Reuters / Michael Caronna

 Soon the FBI will be done building a database containing the photographs, fingerprints and other biometric data for millions of Americans, but the agency has been far from forthcoming with the details. A new lawsuit filed this week aims to change that.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit digital rights group based out of California, sued the United States Department of Justice this week for failing to comply with multiple Freedom of Information Act requests filed last year by the EFF.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation received no fewer than three FOIA requests from the EFF last year for details about its state-of-the-art Next Generation Identification program, or NGI, a system that will store personally-identifiable data for millions of Americans and foreign nationals to act as what the FBI has called a "bigger, faster and better" version of what law enforcement already uses. But while the bureau has indeed already been using fingerprint information to track down potential terrorists and troublemakers for years, the EFF’s main concern revolves around what sort of space-age face recognition abilities NGI will be able to employ.

The FBI previously acknowledged that NGI will “house multimodal biometrics records like palm prints and iris scans” in one master system, as well as facial imaging information and intelligence about scars, marks and tattoos. Eventually, the agency said, it hopes to incorporate technology to track down people using only their voice. For now, though, the EFF is interested in what the facial recognition infrastructure will be able to do, and is demanding the FBI fesses up.

“NGI will change almost everything about how the FBI treats photograph submissions,” the complaint filed this week reads. Citing government documents, the EFF says that the system will allow “the increased capacity to retain photographic images, additional opportunities for agencies to submit photographic images and additional search capabilities, including automated searches.”

“The proposed new system would also allow law enforcement ‘to collect and retain other images (such as those obtained from crime scene security cameras’ and from family and friends) and would allow submission of ‘civil photographs along with civil fingerprint submissions that were collected for noncriminal purposes,’” the EFF continues.

When all is said and done, the FBI will be able to use NGI to scan millions of entries in a single database to find someone based off of a single photograph, and the EFF fears that could send things down a slippery slope.

“Governmental use of face recognition — and the potential for misuse — raises many privacy concerns,” the EFF says in the lawsuit.

AFP Photo / Mandel Ngan

 Using statements already made by the FBI about the program, the EFF presents an argument about why they should be worried that’s hard to counter.

“The FBI has also stated in a public presentation given at a national biometrics conference that it wants to use its facial recognition system to 'identify unknown persons of interest from images' and 'identify subjects in public datasets,'” the complaint continues. “In the same presentation, the FBI included a graphic image that implied the Bureau wanted to use facial recognition to be able to track people from one political rally to another.”

Another digital watchdog group, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, previously alleged that NGI system could be integrated with other surveillance technology in order to enable “real-time image-matching of live feeds from CCTV surveillance cameras.”

Obtaining information about how the FBI will manage and operate this information has been a priority for the EFF for over a year now, and the failure to comply with those FOIA requests has finally prompted the organization to ask a court to intervene.

"NGI will result in a massive expansion of government data collection for both criminal and noncriminal purposes," EFF Staff Attorney Jennifer Lynch said in a statement this week. "Biometrics programs present critical threats to civil liberties and privacy. Face-recognition technology is among the most alarming new developments, because Americans cannot easily take precautions against the covert, remote and mass capture of their images."

The EFF is asking the court to enforce the FOIA requests sent last June and July, which could compel the FBI to disclose information about the face-recognition program and any plans to merge civilian and criminal records in a single database. They are also asking for the total number of face-recognition capable records currently in the database and an assessment of what number the agency expects to have when it rolls out the program in 2014.

"Before the federal government decides to expand its surveillance powers, there needs to be a public debate," Lynch said. "But there can be no public debate until the details of the program are presented to the public."

In a July 18, 2012 assessment, the FBI reported that the program was “on scope, on schedule, on cost and 60 percent deployed.” The program is being put together by contractors Lockheed Martin, who are expected to rake in $1 billion from the government by the time the NGI system is finally up and running.

The FBI previously admitted that they found 7,380 records that were "potentially responsive” to one of the EFF’s request, but has yet to deliver actual information pursuant to any of the three FOIA submissions filed, prompting the nonprofit to allege the FBI is “dragging its feet."

"FBI has not explained to the public how NGI or IAFIS's system design would ensure that civil submissions are not 'tainted' by criminal submissions or explained why it is necessary to combine the two types of data," the EFF wrote in the complaint.

US Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey (AFP Photo / Mark Wilson)

President Barack Obama announced Friday afternoon that he’s selected James Comey to head the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Comey, 52, worked as the deputy attorney general for the United States under President George W. Bush and will replace outgoing FBI Director Robert Mueller when he steps down later this year after he is confirmed by the Senate. 

