The NSA Leaks

[Happy Face 29]

The NSA revelations continue to expose far more than just the ongoing operations of that sprawling and unaccountable spying agency. Let's examine what we have learned this week about the US political and media class and then certain EU leaders.

 

The first NSA story to be reported was our June 6 article which exposed the bulk, indiscriminate collection by the US Government of the telephone records of tens of millions of Americans. Ever since then, it has been undeniably clear that James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, outright lied to the US Senate - specifically to the Intelligence Committee, the body charged with oversight over surveillance programs - when he said "no, sir" in response to this question from Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden: "Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?"

 

That Clapper fundamentally misled Congress is beyond dispute. The DNI himself has now been forced by our stories to admit that his statement was, in his words, "clearly erroneous" and to apologize. But he did this only once our front-page revelations forced him to do so: in other words, what he's sorry about is that he got caught lying to the Senate. And as Salon's David Sirota adeptly documented on Friday, Clapper is still spouting falsehoods as he apologizes and attempts to explain why he did it.

 

How is this not a huge scandal? Intentionally deceiving Congress is a felony, punishable by up to 5 years in prison for each offense. Reagan administration officials were convicted of misleading Congress as part of the Iran-contra scandal and other controversies, and sports stars have been prosecuted by the Obama DOJ based on allegations they have done so.

 

Beyond its criminality, lying to Congress destroys the pretense of oversight. Obviously, members of Congress cannot exercise any actual oversight over programs which are being concealed by deceitful national security officials.

 

In response to our first week of NSA stories, Wyden issued a statement denouncing these misleading statements, explaining that the Senate's oversight function "cannot be done responsibly if senators aren't getting straight answers to direct questions", and calling for "public hearings" to "address the recent disclosures," arguing that "the American people have the right to expect straight answers from the intelligence leadership to the questions asked by their representatives." Those people who have been defending the NSA programs by claiming there is robust Congressional oversight should be leading the chorus against Clapper, given that his deceit prevents the very oversight they invoke to justify these programs.

 

But Clapper isn't the only top national security official who has been proven by our NSA stories to be fundamentally misleading the public and the Congress about surveillance programs. As an outstanding Washington Post article by Greg Miller this week documented:

 

"[D]etails that have emerged from the exposure of hundreds of pages of previously classified NSA documents indicate that public assertions about these programs by senior US officials have also often been misleading, erroneous or simply false."

 

Please re-read that sentence. It's not just Clapper, but multiple "senior US officials", whose statements have been proven false by our reporting and Edward Snowden's disclosures. Indeed, the Guardian previously published top secret documents disproving the claims of NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander that the agency is incapable of stating how many Americans are having their calls and emails invaded without warrants, as well as the oft-repeated claim from President Barack Obama that the NSA is not listening in on Americans' calls without warrants. Both of those assertions, as our prior reporting and Miller's article this week demonstrates, are indisputably false.

 

Beyond that, the NSA got caught spreading falsehoods even in its own public talking points about its surveillance programs, and were forced by our disclosures to quietly delete those inaccuracies. Wyden and another Democratic Senator, Mark Udall, wrote a letter to the NSA identifying multiple inaccuracies in their public claims about their domestic spying activities.

 

Defending the Obama administration, Paul Krugman pronounced that "the NSA stuff is a policy dispute, not the kind of scandal the right wing wants." Really? In what conceivable sense is this not a serious scandal? If you, as an American citizen, let alone a journalist, don't find it deeply objectionable when top national security officials systematically mislead your representatives in Congress about how the government is spying on you, and repeatedly lie publicly about resulting political controversies over that spying, what is objectionable? If having the NSA engage in secret, indiscriminate domestic spying that warps if not outright violates legal limits isn't a "scandal", then what is?

 

For many media and political elites, the answer to that question seems clear: what's truly objectionable to them is when powerless individuals blow the whistle on deceitful national security state officials. Hence the endless fixation on Edward Snowden's tone and choice of asylum providers, the flamboyant denunciations of this "29-year-old hacker" for the crime of exposing what our government leaders are doing in the dark, and all sorts of mockery over the drama that resulted from the due-process-free revocation of his passport. This is what our media stars and progressive columnists, pundits and bloggers are obsessing over in the hope of distracting attention away from the surveillance misconduct of top-level Obama officials and their serial deceit about it.

