Remember the Chinese spy balloon—aka the "civilian airship used for research, mainly meteorological, purposes" (according to China)—that in February flew over the United States until the US Air Force shot it down? Apparently the super-secret surveillance device was, um, using an American internet service provider to communicate with its operators in China, according to NBC News who are not naming the company:

From NBC News:

The Biden administration sought a highly secretive court order from the federal Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to collect intelligence about [the balloon] while it was over the U.S.,

Who are the U.S. senator, the state lawmaker and the state judge that the FBI improperly used their surveillance powers against? It's the rubber-stamp FISA court again, which enables warrantless domestic surveillance by targeting foreigners' communications with the U.S. subject.

The FBI's improper use of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was documented in an opinion from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) and is sure to pose challenges for an intelligence community lobbying for the reauthorization for what it sees as one of its most vital tools.

On January 11, the House passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act bill which renews a controversial NSA surveillance program that allows the spy agency to intercept the communications of Americans without a warrant. — Read the rest

The Federal Bureau of Investigations asked for and received a secret court order last summer to eavesdrop on communications between Carter Page, then a campaign adviser to candidate Donald Trump, as part of the FBI's investigation into connections between Team Trump and Russia. — Read the rest

The ACLU and the Yale Law School Media Freedom Clinic have filed a motion demanding the release of 23 judgments from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, a secret, closed courtroom that evaluates surveillance requests from America's spy agencies.

A new federal report shows that the number of surveillance requests skyrocketed in 2015, and that courts approved every single one of them. That's right, not one single wiretap request was rejected during 2015.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) is a secret court that hears warrant requests from America's spy agencies when they want to wiretap people in the USA.

In July 2015, Freedom of the Press Foundation sued the Justice Department (DOJ) over the agency's secret rules governing how the FBI can target members of the media with due process-free National Security Letters, and we have just received documents back in the ongoing lawsuit.

Evan from Fight for the Future writes, "Imprisoned Wikileaks whistleblower Chelsea Manning has written a groundbreaking bill to reform the U.S. government's unpopular mass surveillance programs, starting by abolishing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court."

Congress allowed Section 215 of the Patriot Act to sunset in June, terminating one of the absurd legal justifications for one of the NSA's domestic mass surveillance programs.

When a panel of federal judges from the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the NSA's bulk-phone records spying program was illegal, it was a legal game-changer, but what, exactly, does it all mean?

The National Security Agency is using a new argument for not retaining the data it gathers about users' online activity: The NSA is just too complex. — Read the rest

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has rounded up the five most discredited arguments advanced by apologists for NSA spying, including "The NSA has Stopped 54 Terrorist Attacks with Mass Spying"; Just collecting call detail records isn't a big deal"; "There Have Been No Abuses of Power"; "Invading Privacy is Okay Because It's Done to Prevent Terrorist Attacks"; and "There's Plenty of Oversight From Congress, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, and Agency Watchdogs." — Read the rest

The NSA is supposed to be America's offshore spy agency, forbidden from spying on Americans. But as an important article by the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Nadia Kayyali points out, the FBI, DEA and other US agencies have closely integrated the NSA into their own efforts, using the NSA's mass surveillance to gather intelligence on Americans — as Glenn Greenwald's No Place to Hide discloses, the NSA isn't a stand-alone agency, it is part of an overarching surveillance state.

"United States of Secrets," a new PBS Frontline airing tonight, explores 'the dramatic inside story of the U.S. government's massive and controversial secret surveillance program—and the lengths they went to trying to keep it hidden from the public.'

Part of that story is highlighted on PRI's 'The World' radio show today. — Read the rest

Photographer Trevor Paglen produced a series of images of US spy headquarters so bloggers like us can finally have some new images to top our posts about NSA leaks. The photos appear in newly-launched digital mag The Intercept, the first of a number of digital publications which will be launched by the Omidyar/Greenwald/etc venture First Look Media — and they attempt to answer the question, "What does a surveillance state look like?"

The forthcoming report of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, the arm's-length body established by the Congress to investigate NSA spying, has leaked, with details appearing in The New York Times and The Washington Post.

From its pages, we learn that the board views the NSA's metadata collection program — which was revealed by Edward Snowden — as illegal, without "a viable legal foundation under Section 215, implicates constitutional concerns under the First and Fourth Amendments, raises serious threats to privacy and civil liberties as a policy matter, and has shown only limited value…As a result, the board recommends that the government end the program." — Read the rest

As we wait to hear Obama's plan to reform the NSA, spare a thought for the poor rubberstamping judges of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, who are charged with the solemn duty of granting permission for pretty much every stupid, overreaching surveillance plan America's spooks bring before it in its secretive, unaccountable chambers. — Read the rest

"A panel of presidential advisers who reviewed the National Security Agency's surveillance practices urged President Obama on Wednesday to end the government's systematic collection of logs of all Americans' phone calls, and to keep those in private hands, 'for queries and data mining' only by court order," Charlie Savage and David E. — Read the rest

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has rounded up an interactive, filterable chart of leaked NSA docs, putting all the material leaked through many media sources and over several months into one place. As EFF's staff explain: