FBI and NSA requests never denied by secret court

Can you say ‘rubber stamp?’ FBI and NSA requests never denied by secret court

Bruce Brown Digital Trends April 30, 2016

You likely don’t know much about the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Though it keeps a low profile, this is the court the Federal Bureau of Investigation and National Security Agency go to when they want permission to put someone under surveillance. And they don’t get turned down, according to Reuters, citing a Justice Department memo. In 2015 the court received and approved 1,457 requests from the FBI and NSA. There were a bit fewer requests in 2014, but all of those were approved as well.

The surveillance requests are for email or telephone intercepts. If granted, which is apparently always, they generally are carried out with the assistance of Internet telecommunications service providers.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court was founded in 1978 to hear requests by law enforcement and intelligence agencies to conduct surveillance on foreign suspects present in the U.S. It stands to reason that if you’re spying on spies, it’s better not to ask for permission in open court and leave a public paper trail.

The secretive court was set up to scrutinize the requests in secret, in order to ensure compliance with applicable civil rights requirements. That all makes sense. That every single request is essentially approved, however, seems at least curious if not a bit off. The government response about its perfect record of approvals is that the FBI and NSA are very careful when applying for surveillance and that the court at times modifies the requests. In 2014, 19 requests were modified, in 2015, 80 were altered.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court hears more than surveillance requests. The FBI can also file National Security Letters (NSLs), asking Internet and telecommunications providers for customer information on foreign residents and U.S. citizens. Some NSLs ask for subscriber names, addresses, and billing information only, while others also request browsing history. The majority of information requests also come with a gag order, prohibiting the companies from informing customers of the requests. No information was provided showing the number of NSLs that were approved or denied.


https://www.yahoo.com/news/rubber-stamp-fbi-nsa-requests-005331279.html?ref=gs

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Report: World’s 1st remote brain surgery via 5G network performed in China

World’s 1st remote brain surgery via 5G network performed in China Published time: 17 Mar, 2019 13:12 ·           A Chinese surgeon has performed the world’s first remote brain surgery using 5G technology, with the patient 3,000km away from the operating doctor. Dr. Ling Zhipei remotely implanted a neurostimulator into his patient’s brain on Saturday, Chinese state-run media  reports . The surgeon manipulated the instruments in the Beijing-based PLAGH hospital from a clinic subsidiary on the southern Hainan island, located 3,000km away. The surgery is said to have lasted three hours and ended successfully. The patient, suffering from Parkinson’s disease, is said to be feeling well after the pioneering operation. The doctor used a computer connected to the next-generation 5G network developed by Chinese tech giant Huawei. The new device enabled a near real-time connection, according to Dr. Ling.  “You barely feel that the patient is 3,000 kilometers away,”  he said.
Read more

Visualizing The Power Of The World's Supercomputers

Visualizing The Power Of The World's Supercomputers   BY TYLER DURDEN FRIDAY, JAN 21, 2022 - 04:15 AM   A supercomputer is a machine that is built to handle billions, if not trillions of calculations at once. Each supercomputer is actually made up of many individual computers (known as nodes) that work together in parallel. A common metric for measuring the performance of these machines is  flops , or  floating point operations per second . In this visualization,  Visual Capitalist's Marcus Lu uses  November 2021 data from  TOP500  to visualize the computing power of the world’s top five supercomputers. For added context, a number of modern consumer devices were included in the comparison. Ranking by Teraflops Because supercomputers can achieve over one quadrillion flops, and consumer devices are much less powerful, we’ve used  teraflops  as our comparison metric. 1 teraflop = 1,000,000,000,000 (1 trillion) flops. Supercomputer Fugaku  was completed in March 202
Read more

BMW traps alleged thief by remotely locking him in car

BMW traps alleged thief by remotely locking him in car Stealer's Wheel? Seattle police department quotes "Watchmen" movie in a recap of the recent arrest. Tech Culture by Gael Fashingbauer Cooper December 4, 2016 5:00 PM PST It's maybe the most satisfying arrest we can imagine. Seattle police caught an alleged car thief by enlisting the help of car maker BMW to both track and then remotely lock the luckless criminal in the very car he was trying to steal. Jonah Spangenthal-Lee, deputy director of communications for the Seattle Police Department, posted a witty summary of the event on the SPD's blog on Wednesday. Turns out if you're inside a stolen car, it's perhaps not the best time to take a nap. "A car thief awoke from a sound slumber Sunday morning (Nov. 27) to find he had been remotely locked inside a stolen BMW, just as Seattle police officers were bearing down on him," Spangenthal-Lee wrote. The suspect found a ke
Read more