All data stored on cloud computing services can be accessed by US government without a warrant

All data stored on cloud computing services can be accessed by US government without a warrant

Sam Johnston/Wikimedia Commons

Madison Ruppert, Contributor
Activist Post

According to reports, all personal information stored on major cloud
computing services can be spied on by US agencies without users’
knowledge or even a search warrant.

This is all reportedly being done under the recently reauthorized Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)
and has led British Members of Parliament to call on the British
government to not only end the use of cloud computing but also stop
sharing intelligence services with the U.S, according to the Independent.

It’s worth pointing out that the US government has admitted breaching the Fourth Amendment under FISA while maintaining an absurd level of secrecy around the Act. Given the massive expansion of the Pentagon’s cyberwarfare forces and the exponential rise in surveillance overall, people around the world have a quite legitimate reason to be concerned.

As New Zealand’s IOL points out,
under FISA “all documents uploaded on to cloud systems based in the US
or falling under Washington’s jurisdiction can be accessed and analyzed
without a warrant by American security agencies.”

Apparently, US agencies have been able to access private data stored on
the cloud since 2008 while no one had any clue it was going on.

“What this legislation means is that the US has been
able to mine any foreign data in US Clouds since 2008, and nobody
noticed,” said Caspar Bowden, chief privacy adviser to Microsoft Europe
for nine years until 2011.

According to IOL, US agencies like the National Security Agency (NSA),
the FBI and the CIA can all access information that potentially concerns
American foreign policy for reasons which are purely political.


There is apparently no need for suspicion that national security issues
are at stake which would mean that religious organizations, political
campaigns and even journalists could have their data monitored by the US
government.

Bowden, now working as an independent advocate for privacy rights,
co-authored a report for the European Parliament which warns of the
threat posed by FISA.

In the report, Bowden also criticized the UK Information Commissioner’s
Office for giving the control over to the US government.

Perhaps even more concerning for the British, four of the suppliers of
the UK Government’s G-Cloud system are indeed located in the US and thus
under American control thanks to FISA, raising “questions over the
security of information is being stored overseas,” as the Independent
puts it.

“The Americans have got to remember who their allies are and who their enemies are,” said Tory MP David Davis.

“There are people like us who they rely on to provide them with
listening stations, like Menwith Hill for example,” Davis said,
referring to a Royal Air Force base which aids the US intelligence
community by intercepting communications.

“Do they really want Parliament to start asking Government to limit what
Menwith Hill can do? There are all sorts of possibilities if they carry
on with this,” Davis said.

Davis further warned that there is “a whole cascade of constitutional and privacy concerns for ordinary British people.”

However, the UK government seems totally on board as the entity
responsible for policing the UK’s data protection laws “effectively
ruled that companies were right to pass information over to foreign
government requests as the disclosure was made ‘in accordance with a
legal requirement,’ such as FISA,” according to IOL.

“Every
time we make a bridge of trust, or commit an indiscretion, using a
social network or webmail, think how a foreign country could use that
information for its own purposes to influence policy and politics,”
Bowden said. “Drafts of documents prepared online, who is in contact
with each other, all of this can be captured and analyzed using
data-mining algorithms much more advanced than those offered by public
search engines.”

Bowden said in his report that the threat of “heavy-caliber
mass-surveillance fire-power aimed at the cloud” is actually more
significant than the threat posed by cybercrime.

“What’s different about this is that it’s a power in the US authorities
to insist on real-time collection of information by any data processer
within US jurisdiction,” said Gordon Nardell QC, a British barrister
specializing in data protection.

“The US authorities basically grab everything that is going in and out,” Nardell said.

Dutch Member of European Parliament Sophie in’t Veld, vice chair of the
European Parliament’s civil liberties committee urged the European
authorities to act swiftly.

“Let’s turn this around and imagine this is not the United States having
unlimited access to our data but the government of Mr. Putin or the
Chinese government – would we still wonder if it’s an urgent issue?
Nobody would ask that question,” she said.

“I have a particular concern about UK government data,” said Liberal
Democrat MP Julian Huppert. “If the Government starts to do more work on
a cloud system – which is being looked at for obvious reasons – have we
had assurance that the US government would not access such data as
foreign intelligence information, and whether there would there have to
be unambiguous consent of UK citizens?”

“If the US will not give a clear assurance about government data then we
will have to stop using the Cloud, as we cannot allow that to happen,”
Huppert said.

“A lot of people wouldn’t realize where data is stored, and hence
wouldn’t expect to be subject to US law,” Huppert continued. “The
Government has a specific responsibility for personal data, and
sensitive data can be stored offshore.”

“There is a very sensible increase in the government use of cloud
computing, there are excellent reasons for cloud services, however there
are concerns around security and this highlights one of them,” Huppert
said, according to the Independent.

“US surveillance ambitions know no bounds,” said Isabella Sankey,
director of Policy for Liberty. “he chilling US Foreign Intelligence
Service Act treats all non-US citizens as enemy suspects.”

“The reality is that every time a British person uses a cloud service,
whether email, social media or online shopping, they are at risk of
having their entire communications stored and analyzed in a way that few
people would argue is necessary or something that sets an example to
the world that blanket surveillance should never be not the norm,” said
Nick Pickles, director of Big Brother Watch.

Pickles, however, seems quite misinformed when he says, “It’s clear that
what this legislation permits surveillance that would be ruled
unconstitutional if the US government tried to use these powers on its
own citizens.”


In reality, these powers are used on US citizens and Americans are subject to absurd levels of surveillance thanks to Department of Homeland Security grants, the work of the National Counterterrorism Center (which has the power to create and store dossiers on innocent Americans), and the National Security Agency.

While only some of the US government’s surveillance on US citizens is conducted under FISA and the FISA Amendments Act, it is clear that the Constitution really doesn’t factor into the equation.

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Source:-
http://www.activistpost.com/2013/01/all-data-stored-on-cloud-computing.html