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National Security Agency (NSA)


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Third-Party Descriptions

March 2012: "Much of the debate over phone surveillance in recent years has focused on the federal government and counterterrorism operations, particularly a once-secret program authorized by President George W. Bush after the Sept. 11 attacks. It allowed the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on phone calls of terrorism suspects and monitor huge amounts of phone and e-mail traffic without court-approved intelligence warrants."

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/01/us/police-tracking-of-cellphones-raises-privacy-fears.html

June 2011: "The problems of perception that plagued the government’s pursuit of Mr. Drake, who claimed to be a whistle-blower exposing a costly National Security Agency boondoggle, may crop up again with Mr. Kim. His personal story as a brainy, up-by-the-bootstraps immigrant is compelling, even if the government is able to prove that he was far too candid in talking to a reporter about intelligence in 2009 and then lied to F.B.I. agents about the episode."

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/18/us/politics/18leak.html

March 2010: "WASHINGTON — A federal judge ruled Wednesday that the National Security Agency’s program of surveillance without warrants was illegal, rejecting the Obama administration’s effort to keep shrouded in secrecy one of the most disputed counterterrorism policies of former President George W. Bush."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/01/us/01nsa.html

July 2009: "As mentioned above, NSA is probably crawling the sudden explosion of social networking tools, making links between individuals and using data-mining technologies to construct elaborate maps of who associate with whom. This may seem like a wild allegation, but we know that the Department of Defense (of which the NSA is a part) was exploring exactly this sort of social network mapping under the Total Information Awareness (TIA) program that was uncovered not long after 9/11."

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/07/effs-new-lawsuit-and-how-the-nsa-is-into-social-networking.ars

July 2009: "The Obama administration will proceed with a Bush-era plan to use National Security Agency assistance in screening government computer traffic on private-sector networks, with AT&T as the likely test site, according to three current and former government officials."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/02/AR2009070202771.html

June 2009: "Much of the new military command’s work is expected to be carried out by the National Security Agency, whose role in intercepting the domestic end of international calls and e-mail messages after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, under secret orders issued by the Bush administration, has already generated intense controversy."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/13/us/politics/13cyber.html

June 2009: "Defense officials are creating the command to defend military networks and develop offensive cyber-weapons, based on a strategy that brings together the military's cyber-warriors and the National Security Agency, the organization responsible for electronic espionage."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/12/AR2009061204373.html

January 2009: "The decision marks the first time since the disclosure of the National Security Agency’s warrantless eavesdropping program three years ago that an appellate court has addressed the constitutionality of the federal government’s wiretapping powers. In validating the government’s wide authority to collect foreign intelligence, it may offer legal credence to the Bush administration’s repeated assertions that the president has constitutional authority to act without specific court approval in ordering national security eavesdropping."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/16/washington/16fisa.html

October 2008: "The U.S. Senate is investigating allegations by two National Security Agency whistleblowers who have described widespread monitoring of innocuous telephone conversations by the Bush administration's clandestine program."

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10063138-38.html

July 2008: "The judge, Vaughn R. Walker, the chief judge for the Northern District of California, made his findings in a ruling on a lawsuit brought by an Oregon charity. The group says it has evidence of an illegal wiretap used against it by the National Security Agency under the secret surveillance program established by President Bush after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/03/washington/03fisa.html

June 2008: "In 2005, Bush acknowledged that he ordered the National Security Agency to intercept communications between U.S. residents and people overseas suspected of having ties to terrorism. The administration insists that the program was authorized when Congress approved military action against al Qaeda after the terrorist network's 2001 attacks."

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/06/20/congress.wiretaps/index.html

June 2008: "The immunity would cover companies that helped the government between Sept. 11, 2001, and Jan. 17, 2007, when the warrantless surveillance program was brought under the authority of the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. That program had allowed the National Security Agency to monitor communications to and from the United States without court oversight."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/19/AR2008061901545.html

June 2008: "In the wiretapping program approved by Mr. Bush after the Sept. 11 attacks, the White House asserted that the president had the constitutional authority to act outside the courts in allowing the National Security Agency to focus on the international communications of Americans with suspected ties to terrorists and that Congress had implicitly authorized that power when it voted to use military force against Al Qaeda."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/20/washington/20fisa.html

February 2008: 'Waterboarding, he told the House committee, "cannot possibly be the subject of . . . a Justice Department investigation" because its use was approved by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel. Mukasey made a parallel argument about the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretapping program, saying the Justice Department could not investigate that program because it was approved at the outset by the department's lawyers.'

