Via the ACLU:

The American Civil Liberties Union and the New York Civil Liberties Union today filed a constitutional challenge to a surveillance program under which the National Security Agency vacuums up information about every phone call placed within, from, or to the United States. The lawsuit argues that the program violates the First Amendment rights of free speech and association as well as the right of privacy protected by the Fourth Amendment. The complaint also charges that the dragnet program exceeds the authority that Congress provided through the Patriot Act.

Also:

Yesterday, the ACLU and Yale Law School's Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic filed a motion with the FISA Court, requesting that it to publish its opinions on the meaning, scope, and constitutionality of Patriot Act Section 215. The ACLU is also currently litigating a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, filed in October 2011, demanding that the Justice Department release information about the government's use and interpretation of Section 215.

Also big news: The FISA Court has published its first public docket -- of an EFF lawsuit seeking disclosure. Pleadings are here.

Google sent a letter today to AG Eric Holder and the FBI seeking permission to disclose the number of national security and FISA requests it has received, the types of data covered by the requests, and the number of user accounts affected by the requests.

We therefore ask you to help make it possible for Google to publish in our Transparency Report aggregate numbers of national security requests, including FISA disclosures—in terms of both the number we receive and their scope. Google’s numbers would clearly show that our compliance with these requests falls far short of the claims being made. Google has nothing to hide.

The letter references the permission it received in March to publish this information about National Security Letters.

Most reaction from media and privacy groups seems to be positive. But Christopher Soghoian tweets:

If Google's FISA numbers are shockingly high, asking for permission to publish if they know it won't be given would be a very savvy move.

Huffington Post reports that Congress was briefed 22 times on the PRISM program and provides the dates.

Glenn Greenwald tells the AP we ain't seen nothing yet.

"We are going to have a lot more significant revelations that have not yet been heard over the next several weeks and months," Greenwald said.
Greenwald claims "dozens" of stories can be generated from the documents, and that the Guardian plans to pursue all of them.

CBS reports the feds are prepping charges against Edward Snowden, who has gone underground in Hong Kong. He told the Guardian he may go to Iceland.

Maybe he should go to New Zealand and hang out at the Dot Com mansion. NZ might not be so willing to provide mutual assistance in arresting Snowden after the debacle of the Kim Dotcom raid.

The PRISM story keeps growing -- now there are reports the NSA has shared data on Kim Dotcom obtained via PRISM with the international spy group "Five Eyes," (background here -- it includes representatives from the U.S., U.K., New Zealand, Canada and Australia,) and that Five Eyes may have given the intercepted data on Kim Dotcom to New Zealand's GSB, which in turn gave it to a specialized New Zealand police group, that used the information to assist the FBI and facilitate his arrest on U.S. charges.

"Five Eyes" met in New Zealand just 2 days before the Prime Minister announced the illegal interception of Kim Dotcom's communications on Sept. 17. Who was at the meeting? Reportedly, Intelligence Co-ordination Group director Roy Ferguson, a former ambassador to the US,along with representatives from the US Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency, Britain's Communications Headquarters, Canada's Communications Security Establishment and the Australian Secret Intelligence Service. [More...]

Edward Snowden has come forward as the source of the recent NSA leaks.

Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old system administrator and former undercover CIA employee, unmasked himself Sunday as the principal source of recent Washington Post and Guardian disclosures about top-secret NSA programs, denouncing what he described as systematic surveillance of innocent citizens and saying in an interview, “it’s important to send a message to government that people will not be intimidated.”

He intends to seek asylum in another country.

The Washington Post has a graphic timeline of electronic surveillance under Presidents Bush and Obama from 2001 through 2013.

But there are many more examples. In 2010, the FBI got the phone records of WAPO journalists. See, FBI Illegally Collected Thousands of Phone Records Through Fake Terror Emergencies. [More...]

Glenn Greenwald strikes again. In the Guardian today, he writes about another classified NSA surveillance tool, The Boundless Informant.

By extracting information from every DNI and DNR metadata record, the tool is able to create a near realtime snapshot of GAO's collection capability at any given moment. The tool allows users to select a country on a map and view the metadata volume and select details about the collection against that country. The tool also allows users to view high level metrics by organization and then drill down to a more actionable level- down to the program and cover term.

The program slides are here and the three page document is here.

CBS reports that the PRISM program is an arm of the Stellar Wind program.

A top-secret arm of the controversial Stellar Wind program set up in the wake of 9/11 is allowing the National Security Agency and the FBI to tap directly into the central servers of nine major Internet companies to extract audio, video, photos, emails and documents that let analysts track an individual's communication, CBS News has learned.

The program, called PRISM, was established in 2007, according to The Washington Post, which broke the story Thursday evening. CBS News senior correspondent John Miller said it doesn't deal with names but was designed as a way for the government to track suspected terrorists. It culls metadata from Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube and Apple and will soon include Dropbox.

The Stellar Wind program was revealed a few years ago by NSA Whistleblower William Binney and James Banford. (video here.) He says it is a domestic spying program: [More...]

Today the White House, without confirming the Guardian article about the FISA order requiring Verizon to turn over call detail records for all of Verizon's customers for at least three months, defended such an action in the name of terrorism and keeping us safe. The order is here. The Guardian reports:

The document shows for the first time that under the Obama administration the communication records of millions of US citizens are being collected indiscriminately and in bulk – regardless of whether they are suspected of any wrongdoing.

According to an unnamed White House Official: [More...]

Attorney General Eric Holder says he recused himself from the investigation into the leak of Undiebomber Wannabe II that resulted in the Justice Department subpoenas of telephone toll records of Associated Press Reporters. Apparently, the subpoenas were authorized by Deputy AG James Cole.

Deputy AG James Cole wrote this letter today to the Associated Press. He says each of the phone numbers for which records were sought were associated with AP personnel involved in the reporting of classified information. The investigation is ongoing.

The Associated Press has issued this statement in response.

The Justice Department has disclosed to the Associated Press that it subpoenaed more than two months of phone records of several AP editors and reporters in 2012. The AP, as well as civil liberties groups, are angry.

Obtaining a broad range of telephone records in order to ferret out a government leaker is an unacceptable abuse of power. Freedom of the press is a pillar of our democracy, and that freedom often depends on confidential communications between reporters and their sources."

This foiled airline plot from Yemen in May, 2012 appears to be what triggered the phone records searches.

Update: Check out this 2010 OIG Report on fBI use of national security letters and telephone toll records. I've excerpted the part about obtaining reporters' telephone toll records here. [More...]

Via Blog at the Legal Times, the Department of Justice has filed this brief seeking to prevent an Office of Legal Counsel memo of advice to the FBI on electronic surveillance from being released to the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

The DOJ document "establishes the scope of the Executive Branch’s authority under federal law to obtain private communications records without legal process or a qualifying emergency, in spite of apparent statutory prohibitions to the contrary," the EFF lawyers said in their court papers.

Here is the amicus brief filed by several groups, including the ACLU, CREW, the Brennan Center and Washington Post.