Edward Snowden, American Hero

[Hunter]

We need to take a closer look at the Third Party Doctrine IMO, its bad and out-dated legal theory.

There are questions about whether the NSA program is consistent with the Fourth Amendment, which requires search warrants to “particularly describe the place to be searched.” The government’s position is that it doesn’t need a warrant under the Third Party Doctrine, a legal theory that says you give up your Fourth Amendment privacy rights when you turn over information to a third party (in this case, your phone company). We give data to a third party. Courts say Fourth Amendment rights lost at that point. So government gets to look at said data without a warrant.

But at least one Supreme Court Justice, Justice Sonya Sotomayor, has described the doctrine as “”ill-suited to the digital age, in which people reveal a great deal of information about themselves to third parties in the course of carrying out mundane tasks.” This week’s revelations, combined with the recent news about DOJ spying on the Associated Press, might cause some of Sotomayor’s colleagues to re-consider the third-party doctrine. Let's hope so at least.

[slimmouse]

We need to take a closer look at the Third Party Doctrine IMO, its bad and out-dated legal theory.

Indeed we do. since It's further compelling evidence of the "Totalitarian tip-toe" in action.

Big Thanks for the info on this.

[Hunter]

We need to take a closer look at the Third Party Doctrine IMO, its bad and out-dated legal theory.

Indeed we do. since It's further compelling evidence of the "Totalitarian tip-toe" in action.

Big Thanks for the info on this.

It is a rather important debate that has been going on in legal circles for some time now, and for obvious reasons. As stated, the Third Party Doctrine says you have no Fourth Amendment protection for any information given to third parties, so consider, now in the digital age, that all internet communications are stored on third party servers or internet service providers, and thus lose Fourth Amendment protection according to this doctrine, and you can easily see how this quickly becomes a big problem. Before the internet this doctrine was useful in some ways and actually made some sense, but in the digital age that we exist in now, it no longer does and it has the potential to cause a lot more harm than good, in fact it already has, as we now know.

Questions such as do communications over third party social networking sites such as Facebook merit Fourth Amendment protection, are very big questions that we do not have answers for and The Supreme Court has not directly answered these questions and lower courts are not yet in agreement about it.

In the past this doctrine mostly referred to something you told a friend or a neighbor or co-worker, for example, that information you shared with them would then no longer merit Fourth Amendment protection, but now in the digital age, this presents a problem, especially wrt social media, telecommunications and EMAIL, I am sure I dont have to spell it all out to you fine RIers so you can see just how big a problem this can be and why we need to do away with such a legal theory in today's world.

Fourth Amendment protection has proven difficult to apply in the digital age because almost all communications over the internet, including messages both private and otherwise over such sites as Facebook, Gmail, and Hotmail, etc are stored for various lengths of time on third party servers or Internet service providers. The question in the legal community has been whether these communications continue to merit privacy protection, despite this disclosure to a third party. As of right now they do not and this is largely why your email is fair game for the NSA without a warrant. This could even, in theory, apply to your private msgs here on RI, of course getting them would require the forum owner to cooperate with the NSA and I am sure Jeff wouldnt but as we have seen that has not been a problem for the NSA with any of the large ISPs and Telecoms.

I believe that people should have a reasonable expectation of privacy when it comes to something like an email, now that doesnt mean you have to be complete idiot and actually believe your email is in fact private, most of us know that isnt the case, but you should have an EXPECTATION THAT IT SHOULD BE PRIVATE whether it actually is or not private, your expectation that it should be is legally valid and thus a warrant should be required if the authorities want to read it. In most criminal court cases a warrant is required if they want to use it as evidence, but that is different than what the NSA is required to do for their data gathering needs.

[Hunter]

We need to take a closer look at the Third Party Doctrine IMO, its bad and out-dated legal theory.

Indeed we do. since It's further compelling evidence of the "Totalitarian tip-toe" in action.

Big Thanks for the info on this.

"Totalitarian tip-toe," great stuff did you make that up or is it a common phrase I have just missed out on?

If you believe like I do, that the media, for example, as been co-opted by the intelligence services with CIA plants and moles in high places so that it is basically controlled and scripted in accord with whatever agenda they want to push (operation mockingbird pretty much confirms this sort of thing) then it probably isnt much of a stretch to assume the big telecoms and ISPs operate in the same way and are also controlled by these same people in the same exact way with plants and moles in high places that ultimately make the final decisions about things. My point being, if you believe this as I do then it really isnt that hard to understand why these companies rolled over so easily and gave up our private info to the NSA/government, which itself was able to get it without a warrant for the most part, because of this doctrine discussed above.

[Hunter]

Unforeseen Consequences:

A guy named Terrance Brown is on trial in Florida for allegedly masterminding the robbery of a Brinks armored truck. Prosecutors have used phone records to track the movements of one of Brown's co-defendants, but guess what? They don't have phone data for Brown himself because his carrier apparently didn't keep it.

Of course, the response is inevitable: The LA Times:

On Sunday, after federal officials acknowledged the NSA trove, Brown's attorney, Marshall Dore Louis, filed a midtrial motion asking the NSA to turn over Brown's phone records. "The records are material and favorable to Mr. Brown's defense," Louis wrote, adding that the request was "not intended as a general fishing expedition."

Everyone quoted in the article expects the federal government to fight back like crazed weasels against this order, and most people expect the case to end up at the Supreme Court. It's hard to imagine the Court saying that potentially exonerating evidence can't be included in discovery if the government is in possession of it, particularly since the government itself is allowed to introduce that same evidence if it's favorable to their case. I suspect they'll punt and say something along the lines of "This evidence is only available as a means for protecting national security", which I suppose would preclude it from being introduced in court as evidence for the state if it benefited them also?

NSA surveillance disclosure could affect court cases.

A lawyer in a Florida robbery case has already filed a motion asking the national security agency to turn over his client's phone records, in what could be a milestone request.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld ... 2361.story

This is just a huge fucking deal and it will be interesting to see how this is ruled on if it gets to the SCOTUS eventually because as you can imagine this would be a big help for the both the state and defense in any number of cases, if they can compel the NSA to turn over all the info they have on a client or a defendant, that is really a big deal and could change everything about how criminal cases are tried and defended entirely.

This case will likely determine if any of the information that is being gathered by the NSA can ever be used as evidence in a court case. That is a big deal my friends.

[Grizzly]

/u/AngryRantingRealist describes PRISM in the context of the "Intelligence Contractors Complex", including allusions (with sources) of a number of related events you should know about http://www.reddit.com/r/NeutralPolitics/comments/1g838l/is_prism_still_in_any_way_effective_now_that_it/cahpx38

I don't perceive this as a "privacy" issue. It's an ethics, constitutional issue, and monetary issue. It's not just a matter of principle or emotion, it's a matter of integrity of state.

Pretext: A lot of people are analyzing this recent PRISM thing and speculating on what's going on. It's not a mystery. A lot of people are construing this as a privacy issue. While I agree that privacy is an integral part of a democracy, I am inclined to disagree that this is the main issue when talking about the NSA; as I will discuss, that's the FBI that you should be concerned about. I don't perceive this as a "privacy" issue. It's an ethics, constitutional issue, and monetary issue. It's not just a matter of principle or emotion, it's a matter of integrity of state. I will be analyzing the holistic state of affairs from a rather different perspective from most of the media (i.e sensationalizing the privacy issue).

Part 1: What is NSA? History

Part 2: Modern Privacy // Myths & Reality

Part 3: The Modern Technology -- WATCH THIS VIDEO

Part 4: The laws and legal understanding BASICS.

Part 5: "The Players"

Part 6: Current State of Affairs

Part 7: There is no 7, only Zuul!

Part 8: The Future.

Part 9:How do we fix this?

[[Part 1: What is NSA?]]

The History ---> Present

Old agency jokes say that NSA means No Such Agency or Never Say Anything. Until recently, very few people have even heard of the NSA, even though today they are magnitudes larger than the CIA; with a classified budget estimated to be magnitudes larger. Today, NSA employs about 30,000 Americans and holds hundreds of classified contracts with various different security contractors and private enterprise companies. For all intents and purposes, they (DoD + NSA) can play god should they choose to smite you. They have the resources, the technical abilities, the funding and support of the entire United States government (even if many insiders don't like it). Today, NSA has become arguably the most powerful collective entity on the planet...

