Obama Scales Back NSA Eavesdropping Program

President Barack Obama today banned U.S. eavesdropping on the leaders of close friends and allies and began reining in the vast collection of Americans' phone data in a series of reforms triggered by Edward Snowden's revelations. (Reuters, 17 January)

“The reforms I'm proposing today should give the American people greater confidence that their rights are being protected, even as our intelligence and law enforcement agencies maintain the tools they need to keep us safe," Obama said.

“The leaders of our close friends and allies deserve to know that if I want to learn what they think about an issue, I will pick up the phone and call them, rather than turning to surveillance,” Obama added. (Reuters, 17 January)

One of the biggest changes will be an overhaul of the government's handling of bulk telephone “metadata.” Obama said the program will be ended as it currently exists. In a nod to privacy advocates, the government will not hold the bulk telephone metadata.

In addition, Obama said the U.S. the government will need a judicial review before the database, which lists millions of telephone calls, can be queried.

File photo: Reuters

NSA: ‘Communications Fingerprinting’ of Iran's Leader

The New York Times on Sunday published new details on NSA documents obtained by Edward Snowden. The agency seems to be listening everywhere in the world! Following is an example of an NSA document on Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s 2009 visit to Kurdistan, as reported by the Times:

“In May 2009, analysts at the agency learned that Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was to make a rare trip to Kurdistan Province in the country’s mountainous northwest. The agency immediately organized a high-tech espionage mission, part of a continuing project focused on Ayatollah Khamenei called Operation Dreadnought.

Working closely with the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which handles satellite photography, as well as G.C.H.Q., the N.S.A. team studied the Iranian leader’s entourage, its vehicles and its weaponry from satellites, and intercepted air traffic messages as planes and helicopters took off and landed.

They heard Ayatollah Khamenei’s aides fretting about finding a crane to load an ambulance and fire truck onto trucks for the journey. They listened as he addressed a crowd, segregated by gender, in a soccer field.

They studied Iranian air defense radar stations and recorded the travelers’ rich communications trail, including Iranian satellite coordinates collected by an N.S.A. program called Ghosthunter. The point was not so much to catch the Iranian leader’s words, but to gather the data for blanket eavesdropping on Iran in the event of a crisis.

This 'communications fingerprinting,' as a document called it, is the key to what the N.S.A. does. It allows the agency’s computers to scan the stream of international communications and pluck out messages tied to the supreme leader. In a crisis — say, a showdown over Iran’s nuclear program — the ability to tap into the communications of leaders, generals and scientists might give a crucial advantage.”

Source: The New York Times, 3 November 2013

File photo: NSA Campus at Ft. Meade, MD: Windows to the World! (Patrick Semansky/Associated Press/NYT)