By Joffa - 12 Jun 2013 10:10 PM
Australia gets 'deluge' of US secret data, prompting a new data facility
Australian intelligence agencies are receiving ''huge volumes'' of ''immensely valuable'' information from the United States including through the controversial PRISM program, Fairfax Media can reveal.
The ''data deluge'' has required the Australian government to build a state-of-the-art secret data storage facility just outside Canberra.
Privately labelled by one official as "the new black vault", the high-security data centre is nearing completion at the HMAS Harman communications base and will support the operations of Australia's signals intelligence agency, the top-secret Australian Signals Directorate (ASD).
The revelations about the PRISM program prompted widespread concern by civil libertarians concerned about its vast size and the lack of requirement to obtain a warrant before hoovering up internet and email data of users of Google, Facebook, Apple and other top technology firms.
Greens senator Scott Ludlam said the government must explain the degree to which ordinary people were being spied on and whether this circumvented Australian privacy protections.
Australian officials describe PRISM and "similar capabilities" in relation to internet service providers in Australia as "an inevitable response to the digital communications revolution".
The $163.5 million HMAS Harman Communications Facility Project includes an extension to the existing Defence Network Operations Centre and a new ''communication/data-room facility".
Because of its complexity and expansion of operational requirements, the project is 80 per cent over its original budget and five years behind schedule, but construction is near completion.
There has been no discussion of the project in Senate estimates committee hearings, and the public reports of Parliament's joint committee on intelligence and security make no reference to it.
Officially the Defence Department will say only that the new facility will provide data storage and processing facilities but has confirmed that "the Australian Signals Directorate (also known as the Defence Signals Directorate) will be one of the Defence entities at the facility".
It is understood the centre will also serve the Defence Intelligence Organisation and the Defence Imagery and Geospatial Organisation.
In underlining the importance of PRISM, Australian officials noted that it had been described in leaked documents as the most prolific contributor to US President Barack Obama's daily intelligence brief.
''Given that the US shares so much with us, it should be no surprise that this reporting is critical to Australian intelligence,'' one official said on condition of anonymity, adding that it included ''what goes into the ONA [Office of National Assessments] briefs for Prime Minister Julia Gillard and the national security committee of cabinet''.
The officials said that Australia contributed to targeting undertaken by US intelligence, including "identification of specific individuals of security concern''.
However, they stressed that the ASD complied with legal requirements and ministerial guidelines that limit reporting in relation to Australians, other than those of specific security or foreign intelligence interest.
They expressed confidence in the US's adherence to similar agreements.
"We are overwhelmingly dependent on intelligence obtained by the NSA and the US intelligence community more broadly," one official said.
Officials cited intelligence relating to North Korea's military threats, information relating to Australian citizens involved in fighting in Syria, missile technology acquisition efforts by Iran and Chinese internal political and economic developments as recent examples of the benefits of Australia's intelligence ties with the US.
US signals intelligence was also described as "absolutely critical" to the diplomatic campaign that won Australia a seat on the UN Security Council.
Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus has refused to say whether US intelligence agencies have shared with Australia information gained through PRISM.
With David Wroe
Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/national/australia-gets-deluge-of-us-secret-data-prompting-a-new-data-facility-20130612-2o4kf.html#ixzz2W0FRg0pU
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By Joffa - 20 Jul 2013 10:19 PM
US court renews surveillance program exposed by Edward Snowden
A secret court that oversees intelligence activities has granted a request by the US government to continue a telephone surveillance program - one of the two data collection operations leaked by former security contractor Edward Snowden.
By Reuters11:31PM BST 19 Jul
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence's authority to maintain the program expired on Friday. Last night the ODNI said the government had sought and received a renewal from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court.
The ODNI said in a statement it was disclosing the renewal as part of an effort at greater transparency following Mr Snowden's disclosure of the telephone data collection and email surveillance programs.
Robert Litt, general counsel of ODNI, said earlier that intelligence officials were working to declassify information on the programs that Mr Snowden had already partially revealed.
Mr Litt he was optimistic the intelligence community could make "a lot of progress" in declassifying the information.
US officials faced a public uproar after Mr Snowden began leaking classified information about telephone and email collection programs. Intelligence officials have been pushing to justify the programs as legal, particularly under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, which requires a secret court to approve the program's.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court sided on Monday with Yahoo Inc and ordered the Obama administration to declassify and publish a 2008 court decision justifying Prism, the data collection program revealed last month by Snowden.
The ruling could offer a rare glimpse into how the government has legally justified its spy agencies' data collection programs under FISA.
"One of the hurdles to declassification earlier was that the existence of the programs was classified," Litt said in response to questions after a speech at the Brookings Institution. "It's very hard to think about releasing the opinion that says a particular program is legal if you're not going to disclose what the program is. Now that the program has been declassified, we're going back and we're looking at these opinions."
Mr Litt said intelligence officials were looking across the spectrum of its activities to see what could be declassified.
"We're trying to prioritize things that we think are of the greatest public interest," he said. "The highest priority is getting out fuller information about the programs about which partial information is already out."
The 2008 ruling mentioned by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court stemmed from Yahoo's challenge of the legality of broad, warrantless surveillance programs like Prism.
A number of major US internet companies, including Microsoft, Google and Facebook, have asked the government for permission to disclose the number of national security-related user data requests they receive.
Mr Snowden, who faces espionage charges for releasing the classified information, has been holed up at a Moscow airport for three weeks trying to avoid prosecution. This week, he sought temporary asylum in Russia.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/10192128/US-court-renews-surveillance-program-exposed-by-Edward-Snowden.html
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