But how did we get here?

On November 4, 1952, the National Security Agency formed. Their HQ in Fort Meade, Maryland, is still today one of the most secretive buildings in the entire country, probably the world. Directly from wikipedia: NSA is a cryptologic intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the collection and analysis of foreign communications and foreign signals intelligence, as well as protecting U.S. government communications and information systems, which involves information security and cryptanalysis/cryptography. To put it rather bluntly, they are an electronic spy agency.

/u/DrStrangematter The National Security Agency is not under the Department of Homeland Security. The National Security Agency is organized under the Department of Defense. The Director of the NSA is always a military officer and also commands one of the DoD's Unified Combatant Commands: CYBERCOM.

Parts of Homeland Security and the NSA are both part of the United States Intelligence Community along with 15 other government organizations including the CIA and DIA. All information sharing between them would be directed and governed by the Director of National Intelligence. James R. Clapper.

So what's the problem today?

Well, this is the long version, from Jewel v NSA (Filed by the EFF in 2012).

2001-2002 "The President's Surveillance Program"

Shortly after September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, President George Bush Jr. authorized NSA to conduct a variety of surveillance activities, including the warrantless surveillance of telephone and Internet communications of persons within the United States. -- U.S v Jewel brief.

October 1st, 2001 the President gave a secret order to conduct electronic surveillance within the United States, without an order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC -- Discussed later). The Program would need to be renewed approximately every 45 days. George Bush Jr. renewed the Program Order at least 30 times. This program "Stellarwind" is still around today under the Obama administration, renamed Ragtime-P (more later on that). That same year, USAPATRIOT was freighttrained through Congress, with section 215 intact. This will be discussed or at least mentioned later, along with National Security Letters and their abuse potential and history. This type of mind set and culture of "F*** IT WE'LL DO IT LIVE!" is the real problem with the government today, and I don't just mean NSA

Watch Thomas Drake's speech March 13, 2013. if you have the time (20 minutes) @Thomas_Drake1

"There is very little oversight, and when there is it's often just talk"-- Thomas Drake.

The 2002 Trailblazer Project gives us great insight into the political, economic, and pathological environment of the intelligence community, closely following 9/11 attacks. The scars of the paranoia and rapid expansion still resonates today. This is no mistake. There was blood in the water, and private security contracts pooled around it like sharks. In a FRONTLINE Report interview involving Stellar Wind, many of the people directly involved said the same or similar things. "In those days, Congress would give money to anyone who asked." And they did.

SAIC a private contracting company similar to Lockheed or Northrop, largely failed to provide what they were being contracted to do by the NSA (Create Trailblazer, a surveillance apparatus). Of the $280 million budget, over $1.8billion (yes that's over budget...) was wasted on the failed Trailblazer project. This lead to Thomas Andrew Drake (Former NSA) blowing the whistle four times, through proper channels, between 2002 and 2006. This will be further analyzed in the Current State of Affairs, as well Thomas Drake will be mentioned extensively in each part. William/Bill Binney (Former NSA) will also be mentioned for his part in the whistle blowing. This type of waste is a matter of culture, as discussed by Thomas Drake in a later section. You should take the time to read his interview later on.

In 2003 the now infamous Room 641A was created. This shows us just how deep the rabbit hole between private enterprise and state security's marriage goes, and how desperate these folks are for MORE INFORMATION. Room 641A is a telecommunication interception facility operated by AT&T for the U.S. National Security Agency that commenced operations in 2003 and was exposed in 2006.

Boeing Narus, an Israeli subsidiary of Boeing, was contracted to create a device that would copy almost every packet (bit of data) sent throughout the "back-bone" of the tier-1 internet lines at AT&T and send them to NSA for data-mining opperations. The Narus STA 6400 was the device used. In 2006 Mark Klein blew the whistle on NSA, leading to the class action lawsuit by the EFF against AT&T (Hepting v AT&T). The room was also covered in the PBS Nova episode "The Spy Factory".

The John Ashcroft (Then Attorney General) situation --See "Attorney General" section in 2004 highlighted just how desperate George Bush (jr) and players (discussed later) like David Addington and Dick Cheney were to continue this type of blatantly illegal program. With the reelection of Bush in 2004, Ashcroft gave his resignation.

On July 20, 2006, a federal judge denied the government's and AT&T's motions to dismiss the case, chiefly on the ground of the States Secrets Privilege, allowing the lawsuit to go forward. On August 15, 2007, the case was heard by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and was dismissed on December 29, 2011 based on a retroactive grant of immunity by Congress for telecommunications companies that cooperated with the government. This will be discussed in "Laws" (FISA Amendment Act of 2008 sec 702).

With the election of President George Bush Jr. for his Third Time (aka Obama) the surveillance state expanded. I won't touch much on it, but Stuxnet was actually the result of President Bush, and completed under Obama under "Operation Olympic Games". This shows us just how far Obama is willing to go to expand our use of cyber weapons, and their deployment, or rather discovery, in 2010.

In 2012 the codename Ragtime-P was leaked. This was a continuation of the domestic spying program originally Stellarwind.

In 2013 a few things happened. A judge shoots down NSLs (largely an FBI problem) and a man named Edward Snowden leaked documents detailing what many already knew and had confirmed. The presence of an illicit marriage between the U.S DoD and private enterprise. This caused many people to flip the fuck out. However, today, the NSA, contrary to common belief, does have strict POLICY oversight, is not a rogue agency, and is not spying on every citizen in the United States the way it is being asserted. I will discuss this point further in part 7. However, the NSA does have nearly unlimited power (should they choose to exercise it), is involved with some possibly unconstitutional behavior, and involved in some egregious violations on matters of national security. All of this will be discussed further in different sections.

All of this said, one has to ask, to what ends is this all orchestrated? To what end? The answer is two fold and will be analyzed later.

"Total Informational Awareness" is the first answer. The second is simply "Because they'll cut our budget next year if don't keep spending". The private enterprise leeches the massive budget, and will continue to do so until the marriage is broken, or more light is cast into this "shadow government". This is not conspirators terminology. For every government entity, these is at least twice as many "shadow" entities doing the exact same job, for the same or greater cost.

So what about privacy?

[[Part 2: Modern Privacy // Myths & Reality]]

Modern Privacy has largely become a thing of the past; this is the sad truth of affairs. There are three sides to this story: the reality, the paranoia and hype (i.e sensationalism), and taking extremist measures (such as TAILs or TOR for everything).

Privacy is a concept that was fundamental to the United States' Founding Fathers. If you don't already know what the 4th amendment is, I suggest you check out /r/Assert_Your_Rights. Operation Shamrock is the first time we see NSA doing, well, exactly what they're doing today; analyzing data of domestic messages by intercepting them without out knowledge or approval. During Shamrock 1945, they would read the outgoing telegraphs. How did they get them, you may ask? The same way they get them today, through the new PRISM program we're now learning about. They asked...

There is a common misconception that the NSA is spying on our private conversations, looking at the naughty pictures you send me ladies ;- ) and keeping dossiers with our names and numbers on them. This is flat out untrue. I assure you, using software such as: Xkeyscore, Narus-Insight, DCS5000 (FBI), or even Wireshark or firesheep (lol), the NSA could spy on you in an instant.

So where does that leave us?

Well, for starters you can cast out the image of the NSA having thousands of people behind screens laughing at your private emails, or seeing you googled the word "bomb" or "Ricin" and desperately trying to learn everything about your past. There are only a handful (aprx. 12 -- I believe according Thomas Drake in this Q&A) people on the Earth that cleared in and "allowed" to read your emails in the intelligence agencies. Again, we are not talking about the corruption and lack of oversight of the FBI; we are speaking explicitly about intelligence and contractors. We are speaking assuming that they are following the rules. There is a strict process by which the NSA can actually look at content data; however, what Edward Snowden and Jacob Applebaum (discussed in part 5) tell us is that COLLECTION IS STILL AN ISSUE.