 All three men were on hand at the White House Friday afternoon when President Obama formally made his pick after weeks of speculation suggested Comey would be the likely nominee. Comey, said Obama, embodies the “core principals of fidelity, bravery and integrity” expected of FBI agents and applauded “his fierce independence and his deep integrity.” In fact, that independence is the focus of perhaps the most widely reported instance from the Bush White House involving Comey. While serving as deputy attorney general in the Department of Justice, Comey rejected the administration’s warrantless wiretapping program that has recently reemerged as the center of controversy.

 “In a confrontation he has called the most difficult night of his career, [Comey] rushed to the hospital bedside of his boss, John Ashcroft, in 2004 to stop two senior Bush White House aides from getting the ailing attorney general's approval to reauthorize a post-9/11 program that allowed government wiretaps to be used without warrants,” the Associated Press recalled this week. Comey’s insistence in keeping the program off the books was made notwithstanding an earlier decision to favor the surveillance program, though. Glenn Greenwald reported for The Guardian last month that Comey “approved a legal memorandum in 2004 endorsing radical executive power theories and warped statutory interpretations, concluding that the Bush NSA warrantless eavesdropping program was legal, thus making it more difficult to prosecute the Bush officials who ordered it.”

 The internal conflict within the administration that erupted years later over that program almost led to Comey, Ashcroft and Mueller offering their resignation, apparently. As Greenwald noted, though, the then-deputy attorney general declined to follow up on his threat after slight adjustments were made to the NSA spy program.

 “But the reason they didn't end up resigning ,” he wrote, “was because Bush officials ‘modified’ that NSA program into something those lawyers could and did endorse: the still-illegal, still-radical NSA eavesdropping program that spied on the communications of Americans without warrants and in violation of the law.”

Those practices have come under question in recent weeks after Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old former intelligence contractor, leaked documents showing the size and scope of the surveillance programs. Mr. Mueller said those disclosures caused "significant harm'' to the nation’s security and that the admitted leaker is the "subject of an ongoing criminal investigation.'' 

"One of the great vulnerabilities terrorists understand is their communications,'' Mueller told the House Judiciary Committee last week. "If we lose our ability get their communications, we are going to be exceptionally vulnerable.'' 

 After being picked by Pres. Obama to replace Mueller on Friday, Comey said, “I don’t know whether I can fill those shoes.” Mueller was FBI chief for 12 years, making him the second-longest serving official to ever head the bureau.

A laboratory technician uses a Geiger counter.(Reuters / Issei Kato)

An FBI investigation has uncovered a plot by a New York state engineer with ties to the Ku Klux Klan to construct a radiation particle weapon, with the intention to sell the device to either a southern branch of the KKK or Jewish groups. Federal investigators first began to investigate Glendon Scott Crawford, 49, when he allegedly approached an Albany-area synagogue and “asked to speak with a person who might be willing to help him with a type of technology that could be used by Israel to defeat its enemies, specifically, by killing Israel's enemies while they slept."

US President Barack Obama (AFP Photo / Bertrand Langlois)

Despite reports indicating the opposite US President Barack Obama has continued to perpetrate the vague assertion that the controversial NSA surveillance programs, primarily PRISM, are responsible for stopping a major terrorist attack in New York City. American officials have maintained that the National Security Agency has been “transparent” in its explanation of mass surveillance policies that are quietly reviewed and approved by a secret court after secret requests from law enforcement agencies. President Obama, during an interview on PBS Monday night, claimed that Americans are “not getting the complete story” after a leak from former NSA employee exposed the widespread domestic monitoring. Before an agency begins leafing through an individual’s phone records or Internet history, according to US officials, they are required to take the case before a court created by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). These FISA courts, while meeting in secret and keeping the number of disclosures classified, have denied only ten out of more than 20,000 requests put in since September 11, 2001. When asked if the FISA courts are effectively a rubber stamp for law enforcement and the federal government, Obama said “the number of requests is surprisingly small” and “folks don’t go with a query unless they’ve got a pretty good suspicion” that he intended target is involved in illegal activity. Obama bemoaned media’s assertion that he had fallen from his liberal hero status to that of a kind of next Dick Cheney, the notoriously secretive vice president under George W. Bush, who pushed for greater federal power without the burden of public transparency. Of the NSA electronic domestic spying program, Obama said, “it is transparent” in an interview with Charlie Rose of PBS. “That’s why we set up the FISA court…The whole point of my concern, before I was president – because some people say, ‘Well Obama was this raving liberal before. Now he’s Dick Cheney.’” “My concern has always been not that we shouldn’t do intelligence gathering to prevent terrorism, but rather are we setting up a system of checks and balances? So, on this telephone program, you’ve got a federal court with independent federal judges overseeing the entire program. And you’ve got Congress overseeing the program, not just the intelligence committee and not just the judiciary committee – but all of Congress had available to it before the last reauthorization [of the 2001 Patriot Act, which expanded the powers of the FISA court] exactly how this program works.” Obama also echoed the claims of government officials who asserted that they had foiled dozens of terrorist plots through information gathered via the various surveillance programs. The president that implied Najibullah Zazi, who was arrested before he could detonate a bomb in the New York City subway, was caught as a result of warrantless surveillance. The explanation was repeated by Senators Dianne Feinstein and Mike Rogers and part of a national intelligence declassification meant to shift public opinion on the NSA’s PRISM program. While it may be a convenient story, though, lawmakers frequently forget to mention that the email that led to Zazi’s capture and eventual prosecution could have been captured without PRISM, as the NSA program is known. 