 

What kind of journalist - or citizen - would focus more on Edward Snowden's tonal oddities and travel drama than on the fact that top US officials have been deceitfully concealing a massive, worldwide spying apparatus being constructed with virtually no accountability or oversight? Just ponder what it says about someone who cares more about, and is angrier about, Edward Snowden's exposure of these facts than they are about James Clapper's falsehoods and the NSA's excesses.

 

What we see here, yet again, is this authoritarian strain in US political life that the most powerful political officials cannot commit crimes or engage in serious wrongdoing. The only political crimes come from exposing and aggressively challenging those officials.

 

How is it anything other than pure whistleblowing to disclose secret documents proving that top government officials have been systematically deceiving the public about vital matters and/or skirting if not violating legal and Constitutional limits? And what possible justification is there for supporting the ability of James Clapper to continue in his job despite what he just got caught doing?

 

EU Leaders

 

Then we come to the leaders of various EU states. These leaders spent the last week feigning all sorts of righteous indignation over revelations that the NSA was using extreme measures to spy indiscriminately not only on the communications of their citizens en masse but also on their own embassies and consulates - things they learned thanks to Edward Snowden's self-sacrificing choice to reveal to the world what he discovered inside the NSA.

 

But on Tuesday night, the governments of three of those countries - France, Spain and Portugal - abruptly withdrew overflight rights for an airplane carrying Bolivian President Evo Morales, who was attempting to fly home from a conference in Russia. That conduct forced a diversion of Morales' plan to Austria, where he remained for 13 hours before being able to leave this morning.

 

These EU governments did that because they suspected - falsely, it now seems - that Morales' plane was also carrying Snowden: the person who enabled them to learn of the NSA spying aimed at their citizens and themselves that they claim to find so infuriating. They wanted to physically prevent Bolivia from considering or granting Snowden's request for asylum, a centuries-old right in international law. Meanwhile, the German government - which has led the ritualistic condemnations of NSA spying that Snowden exposed - summarily rejected Snowden's application for asylum almost as soon as it hit their desks.

 

A 2013 report from Open Society documents that Spain and Portugal were among the nations who participated in various ways in rendition flights - ie kidnapping - by the US. In particular, the report found, "Spain has permitted use of its airspace and airports for flights associated with CIA secret detention and extraordinary rendition operations." Similarly, "Portugal has permitted use of its airspace and airports for flights associated with CIA extraordinary rendition operations." The French judiciary previously investigated reports that the French government knowingly allowed the CIA to use its airspace for renditions.

 

So these EU states are perfectly content to allow a country - when it's the US - to use their airspace to kidnap people from around the world with no due process. But they will physically stop a plane carrying the president of a sovereign state - when it's from Latin America - in order to subvert the well-established process for seeking asylum from political persecution (and yes: the US persecutes whistleblowers).

 

All of this smacks of exactly the kind of rank imperialism and colonialism that infuriates most of Latin America, and further exposes the emptiness of American and western European lectures about the sacred rule of law. This is rogue nation behavior. As human rights law professor Sarah Joseph put it:

 

"Bravo EU states. You allowed rendition flights. But not Bolivian prez due to bogus belief the guy who revealed mass spying on you onboard"

 

As the Index on Censorship said to EU states this morning: "Members of the EU have a duty to protect freedom of expression and should not interfere in an individual's attempts to seek asylum. Edward Snowden is a whistleblower whose free speech rights should be protected not criminalised."

 

As usual, US officials and their acolytes who invoke "the law" to demand severe punishment for powerless individuals (Edward Snowden, Bradley Manning) instantly exploit the same concept to protect US political officials, their owners and their allies from the worst crimes: torture, warrantless eavesdropping, rendition, systemic financial fraud, deceiving Congress and the US public about their surveillance behavior. If you're spending your time calling for Ed Snowden's head but not James Clapper's, or if you're obsessed with Snowden's fabricated personality attributes (narcissist!) but apathetic about rampant, out-of-control NSA surveillance, it's probably worth spending a few moments thinking about what this priority scheme reveals.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jul/03/clapper-lying-snowden-eu-bolivia

[ChezGiven 0]

Saw this in the IHT the other day HF and thought you'd be interested. It was actually an NYT article so you might have seen it already.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/02/us/politics/feinsteins-support-for-nsa-defies-liberal-critics-and-repute.html?pagewanted=all

 

 

WASHINGTON — She fought so hard to outlaw assault weapons that the National Rifle Association deemed her efforts tantamount to proposing the largest gun ban in American history. Well before the Supreme Court took up same-sex marriage, she sponsored a bill to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act. And she urged President George W. Bush, and later President Obama, to shut down the prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

 

But Senator Dianne Feinstein — California Democrat and liberal lioness — has taken on a role that is leaving many of her allies on the left dismayed: as perhaps the most forthright and unapologetic Congressional defender of the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs.