People tend to think about as if they're being spied on RIGHT NOW. "Oh god! They're watching me! THEY'RE WATCHING ME!"

No. They're not. They're NOT watching YOU DIRECTLY, even if they are passively collecting some obscure meta-data and sorting it; it's not "yours". They don't link it to your phone, your photo, etc. The fact that they COULD is scary, but that's not what I'm talking about here today (That's the FBI, you can listen to Jake Applebaum if you're worried about the privacy and safety from law enforcement side to this.) Read into Ragtime-P for more information on this.

"When he's saying he could just put any phone number in and look at phone calls, it just doesn't work that way," he said. " It's absurd. There are technical limits, and then there are people who review these sorts of queries." -- LATIMES

There are (probably) no lists with your NAME on it. (unless you're a known terrorist...Snowden talks about this in the interview, about false labels, but I don't want to get into the "what if" hypotheticals, such as "what if YOU DO hit their shit list??" -- That's a separate really scary issue I'm not going to touch on here. That's the type of thing we'll be forced to deal with in about ten years, if we don't stop this stuff now. Yeah, we need to worry about this stuff NOW, because the FBI and the NYPD are doing that NOW. Not so much the NSA...but if we look at what they're creating (a surveillance state the likes of which the Stasi or George Orwell could have only dreamed of) we are actually that close from "Turnkey Tyranny".

You're assuming anyone/everyone involved in the intelligence world (mostly private sector) actually cares about our PERSONAL information, like who we're sleeping with, or what we like to drink after work, what I had for breakfast, or what porn you favor...They don't. Get adblock plus and 50% of the problem is solved for the folks who care about that stuff, e.g marketing firms.

They (Agencies like CIA and NSA and to a lesser extent FBI) want the big picture -- See Boundless Informant

Your girlfriend's naughty pictures aren't their concern, neither is hacking your webcam to spy on you beating off. That's where the privacy issues of NSA's Box, sorry Microsoft XBox one come into play with PRISM specifically, but again, I'm not talking about this here today. Still with me folks?

They (The contractors and agencies like and including NSA) want a bigger $$ contract (by proxy a cut of NSA budget, from a cut of your paycheck)**

It's not a matter of what they are or they're not looking at.... It's not even a matter IF they WANT to look AT YOU. I assure you, they absolutely could (the privacy issue part of it) but THEY DON'T. It's also true I COULD go around killing people in the street....but I don't. In fact, someone like me (the shady scary tech types with a laptop on reddit o0o0o0o0o0o) could gather just as much information on you as they could. Perhaps more, because I'm not bound by the law and I'm an asshole (hypothetically).

So what does that mean?

They're not actually creating Dossiers on every living person on Earth.

For some perspective on what they're (the intelligence side, not the enforcement side) actually doing I suggest you read a lot of this guy Thomas Drake (NSA Whistle Blower 4 times over). This was the interview I talked about earlier. READ THIS.

Unless they have a really good reason or a ton of really really "high-value" intelligence spilling out of "you", I doubt anyone even knows cares you exist. I understand this does raise concerns about "Total Informational Awareness" and being able to retroactively data-mine you maliciously, but that's not what I'm here to show. They'd just query faceStazibook. But that's not going to be the NSA or CIA. That's the popo and the feds. (Sup' Feds. Apparently I made front page. My name is No One, I'm 21 years young and I want you to read this and accept that if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem.)

If you want more on the privacy concerns (they are extremely valid, but I'm looking at this on a bigger scale, not a law enforcement scale or 'privacy concern' perspective) check out Jacob Applebaum's (TOR project guy) 2 hour talk on digital repression.. This guy is brilliant, but he's not talking about the same thing I am here. The privacy issue attached with PRISM "scandal" PRISM/NSA-Gate (can I coin this? I've always wanted to coin a term :-3) is just a catalyst to garner attention. Edward Snowden is largely a martyr in my opinion, and a hero.

[[[Part 3: The Modern Technology]]]

I don't want to spend too much time with this, because this is an endless rabbit hole. Everything from the 1.8gigapixil cameras on MQ drones)

The Narus STA 6400is fundamentally a splitter that copies all packets of data and filters them. Check out this break down of RAGTIME-P (surveillance on a huge scale) to see how it works.

(Fun google buzz words, nothing substantial here)

Narus-Insight is similar to DCS5000 (point and click surveillance folks!) -- Mostly FBI :: IMSI catchers -- Fake towers being used by the NYPD. (See Applebaum's repression workshop). :: Xkeyscore -- The datamining program NSA uses (probably) :: Tempest Attacks -- They can actually read the EM waves in your house through your walls and what have you....scarrryyyy :: Laser Mics -- A fun science project for 6th graders. Nothing more than hype. :: Echelon-- SIGINT network :: Carnivor -- Project FBI uses :: Stylomatry -- analyze who you are based on the words you use and the way you type :: RSA History :: TruCrypt -- You should all download this! :: PGP encryption :: TOR :: TAILS -- I use this without a hard drive for 'secret' stuff (implying i have any) :: Firesheep -- Facebook cookie snatcher :: Wifipinnaples -- I'm just listing fun stuff, this is a "rogue access point" attack -- :: SCADA system infiltration (what I first got involved with with this security nonsense) and all types of fun military drones etc etc. Check out more on GOOGLE and dig around some forums for the tech (personally 3 years ago I though the DARPA vulcan project scramjets were the coolest thing ever....still do).

"Okay, it's important to not to let this stuff paralyze you...it's one thing to know it's happening, and it's one thing, and it's another to pretend that the solution is to become a Luddite" -- (Watch for 3 minutes)Jabob Applebaum

[Part 4: The Laws]

NSLs or National Security Letters -- These are now basically in the past since the court ruled them unconstitutional. Under USAPATRIOT these administrative subpoenas were given vastly expanded access to things like "databases" as opposed to hyper specific non-content data, like who called who 'meta-data'. These letters, or requests (with force) allowed (mostly the FBI) to completely subvert the process of obtaining a warrant. That's a whole other scandal with AT&T employees being placed inside FBI HQ's. NSLs came with a gag order. This meant that you couldn't tell anyone about it, not even that you had received it. Not even a lawyer. The FBI sent out as many as 50,000 of these per years to various different bodies. PRISM (NSA's program) saw fit to simply cut out even the NSL and go directly to the providers as opposed to ISPs (internet service providers). NSLs are a huge deal, and there is enough information on google to fill another post about them. But that is the basics. They're abusive subversive pseudo-warrants that the FBI used to use until very recently this year.

SCA -- "Third Party Doctrine" and Stored Communications Act -- I.E if you share something with a third party, they can share it. This matters! This is why PRISM is technically legal...although probably unconstitutional. Anything that is stored on their database is theirs. Your emails? Theirs. Pictures? Theirs (The database owners) Now, that doesn't give them the right to reproduce it due to copywrite laws, but there is no LAW preventing them from snooping, even if policy prevents them from doing so. They can also, as with PRISM, simply hand over your data to law enforcement at their leisure.

US v Duffey -- Cell phone dumps (mostly and FBI trick) are legal because of the "Third party doctrine" discussed above. What the FBI didn't tell the courts was how many innocent people also were tracked based on these "cell dumps" which are pseudo-GPS tracking. (See also IMSI towers for wiretapping).

Hepting V AT&T -- Discussed previously, the 641a room lawsuit filed by the EFF.

Jewel V NSA -- Basically part 2 of Hepting after the Hepting case was dismissed.

People V Diaz -- Cell phones don't need warrants after an arrest. Not related to the NSA, but still be aware of this fact and always encrypt your stuff! Check out /r/Assert_Your_Rights and /r/Privacy for sure.

USSID-18 Regulations and boundaries circa 2005 (thanks /u/postmodern)

CALEA -- Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) in 1994 to make it easier for law enforcement to wiretap digital telephone networks. CALEA forced telephone companies to redesign their network architectures to make wiretapping easier. It expressly did not regulate data traveling over the Internet.

USAPATRIOT Section 215 -- Honestly, it's tl;dr please just read it off the resource link provided.

FISC - Foreign Surveillance Court(Created under FISA) -- This is basically the "court" designed to oversee foreign communications and what have you and approve the looking into data. Remember, the NSA can legally (my ass) store your information, as long as they don't read it or analyze it (that's scary...and many people believe illegal). Contrary to common belief, as was stated, there is oversight on NSA. Lots of it.

2008 FISA Amendment Act - Section 702. "Activities under Section 702 are governed by [REDACTED]executed jointly by the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence that detail targeting and minimization procedures under which the government will obtain foreign intelligence data. --

Acquisition under Section 702 is governed by targeting procedures and minimization procedures for Section 702 filed with the FISC stipulating, among other things, that The target is *"reasonably believe to be a NON-USPER outside the U.S. *[The problem is there is no unclassified standard for this. - Noted by A.R.R] A significant purpose of the acquisition" is to acquire foreign intelligence. Minimization procedures are in place for USPER information. Targeting and minimization procedures are consistent with the Fourth Amendment to the U.S."

By order of the FISC, the Government is prohibited from indiscriminately sifting through the telephony metadata acquired under the program. All information that is acquired under this program is subject to strict, court-imposed restrictions on review and handling. The court only allows the data to be queried when there is a reasonable suspicion, based on specific facts, that the particular basis for the query is associated with a foreign terrorist organization. Only specially cleared counterterrorism personnel specifically trained in the Court-approved procedures may even access the records. -- http://www.volokh.com/2013/06/06/the-fi ... ep-breath/

[[[Part 5: The Players]]]

For the record, I won't be listing all the agencies. I will leave you with this analogy.

Comparing law enforcement to NSA is like comparing them to TSA to DEA. Just because the TSA sometimes finds drugs, it's not their job to kick in your door and build cases about it. This is analogous to to FBI and the NSA in that the NSA is light-years ahead of the FBI in terms of electronic capabilities, but doesn't kick your door in (well maybe mine). -- /u/ldonthaveaname

Edward Snowden -- NSA Whistleblower I hope you've watched Ed. Snowden talk you've heard him say quite a bit about this stuff. He's talking about Privacy issues, or so it would seem...really, he's talking about RESTORING DEMOCRACY AND OVERSIGHT, not subjective privacy concerns about your silly skype convos. I'm not giving this guy's life story here. /r/Snowden

William/Bill Binney) -- If you've not heard the story of Bill Binney click that link right now. Really. Bill Binney was an NSA executive who left the NSA after blowing the whistle on the stuff I'm trying to raise awarness about right now. I.E that it is a privacy issue, but more over, it's a matter of wasting and dysfunction. Thomas Drake has some great stuff on this.

Thomas Andrew Drake -- NSA Whistleblower and one of my heros. I don't even want to put the wiki paragraph here. Read this for more about TrailBlazer You really have to read this to understand and contextualize everything I'm talking about. Of all the resources I've linked here, this is the most important. http://www.washingtonspectator.org/inde ... mplex.html

John Ashcroft -- As discussed previous, he was the Attorney General under Bush for the first term. Read his Wikipedia on his term as AG and watch "Cheney's Law"

Eric Holder -- Acting Attorney General under Obama as of today (Jun, 13. 2013).

Obama - Ring ring ring ring....OBAMA PHONE! oookkdookdookaadooka!

James Clapper -- Director of National Intelligence

Dick Cheney -- Dictator of the United States 2000-2004. See the documentary Cheney's Law (FRONT LINE).

China -- According to Snowden if you don't believe my word for it, contrary to common belief, we're not really at war with China. I'll bet in 50 years the "informational cold war" (I'm bad at coining terms) will be a thing. We hack them, they hack us. It's symbiotic and both sides lie and point fingers at the other. Why not sing koobayha and make friendly you ask? Simple. Money. I was a security conference last week and I heard this quote "You can sell anything to China.....ONCE."

Russia -- Russian hackers are a different group. These guys are criminals. I really don't have time to dig into this, but I think the NSA could and should be doing more to protect against this and lifting it from the totally overwhelmed and inept FBI. It's our tax money, why are we not protected? (See Bryan Krebs on Security).

No One / AngryRantingRealist -- Some guy with a laptop. You can read more about me if you really care ("Judge me not by who I am, but by the weight of the words I speak" -- Some profound shit I just made up to quote myself)

General Keith Alexander -- Director of NSA

In the words of Jacob Applebaum "This man is a fucking liar." I'd loooveee to see that (probably redacted) report the NSA talked about today (6/12/13) what with "dozens" of plots foiled. My ass. This man (Alexander) is arguably the most powerful man on earth today. He commands the Navy 10th and the Airforce 24th fleets as a private army. He has risen through the ranks higher and held more power than anyone in American History.

Bryan Krebs-- Washington Post former Journalist on security. Really fantastic in depth stuff.

Jacob Applebaum-- Computer Security Researcher and TOR project. /u/ioerror / @ioerror This guy is my hero. Go to youtube and watch his digital repression workshop. It's long, but it's super insightful. This guy is a legend.

[[Part 6: Current State of Affairs]]]

I hope you've watched Ed. Snowden talk you've heard him say

"All they care about is POLICY" and that the only way to change things is through POLICY.

But wouldn’t NSA want to prevent a 9/11 or track Al Qaeda? -- Interviewer

That’s logical thinking. You have to remember, NSA is an institution, and it preserves its integrity before anything else. Rule number one. It’s pathological. -- Thomas Drake.

Changing the culture is the way to go (see Thomas Drake Interview). Unfortunately, unlike PIPA SOPA this isn't something that's just going to go away over night if google and friends says ["we don't like this"](http://www.stopwatching.us). They have a culture of apathy (not just the NSA, we're talking big picture). Just ask the man who knew 9/11 was coming (even outside NSA who "knew a lot" -- Drake) John O'Niel (FBI). Such a tragedy that he died in the attacks themselves after being forced out of the FBI for being "abrasive". Watch the whole story of John O'Niel here (really great 9/11 stuff)

Private Contractors/NSA: It's not an entity of illicit shady types behind the curtain, it's a group of executives with skilled "hackers" (misnomer) and analysts working for them, marketing literal bullshit (trailblazer) to the government and the government willingly relinquishing control to the private sector

(booz allen, raytheon, lockheed, northrop grummun, boeing etc etc etc.) It's about PROFIT.

What better way to get profit than to make the NSA (the pay-check suppliers by proxy) and U.S DoD (paayyychhheeeckkkkkksss). The issue is that this country doesn't even know what it's doing anymore. We've tossed money to companies like Booz Allen and CAIC (which IMHO isn't even the big bad wolf...see BlueCo, Lockheed, Northrop etc) and

they've built us a functioning 'Total Awareness Matrix' but at the end of the day, we're not aware of shit. There is so much redundancy it's unbelievable.

[[[Part 8: The Future]]]

Today, the sky is not falling. At least not in terms of your personal conversations about drug dealing and cheating on your wife in regards to NSA. That's the FBI...you should worry about them, and the police state Bloomberg has created with the NYPD... What people like myself, and many others are worried about is what happens when they keep stretching, keep over-reaching and expanding...where does it end? Does it? Does it implode, explode, snap? Do we fall into tyranny? What happens to democracy when everything is a secret? Watch Thomas A. Drake on this stuff (First 20 minutes)

If we put this much power from spying into humanitarian efforts, like solving sex trafficking, or drug exports (implying we don't allow it), or stopping cyber criminals (Check out Bryan Krebs on this stuff!) the world would be a better place. However, we aren't team America World Police. We just wrap ourselves up in the flag of democracy and pat ourselves on the good german backs and say "job well done, we got paid!" ...when really it's about the bottom line and squeezing the fruit (literally if we look at 1954 CIA Coup of Guatemala) out of the rest of the world, and fueling it to those ends, we've created a literal second industrial military complex, this time being fed into "intelligence". And It sucks. If we aren't careful, this will never stop and we'll end up in a true Orwellian state.