Under the law at the time the FBI had the authority to monitor the email accounts of people linked to terrorists. Zazi was identified when British intelligence found a computer containing an email from Zazi to Pakistani terrorists, at which point the government could have gone to a judge for a warrant. “To get a warrant, the law requires that the government show that the target is a suspected member of a terrorist group or foreign government, something that had been well established at that point in the Zazi case,” the Associated Press reported earlier this month. “In using Zazi to defend the surveillance program, government officials have further confused things by misstating key details about the plot,” the agency said at the time. Critics have not only levied their complaints at politicians, but at mainstream media outlets for failing to ask the relevant questions about the NSA programs. Charlie Rose, in particular, has been chided for not pushing Obama to provide evidence for his NSA claims while 24-hour news channels including CNN seem to have devoted more coverage to NSA leaker Edward Snowden’s personality than to the information he made public. Snowden himself digitally emerged from hiding Monday to answer reader-submitted questions on TheGuardian.com, where he lamented the media’s failings. “Journalists should ask a specific question: since these programs began operation shortly after September 11th, how many terrorist attacks were prevented SOLELY by information derived from this suspicion-less surveillance that could not be gained via any other source?” Snowden wrote. “Initially I was very encouraged. Unfortunately, the mainstream media now seems far more interested in what I said when I was 17 or what my girlfriend looks like rather than, say, the largest program of suspicion-less surveillance in human history.”

FBI Director Robert Mueller (Reuters / Yuri Gripas)

The FBI uses drones for domestic surveillance purposes, the head of the agency told Congress early Wednesday. Robert Mueller, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, confirmed to lawmakers that the FBI owns several unmanned aerial vehicles, but has not adopted any strict policies or guidelines yet to govern the use of the controversial aircraft. “Does the FBI use drones for surveillance on US soil?” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) asked Mr. Mueller during an oversight hearing on Capitol Hill Wednesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee. “Yes,” Mueller responded bluntly, adding that the FBI’s operation of drones is “very seldom.” Asked by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-California) to elaborate, Mueller added, “It’s very seldom used and generally used in a particular incident where you need the capability.” Earlier in the morning, however, Mueller said that the agency was only now working to establish set rule for the drone program. Mueller began answering questions just after 10 a.m. EDT and has also touched briefly on the recently exposed NSA surveillance program that has marred the reputation of the United States intelligence community as of late. Mueller said 22 agents have access to a vast surveillance database, including 20 analysts and two overseers. When Sen. Al Franken (D-Minnesota) asked Mueller later in the morning if he’d consider being more open about the FBI’s surveillance methods, the director decried being much more transparent that the bureau already is. Mueller said the FBI has and will continue to weigh the possibility of publishing more information about its spy habits, but warned that doing such would be to the advantage of America’s enemies. “There is a price to be paid for that transparency,” Mueller said. “I certainly think it would be educating our adversaries as to what our capabilities are.”

