NSA's use of 'traffic shaping' allows unrestrained spying on Americans

["Dave Farber" <dave () farber net>]

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>
Date: Sun, Jul 2, 2017 at 1:37 AM
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] NSA's use of 'traffic shaping' allows unrestrained
spying on Americans
To: Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net <dewayne-net () warpspeed com>


[Note:  This item comes from friend David Rosenthal.  DLH]

NSA's use of 'traffic shaping' allows unrestrained spying on Americans
By using a "traffic shaping" technique, the National Security Agency
sidestepped legal restrictions imposed by lawmakers and the surveillance
courts.
By Zack Whittaker
Jun 22 2017
<
http://www.zdnet.com/article/legal-loopholes-unrestrained-nsa-surveillance-on-americans/
>

A new analysis of documents leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden details
a highly classified technique that allows the National Security Agency to
"deliberately divert" US internet traffic, normally safeguarded by
constitutional protections, overseas in order to conduct unrestrained data
collection on Americans.

According to the new analysis, the NSA has clandestine means of "diverting
portions of the river of internet traffic that travels on global
communications cables," which allows it to bypass protections put into
place by Congress to prevent domestic surveillance on Americans.

The new findings, published Thursday, follows a 2014 paper by researchers
Axel Arnbak and Sharon Goldberg, published on sister-site CBS News, which
theorized that the NSA, whose job it is to produce intelligence from
overseas targets, was using a "traffic shaping" technique to route US
internet data overseas so that it could be incidentally collected under the
authority of a largely unknown executive order.

US citizens are afforded constitutional protections against surveillance or
searches of their personal data. Any time the government wants to access an
American's data, they must follow the rules of the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance (FISA) Court, a Washington DC-based court that authorizes the
government's surveillance programs.

But if that same data is collected outside the US, the bulk of the NSA's
authority stems from a presidential decree dating back more than three
decades.

The so-called Executive Order 12333, signed into law by President Ronald
Reagan in 1981, went on to become the bulk of the NSA's authority,
expanding the agency's collection capabilities to both foreign and domestic
targets. The order is far more permissive than the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act, as enacted by Congress, as it falls solely under the
watch of the executive branch and is not reviewed by the courts.

A former NSA executive turned whistleblower Bill Binney once described the
executive order as a "blank check" for the intelligence agencies to conduct
surveillance when other laws fail or don't reach far enough.

Although the new research notes that the agency's ability to carry out the
traffic shaping technique is unknown due to the highly classified nature of
any surveillance program, the NSA can use its legal powers to "sidestep
legal restrictions imposed by Congress and the surveillance courts," said
Goldberg, who authored the report.

The government's use of traffic shaping exploits a fundamental principle
about internet traffic: Data takes the quickest and most efficient route,
which sometimes means bouncing from different countries around the globe,
rather than staying within a country's borders.

[snip]

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