 

“I think it’s an act of treason,” she said of the leaks by Edward J. Snowden, the N.S.A. contractor who revealed classified details about the programs, even as many liberals were hailing him as a whistle-blower. She has praised James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, who has been accused of lying to the Senate about the scope of the programs, as an honest and direct man.

 

At 80 — the Senate’s oldest member — she says she is resolute that the danger from terrorists demands an aggressive national security apparatus.

 

“I feel I have an obligation to do everything I can to keep this country safe,” Ms. Feinstein, who as chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee is one of the few Americans with detailed knowledge of the N.S.A.’s efforts, said in a recent interview from her private Capitol Hill office. “So put that in your pipe and smoke it.”

 

Although her political upbringing in the liberal bastion of San Francisco City Hall, where she served first as a city supervisor and then as mayor, suggests otherwise, her beliefs have always defied an easy caricature. She supports capital punishment, saying the Boston Marathon bombings should be prosecuted as a death penalty case. She cast votes to sustain the Iraq war until its later stages and voted to confirm Bush cabinet and judicial nominees from her position on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

 

Her Democratic colleagues on the Judiciary Committee often had no idea when she would vote against them. Her support for Mr. Bush’s nominee for attorney general in 2007, Michael B. Mukasey, prompted some in the California Democratic Party to try to censure her.

 

To her critics today, she is just another victim of Stockholm syndrome on the Congressional Intelligence Committees: an enabler of government overreach who has been intoxicated by the privilege of knowing the deepest-held state secrets.

 

Her ardent defense of the government’s surveillance efforts has put her at odds with some Democrats on the Intelligence Committee who have called on the Obama administration to narrow the scope of the N.S.A.’s data collection efforts.

 

“She and I, in terms of policy issues, growth, energy, social issues, we certainly agree on the overwhelming number of issues,” said Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, who along with Senator Mark Udall of Colorado has been a voice of dissent on the Intelligence Committee. “But, you know, families disagree.”

 

He added, “Here’s why we’re going to win: Because our side believes that security and liberty are not mutually exclusive.”

 

Ms. Feinstein, never one to shy away from uncomfortable disagreements with colleagues, observed that Mr. Wyden and Mr. Udall were in the minority in their beliefs. “Two people out of 15,” she said matter of factly.

 

“What do you think would happen if Najibullah Zazi was successful?” she asked, referring to the man who pleaded guilty to plotting to bomb the New York City subway. Intelligence officials have said N.S.A. e-mail surveillance helped them catch Mr. Zazi. “There would be unbridled criticism,” she said. “Didn’t we learn anything? Can’t we protect our homeland? What good is intelligence if we can’t stop this? So there’s a flip side to all this.”

 

For those who have worked alongside Ms. Feinstein, her resolve comes as no surprise. She angered Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, this year when she publicly criticized his decision to drop her assault weapons ban from a package of gun control bills. “Show some guts,” she implored her colleagues from the Senate floor as they were about to vote her proposal down.

 

She has always had a defiant streak. About a decade ago, Ms. Feinstein decided to add a playful feminist twist to one of the favorite institutions of a colleague then, Trent Lott of Mississippi, who had revived it when he was majority leader: Seersucker Thursday, when male senators wore seersucker suits to honor a Southern sartorial tradition. Ms. Feinstein bought all the female senators seersucker suits of their own.

 

“She is gutsy,” said Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine and a colleague on the Intelligence Committee. “She knows more — and I don’t mean that in a facetious way. She really knows the details,” Ms. Collins said. “She’s studied the program. She helped to strengthen the safeguards. She gets briefed regularly.”

 

Other senators describe Ms. Feinstein as consumed with her work as head of the Intelligence Committee. She reads volume after volume of classified reports and comes to meetings armed with statistics and anecdotes to defend a position she has clearly carved out. Unlike other senators, she rarely skips a weekly Democratic caucus lunch. And she almost always rises to speak.

