In our 641st issue: In most issues of EFFector, we give an overview of all the work we're doing at EFF right now. This week, we’re taking a deep dive into a single issue: new revelations of a massive domestic surveillance program leaked to the Guardian and Washington Post. Last night, we received confirmation from a report in the Guardian that the National Security Agency (NSA) is currently collecting the call records of every Verizon customer in America. The NSA order forces Verizon to provide "on an ongoing daily basis" all call records for any call "wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls” and any call made "between the United States and abroad." And that’s not all. Today, the Washington Post and the Guardian published reports based on information provided by a career intelligence officer showing how the NSA and the FBI are tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies. The government is extracting audio, video, photographs, e-mails, documents, and connection logs that enable analysts to track a person’s movements and contacts over time. Mounting Evidence of the NSA Warrantless Surveillance EFF has so much evidence of the surveillance now that we've created a timeline. In brief, America first learned about the secret surveillance in a 2005 New York Times exposé which disclosed one aspect of the NSA’s domestic surveillance program. We learned that the Bush Administration had been illegally tapping phone lines in the U.S. without warrants or court permission immediately following the 9/11 attacks. President Bush himself admitted at least some of what the government was doing. In early 2006, EFF received photos and blueprints from former AT&T technician Mark Klein. These undisputed documents show that AT&T installed a fiberoptic splitter at its facility in San Francisco which sends copies of all AT&T customers’ emails, web browsing, and other Internet traffic to the NSA. Later in 2006, USA Today and a number of other newspapers published a story disclosing that the NSA had compiled a massive database of call records from American telecommunications companies, which included AT&T, Verizon, and Bell South. This was confirmed by a number of members of Congress. Information has continued to trickle out over time. In 2009, the New York Times reported the NSA was still collecting purely domestic communications in a "significant and systematic" way after the FISA Amendments Act was passed in 2008. Section 215 of the Patriot Act and Verizon The news of the last few days has confirmed the records portion of the surveillance, and gave us some additional hints about the government’s arguments in support of its actions.  The secret court order issued to Verizon was a Section 215 order (50 U.S.C. sec. 1861), a controversial legal instrument greatly expanded when George Bush signed the USA PATRIOT Act into law on October 26, 2001. It allows the government to seek "any tangible things" in connection with an authorized investigation and is often known as the "business records" provision of FISA. Section 215 allows for secret court orders to records that are "relevant" to a government investigation – a far lower threshold and more expansive reach than a warrant based on probable cause.  The list of possible "tangible things" the government can obtain is seemingly limitless, and could include everything from driver’s license records to Internet browsing history. We've long suspected that the government has been using Section 215 to conduct dragnet surveillance. Now we have incontrovertible evidence. Senator Ron Wyden has warned that "when the American people find out how their government has secretly interpreted the Patriot Act, they will be stunned and they will be angry." Senator Wyden is right. What EFF is Doing First of all, we're leading the charge to stop the NSA’s domestic surveillance program in the courts. Since 2006, EFF has challenged the NSA surveillance in two landmark lawsuits, Hepting v. AT&T and Jewel v. NSA. These cases, in which we represent AT&T customers, include both the wiretapping claims arising from the fiberoptic splitter that Mark Klein found and the scooping up of communications records referred to in the Verizon order. We also have fought back against other PATRIOT Act surveillance abuses, including bringing a case that resulted in National Security Letters being declared unconstitutional — which is currently on appeal to the Ninth Circuit. We’re also fighting for transparency. In 2011, we filed a FOIA lawsuit against the Department of Justice for records about the government’s secret interpretation of Section 215. Last week we submitted a brief to the secret FISA court itself in that case. And we're pushing for legislative reform. We've organized tens of thousands of concerned citizens to speak out against the surveillance powers in the PATRIOT Act and the FISA Amendments Act, and now we’re calling on the public to demand a full, public accounting of the government's surveillance programs. Join the Fight We're asking individuals to email Congress right away to tell them in the strongest possible terms that you do not consent to dragnet domestic surveillance. Tell your elected officials that you object to this mass domestic spying program. Demand that they initiate a full-scale, public investigation immediately with the results of the investigation made public as much as possible. Demand that the public officials responsible for this program are held to account. Click here to speak out now. And we’re also asking individuals to support our work. Become an EFF member today and join the fight to defend fundamental liberties in the digital world. Learn more NSA Spying Overview Timeline of NSA Spying Frequently Asked Questions State Secrets Privilege Washington Post story on Internet surveillance Guardian story on Internet surveillance Guardian story on phone record surveillance Supported by Members Our members make it possible for EFF to bring legal and technological expertise into crucial battles about online rights. Whether defending free speech online or challenging unconstitutional surveillance, your participation makes a difference. Every donation gives technology users who value freedom online a stronger voice and more formidable advocate. If you aren't already, please consider becoming an EFF member today. Donate Today Administrivia Editor: Rainey Reitman, Activist editor@eff.org EFFector is a publication of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. eff.org Membership & donation queries: membership@eff.org General EFF, legal, policy, or online resources queries: info@eff.org Reproduction of this publication in electronic media is encouraged. MiniLinks do not necessarily represent the views of EFF. Back issues of EFFector Change your email address This newsletter is printed from 100% recycled electrons. EFF appreciates your support and respects your privacy. Privacy Policy. Unsubscribe or change your email preferences, or opt out of all EFF email   815 Eddy Street San Francisco, CA 94109-7701 United States

