Privacy & New Media

President Trump has signed the CLOUD Act, requiring internet companies to hand over personal data to U.S. law enforcement agencies, no matter where that data is stored. The Act also allows the executive branch to create agreements with foreign countries to provide direct access to personal data stored in the United States. EPIC submitted an amicus brief in United States v. Microsoft arguing that law enforcement access to data abroad should be resolved by international consensus and comply with human rights norms. Many organizations and privacy experts have endorsed the Madrid Privacy Declaration, which would establish international protections for personal data.

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The Department of Homeland Security has released the 2016 Annual Data Mining Report. The report describes several of the agency’s profiling systems that assign secret “risk assessments” to U.S. citizens. According to the DHS report, the Analytical Framework for Intelligence is accessible to several agency components, including the Citizenship and Immigration Services, the Coast Guard, and the Transportation Security Administration. Through a Freedom of information Act lawsuit, EPIC previously obtained important documents about the secretive scoring program. EPIC is now appealing EPIC v. DHS to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to compel the release of additional documents.

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Donald Trump has nominated Adam Klein to head the Privacy & Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB). Klein, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, recently testified that Congress should not require agencies to obtain a court order to query data collected under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, facilitating warrantless surveillance. As Judge Patricia Wald recently stated in remarks at the EPIC Champions of Freedom Dinner, “an agency dedicated to protecting privacy and civil liberties inside the intelligence community with access to classified material is a uniquely valuable asset in the ever difficult search for the right balance between national security and democratic values.” EPIC recently urged the Senate Judiciary Committee to restore PCLOB to full strength.

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WikiLeaks: CIA Has Targeted Everyday Gadgets for Snooping

3/8/2017

Anick Jesdanun

US News

    WikiLeaks has revealed yet another set of CIA-centered documents revealing that the agency uses technology like smart TVs to monitor Americans’ everyday goings-on, weeding through personal conversations held in citizens’ homes. The site has yet to release specifics of the “hacks,” citing a desire to wait “‘until a consensus emerges’ on the nature of the CIA’s program and now the methods should be ‘analyzed, disarmed and published.’” These documents, if released in full, could contain detailed information for anyone who reads them to have the same access the CIA has.

    WikiLeaks itself claims that the CIA’s access to the data available from phones and TVs relies heavily on security vulnerabilities within the software of these devices, which they have yet to disclose to the developers of said technology. These vulnerabilities, obviously, are accessible to anyone who finds them, potentially leaking this same information to malicious entities as well.

    Yet more worrying is that WikiLeaks claims that the CIA has found ways to abuse these vulnerabilities to intercept data before encryption or after decryption, leaving even supposedly protected information passed through apps like WhatsApp in fact vulnerable. Additionally, WikiLeaks claims that the CIA makes use of virus-like secretive applications that target Windows PCs.

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The Washington Post

 Craig Timberg, Elizabeth Dwoskin and Ellen Nakashima

March 7

The latest revelations about the U.S. government’s powerful hacking tools potentially takes surveillance right into the homes and hip pockets of billions of users worldwide, showing how a remarkable variety of everyday devices can be turned to spy on their owners.

Televisions, smartphones and even anti-virus software are all vulnerable to CIA hacking, according to the WikiLeaks documents released Tuesday. The capabilities described include recording the sounds, images and the private text messages of users, even when they resort to encrypted apps to communicate.

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Ars Technica

While American Spies was written prior to Donald Trump winning the 2016 presidential election, it has become vital and relevant under the new Republican administration.

Jennifer Stisa Granick is one of the premiere legal minds currently trying to grok the intersection between surveillance, privacy, and public policy. She serves as the Director of Civil Liberties at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society. Before that, she worked at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

In her book, Granick presents an expansive overview of the national-security legal landscape. However, despite being geared largely toward attorneys and academics, American Spies can be easily understood by anyone with even a passing familiarity with touchstone concepts that have graced the pages of Ars Technica in recent years, including Edward Snowden, Section 702, and Executive Order 12333.

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