 

Around the Senate, she is often referred to simply as “DiFi,” a nickname given to her during her days as a San Francisco city supervisor that suggests her singular, imperious presence.

 

“Dianne works very hard, and she reads a lot; she asks a lot of her staff in briefing her on issues,” said Joseph I. Lieberman, the former senator from Connecticut, who despite being liberal on many issues also routinely angered the left wing of the Democratic Party. “She’ll decide issue by issue what’s right, and that means sometimes she displeases the liberals, sometimes she displeases the conservatives. She’s not predictable.”

 

After her more than 20 years in the Senate — she was first elected in 1992, two years after an unsuccessful campaign as the first female nominee for governor from a major party in California history — hers is a phone call most of official Washington takes.

 

After details of the N.S.A. programs emerged a few weeks ago she placed a call to Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and asked him to arrange a classified briefing for the Senate. He agreed to send a former judge from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

 

In June, the White House chief of staff, Denis McDonough, agreed to accompany her and Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican, on a trip to the prison at Guantánamo Bay. Alarmed that 40 of the 166 men detained there were being force-fed because they refused to eat, Ms. Feinstein wrote to Chuck Hagel, the defense secretary, saying she felt their rights under the Geneva Conventions were being violated.

 

“Some problems take conservative solutions,” she explained. “And some problems take progressive solutions.”

 

[Happy Face 29]

Interesting article cheers Chez. Hadn't read it. She exemplifies how it's not in the least bit a left/right issue. The majority of congress are scared to fight for the constitution against fear-mongering. Her entire stance amounts to keeping Americans from harm no matter what the cost....

 

 

 

“I feel I have an obligation to do everything I can to keep this country safe. What do you think would happen if Najibullah Zazi was successful? There would be unbridled criticism. Didn’t we learn anything? Can’t we protect our homeland? What good is intelligence if we can’t stop this? So there’s a flip side to all this.”

But by that logic America would be safer if law enforcement could enter any and every property at any time to perform searches, if they could stop and search any person or vehicle, imprison anyone indefinitely upon suspicion only. None of these things are a price worth paying, but saying you will do everything you can suggests you will stop at nothing.

 

During the cold war there were nuclear warheads pointed at America, millions upon millions could have perished at any time, but freedoms weren't eroded to this degree. The most successful terrorist attack imaginable could kill what, tens of thousands? But law-makers are gutting the constitution to (they say) avoid that.

 

Zazi being caught on the back of PRISM was debunked before it even got traction. Operation Pathway (London) unearthed the intelligence that nipped his plan in the bud...

 

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2013/06/nsas-only-terrorist-defense-prism-didnt-even-last-week/66143/

[Happy Face 29]

Ms. Feinstein, as chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee is one of the few Americans with detailed knowledge of the N.S.A.’s efforts

 

 

That's suggests the committee have access to and oversight of the NSA's efforts, which isn't the case at all. Wyden is on the same committee and has lamented it's impotence (during an interview where a lawyer had to sit alongside him and give permission to answer questions)...

 

"if the state of our oversight is that only a handful of lawmakers can go into the secure room, and can't take pencil or paper, and can only look at certain memos, and aren't allowed to discuss them with anyone, that's not actual oversight."

 

 

 

 

http://www.oregonlive.com/movies/index.ssf/2013/06/interview_journalist_jeremy_sc.html

 

If Diane disclosed any of what she was told she'd have been done for leaking. If she asked for more info than she was provided it was at the discretion of the agency she was supposed to monitor. Like Wyden, who did feel the activities required challenging, if she wanted to object she had no mechanism for doing so. If questions were asked in congress, then the head of the security agencies would lie under oath (if only Snowden could apologise for his crime and have it forgotten, like Clapper).

[ChezGiven 0]

Nice ripostes, both to the article and Feinstein's position.

 

The piece was positioned as the 'alternative view' on a double-page of largely critical pieces in the IHT.

[ewerk 30616]

So after all the hoo ha the response from the US government has been simply to continue on just as they have been. The land of the free indeed.

[Happy Face 29]

Remarkably close vote yesterday though. Where there have only been a few dissenters when it has come to renewing the patriot act in past years, yesterdays proposal was the first in over a decade to place limits on NSA overreach....and it was almost a 50-50 split. Only 12 votes gave Obama his victory. Shows the impact these leaks have had on lawmakers.

