Tag: surveillance

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

The Central Intelligence Agency has decided to “come clean” about what most of already knew. Through a Freedom of Information Act by Foreign Policy, it has been confirmed that the CIA spied on famed activist and linguist Noam Chomsky in the 1970’s.

For years, FOIA requests to the CIA garnered the same denial: “We did not locate any records responsive to your request.” The denials were never entirely credible, given Chomsky’s brazen anti-war activism in the 60s and 70s — and the CIA’s well-documented track record of domestic espionage in the Vietnam era. But the CIA kept denying, and many took the agency at its word.

Now, a public records request by Chomsky biographer Fredric Maxwell reveals a memo between the CIA and the FBI that confirms the existence of a CIA file on Chomsky.

Dated June 8, 1970, the memo discusses Chomsky’s anti-war activities and asks the FBI for more information about an upcoming trip by anti-war activists to North Vietnam. The memo’s author, a CIA official, says the trip has the “ENDORSEMENT OF NOAM CHOMSKY” and requests “ANY INFORMATION” about the people associated with the trip.  request by Foreign Policy, the CIA finally admitted spying on famed activist and linguist Noam Chomsky in the 1970’s.

The CIA also admitted that while they had created a file, it had also been tampered with and destroyed at an unknown time. The destruction of the file may be in violation the Federal Records Act of 1950, requiring all federal agencies to obtain advance approval from the National Archives for any proposed record disposition plans. The Archives is tasked with preserving records with “historical value.” Maybe the dog ate the file.

The other not so surprising confession was the agency’s direct involvement, along with the British, in the 1953 Iranina coup that deposed the democratically elected government

Declassified documents describe in detail how US – with British help – engineered coup against Mohammad Mosaddeq

On the 60th anniversary of an event often invoked by Iranians as evidence of western meddling, the US national security archive at George Washington University published a series of declassified CIA documents.

“The military coup that overthrew Mosaddeq and his National Front cabinet was carried out under CIA direction as an act of US foreign policy, conceived and approved at the highest levels of government,” reads a previously excised section of an internal CIA history titled The Battle for Iran.

The documents, published on the archive’s website under freedom of information laws, describe in detail how the US – with British help – engineered the coup, codenamed TPAJAX by the CIA and Operation Boot by Britain’s MI6.

Britain, and in particular Sir Anthony Eden, the foreign secretary, regarded Mosaddeq as a serious threat to its strategic and economic interests after the Iranian leader nationalised the British Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, latterly known as BP. But the UK needed US support. The Eisenhower administration in Washington was easily persuaded.

This is one of those “no, duh” moments that we have always known was true and is now confirmed.

Yes, folks, it was and still is all about the oil. Forget the spin about Iran’s nuclear weapon’s program that doesn’t exist or the supposed threat to Israel, it’s all about who controls those oil fields. And the CIA is just another tax funded arm of the corporations that control the rest of the world’s government.

But there are no aliens in Area 51. Yeah, right.

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

With each recent revelation about the NSA’s spying programs government officials have tried to reassure the American people that all three branches of government-the Executive branch, the Judiciary branch, and the Congress-knowingly approved these programs and exercised rigorous oversight over them. President Obama recited this talking point just last week, saying: “as President, I’ve taken steps to make sure they have strong oversight by all three branches of government and clear safeguards to prevent abuse and protect the rights of the American people.”  With these three pillars of oversight in place, the argument goes, how could the activities possibly be illegal or invasive of our privacy?

Today, the Washington Post confirmed that two of those oversight pillars-the Executive branch and the court overseeing the spying, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA court )- don’t really exist. The third pillar came down slowly over the last few weeks, with Congressional revelations about the limitations on its oversight, including what Representative Sensennbrenner called “rope a dope” classified briefings. With this, the house of government trust has fallen, and it’s time to act.

(T)he latest report from the Washington Post based on leaked documents shows that an audit of the NSA’s activities shows it broke privacy rules, mostly to spy on Americans, thousands of times per year:

   The National Security Agency has broken privacy rules or overstepped its legal authority thousands of times each year since Congress granted the agency broad new powers in 2008, according to an internal audit and other top-secret documents.

   Most of the infractions involve unauthorized surveillance of Americans or foreign intelligence targets in the United States, both of which are restricted by law and executive order. They range from significant violations of law to typographical errors that resulted in unintended interception of U.S. e-mails and telephone calls.

The audit info comes from Ed Snowden’s leaks, so it seems rather incredible that President Obama, Keith Alexander and Mike Rogers didn’t seem to realize that this audit would eventually come to light, showing that they were flat out 100% lying to the American public.

The chief judge of FISC, Reggie Walton, who has reacted angrily in the past to the claims of FISC being a “rubber stamp”, has now admitted that the FISC really can’t check on what the NSA is doing and relies on what they tell him to make sure that they’re not breaking the law.

   “The FISC is forced to rely upon the accuracy of the information that is provided to the Court,” its chief, U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton, said in a written statement to The Washington Post. “The FISC does not have the capacity to investigate issues of noncompliance, and in that respect the FISC is in the same position as any other court when it comes to enforcing [government] compliance with its orders.”

That’s not quite true. You see, with “any other court” when it comes to “enforcing compliance” things aren’t all hidden away from everyone, so there is scrutiny to make sure that there’s compliance. Not here.