The worst case scenario is that CIA and NSA and all the other alphabet agencies we see in movies turn the tyranny key and we become a true state under secret police where dissidence like this is illegal, rather than obnoxious and short lived.

In 2011 we assassinated a completely innocent U.S Citizen with "a flying fucking robot" -- Jacob Applebaum, with no trial because we didn't like what he had to say and had bad info that linked him to terrorists. Two weeks later we killed his 17 year old son in a separate drone strike miles away and unrelated. No trial. No judicial oversight, no judicial process, only the vaguely assert "due process" although that was, of course, classifed by the CIA. This is Obama's drone program. This is the foreseeable future if we aren't careful. What happens to our democracy if everyone is an enemy? What happens to freedom...?

Also: I'm writing a fictional dystopian Orwellian state book for the last 1.5 years... if anyone gives a shit see the comments below Here is chapters 1 - 8 with a few missing

Anyway, back to reality...

[[[Part 9: How do we fix this?]]]

Again, I don't perceive this as a "privacy" issue. It's an ethics and constitutional issue, and a monetary issue. It's not just a matter of principle, or emotion... it's a matter of integrity of state.

Things like

the judge that ruled NSLs unconstitutional

(national security letters) based on the gag-order under the 1st amendment, are the way to stop things! Give your support to the ALCU and the EFF!

It's all about policy and law (see the EFF).

If it's not legal, they make it legal...THIS IS THE CULTURAL CHANGE I TALKED ABOUT. IT IS OUR JOB TO HELP PRESSURE THOSE IN POWER TO DO SO TO MAKE IT ILLEGAL AGAIN!!!

Changing things like the FISA Amendment Act Section 702 ("The Barn Door" -- Thomas A. Drake)

Is really the best way to stop this type of activity. The issue isn't that someone is directly spying on everything we have, it's that they can retroactively go back in time and make you into a criminal, even if they aren't directly under PRISM (which is what part 1 of this long post discussed). Both Jacob Applebaum, and Ed. Snowden both touch on this.

The best chance we have is to pressure our Congressmen into holding more hearings that will hopefully change their mind for funding and policy

If you've seen many of the interviews with the NSA and FBI speaking to Congress, you've heard them lie through their teeth or dance around answers with stuff like "Not under this program" (Stellarwind & Trailblazer). We need to keep them under the microscope. Especially if the FISC (FISA COURT) isn't going to and Congress is either too submissive, apathetic, or powerless to do so themselves.

There are few individuals involved that the EFF lawsuits (Hepting V AT&T and Jewel V NSA (still on going)) such as David Addington (Cheney's Lawyer) and John Ashcroft (then acting AG) as well as people like the leader of NSA. (Wed. 6-12-13) that people (EFF / ACLU) are trying to "take down". this probably not the way to stop the problem holistically, but gives negative media attention to the questioned parties and that sure as hell does! And, if they do happen to pull a victory like google did with the NSL's being unconstitutional, I'm all for that!

Hopefully we can repeal a lot of these amendments (FISA Sec. 702, 2008) (PAA, 2007) and sec. 215 USAPATRIOT etc etc. I've been writing my congressmen 6 or 7 page letters on this since I stumbled upon this clusterfuck and hopefully I'll wake up and I wont be alone in that endevour. Check out "Cheny's law" the FRONTLINE report and check out Jacob Applebaum's talk with Bill Binny on Democracy Now.

TL;DR

I don't perceive this as a "privacy" issue. It's an ethics and constitutional issue, and a monetary issue. It's not just a matter of principle, or emotion...It's a matter of integrity of state.

We've created the Industrial Military Complex 2.0.

The "Intelligence Private-Contractor Complex")

Total informational awareness my ass. ~~ Welcome to the Disposition Matrix Angry Ranting Realist. Prepared for special rendition!

Seriously, thanks for reading<3 God Bless the United Surveillance State of America!

[seemslikeadream]

^^^^^THANKS FOR THAT

Edward Snowden's worst fear has not been realised – thankfully
The NSA whistleblower's only concern was that his disclosures would be met with apathy. Instead, they're leading to real reform

Glenn Greenwald
The Guardian, Friday 14 June 2013 14.00 EDT

Link to video: NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden: 'I don't want to live in a society that does these sort of things'


In my first substantive discussion with Edward Snowden, which took place via encrypted online chat, he told me he had only one fear. It was that the disclosures he was making, momentous though they were, would fail to trigger a worldwide debate because the public had already been taught to accept that they have no right to privacy in the digital age.

Snowden, at least in that regard, can rest easy. The fallout from the Guardian's first week of revelations is intense and growing.

If "whistleblowing" is defined as exposing secret government actions so as to inform the public about what they should know, to prompt debate, and to enable reform, then Snowden's actions are the classic case.

US polling data, by itself, demonstrates how powerfully these revelations have resonated. Despite a sustained demonization campaign against him from official Washington, a Time magazine poll found that 54% of Americans believe Snowden did "a good thing", while only 30% disagreed. That approval rating is higher than the one enjoyed by both Congress and President Obama.

While a majority nonetheless still believes he should be prosecuted, a plurality of Americans aged 18 to 34, who Time says are "showing far more support for Snowden's actions", do not. Other polls on Snowden have similar results, including a Reuters finding that more Americans see him as a "patriot" than a "traitor".

On the more important issue – the public's views of the NSA surveillance programs – the findings are even more encouraging from the perspective of reform. A Gallup poll last week found that more Americans disapprove (53%) than approve (37%) of the two NSA spying programs revealed last week by the Guardian.

As always with polling data, the results are far from conclusive or uniform. But they all unmistakably reveal that there is broad public discomfort with excessive government snooping and that the Snowden-enabled revelations were met with anything but the apathy he feared.

But, most importantly of all, the stories thus far published by the Guardian are already leading to concrete improvements in accountability and transparency. The ACLU quickly filed a lawsuit in federal court challenging the legality, including the constitutionality, of the NSA's collection of the phone records of all Americans. The US government must therefore now defend the legality of its previously secret surveillance program in open court.

These revelations have also had serious repercussions in Congress. The NSA and other national security state officials have been forced to appear several times already for harsh and hostile questioning before various committees.

To placate growing anger over having been kept in the dark and misled, the spying agency gave a private briefing to rank-and-file members of Congress about programs of which they had previously been unaware. Afterward, Democratic Rep Loretta Sanchez warned that the NSA programs revealed by the Guardian are just "the tip of the iceberg". She added: "I think it's just broader than most people even realize, and I think that's, in one way, what astounded most of us, too."

It is hardly surprising, then, that at least some lawmakers are appreciative rather than scornful of these disclosures. Democratic Sen Jon Tester was quite dismissive of the fear-mongering from national security state officials, telling MSNBC that "I don't see how [what Snowden did] compromises the security of this country whatsoever". He added that, despite being a member of the Homeland Security Committee, "quite frankly, it helps people like me become aware of a situation that I wasn't aware of before".

These stories have also already led to proposed legislative reforms. A group of bipartisan senators introduced a bill which, in their words, "would put an end to the 'secret law' governing controversial government surveillance programs" and "would require the Attorney General to declassify significant Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) opinions, allowing Americans to know how broad of a legal authority the government is claiming to spy on Americans under the Patriot Act and Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act".

The disclosures also portend serious difficulties for the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, and NSA chief, Keith Alexander. As the Guardian documented last week, those officials have made claims to Congress – including that they do not collect data on millions of Americans and that they are unable to document the number of Americans who are spied upon – that are flatly contradicted by their own secret documents.

This led to one senator, Ron Wyden, issuing a harshly critical statement 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 and the American people have the right to expect straight answers from the intelligence leadership to the questions asked by their representatives".

One well-respected-in-Washington national security writer, Slate's centrist Fred Kaplan, has called for Clapper's firing. "It's hard," he wrote, "to have meaningful oversight when an official in charge of the program lies so blatantly in one of the rare open hearings on the subject."

The fallout is not confined to the US. It is global. Reuters this week reported that "German outrage over a US Internet spying program has broken out ahead of a visit by Barack Obama, with ministers demanding the president provide a full explanation when he lands in Berlin next week and one official likening the tactics to those of the East German Stasi."