[ewerk 30616]

It hasn't actually had an effect on the law though, if anything was going to change then now was the time to change it but the tide only appears to be flowing in one direction.

[Happy Face 29]

Not yet. This is the first proposed bill and Obama needed republican support to defeat it, his own party were well against him. The Patriot act will not get re-authorised next time around in it's current form. I'm not saying it'll be dumped, but the oversight will get some tinkering at least.

[Park Life 71]

Manning gets 136 years.

[Happy Face 29]

Minus 12 for all that bad stuff...you know...the torture...but we'll not talk about that.

[Park Life 71]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjLrC1-PMDw

[ChezGiven 0]

Thanks for posting that. Not always a huge fan of Pilger but will watch the rest of that later.

[Happy Face 29]

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

Under US law, the NSA is required to obtain an individualized Fisa warrant only if the target of their surveillance is a 'US person', though no such warrant is required for intercepting the communications of Americans with foreign targets. But XKeyscore provides the technological capability, if not the legal authority, to target even US persons for extensive electronic surveillance without a warrant provided that some identifying information, such as their email or IP address, is known to the analyst.

 

One training slide illustrates the digital activity constantly being collected by XKeyscore and the analyst's ability to query the databases at any time.

 

 

The purpose of XKeyscore is to allow analysts to search the metadata as well as the content of emails and other internet activity, such as browser history, even when there is no known email account (a "selector" in NSA parlance) associated with the individual being targeted.

 

Analysts can also search by name, telephone number, IP address, keywords, the language in which the internet activity was conducted or the type of browser used.

 

One document notes that this is because "strong selection [search by email address] itself gives us only a very limited capability" because "a large amount of time spent on the web is performing actions that are anonymous."

 

The NSA documents assert that by 2008, 300 terrorists had been captured using intelligence from XKeyscore.

 

Analysts are warned that searching the full database for content will yield too many results to sift through. Instead they are advised to use the metadata also stored in the databases to narrow down what to review.

 

A slide entitled "plug-ins" in a December 2012 document describes the various fields of information that can be searched. It includes "every email address seen in a session by both username and domain", "every phone number seen in a session (eg address book entries or signature block)" and user activity – "the webmail and chat activity to include username, buddylist, machine specific cookies etc".

 

Email monitoring

 

In a second Guardian interview in June, Snowden elaborated on his statement about being able to read any individual's email if he had their email address. He said the claim was based in part on the email search capabilities of XKeyscore, which Snowden says he was authorized to use while working as a Booz Allen contractor for the NSA.

 

One top-secret document describes how the program "searches within bodies of emails, webpages and documents", including the "To, From, CC, BCC lines" and the 'Contact Us' pages on websites".

 

To search for emails, an analyst using XKS enters the individual's email address into a simple online search form, along with the "justification" for the search and the time period for which the emails are sought.

 

 

 

The analyst then selects which of those returned emails they want to read by opening them in NSA reading software.

 

The system is similar to the way in which NSA analysts generally can intercept the communications of anyone they select, including, as one NSA document put it, "communications that transit the United States and communications that terminate in the United States".

 

One document, a top secret 2010 guide describing the training received by NSA analysts for general surveillance under the Fisa Amendments Act of 2008, explains that analysts can begin surveillance on anyone by clicking a few simple pull-down menus designed to provide both legal and targeting justifications. Once options on the pull-down menus are selected, their target is marked for electronic surveillance and the analyst is able to review the content of their communications:

 

 

Chats, browsing history and other internet activity

 

Beyond emails, the XKeyscore system allows analysts to monitor a virtually unlimited array of other internet activities, including those within social media.

 

An NSA tool called DNI Presenter, used to read the content of stored emails, also enables an analyst using XKeyscore to read the content of Facebook chats or private messages.

 

 

An analyst can monitor such Facebook chats by entering the Facebook user name and a date range into a simple search screen.

 

 

Analysts can search for internet browsing activities using a wide range of information, including search terms entered by the user or the websites viewed.

 

 

As one slide indicates, the ability to search HTTP activity by keyword permits the analyst access to what the NSA calls "nearly everything a typical user does on the internet".

 

 

The XKeyscore program also allows an analyst to learn the IP addresses of every person who visits any website the analyst specifies.

 

 

The quantity of communications accessible through programs such as XKeyscore is staggeringly large. One NSA report from 2007 estimated that there were 850bn "call events" collected and stored in the NSA databases, and close to 150bn internet records. Each day, the document says, 1-2bn records were added.