According to a top-secret court order obtained by The Guardian, the National Security Agency has collected the phone records of millions of U.S. Verizon customers since late April. The Guardian's Spencer Ackerman explains the coming debate over the scale of domestic spying operations.

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NEAL CONAN, HOST:

This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington. Later in the program, we'll continue our series of conversations and look ahead with NPR's Deborah Amos, who's been covering the war in Syria. But we begin today with a court order obtained by The Guardian's U.S. team, which authorizes the National Security Agency to collect information on billions of phone calls made by U.S. Verizon customers since late April.

The order is unusually broad and has already inflamed controversy over civil liberties, the Patriot Act and the little-known court that authorized the data collection. Critics like the ACLU say there is no possible justification for such a sweeping search. The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Republican Mike Rogers, said today that phone records sweeps like the one reported today had stopped what he described as a significant terrorist against the United States within the past few years.

Spencer Ackerman, The Guardian's U.S. national security editor, joins us here in Studio 42. Thanks very much for coming in today.

SPENCER ACKERMAN: Thanks very much for having me.

CONAN: And since your story came out, we've had confirmation: A, that it's accurate; and B, that this kind of thing has been going on for, what, six or seven years.

ACKERMAN: For seven years is what members of Congress are now saying, raising the very interesting question of whether they knew precisely of the scope of metadata, so-called metadata collection that the NSA has been collecting.

CONAN: Well, let us inform ourselves. Metadata, what does that mean?

ACKERMAN: Yes, that's a great question. This gets a little jargony sometimes. Think of metadata as everything that isn't in the direct substance of our conversation, so not what it is that you and I are talking about right now but perhaps the mechanisms by which we are talking, the IP addresses, the phone numbers, the duration of the call, the frequency of interaction between us.

CONAN: So if you are collecting metadata, you might know that I called you at such and such a time, the call lasted so long, it was routed through these particular servers and that I called from Union Station, and you received it in – at Capitol Hill.

ACKERMAN: That's correct, and from that you can learn quite a great deal of identifying information about either ends of our phone call. I can find out particularly, if I look through other publicly available records, I can probably get your name, I can probably get your address, I can probably get your Social Security number, I can probably get your driver's license.

CONAN: If there's a TV camera up there, you could probably get my picture.

ACKERMAN: That's right.

CONAN: But you're being swarmed by billions of calls, maybe a billion calls a day. This is a three-month period. How do you sort through all that data?

ACKERMAN: You'll need essentially algorithms to determine when all that data is collected and tagged digitally, ultimately mechanisms like that for sorting through it. It's a tremendous amount of information.

CONAN: And computers sweep through it looking for particular patterns?

ACKERMAN: That's right.

CONAN: All right, so what can be gleaned from that information when there's so much of it?

ACKERMAN: Think about how often you talk to close associates, friends, people that you're related to, that you have longstanding connections with. That's the sort of thing I can infer from your call patterns based on the duration they take place and based on the frequency with which they take place. And when you're potentially investigating something, that information becomes rather important for understanding who someone that you might be collecting information on is talking to.

However, from the order that we acquired, there's no indication that they are in fact searching for anything specific. This is all potentially tens of millions if not more of information that goes across Verizon's pipes.