Google filed legal papers with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on Tuesday in an attempt to provide the American public with more knowledge about the government’s ongoing requests for personal data. Through a provision in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, the federal government can and do routinely compel Internet companies such as Google for the personal data pertaining to its users. Those requests regularly are accompanied with a gag-order, though, making it illegal for Web entities to even express the scope of the surveillance. Last week Google wrote the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation in hopes that Washington will change the rules for those FISA requests in the wake of the surveillance scandal that has plagued the government since former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden released classified National Security Agency documents to The Guardian. Now just one week after that first letter was published, the Washington Post reported that Google took their complaint to court. According to the Post’s Craig Timberg, Google filed legal papers with the downtown Washington, DC FISA court on Tuesday, “arguing that the company has a constitutional right to speak about information it’s forced to give the government.” In the petition, Google asks the court to start allowing them to publish raw figures pertaining to the number of requests filed under the surveillance act. “Greater transparency is needed, so today we have petitioned the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to allow us to publish aggregate numbers of national security requests, including FISA disclosures, separately,” the company said in a statement obtained by the Post. In the letter to Attorney General Eric Holder and FBI Director Robert Mueller last week, Google said that publishing the numbers “would clearly show that our compliance with these requests falls far short of the claims being made. Google has nothing to hide.” Google and other big Web companies regularly publish information about law enforcement requests that compel them for user data, but the FISA rules prohibit them from publically documenting exactly how many of those they really receiving. Yesterday, competitors Yahoo! made a similar, informal request on their website: “Like all companies, Yahoo! cannot lawfully break out FISA request numbers at this time because those numbers are classified; however, we strongly urge the federal government to reconsider its stance on this issue,” they wrote. Days earlier, Microsoft Vice President John Frank wrote on a blog post, "We continue to believe that what we are permitted to publish continues to fall short of what is needed to help the community understand and debate these issues." Along with AOL, Apple, Facebook, PalTalk, Skype and YouTube, Microsoft, Yahoo! and Google have all been linked in documents leaked by Snowden as participating in an ominous NSA surveillance program operated under the name PRISM. Those companies have since attempted to engage full-out damage control, but during an online chat on Monday, Snowden said those denials “were misleading.” "They are legally compelled to comply and maintain their silence in regard to specifics of the program, but that does not comply them from ethical obligation. If for example Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Apple (AAPL) refused to provide this cooperation with the Intelligence Community, what do you think the government would do? Shut them down?" he said. In his first interview with The Guardian, Snowden said, “I’m willing to sacrifice all that because I can’t in good conscience allow the US government to destroy privacy, Internet freedom and basic liberties for people all around the world with this massive surveillance machine they’re secretly building.” Earlier Tuesday, NSA chief Gen. Keith Alexander said the leaks attributed to Snowden caused “irreversible and significant damage to the US.”

Reuters / Pawel Kopczynski

Following whistleblower Edward Snowden’s leaks of National Security Agency documents pointing to mass online surveillance, both Facebook and Microsoft have released details on the number of legal orders made to them by the NSA.

Only a few days after revelations of the surveillance program known as PRISM, which alleged major companies such as the social networking giant Facebook and software maker Microsoft, as well as others, had provided the NSA direct access to their server data, both companies released statements denying such involvement.

On Friday both Microsoft and Facebook released more information regarding requests made by federal, state and local police in an effort to reassure users. The new information provided by Facebook and Microsoft detail the number of legal orders they received to disclose user data.

According to Microsoft, in the last six months of 2012 it received between 6,000 and 7,000 criminal and national security warrants, subpoenas and orders affecting between 31,000 and 32,000 consumer accounts.

Facebook, meanwhile, has divulged a similar number of requests during the same period of time.

“For the six months ending December 31, 2012, the total number of user-data requests Facebook received from any and all government entities in the U.S. (including local, state, and federal, and including criminal and national security-related requests) - was between 9,000 and 10,000. These requests run the gamut - from things like a local sheriff trying to find a missing child, to a federal marshal tracking a fugitive, to a police department investigating an assault, to a national security official investigating a terrorist threat. The total number of Facebook user accounts for which data was requested pursuant to the entirety of those 9-10 thousand requests was between 18,000 and 19,000 accounts,” said Facebook.

According to Facebook, then, the number of data requests made by law enforcement and intelligence services represent a “tiny fraction of one percent of our user accounts.”

Along with other implicated companies, such as Yahoo and Google, Microsoft and Facebook sought greater leeway from the government to disclose information regarding secret court orders compelling them to hand over user data, ostensibly in the interests of national security.

According to James Clapper, head of US national intelligence, Internet companies implicated under the PRISM program were receiving legal orders sent to them "pursuant to Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act." In theory, judges must evaluate whether a request is "reasonably designed" to exclude Americans.

Without exception all of the companies tied to the PRISM leak maintained that they were only complying with orders made under the FISA Amendments Act, which established certain limits placed on a Bush-era warrantless surveillance following that scandal. Of course, critics argue that such courts are hand-picked and merely rubber-stamp requests that enable mass surveillance.

One such critic, retired US District Judge Nancy Gertner, told a panel discussion on constitutional privacy protection on Friday that the selection process for federal judges serving on such secret courts is extremely biased.

“It’s an anointment process. It’s not a selection process. But you know, it’s not boat rockers. So you have a [federal] bench which is way more conservative than before. This is a subset of that. And it’s a subset of that who are operating under privacy, confidentiality, and national security. To suggest that there is meaningful review it seems to me is an illusion,” says Gertner.