 

William Binney, a former NSA mathematician, said last year that the agency had "assembled on the order of 20tn transactions about US citizens with other US citizens", an estimate, he said, that "only was involving phone calls and emails". A 2010 Washington Post article reported that "every day, collection systems at the [NSA] intercept and store 1.7bn emails, phone calls and other type of communications."

 

The XKeyscore system is continuously collecting so much internet data that it can be stored only for short periods of time. Content remains on the system for only three to five days, while metadata is stored for 30 days. One document explains: "At some sites, the amount of data we receive per day (20+ terabytes) can only be stored for as little as 24 hours."

 

To solve this problem, the NSA has created a multi-tiered system that allows analysts to store "interesting" content in other databases, such as one named Pinwale which can store material for up to five years.

 

It is the databases of XKeyscore, one document shows, that now contain the greatest amount of communications data collected by the NSA.

 

 

In 2012, there were at least 41 billion total records collected and stored in XKeyscore for a single 30-day period.

 

 

Legal v technical restrictions

 

While the Fisa Amendments Act of 2008 requires an individualized warrant for the targeting of US persons, NSA analysts are permitted to intercept the communications of such individuals without a warrant if they are in contact with one of the NSA's foreign targets.

 

The ACLU's deputy legal director, Jameel Jaffer, told the Guardian last month that national security officials expressly said that a primary purpose of the new law was to enable them to collect large amounts of Americans' communications without individualized warrants.

 

"The government doesn't need to 'target' Americans in order to collect huge volumes of their communications," said Jaffer. "The government inevitably sweeps up the communications of many Americans" when targeting foreign nationals for surveillance.

 

An example is provided by one XKeyscore document showing an NSA target in Tehran communicating with people in Frankfurt, Amsterdam and New York.

 

 

In recent years, the NSA has attempted to segregate exclusively domestic US communications in separate databases. But even NSA documents acknowledge that such efforts are imperfect, as even purely domestic communications can travel on foreign systems, and NSA tools are sometimes unable to identify the national origins of communications.

 

Moreover, all communications between Americans and someone on foreign soil are included in the same databases as foreign-to-foreign communications, making them readily searchable without warrants.

 

Some searches conducted by NSA analysts are periodically reviewed by their supervisors within the NSA. "It's very rare to be questioned on our searches," Snowden told the Guardian in June, "and even when we are, it's usually along the lines of: 'let's bulk up the justification'."

 

In a letter this week to senator Ron Wyden, director of national intelligence James Clapper acknowledged that NSA analysts have exceeded even legal limits as interpreted by the NSA in domestic surveillance.

 

Acknowledging what he called "a number of compliance problems", Clapper attributed them to "human error" or "highly sophisticated technology issues" rather than "bad faith".

 

However, Wyden said on the Senate floor on Tuesday: "These violations are more serious than those stated by the intelligence community, and are troubling."

 

In a statement to the Guardian, the NSA said: "NSA's activities are focused and specifically deployed against – and only against – legitimate foreign intelligence targets in response to requirements that our leaders need for information necessary to protect our nation and its interests.

 

"XKeyscore is used as a part of NSA's lawful foreign signals intelligence collection system.

 

"Allegations of widespread, unchecked analyst access to NSA collection data are simply not true. Access to XKeyscore, as well as all of NSA's analytic tools, is limited to only those personnel who require access for their assigned tasks … In addition, there are multiple technical, manual and supervisory checks and balances within the system to prevent deliberate misuse from occurring."

 

"Every search by an NSA analyst is fully auditable, to ensure that they are proper and within the law.

 

"These types of programs allow us to collect the information that enables us to perform our missions successfully – to defend the nation and to protect US and allied troops abroad."

 

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/31/nsa-top-secret-program-online-data

[Happy Face 29]

The full NSA presentation...

 

http://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2013/jul/31/nsa-xkeyscore-program-full-presentation

[ChezGiven 0]

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/01/new-york-police-terrorism-pressure-cooker

 

This is what happens when you search online for pressure cookers and backpacks.

[Happy Face 29]

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/01/new-york-police-terrorism-pressure-cooker

 

This is what happens when you search online for pressure cookers and backpacks.

Lucky they weren't a Muslim family...or from kyrgystan. Jack Bauer would be water boarding the shit out of them by now.

