Secure Liberties Newsletter
TOP LINE
Just introduced: a bill to stop the government from buying location data, internet activity records, and more from data brokers. The Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act, a new bipartisan bill from dozens of lawmakers, would break the apparently blossoming relationship between intelligence and law enforcement agencies and the likes of Clearview.AI. Relatedly, earlier this year the Defense Intelligence Agency asserted it can buy bulk location data on people in the US.
Last week’s Yemen briefings left critical questions unanswered. U.S. Special Envoy for Yemen, Timothy Lenderking, sat down with HFAC and SFRC subcommittees last Wednesday to discuss the current crisis in Yemen. After backlash from the hearings, where the Special Envoy deflected key questions on U.S. military involvement in the war, the Pentagon finally acknowledged that it still maintains the Royal Saudi Air Force — a crucial component of the Saudi’s offensive campaign. Check out our thread with relevant clips of the HFAC hearing, and a response to the hearing by Reps. Lieu, Khanna, and Malinowski.
The Postal Service is running a ‘covert operations program’ that monitors Americans’ social media posts, per reporting by Jana Winter at Yahoo News — including about protests. Winter describes analysts in the USPS’s law enforcement arm “trawl[ing] through social media sites to look for what the document describes as ‘inflammatory’ postings’” — which are then shared across agencies, via fusion centers.
Another hack: At least a dozen U.S. government agencies have or recently had contracts for the software, according to the Washington Post. “Chinese government hackers are believed to have compromised dozens of US government agencies, defense contractors, financial institutions and other critical sectors” — once again underscoring widespread cybersecurity vulnerabilities.
Signal reverse hacks Cellebrite — after finding major security flaws in the company’s hacking hardware, most famous as a law enforcement go-to for breaking into iPhones and other encrypted devices. The move from Moxie Marlinspike, the founder of Signal, highlights the competing views on how to deal with vulnerabilities: disclose them so they can be patched, or hoard them for exploitation?
ARMS, INTEL, and NDAA
Congress wants more accountability for Saudi Arabia’s human rights abuses. Last Wednesday, the House passed the Protection of Saudi Dissidents Act of 2021 with bi-partisan support. In an effort to go further than Biden’s response to Saudi Arabia after an ODNI report implicated Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, the bill would halt arms sales (though not defensive weapons) to Saudi Arabia for 120 days and up for three years unless the President can certify the regime has ended abuses against dissidents and prisoner. It would also review the possibility of closing Saudi diplomatic offices if they are found to be spying or harassing Saudi dissidents on U.S. soil.
Withdrawal from Afghanistan has begun. On Sunday, U.S. Army General Scott Miller confirmed he has taken initial steps towards meeting President Biden’s September 11th deadline for troop withdrawal from Afghanistan — a move supported by 58% of Americans. The U.S. Embassy in Kabul also announced it was sending home all nonessential staff. Yesterday, Senators questioned Zalmay Khalilzad, special envoy for Afghanistan Reconciliation, on the withdrawal. In no uncertain terms, Khalilzad painted the stakes: either there is a negotiated political settlement, which includes U.S. troop withdrawal, or America’s longest war will continue indefinitely. We recommend this thread by Adam Weinstein of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft for a re-cap of the hearing.
But withdrawing troops doesn’t always mean ending a war, at least in the case of Somalia. U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) leaders say the mission against al-Shabab is still ongoing, despite Trump withdrawing our 700 troops out of the country last year. Per Military Times, “commuting” military personnel still make periodic trips to assist operations in the country, and continue training of Somali security forces via teleconference. Airstrikes and reconnaissance haven’t ended, either.
Colin Kahl was confirmed by the Senate for Undersecretary of Defense for Policy position after a contentious nomination process. The hearings earlier in March quickly became a proxy fight between Democratic and Republican Senators over whether or not to rejoin the JCPOA (the Iran Deal). The vote was expected to be broken by Vice President Harris, but due to absences, he was confirmed by a party line vote of 49-45.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee wants to turn up the heat with China. Last Wednesday the committee voted nearly unanimously to forward the 280-page Strategic Competition Act of 2021. The massive bill, among many other things, pushes more than a billion dollars of military investment in the Indo-Pacific, levies sanctions against the Chinese government and businesses, and creates a $300 million “Countering Chinese Communist Party Influence” fund, part of which will go to unnamed civil society and independent media entities.
A new human rights report calls on the ICC to investigate US crimes against humanity for police killings of African Americans. The 188-page report authored by human rights experts from 11 countries found that extrajudicial killings and disproportionate brutality by US security forces against Black communities in the United States violate international law and in some cases rise to the level of crimes against humanity. Along with recommending an International Criminal Court inquiry, with an eye towards prosecutions, the report also details recommendations for U.S. justice system reform.
SURVEILLANCE
DEA conducted “covert surveillance” of racial justice protesters in Philadelphia, Chicago, Albuquerque, per emails obtained by CREW. Apparently the DEA infiltrated protests, and conducted social media and aerial surveillance, on the other side of a memo reported on by BuzzFeed News last year.
Also: US Marshalls used drones to spy on BLM protests in DC, per The Intercept via FOIA. The entity that conducted the flights was redacted.
175 million dormant Pentagon IP addresses went online as Trump left office, in a mysterious turn of events revolving around “Global Resource Systems,” a company that’s less than a year old but is now apparently managing the addresses. “They are now announcing more address space than anything ever in the history of the Internet,” Kentik’s director of Internet analysis told WaPo.
DOJ pushing vulnerability patches and removal of web shells, which give hackers a foothold for further access. WaPo’s Cybersecurity 202 tracked the DOJ’s actions, describing it as evidence that intelligence agencies are “increasingly turning to the legal system to parry tools used by hackers.”
The Biden administration is also looking to expand information-sharing between the private sector and government, which multiple officials have identified during recent hearings. The details matter on this, though — this has often been a trojan horse for broader surveillance. It will be interesting to see how much the administration prioritizes defense (like the vulnerability patches above) vs. domestic surveillance, which by its nature leans toward after-the-fact analysis than prevention.
ACLU and Ted Olson ask SCOTUS to consider release of more secret FISA Court opinions. Olson is one of the most notable parts of this story, as he oversaw significant expansions of domestic surveillance by intelligence agencies as head of the Office of Legal Counsel under President Reagan and as solicitor general for George W. Bush’s administration. The court highlights a failing in the USA Freedom Act, which required publication of significant FISC opinions — but which the government has limited to only those issued on or after 2015.
RELEVANT, TOO
President Biden Announces His Intent to Nominate 11 Key Administration Leaders on National Security and Law Enforcement
Supreme Court to Rule on Whether C.I.A. Black Sites Are State Secrets
How Afghanistan’s President Helped His Brother Secure Lucrative Mining Deals with a U.S. Contractor
BOTTOM LINE
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