The History Book Club discussion
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The predecessor of the National Security Agency was the Armed Forces Security Agency (AFSA), created on May 20, 1949.
This organization was originally established within the U.S. Department of Defense under the command of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The AFSA was to direct Department of Defense communications and electronic intelligence activities, except those of U.S. military intelligence units.
AFSA failed to achieve a centralized communications intelligence mechanism, and failed to coordinate with civilian agencies that shared its interests (the Department of State, CIA, and FBI).
In December 1951, President Harry S. Truman ordered a study to correct AFSA's failures.
Six months later, the four members finished and issued the Brownell Report, which criticized AFSA, strengthened it and resulted in its redesignation as the National Security Agency.
The agency was formally established by Truman in a memorandum of October 24, 1952, that revised National Security Council Intelligence Directive (NSCID) 9.[11] Truman's memo was later declassified.
Memorials
Crews associated with NSA missions have been involved in a number of dangerous and deadly situations.
The USS Liberty incident in 1967 and USS Pueblo incident in 1968 are examples of the losses endured during the Cold War.
The National Security Agency/Central Security Service Cryptologic Memorial honors and remembers the fallen personnel, both military and civilian, of these intelligence missions.
It is made of black granite, and has 171 names (as of 2013) carved into it.
It is located at NSA headquarters. A tradition of declassifying the stories of the fallen was begun in 2001.
In 1999, NSA founded the NSA Hall of Honor, a memorial at the National Cryptologic Museum in Fort Meade, Maryland.
The memorial is a "tribute to the pioneers and heroes who have made significant and long-lasting contributions to American cryptology".
NSA employees must be retired for more than fifteen years to qualify for the memorial.
Source: Wikipedia
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Headquarters
Headquarters for the National Security Agency is set apart from but is technically inside Fort George G. Meade, Maryland.
Ft. Meade is about 20 mi (32 km) southwest of Baltimore,[15] and 25 mi (40 km) northeast of Washington, DC.
The NSA has its own exit off Maryland Route 295 South labeled "NSA Employees Only".
The exit may only be used by people with the proper clearances, and security vehicles parked along the road guard the entrance.
NSA is the largest employer in the U.S. state of Maryland, and two-thirds of its personnel work at Ft. Meade.
Built on 350 acres (140 ha; 0.55 sq mi)[21] of Ft. Meade's 5,000 acres (2,000 ha; 7.8 sq mi),[22] the site has 1,300 buildings and an estimated 18,000 parking spaces.
The main NSA headquarters and operations building is what James Bamford, author of Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency, describes as "a modern boxy structure" that appears similar to "any stylish office building." which is covered with one-way dark glass.
The building has 3,000,000 square feet (280,000 m2), or more than 68 acres (28 ha), of floor space. Bamford said that the U.S. Capitol "could easily fit inside it four times over."
Under the outside glass the building uses copper shielding to trap in any signals and sounds to prevent espionage.
The facility has over 100 watchposts, one of them being the visitor control center, a two-story area that serves as the entrance.
At the entrance, a white pentagonal structure, visitor badges are issued to visitors, and security clearances of employees are checked.
The visitor center includes a painting of the NSA seal.
The OPS2A building, the tallest building in the NSA complex and the location of much of the agency's operations directorate, is accessible from the visitor center. Bamford described it as a "dark glass Rubik's Cube".
The facility's "red corridor" houses non-security operations such as concessions and the drug store. The name refers to the "red badge" which is worn by someone without a security clearance.
The NSA headquarters includes a cafeteria, a credit union, ticket counters for airlines and entertainment, a barbershop, and a bank.
NSA headquarters has its own post office, fire department, and police force.
The employees at the NSA headquarters reside in various places in the Baltimore-Washington area, including Annapolis, Baltimore, and Columbia in Maryland and the District of Columbia, including the Georgetown community.
History of headquarters
When the agency was established, its headquarters and cryptographic center were in the Naval Security Station in Washington, D.C.. The COMINT functions were located in Arlington Hall in Northern Virginia, which served as the headquarters of the U.S. Army's cryptographic operations.
Because the Soviet Union had detonated a nuclear bomb and because the facilities were crowded, the federal government wanted to move several agencies, including the AFSA/NSA.
A planning committee considered Fort Knox, but Fort Meade, Maryland, was ultimately chosen as NSA headquarters because it was far enough away from Washington, D.C. in case of a nuclear strike and was close enough so its employees would not have to move their families.
Construction of additional buildings began after the agency occupied buildings at Ft. Meade in the late 1950s, which they soon outgrew.
In 1963 the new headquarters building, nine stories tall, opened. NSA workers referred to the building as the "Headquarters Building" and since the NSA management occupied the top floor, workers used "Ninth Floor" to refer to their leaders.
COMSEC remained in Washington, D.C., until its new building was completed in 1968.
In September 1986, the Operations 2A and 2B buildings, both copper-shielded to prevent eavesdropping, opened with a dedication by President Ronald Reagan.
The four NSA buildings became known as the "Big Four."
The NSA director moved to 2B when it opened.
National Security Agency headquarters circa 1950s. Note: NSA gratefully acknowledges Presidential Libraries and Museum entities and their staffs for their contribution of materials for its 60th Anniversary publication.
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They are even planning more expansion!
Planned headquarters expansion
NSA had a groundbreaking ceremony at Ft. Meade in May 2013 for its High Performance Computing Center 2, expected to open in 2016.
Called Site M, the center has a 150 megawatt power substation, 14 administrative buildings and 10 parking garages.
It cost $3.2 billion and covers 227 acres (92 ha; 0.355 sq mi).[30] The center is 1,800,000 square feet (17 ha; 0.065 sq mi)[30] and initially uses 60 megawatts of electricity.
Stretching 16 years into the future, increments 2 and 3 would quadruple the space, covering 5,800,000 square feet (54 ha; 0.21 sq mi) with 60 buildings and 40 parking garages.
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By Ryan Gallagher | Posted Tuesday, July 2, 2013, at 4:08 PM
For almost a month, revelations about the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs have made headlines across the world. But the international legal and political backlash is only just beginning.
In June, details about the NSA’s efforts to spy on foreigners’ communications sparked outrage in Europe, prompting calls for renewed efforts to strengthen data protections regulations. Now, the rhetoric is being replaced with action.
Following the exposure of the NSA’s Internet snooping system PRISM, the vice president of the European Commission, the EU’s executive body, squared up to Attorney General Eric Holder over the scope of the program. Further information published by the Guardian on Sunday revealed that the NSA is not only monitoring foreigners for intelligence-gathering and counter-terrorism purposes, but it is also bugging diplomatic missions used by EU officials. This has prompted France to threaten to halt European trade talks unless the United States “immediately” stops its surveillance of allies, potentially jeopardizing a free-trade agreement worth billions of dollars every year.
President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry have tried to play down the spying, insisting that bugging allies is normal behavior conducted by all intelligence agencies. But the administration’s dismissive remarks appear to have only provoked further anger among some European leaders, who seem genuinely shocked and aghast at the scope of the NSA’s activities. Martin Schulz, the president of the European Parliament, described the surveillance as “comparable to measures taken in the past by the KGB, by the secret service of the Soviet Union."
In Germany, a country with a touchy relationship with privacy due to the brutal legacy of East Germany’s Stasi secret police, revelations about the NSA explicitly targeting Germans’ communications for mass surveillance have incensed both the public and political class alike. A spokesman for German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that “bugging friends is unacceptable" and added that “we are no longer in the cold war.” German newspaper Der Spiegel reported Sunday that federal prosecutors in the country are investigating the NSA’s spying and that criminal complaints will likely be issued in relation to the scandal.
Elsewhere, government officials in Luxemburg, Austria, Turkey, and Japan have demanded answers from the Obama administration about the NSA’s spying efforts. And U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said Monday when asked about the U.S. bugging diplomatic missions that international law means “diplomatic activities should be protected.” Indeed, the 1961 Vienna convention on diplomatic relations specifically states that "the official correspondence of the mission shall be inviolable." But that does not appear to have stopped the NSA, which reportedly deemed 38 embassies and missions “targets” for covert communications surveillance.
The classified documents leaked by NSA contractor Edward Snowden continue to illustrate how the agency has spread its surveillance tentacles around the world. It is possible, however, that the forced transparency Snowden has brought about with his leaks may lead to a culture-shift in the NSA’s activities. Public opinion on the NSA’s spying is divided in the United States. But international legal cases and mushrooming diplomatic fallouts in Europe and elsewhere could make the difference—reining in aggressive surveillance programs that appear to have spiralled to alarming proportions under cover of total secrecy.
(Source for all of the above - Slate)
http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_ten...
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Jerome, Assisting Moderator - Upcoming Books and Releases
(last edited Jul 16, 2013 08:29AM)
(new)
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by Matthew Aid (no photo)Synopsis:
In February 2006, while researching this book, Matthew Aid uncovered a massive and secret document reclassification program—a revelation that made the front page of the New York Times. This was only one of the discoveries Aid has made during two decades of research in formerly top-secret documents. In The Secret Sentry, Aid provides the first-ever full history of America’s largest security apparatus, the National Security Agency.
This comprehensive account traces the growth of the agency from 1945 to the present through critical moments in its history, from the cold war up to its ongoing involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq. Aid explores the agency’s involvement in the Iraqi weapons intelligence disaster, where evidence that NSA officials called “ambiguous” was used as proof of Iraqi WMD capacity, and details the intense debate within the NSA over its unprecedented role, pressed by the Bush-Cheney administration, in spying on U.S. citizens.
Today, the NSA has become the most important source of intelligence for the U.S. government, providing 60 percent of the president’s daily intelligence briefing. While James Bamford’s New York Times bestseller The Shadow Factory covered the NSA since 9/11, The Secret Sentry contains new information about every period since World War II. It provides a shadow history of global affairs, from the creation of Israel to the War on Terror.
by James Bamford
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The Era of Metadata
Five blunt thoughts on the growing surveillance state:
1. The thing political figures fear most is a terror event that will ruin their careers. The biggest thing they fear is that a bomb goes off and it can be traced to something they did or didn’t do, an action they did or didn’t support. They all fear being accused of not doing enough to keep the citizenry safe.
This is true of Republicans and Democrats. Their anxiety has no ideology. They all fear being the incumbent in the election in which the challenger says, in a debate: “That’s all well and fine, Senator, we’re sure you’re upset at what happened. But at the moment it counted, when you could have supported all efforts to keep the people safe and bust the terror network, you weren’t there. You were off giving lectures on what you call civil liberties, and explaining why you were voting ‘no.’ Well, life is a civil liberty—and now a thousand people are dead.” Nobody wants to be that incumbent.
Because of that primal political fear, there is a built-in bias within the U.S. government toward doing too much and not too little. There is a built-in bias toward using too much muscle, too much snooping, too much gathering of data. The bias is toward overreach. The era of metadata encourages all this: There’s always more information to be got.
Presidents are very much part of this, as are congressmen, and judges too. Nobody wants to be the judge who didn’t sign off on the request that could arguably have impeded the network that put the dirty bomb on 42nd and Eighth. No one wants to be the judge whose name the U.S. intelligence agencies leak to the press as the real culprit, the real reason they couldn’t stop the bad guys. “Judge Murphy was generally seen as a loner on the bench, a man more drawn to horticultural pursuits and abstruse comment-thread debate on the history of the Fourth Amendment than evenings out with colleagues on the court and in the local bar association. ‘He’s about to discover why people have friends,’ said a court worker who spoke anonymously in order not to appear to be taking sides in the growing controversy. ‘I hope he survives this, even in a diminished capacity, because in a way the law benefits from his kind of detachment and ethereal approach.’” Nobody wants to be Judge Murphy.
Because of the built-in bias in the system—the bias to do too much, to go too far—the creation of an invasive American surveillance state is probably inevitable. Politicians are people who can do math. The number of people who want to be safe, they are certain, is far greater than the number worried about abstract issues of privacy. Moreover, they figure voters are more or less like this: They’ll have their little blog debates about privacy right up until a bomb goes off, and then they’ll all go into a swivet and join a new chorus: “Why didn’t you protect me? Throw the bums out!”