[Park Life 71]

This is the problem with facebook, you have no idea what your 'friends' are upto...You go on the same list as the one's buying compost and fertiliser or as is the case an unhealthy zeal for presssure cookers.

 

The new Motorola phone is always 'on' and listening and the camera is always on looking for hand signals....Think about it.

Edited August 1, 2013 by Park Life

[Happy Face 29]

 

NSA pays £100m in secret funding for GCHQ

• Secret payments revealed in leaks by Edward Snowden

• GCHQ expected to 'pull its weight' for Americans

• Weaker regulation of British spies 'a selling point' for NSA

 

The US government has paid at least £100m to the UK spy agency GCHQ over the last three years to secure access to and influence over Britain's intelligence gathering programmes.

 

The top secret payments are set out in documents which make clear that the Americans expect a return on the investment, and that GCHQ has to work hard to meet their demands. "GCHQ must pull its weight and be seen to pull its weight," a GCHQ strategy briefing said.

 

The funding underlines the closeness of the relationship between GCHQ and its US equivalent, the National Security Agency. But it will raise fears about the hold Washington has over the UK's biggest and most important intelligence agency, and whether Britain's dependency on the NSA has become too great.

 

In one revealing document from 2010, GCHQ acknowledged that the US had "raised a number of issues with regards to meeting NSA's minimum expectations". It said GCHQ "still remains short of the full NSA ask".

 

Ministers have denied that GCHQ does the NSA's "dirty work", but in the documents GCHQ describes Britain's surveillance laws and regulatory regime as a "selling point" for the Americans.

 

The papers are the latest to emerge from the cache leaked by the American whistleblower Edward Snowden, the former NSA contractor who has railed at the reach of the US and UK intelligence agencies.

 

Snowden warned about the relationship between the NSA and GCHQ, saying the organisations have been jointly responsible for developing techniques that allow the mass harvesting and analysis of internet traffic. "It's not just a US problem," he said. "They are worse than the US."

 

As well as the payments, the documents seen by the Guardian reveal:

 

• GCHQ is pouring money into efforts to gather personal information from mobile phones and apps, and has said it wants to be able to "exploit any phone, anywhere, any time".

 

• Some GCHQ staff working on one sensitive programme expressed concern about "the morality and ethics of their operational work, particularly given the level of deception involved".

 

• The amount of personal data available to GCHQ from internet and mobile traffic has increased by 7,000% in the past five years – but 60% of all Britain's refined intelligence still appears to come from the NSA.

 

• GCHQ blames China and Russia for the vast majority of cyber-attacks against the UK and is now working with the NSA to provide the British and US militaries with a cyberwarfare capability.

 

The details of the NSA payments, and the influence the US has over Britain, are set out in GCHQ's annual "investment portfolios". The papers show that the NSA gave GCHQ £22.9m in 2009. The following year the NSA's contribution increased to £39.9m, which included £4m to support GCHQ's work for Nato forces in Afghanistan, and £17.2m for the agency's Mastering the Internet project, which gathers and stores vast amounts of "raw" information ready for analysis.

 

The NSA also paid £15.5m towards redevelopments at GCHQ's sister site in Bude, north Cornwall, which intercepts communications from the transatlantic cables that carry internet traffic. "Securing external NSA funding for Bude has protected (GCHQ's core) budget," the paper said.

 

In 2011/12 the NSA paid another £34.7m to GCHQ.

 

The papers show the NSA pays half the costs of one of the UK's main eavesdropping capabilities in Cyprus. In turn, GCHQ has to take the American view into account when deciding what to prioritise.

 

A document setting out GCHQ's spending plans for 2010/11 stated: "The portfolio will spend money supplied by the NSA and UK government departments against agreed requirements."

 

Other documents say the agency must ensure there has been "an appropriate level of contribution … from the NSA perspective".

 

The leaked papers reveal that the UK's biggest fear is that "US perceptions of the … partnership diminish, leading to loss of access, and/or reduction in investment … to the UK".

 

When GCHQ does supply the US with valuable intelligence, the agency boasts about it. In one review, GCHQ boasted that it had supplied "unique contributions" to the NSA during its investigation of the American citizen responsible for an attempted car bomb attack in Times Square, New York City, in 2010.

 

No other detail is provided – but it raises the possibility that GCHQ might have been spying on an American living in the US. The NSA is prohibited from doing this by US law.