Indeed, Viviane Reding, the EU's justice commissioner, has, in the words of the New York Times, "demanded in unusually sharp terms that the United States reveal what its intelligence is doing with personal information of Europeans gathered under the Prism surveillance program revealed last week". She is particularly insistent that EU citizens be given some way to find out whether their communications were intercepted by the NSA.

In the wake of the Guardian's articles, I heard from journalists and even government officials from around the world interested in learning the extent of the NSA's secret spying on the communications of their citizens. These stories have resonated globally, and will continue to do so, because the NSA's spying apparatus is designed to target the shared instruments used by human beings around the world to communicate with one another.

The purpose of whistleblowing is to expose secret and wrongful acts by those in power in order to enable reform. A key purpose of journalism is to provide an adversarial check on those who wield the greatest power by shining a light on what they do in the dark, and informing the public about those acts. Both purposes have been significantly advanced by the revelations thus far.

[Elvis]

Thanks for posting that, Grizzly.

(booz allen, raytheon, lockheed, northrop grummun, boeing etc etc etc.) It's about PROFIT.

Richard Perle is prime example of selling the snake-oil disease then selling the snake-oil remedy. The Prince of Darkness is also sometimes credited with the line in the 'PNAC paper' about the need for "a new Pearl Harbor," just sayin'. Below is from April 2003:

Richard Perle's resignation as chairman of Donald Rumsfeld's Defense Policy Board on March 27 capped a tumultuous month for the neoconservative who spent the past decade stoking the fires for the US onslaught on Iraq. The trail to his resignation--as chairman, but not from the board itself--began with Seymour Hersh's New Yorker exposé of Perle's financial stakes in Trireme Partners, a private fund that is currying Saudi investment in homeland security companies, and the Autonomy Corporation, a British company that sells eavesdropping software to the FBI and to US, British and Italian intelligence.

Perle's fate was sealed when the New York Times reported that he was also taking money from Global Crossing to lobby the Pentagon to approve his clients' dealings with Hong Kong and mainland China. Some Democrats now argue that Perle's conflicts of interest are so serious that he should quit the board altogether.

But according to the Center for Public Integrity, such an ethical threshold would force almost one-third of Rumsfeld's board off the panel. Nine of the board's thirty members, CPI found in a new report (http://www.publicintegrity.org), have ties to defense and security-related companies that collectively won more than $76 billion in US defense contracts over the past two years. Former CIA director James Woolsey, for example, runs the Global Strategic Security practice of Booz Allen Hamilton, a global IT consulting firm that advises the US and British governments and had $680 million in military contracts in 2002. Retired Marine General Jack Sheehan works for Bechtel, the engineering giant and defense contractor bidding for US contracts to rebuild postwar Iraq. Retired Admiral David Jeremiah, the former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has links to at least five military contractors, including The Mitre Corporation, which runs a major R&D center for the Pentagon and is headed by board member James Schlesinger, a former Defense Secretary. However, the CPI found no evidence to suggest that serving on Rumsfeld's board "confers a decisive advantage" to corporations represented by board members, a list that includes Boeing, TRW, Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin [see list below].

http://http://www.thenation.com/article/richard-perles-corporate-adventures


And get this:

[Perle] bitterly attacked Hersh as a "terrorist" and was visibly upset when a Code Pink activist disrupted his March 25 talk at the American Enterprise Institute, where he, Woolsey and other pre-emptive warriors have found their ideological home. But Perle quickly recovered: After the woman was escorted out, he declared that the US campaign in Iraq underscores his argument that democracies don't start aggressive wars. "Dictatorships start wars because they need external enemies to exert internal control over their own people," he said.

You don't say?!


Top 20 Cybersecurity Companies

- BAE Systems PLC
- Boeing Company
- Booz Allen Hamilton Inc
- Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC)
- EADS Group
- Finmeccanica Group
- General Dynamics Corporation
- Hewlett Packard Company
- International Business Machines Corporation (IBM)
- Intel Corporation
- Kaspersky Lab
- L-3 Communications Holdings Inc
- Lockheed Martin Corporation
- Northrop Grumman Corporation
- Raytheon Company
- Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC)
- Sophos PLC
- Symantec Corporation
- Thales Group
- Trend Micro Inc

http://cryptome.org/2013/06/top20-cybersec.htm

The above is from a Cryptome post, a come-on for a "Global 20 Leading Cyber Security Companies 2013: Competitive Landscape Analysis Defence report" selling at £1699 a copy.

[seemslikeadream]

Senate Staffers Told To Pretend Top Secret Documents Are Not Widely Available On Web

Senate employees and contractors are still supposed to treat this as classified

The Senate Security Office sent an email around the Hill Friday afternoon asking Senate employees and contractors to try to ignore the fact that top-secret, highly-classified documents are now floating around the Web freely (and, in the case of a terribly designed NSA Powerpoint, getting facelifts.) The email asks security managers to remind Senate employees and contractors that the documents are still technically classified and should be treated as if millions of people haven’t already read them. The email:

Please share with your staff the guidance below.
· Classified information, whether or not posted on public websites, disclosed to the media, or otherwise in the public domain, remains classified and must be treated as such until it is declassified by an appropriate U.S. government authority.

The director of national intelligence has declassified some information in light of the public debate, but the FISA court order, PRISM Powerpoint, NSA brochure, presidential order, as well as the “dozens” of newsworthy documents that Glenn Greenwald still plans to publish remain technically secret even if it’s a secret that anyone with an Internet connection can be let in on.

· Senate employees and contractors shall not, while accessing the web on unclassified government systems, access or download documents that are known or suspected to contain classified information.

Government employees are not supposed to keep classified documents just hanging around on their computers, but at this point, the battle to keep this particular set of documents secure has already been lost thanks to leaker Edward Snowden and his thumb drive. Rules are rules — even if they make little sense in light of current circumstances and seem like a serious impediment for the staffers tasked with supporting senators who need to have a policy debate about the revelations in the leaks.

· Senate employees and contractors who believe they may have inadvertently accessed or downloaded classified information via non-classified Senate systems, should contact the Office of Senate Security for assistance.

So, any staffer that’s been reading the Guardian now needs to call the Senate Security Office. Anyone who doesn’t call should be chastised for not keeping up with relevant news.

The Department of Defense sent around a similar email earlier this week, as reported by Wired. It appears to be standard — if inane — procedure after classified docs go viral. In 2010, U.S. agencies asked unauthorized employees not to access the classified material that came pouring out of Wikileaks in the form of videos and State Department cables. It’s a terrible attempt to chase cats around trying to get them back into bags. And worst of all, puts staffers in the uncomfortable position of breaking protocol by following links on Google News.

[barracuda]

I'm unsure which NSA thread this belongs in, and I'm not certain I ever agree with Arthur entirely, but I'm willing to give him a listen. Links in the original...

JUNE 12, 2013
Fed Up with All the Bullshit

In the final section of the preceding post (the section subtitled "The Filtering of the NSA/Surveillance Stories"), I discussed the manner in which the journalists to whom Edward Snowden provided documents chose to continue to conceal much of the information he had given them. I emphasized that the explanations provided to the general public are notably threadbare, and filled with familiar, vacuous phrases. One of the links I included itself links to another article. It is worth noting the fuller version of some comments from Glenn Greenwald in the BuzzFeed piece:

“We’re not engaged in a mindless, indiscriminate document dump, and our source didn’t want us to be,” said Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian writer, in an email to BuzzFeed Saturday. “We’re engaged in the standard journalistic assessment of whether the public value to publication outweighs any harms."

“I’m sure the Guardian has consulted lawyers about all of this, but as far as I know, none of the decisions have been legal, only journal[istic],” Greenwald said. He tweeted earlier on Saturday that the Guardian would not be publishing one of the full unredacted PowerPoint slides related to the PRISM datamining program, because “it contains very specific technical NSA means for collection - we’d probably be prosecuted if we did."