Either way, this again shows just how laughable President Obama’s claims are about the FISC’s oversight abilities:

   “We also have federal judges that we’ve put in place who are not subject to political pressure,” Obama said at a news conference in June. “They’ve got lifetime tenure as federal judges, and they’re empowered to look over our shoulder at the executive branch to make sure that these programs aren’t being abused.”

Not quite. Now we know that they rely on the NSA to tell the judges what they might see if they were looking over their shoulders… and the NSA isn’t entirely truthful to FISC about that.

The latest revelation that the House Intelligence Committee withheld surveillance information from Congress before a critical vote to renew the Patriot Act has resulted in pressure from both side of the aisle and government watch dogs on committee chair Mike Rogers (R-MI). The demand is for an explanation of why a document that prepared by the justice department and intelligence community was not shared by the panel’s leadership. From Spencer Ackerman at The Guardian:

The accusations broaden the focus of the surveillance controversy from the National Security Agency to one of the congressional committees charged with exercising oversight of it – and the panel’s closeness to the NSA it is supposed to oversee.

(Michigan Republican Justin) Amash told the Guardian on Monday that he had confirmed with the House intelligence committee that the committee did not make non-committee members aware of the classified overview from 2011 of the bulk phone records collection program first revealed by the Guardian thanks to whistleblower Edward Snowden. The document was expressly designed to be shared with legislators who did not serve on the panel; it appears that a corresponding document for the Senate in 2011 was made available to all senators.

“Nobody I’ve spoken to in my legislative class remembers seeing any such document,” Amash said.

Amash speculated that the House intelligence committee withheld the document in order to ensure the Patriot Act would win congressional reauthorization, as it ultimately did.

On Monday, a former senate staffer Jennifer Hoelzer, who was deputy chief of staff for Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), spoke with Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! on President Barack Obama’s proposed changes to reform the government’s surveillance policies and programs.

“Unfortunately Edward Snowden was the only means by which we have been able to have this debate,” Hoelzer says. “We, working for Senator Wyden, did everything to try to encourage the administration to bring these facts to light. We’re not talking about sources and methods, we’re not talking about sensitive materials, we’re talking about what they believed the law allows them to do.”

As Spencer Ackerman points out in his article, both Chairman Rogers and his ranking Democratic counterpart, Dutch Ruppersberger of Maryland, are “staunch advocates of the NSA bulk surveillance programs.”

This is the government’s definition of “oversight.”

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

During his press conference on Friday, President Barack Obama admitted, without giving him credit, that the reason the conversation on the NSA is now taking place is thanks to Edward Snowden.

“The leaks triggered a much more rapid and passionate response than would have been the case if I had simply appointed this review board,” Obama said, while adding, “I actually think we would have gotten to the same place-and we would have done so without putting at risk our national security.”

With public opinion rapidly eroding over the surveillance, the president still refused to concede that the program was abused:

“America is not interested in spying on ordinary people,” Obama said. The surveillance programs, he said, were valuable and “should be preserved.” The flaw, if there was one, he said, lay in his assumption that the public would trust that the “checks and balances” in place between the administration, Congress, and the courts was enough to secure personal freedom. Instead, he said, after Snowden’s revelations, “I think people have questions about this program.”

While Obama promised a to create an an independent advisory group made up of “outside experts” who will review controversial surveillance programs, it’s pretty clear that [the group won’t exactly be completely independent of the NSA, as Marcy Wheeler reports:

In the memo Obama just released (pdf) ordering James Clapper to form such a committee, those words “outside” and “independent” disappear entirely.

   I believe it is important to take stock of how these technological advances alter the environment in which we conduct our intelligence mission. To this end, by the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, I am directing you to establish a Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies (Review Group).

   The Review Group will assess whether, in light of advancements in communications technologies, the United States employs its technical collection capabilities in a manner that optimally protects our national security and advances our foreign policy while appropriately accounting for other policy considerations, such as the risk of unauthorized disclosure and our need to maintain the public trust. Within 60 days of its establishment, the Review Group will brief their interim findings to me through the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), and the Review Group will provide a final report and recommendations to me through the DNI no later than December 15, 2013. [my emphasis]

And neither Obama nor the Intelligence Committees get to hear from this Group themselves. It all goes through James Clapper.

And the other group members

President Obama and Director Clapper may solicit advice from notable figures in the technology industry; the president reportedly met with several leaders last Thursday, including Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google VP Vint Cerf. But with both Apple and Google implicated in some level of cooperation with the government under PRISM, the government may need to solicit input from a broader coalition of stakeholders.

So, Obama is putting the liar in charge, asking advice from those who willingly aided and abetted the spying and isn’t going to make the report public but expects this will win over public opinion. Yeah, right. If the public falls for this malarkey, I have a bridge to sell, too.

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

Someone suggested that latest lie told by President Barack Obama on the Jay Leno Show that other night stating, “There is no spying on Americans. We don’t have a domestic spying program,” was up there with the 10 greatest lies ever told. That fallacy of the president’s declaration was made very obvious in a New York Times article by Charlie Savage on the latest and greatest NSA domestic surveillance program. The NSA has been copying virtually all overseas messages that Americans send or receive, scanning them to see if they contain any references to people or subjects the agency thinks might have a link to terrorists.