 

Asked about the payments, a Cabinet Office spokesman said: "In a 60-year alliance it is entirely unsurprising that there are joint projects in which resources and expertise are pooled, but the benefits flow in both directions."

 

A senior security source in Whitehall added: "The fact is there is a close intelligence relationship between the UK and US and a number of other countries including Australia and Canada. There's no automaticity, not everything is shared. A sentient human being takes decisions."

 

Although the sums represent only a small percentage of the agencies' budgets, the money has been an important source of income for GCHQ. The cash came during a period of cost-cutting at the agency that led to staff numbers being slashed from 6,485 in 2009 to 6,132 last year.

 

GCHQ seems desperate to please its American benefactor and the NSA does not hold back when it fails to get what it wants. On one project, GCHQ feared if it failed to deliver it would "diminish NSA's confidence in GCHQ's ability to meet minimum NSA requirements". Another document warned: "The NSA ask is not static and retaining 'equability' will remain a challenge for the near future."

 

In November 2011, a senior GCHQ manager working in Cyprus bemoaned the lack of staff devoted to one eavesdropping programme, saying: "This is not sustainable if numbers reduce further and reflects badly on our commitments to the NSA."

 

The overriding necessity to keep on the right side of the US was revealed in a UK government paper that set out the views of GCHQ in the wake of the 2010 strategic defence and security review. The document was called: "GCHQ's international alliances and partnerships: helping to maintain Britain's standing and influence in the world." It said: "Our key partnership is with the US. We need to keep this relationship healthy. The relationship remains strong but is not sentimental. GCHQ must pull its weight and be seen to pull its weight."

 

Astonishingly, the document admitted that 60% of the UK's high-value intelligence "is based on either NSA end-product or derived from NSA collection". End product means official reports that are distillations of the best raw intelligence.

 

Another pitch to keep the US happy involves reminding Washington that the UK is less regulated than the US. The British agency described this as one of its key "selling points". This was made explicit two years ago when GCHQ set out its priorities for the coming years.

 

"We both accept and accommodate NSA's different way of working," the document said. "We are less constrained by NSA's concerns about compliance."

 

GCHQ said that by 2013 it hoped to have "exploited to the full our unique selling points of geography, partnerships [and] the UK's legal regime".

 

However, there are indications from within GCHQ that senior staff are not at ease with the rate and pace of change. The head of one of its programmes warned the agency was now receiving so much new intelligence that its "mission management … is no longer fit for purpose".

 

In June, the government announced that the "single intelligence account" fund that pays for GCHQ, MI5 and MI6 would be increased by 3.4% in 2015/16. This comes after three years in which the SIA has been cut from £1.92bn to £1.88bn. The agencies have also been told to make £220m savings on existing programmes.

 

The parliamentary intelligence and security committee (ISC) has questioned whether the agencies were making the claimed savings and said their budgets should be more rigorously scrutinised to ensure efficiencies were "independently verifiable and/or sustainable".

 

The Snowden documents show GCHQ has become increasingly reliant on money from "external" sources. In 2006 it received the vast majority of its funding directly from Whitehall, with only £14m from "external" funding. In 2010 that rose to £118m and by 2011/12 it had reached £151m. Most of this comes from the Home Office.

 

 

 

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/aug/01/nsa-paid-gchq-spying-edward-snowden

[Park Life 71]

BT and Vodaphone and some others give GCHQ full access to all telephone and internet data...So, by default this will be the NSA as well...

[Happy Face 29]

The ripples created by Edward Snowden's leaks continue to impact the U.S. government and electorate. In a show where Dan reads a lot to you he breaks down how the controversial Snowden has already changed things for the better.

 

 

http://ec.libsyn.com/p/f/d/4/fd4508d328efc951/cswdcc58.mp3?d13a76d516d9dec20c3d276ce028ed5089ab1ce3dae902ea1d01cf823ed0cf5de929&c_id=5948045

[Park Life 71]

Obomber won't meet Putin now.

[Happy Face 29]

Obomber won't meet Putin now.

 

Aye, Greenwald has tore him a new arse on that one too...

 

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/07/obama-putin-extradition-snowden

[Park Life 71]

I read somewhere he was was worried about assasination.

[Howmanheyman 33228]

I read somewhere he was was worried about assasination.

It should be a quick job which he'll not even feel. He shouldn't be too worried.