users, arguing it has a chilling effect on free speech.

Facebook, Twitter and Microsoft all have policies to notify users of government requests for account information unless they are prohibited by law from doing so in exceptional circumstances such as life-threatening emergencies, child sexual exploitation and terrorism. However, it seems that the US government is attaching gag orders – many with no time limit – to their data requests in about half of all cases. This means that people are having their digital lives ransacked without their knowledge and with no chance for public scrutiny or appeal. Tech companies and civil liberties campaigners argue that the gag orders are unconstitutional, violating the fourth amendment, which gives people the right to know if the government searches or seizes their property, and the first amendment, which protects the companies’ right to talk to their customers and discuss how the government conducts its investigations.

A team of international investigators brought to Mexico to unravel one of the nation’s gravest human rights atrocities was targeted with sophisticated surveillance technology sold to the Mexican government to spy on criminals and terrorists. The spying took place during what the investigators call a broad campaign of harassment and interference that prevented them from solving the haunting case of 43 students who disappeared after clashing with the police nearly three years ago.

National security officials across the federal government say they are seeing new restrictions on who can access sensitive information, fueling fears in the intelligence and security community that the Trump administration has stepped up a stealthy operation to smoke out leakers. Officials at various national security agencies also say they are becoming more concerned that the administration is carefully tracking what they’re doing and who they’re talking to — then plotting to use them as a scapegoat or accuse them of leaks.

One US official voiced concern over even talking to their superiors about a benign call from a reporter. The agency this official works for had started limiting staff’s access to information, they said, and it would make it far easier to figure out who was talking to people in the media. There was suspicion, the official said, that the agency was even tracking what they printed, to keep tabs on what information they were accessing. A half dozen officials across the national security community described to Politico a series of subtle and no-so-subtle changes that have led to an increasingly tense and paranoid working environment rooted in the White House’s obsession with leaks. President Donald Trump has regularly vented about his intense frustration with anonymously sourced stories, and has specifically targeted federal government entities, including intelligence agencies like the CIA and FBI and the State Department.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Crime and Terrorism Subcommittee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-SC) have asked for all the surveillance warrants the FBI asked for from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (FISA) Court as part of the FBI's investigation into Russian campaign interference, including possible collusion with the campaign of Donald Trump.

The top Republicans cited stories by both the BBC and CNN, the latter of which President Trump continues to brand as fake news. The request by the senators was based on news reports that the Justice Department had asked the court for authority to monitor members of the Trump presidential campaign—which the court denied, advising the FBI to narrow its focus. They said they want copies of both classified and non-classified.

Businesses leaders expressed surprise that the Department of Justice is appealing a case about when law enforcement should have access to data stored in other countries. The case pits the DOJ against Microsoft over an issue both sides have indicated requires a legislative fix: whether or not a domestic warrant can require a company to retrieve data stored on a foreign server.

Both chambers of Congress had taken up the issue with hearings involving the DOJ, industry and other stakeholders, and both chambers had expressed a sense of urgency to resolve the conflict. The DOJ filed paperwork for the appeal on June 23. The government is appealing lower court rulings that law enforcement cannot obtain data stored in a foreign nation with a warrant. Rather, the ruling says law enforcement needs to follow the foreign nation's policies for searching and seizing evidence. This has long been the case with physical evidence and the United States has several treaties known as Mutual Legal Assistance Treaties (MLATs) to provide a diplomatic apparatus to request evidence be retrieved and sent stateside.

Mexico’s most prominent human rights lawyers, journalists and anti-corruption activists have been targeted by advanced spyware sold to the Mexican government on the condition that it be used only to investigate criminals and terrorists. The targets include lawyers looking into the mass disappearance of 43 students, a highly respected academic who helped write anti-corruption legislation, two of Mexico’s most influential journalists and an American representing victims of sexual abuse by the police. The spying even swept up family members, including a teenage boy.

Since 2011, at least three Mexican federal agencies have purchased about $80 million worth of spyware created by an Israeli cyberarms manufacturer. The software, known as Pegasus, infiltrates smartphones to monitor every detail of a person’s cellular life — calls, texts, e-mail, contacts and calendars. It can even use the microphone and camera on phones for surveillance, turning a target’s smartphone into a personal bug. The company that makes the software, the NSO Group, says it sells the tool exclusively to governments, with an explicit agreement that it be used only to battle terrorists or the drug cartels and criminal groups that have long kidnapped and killed Mexicans. But according to dozens of messages examined by The New York Times and independent forensic analysts, the software has been used against some of the government’s most outspoken critics and their families, in what many view as an unprecedented effort to thwart the fight against the corruption infecting every limb of Mexican society.

Mexico’s most prominent human rights lawyers, journalists and anti-corruption activists have been targeted by advanced spyware sold to the Mexican government on the condition that it be used only to investigate criminals and terrorists. The targets include lawyers looking into the mass disappearance of 43 students, a highly respected academic who helped write anti-corruption legislation, two of Mexico’s most influential journalists and an American representing victims of sexual abuse by the police. The spying even swept up family members, including a teenage boy.

Your Wi-Fi router, sitting in the corner of your home accumulating dust and unpatched security flaws, provides an attractive target for hackers. Including, according to a new WikiLeaks release, the CIA.

On June 15, WikiLeaks published a detailed a set of descriptions and documentation for the CIA's router-hacking toolkit. It's the latest drip in the months-long trickle of secret CIA files it's called Vault7, and it hints at how the agency leverages vulnerabilities in common routers sold by companies including D-Link and Linksys. The techniques range from hacking network passwords to rewriting device firmware to remotely monitor the traffic that flows across a target's network. After reading up on them, you may find yourself itching to update your own long-neglected access point.

An American communications company in 2014 balked at an “expansion” of the National Security Agency’s warrantless surveillance program, but was ordered to comply by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, a newly declassified document shows. The previously secret fight, which played out quietly amid a public debate over surveillance that was prompted by the 2013 leaks by the intelligence contractor Edward J. Snowden, was described in a 37-page ruling issued in 2014 by Judge Rosemary Collyer.

The ruling was heavily redacted when it was made public this week. Its uncensored portions did not say whether the challenge was brought by a telecommunications provider like AT&T that is part of the program’s “upstream” system or by a Silicon Valley internet company like Google that is part of the program’s “Prism” system. It also did not say what the “expansion” was or what legal arguments the company had made about it.