CONAN: And Verizon, they said today if such an order was issued, we're not allowed to talk about it. We are, however, had such an order been issued, required to comply with it and required not to say anything about it.

ACKERMAN: That's right. This order comes from a very secretive court called the FISA court. It's supposed to be the only judicial mechanism by which the government's surveillance efforts are checked. However, that court refuses to…

CONAN: Domestic surveillance.

ACKERMAN: Domestic surveillance, that's right. It refuses nearly no government requests. These orders occur in secret. What's called third party businesses and that sort of thing that are required to comply with it cannot publicly discuss the fact that they've been issued these orders.

The document that we acquired and we publish says that it cannot be declassified for another 30 years.

CONAN: And is there any reason to believe that all the other telephone companies aren't complying with similar orders?

ACKERMAN: I'd hate to speculate, but it would be very surprising.

CONAN: I wanted to read you some quotes from the White House spokesman, who is on a place with the president en route to California, I guess: The intelligence community is conducting court-authorized intelligence activities pursuant to public statute with the knowledge and oversight of Congress. That's according to Josh Earnest, traveling with the president to North Carolina.

An order relating to the collection of massive amounts of phone records made public, quote, "does not allow the government to listen in on anyone's telephone calls, nor did the information include the content of any communication nor the name of any subscriber."

ACKERMAN: Yes, but again when you learn the metadata around you, it's something of a cold comfort not to have your name attached to it because it's easily – it gives you quite a great deal of information as a basis for then finding that out. It's an open question.

CONAN: Now the timing of this, it was issued shortly after the bombing in Boston and the shootout that followed there. Is there any reason to believe it's connected with that?

ACKERMAN: I'd hate to speculate on that.

CONAN: OK, now that we know that these kinds of searches have been going on for the past seven years, and there have been hints about this from a couple of Democratic senators who have been complaining publicly but not allowed to say publicly what they were talking about until your report came out.

ACKERMAN: This is an interesting thing. In 2011, shortly before Congress took up the debate about reauthorizing the Patriot Act, I had an interview with Senator Ron Wyden, who is one of the Senate's premiere civil libertarians, and he told me that although he couldn't talk about publicly what in fact he was about to tell me that the government had an interpretation of its powers under the Patriot Act for surveillance that were far broader than what it had been saying publicly and what it expected Congress to vote on, that he considered this so important, that it was essentially a secret law, something substantially different from the public debate about the Patriot Act.

CONAN: And concern is not limited to Democrats on Capitol Hill. Early this morning, Republican Senator Mark Kirk of Illinois had Attorney General Eric Holder before him in testimony that had been previously scheduled, not called on this, but asked the attorney general about what he called the, quote, "Verizon scandal."

SENATOR MARK KIRK: Could you assure to us that no phones inside the Capitol were monitored of members of Congress that would give a future executive branch, if they started pulling this kind of thing up, would give them unique leverage over the legislature?

ATTORNEY GENERAL ERIC HOLDER: With all due respect, Senator, I don't think this is an appropriate setting for me to discuss that issue. I'd be more than glad to come back in an appropriate setting to discuss the issues that you have raised. But in this open forum, I don't…

KIRK: I would interrupt you and say the correct answer would be to say no, we stayed within our lane, and I'm assuring you we did not spy on members of Congress.

CONAN: And an appropriate forum, the attorney general's word, that means a secret session.

ACKERMAN: Yeah, I mean, I wonder if members of Congress are Verizon subscribers.

CONAN: Many possibly are, and it's interesting that this is coming from both sides of the aisle. Then of course you hear also from members of the intelligence committees, the people who were briefed on these operations, who are saying wait a minute, this has saved lives. These kinds of operations in the past have saved lives. These are authorized by the law, authorized by a court, this is perfectly legal, and we knew about it.

ACKERMAN: They have made that argument. It'll be interesting to see if there is any public disclosure that would substantiate that. It would also be interesting to find out if members of Congress even on those committees had the understanding of what in fact the scope of the surveillance they say they authorized was.

CONAN: Because if you were looking for certain phone numbers, certain individuals, it's a little easier to understand the intrusion. For billions of calls over a three-month period, it sounds like a giant fishing expedition.

ACKERMAN: And there's no reason to believe, when members of Congress are saying this has been happening for seven years, that that particular three-month period wouldn't have previously been reauthorized and won't be reauthorized in the future.

