WNA

Google today is shedding some light on their Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) requests. Until now, the U.S. Department of Justice opposed their efforts to publish statistics specifically about FISA requests.

CSPAN recently featured Author James Bamford, who has written three books about the National Security Agency, The Puzzle Palace, Body of Secrets, and The Shadow Factory. He has also written and co-produced a documentary on the NSA titled, The Spy Factory

Bamford talks about the history of NSA spying, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, and the lawsuit brought against the agency by the Electronic Frontier Foundation at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. 

NSA Director Keith Alexander has made several appearances at major hacker conferences in the United States and lead the largest security breach in U.S. history.

A panel looking into U.S. electronic surveillance activities in the wake of the Edward Snowden revelations (pdf) in December, 2013, recommended changes in the way the agency collects the telephone data of Americans, spies on foreign leaders and prepares for cyberattacks abroad, but did not propose a wholesale scaling back of domestic spying by the National Security Agency and other intelligence branches.

Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), an outspoken critic of N.S.A. surveillance, noted that the report flatly declared that the phone-logging program had not been necessary in stopping terrorist attacks.