“We’re applying the standard judgment test that journalists apply every day: first, is it newsworthy and relevant, ie, is there public interest in knowing this?” Greenwald told BuzzFeed. “If so: is there genuine harm that comes from publication? And if there is harm, does the public value outweigh/justify the harm?"

My earlier post discussed only a few of the many problems with these formulations, including: Who makes up "the public," and what specifically are the factors involved in determining what is in "the public interest"? Greenwald (and many others) appear to assume that everyone just sort of "knows" what these phrases mean. In fact, we don't know what they mean with any specificity. When critical terms are left undefined, alarms should always start clanging in your head. And as I pointed out, "the public interest" can mean anything at all. Something which can mean anything, means nothing. With regard to political matters, such phrases usually indicate that someone is trying to put something over on you.

I also pointed out that Greenwald (and Gellman, and Snowden himself, and many, many others) all talk about "harms," but we are never told what particular harms with any degree of specificity, just as we are not told who it is who is supposedly in danger of being harmed. As far as Greenwald's comment that "we're applying the standard judgment test that journalists apply every day" is concerned, I can only note that the irony is rather heavy when Greenwald, who writes endlessly about the numerous failures, limitless misrepresentations, hugely significant lapses, and so on, of mainstream journalism now appeals to some notion of journalistic "community standard." If journalism is, generally speaking, so rotten and filled with failure, who cares what the journalism community's standard is? Apparently Greenwald cares, at least now.

The preceding post also discussed what ought to be a disturbing similarity between the justifications for concealment employed by Snowden's chosen journalists and the State's justifications for keeping massive amounts of information from the public. In both cases, the "authorities" rely on factors and standards that are never specifically defined, on the basis of which they engage in some kind of unexplained "weighing" process, all to decide whether to reveal or conceal the information in question.

In summary: we are left with terms that are never defined and/or that are largely devoid of meaning, and a process of reaching judgments which remains a complete mystery to all the rest of us. That is to say: we have absolutely no way of evaluating what it is they are doing, for the simple reason that we don't know what they're doing with any specificity. And in terms of what has not been disclosed, and as I already pointed out, we are not given even the slightest indication of why particular information has been withheld. With regard to the 41 slides that make up the Prism "brief," for example, we might have been told: "Slides 9 through 16 concern X," where X is still generally described, if necessary, as for example: "disabling computer security systems in terms we view as potentially helpful to enemies of the U.S." That at least would make what they're doing minimally intelligible. But we're provided no details at all. We just have to "trust" them. Do you hear those alarms going off again? You should.

I will also state frankly, again with regard to the similar justifications offered by both these journalists and the government, that there is a very strong element of elitism involved that I find objectionable in the extreme. In the case of the Guardian, we know that Greenwald and at least two other reporters had access to Snowden's documents (or at least parts of them). We can safely assume that at least one editor was also involved, and probably more than one given the "sensitivity" of the material and the attention they knew the stories would receive. We can also safely assume, as Greenwald does, that "the Guardian has consulted lawyers about all of this." How many lawyers? We don't know. I have some familiarity with matters of this kind, and I think we can say it's at least two or three, and possibly five or six (given the importance of this material and the stories based on it). So how many people are we talking about? Eight, 10, 15, 20? Almost certainly between 10 and 20, at a minimum. That's just at the Guardian. The same would be true at the Washington Post. So we're talking about 40 or 50 individuals, possibly more, who reviewed Snowden's documents or at least some of them. I'm probably undercounting.

On top of this, we've all seen the stories about how the government hands out clearances to classified and "Top Secret" information like candy. But now we're told that all those very special workers for the State, plus the 40 or 50 people (and probably more) at the Guardian and the Washington Post, well, they're so responsible, and conscientious, and impossibly pure that they can be trusted with information that apparently will cause the simultaneous implosion of numerous galaxies if it were to fall into the hands of irresponsible, criminally careless, and stupid people -- like you. Like me.

It is at this point that you must forgive me for expressing my conclusion somewhat crudely: Peddle this bullshit somewhere else. I'm not buying it, not any of it.

I'm especially not buying it because the State's insistence on "secrecy" is a series of lies from beginning to end. And I implore you always to remember that we are speaking of a State which arrogates to itself the power to murder anyone it wishes, for any reason it chooses. This is a viciously authoritarian State running entirely out of control. Of course they would prefer to keep every single thing in the world "secret" and away from public view -- because they want and intend to do whatever the hell they wish, they don't want you to know about any of it (until they do want you to know, at least one or two things, when you'll be sorry you found out even that), and they don't intend to ever have to account to anyone for a single damned thing.

I therefore repeat: dump every single goddamned document you can get your hands on in toto, and make every last bit of it available to the public. It's the public that's paying for all of it, and not merely monetarily -- and it's the public for whose benefit everyone claims to be working (another similarity between the journalists and the State). If it's all for the public, doesn't the public have not only the right to know all about it, but the first right to know about it? But, no: you're too stupid to know what's best for you. Your betters will have to make these determinations. They'll decide what you can know, how much, and when.

Bullshit, all of it. These are the dishonest, insulting arguments of power used to justify itself. To hell with it.

Many of the same problems continue with regard to what these journalists have chosen to tell us about. Thanks to this tweet, I was directed to this article. Take a look:

Now that Snowden has revealed himself to the world as the NSA whistleblower, details about his interaction with the press are surfacing. And at the center of the drama is a still mostly unpublished 41-slide presentation, classified top secret, that Snowden gave to the Washington Post and the Guardian to expose the NSA’s internet spying operation “PRISM.”

Only five slides from the presentation have been published. The other 36 remain a mystery. Both the Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald and the Post’s Barton Gellman have made it clear that the rest of the PowerPoint is dynamite stuff … which we’re not going to be seeing any time soon. “If you saw all the slides you wouldn’t publish them,” wrote Gellman on Twitter, adding in a second tweet: “I know a few absolutists, but most people would want to defer judgment if they didn’t know the full contents.”

Even Greenwald, who urged me rather strongly in 2010 to publish Bradley Manning’s personal chats, is taking a more conservative view of the NSA’s PowerPoint. “I’m not going to discuss our legal advice with you,” Greenwald wrote on Twitter, “but we’re not publishing NSA tech methods.”

We are confronted with several problems here. First, we have only a small fraction of the total number of slides from the presentation. Second, we have the problem with PowerPoint presentations themselves. And third, related to the second point, we have a problem interpreting the minimal amount of text contained on the slides. The Wired article fleshes out the second and third points:

It’s strangely incongruent that a PowerPoint deck has taken on such importance. Indeed, the very properties of PowerPoint that make it one of the most hated conveyances of information in the world have contributed to the lingering uncertainty about PRISM and what it really does. Crude vector art and bullet points leave too much to the imagination, even when it’s the most highly classified crude vector art and bullet points the public has ever seen.

After company executives and administration officials disputed the key finding in the newspapers’ first reports — that the NSA has unilateral access to backend servers of Google, Facebook, and seven other technology companies — the Guardian released a new slide (slide number eight, we’re told) to support the paper’s claim. This one includes this PRISM point: “Collection directly from the servers of these U.S. Service Providers: Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube [and] Apple.”

But in context, that additional line adds little. The slide is intended to distinguish PRISM collection from the NSA’s raw internet wiretapping. It doesn’t address whether the collection is broad and automatic, or narrow and mediated by lawyers at the target companies, as subsequent reporting by other news outlets has indicated.

We thus begin to see how difficult it is to evaluate even the information that has been provided to us. After we try to sift through the available details, we're left with the sense that the government is engaged in intensive, systematic intrusions into individual privacy, but many of the details -- exactly what is happening, how, and in what manner -- are still elusive in varying degrees. In a significant sense, this isn't different from what we already knew from numerous stories over the past several years (see here and here, as only two examples from my own archives).