CONAN: So that there could have been a sequence of three-month authorization periods by the FISA court.

ACKERMAN: It's possible, given that this is what members of Congress are saying publicly about the length this surveillance has been occurring.

CONAN: Tell us a little bit about the FISA court. This is authorized again under a law by Congress.

ACKERMAN: That's correct. The 1978 foreign intelligence surveillance act, which is supposed to bind surveillance conducted by the government to ensure that individual Americans who are not suspected of any wrongdoing are not swept up in these rather broad and powerful government dragnets. It was a creation after some reforms by Congress in the 1970s to correct some abuses of the intelligence community.

And it operates entirely in secret. Members are appointed for I believe seven-year terms. And the scope of what they discuss is not adversarial. So the government pleads its case, but there's no one else, unlike elsewhere in the judicial system, to make counterarguments. And its decisions are almost never publicly known.

The scope of these decisions, we've now had reason to believe and now see, are very broad, and they almost never refuse a government request. In the last year, it had just come out publicly, they have I believe seen maybe something on the order of over 1,800 requests from the government for surveillance and refused none of them.

CONAN: And so as this goes ahead, the kind of controversy that's been generated today, do you think it is going to force the administration to be more forthcoming not only with what it's doing and why but what it has learned from these sweeps in the past?

ACKERMAN: We'll see.

CONAN: And as you go ahead, would you expect now that there would be public hearings about this?

ACKERMAN: Judging from the reaction in Congress, it's certainly possible. You've got a number of legislators, as you've pointed out, who are saying look, this is nothing new, nothing to see here, move along, and then others who are quite disturbed, particularly civil libertarian members of Congress that the government could be doing something like this for so many millions of Americans, potentially.

CONAN: And does this tie into the kinds of intrusive investigations that we've heard complaints about in recent weeks, as the administration has looked into phone records of reporters and various other issues?

ACKERMAN: Well, if they've looked into phone records of reporters, and now you've got a court order that shows that all subscriber data, that all communications that track over Verizon's pipes are collectable by the NSA, that in fact Verizon has to turn them over, I would be very interested to know how you could separate one from the other.

CONAN: Would you fear that your records might be looked into to find out who leaked you this document, this classified document?

ACKERMAN: I don't want to talk about that.

CONAN: Well, thanks very much, we appreciate your time today, and we will follow the story with interest.

ACKERMAN: Thanks very much.

CONAN: More on this story later today on ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. We were just speaking with Spencer Ackerman, national security editor for the British newspaper The Guardian, its U.S. unit. He joined us here in Studio 42. After a short break, NPR's Deb Amos joins us for the next in our series of looking ahead conversation. Syria is her beat. We'll be right back with her to talk about that country's future and how it may affect the entire region. Stay with us. I'm Neal Conan. It's the TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.

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Change User Folder and System Folder Locations

With this tip, you can change the location of the user folders such as "My Documents", "Cookies", "Desktop", "Favorites", "History", etc.

Location: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders

Values: Multiple, see graphic

Normally whatever you download by default it will save in downloads folder. If you want to save your downloads in the different folders you need to change the locations of the driver.

Step 1:

Please follow the steps to set the location of your default download folder.

1)      Click on Start, then click on Computer

2)      Click on C:\ drive, and then click on User’s folder.

3)      Under user’s folder click on your user name, then click on Downloads, right click on downloads select Properties

4)      Click on the Location Tab.

5)      Under location tab Change the location to the require drive.

6)      Click on Apply, finally click OK.

If this doesn’t helps, then I would suggest you to follow step 2:

Note: before changing any registry setting, I would suggest you to back up and restore the registry please refer to the below link: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-vista/Back-up-the-registry

Step 2:

Try changing the location of the Download folder from the Registry:
 
1. Click "Start" – "Run".

2. Start the registry editor by typing "regedit" and press ENTER.

3. Scroll down to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer.

4. In the right pane, double-click "Download Directory".

5. When the "Edit String" dialog appears, enter your new download directory. Make sure to type this EXACTLY correct – there is no option to browse for directories! When done, click "OK".

6. Close the Registry Editor. Close all open Internet Explorer windows. You may also need to reboot your computer or logoff and login for this change to occur.

