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NSA Whistleblower: Wiretaps Were Combined with Credit Card Records of U.S. Citizens

By Kim Zetter January 23, 2009 | 7:00:00 AMCategories: NSA, Surveillance

NSA whistleblower Russell Tice was back on Keith Olbermann’s MSNBC program Thursday evening to expand on his Wednesday revelations that the National Security Agency spied on individual U.S. journalists, entire U.S. news agencies as well as “tens of thousands” of other Americans.

Tice said on Wednesday that the NSA had vacuumed in all domestic communications of Americans, including, faxes, phone calls and network traffic.

Today Tice said that the spy agency also combined information from phone wiretaps with data that was mined from credit card and other financial records. He said information of tens of thousands of U.S. citizens is now in digital databases warehoused at the NSA.

“This [information] could sit there for ten years and then potentially it marries up with something else and ten years from now they get put on a no-fly list and they, of course, won’t have a clue why,” Tice said.

In most cases, the person would have no discernible link to terrorist organizations that would justify the initial data mining or their inclusion in the database.

“This is garnered from algorithms that have been put together to try to just dream-up scenarios that might be information that is associated with how a terrorist could operate,” Tice said. “And once that information gets to the NSA, and they start to put it through the filters there . . . and they start looking for word-recognition, if someone just talked about the daily news and mentioned something about the Middle East they could easily be brought to the forefront of having that little flag put by their name that says ‘potential terrorist’.”

The revelation that the NSA was involved in data mining isn’t new. The infamous 2004 hospital showdown between then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales and Deputy Attorney General James Comey over the legality of a government surveillance program involved the data mining of massive databases, according to a 2007 New York Times article.

But there was always a slight possibility, despite the suspicions of many critics, that the NSA’s data mining involved only people who were legitimately suspected of connections to terrorists overseas, as the Bush Administration staunchly maintained about its domestic phone wiretapping program.

“There’s no spying on Americans,” former Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell insisted to the New Yorker last year.

But Tice’s assertions this week contradict these claims.

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Is Your Family Ready For An Emergency or Natural Disaster? | Geekdad from Wired.com.

January 23, 2009 (Computerworld) How do you let people create user accounts or post comments on your Web site without letting spam bots in? Simple — make your users prove they’re human. Many Web sites use CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart) technology to try to tell the bots from the people.

CAPTCHA’s idea is simple enough. It presents users with an image showing an obfuscated string of letters that they must type in to get an e-mail or social networking account, for instance, or to enter a comment on an online forum. The theory is that only humans can decipher the letters hidden in the image and type in the correct code, and for a time it was an effective tool to keep the bots out.

A basic CAPTCHA

But while no one has yet come up with a computer that can fool people into thinking it’s another person, computers are great at fooling other computers. These days, malware makers and spammers regularly trick the CAPTCHA systems at big-name Web sites such as Yahoo Mail, Gmail and Craigslist, and use these sites to automate their attacks.

So what can we do? Can CAPTCHA be saved?

The rise and fall of CAPTCHA

CAPTCHA was created in 2000 by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, and by 2007, the technology was being used almost everywhere on the Web. For example, if you try to leave a comment on this story, you’ll need to jump through a CAPTCHA hoop before you can leave a message.

Unfortunately, beginning in early 2008, crackers started getting the better of the CAPTCHA systems. In short order, Yahoo Mail’s, Gmail’s and Hotmail’s CAPTCHA defenses were cracked.

Building a better spam-blocking CAPTCHA.

WASHINGTON — There is one addiction President Obama will not have to kick: his BlackBerry.

For more than two months, Mr. Obama has been waging a vigorous battle with his handlers to keep his BlackBerry, which like millions of other Americans he has relied upon for years to stay connected with friends and advisers. (And, of course, to get Chicago White Sox scores.)

He won the fight, aides disclosed Thursday, but the privilege of becoming the nation’s first e-mailing president comes with a specific set of rules.

“The president has a BlackBerry through a compromise that allows him to stay in touch with senior staff and a small group of personal friends,” said Robert Gibbs, his spokesman, “in a way that use will be limited and that the security is enhanced to ensure his ability to communicate.”

First, only a select circle of people will have his address, creating a true hierarchy for who makes the cut and who does not.

Second, anyone placed on the A-list to receive his e-mail address must first receive a briefing from the White House counsel’s office.

Third, messages from the president will be designed so they cannot be forwarded.

The battle over whether the president could keep his BlackBerry has been fueled to a large degree by Mr. Obama himself, who mentioned it again and again. He would not take no for an answer. In an interview this month, he worried aloud, “They’re going to pry it out of my hands.”

Mr. Obama received his BlackBerry on Tuesday, but officials declined to specify what kind. In a conversation with reporters on Thursday evening, he said, “I don’t think it’s actually up and running yet.”

Obama Keeps His Blackberry in a Hard-Fought E-Victory – NYTimes.com.