The problem is exponentially worsened when we consider how little of the total presentation we've been given. We all know the great dangers of selective information. Let me provide a very different kind of example to make the issue clearer. A very familiar, indeed cliched, scene in a certain kind of lousy movie (or novel) involves a person who tries to start trouble between two friends. The troublemaker says to one of the friends, "Do you know what Tim said about you? He said you're a manipulative, backstabbing son of a bitch, and he'd like to punch your goddamned lights out." As it happens, Tim said exactly that. But, as a wise friend of mine once remarked, "Context is everything." And the context surrounding Tim's remark was his explaining how he would feel if he were to find out that a close friend had acted in a certain way. He then went on to say that the close friend in question -- the person to whom the troublemaker ran with this dynamite story -- had never acted that way, and Tim was certain he never would. But the troublemaker neglected to include that part of the story. The trouble will begin if the person who is told the selective version of the truth believes that he has all the relevant information. In fact, all he has is one small piece of a larger story. The small piece of the story by itself, if treated as the totality of the required information, is not only not the truth: it is the opposite of the truth.

The parallels between this little fictional example and the Prism story are obviously not exact. I'm not suggesting that what we do know is not true, or that the actual truth is the opposite of what the slides we've been provided convey. But as indicated above, there are huge difficulties in interpreting the slides we know about with precision. Moreover, as my friend noted, context is everything. The full truth might be far worse than what we now know, or it might be awful, but in a way that is significantly different from what we now think. The critical point is that, because we have been provided with only a very selective part of the truth, we have no way of answering these questions. The problem goes still deeper than that: because we have only a small fraction of the entire presentation, we don't even know what questions we should be asking. It may be that we should actually be worried about an aspect of all this that hasn't occurred to anyone -- at least, to anyone in the great unwashed public. Some of the select few who have reviewed all 41 slides may have performed a brilliant analysis, and they may know that there are additional issues out there that would make our heads explode (or explode even more) -- but if they have such knowledge, based not on what they've shared so far but on the totality of the presentation, they aren't going to tell us.

Note, too, that we don't know that what we've been told is the most important part of the Prism story. You might argue that the published stories imply that, but they don't explicitly make any such claim. The published stories represent the newspapers' judgment concerning what information they believe, via some mysterious alchemical process, it is "responsible" to share with us. So perhaps what we know isn't the most important part of the story.

This is an entirely unsatisfactory way of imparting information to the public. In fact, what we're left with ("we" huddled masses, that is) is not knowledge at all in certain critical respects. We have isolated bits of information (which are unquestionably very bad and deeply troubling), but we have no idea how those bits would look when placed in the full context of the entire presentation. I can't imagine anything that would make the isolated pieces we have look "good" or "satisfactory," but again, to know that much isn't to know much more than we did before these stories were published.

And now we have the prospect of many more stories from the Guardian. We have no reason to think the Guardian is going to alter its basic approach to divulging the information it possesses; to the contrary, indications are that the methodology will remain the same. Of course, I will read the stories, and it may be that even the isolated pieces of information we're given will be so explosive that a major debate will occur, and even some modifications to current policy. But I wouldn't count on it.

I'm enormously tired by all the filtering, all the selective sharing of information, the repeated insistence that the general public can't be trusted with the full truth and that a select elite will decide what's best for us to know. It's all bullshit, and it needs to stop. Even to attempt to reach the truth, or just one part of the truth, when confronted with such an unending series of obstacles is absolutely exhausting. In truth, I think those in the elite ranks count on that: the prospect of trying to make sense out of the little information we're given is so forbidding that most people give up. They finally accept the tiny morsels they're provided, because they're too goddamned tired to fight for more. And they probably have at least a dim suspicion that what they know isn't the truth, or perhaps even close to the truth, but they simply don't care any longer.

It's a fucking rotten way to run a newspaper. It's a fucking rotten way to run a country. It's a fucking rotten way to live.

POSTED BY ARTHUR SILBER AT 11:37 AM

[thatsmystory]

I'm unsure which NSA thread this belongs in, and I'm not certain I ever agree with Arthur entirely, but I'm willing to give him a listen. Links in the original...

Great stuff. He asks questions that should be asked. His argument appears to be that Greenwald isn't as committed to his beliefs as he might lead readers to believe. Definitely a substantive critique unlike the "Greenwald is a CATO operative" theories floating around.

[Hunter]

There is an underlying issue here that I think has been alluded to upthread and which I feel is a major problem that is only getting worse here in America and that is the issue of privatization. The effort to privatize that which has traditionally been the responsibility of government and elected officials and turning it over to private corporations, two disturbing examples being intelligence services and private military/mercenaries. I think one well documented and sourced study I read recently suggested that up to 70% of our intelligence services is now done by private corporations as opposed to the CIA. Those in favor of this have sold it in such a way to make people believe it is for the best because it saves money and private corporations are more competent and efficient than the government is but the real reason for this trend is because these private corporations can get away with a lot more than the govt agencies can due to lack of congressional oversight wrt the private corporations involved, they can do things that the govt agencies cannot because of this and it is a very disturbing trend that is only going to get worse especially when this moves in to the realm of private armies/military full time, those private armies/military will not be held back because of things like Geneva and international treaties etc and can largely operate outside of those laws and the framework of congressional oversight. We are seeing the results of a lot of this now wrt intelligence services and companies like Booz, Allen, Hamilton, Stratfor and Palantir. In fact Jeremy Hammond, a hacktivist now serving time in prison for hacking in to Stratfor's computers was able to expose some of the crime and corruption that these types of companies are involved in when he leaked thousands of emails that he took from their network. Some of the stuff in those emails were real eye-openers. If you ever get bored go read some of that stuff, there is enough there to keep you busy for several years if you are really interested.


But yes, this trend towards privatization is a serious problem and one that is not going away any time soon and which is going to get a lot worse before it gets any better, if it ever does get better.

[stickdog99]

I'm unsure which NSA thread this belongs in, and I'm not certain I ever agree with Arthur entirely, but I'm willing to give him a listen. Links in the original...

JUNE 12, 2013
Fed Up with All the Bullshit


POSTED BY ARTHUR SILBER AT 11:37 AM

The article's title expresses exactly my sentiments about it.

[Hunter]

Greenwald has said over and over that the stuff they have not released yet and are working on releasing soon is 'gut wrenching and very hurtful stuff.'

Think about that now, this is a wordsmith talking, a guy who makes a living writing and choosing his words very carefully, we already know that they keep data wrt our phone calls, our emails, our web searches, what books we read, our general internet activity, chats etc. So what realistically is left that would be 'gut wrenching and very hurtful,' and which, according to Greenwald and others, has given the media pause and made them really think long and hard about whether it is a good idea that they leak it?


My best guess, and this is just grabbing at straws, but all things considered, the one thing that I know CAN BE DONE and which would most definitely be a hurtful gut check to the American people would be that there is evidence that the NSA and smart TV manufacturers are cooperating to give the NSA the ability to tap in to all internet connected smart TVs in private homes and activate built in video cameras and mics.

Now before you completely dismiss me as a paranoid nut please do some research and understand that it has been proven that the manufacturers of these smart TVs that are internet connected have in fact built a backdoor in to the software that gives them the capability to do exactly the above and all it takes from there, to make what I just suggested a reality, would be for those very smart TV manufacturers to cooperate with the NSA and give them access to those backdoors and as we know, that sort of cooperation and teamwork between NSA and industry such as large telecoms and internet service providers is happening as we speak. So, while this may just be the product of my over-active imagination, the capability to do such DOES EXIST and all that is missing is the NSA having access to those built in backdoors which itself is really not out of the realm of possibility.

What do you think the next big revelation is that could be described as 'gut-wrenching and very hurtful,' as Mr Greenwald has called it?

[justdrew]

what's left?

remember, they can open the mic of most cell phones, turn on the cameras, video mode or snapshots, follow you to a great precision via signal strength at multiple towers, triangulating right in on your phone, probably on smartphones too, can't be sure if it's true of all devices these days, possibly, possibly not, almost certainly not wifi or wimax only based devices, but if it plugs into a cell carrier via 4G or whatever the latest is, the people who license the intellectual property could require certain 'standards' be implemented that provide the 'back door' capability. Lord knows I wouldn't trust any of the smartphones that have had the phone companies add their own software. If I were to advise on what device to get, a google nexus would be the way to go.

btw - at some point, probably not too far away, Androids are going to be able to run iPad apps