by Kara Brandeisky ProPublica, July 25, 2013, 4:39 p.m. Although the House defeated a measure that would have defunded the bulk phone metadata collection program, the narrow 205-217 vote showed that there is significant support in Congress to reform NSA surveillance programs. Here are six other legislative proposals on the table. 1) Raise the standard…
Category: Govt
Is the Department of Homeland Security following you on Twitter?
Joe Cadillic sends along this information from Public Intelligence, who compiled a 5-page list of Twitter accounts followed by the Dept. of Homeland Security National Operations Center (@DHSNOCMMC1). They note that “in accordance with DHS Privacy direction, DHS NOC MMC follows only authorized accounts and never follows accounts of private individuals.” You can download the…
NSA Says It Can’t Search Its Own Emails
By Justin Elliott ProPublica, July 23, 2013, 12:39 p.m. The NSA is a “supercomputing powerhouse” with machines so powerful their speed is measured in thousands of trillions of operations per second. The agency turns its giant machine brains to the task of sifting through unimaginably large troves of data its surveillance programs capture. But ask…
Congress Votes on an Amendment to Defund Domestic Spying: Here’s How You Can Help
From EFF: The House is gearing up for a vote on the Defense Appropriations Bill (basically, the budget for the Department of Defense) and a bipartisan coalition of Representatives will be introducing a novel amendmentthat attempts to strike at funding for one type of particularly egregious surveillance power of the NSA. EFF thinks this amendment is an important…