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/07/AR2008020701542.html

January 2008: "The temporary surveillance law -- approved under heavy White House pressure -- gives the government broad powers to eavesdrop on the communications of terrorism suspects without warrants. It effectively legalized many of the practices employed by the National Security Agency as part of a secret program approved by Bush in late 2001."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/23/AR2008012302179.html

January 2008: "US signals intelligence – the much-vaunted ability of American military and spy units to eavesdrop on the radio calls and other electronic communications of an adversary – failed at crucial moments during the Vietnam War, according to a just-declassified National Security Agency history of the effort."

http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0109/p04s01-usmi.html

October 2007: The interrogation opinions were signed by Steven G. Bradbury, who since 2005 has headed the elite Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department. He has become a frequent public defender of the National Security Agency’s domestic surveillance program and detention policies at Congressional hearings and press briefings, a role that some legal scholars say is at odds with the office’s tradition of avoiding political advocacy.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/04/washington/04interrogate.html

September 2007: The same state-secrets issue is also at the center of a string of lawsuits challenging the Bush administration's warrantless surveillance operations by the National Security Agency. The Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco heard two cases last month involving alleged NSA surveillance within the US.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0919/p01s08-usju.html

September 2007: The intelligence officials, including the directors of the C.I.A., the F.B.I. and the National Security Agency, said in court filings that the vast disclosure would reveal counterterrorism activities and could disrupt intelligence gathering. They also said assembling the information was so time-consuming that the effort had distracted the agencies from terrorism investigations.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/12/washington/12gitmo.html

August 2007: The expanded snooping powers of the National Security Agency (NSA) have been controversial ever since they became public in 2006. To critics, the program opens the door to the possibility of dangerous infringement on the civil liberties of US citizens. To supporters, they're a necessary tool against terrorism in an era of cellphones and Internet communications.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0822/p01s03-uspo.html

August 2007: Civil liberties and privacy groups have denounced the administration's proposal, which they say would effectively allow the National Security Agency to revive a warrantless surveillance program conducted in secret from 2001 until late 2005. They say it would also give the government authority to force carriers to turn over any international communications into and out of the United States without a court order.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/31/AR2007073101879.html

June 2007: U.S. intelligence agencies have always relied on private companies for technology and hardware. Lockheed built the famous U-2 spy plane under specifications from the CIA, and dozens of companies, from TRW to Polaroid to Raytheon, helped develop the high-resolution cameras and satellites that beamed information back to Washington about the Soviet Union and its military and missile installations. The National Security Agency, which was founded in the early 1950s to monitor foreign communications and telephone calls, hired IBM, Cray and other companies to make the supercomputers that helped the agency break encryption codes and transform millions of bits of data into meaningful intelligence.

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/06/01/intel_contractors/

February 2007: The deal appears to resolve the latest conflict between Congress and the administration over the National Security Agency's surveillance effort, and it provides new evidence of the administration's more accommodating approach to the Democrats who now control Congress.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/31/AR2007013100921.html

January 2006: On Oct. 1, 2001, three weeks after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Gen. Michael V. Hayden, who was running the National Security Agency at the time, told the House intelligence committee that the agency was broadening its surveillance authorities, according to a newly released letter sent to him that month by Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.). Pelosi, the ranking Democrat on the committee, raised concerns in the letter, which was declassified with several redactions and made public yesterday by her staff.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/03/AR2006010301460.html

January 2006: Information captured by the National Security Agency's secret eavesdropping on communications between the United States and overseas has been passed on to other government agencies, which cross-check the information with tips and information collected in other databases, current and former administration officials said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/31/AR2005123100808.html

December 2005: Nor did he explain why the current system is not quick enough to meet the needs of the fight against terrorism. Under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the NSA in urgent situations can already eavesdrop on international telephone calls for 72 hours without a warrant, as long as it goes to a secret intelligence court by the end of that period for retroactive permission. Since the law was passed in 1978 after intelligence scandals, the court has rejected just five of 18,748 requests for wiretaps and search warrants, according to the government.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/19/AR2005121900211.html

