Verizon says it will publish greater details on the records requests made by law enforcement, beginning in early 2014. Here is Verizon's statement.

To the extent permitted by applicable U.S. and foreign laws and regulations, Verizon’s transparency report will identify the total number of law enforcement agency requests received from government authorities in criminal cases.

In addition, the report will break out this data under categories such as subpoenas, court orders and warrants. Verizon will also provide other details about the legal demands it receives, as well as information about requests for information in emergencies.

Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Twitter and Yahoo already publish transparency reports.

A federal judge in the District of Columbia has granted a request for a preliminary injunction against the NSA preventing them from bulk collecting and querying of telephone record metadata, finding it likely violates the Fourth Amendment.

The opinion is here.

In a 68-page ruling, Judge Richard J. Leon of the District of Columbia called the program’s technology “almost Orwellian” and suggested that James Madison, the author of the Constitution, would be “aghast” to learn that the government was encroaching on liberty in such a way.

“I cannot imagine a more ‘indiscriminate’ and ‘arbitrary’ invasion than this systematic and high-tech collection and retention of personal data on virtually every single citizen for purposes of querying and analyzing it without prior judicial approval,” Judge Leon wrote. “Surely, such a program infringes on ‘that degree of privacy’ that the founders enshrined in the Fourth Amendment.”

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The Senate Judiciary Committee is holding a hearing this afternoon, "Continued Oversight of U.S. Government Surveillance Authorities." You can watch online here or at CSpan 3 here.

The Government's prepared statement is here. It begins:

Thank you for inviting us to continue our discussions with this Committee on our efforts to enhance public confidence in the important intelligence collection programs that have been the subject of unauthorized disclosures since earlier this year: the collection of bulk telephony metadata under the business records provision found in Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act, and the targeting of non-U.S. persons overseas under Section 702 of FISA.

The statement details the Government's recent efforts to increase transparency and then lists a few changes to the FISA statute it willing to endorse, and several that it opposes. [More...]

The big 8 Tech Companies have sent a letter to President Obama and Congress urging them to scale back surveillance programs.

The 8 companies are: AOL, Apple, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Twitter, and Yahoo.

You can read their letter on the website they have set up, Reform Government Surveillance.

"We understand that governments have a duty to protect their citizens. But this summer's revelations highlighted the urgent need to reform government surveillance practices worldwide... "The balance in many countries has tipped too far in favor of the state and away from the rights of the individual - rights that are enshrined in our Constitution. "This undermines the freedoms we all cherish. It's time for a change."

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David Green, the owner of Hobby Lobby , has said:

We're Christians, and we run our business on Christian principles. I've always said that the first two goals of our business are (1) to run our business in harmony with God's laws, and (2) to focus on people more than money. And that's what we've tried to do. [...] We believe that it is by God's grace that Hobby Lobby has endured, and he has blessed us and our employees. [...] But now, our government threatens to change all of that. A new government health care mandate says that our family business MUST provide what I believe are abortion-causing drugs as part of our health insurance. Being Christians, we don't pay for drugs that might cause abortions, which means that we don't cover emergency contraception, the morning-after pill or the week-after pill. We believe doing so might end a life after the moment of conception, something that is contrary to our most important beliefs. It goes against the Biblical principles on which we have run this company since day one.

Apparently, Green and his family run Hobby Lobby on "Christian principles" only when it is convenient and good for the bottom line. They send their "Christian" money to China and its policy of one child per family and forced abortions:

The New York Times has an article about DOJ notifying a criminal defendant in Colorado that it intends to use warrantless surveillance obtained under FISA in its case against him.From the Notice:

...the government intends to offer into evidence or otherwise use or disclose in proceedings in the above-captioned matter information obtained or derived from acquisition of foreign intelligence information conducted pursuant to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, as amended, 50 U.S.C. 1881a.

The case is an interesting one. I wrote about it here. [More...]

The FISA Court today released the August 29, 2013 opinion by FISA Court Judge Claire Eagen finding the NSA's mass telephony data program is constitutional and statutorily permissible.

The opinion is here.

[B]ecause there is no cognizable Fourth Amendment interest in a telephone company's metadata that it holds in the course of its business, the Court finds that there is no Constitutional impediment to the requested production.

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The New York Times reports on the Hemisphere Project, a program in which the DEA HIDTAs have been paying AT&T for phone records for 26 years.

The government pays AT&T to place its employees in drug-fighting units around the country. Those employees sit alongside Drug Enforcement Administration agents and local detectives and supply them with the phone data from as far back as 1987.

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Reuters reported yesterday that several Congresspersons and Senators have written Attorney General Holder seeking answers to questions about the report that the DEA used information collected by the National Security Agency (NSA) in criminal investigations unrelated to terrorism and the collection of foreign intelligence.

It appears the first letter was from Congressman John Conyers, Jerrold Nadler and Bobby Scott on August 9. It asked these questions and requested an answer by August 26:

1. Which components of the U.S. Department of Justice have access to information collected by the government under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act?

2. Does the Drug Enforcement Administration, or any other component of the Department of Justice, use or give to any other federal, state, or local agency foreign intelligence surveillance information collected under FISA for the purpose of criminal investigation or criminal prosecution? If so, with what frequency? Under which authorities is such information collected?

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Facebook has released the numbers of requests it received for user account information during the first half of 2013.

The United States sought data from between 20,000 – 21,000 accounts. Facebook said the data included “criminal and national security requests to the maximum extent permitted by law.” It said it was prohibited from detailing exact numbers or types of national security related requests, which would include National Security Letters and FISA court orders.

...The data, the social-networking giant said, concern basic subscriber information, such as name and length of service. “Other requests may also seek IP address logs or actual account content,” Facebook said.

Facebook's report is here. Take a look at FB's Data Privacy page and see how much information it stores about you. You need to check three places, the Activities Log, Expanded Archives and Downloaded Info and Activity Logs.

To save you some time, I combined them in this slideshow. The complete data use policy is here. For more on what information Facebook, Twitter and other social media companies store, see here. For stored metadata, see here.

Chelsea Manning, formerly known as Bradley Manning, is requesting hormone therapy during her incarceration. Here is her letter. After thanking her supporters, she writes:

As I transition into this next phase of my life, I want everyone to know the real me. I am Chelsea Manning. I am a female. Given the way that I feel, and have felt since childhood, I want to begin hormone therapy as soon as possible. I hope that you will support me in this transition. I also request that, starting today, you refer to me by my new name and use the feminine pronoun (except in official mail to the confinement facility). I look forward to receiving letters from supporters and having the opportunity to write back.

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In response to a FOIA lawsuit(document here) by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the Government today agreed to release a FISA court opinion finding some parts of the NSA electronic surveillance program unconstitutional. For example, for a period of time, the NSA illegally collected domestic emails and internet communications of Americans.

The October, 2011 opinion by former FISA Court Chief Judge John Bates is here. A September, 2012 opinion by Judge Bates finding the issue sufficiently resolved is here. Spencer Ackerman and other reporters had a conference call with an intelligence official who gave an explanation of what happened and why. Here is the Guardian report on documents from Edward Snowden describing the loophole (also here.)

DNI Director James Clapper's letter explaining today's releases is here. The website DNI set up with links to released documents is here.
Other documents released today include: [More...]