This is a note to self while I am elsewhere:

TuneUp Utilities 2012 is the latest version of one of the most popular Windows system optimization and tweaking program. Every year it is getting perfected with new unique features added to the program. TuneUp Utilities 2012 features all the functions that were present in the earlier version, viz, TuneUp Utilities 2011 (which we have reviewed earlier). Along with all those features, two notable features added to the latest version are TuneUp Economy Mode and TuneUp Program Deactivator.

TuneUp Economy Mode will extend the battery life of notebook, netbook and tablet computers by shutting off processes and hardware components that aren’t required or in use. TuneUp Economy Mode is the new introduced feature of 2012 while TuneUp Program Deactivator, introduced in 2011 version, has gone through major overhauling in 2012 edition. Both TuneUp Economy Mode and TuneUp Program Deactivator, when used in combination can boost the energy efficiency of Windows 7 systems by up to 30 percent, when compared with the Windows 7 built-in energy savings mode.

With today’s increasing computing power, multi-core processors and gigabytes of RAM, many users will argue if they need a system optimization program? But, many users will agree with us that even with so much of computation power in hand, Windows tends to become sluggish after usage. Microsoft promises to change this scenario with its upcoming Windows 8 operating system but until than we are left with trusted system optimization utilities like TuneUp Utilities.

Since we have already reviewed TuneUp Utilities 2011 and most of the tools, although improved, have remained same in TuneUp Utilities 2012, in this review we will concentrate only on the most notable two features (discussed above). You can go through the thorough review of TuneUp Utilities 2011 here to know in-depth about what it offers.

At the end of this review (after break), you will find a giveaway contest, through which you can win a free license of TuneUp Utilities 2012 worth $49.95. 5 licenses are up for the giveaway, so the total licenses worth approx $250 (exactly $249.75). More on that later.

A quick walk-through…

TuneUp Utilities 2012 User Interface

The installation was very straight forward, after which, TuneUp Utilities immediately launched its 1-Click Maintenance tool. The tool quickly checks for Windows Registry errors, broken shortcuts, temporary files (but Recycle Bin), Windows startup and shutdown problems, disk fragmentation and so on. A report of everything found, is provided after the analysis and you can then fix the issues with a single click.

As we have seen earlier with 2011, the tools are divided into five tabs:

For advance users or for quickly finding a tool, you can click on “Overview of all functions” option. This option gives you a list of all functions that TuneUp Utilities offers. If you click on the wrench icon next to a tool, it opens the settings for that tool.

TuneUp Program Deactivator

Many Windows programs like Microsoft Office adds services, startup programs and other tasks which slows down the system and hampers performance, even though we don’t need those services or programs to start with Windows. If uninstalling the program is not an option than the revamped version of Program Deactivator might be able to help you.

Simply launch Program Deactivator and a list of installed programs is displayed along with its performance impact on your PC. We have already seen earlier in TuneUp Utilities 2011, that it really works and improves performance of the system.

What’s new in TuneUp Utilities 2012 edition of Program Deactivator is the TuneUp Programs-on-Demand Technology, in layman terms the “Automatic” function. Simply keep the function on, and if you launch a “deactivated” program then TuneUp Utilities 2012 will automatically disable this again once you’ve closed it down. Thus it keeps your system in top performance always.

Even though your mileage may vary when using this tool. But if your system is packed up with programs (like ours), TuneUp Program Deactivator will surely help you gain performance.

TuneUp Economy Mode

Windows 7 is optimized to conserve power but it is still not fully optimized. As the number of background process, service or scheduled task increases, the impact on the power can also be felt. This prevents devices from entering low-power (or idle) modes. TuneUp Economy Mode prevents PC hardware components from delivering too much power when it’s not really needed. Once TuneUp Economy Mode is active, all non-essential background processes and services are disabled to reduce power usage. The settings are very easy to configure. In our tests, we have seen an increase in battery life.

Conclusion

In our tests on a laptop running Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit) on Core i5, 4GB RAM, 640GB HDD, boot time fell by around 10 percent, RAM usage fell from 40 percent to 35 percent. Overall, system performance was improved and we actually found our applications launching faster.

You can test TuneUp Utilities 2012 for yourself and see the system performance improvements yourself. The software is available for Windows XP, Vista and 7 (32-bit and 64-bit editions) and can be downloaded from TuneUp Utilities official website for free.