Hints of the surveillance appeared in a set of rules, leaked by Mr. Snowden, for how the N.S.A. may carry out the 2008 FISA law. One paragraph mentions that the agency “seeks to acquire communications about the target that are not to or from the target.” The pages were posted online by the newspaper The Guardian on June 20, but the telltale paragraph, the only rule marked “Top Secret” amid 18 pages of restrictions, went largely overlooked amid other disclosures.

In an opinion by the New York Times Editorial Board, these messages could be very private and no connection to terrorists or terrorist activity:

That could very well include innocent communications between family members expressing fears of a terror attack. Or messages between an editor and a reporter who is covering international security issues. Or the privileged conversation between a lawyer and a client who is being investigated.

Data collection on this scale goes far beyond what Congress authorized, and it clearly shreds a common-sense understanding of the Fourth Amendment. It’s as if the government were telling its citizens not to even talk about security issues in private messages or else they will come to the attention of the nation’s spies.

At the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Mark Rumold explains what it means to be an NSA target:

When “Target” Means Searching a Specific Person’s Communications

First, at least this much is clear: a “target” under the FA (FISA Amendments Act ) must be (a) a non-US person and (b) not physically located within the United States. A “person,” for purposes of the FAA, includes individuals as well as “any group, entity, association, corporation, or foreign power.”  Under the FAA, the government can thus “target” a single individual (e.g., Vladimir Putin), a small group of people (e.g., Pussy Riot), or a formal corporation or entity (e.g., Gazprom).

So, when the NSA decides to “target” someone (or something), it turns its specific surveillance vacuum at them. [..]

When “Target” Means Searching Everyone’s Communications

Once a target is established, the NSA believes it can expand the sweep of its interception far more broadly than the communhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/world/interactive/2013/jun/20/exhibit-a-procedures-nsa-documentications of the particular, identified target. Notably, the NSA’s procedures state (emphasis added):

   [I]n those cases where NSA seeks to acquire communications about the target that are not to or from the target, NSA will either employ an Internet Protocol filter to ensure that the person from whom it seeks to obtain foreign intelligence information is located overseas, or it will target Internet links that terminate in a foreign country.

In plain English: the NSA believes it not only can (1) intercept the communications of the target, but also (2) intercept communications about a target, even if the target isn’t a party to the communication. The most likely way to assess if a communication is “about” a target is to conduct a content analysis of communications, probably based on specific search terms or selectors.

And that, folks, is what we call a content dragnet.

Importantly, under the NSA’s rules, when the agency intercepts communications about a target, the author or speaker of those communications does not, thereby, become a target: the target remains the original, non-US person. But, because the target remains a non-US person, the most robust protection for Americans’ communications under the FISA Amendments Act (and, indeed, the primary reassurance the government has given about the surveillance) flies out the window. If you communicate about a target of NSA surveillance, your citizenship is irrelevant: the only thing standing between you and NSA surveillance is your IP address or the fiber optic path through which your communications flow.

Jameel Jaffer, American Civil Liberties Union deputy legal director, made the following comments about the latest revelations:

“The program described by the New York Times involves a breathtaking invasion of millions of people’s privacy.  The NSA has cast a massive dragnet over Americans’ international communications, collecting and monitoring all of them, and retaining some untold number of them in government databases.  This is precisely the kind of generalized spying that the Fourth Amendment was intended to prohibit.

“The government’s scrutiny of virtually every international email sent by Americans will have extraordinary consequences for free expression. Americans will inevitably hesitate to discuss controversial topics, visit politically sensitive websites, or interact with foreigners with dissenting views. By injecting the NSA into virtually every cross-border interaction, the U.S. government will forever alter what has always been an open exchange of ideas.”

“There is no spying on Americans. We don’t have a domestic spying program,” is right up there with “I am not a crook” and “I did not have sex with that woman.”

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

The National Security Agency isn’t just looking to “keep us safe” from terrorists by collecting metadata, the NSA is sharing its information with the secretive Special Operations Division of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) which is then passing that information to local authorities, covering up the NSA source.

U.S. directs agents to cover up program used to investigate Americans

by John Shiffman and Kristina Cooke, Reuters

A secretive US Drug Enforcement Administration unit is funneling information from intelligence intercepts, wiretaps, informants and a massive database of telephone records to authorities across the nation to help them launch criminal investigations of Americans.

Although these cases rarely involve national security issues, documents reviewed by Reuters show that law enforcement agents have been directed to conceal how such investigations truly begin – not only from defense lawyers but also sometimes from prosecutors and judges.

The undated documents show that federal agents are trained to “recreate” the investigative trail to effectively cover up where the information originated, a practice that some experts say violates a defendant’s constitutional right to a fair trial. If defendants don’t know how an investigation began, they cannot know to ask to review potential sources of exculpatory evidence – information that could reveal entrapment, mistakes or biased witnesses.

It isn’t just the DEA that is doing this, the Justice Department is also receiving information about non-terrorist related criminal activity.

NSA handing over non-terror intelligence

by Stewart M. Powell, SFGate

The National Security Agency is handing the Justice Department information, derived from its secret electronic eavesdropping programs, about suspected criminal activity unrelated to terrorism.

This little-known byproduct of counterterrorism surveillance continues amid controversy over the NSA’s wide-ranging collection of domestic communications intelligence, including Americans’ telephone calling records and Internet use.

It is unclear whether the referrals have been built upon the content of telephone calls and emails. Administration officials have previously assured Congress that NSA surveillance focuses on so-called metadata and in the main does not delve into the content of individual calls or email messages.

Also, some in the legal community question the constitutionality of criminal prosecutions stemming from intelligence-agency eavesdropping.

Other Agencies Clamor for Data N.S.A. Compiles

by Eric Lichtblau and Michael S. Schmidt, The New York Times

The National Security Agency’s dominant role as the nation’s spy warehouse has spurred frequent tensions and turf fights with other federal intelligence agencies that want to use its surveillance tools for their own investigations, officials say.

Agencies working to curb drug trafficking, cyberattacks, money laundering, counterfeiting and even copyright infringement complain that their attempts to exploit the security agency’s vast resources have often been turned down because their own investigations are not considered a high enough priority, current and former government officials say.

Intelligence officials say they have been careful to limit the use of the security agency’s troves of data and eavesdropping spyware for fear they could be misused in ways that violate Americans’ privacy rights.

The recent disclosures of agency activities by its former contractor Edward J. Snowden have led to widespread criticism that its surveillance operations go too far and have prompted lawmakers in Washington to talk of reining them in. But out of public view, the intelligence community has been agitated in recent years for the opposite reason: frustrated officials outside the security agency say the spy tools are not used widely enough.

At emptywheel, bmaz points out this is nothing in the Reuter’s article on the SOD wasn’t already known, just no one has been paying attention:

First, the headline is misleading. The caption is:

   Exclusive: U.S. directs agents to cover up program used to investigate Americans

Well, not really (and, in fairness, the actual body of the article is about a practice that is a result of the SOD). DEA’s Special Ops Division is neither new nor secret in the least, and there is no way to “cover it up”. Google it; I got “About 289,000 results (0.29 seconds)” as a return. You will get something similar. The revelation that SOD was used in the Viktor Bout case is also not new, here is a Time story detailing it from 2011.

In fact, any criminal defense attorney who did cocaine hub conspiracy cases in the 90′s could have told you most of the Reuter’s article in their sleep. That was exactly the scene that DEA-SOD was born from. As the war on drugs went nuclear, the DEA devised what they termed the “Kingpin Strategy” (pdf):

   In 1992, the DEA instituted the Kingpin Strategy that focused investigative and enforcement efforts on specific drug trafficking organizations. The DEA planned to dis- able major organizations by attacking their most vulnerable areas-the chemicals needed to process the drugs, their finances, communications, transportation, and leadership structure.

   The Kingpin Strategy held that the greatest impact on the drug trade took place when major drug organizations were dis- rupted, weakened, and destroyed. This strategy focused enforcement efforts and resources against the highest-level traffickers and their organizations, and provided a systematic way of attacking the various vulnerabilities of the organiza- tions. By systematically attacking each of these vulnerabilities, the strategy aimed to destroy the entire organization, and with it, the organization’s capacity to finance, produce, and distrib- ute massive amounts of illegal drugs. Each blow weakened the organization and improved the prospects for arresting and prosecuting the leaders and managers of the organizations.

   The Kingpin Strategy evolved from the DEA’s domestic and overseas intelligence gathering and investigations.

And from Kingpin sprung the Special Operations Division:

   Under the original Kingpin Strategy, DEA headquarters often dictated the selection of Kingpin targets. In response to the SACs’ concerns, Administrator Constantine agreed to allow them more latitude in target selection. In conjuction with this decision, he established the Special Operations Division at Newington, Virginia, in 1994 to coordinate multi-jurisdictional investigations against major drug trafficking organizations responsible for the flow of drugs into the United States.

On this morning’s Democracy Now!, Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald responded to a report by Reuters.

“It’s a full-frontal assault on the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendments and on the integrity of the judicial process, because they’re deceiving everyone involved in criminal prosecutions about how this information has been obtained,” Greenwald says.

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

Strange, the US intelligence agencies didn’t intercept any communications warning of the prison breaks but have info on alleged “imminent attacks.”

Yemen on ‘high alert’ over warning of imminent al-Qaida attack

by Ian Black, The Guardian

US personnel flown out of country as reports claim ‘extraordinary and unprecedented’ security measures in force in capital Sana’a

Yemeni security forces have been put on high alert amid warnings of an imminent attack by al-Qaida in Sana’a, as the US and Britain withdrew embassy staff and urged their citizens to leave the country.

BBC Arabic quoted a Yemeni security source as saying that “extraordinary and unprecedented” security measures had been put in place, with armoured vehicles deployed at the presidential palace and other sensitive government and foreign installations in Yemen’s capital.

Dozens of al-Qaida operatives were said to have streamed into Sana’a in the last few days, apparently to take part in a terrorist attack, the BBC said. The Yemeni claim could not be independently confirmed.

US embassy closures used to bolster case for NSA surveillance programs

by Spencer Ackerman and Dan Roberts, The Guardian

Congress told that NSA monitoring led to interception of al-Qaida threats but privacy campaigners fear ulterior political motives

US embassies in the Middle East are to remain closed for the rest of the week as supporters of the National Security Agency’s sweeping surveillance powers used the unspecified terror alert to bolster the case against reining in the controversial measures.

The closures follow the alleged interception of al-Qaida communications in Yemen, which intelligence committee members in Congress have been told were collected overseas using powers granted to the NSA under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act – not the bulk surveillance programs disclosed by the Guardian and the Washington Post thanks to whistleblower Edward Snowden.

A privacy group questioned the publicity given to the latest alert after the State Department announced on Sunday evening that the number of embassies and consulates closed “out of an abundance of caution”

would be increased, with some remaining shut for up to a week.

Rebublican senator Saxby Chambliss said the NSA had identified threats that were the most serious for years and akin to levels of “terrorist chatter” picked up before 9/11.

On Democracy Now!, journalist for The Guardian, Glenn Greenwald discusses the latest terrorist treats and the closings ogf US embassies int the the region.

The Obama administration has announced it will keep 19 diplomatic posts in North Africa and the Middle East closed for up to a week, due to fears of a possible militant threat. On Sunday, Senator Saxby Chambliss, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the decision to close the embassies was based on information collected by the National Security Agency. “If we did not have these programs, we simply would not be able to listen in on the bad guys,” Chambliss said, in a direct reference to increasing debate over widespread spying of all Americans revealed by Glenn Greenwald of The Guardian. “Nobody has ever questioned or disputed that the U.S. government, like all governments around the world, ought to be eavesdropping and monitoring the conversations of people who pose an actual threat to the United States in terms of plotting terrorist attacks,” Greenwald says.

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

As a hearing on reining in the secret surveillance program was taking place, another “tool” in the NSA’s collection of on-line data was revealed to the public.

Senate Panel Presses N.S.A. on Phone Logs

by Charlie Savage and David E. Sanger, The New York Times

Senators of both parties on Wednesday sharply challenged the National Security Agency’s collection of records of all domestic phone calls, even as the latest leaked N.S.A. document provided new details on the way the agency monitors Web browsing around the world.

At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, the chairman, Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, accused Obama administration officials of overstating the success of the domestic call log program. He said he had been shown a classified list of “terrorist events” detected through surveillance, and it did not show that “dozens or even several terrorist plots” had been thwarted by the domestic program.

“If this program is not effective it has to end. So far, I’m not convinced by what I’ve seen,” Mr. Leahy said, citing the “massive privacy implications” of keeping records of every American’s domestic calls.

XKeyscore: NSA tool collects ‘nearly everything a user does on the internet’

by Glenn Greenwald, The Guardian

• XKeyscore gives ‘widest-reaching’ collection of online data

• NSA analysts require no prior authorization for searches

• Sweeps up emails, social media activity and browsing history

• NSA’s XKeyscore program – read one of the presentations

A top secret National Security Agency program allows analysts to search with no prior authorization through vast databases containing emails, online chats and the browsing histories of millions of individuals, according to documents provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The NSA boasts in training materials that the program, called XKeyscore, is its “widest-reaching” system for developing intelligence from the internet.

The latest revelations will add to the intense public and congressional debate around the extent of NSA surveillance programs. They come as senior intelligence officials testify to the Senate judiciary committee on Wednesday, releasing classified documents in response to the Guardian’s earlier stories on bulk collection of phone records and Fisa surveillance court oversight.

The files shed light on one of Snowden’s most controversial statements, made in his first video interview published by the Guardian on June 10.

“I, sitting at my desk,” said Snowden, could “wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant, to a federal judge or even the president, if I had a personal email”.

US officials vehemently denied this specific claim. Mike Rogers, the Republican chairman of the House intelligence committee, said of Snowden’s assertion: “He’s lying. It’s impossible for him to do what he was saying he could do.”

But training materials for XKeyscore detail how analysts can use it and other systems to mine enormous agency databases by filling in a simple on-screen form giving only a broad justification for the search. The request is not reviewed by a court or any NSA personnel before it is processed.

XKeyscore, the documents boast, is the NSA’s “widest reaching” system developing intelligence from computer networks – what the agency calls Digital Network Intelligence (DNI). One presentation claims the program covers “nearly everything a typical user does on the internet”, including the content of emails, websites visited and searches, as well as their metadata.

Analysts can also use XKeyscore and other NSA systems to obtain ongoing “real-time” interception of an individual’s internet activity.

All In host Chris Hayes talks about the new efforts at transparency and the latest NSA revelations courtesy of Edward Snowden with Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Glenn Greenwald of The Guardian.

With the crackdown on whistleblowers and failure to pursue the crimes they revealed, one wonders just how far is the US from becoming the Soviet Russia of the 21st century.

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

Before last week’s vote on the Amash/Conyer Amendment, that would have stripped financing for the NSA program of unfettered surveillance, the American people were already shifting in how they viewed these programs. Over the weekend Pew conducted another poll showing that the shift is even more stark.

“Overall, 47% say their greater concern about government anti-terrorism policies is that they have gone too far in restricting the average person’s civil liberties, while 35% say they are more concerned that policies have not gone far enough to protect the country. This is the first time in Pew Research polling that more have expressed concern over civil liberties than protection from terrorism since the question was first asked in 2004.”

Major opinion shifts, in the US and Congress, on NSA surveillance and privacy

by Glenn Greenwald, The Guardian

Pew finds that, for the first time since 9/11, Americans are now more worried about civil liberties abuses than terrorism

Perhaps more amazingly still, this shift has infected the US Congress. Following up on last week’s momentous House vote – in which 55% of Democrats and 45% of Republicans defied the White House and their own leadership to vote for the Amash/Conyers amendment to ban the NSA’s bulk phone records collection program – the New York Times has an article this morning which it summarizes on its front page this way:

Click on image to enlarge

The article describes how opposition to the NSA, which the paper says was recently confined to the Congressional “fringes”, has now “built a momentum that even critics say may be unstoppable, drawing support from Republican and Democratic leaders, attracting moderates in both parties and pulling in some of the most respected voices on national security in the House.” [..]

The strategy for the NSA and its Washington defenders for managing these changes is now clear: advocate their own largely meaningless reform to placate this growing sentiment while doing nothing to actually rein in the NSA’s power. “Backers of sweeping surveillance powers now say they recognize that changes are likely, and they are taking steps to make sure they maintain control over the extent of any revisions,” says the NYT.

The primary problem enabling out-of-control NSA spying has long been the Intelligence Committees in both houses of Congress. That’s an ironic twist given that those were the committees created in the wake of the mid-1970s Church Committee to provide rigorous oversight, as a response to the recognition that Executive Branch’s surveillance powers were being radically abused – and would inevitably be abused in the future – without robust transparency and accountability. [..]

The largest changes toward demanding civil liberties protections have occurred among liberal Democrats, Tea Party Republicans, independents and liberal/moderate Republicans. Only self-identified “moderate/conservative Democrats” – the Obama base – remains steadfast and steady in defense of NSA surveillance. The least divided, most-pro-NSA caucus in the House for last week’s vote was the corporatist Blue Dog Democrat caucus, which overwhelmingly voted to protect the NSA’s bulk spying on Americans.

As I’ve repeatedly said, the only ones defending the NSA at this point are the party loyalists and institutional authoritarians in both parties. That’s enough for the moment to control Washington outcomes – as epitomized by the unholy trinity that saved the NSA in the House last week: Pelosi, John Bohener and the Obama White House – but it is clearly not enough to stem the rapidly changing tide of public opinion.

On Sunday, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), one of the harshest critics of the NSA and the FISA court, was a guest on C-Span’s Newsmankers. He called the FISA court “anachronistic” and stated that he is most likely to support overhaul of the secretive court. He was particularly alarmed by the way that the Patriot Act was being interpreted by the federal government in its fight against terrorism.

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

On Thursday the White House was mum on whether they would seek renewal of the “secret” court order that allows the NSA to collect the phone records and e-mails of Americans without due process.

Officials declined to discuss what action they intend to take about the order at the center of the current surveillance scandal, which formally expires at 5pm Friday. [..]

On Thursday, the administration would not answer a question first posed by the Guardian six days ago about its intentions to continue, modify or discontinue the Verizon bulk-collection order. The White House referred queries to the Justice Department. “We have no announcement at this time,” said Justice Department spokesman Brian Fallon. The NSA and office of the Director of National Intelligence did not respond to questions.

At a hearing on Wednesday before the House Judiciary Committee, the top lawyer for the director of national intelligence, Robert S Litt, was asked by the chairman, Bob Goodlatte, if the administration thought if a surveillance program “of this magnitude … could be indefinitely kept secret from the American people?”

Litt answered, “well, we tried.”

Since the cat is out of the bag, so to speak, the White House decided on Friday to come clean that they would continue to violate the Fourth Amendment with impunity:

In an unprecedented move prompted by the Guardian’s disclosure in June of the NSA’s indiscriminate collection of Verizon metadata, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) has publicly revealed that the scheme has been extended yet again.

The statement does not mention Verizon by name, nor make clear how long the extension lasts for, but it is likely to span a further three months in line with previous routine orders from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (Fisa). [..]

The decision to go public with the latest Fisa court order is an indication of how the Obama administration has opened up the previously hidden world of mass communications surveillance, however slightly, since former NSA contractor Edward Snowden exposed the scheme to the Guardian.

Earlier on Friday, ODNI lawyer, Litt, told the Brookings Institute that the intelligence chiefs would consider NSA data collection changesbut continued defending the unconstitutional program:

“It is, however, not the only way that we could regulate intelligence collection,” Litt said. “We’re currently working to declassify more information about our activities to inform that discussion,” particularly concerning the bulk collection of Americans’ telephone records. [..]

“That could be a significant problem in a fast-moving investigation where speed and agility are critical, such as the plot to bomb the New York City subways in 2009,” Litt said.

But Litt also noted: “All of the metadata we get under this program is information that the telecommunications companies obtain and keep for their own business purposes.”

He acknowledged in the beginning of his speech: “There is an entirely understandable concern that the government may abuse this power.”

In response to a question about the legality of the program, Litt also suggested that congress could pass a law permitting the NSA to collect the records.

“You’d have to make sure that it enables the kind of flexibility and operational agility that we need to conduct the collection,” Litt said. “We don’t think a new statute is necessary. We think we have the authority. But obviously, if Congress thinks a new statute is appropriate for this, Congress can provide that.”

Brilliant, let’s pass another unconstitutional law. Way to go, Barack.

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

Microsoft has previously admitted to cooperating with the NSA. New revelations reveal that it is far worse than was previously disclosed giving the NSA up-to-date access to its customer data whenever the company changes its encryption and related software technology. Microsoft helped the security agency find ways to circumvent its encryption on its Outlook.com portal’s encrypted Web chat function, and the agency was given what is described as “pre-encryption stage” access to e-mail on Outlook, including Hotmail e-mail.

How Microsoft handed the NSA access to encrypted messages

by Glenn Greenwald, Ewen MacAskill, Laura Poitras, Spencer Ackerman and Dominic Rushe, The Guardian, Thursday 11 July 2013

• Secret files show scale of Silicon Valley co-operation on Prism

• Outlook.com encryption unlocked even before official launch

• Skype worked to enable Prism collection of video calls

• Company says it is legally compelled to comply

The files provided by Edward Snowden illustrate the scale of co-operation between Silicon Valley and the intelligence agencies over the last three years. They also shed new light on the workings of the top-secret Prism program, which was disclosed by the Guardian and the Washington Post last month.

The documents show that:

• Microsoft helped the NSA to circumvent its encryption to address concerns that the agency would be unable to intercept web chats on the new Outlook.com portal;

• The agency already had pre-encryption stage access to email on Outlook.com, including Hotmail;

• The company worked with the FBI this year to allow the NSA easier access via Prism to its cloud storage service SkyDrive, which now has more than 250 million users worldwide;

• Microsoft also worked with the FBI’s Data Intercept Unit to “understand” potential issues with a feature in Outlook.com that allows users to create email aliases;

• In July last year, nine months after Microsoft bought Skype, the NSA boasted that a new capability had tripled the amount of Skype video calls being collected through Prism;

While Microsoft claimed it had no choice but to cooperate arguing that it provides customer data “only in response to government demands and we only ever comply with orders for requests about specific accounts or identifiers”. Emptywheel proprietress, Marcy Wheeler is interested in some of the details about the cooperation:

For example, the story describes that this cooperation takes place through the Special Source Operations unit.

   The latest documents come from the NSA’s Special Source Operations (SSO) division, described by Snowden as the “crown jewel” of the agency. It is responsible for all programs aimed at US communications systems through corporate partnerships such as Prism.

But we saw that when NSA approached (presumably) Microsoft in 2002, it did not approach via SSO; it used a more formal approach through counsel.

In addition, note how Skype increased cooperation in the months before Microsoft purchased it for what was then considered a hugely inflated price, and what is now being called (in other legal jurisdictions) so dominant that it doesn’t have to cooperate with others.

   One document boasts that Prism monitoring of Skype video production has roughly tripled since a new capability was added on 14 July 2012. “The audio portions of these sessions have been processed correctly all along, but without the accompanying video. Now, analysts will have the complete ‘picture’,” it says.

   Eight months before being bought by Microsoft, Skype joined the Prism program in February 2011.

   According to the NSA documents, work had begun on smoothly integrating Skype into Prism in November 2010, but it was not until 4 February 2011 that the company was served with a directive to comply signed by the attorney general.

   The NSA was able to start tasking Skype communications the following day, and collection began on 6 February. “Feedback indicated that a collected Skype call was very clear and the metadata looked complete,” the document stated, praising the co-operation between NSA teams and the FBI. “Collaborative teamwork was the key to the successful addition of another provider to the Prism system.”

While this isn’t as obvious as Verizon’s MCI purchase – which for the first time led that carrier to hand over Internet data – it does seem that those companies that cooperate with the NSA end up taking over their rivals.

The Guardian article includes a statement from Microsoft and a joint statement by Shawn Turner, spokesman for the director of National Intelligence, and Judith Emmel, spokeswoman for the NSA.

In his New York Times article, James Risen reports that some Silicon Valley companies fearing negative public response have begun to openly push back against the security agency:

Yahoo, for example, is now asking the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the secret court that rules on data collection requests by the government, to allow it to make public the record of its 2008 challenge to the constitutionality of the law requiring it to provide its customer data to the agency.

A Yahoo spokeswoman said Thursday that the company was “seeking permission from the FISA court to unseal the arguments and orders from the 2008 case.”

Risen also reported that Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) believes that the White House is considering scaling back data collection over concerns about privacy issues and public backlash against the security agency’s large-scale collection of the personal data:

“I have a feeling that the administration is getting concerned about the bulk phone records collection, and that they are thinking about whether to move administratively to stop it,” he said. He added he believed that the continuing controversy prompted by Mr. Snowden had changed the political calculus in Congress over the balance between security and civil liberties, which has been heavily weighted toward security since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

“I think we are making a comeback,” Mr. Wyden said, referring to privacy and civil liberties advocates.

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

At his blog, Glenn Greenwald posted that he had written an article for O Globo, the large Brazilian newspaper based in Rio de Janeiro revealing that millions of Brazilians emails and calls, too, had been scooped up by the US spy program. This followed on the news in Der Spiegel that gave a detailed account of the mass collection of data from the electronic communications of Germans. The Brazilian government is now demanding an explanation from the US.

The foreign minister, Antonio Patriota, expressed “deep concern” about a report that appeared in O Globo newspaper at the weekend, which detailed how the US National Security Agency (NSA) had conducted extensive spying activities in Brazil.

Based on documents provided by Snowden, the O Globo story showed how the US had been carrying out covert surveillance on ostensibly friendly nations. Similar reports in Europe and Hong Kong have sparked indignation in recent weeks.

After the Brazilian president, Dilma Rousseff, called in cabinet ministers to discuss the issue, the government issued a statement of concern.

After the flight carrying Bolivian president Evo Morales was forced to land in Austria over the suspicion that NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden was on board, Bolivia and two other Latin American countries, Venezuela and Nicaragua have offered Snowden asylum. The offers spark some rather undiplomatic responses from elected officials on the Sunday talk shows. The most notable was from Sen. Robert Menedez (D-NJ) who, after calling for sanctions against the three countries, told Meet the Press‘s David Gregory:

“I’m not surprised by the countries that are offering him asylum,” Menendez said Sunday. “They like sticking it to the United States.”

The second half of Glenn Greenwald’s interview with Snowden that was taped in Hong Kong by Laura Poitras on 6 June 2013 was posted at The Guardian.

Juan Cole had this to say about the NSA spying and the Obama administration

The general disappointment with the Obama administration on issues of surveillance, drone warfare, the surge in Afghanistan, extension of the Bush tax cuts for the super-rich, labor issues and the environment felt by anyone to the left of David Brooks appears to be a factor in Snowden’s whistleblowing. He must also have been frustrated to see Senators such as Ron Wyden (D-OR) muzzled and unable to tell the American people forthrightly what was troubling him about the secret interpretation of the USA Patriot Act (which is of course the most unpatriotic piece of legislation ever passed). Muzzling a sitting senator about an issue of clear public concern surely is unconstitutional. You can’t have a democracy that way. Snowden knew this and is trying to restore what we lost to the National Security Super-State.

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

As the United States scrambles to cover up the contradictory web if lies it has woven over the NSA spying, the Europeans have expressed their displeasure and threatened to scuttle talks on the trade agreement with the US. This left President Barack Obama, who has been touring Africa, trying to mend fences:

After the Guardian’s disclosure that US agencies were secretly bugging the French embassy in Washington and France’s office at the UN in New York, (French president, François) Hollande called for an immediate halt to the alleged spying.

“We cannot accept this kind of behaviour between partners and allies,” he said. “We ask that this stop immediately … There can be no negotiations or transactions in all areas until we have obtained these guarantees, for France but also for all of the European Union … We know well that there are systems that have to be checked, especially to fight terrorism, but I don’t think that it is in our embassies or in the European Union that this threat exists.”

(German chancellor, Angela) Merkel delivered her severest warning yet on the NSA debacle. “We are no longer in the cold war,” her spokesman, Steffen Seibert, said. “If it is confirmed that diplomatic representations of the European Union and individual European countries have been spied upon, we will clearly say that bugging friends is unacceptable.”

Seibert said Berlin was keen on the trade talks with Washington, but qualified that support: “Mutual trust is necessary in order to come to an agreement.” [..]

Martin Schulz, the president of the European parliament, likened the NSA to the Soviet-era KGB and indirectly suggested a delay in the talks. Greens in the European parliament, as well as in France and Germany, called for the conference to be postponed pending an investigation of the allegations. They also called for the freezing of other data-sharing deals between the EU and the US, on air transport passengers and banking transactions, for example, and called for the NSA whistleblower, Edward Snowden, to be granted political asylum in Europe. French Greens asked Hollande to grant Snowden asylum in France.

Back in the US, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper is still in hot water despite for his halfhearted letter of apology to Congress for “erroneous” responses to questions he was given days before.

But Clapper did not say in the letter why he had taken him until June to correct the mistake. Senator Wyden’s spokesman made it clear on Monday that the senator had made attempts to get Clapper to correct the record before the revelations in the Guardian, but was rebuffed. “Senator Wyden had a staff member contact the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on a secure phone line soon after the March hearing to address the inaccurate statement regarding bulk collection on Americans.

“The ODNI acknowledged that the statement was inaccurate but refused to correct the public record when given the opportunity. Senator Wyden’s staff informed the ODNI that this was a serious concern.

“Senator Wyden continued to raise concerns about the government’s reliance on secret law in the weeks following the hearing, prior to the Guardian publishing its first story several weeks later.”

A bipartisan group of senators expressed their displeasure  and accused Clapper of intentionally misleading congress to prevent a public discussion of secret interpretations of the Patriot Act thus undermining public trust in government.

A week ago, Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Mark Udall (D-Colo.) wrote Gen. Keith Alexander, head of the NSA, that documents on its web site intended to clarify the two surveillance programs, Section 215 of the Patriot Act and Section 702 of FISA, were ” misleading and inaccurate.” The “fact sheet” were scrubbed from the web site shortly after the senators complaint.

Following a complaint from two senators, the National Security Agency has removed from its website two fact sheets designed to shed light on and defend a pair of surveillance programs. Users now trying to access the documents detailing surveillance under legal authorities known as Section 215 and Section 702 receive an error message when they try to load the fact sheets. [..]

The documents, still available here, were published in the wake of revelations about the extent of the NSA’s surveillance programs. They sought to highlight the safeguards the NSA uses to make sure American communications aren’t caught up in its surveillance – or if they are, what the NSA does to remove identifying information about U.S. citizens. Wyden and Udall, both of whom sit on the Senate Intelligence Committee, have long called for more transparency on how the NSA protects Americans’ privacy — but said the NSA’s fact sheets gave the wrong impression.

Meanwhile in Russia Edward Snowden remains at the Moscow airport without a valid passport. With his asylum options shrinking, he has withdarwn his request for  asylum with Russia after President Vladimir Putin required he stop leaking information about the US spy programs.

Icelandic investigative journalist and spokesperson for WikiLeaks, Kristinn Hrafnsson appeared with Amy Goodman and Aaron Mate on today’s Democracy Now blasting the United States for leaving Snowden “stateless.”