December 2005: Congressional leaders of both parties called for hearings and issued condemnations yesterday in the wake of reports that President Bush signed a secret order in 2002 allowing the National Security Agency to spy on hundreds of U.S. citizens and other residents without court-approved warrants.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/16/AR2005121601825.html

December 2005: WASHINGTON, Dec. 1 - The National Security Agency has released hundreds of pages of long-secret documents on the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident, which played a critical role in significantly expanding the American commitment to the Vietnam War.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/02/politics/02tonkin.html

Relationships

RoleNameTypeLast Updated
Cooperation (past or present) AT&T Organization Aug 12, 2006
Opponent (past or present) Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation Organization Apr 1, 2010
Owned by (partial or full, past or present) Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) Organization Feb 8, 2007
Opponent (past or present) Organization Executive (past or present) Thomas A. Drake Organization Jun 18, 2011
Owned by (partial or full, past or present) US Federal Government - Independent Agencies Organization May 6, 2005
Employee/Freelancer/Contractor (past or present) Research/Analysis Subject Opponent (past or present) Matthew M. Aid Person May 10, 2010
Organization Head/Leader (past or present) Gen. Lew Allen Jr. Person Jan 3, 2006
Employee/Freelancer/Contractor (past or present) Robert J. Hanyok Person Dec 2, 2005
Organization Head/Leader (past or present) Gen. Michael V. Hayden Person Dec 18, 2005
Organization Head/Leader (past or present) Vice Adm. John "Mike" M. McConnell Retd. Person Jul 9, 2007
Organization Executive (past or present) Prof. Elizabeth Rindskopf Parker Esq. Person Jan 14, 2007
Organization Executive (past or present) O. Sami Saydjari MS Person Jan 6, 2008
Employee/Freelancer/Contractor (past or present) Advised by (past or present) Paul B. Schneck Ph.D. Person May 2, 2007

Articles and Resources

111 Articles and Resources. Go to:  [Next 20]   [End]

Date Fairness.com Resource Read it at:
Mar 31, 2012 Police Are Using Phone Tracking as a Routine Tool

QUOTE: Law enforcement tracking of cellphones, once the province mainly of federal agents, has become a powerful and widely used surveillance tool for local police officials, with hundreds of departments, large and small, often using it aggressively with little or no court oversight, documents show. The practice has become big business for cellphone companies, too...

 New York Times
Jun 17, 2011 U.S. Pressing Its Crackdown Against Leaks

QUOTE: The Justice Department shows no sign of rethinking its campaign to punish unauthorized disclosures to the news media, with five criminal cases so far under President Obama, compared with three under all previous presidents combined....The string of cases reflects a broad belief across two administrations and in both parties in Congress that leaks have gotten out of hand, endangering intelligence agents and exposing American spying methods.

 New York Times
May 31, 2011 Pentagon to Consider Cyberattacks Acts of War

QUOTE: The Pentagon, trying to create a formal strategy to deter cyberattacks on the United States, plans to issue a new strategy soon declaring that a computer attack from a foreign nation can be considered an act of war that may result in a military response.

 New York Times
Apr 27, 2011 Honoring Those Who Said No

QUOTE: Thus far, though, our official history has honored only those who approved torture, not those who rejected it… But averting our eyes from recent history means not only that we fail in our legal and moral duty to provide redress to victims of torture, but also that we betray the public servants who risked so much to reverse what they knew was a disastrous and shameful course.

 New York Times
Mar 31, 2010 Federal Judge Finds N.S.A. Wiretaps Were Illegal

QUOTE: A federal judge ruled Wednesday that the National Security Agency’s program of surveillance without warrants was illegal, rejecting the Obama administration’s effort to keep shrouded in secrecy one of the most disputed counterterrorism policies of former President George W. Bush.

 New York Times
Jan 31, 2010 Obama admnistration takes several wrong paths in dealing with terrorism

QUOTE: Some may celebrate that the current Justice Department's perspective on the war on terrorism has become markedly more dominant in the past year. We should probably understand the implications of that before we break out the champagne. That apparently no one recommended on Christmas Day that Abdulmutallab be handled, at least for a time, as an enemy combatant should be concerning.

 Washington Post
Nov 12, 2009 Welcome Home, War!: How America's Wars Are Systematically Destroying Our Liberties

QUOTE: surprisingly few Americans seem aware of the toll that this already endless war [on terror] has taken on our civil liberties.

 TomDispatch
Nov 05, 2009 Who's in Big Brother's Database?

QUOTE: these new centers in Utah, Texas, and possibly elsewhere will likely become the centralized repositories for the data intercepted by the NSA in America's version of the "big brother database" rejected by the British.

 New York Review of Books (NYRB)
Jul 28, 2009 The Future of Cyber Security: What Are the Rules of Engagement? (Duel Perspectives)

QUOTE: In a battle where the militarized zone exists solely in the ether(net) and where anyone can wield the cyber-equivalent of a 10-ton bomb, how do we fight, let alone find, the enemy? What standard of proof will be used to determine the origin of an anonymous attack?

 Wired
Jul 23, 2009 EFF's new lawsuit, and how the NSA is into social networking

QUOTE: The government could be building a giant map of social networks... in order to look for communication patterns.

 Ars Technica
Jul 11, 2009 Cheney Is Linked to Concealment of C.I.A. Project

QUOTE: The Central Intelligence Agency withheld information about a secret counterterrorism program from Congress for eight years on direct orders from former Vice President Dick Cheney...

 New York Times
Jul 07, 2009 Obama's Cyber Plan Raises Privacy Hackles

QUOTE: privacy advocates monitoring the [federal cybersecurity] initiative are already raising concerns about what they know and what they don't: the details that have trickled out--including the involvement of the National Security Agency--and the veil of classified information that still covers much of the multibillion-dollar project.

 Forbes
Jul 02, 2009 Cybersecurity Plan to Involve NSA, Telecoms: DHS Officials Debating The Privacy Implications

QUOTE: But the program has provoked debate within DHS, the officials said, because of uncertainty about whether private data can be shielded from unauthorized scrutiny, how much of a role NSA should play and whether the agency's involvement in warrantless wiretapping during George W. Bush's presidency would draw controversy.

 Washington Post
Jun 22, 2009 Iran's Web Spying Aided By Western Technology

QUOTE: The [Iranian Internet] monitoring capability was provided, at least in part, by a joint venture of Siemens AG, the German conglomerate, and Nokia Corp., the Finnish cellphone company, in the second half of 2008, Ben Roome, a spokesman for the joint venture, confirmed.

 Wall Street Journal, The (WSJ)
Jun 13, 2009 Pentagon Cyber Unit Prompts Questions: New Command's Offensive Role Complicates Administration's Global Outreach

QUOTE: a "cyber-command" is prompting questions about its role in the larger national strategy to protect government and private-sector computer networks and whether privacy can be protected. And the command is fueling debate over the proper rules to govern a new kind of warfare in which unannounced adversaries using bits of computer code can launch transnational attacks.

 Washington Post
Jun 12, 2009 Cyberwar: Privacy May Be a Victim in Cyberdefense Plan

QUOTE: President Obama has said that the new cyberdefense strategy he unveiled last month will provide protections for personal privacy and civil liberties. But senior Pentagon and military officials say that Mr. Obama’s assurances may be challenging to guarantee in practice, particularly in trying to monitor the thousands of daily attacks on security systems in the United States that have set off a race to develop better cyberweapons.

 New York Times
Jan 15, 2009 Intelligence Court Rules Wiretapping Program Legal

QUOTE: A federal intelligence court, in a rare public opinion, is expected to issue a major ruling validating the power of the president and Congress to wiretap international phone calls and intercept e-mail messages without a court order, even when Americans’ private communications may be involved, according to a person with knowledge of the opinion.

 New York Times
Oct 10, 2008 Will Senate actually investigate NSA spying on Americans?

QUOTE: The U.S. Senate is investigating allegations by two National Security Agency whistleblowers who have described widespread monitoring of innocuous telephone conversations by the Bush administration's clandestine program.

 CNET
Oct 01, 2008 Surveillance of Skype Messages Found in China

QUOTE: A group of Canadian human-rights activists and computer security researchers has discovered a huge surveillance system in China that monitors and archives certain Internet text conversations that include politically charged words.

 New York Times
Sep 08, 2008 Exclusive: Widespread cell phone location snooping by NSA?

QUOTE: If you thought that the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretapping was limited to AT&T, Verizon and Sprint, think again.

 CNET

111 Articles and Resources. Go to:  [Next 20]   [End]