The U.S. Senate today passed a bill that will renew the National Security Agency's warrantless internet surveillance program for six years with no substantive changes. It's bad news, say privacy and security advocates, but not a surprise. — Read the rest

One year

NSA reveals that it illegally gathered thousands of phone records, to the appalled astonishment of FISA court judge: As the Snowden leaks about NSA surveillance continue to trickle out, it's easy to miss the fact that the NSA is now releasing hundreds of pages of damning documents about its activities. — 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

As the Snowden leaks about NSA surveillance continue to trickle out, it's easy to miss the fact that the NSA is now releasing hundreds of pages of damning documents about its activities. They're not doing it voluntarily: the Snowden leaks allowed the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the ACLU to wave away a decade's worth of administrative stalling and secure a major court victory that triggered the releases. — Read the rest

The National Security Agency unlawfully gathered tens of thousands of e-mails and other digital communications between Americans for years, as part of a now-revised collection method, according to a 2011 secret court opinion declassified this week. [The Washington Post]

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has won a huge victory in its ongoing battle to turn over the rock of secret surveillance in the USA. A federal court has ordered the government to publish a 2011 opinion from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in which the court held that the NSA's surveillance was unconstitutional and not in "the spirit of" federal law. — Read the rest

Rush Holt (D-NJ) has introduced a bill called the "Surveillance State Repeal Act" that repeals the PATRIOT Act and much of FISA (though it leaves some pretty terrible parts of FISA intact). It's only 8 pages long, but it has the potential to do a lot of good.

Brett Dobbs says: "I found this the most useful guide to explain what has gone on with FISA. With flowcharts!"

1. It Eliminates the requirement that there be probable cause that a foreign target is a suspect of any kind – terrorist, criminal, ore "foreign agent."

If anyone expects President Obama to roll back Bush's illegally-gained dictator powers, they are smoking rope. From Salon's Glenn Greenwald.

It is absolutely false that the only unconstitutional and destructive provision of this "compromise" bill is the telecom amnesty part. It's true that most people working to defeat the Cheney/Rockefeller bill viewed opposition to telecom amnesty as the most politically potent way to defeat the bill, but the bill's expansion of warrantless eavesdropping powers vested in the President, and its evisceration of safeguards against abuses of those powers, is at least as long-lasting and destructive as the telecom amnesty provisions.

Snip from Washington Post story:

A federal judge has resigned from the court that oversees government surveillance in intelligence cases in protest of President Bush's secret authorization of a domestic spying program, according to two sources.

U.S. District Judge James Robertson, one of 11 members of the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, sent a letter to Chief Justice John G.

After a long week of bitter infighting among House Republicans — with the rabid Marjorie Taylor Greene nipping at Speaker Mike Johnson's heels — Johnson flew to Mar-a-Lago today to hide behind Donald Trump.

And amusingly, after the speaker and Trump met in private, Trump played the part of peacemaker. — Read the rest

Marjorie Taylor Greene blew up today after news that Kevin McCarthy is resigning, and she took her anger out on none other than the former ousted speaker's archnemesis, Speaker Mike Johnson.

"Speaker Johnson worked with Chuck Schumer to cut a deal that removes all abortion and trans surgery prohibitions we passed under Speaker McCarthy," she said on video in a Xitter post, referring to the proposed bipartisan National Defense Authorization Act [NDAA] that was made without her consent. — Read the rest

FBI Director Christopher Wray went to Capitol Hill today, warning Congress members of the "devastating" consequences should they fail to reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), a warrantless surveillance program it has habitually abused to spy on Americans. — Read the rest

HP wants you to print things through its cloud service, wherein you pay a subscription fee for ink and your usage is routed through its servers. To encourage you to do this, it covers the USB port on one model with a sticker with a No Smoking-style "No USB" logo on it–lest you simply plug in your printer and start printing things with it before you've endured the hard sell via network setup. — Read the rest

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.

The Santa Clara County Superior Court judge presiding over a wrongful death lawsuit against Tesla relating to its "Full Self Driving" marketing and very public statements by Tesla's CEO Elon Musk. Musk has used his wealth to thrust himself into the public eye and enjoys making wild statements that many accept as accurate without any facts or logic check. — Read the rest

This summer, I got invited to emcee a wedding reception in Italy for an old friend from art school and his fiancee. I was honored to be part of their union and especially stoked for the chance to get some weird vinyl. — Read the rest

If it's the end of the world, why not spend it with BMP Collective's Catastrophe Girl?

Singer/songwriter Danny Baker serves up five great new tunes! Gotta love the 60's power pop throwback with a dash of 70's Elvis Costello cheesy Farfisa organ. — Read the rest

The r/coolguides page on Reddit has lots of fun and useful stuff to browse through from guides on wilderness survival to vintage instructions about talking on the telephone. I hope I never actually need to refer to the one about "how to make seawater drinkable", but I do think it's a good skill to know, just in case I find myself stuck in a rubber boat with Tallulah Bankhead and William Bendix. — Read the rest

From The Guardian, where the Snowden revelations were originally published in 2013:

Seven years after the former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden blew the whistle on the mass surveillance of Americans' telephone records, an appeals court has found the program was unlawful – and that the US intelligence leaders who publicly defended it were not telling the truth.