2. There is no way a government in the age of metadata, with the growing capacity to listen, trace, tap, track and read, will not eventually, and even in time systematically, use that power wrongly, maliciously, illegally and in areas for which the intelligence gathering was never intended. People are right to fear that the government’s surveillance power will be abused. It will be. There are many reasons for this, but the primary one is that humans are and will be in charge of it, and humans have shown throughout history a bit of a tendency to play every trick and bend and break laws. “If men were angels,” as James Madison wrote, limits, checks, balances and specifically protected rights would not be necessary. But they aren’t angels. Add to all this simple human mistakes, innocent and not, and misjudgments. And add to that sheer human craziness, partisan lust, political mischief of all sorts. In the Clinton White House there was a guy named Craig Livingstone who amused himself reading aloud the confidential FBI files of prominent Republicans. The files—hundreds of them—were improperly secured and disseminated. Imagine Craig Livingstone at the National Security Agency. Imagine Lois Lerner.
So if we have and develop a massive surveillance state, it will be abused. And that abuse will, down the road, do damage not only to individuals but, quite probably, to the nation’s morale, to its very vision of itself.
But it will make us – or allow us to feel — physically safer. And it may help break real terror networks bent on real mayhem.
Discuss. Really: Discuss.
3. The president said Friday, in his remarks on the NSA surveillance story: “I think it’s important to recognize that you can’t have 100% security and also then have 100% privacy and zero inconvenience.”
But is that really the trade-off? Will a surveillance state make us 100% safer? It let the Tsarnaevs through. We had the surveillance state when they set off their bombs at the Boston Marathon. We’d even been tipped by the Russians to watch them. The surveillance state didn’t thwart the Fort Hood massacre. Maybe in the end we’ll find the surveillance state is massive, cumbersome, costly, potentially helpful, certainly powerful, menacing and yet not always so effective.
4. The president said the recently revealed programs are subject to congressional oversight, which will help keep them from getting out of hand. But that sounded more like a Washington inside joke than a comfort. Congressional oversight of executive agencies has been chronically lacking and lackluster for years. If you are a congressman oversight is, generally, an unrewarded time-suck. It’s housekeeping that demands deep bureaucratic, accounting and now technological expertise. (“Thank you for providing the email records, but is there any chance you have secret email accounts that aren’t included here?”) And usually nobody knows about your good work—it yields little in the way of credit.
Oversight is time taken away from fundraising calls, from the four-minute hit on “Hardball” or Fox, from the urgent call with the important constituent, from time in the gym where you hide from your staff. And Congress isn’t even in Washington often enough to establish ready and present oversight—members work from Monday through Thursday, and then go home to meet with people and show they’re normal. That’s part of the reason the Internal Revenue Service thought it could function as a political entity—they didn’t fear oversight. The General Services Administration on its champagne-soaked boondoggles—they didn’t fear oversight. Do the technicians, data miners, lawyers and technology officers in the NSA warehouses fear oversight?
Props here to Darrell Issa: He does oversight. But his work is exceptional because it is the exception. And congressional oversight still leads us back to where we began: the built-in bias toward doing too much.
5. The security age began on Sept. 12, 2001. The enormity of the surveillance state since has grown. Americans, in the shock after 9/11, didn’t mind enhanced security, and in fact were mostly grateful for it and supportive of it. But built into that support, and the acceptance of the surveillance mentality’s intrusions, was I suspect a broadly held assumption that we’ll just do it now, and down the road we can stop it. It’s just an emergency thing. We can make it go away when we no longer want it. But can we? Do government programs tend to remain static, or wither? Or do they tend to grow?
About Peggy Noonan:
Peggy Noonan is a writer. For twelve years she has been a weekly columnist for the Wall Street Journal. She is the author of eight books on American politics, history and culture. She was a special assistant to president Ronald Reagan, and before that was a producer and writer at CBS News in New York.
Source: http://blogs.wsj.com/peggynoonan/2013...
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Peggy NoonanNote: I want to say that I liked how Ms. Noonan laid out some of the perceptions on why this is occurring and although I do not agree with Ms. Noonan on everything - for example - I like Hillary Clinton - and from my perspective (MHO) I am not so sure that Reagan was the greatest thing since sliced bread -however, I do feel that she makes some good points which should be listened to.
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Interview with Russell Tice:
Some of this stuff is very scary - here is another Whistleblower - Russell Tice who was an analyst who states that the NSA was spying on Hilary Clinton, the Supreme Court, Generals like Petraeus, even Obama when he was a Senator - he says that right now the American people do not realize but he claims that we are living in a "police state" - he claims that not only emails - but telephone calls and even the letters you send at the post office are being photographed in terms of who the letter is going to and who it is from. And it appears that this started under Bush and Cheney.
Here is his interview: (important viewing)
http://youtu.be/d6m1XbWOfVk
Source:Published on Jul 9, 2013
Abby Martin talks to Russell Tice, former intelligence analyst and original NSA whistleblower, about how the recent NSA scandal is only scratches the surface of a massive surveillance apparatus, citing specific targets the he saw spying orders for including former senators Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama.
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Russell Tice on MSNBC - According to Tice - he is saying that the NSA is storing content - not simply metadata
See video below:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwA-vT...
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Court tells government to publish legal basis for Prism programme's warrantless monitoring of millions of communications
A US court has ordered the Obama administration to declassify a 2008 court decision justifying the Prism spying programme revealed last month by whistleblower Edward Snowden.
The ruling, issued earlier this week, will show how the state has legally justified its covert data collection programmes under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
Judge Reggie Walton of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court issued the ruling to declassify the decision. The government is expected to decide by August 26 which parts of the 2008 decision may be published.
The scope and scale of Prism, which collects millions of private foreign communications with American citizens, was leaked to the media last month by Snowden. Its operation is overseen by the FIS Court and its appeals body, the FIS Court of Review.
The ruling to declassify comes after a challenge by the internet firm, Yahoo, on the constitutionality of the programme.
It and a number of internet firms including Facebook, Google, AOL and Microsoft, were compelled to provide information to the National Security Agency (NSA), which runs Prism.
A statement from Yahoo on Tuesday said that it was "very pleased" with the court's ruling.
"Once those documents are made public, we believe they will contribute constructively to the ongoing public discussion around online privacy," Yahoo said.
NSA sued
Meanwhile, 19 organisations represented by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has filed a suit against the NSA for violating their right of association by illegally collecting their call records.
The coalition includes Unitarian church group, gun ownership advocates, and a broad coalition of membership and political advocacy groups.
"The First Amendment protects the freedom to associate and express political views as a group, but the NSA's mass, untargeted collection of Americans' phone records violates that right by giving the government a dramatically detailed picture into our associational ties," Cindy Cohn, the legal director for the EFF, said.
"Who we call, how often we call them, and how long we speak shows the government what groups we belong to or associate with, which political issues concern us, and our religious affiliation.
"Exposing this information – especially in a massive, untargeted way over a long period of time – violates the Constitution and the basic First Amendment tests that have been in place for over 50 years."
Data requests
Meanwhile a number of major US Internet companies, including Microsoft, Google and Facebook have asked the government for permission to disclose the number of national security-related user data requests they receive.
Also on Tuesday, Microsoft published an lengthy letter to US Attorney General Eric Holder asking for greater freedom to publicly discuss how it turns over user information to the government.
The letter was a response to a The Guardian newspaper report that said Microsoft had given authorities the ability to circumvent encryption of Outlook emails and to capture Skype online chats. The company says that report is inaccurate.
Source: Agencies
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VIDEO - HANDS OFF MY METADATA - http://aje.me/16T7WFq
The above is an excellent interview folks.
Inside Story Americas article - Last Modified: 05 Jul 2013 13:52
The article asks what recent spying revelations mean for democracy in the United States
On Independence Day in the United States, protesters demanded a restoration of their constitutional right to privacy.
The disclosures by former US government contractor, Edward Snowden, have given the world a glimpse into the far-reaching spying capacity of the National Security Agency (NSA).
Americans appear divided on whether the NSA is justified in collecting information on millions of citizens, including phone and internet data. But on Thursday - the country's independence holiday - protesters demanded that the government respect the constitutional guarantee against "unreasonable searches and seizures".
The fourth amendment to the US constitution guarantees: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated; and no Warrants shall issue but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
Members of Congress also demanded answers on whether they were misled about the NSA's activities.
In March, prior to the series of leaks, US officials including James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, had assured members of Congress that the government was not collecting information on hundreds of millions of Americans.
Following the leaks by Snowden, Clapper backpedalled. He then wrote a letter to the Senate Intelligence Committee to apologise.
In more than a month of leaks, a lot of information has been released, much of which has been overshadowed by the drama surrounding Snowden himself. But what have we learned about the NSA?
On June 6, the Guardian newspaper revealed that the NSA was collecting phone records of millions of Verizon customers in the US, mandated by a secret court order.
* The next day we learned about a previously undisclosed programme called Prism, which allows the NSA to gain direct access to the private communications of those who use large internet services including Google, Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft. But all of those companies have denied allowing such direct access.
* On June 8, the Guardian revealed that the NSA had developed a tool known as 'boundless informant', which allows the agency to organize the data it collects from around the world, including the US.
* On June 17, it revealed that the UK's Government Communications Headquarters, which shares information with the NSA, intercepted foreign politicians' communications during the 2009 G-20 summit.
* On June 20, top secret documents showed that US judges signed off on broad court orders that allow the NSA to use information inadvertently collected from domestic US communications, without a warrant.
* On June 21, the Guardian revealed that the UK spy agency, GCHQ, had been secretly tapping hundreds of fibre-optic cables carrying phone and internet traffic, and then sharing the information it obtains with the NSA.
* On June 27, it was revealed that a programme started under President George W Bush in 2001, allowing the NSA to collect vast amounts of email and internet usage records from Americans, continued until 2011 under President Barack Obama.
* And just within the last week German magazine Der Spiegel revealed that the NSA is spying on its European allies, including Germany, by bugging EU buildings and monitoring half a billion communications.
There have been a series of public opinion polls since the NSA documents were released.
The most recent poll was published on June 19 by the Washington Post and ABC News, which found that 58 percent support the NSA's intelligence-gathering programme. While the same poll found that 65 percent supported holding public hearings on the programme, other polls have found varying levels of support for the surveillance.
A CNN-ORC poll released just a few days earlier asked respondents if they thought the Obama administration has gone too far in restricting people's civil liberties in order to fight terrorism. Forty-three percent said he had gone too far, compared to 38 percent who said it was about right and 17 percent who said it did not go far enough.
A Gallup poll asked people whether they approve or disapprove of the government's programme of collecting phone records. Fifty-three percent said they disapprove of the programme.
So, what do recent NSA spying revelations mean for American democracy?
To discuss this, IInside Story Americas, with presenter Shihab Rattansi, is joined by: Nathan White, the national spokesperson for the Restore the Fourth Rally; Julian Sanchez, a research fellow at the CATO institute who focuses on technology, privacy and politics; and Thomas Drake, a former NSA senior executive and a whistleblower.
"The thing that holds us together, that united us as a country, and gives us the framework for us to be successful is the United States' constitution. The fourth amendment ... that's what's under threat here. There are people at our rallies that have dramatically different opinions about Edward Snowden and about particular politicians, but we're united in our concern that, 'how can this been happening when it seems so unconstitutional?'"
- Nathan White, the national spokesperson for the Restore the Fourth Rally
NSA was simply challenged in dealing with the digital age .... So they began to develop global programmes that would allow them to do so. 'Boundless informant' is a mechanism that measures how successful they are in being able to acquire the targeting information or the collection of information that they receive. So it's really a red light to say how successful are they in their surveillance of the world.
-- Thomas Drake, a former NSA senior executive and a whistleblower
Source: Al Jazeera
Book on the NSA:
The Shadow Factory
by James Bamford (no photo)Synopsis:
James Bamford has been the preeminent expert on the National Security Agency since his reporting revealed the agency’s existence in the 1980s. Now Bamford describes the transformation of the NSA since 9/11, as the agency increasingly turns its high-tech ears on the American public.
The Shadow Factory reconstructs how the NSA missed a chance to thwart the 9/11 hijackers and details how this mistake has led to a heightening of domestic surveillance. In disturbing detail, Bamford describes exactly how every American’s data is being mined and what is being done with it. Any reader who thinks America’s liberties are being protected by Congress will be shocked and appalled at what is revealed here.
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by James Bamford (no photo)Synopsis:
The National Security Agency is the world’s most powerful, most far-reaching espionage. Now with a new afterword describing the security lapses that preceded the attacks of September 11, 2001, Body of Secrets takes us to the inner sanctum of America’s spy world. In the follow-up to his bestselling Puzzle Palace, James Banford reveals the NSA’s hidden role in the most volatile world events of the past, and its desperate scramble to meet the frightening challenges of today and tomorrow.
Here is a scrupulously documented account–much of which is based on unprecedented access to previously undisclosed documents–of the agency’s tireless hunt for intelligence on enemies and allies alike. Body of secrets is a riveting analysis of this most clandestine of agencies, a major work of history and investigative journalism.
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by James Bamford (no photo)Synopsis:
In this remarkable tour de force of investigative reporting, James Bamford exposes the inner workings of America's largest, most secretive, and arguably most intrusive intelligence agency. The NSA has long eluded public scrutiny, but The Puzzle Palace penetrates its vast network of power and unmasks the people who control it, often with shocking disregard for the law. With detailed information on the NSA's secret role in the Korean Airlines disaster, Iran-Contra, the first Gulf War, and other major world events of the 80s and 90s, this is a brilliant account of the use and abuse of technological espionage
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jtmel...
The NSA is the most expensive agency - and it is costing the taxpayers zillions.
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Note: This was published in 1996 prior to what is going on now - so it may not give a true picture of the abuses today that the whistleblowers are talking about.
by David KahnSynopsis:
The magnificent, unrivaled history of codes and ciphers -- how they're made, how they're broken, and the many and fascinating roles they've played since the dawn of civilization in war, business, diplomacy, and espionage -- updated with a new chapter on computer cryptography and the Ultra secret.
Man has created codes to keep secrets and has broken codes to learn those secrets since the time of the Pharaohs.
For 4,000 years, fierce battles have been waged between codemakers and codebreakers, and the story of these battles is civilization's secret history, the hidden account of how wars were won and lost, diplomatic intrigues foiled, business secrets stolen, governments ruined, computers hacked.
From the XYZ Affair to the Dreyfus Affair, from the Gallic War to the Persian Gulf, from Druidic runes and the kaballah to outer space, from the Zimmermann telegram to Enigma to the Manhattan Project, codebreaking has shaped the course of human events to an extent beyond any easy reckoning.
Once a government monopoly, cryptology today touches everybody. It secures the Internet, keeps e-mail private, maintains the integrity of cash machine transactions, and scrambles TV signals on unpaid-for channels.
David Kahn's The Codebreakers takes the measure of what codes and codebreaking have meant in human history in a single comprehensive account, astonishing in its scope and enthralling in its execution. Hailed upon first publication as a book likely to become the definitive work of its kind, The Codebreakers has more than lived up to that prediction: it remains unsurpassed.
With a brilliant new chapter that makes use of previously classified documents to bring the book thoroughly up to date, and to explore the myriad ways computer codes and their hackers are changing all of our lives, The Codebreakers is the skeleton key to a thousand thrilling true stories of intrigue, mystery, and adventure. It is a masterpiece of the historian's art.
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Justin Amash claims strong support for NSA amendment
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/07...
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Can you believe they defeated the bill.
At least it was close - I think folks should vote against the folks who
opposed this biil - because otherwise our rights and liberties are at severe risk and considering the full court press done by the White House and the arm twisting - it was close and I hope that they realize that they have to do something about this situation before it is too late. The Patriot Act which has nothing patriotic about it is what started the country down this slippery slope
Here is the breaking news article:
Rep. Amash’s Amendment To Defund The NSA’s Domestic Phone Metadata Program Fails 205-217
oday Rep. Amash’s amendment to the 2014 Defense Appropriations Bill failed in the House on a vote of 205 in favor to 217 opposed. When it became known that the amendment would in fact come up for a vote, the powers of the status quo came together to decry its tenets as ham-fisted and irresponsible.
The White House called the amendment a “blunt approach” that is not “the product of an informed, open, or deliberative process.” Naturally, the irony of that specific complaint resonates: The intelligence programs in question were not enacted with any of those forms of debate. To ask that their rescinding be held to a higher standard then their enaction is hubris of a real sort.
Underlining how seriously those who are in favor of maintaining the phone record collection program took the amendment’s threat to yank its funding, General Alexander himself — the good general heads the NSA — gave briefings on the Hill to House Democrats and Republicans, albeit in different sessions.
A formal statement from the White House and face time with the head of the NSA are some of the larger guns available for this sort of court press.
The NSA has come under heavy scrutiny for its collection of both Internet data and telephonic records by privacy advocates, certain members of Congress, and what is sometimes referred to as the netroots — efforts that include broad surveillance of U.S. citizens and the retention of information relating to their actions. Those in favor claim that it doesn’t violate the Fourth Amendment and is a key tool in the fight to protect American interests and national security. Opponents directly proclaim that the various NSA data-collection efforts are beyond unconscionable and should instead be viewed as nothing less than utterly un-American given its diametric opposition to hallowed Constitutional rights.
This isn’t a small argument, and it goes beyond our current simplistic ideological dialogue in which there are only two perspectives: left and right. Instead, we’re seeing a number of supposedly small government members of Congress stand behind action that gives the Federal government chronic authority to end the right to privacy. At the same time, the argument that national security can at times take primacy over privacy has been upheld in the past by American courts.
Before the vote, House members opposed to the amendment circulated a letter that included the following text:
While many Members have legitimate questions about the NSA metadata program, including whether there are sufficient protections for Americans’ civil liberties, eliminating this program altogether without careful deliberation would not reflect our duty, under Article I of the Constitution, to provide for the common defense. Furthermore, the Amash amendment would have unintended consequences for the intelligence and law enforcement communities beyond the metadata program.
Rep. Rogers was among those signed to the above. From the other end, a different House cadre came out in favor of the amendment, including Rep. Lofgren, who released a letter that said:
In short, this amendment would not prohibit the government from spying on terrorists under Section 215, or from collecting information in bulk about American’s under other legal provisions. However, the amendment would prevent the bulk collection of sensitive information on innocent Americans under Section 215 – and important improvement.
The vote was surprisingly close, with broad bipartisan support in favor of the amendment, and equally strong support opposed; this is a vote that split parties. The final tally was 94 Republicans and 111 Democrats in favor, and 134 Republicans and 83 Democrats opposed.
That the vote was so close all but guarantees that as an issue, the NSA’s domestic surveillance programs will be challenged again, and perhaps successfully.
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Here is the roll call and how they voted:
http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2013/roll4...
This appears to be about government surveillance more broadly and not limited to the NSA.Spying on Democracy: Government Surveillance, Corporate Power, and Public Resistance
by Heidi Boghosian (no photo)Synopsis:
"With ex-CIA staffer Edward Snowden's leaks about National Security Agency surveillance in the headlines, Heidi Boghosian’s Spying on Democracy: Government Surveillance, Corporate Power, and Public Resistance feels especially timely. Boghosian reveals how the government acquires information from telecommunications companies and other organizations to create databases about 'persons of interest.'"--Publishers Weekly
The government is spying on you, collecting phone records, and accessing your online activity. This is not only unacceptable, it's unconstitutional. National Lawyers Guild Executive Director Heidi Boghosian provides the back story.
Until the watershed leak of top-secret documents by Edward Snowden to the Guardian UK and the Washington Post, most Americans did not realize the extent to which our government is actively acquiring personal information from telecommunications companies and other corporations. We now know that the National Security Agency (NSA) has collected information on every phone call Americans have made over the past seven years. And, in that same time, the NSA and the FBI have gained the ability to access emails, photos, audio and video chats, and additional content from Google, Facebook, and others, allegedly in order to track foreign targets.
In Spying on Democracy, Heidi Boghosian documents the profoundly disturbing increase in surveillance of ordinary citizens and the danger it poses to our privacy, our civil liberties, and to the future of democracy itself.
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JUNE 22, 2013
U.S. SEEMINGLY UNAWARE OF IRONY IN ACCUSING SNOWDEN OF SPYING
POSTED BY ANDY BOROWITZ
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—The United States government charged former intelligence analyst Edward Snowden with spying on Friday, apparently unaware that in doing so it had created a situation dripping with irony.
At a press conference to discuss the accusations, an N.S.A. spokesman surprised observers by announcing the spying charges against Mr. Snowden with a totally straight face.
“These charges send a clear message,” the spokesman said. “In the United States, you can’t spy on people.”
Seemingly not kidding, the spokesman went on to discuss another charge against Mr. Snowden—the theft of government documents: “The American people have the right to assume that their private documents will remain private and won’t be collected by someone in the government for his own purposes.”
“Only by bringing Mr. Snowden to justice can we safeguard the most precious of American rights: privacy,” added the spokesman, apparently serious.
Source: The New Yorker
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs...
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N.S.A. Enforces Zero-Tolerance Policy on Conscience
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—The National Security Agency moved swiftly and forcefully today to remind its employees of its longstanding zero-tolerance policy on conscience, warning that any violation of that policy would result in immediate termination.
“When you sign on to work at the N.S.A. you swear to uphold the standards of amorality and soullessness that this agency was founded upon,” said N.S.A. director General Keith B. Alexander. “Any evidence of ethics, decency, or a sense of right and wrong will not be tolerated. These things have no place in the intelligence community.”
To enforce the policy, General Alexander said that once a month all N.S.A. employees will be wired to a computer to take full inventory of what is going on in their minds: “We want to be sure they are spending their free time playing Call of Duty, not reading the Federalist Papers.”
The N.S.A. director attempted to reassure the American people that despite “unfortunate recent events,” the agency remains “one of the most heartless and cold-blooded organizations on the face of the earth.” He added, “We refuse to let one good apple spoil the whole bunch.”
He said that going forward, the N.S.A. would try to recruit people who had already demonstrated “a commitment to invading people’s privacy” by working at Google or Facebook.
Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs...
Note: This is a satire folks so for those folks globally who might be not so familiar with satire - it is a spoof on the truth so what seems like facts conveyed are not always necessarily truthful (but sometimes there is a lot of truth beneath the statements) - it is meant to make you laugh.
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JUNE 11, 2013
USEFUL PHRASES FOR THE SURVEILLANCE STATE
POSTED BY ANDY BOROWITZ
NEW YORK (The Borowitz Report)—In the event that the U.S. government is monitoring your conversations, here are some useful phrases to insert into your phone calls, texts, or e-mails:
I think the N.S.A. is awesome.
I just reread “Nineteen Eighty-Four”—it actually has a lot of good ideas in it!
There’s no such thing as a “bad” drone.
Sure am glad that I never talk to any foreigners.
I wouldn’t know the first thing about making ricin.
The Fourth Amendment is overrated.
If you ask me, Guantánamo is full of nothing but complainers.
Just changed my Facebook status from “Single” to “In a Relationship with America.”
I’m pretty sure my neighbor is cheating on his taxes.
Note: This is a satire folks so for those folks globally who might be not so familiar with satire - it is a spoof on the truth so what seems like facts conveyed are not always necessarily truthful (but sometimes there is a lot of truth beneath the statements) - it is meant to make you laugh.
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AGENCY BUSY SPYING ON THREE HUNDRED MILLION PEOPLE FAILED TO NOTICE ONE DUDE WORKING FOR IT
POSTED BY ANDY BOROWITZ
Photograph by Kin Cheung/AP.
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—A U.S. intelligence agency was so busy spying on three hundred million Americans that it failed to notice one dude who was working for it, a spokesman for the agency acknowledged today.
“I guess we were so busy monitoring the everyday communications of every man, woman, and child in the nation that we didn’t notice that a contractor working for us was downloading tons of classified documents,” the agency spokesman said. “It’s definitely embarrassing, for sure.”
Despite having an annual budget in the neighborhood of ten billion dollars, the agency had no idea that a dude who was working for it five days a week was getting ready to send those classified documents to a journalist who would then tell everybody in the world.
“Maybe if we hadn’t been so busy keeping our eye on those other three hundred million people, we would have noticed that this one guy who was working right under our noses was up to something totally fishy,” the spokesman said. “But you know what they say about hindsight.”
As for where that guy who leaked the documents was planning to go next, the spokesman admitted, “We don’t have a clue.”
“I know what you’re thinking—an intelligence agency probably should know that Hong Kong has an international airport and that its departures board lists flights to Moscow and whatnot,” the spokesman said. “I don’t know what to say. Maybe we need a bigger budget or something.”
Note: This is a satire folks so for those folks globally who might be not so familiar with satire - it is a spoof on the truth so what seems like facts conveyed are not always necessarily truthful (but sometimes there is a lot of truth beneath the statements) - it is meant to make you laugh.
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NSA: Americans Sent Over a Hundred Million Father's Day Messages
By Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker
18 June 13
NSA Director General Keith Alexander. (photo: Mark Wilson/Getty)
The article below is satire. Andy Borowitz is an American comedian and New York Times-bestselling author who satirizes the news for his column, "The Borowitz Report."
Americans sent over a hundred million Father's Day messages on Sunday, the National Security Agency reported today.
The hundred-million number, while robust, falls short of the hundred and twenty million Mother's Day messages collected by the N.S.A. in May.
The difference between the two figures is "not surprising," said N.S.A. director General Keith B. Alexander. He added, "On the whole, mothers take Mother's Day more seriously - if the e-mails we read by mothers whose children forgot are any indication."
General Alexander said that the agency collected in the neighborhood of two to three million such e-mails from angry mothers this year.
The N.S.A. director added that the agency had not foiled any terror plots over the weekend but did uncover between thirty and forty thousand extramarital relationships.
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Posted: 08/09/2013 3:12 pm EDT | Updated: 08/09/2013 6:37 pm EDT
WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama announced new measures Friday to increase transparency and reform the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court amid growing concerns over the National Security Agency's widespread surveillance programs.
Speaking to reporters at a press conference, Obama proposed the first of several steps "to help restore public confidence" following revelations in June that the federal government was secretly mining millions of Americans' phone and electronic communications.
"Unfortunately, rather than an orderly and lawful process to debate these issues and come up with appropriate reforms, repeated leaks of classified information have initiated the debate in a very passionate but not always fully informed way," Obama said. "But given the history of abuse by governments, it's right to ask questions about surveillance, particularly as technology is reshaping every aspect of our lives."
The president's proposed measures focused on reforming Section 215 of the Patriot Act and Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act, under which the NSA's surveillance programs are considered lawful. The reforms would focus on creating more oversight and greater transparency, particularly through modifications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which currently authorizes the surveillance through highly classified opinions.
Obama specifically discussed creating a special advocate who could challenge the court on the basis of privacy and constitutional concerns. He also expressed support for making more information public, and upon his directive, the Department of Justice released the legal rationale for the government's collection activities under Section 215 of the Patriot Act.
The president added that the NSA would be creating a civil liberties and privacy officer, as well as launching a website to serve "as the hub for further transparency." And finally, Obama announced an independent task force of outside experts that would review the government's surveillance efforts, in terms of both privacy rights and impact on foreign policy. The group would produce both an interim report within 60 days and a final report by the end of the year with findings and recommendations.
"One of the concerns that people raise is that a judge reviewing a request from the government to conduct programmatic surveillance only hears one side of the story ... [that] may tilt it too far in favor of security, may not pay enough attention to liberty," Obama said. "While I've got confidence in the court and I think they've done a fine job, I think we can provide greater assurances that the court is looking at these issues from both perspectives, security and privacy."
Senior administration officials told reporters on background Friday that NSA leaker Edward Snowden's unauthorized disclosures "elevated the profile on these issues" and required a response from the government that would "build public trust." As a result, officials said the president directed his team to coordinate a response across the national security community.
But despite his embrace of reforms, the president had little sympathy for Snowden when asked if the former government contractor could be characterized as a "patriot" and "whistleblower."
"No, I don't think Mr. Snowden was a patriot," Obama said. "The fact is, Mr. Snowden has been charged with three felonies."
Officials said that Obama has engaged in a series of meetings with intelligence community leaders and that he discussed the NSA's surveillance in June with the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. The president convened a group of lawmakers last week at the White House to hash out concerns and possible measures where the administration could work with Congress on achievable reforms, officials added.
The proposed changes to the FISA court would require congressional approval, and it remains unclear if there is enough bipartisan support to implement significant reform. Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Tom Udall (D-N.M.) introduced legislation last week closely resembling Obama's recommendations, such as installing a special privacy advocate. Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, has also called for a reformed process and, along with Wyden, outlined proposals to achieve that end in the meeting with Obama last week.
Civil liberties advocates in Congress have offered many other bills to impose greater transparency on how the FISA court authorizes the NSA programs, as well as to curb the scale of the government's surveillance. But despite the immediate backlash that followed Snowden's revelations about the NSA, the subject largely took a backseat to other pressing issues, such as immigration reform and student loan rates.
It wasn't until a narrow defeat in late July of an amendment from Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.), which aimed to stop the NSA's collection of phone records, that critics felt a renewed sense of momentum to broach the issue again. The razor-thin margin of defeat was indicative of a growing desire among lawmakers to revisit it, and is said to have played a role in prompting the White House to take action.
Obama conceded as much on Friday, although he disputed allegations of government overreach.
"If you look at the reports ... what you're not reading about is the government actually abusing these programs ... what you're hearing about is the prospect that these could be abused," Obama said.
The president reiterated throughout the news conference that he would continue to hold discussions with Congress to determine a path forward. But while his remarks were applauded by some members of Congress, who put out statements welcoming the reforms, others were not so keen.
A spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said that most of the public concern about the NSA's surveillance programs stems from Obama's "reluctance" to sufficiently explain it, signaling potential pushback when Congress returns from recess and begins to debate next steps.
"Transparency is important, but we expect the White House to insist that no reform will compromise the operational integrity of the program," Boehner spokesman Brendan Buck said in a statement. "That must be the president’s red line, and he must enforce it. Our priority should continue to be saving American lives, not saving face."
Boehner's office did not return a request for comment on whether the speaker supports any of the reforms the president mentioned.
Meanwhile, as Obama spoke, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), one of the most vocal defenders of the surveillance programs, announced that the committee would hold a series of hearings "to examine intelligence data-collection programs."
"As I have said before, if changes are necessary, whenever feasible, we will make them," Feinstein said in a statement. "I am pleased the president shares the committee’s commitment to improving the public’s confidence with more transparency and more privacy protections. This is the right thing to do."
Read the legal rationale for the government's collection activities under the Patriot Act Section 215, released by the Department of Justice:
http://www.docstoc.com/docs/document-...
http://www.docstoc.com/docs/160306246...
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The Huffington Post | By Paige Lavender
Posted: 08/09/2013 3:33 pm EDT | Updated: 08/09/2013 6:42 pm EDT
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08...
During a press conference on surveillance reforms Friday afternoon, President Barack Obama made clear his thoughts on National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden.
"No, I don't think Mr. Snowden was a patriot," Obama said.
"The fact is, Mr. Snowden has been charged with three felonies," Obama said.
Snowden was charged with conveying classified information to an unauthorized party, disclosing communications intelligence information, and theft of government property.
HuffPost's Sabrina Siddiqui reported on the press conference:
Obama announced new measures Friday to increase transparency and reform the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court amid growing concerns over the National Security Agency's widespread surveillance programs.
Speaking to reporters at a press conference, Obama proposed the first of several steps "to help restore public confidence" following revelations in June that the federal government was secretly mining millions of Americans' phone and electronic communications.
"Unfortunately, rather than an orderly and lawful process to debate these issues and come up with appropriate reforms, repeated leaks of classified information have initiated the debate in a very passionate but not always fully informed way," Obama said. "But given the history of abuse by governments, it's right to ask questions about surveillance, particularly as technology is reshaping every aspect of our lives."
The president's proposed measures focused on reforming Section 215 of the Patriot Act and Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act, under which the NSA programs are considered lawful. The reforms would focus on creating more oversight and greater transparency, particularly through modifications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which currently authorizes the surveillance through highly-classified opinions.
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Edward Snowden, patriot
By Ezra Klein, Updated: August 9, 2013
National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden is pictured during an interview with the Guardian in his hotel room in Hong Kong on June 9, 2013. (Ewen MacAskill/The Guardian via Reuters)
President Obama’s news conference today was … weird.
Binyamin Appelbaum, an economics reporter for the New York Times, summed it up sharply on Twitter: “Obama is really mad at Edward Snowden for forcing us patriots to have this critically important conversation.”
Obama began the news conference by announcing a series of reforms meant to increase the transparency of, and the constraints on, the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs. They included reforms to Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which enables the collection of telephone metadata; changes to the powerful surveillance courts to ensure ”that the government’s position is challenged by an adversary”; declassification of key NSA documents; and the formation of “a high-level group of outside experts to review our entire intelligence and communications technologies.”
“What makes us different from other countries is not simply our ability to secure our nation,” Obama said. “It’s the way we do it, with open debate and democratic process.”
If that’s so, then Edward Snowden should be hailed as a hero. There’s simply no doubt that his leaks led to more open debate and more democratic process than would’ve existed otherwise.
Obama reluctantly admitted as much. “There’s no doubt that Mr. Snowden’s leaks triggered a much more rapid and passionate response than would have been the case if I had simply appointed this review board,” he said, though he also argued that absent Snowden, “we would have gotten to the same place, and we would have done so without putting at risk our national security and some very vital ways that we are able to get intelligence that we need to secure the country.”
As Tim Lee writes, this is dubious at best. Prior to Snowden’s remarks, there was little public debate — in part because the federal government was preventing it.
When Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) asked for a “ballpark figure” of the number of Americans whose information was being collected by the NSA last year, the agency refused to give the senator any information, arguing that doing so would violate the privacy of those whose information was collected.
In March, at a Congressional hearing, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper answered “no sir” when Wyden asked whether the NSA had collected “any type of data at all on millions of Americans.” We now know his statement was incorrect.
That was the state of the debate prior to Snowden: The Director of National Intelligence went before Congress, was given an opportunity to give the American people a clear and balanced picture on some of these programs, and basically lied. And no one from the Obama administration came out that day, or the next day, or the next week, to correct the record. It was only after Snowden’s leak that Clapper apologized.
Obama allowed that “those who have lawfully raised their voices on behalf of privacy and civil liberties are also patriots who love our country and want it to live up to our highest ideals.” But most all of those people would say Snowden strengthened their hand immeasurably.
Obama’s frustration with Snowden is that he interrupted what could have been “a lawful, orderly examination of these laws; a thoughtful, fact-based debate.” The White House believes Snowden’s leaks — and the drip-drip-drip way the Guardian released them — left the public misinformed. And at times, that’s certainly true. The initial reports on PRISM, for instance, clearly suggested that the program was wider in scope than it actually is.
But the White House could have led that thoughtful, fact-based debate, and despite Obama’s protestations to the contrary, they didn’t. They prevented it. If this conversation, and these reforms, are as positive for the country as Obama says they are, then it’s hard to escape the conclusion that Snowden did the country a real service — even if the White House can’t abide crediting him with it.
Source: The Washington Post Company
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The Huffington Post | By Mollie Reilly
Posted: 06/11/2013 11:57 pm EDT | Updated: 06/12/2013 11:46 am EDT
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06...
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper sought to clarify his claim that the National Security Agency does not collect information on millions of Americans, telling NBC News' Andrea Mitchell that he gave the "least untruthful" answer possible on the agency's surveillance program.
During a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on March 12, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) asked the intelligence czar if the NSA gathers "any type of data at all on millions of Americans.”
"No, sir," Clapper responded. "Not wittingly. There are cases where they could inadvertently perhaps collect, but not wittingly."
Clapper's response appears to contradict recent revelations about the agency's large scale phone records collection program, first reported on by the Guardian last week. However, during the NBC interview, Clapper said Wyden's question did not have a straightforward answer.
"I thought, though in retrospect, I was asked -- 'When are you going to start -- stop beating your wife' kind of question, which is meaning not -- answerable necessarily by a simple yes or no," Clapper said in the interview, which aired Sunday. "So I responded in what I thought was the most truthful, or least untruthful, manner by saying 'no'."
Clapper said his remarks also reflected his definition of "collection," which he said has a specific meaning in an intelligence context.
"What I was thinking of is looking at the Dewey Decimal numbers-- of those books in that metaphorical library-- to me, collection of U.S. persons' data would mean taking the book off the shelf and opening it up and reading it," he said.
In a Tuesday statement, Wyden said he had notified Clapper of his question in advance, and had given his office a chance to give a "straight answer" after the March hearing.
“So that he would be prepared to answer, I sent the question to Director Clapper’s office a day in advance. After the hearing was over my staff and I gave his office a chance to amend his answer,” Wyden said. “Now public hearings are needed to address the recent disclosures and the American people have the right to expect straight answers from the intelligence leadership to the questions asked by their representatives."
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The Huffington Post | By Jack Mirkinson
Posted: 08/09/2013 4:29 pm EDT | Updated: 08/09/2013 4:35 pm EDT
President Barack Obama gestures while speaking during his news conference in the East Room of the White House in Washington, Friday, Aug. 9, 2013. The president said he'll work with Congress to change the oversight of some of the National Security Agency's controversial surveillance programs and name a new panel of outside experts to review technologies. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
President Obama's press conference on Friday was full of headline-making news about new proposals to reform the American surveillance system. But another headline could also be appropriate: "Journalism gets results."
Washington Post writer Timothy Lee expanded on the point:
Yet the Obama administration showed little interest in subjecting the NSA to meaningful oversight and public debate prior to Snowden’s actions. When Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) asked for a “ballpark figure” of the number of Americans whose information was being collected by the NSA last year, the agency refused to give the senator any information, arguing that doing so would violate the privacy of those whose information was collected.
Moreover, Obama himself mentioned "repeated leaks of classified information" at the very start of his remarks about his reform proposals — a clear indication that the Guardian and Snowden had influenced the debate.
“There’s no doubt that Mr. Snowden’s leaks triggered a much more rapid and passionate response than would have been the case if I had simply appointed this review board," he said.
Obama's decision to both acknowledge Snowden's impact and to propose changes also led some to wonder how he could still paint Snowden in a bad light:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08...
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Reuters | Posted: 08/05/2013 4:59 am EDT | Updated: 08/06/2013 1:16 am EDT
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08...
REUTERS
By John Shiffman and Kristina Cooke
WASHINGTON, Aug 5 (Reuters) - A secretive U.S. 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.
"I have never heard of anything like this at all," said Nancy Gertner, a Harvard Law School professor who served as a federal judge from 1994 to 2011. Gertner and other legal experts said the program sounds more troubling than recent disclosures that the National Security Agency has been collecting domestic phone records. The NSA effort is geared toward stopping terrorists; the DEA program targets common criminals, primarily drug dealers.
"It is one thing to create special rules for national security," Gertner said. "Ordinary crime is entirely different. It sounds like they are phonying up investigations."
THE SPECIAL OPERATIONS DIVISION
The unit of the DEA that distributes the information is called the Special Operations Division, or SOD. Two dozen partner agencies comprise the unit, including the FBI, CIA, NSA, Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Homeland Security. It was created in 1994 to combat Latin American drug cartels and has grown from several dozen employees to several hundred.
Today, much of the SOD's work is classified, and officials asked that its precise location in Virginia not be revealed. The documents reviewed by Reuters are marked "Law Enforcement Sensitive," a government categorization that is meant to keep them confidential.
"Remember that the utilization of SOD cannot be revealed or discussed in any investigative function," a document presented to agents reads. The document specifically directs agents to omit the SOD's involvement from investigative reports, affidavits, discussions with prosecutors and courtroom testimony. Agents are instructed to then use "normal investigative techniques to recreate the information provided by SOD."
A spokesman with the Department of Justice, which oversees the DEA, declined to comment.
But two senior DEA officials defended the program, and said trying to "recreate" an investigative trail is not only legal but a technique that is used almost daily.
A former federal agent in the northeastern United States who received such tips from SOD described the process. "You'd be told only, 'Be at a certain truck stop at a certain time and look for a certain vehicle.' And so we'd alert the state police to find an excuse to stop that vehicle, and then have a drug dog search it," the agent said.
"PARALLEL CONSTRUCTION"
After an arrest was made, agents then pretended that their investigation began with the traffic stop, not with the SOD tip, the former agent said. The training document reviewed by Reuters refers to this process as "parallel construction."
The two senior DEA officials, who spoke on behalf of the agency but only on condition of anonymity, said the process is kept secret to protect sources and investigative methods. "Parallel construction is a law enforcement technique we use every day," one official said. "It's decades old, a bedrock concept."
A dozen current or former federal agents interviewed by Reuters confirmed they had used parallel construction during their careers. Most defended the practice; some said they understood why those outside law enforcement might be concerned.
"It's just like laundering money - you work it backwards to make it clean," said Finn Selander, a DEA agent from 1991 to 2008 and now a member of a group called Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, which advocates legalizing and regulating narcotics.
Some defense lawyers and former prosecutors said that using "parallel construction" may be legal to establish probable cause for an arrest. But they said employing the practice as a means of disguising how an investigation began may violate pretrial discovery rules by burying evidence that could prove useful to criminal defendants.
A QUESTION OF CONSTITUTIONALITY
"That's outrageous," said Tampa attorney James Felman, a vice chairman of the criminal justice section of the American Bar Association. "It strikes me as indefensible."
Lawrence Lustberg, a New Jersey defense lawyer, said any systematic government effort to conceal the circumstances under which cases begin "would not only be alarming but pretty blatantly unconstitutional."
Lustberg and others said the government's use of the SOD program skirts established court procedures by which judges privately examine sensitive information, such as an informant's identity or classified evidence, to determine whether the information is relevant to the defense.
"You can't game the system," said former federal prosecutor Henry E. Hockeimer Jr. "You can't create this subterfuge. These are drug crimes, not national security cases. If you don't draw the line here, where do you draw it?"
Some lawyers say there can be legitimate reasons for not revealing sources. Robert Spelke, a former prosecutor who spent seven years as a senior DEA lawyer, said some sources are classified. But he also said there are few reasons why unclassified evidence should be concealed at trial.
"It's a balancing act, and they've doing it this way for years," Spelke said. "Do I think it's a good way to do it? No, because now that I'm a defense lawyer, I see how difficult it is to challenge."
CONCEALING A TIP
One current federal prosecutor learned how agents were using SOD tips after a drug agent misled him, the prosecutor told Reuters. In a Florida drug case he was handling, the prosecutor said, a DEA agent told him the investigation of a U.S. citizen began with a tip from an informant. When the prosecutor pressed for more information, he said, a DEA supervisor intervened and revealed that the tip had actually come through the SOD and from an NSA intercept.
"I was pissed," the prosecutor said. "Lying about where the information came from is a bad start if you're trying to comply with the law because it can lead to all kinds of problems with discovery and candor to the court." The prosecutor never filed charges in the case because he lost confidence in the investigation, he said.
A senior DEA official said he was not aware of the case but said the agent should not have misled the prosecutor. How often such misdirection occurs is unknown, even to the government; the DEA official said the agency does not track what happens with tips after the SOD sends them to agents in the field.
The SOD's role providing information to agents isn't itself a secret. It is briefly mentioned by the DEA in budget documents, albeit without any reference to how that information is used or represented when cases go to court.
The DEA has long publicly touted the SOD's role in multi-jurisdictional and international investigations, connecting agents in separate cities who may be unwittingly investigating the same target and making sure undercover agents don't accidentally try to arrest each other.
SOD'S BIG SUCCESSES
The unit also played a major role in a 2008 DEA sting in Thailand against Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout; he was sentenced in 2011 to 25 years in prison on charges of conspiring to sell weapons to the Colombian rebel group FARC. The SOD also recently coordinated Project Synergy, a crackdown against manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers of synthetic designer drugs that spanned 35 states and resulted in 227 arrests.
Since its inception, the SOD's mandate has expanded to include narco-terrorism, organized crime and gangs. A DEA spokesman declined to comment on the unit's annual budget. A recent LinkedIn posting on the personal page of a senior SOD official estimated it to be $125 million.
Today, the SOD offers at least three services to federal, state and local law enforcement agents: coordinating international investigations such as the Bout case; distributing tips from overseas NSA intercepts, informants, foreign law enforcement partners and domestic wiretaps; and circulating tips from a massive database known as DICE.
The DICE database contains about 1 billion records, the senior DEA officials said. The majority of the records consist of phone log and Internet data gathered legally by the DEA through subpoenas, arrests and search warrants nationwide. Records are kept for about a year and then purged, the DEA officials said.
About 10,000 federal, state and local law enforcement agents have access to the DICE database, records show. They can query it to try to link otherwise disparate clues. Recently, one of the DEA officials said, DICE linked a man who tried to smuggle $100,000 over the U.S. southwest border to a major drug case on the East Coast.
"We use it to connect the dots," the official said.
"AN AMAZING TOOL"
Wiretap tips forwarded by the SOD usually come from foreign governments, U.S. intelligence agencies or court-authorized domestic phone recordings. Because warrantless eavesdropping on Americans is illegal, tips from intelligence agencies are generally not forwarded to the SOD until a caller's citizenship can be verified, according to one senior law enforcement official and one former U.S. military intelligence analyst.
"They do a pretty good job of screening, but it can be a struggle to know for sure whether the person on a wiretap is American," the senior law enforcement official said.
Tips from domestic wiretaps typically occur when agents use information gleaned from a court-ordered wiretap in one case to start a second investigation.
As a practical matter, law enforcement agents said they usually don't worry that SOD's involvement will be exposed in court. That's because most drug-trafficking defendants plead guilty before trial and therefore never request to see the evidence against them. If cases did go to trial, current and former agents said, charges were sometimes dropped to avoid the risk of exposing SOD involvement.
Current and former federal agents said SOD tips aren't always helpful - one estimated their accuracy at 60 percent. But current and former agents said tips have enabled them to catch drug smugglers who might have gotten away.
"It was an amazing tool," said one recently retired federal agent. "Our big fear was that it wouldn't stay secret."
DEA officials said that the SOD process has been reviewed internally. They declined to provide Reuters with a copy of their most recent review. (Edited by Blake Morrison)
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Lavabit, the e-mail service reportedly used by Edward Snowden, goes dark
The Lavabit notice was followed by a similar announcement from another encrypted e-mail service, Silent Circle.
By Matthew Shaer / August 9, 2013
Lavabit, the encrypted e-mail program reportedly used by Edward Snowden, has gone dark.
In a message posted yesterday to the Lavabit site, founder Ladar Levison said he decided to suspend service "after significant soul searching." Although Levison did not go into detail on his reasoning – he seemed to hint that he was legally prohibited from doing so – it is widely believed that he is currently working to stave off some kind of court order involved with Mr. Snowden's leaking case.
"I feel you deserve to know what’s going on – the first amendment is supposed to guarantee me the freedom to speak out in situations like this," Mr. Levison wrote to users. "Unfortunately, Congress has passed laws that say otherwise. As things currently stand, I cannot share my experiences over the last six weeks, even though I have twice made the appropriate requests."
Levison says he would file an appeal, which might allow him to "resurrect Lavabit as an American company." In addition, he's established a Lavabit Legal Defense Fund.
In related news, Silent Circle, another encrypted e-mail service first launched in 2012, has also decided to power down. Although Silent Circle has not been linked to Snowden or the NSA leaks, in a notice to users, the site's operators signaled in a open letter that they are acting preemptively, apparently in case they are slapped with a gag order by the US government.
"We see the writing on the wall, and we have decided that it is best for us to shut down Silent Mail," the message reads. "We have not received subpoenas, warrants, security letters, or anything else by any government, and this is why we are acting now."
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by John W. Whitehead (no photo)Synopsis:
In A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, John W. Whitehead charts America's transition from a society governed by "we the people" to a police state governed by the strong arm of the law. In such an environment, the law becomes yet another tool to oppress the people. As a constitutional attorney of national prominence, and as president of The Rutherford Institute, an international civil liberties organization, Whitehead has been at the forefront of the fight for civil liberties in this country.
The recurring theme at the heart of A Government of Wolves is that the American people are in grave danger of losing their basic freedoms. The simple fact is that the Constitution - and in particular the Bill of Rights - is being undermined on virtually every front. Indeed, everything America was founded upon is in some way being challenged. The openness and freedom that were once the hallmarks of our society are now in peril.
We were once a society that valued individual liberty and privacy. But in recent years we have turned into a culture that has quietly accepted surveillance cameras, police and drug-sniffing dogs in our children's schools, national databases that track our finances and activities, sneak-and-peek searches of our homes without our knowledge or consent, and anti-terrorism laws that turn average Americans into suspects. In short, America has become a lockdown nation, and we are all in danger.
A Government of Wolves not only explains these acute problems but is a call to action offering timely and practical initiatives for Americans to take charge of present course of history and stop the growing police state. But time is running out. We are at critical juncture and every citizen who values his or her personal freedom needs to pay close attention to the message in this book!
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by Radley Balko (no photo)Synopsis:
The last days of colonialism taught America’s revolutionaries that soldiers in the streets bring conflict and tyranny. As a result, our country has generally worked to keep the military out of law enforcement. But according to investigative reporter Radley Balko, over the last several decades, America’s cops have increasingly come to resemble ground troops. The consequences have been dire: the home is no longer a place of sanctuary, the Fourth Amendment has been gutted, and police today have been conditioned to see the citizens they serve as an other—an enemy.
Today’s armored-up policemen are a far cry from the constables of early America. The unrest of the 1960s brought about the invention of the SWAT unit—which in turn led to the debut of military tactics in the ranks of police officers. Nixon’s War on Drugs, Reagan’s War on Poverty, Clinton’s COPS program, the post–9/11 security state under Bush and Obama: by degrees, each of these innovations expanded and empowered police forces, always at the expense of civil liberties. And these are just four among a slew of reckless programs.
In Rise of the Warrior Cop, Balko shows how politicians’ ill-considered policies and relentless declarations of war against vague enemies like crime, drugs, and terror have blurred the distinction between cop and soldier. His fascinating, frightening narrative shows how over a generation, a creeping battlefield mentality has isolated and alienated American police officers and put them on a collision course with the values of a free society.
Reviews:
The Economist
“Mr Balko manages to avoid the clichés of both right and left, and provokes genuine outrage at the misuse of state power in its most brutal and unaccountable form: heavily armed police raiding the homes of unarmed, non-violent suspects on the flimsiest of pretexts, and behaving more like an occupying army in hostile territory than guardians of public safety. “Rise of the Warrior Cop”, Mr Balko’s interesting first book, explains what policies led to the militarisation of America’s police. To his credit, he focuses his outrage not on the police themselves, but on politicians and the phoney, wasteful drug war they created.”
Pacific Standard
“Fascinating and sometimes terrifying”
Diane Goldstein, Huffington Post
“Rise of the Warrior Cop asks many questions about the proper role of law enforcement and the effect of the drug war, America's longest war, on our communities… Balko interweaves history, the Constitution, and case law to create an account of how the massive expansion of SWAT teams occurred as the perfect storm of politics, ideology and federal fiscal coercion.”
New York Journal of Books
“This historic review of America’s police and police tactics is clear and direct in its nondismissal narrative. This is not an anti-police book, but a serious look at the growth and use of SWAT and military style tactics, at America’s war on drugs, and the financial incentives that created the new “community police force”… This book is highly recommended for the historic value of the information; it is clear, concise, and well argued. Whether you are a lifetime, card carrying member of the ACLU or the newest law and order politician The Rise of the Warrior Cop provides a clear timeline and important information making it a must read.”
Publishers Weekly
“’Are cops constitutional?’ It’s a bold and provocative question, and the more Balko delves into the history of law enforcement, the more that question seems worth considering. … After reading Balko, you’ll be aware, alright—and scared.”
Ilya Somin, Volokh Conspiracy
“The best new book on a law-related topic I have read so far this year”
Simple Justice blog
“It's critical to appreciate the history of policing, to understand that what we now see as normal and inescapable wasn't always the case. For most of our history, this country did not have a group of people with shields and guns who wandered the streets ordering people about.… If there is any hope of changing the course of the militarization of law enforcement, it will come from a greater understanding of why this was never meant to be the internal norm of this country, and that it doesn't have to be. Radley Balko has done an exceptional job of making the case. Every person who hopes to preserve the integrity of his Castle from dynamic entry needs to read The Rise of Warrior Cop.”
Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director, American Civil Liberties Union
“Excessively militarized policing is easy to ignore when a SWAT team is ramming down someone else’s door or tear-gassing someone else’s protest. What makes Rise of the Warrior Cop so important is that Mr. Balko makes police militarization real for all of us. This is a meticulously researched history book that casts needed light on a central civil liberties issue. Police militarization is something we should all care about, and Rise of the Warrior Cop will show you why.”
Arianna Huffington, president and editor-in-chief, Huffington Post
“With his thorough reporting and compelling storytelling gifts, Radley Balko builds a powerful narrative of the militarization of our police forces, which both liberals and conservatives have allowed to flourish. And he shows the chilling results of both parties’ unwillingness to stand up to increasingly aggressive police tactics that often pit cops against those they are sworn to protect.”
Ron Paul, former Texas congressman and Republican presidential candidate
“Rise of the Warrior Cop is a comprehensive look at the reasons for, and the results of, the increasing militarization of law enforcement. Civil libertarians on the left and limited government conservatives on the right should pay especially close attention to Radley Balko’s examination of the link between the ‘the war on drugs’ and law enforcement’s increased use of police state tactics.”
Norm Stamper, thirty-four-year police veteran and police chief of Seattle, Washington, 1994–2000
“A rich, pertinent history, with unexpected but critically important observations of the increased militarization of American policing. And so well presented: clear, lucid, elegantly crafted. Rise of the Warrior Cop should be on the shelves of every police chief, sheriff, and SWAT commander in the country. A huge contribution.”
Glenn Greenwald, constitutional lawyer, Guardian columnist, and New York Times-bestselling author
“Vibrant and compelling. There is no vital trend in American society more overlooked than the militarization of our domestic police forces, and there is no journalist in America who is more knowledgeable and passionate about this topic than Radley Balko. If you care about the core political liberties of Americans, this is a must-read.”
Peter Kraska, Chair and Professor, Police and Justice Studies, Eastern Kentucky University
“Balko excels at an excruciatingly difficult task: telling the history of police militarization in a way that will grip any curious mind – without any loss of intellectual rigor. A fascinating, highly educational, and deeply disturbing read.”
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HOW THE GOVERNMENT KILLED A SECURE E-MAIL COMPANY
POSTED BY MICHAEL PHILLIPS
Source: The New Yorker Magazine
In mid-July, Tanya Lokshina, the deputy director for Human Rights Watch’s Moscow office, wrote on her Facebook wall that she had received an e-mail from edsnowden@lavabit.com. It requested that she attend a press conference at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International Airport to discuss the N.S.A. leaker’s “situation.” This was the wider public’s introduction to Lavabit, an e-mail service prized for its security. Lavabit promised, for instance, that messages stored on the service using asymmetric encryption, which encrypts incoming e-mails before they’re saved on Lavabit’s servers, could not even be read by Lavabit itself.
Yesterday, Lavabit went dark. In a cryptic statement posted on the Web site, the service’s owner and operator, Ladar Levison, wrote, “I cannot share my experiences over the last six weeks, even though I have twice made the appropriate requests.” Those experiences led him to shut down the service rather than, as he put it, “become complicit in crimes against the American people.” Lavabit users reacted with consumer vitriol on the company’s Facebook page (“What about our emails?”), but the tide quickly turned toward government critique. By the end of the night, a similar service, Silent Circle, also shut down its encrypted e-mail product, calling the Lavabit affair the “writing [on] the wall.”
Which secret surveillance scheme is involved in the Lavabit case? The company may have received a national-security letter, which is a demand issued by a federal agency (typically the F.B.I.) that the recipient turn over data about other individuals. These letters often forbid recipients from discussing it with anyone. Another possibility is that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court may have issued a warrant ordering Lavabit to participate in ongoing e-mail surveillance. We can’t be completely sure: as Judge Reggie Walton, the presiding judge of the FISA court, explained to Senator Patrick Leahy in a letter dated July 29th, FISA proceedings, decisions, and legal rationales are typically secret. America’s surveillance programs are secret, as are the court proceedings that enable them and the legal rationales that justify them; informed dissents, like those by Levison or Senator Ron Wyden, must be kept secret. The reasons for all this secrecy are also secret. That some of the secrets are out has not deterred the Obama Administration from prosecuting leakers under the Espionage Act for disclosure of classified information. Call it meta-secrecy.
If Lavabit attempted to resist a FISA order, the first thing it would have done is petition the FISA court to review the order, arguing that it was flawed in some way. According to some legal commentators, such an argument, no matter how it is styled, would almost certainly fail; the FISA court so frequently approves surveillance orders that it is often criticized as a rubber stamp. If Lavabit’s petition failed, it could still drag its feet and force the government to petition the FISA court to issue an order compelling Lavabit to comply. This would give Lavabit another opportunity to press its case.
If Lavabit lost a petition to compel, and still refused to coöperate, it could seek review before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review, which has limited power to review FISA orders and is rarely adversarial. According to Judge Walton, only one company has had the chance to argue before the F.I.S.C.R. as a party objecting to an order—Yahoo, which initially refused to coöperate with the Prism surveillance dragnet.
If Lavabit lost its appeal to the F.I.S.C.R., and still refused to coöperate, it would run a serious risk of being found in contempt; that’s how most courts punish those who disobey its orders. The FISA court is no different. According to the court’s rules of procedure, a party may be held in contempt for defying its orders. The secret court may consider many punishments—secret fines for each day of noncompliance, or even secret jail time for executives. The idea behind civil contempt is that “you hold the key to your own cell.” If you comply, the punishment stops. But hold out long enough and your contempt may be criminal, and your compliance will not end the jail sentence or displace the fine.
With these powers, the FISA court could dismantle a stubborn e-mail service provider, or Facebook, piece by piece. An angry FISA court could demand increasingly severe fines, identify more and more officers for jail time, and make it impossible for Facebook to operate within the United States by issuing more (and more invasive) warrants. In this scenario, the FISA court would order Mark Zuckerberg, hoodie and all, to walk down the hallway to the FISA court’s reportedly unmarked door and explain whether he would coöperate. If he refused to comply, the court could jail him—and then pressure Sheryl Sandberg, and on down the line. Aside from the risk of the public finding out its surveillance methods, the court would only be limited by its willingness to violate the privacy of Facebook’s users, and inflict pain on shareholders, who would not have received the usual disclosures about the company’s books. (In an HSBC money-laundering case, for instance, afraid of harming the shareholders and destabilizing the financial system, the government ultimately blinked, and settled outside of criminal proceedings.)
Because FISA proceedings are secret, there are only a few examples of dissent. In 2004, the Internet service provider Calyx was served with a national-security letter. The letter came with a gag order, which Calyx’s owner, Nicholas Merrill, succeeded in getting partially lifted—after more than six years of litigation. In the meantime, Calyx shut down, with the goal of one day reopening as a nonprofit Internet service provider focussed on privacy. In 2007, a former Qwest Communications International executive (appealing his conviction for insider trading) alleged that the government revoked opportunities for hundreds of millions of dollars of government contracts when Qwest objected to participating in a warrantless surveillance program. The government refused to comment on the executive’s allegations. And, finally, Yahoo resisted FISA orders in 2007 and 2008, according to published reports and Judge Walton’s letter to Leahy. But Yahoo ultimately buckled under the threat of contempt. In each case, the resisting company wanted to inform the public, but was initially denied.
Any one company rightly fears the FISA court’s ability to punish contempt. But the N.S.A.’s surveillance programs are impossible without robust coöperation from America’s telecommunications and Internet companies. Silicon Valley and the telecoms can’t press this leverage because meta-secrecy keeps the companies trapped in a prisoner’s dilemma. Microsoft doesn’t know if Google is heroically resisting. Tim Cook doesn’t know if Mark Zuckerberg has endured a secret jail sentence for freedom’s cause. No company wants to be the only one to disclose its coöperation with Prism and other programs, lest it appear to be weak on privacy and set itself at a competitive disadvantage. That’s why Google and other companies are petitioning for the right to disclose their participation. And, of course, nobody wants to be the first public company taken apart in contempt proceedings.
If Silicon Valley can coördinate its dissent, they stand a chance of moving the policy needle. For the government, meta-secrecy has the added benefit of deflecting the legitimacy that big business would bring to critics of the surveillance state; the few known public dissenters are painted as a rogue’s gallery of hackers, leakers, spies, and traitors. Depending on what he does next, Levison, a businessman in Texas, could join those ranks.
Levison’s statement provides few clues about what he might do. His mention of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals is a hint that he was ordered to do something—one of the only ways a case can go directly to a Court of Appeals is to challenge an agency order. A national-security letter is one such order, but there are at least two reasons to think Lavabit was ordered to participate in ongoing surveillance. First, the strategy of challenging national-security letters in the district courts has had some success—why deviate? Second, Levison described his decision as a choice between “becom[ing] complicit” and shutting down. One of the few publicly available national-security letters demands that a company not “disable, suspend, lock, cancel, or interrupt service” until the obligations of the letter are fulfilled. If Levison was ordered to give up Snowden’s encrypted data, refused, and then shut down the company, it’s unlikely he’d be going on the offensive in the Fourth Circuit. And while Lavabit’s encryption and privacy measures make brute force unattractive, the F.B.I. could have gotten a warrant to raid Lavabit and seize its hard drives or servers. Shutting down only mattered if Lavabit’s coöperation did.
There are already two theories as to what a FISA order against Lavabit may have looked like. First, FISA could have ordered Lavabit to insert spyware or build a back door for the N.S.A., as American and Canadian courts reportedly did to the encrypted e-mail service Hushmail, in 2007. Second, FISA could have ordered Lavabit to permit the N.S.A. to intercept users’ passwords. But the truth may never come out.
In a press conference on Friday, President Obama, in addition to pledging greater transparency surrounding the use of Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which the government invokes to gather telephone records, promised to work with Congress to improve the FISA court. He proposed to make its deliberations more transparent and more adversarial, so that FISA judges hear from advocates for both “security” and “liberty.” Most important, he committed to establishing public trust in “the whole elephant” of America’s surveillance programs. That will require open debate—something this Administration has not guaranteed thus far.
Michael Phillips is an associate at a Wall Street litigation firm.
Illustration by Matthew Hollister.
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A threat of legal action by the government that could have stopped reporting on the files leaked by Edward Snowden led to a symbolic act at the Guardian's offices in London
The Guardian's editor reveals why and how the newspaper destroyed computer hard drives containing copies of some of the secret files leaked by Edward Snowden. The decision was taken after a threat of legal action by the British government, that could have stopped the reporting on the extent of American and British state surveillance revealed by the document
Alan Rusbridger, Julian Borger, Mustafa Khalili and Laurence Topham
Tuesday 20 August 2013
theguardian.com
http://www.theguardian.com/world/vide...
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David Miranda detention questioned by terrorism law watchdog - video
Britain's anti-terrorist legislation watchdog is calling on the Home Office and Metropolitan police to explain why anti-terror laws were used to detain the partner of the Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald at Heathrow airport on Sunday. David Anderson QC, who is reviewing terrorism laws in the UK, says the detention of Miranda for the full nine hours was 'extremely unusual'
Tuesday 20 August 2013
theguardian.com
http://www.theguardian.com/world/vide...
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Theresa May had advance notice of David Miranda detention at Heathrow
Home secretary confirms Met briefed her before but denies she directed actions, saying police had 'operational independence'
Nicholas Watt, chief political correspondent
theguardian.com, Tuesday 20 August 2013 13.12 EDT
he home secretary has confirmed that she was given advanced notice of the decision by the police to detain David Miranda, the partner of the Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, at Heathrow airport.
As part of an offensive by the government to justify the detention, the home secretary praised the police action on the grounds that Miranda possessed sensitive documents which could help terrorists and "lead to a loss of lives".
May told the BBC: "I was briefed in advance that there was a possibility of a port stop, of the sort that took place. But we live in a country where those decisions as to whether or not to stop somebody or arrest somebody are not for me as home secretary. They are for the police to take. That's absolutely right that they have their operational independence. Long may that continue."
The home secretary, whose officials had initially declined to comment on the detention of Miranda on the grounds that it was an operational matter, said it was right for the police to act because of the sensitive nature of documents in his possession.
May added: "I think it is right, given that it is the first duty of the government to protect the public, that if the police believe somebody has in their possession highly sensitive stolen information which could help terrorists which could lead to a loss of lives then it is right that the police act. That is what the law enables them to do. But of course the law also has safeguards within it and we have an inpendent reviewer who, as David Anderson has already said, he will be looking into this case to ensure it was conducted properly."
The remarks by May followed confirmation by Downing Street that the prime minister was also given advanced notice that police planned to detain Miranda. A No 10 source said: "We were kept abreast in the usual way. We do not direct police investigations."
The confirmation from Downing Street and the Home Office, which followed a statement from the White House on Monday, that it was given a "heads-up" about the detention of Miranda, marked an abrupt change of tactics by the government. Officials had declined to answer questions about the affair on the grounds that it was an operational police matter.
The government faced calls from across the political spectrum to give a more detailed response. Downing Street decided to clarify the position after Josh Earnest, the principal deputy White House press secretary, said at a briefing on Monday that the "British government" had decided to detain Miranda.
This claim was seized on by Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, who demanded an explanation from May. No 10 sources said that the White House spokesman meant to say that the UK authorities, rather than the UK government, had made the decision to detain Miranda. The remarks by Earnest explained why No 10 felt the need to make clear that it did not direct police operations.
David Davis, the former shadow home secretary, dismissed the No 10 intervention. Davis told The World at One on BBC Radio 4: "The simple fact that the White House had been notified about it really told you that the entire senior tier of government in this area would have known about it – the home secretary, probably the foreign secretary and almost certainly the prime minister.
"What that means is that of course they didn't direct it, nobody is suggesting they directed it. But they approved it by implication. If the home secretary is told this is going to happen and she doesn't intervene then she is approving it."
May emphatically rejected the claim by Davis. She told the BBC: "No. We have a very clear divide in this country – and I think that is absolutely right – between the operational independence of the police and the policy work of politicians. I, as home secretary, do not tell the police who they should or should not stop at ports or who they should or should not arrest.
"I think it is absolutely right that that is the case – that the police decide who they should stop or not and whether they should arrest somebody or not. That's their operational independence. I am pleased we live in a country where there is that separation."
Miranda was stopped at Heathrow en route to Rio de Janeiro, where he lives with Greenwald, who has written a series of stories for the Guardian revealing mass surveillance programmes by the NSA.
He was returning to their home from Berlin when he was stopped at Heathrow under schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000, allowing officials to take away his mobile phone, laptop, camera, memory sticks, DVDs and games consoles.
During his trip to Berlin, Miranda met Laura Poitras, the US film-maker who has been working with Greenwald and the Guardian.
The Guardian paid for Miranda's flights. Miranda is not a Guardian employee but often assists Greenwald in his work.
===================================================
Net, net: It appears that more than the NSA are afraid of the truth that Snowden has revealed about what is really going on so much so that they abuse the powers that they were given.
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The remains of a computer that held files leaked by Edward Snowden to the Guardian and destroyed at the behest of the UK government. Photograph: Roger Tooth
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The decision was taken after a threat of legal action by the government that could have stopped reporting on the extent of American and British government surveillance revealed by the documents.
It resulted in one of the stranger episodes in the history of digital-age journalism. On Saturday 20 July, in a deserted basement of the Guardian's King's Cross offices, a senior editor and a Guardian computer expert used angle grinders and other tools to pulverise the hard drives and memory chips on which the encrypted files had been stored.
As they worked they were watched by technicians from Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) who took notes and photographs, but who left empty-handed.
The editor of the Guardian, Alan Rusbridger, had earlier informed government officials that other copies of the files existed outside the country and that the Guardian was neither the sole recipient nor steward of the files leaked by Snowden, a former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor. But the government insisted that the material be either destroyed or surrendered.
Twelve days after the destruction of the files the Guardian reported on US funding of GCHQ eavesdropping operations and published a portrait of working life in the British agency's huge "doughnut" building in Cheltenham. Guardian US, based and edited in New York, has also continued to report on evidence of NSA co-operation with US telecommunications corporations to maximise the collection of data on internet and phone users around the world.
The British government has attempted to step up its pressure on journalists, with the detention in Heathrow on Sunday of David Miranda, the partner of Glenn Greenwald, who has led the Guardian's US reporting on the files.
Miranda was detained for nine hours under a section of legislation enacted in 2000 aimed at terrorists. The use of this measure – which applies only to airports and ports – meant the normal protection for suspects in the UK, including journalists, did not apply.
The initial UK attempts to stop reporting on the files came two weeks after the publication of the first story based on Snowden's leaks, about a secret US court order obliging the communications corporation Verizon to hand over data on its customers' phone usage. This was followed by a story detailing how GCHQ was making use of data collected by the NSA's internet monitoring programme, Prism.
Days later the paper published another story revealing how UK intelligence spied on British allies at two London summits.
Shortly afterwards two senior British officials arrived at the Guardian's offices to see Rusbridger and his deputy, Paul Johnson. They were cordial but made it clear they came on high authority to demand the immediate surrender of all the Snowden files in the Guardian's possession.
They argued that the material was stolen and that a newspaper had no business holding on to it. The Official Secrets Act was mentioned but not threatened. At this stage officials emphasised they preferred a low-key route rather than go to court.
The Guardian editors argued that there was a substantial public interest in the hitherto unknown scale of government surveillance and the collaboration with technology and telecoms companies, particularly given the apparent weakness of parliamentary and judicial oversight.
There was no written threat of any legal moves.
After three weeks which saw the publication of several more articles on both sides of the Atlantic about GCHQ and NSA internet and phone surveillance, British government officials got back in touch and took a sterner approach.
"You've had your fun. Now we want the stuff back," one of them said.
The same two senior officials who had visited the Guardian the previous month returned with the message that patience with the newspaper's reporting was wearing out.
They expressed fears that foreign governments, in particular Russia or China, could hack into the Guardian's IT network. But the Guardian explained the security surrounding the documents, which were held in isolation and not stored on any Guardian system.
However, in a subsequent meeting, an intelligence agency expert argued that the material was still vulnerable. He said by way of example that if there was a plastic cup in the room where the work was being carried out foreign agents could train a laser on it to pick up the vibrations of what was being said. Vibrations on windows could similarly be monitored remotely by laser.
Between 16 and 19 July government pressure intensified and, in a series of phone calls and meetings, the threat of legal action or even a police raid became more explicit.
At one point the Guardian was told: "We are giving active consideration to the legal route."
Rusbridger said: "I don't know what changed or why it changed. I imagine there were different conversations going on within the security apparatus, within Whitehall and within Downing Street."
The Guardian's lawyers believed the government might either seek an injunction under the law of confidence, a catch-all statute that covers any unauthorised possession of confidential material, or start criminal proceedings under the Official Secrets Act.
Either brought with it the risk that the Guardian's reporting would be frozen everywhere and that the newspaper would be forced to hand over material.
"I explained to British authorities that there were other copies in America and Brazil so they wouldn't be achieving anything," Rusbridger said. "But once it was obvious that they would be going to law I preferred to destroy our copy rather than hand it back to them or allow the courts to freeze our reporting."
Any such surrender would have represented a betrayal of the source, Edward Snowden, Rusbridger believed. The files could ultimately have been used in the American whisteblower's prosecution.
"I don't think we had Snowden's consent to hand the material back, and I didn't want to help the UK authorities to know what he had given us," the Guardian editor said.
Furthermore the computer records could be analysed forensically to yield information on which journalists had seen and worked with which files.
Rusbridger took the decision that if the government was determined to stop UK-based reporting on the Snowden files, the best option was destroy the London copy and to continue to edit and report from America and Brazil. Journalists in America are protected by the first amendment, guaranteeing free speech.
Since a legal case over the publication of the Pentagon Papers by the Washington Post and New York Times in 1971, it is widely considered that the US state would not succeed in attempting prior restraint on publication. The leaked Pentagon Papers revealed top secret details of the poor progress of the US military campaign in Vietnam.
Talks began with government officials on a procedure that might satisfy their need to ensure the material had been destroyed, but which would at the same time protect the Guardian's sources and its journalism.
The compromise ultimately brought Paul Johnson, Guardian News and Media's executive director Sheila Fitzsimons, and one of its top computer experts, David Blishen, to the basement of its Kings Place office on a hot Saturday morning to meet two GCHQ officials with notebooks and cameras.
The intelligence men stood over Johnson and Blishen as they went to work on the hard drives and memory chips with angle grinders and drills, pointing out the critical points on circuit boards to attack. They took pictures as the debris was swept up but took nothing away.
It was a unique encounter in the long and uneasy relationship between the press and the intelligence agencies, and a highly unusual, very physical, compromise between the demands of national security and free expression.
But it was largely a symbolic act. Both sides were well aware that other copies existed outside the UK and that the reporting on the reach of state surveillance in the 21st century would continue.
"It affects every citizen, but journalists I think should be aware of the difficulties they are going to face in the future because everybody in 2013 leaves a very big digital trail that is very easily accessed," Rusbridger said.
"I hope what [the Miranda detention row] will do is to send people back to read the stories that so upset the British state because there has been a lot of reporting about what GCHQ and the NSA are up to. What Snowden is trying to do is draw attention to the degree to which we are on a road to total surveillance."
Groklaw closes down
The award-winning legal analysis site Groklaw is to shut because its founder says there is no way to continue to run it without using secure email – and that the threat of National Security Agency spying means that could be compromised.
"There is now no shield from forced exposure," wrote Pamela Jones, an American paralegal who has run the site since its founding in 2003, in a farewell message on the site.
Jones cites the revelations that the US National Security Agency (NSA) can capture any email, and can store encrypted email for up to five years, as having prompted her decision to close down: "The simple truth is, no matter how good the motives might be for collecting and screening everything we say to one another, and no matter how 'clean' we all are ourselves from the standpoint of the screeners, I don't know how to function in such an atmosphere. I don't know how to do Groklaw like this," she wrote.
Privacy International criticised the climate that had led to Jones's decision. "The closing of Groklaw demonstrates how central the right to privacy is to free expression. The mere threat of surveillance is enough to [make people] self-censor," it said in a statement.
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How to fight back … digital rights activist and author Cory Doctorow.
News of secret courts being introduced in the world's oldest democracy should scare any rational human. The right to a public trial has survived feudalism, Henry VIII and the industrial revolution, but couldn't stand up to the forces of global capitalism. Secret courts could be an idea from Alan Moore's polemic on Thatcher's Britain, V for Vendetta (today enjoying a second life inspiring Occupy protestors and the Anonymous hacker group) or from Homeland, the latest novel from science-fiction author Cory Doctorow.
Doctorow's 2007 young adult novel Little Brother introduced teenage readers to the writer's outspoken ideas on technology and personal freedom. The novel's title is of course a play on Big Brother, from the granddaddy of all dystopian SF, George Orwell's 1984. Orwell's devastating vision of totalitarian state rule remains chilling, but it has dated with the advance of technology. Orwell was writing at a time when governments, whether the totalitarian dictatorships of Russia and China, or the democracies of western Europe and America, ruled with near absolute power. Today national governments seem increasingly impotent in the face of global economic forces and technological change they cannot begin to keep pace with.
Homeland sees protagonist Marcus Yallow older and somewhat wiser, but once again dragged in to a conflict with the same shadowy powers within the Department of Homeland Security responsible for torturing him in Little Brother. Doctorow, perhaps because of his background in adult SF writing and his long history of political activism, is unflinching both in his portrayal of torture, and in his radical scepticism of state and corporate power. Homeland, like Little Brother before it, aims to give teenagers a manual of techniques for resisting corruption and oppression, wherever it happens to arise. It's a sign of the pressures inherent in our post-9/11 society that we feel need to educate young citizens in how to resist the authority of both their government and of big business.
Today we perhaps have less to fear from the iron fist of Big Brother (although force is never far out of the picture) than from the insidious manipulation of big data. Viktor Mayer-Schonberger and Kenneth Cukier's new book (Big Data: A Revolution) cracks open one of the most revolutionary aspects of modern technology – the huge amount of data on our behaviour it gives us access to. Technology that we take for granted, from smartphones to social networks, harvest a vast array of data on the minutiae of our lives. What we buy. Where we go. Who we talk to. What we believe. Why we believe it. And the bulk of this data is delivered, unquestioningly, in to the hands of a just a few technology providers – Google and Facebook being the market leaders.
Big data has many positive applications, but the potential for oppressive uses is undeniable. Whether it's manufacturing consent for an election campaign to deliver the right candidate, or developing consumer products so perfectly targeted to our psychological weaknesses that we can barely resist buying them, the data is now there to facilitate unparalleled levels of control over the public. And it's for sale, an explicit and ever more profitable part of the business of modern technology companies.
As technology becomes an ever bigger factor in day-to-day life, we need writers like Doctorow to help us direct it to support freedom over oppression. In his other writing, including Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom and Makers, Doctorow has explored the more optimistic futures that technology might shape. I took some inspiration from Doctorow's work recently in thinking through the potential of an emerging creator culture, one where the great potential of technology is harnessed not to manipulate people for greater profit, but to liberate their natural creativity. It's my gut instinct that our future, much like our today, will be a stark mixture of both Big Brother and creator culture, with all the possibilities in between also represented. But what do you think? Where is the technology of today leading us tomorrow?
The writing of Cory Doctorow and other SF authors could help us shape future technology for liberation, not oppression
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Folks, the following books are Science Fiction although others might argue they are becoming reality - but not non fiction unless otherwise noted.
by
Cory Doctorow
by George OrwellGeorge Orwell
by
Cory Doctorow
by
Alan MooreNote: The following book is non fiction
by
Viktor Mayer-Schönberger
by
Cory Doctorow
Mod
8/22/2013 9:47am
The NSA violated the Constitution for three years when it collected tens of thousands of domestic communications without sufficient privacy protection, according to a 2011 secret national-security court ruling. Jennifer Valentino-DeVries explains.
Secret Court Faulted NSA For Collecting Domestic Data
BY SIOBHAN GORMAN, DEVLIN BARRETT AND JENNIFER VALENTINO-DEVRIES
WASHINGTON—
The National Security Agency violated the Constitution for three years by collecting tens of thousands of purely domestic communications without sufficient privacy protection, according to a secret national-security court ruling.
In the strongly worded 2011 ruling, released Wednesday by the Obama administration, the court criticized the NSA for misrepresenting its practices to the court.
It noted that the illegal collection was the third instance in less than three years in which the government made a "substantial misrepresentation regarding the scope of a major collection program," specifically how the NSA collected Internet communications and phone data.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001...
Source: The Wall Street Journal
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Release date: April 29, 2014
No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State
by
Glenn GreenwaldSynopsis:
No Place to Hide is a groundbreaking look at the NSA surveillance scandal, from the reporter who broke the story
Investigative reporter for The Guardian and bestselling author Glenn Greenwald, provides an in-depth look into the NSA scandal that has triggered a national debate over national security and information privacy. With further revelations from documents entrusted to Glenn Greenwald by Edward Snowden himself, this book explores the extraordinary cooperation between private industry and the NSA, and the far-reaching consequences of the government’s surveillance program, both domestically and abroad.
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by Luke Harding (no photo)Synopsis:
IT BEGAN WITH A TANTALIZING, ANONYMOUS EMAIL: “I AM A SENIOR MEMBER OF THE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY.”
What followed was the most spectacular intelligence breach ever, brought about by one extraordinary man. Edward Snowden was a 29-year-old computer genius working for the National Security Agency when he shocked the world by exposing the near-universal mass surveillance programs of the United States government. His whistleblowing has shaken the leaders of nations worldwide, and generated a passionate public debate on the dangers of global monitoring and the threat to individual privacy.
In a tour de force of investigative journalism that reads like a spy novel, award-winning Guardian reporter Luke Harding tells Snowden’s astonishing story—from the day he left his glamorous girlfriend in Honolulu carrying a hard drive full of secrets, to the weeks of his secret-spilling in Hong Kong, to his battle for asylum and his exile in Moscow. For the first time, Harding brings together the many sources and strands of the story—touching on everything from concerns about domestic spying to the complicity of the tech sector—while also placing us in the room with Edward Snowden himself. The result is a gripping insider narrative—and a necessary and timely account of what is at stake for all of us in the new digital age.
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by John W Whiteside III (no photo)Synopsis:
Fool’s Mate tells the true stories of two traitors working different sides of the Cold War. One is an arrogant, lonely U.S. Army soldier serving in the highly secretive National Security Agency. The other is an ambitious KGB officer with access to the U.S.S.R.’s most sensitive documents. Both betray their countries, but their fates and motivations are very different. At the height of the Cold War in September 1965, disgruntled U.S. soldier Robert Stephan Lipka walked boldly into the U.S.S.R. embassy in Washington, DC. Inside, he negotiated the sale of highly sensitive National Security Agency documents. The price he demanded for his treason? A mere four hundred dollars. The Soviets could not believe their luck. For the next two years, Lipka delivered a steady stream of important information on U.S. security, before attempting to get out of the spy game as his military enlistment period expired. The KGB, however, continued their interest in Lipka for several years, eventually dispatching deep-cover Soviet illegals to make re-contact. As Lipka exited the scene, KGB officer Vasili Mitrokhin planted the seeds of his own treason, which bore unexpected fruit decades later.
With the fall of the Berlin Wall and the imminent collapse of the Soviet Union, Mitrokhin fled to the West, offering a treasure trove of archived KGB files in return for protection. Hidden within those documents was incriminating evidence against Lipka, who was then living a quiet life in the Amish suburbs of Lancaster, Pennsylvania. After a lengthy surveillance and sting operation, Lipka was convicted in 1997. Thirty-two years after first committing treason, he was finally brought to justice—his conviction ending the longest-running open espionage case in U.S. history. With Lipka’s adamant refusal to cooperate with authorities, it remains unclear just how much American blood he traded for small sums of cash. Fool’s Mate reconstructs the Lipka investigation through the eyes of author John Whiteside, the FBI Special Agent who led the case from start to finish, telling a story as relevant today as it was in 1965. With the arrest of ten Russian illegals in 2010 and the 2013 release of classified National Security Agency documents by Edward Snowden, "Fool's Mate" reminds us just how vulnerable national security is to both foreign intelligence services and men like Lipka, willing to sell out their country from within.
Mod
This topic greatly saddens me. It seems, more and more, that we are the new Evil Empire, here in America. I am deeply ashamed.More and more, we need to be cautious what we say and who we say it to. Sometimes, we cannot speak about things the government has done to us, because it would jeopardize "national security" (like the closure of lavabit). It would jeopardize the freedoms of the criminal elite.
It reminds me of the work of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.
Aleksandr SolzhenitsynNo longer can we be literal about our criticism of government. We have to use metaphor.
Someone sold us on the idea that "security" was more important than "liberty," but Benjamin Franklin knew better. He knew that giving in to our weaknesses is never a solution.
Benjamin FranklinMore and more our sweet-talking presidents are passing tyrannical legislation to curb and even shred the Constitution. Their oaths of office are a sham. Advocates of the Constitution are showing up on lists of suspected terrorists, if not by name, at least by category.
When whistleblowers (like Manning and Snowden) are demonized, along with "conspiracy theorists" who only deal in facts, and the real criminals are not even investigated, then confidence in the once-great United States has evaporated.
When more and more evidence comes to light that 9/11 was an inside job, the Corporate Party Mainstream Media seems increasingly deaf and blind. But this shouldn't be a surprise. The same corporations who profit from lies and destruction also own the channels of communication. Corporatocracy has won a silent coup.
It doesn't take much to imagine what Plato must have felt when his mentor was forced to take hemlock, because of the bruised egos of his fellow Athenians. Corruption by ego has been the bane of humanity since the beginning.
PlatoPerhaps the only real solution is not in this action-reaction, continuity-based world, but in the wisdom of the ancient sages, like Yeshua of Nazareth, when he warned about the hunger to be "first" (ego), and talked of its antidote, the acceptance of being "last" (humility). Such things as humility, inspiration, forgiveness and creation are the real building blocks of civilization. All else is wailing and gnashing. Amazing what kind of wisdom a book might reveal when you read it metaphorically. Such indirectness does not stir ego, or the NSA, from its light slumber.
Holy Bible: King James VersionWhen President Obama pretends to be Christian and then ridicules "turning the other cheek," he shows his true colors. As Yeshua once taught, you can tell a "tree" by the "fruit" it bears. And the fruit of ego has given us NSA, 9/11, SIS, countless wars of greed and deception and a world of suffering.
In such madness, we need quiet wisdom, peaceful reflection and thoughtful action, rather than knee-jerk reaction. We need to understand the perfection of the "paramitas," as Khentin Tai Situ Pa once described in Way to Go (no cover, photo or link found).
The History Book Club
Books mentioned in this topic
Beyond Snowden: Privacy, Mass Surveillance, and the Struggle to Reform the NSA (other topics)How America Lost Its Secrets: Edward Snowden, the Man and the Theft (other topics)
Code Warriors: NSA's Code Breakers and the Secret Intelligence War Against the Soviet Union (other topics)
Dark Mirror: Edward Snowden and the American Surveillance State (other topics)
National Security under the Obama Administration (other topics)
More...
Authors mentioned in this topic
Timothy H. Edgar (other topics)Edward Jay Epstein (other topics)
Stephen Budiansky (other topics)
Barton Gellman (other topics)
Bahram M Rajaee (other topics)
More...
Estimated to be the largest and costliest of all U.S. intelligence organizations, NSA is primarily tasked with collecting and analyzing information and data of foreign intelligence and counterintelligence value, including through clandestine means.
The agency is also responsible for the protection of U.S. government communications and information systems, which involves information security and cryptanalysis/cryptography.
Due to the organization's secrecy, NSA's famous acronym is at times explained to stand for "No Such Agency" or "Never Say Anything".
While the CIA serves as the national coordinator for human intelligence (HUMINT), the NSA is tasked with coordination and deconfliction of national SIGINT missions across the intelligence community, with all other government establishments being prevented by law from engaging in such activities without the approval of the Defense Secretary following consultations with the NSA.
As part of these streamlining responsibilities, the agency has a co-located organization called the Central Security Service, which was created to facilitate cooperation between NSA and other U.S. military cryptanalysis components.
The NSA Director, who is at least a lieutenant general or vice admiral, also serves as the Commander of the United States Cyber Command and Chief of the Central Security Service.
Source: Wikipedia