The Republican and Democratic parties have achieved a bipartisan purpose in uniting against the public’s need to know about massive surveillance programs and the need to redefine privacy in a more surveillance friendly image. They have also united in attacking Snowden as a traitor and seeking his prosecution for telling the public about the program. In the midst of this full-court press to lull the public back into sleep over civil liberties, the members will face a slightly inconvenient problem: possible perjury. These members have repeatedly called for perjury and contempt prosecutions of officials who have given false or misleading testimony like Eric Holder. However, they have a little problem with Obama officials who seem to have given false or intentionally misleading testimony over the surveillance of citizens. The problem is that these members want the scandal (and the public) to go away. Many of them knew at the time that the public was being told untrue things in these hearings. It will only be embarrassing to now address the falsehoods fed to the public in their presence and with their knowledge. In other words, they were all lying to the public and, under our new relativistic world, a lie told by everyone is treated as the truth.
Consider the testimony of James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, to the Senate in March. Clapper said unequivocally that the N.S.A. was not gathering data on millions of Americans. That is obviously false and Senators hearing the testimony knew that the public was being lied to.
How about this exchange?
Senator Wyden: “Does the N.S.A. collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?”
Clapper: “No, sir. Not wittingly.”
However, it was done “wittingly” when you demand all of the calls for all citizens, right? Clapper will argue that he simply defines collecting data differently from the vast majority of humanity. However, courts regularly reject such subjective views of the truth. The point of the answer was to assure the public that they have nothing to worry about — the same message being given by members now that the truth has come out. Clapper’s testimony was for the public to hear and believe — even though Senators knew it to be untrue. Keep in mind that we have two surveillance programs now being reported — one collecting all call information and one involving email data.
Clapper has recently said that his testimony was “the least untrue” statement that he could make. Yet, of course that would still make it an untrue statement — which most people call a lie and lawyers call perjury. Indeed, when Roger Clemens was prosecuted for untrue statements before Congress, he was not told of the option to tell the least untrue statement on steroid use.
What is remarkable is that, while such hearings are presented as spontaneous, senators routinely send their questions in advance to officials. That is what Wyden did with Clapper so he knew this question was coming. Afterward, Wyden gave him a chance to correct his statement and he did not.
Gen. Keith B. Alexander, the N.S.A. director, has reportedly also given such false statements. N.S.A.’s general counsel, Rajesh De, called rumors of such spying merely “false myths” and that the suggestion that the “N.S.A. is spying on Americans at home and abroad with questionable or no legal basis.”
There is clearly an effort by Feinstein and others to ignore this testimony to avoid having to deal with their own culpability. The same was true with torture. Congressional members knew of the program while feigning outrage in public. They then worked with the White House to quash any hearings or investigations that would implicate their own involvement.
The result is that the Justice Department will continue to prosecute ordinary citizens for relatively small inconsistencies in testimony or statements to investigators. However, high-ranking officials in both branches will have a license to lie because it is not a lie when no one is willing to acknowledge the truth.
Our leaders have embraced that core view of Lenin that “A Lie told often enough becomes the truth.”
Source: NY Times
“Snowden explained that he had sought refuge in Hong Kong because it “has a strong tradition of free speech” and “a long tradition of protesting in the streets.”
Local activists plan to take to the streets on Saturday in support of Snowden. Groups including the Civil Human Rights Front and international human rights groups will march from Chater Gardens in Central to the US consulate on Garden Road, starting at 3pm.
The march is being organised by In-media, a website supporting freelance journalists.
“We call on Hong Kong to respect international legal standards and procedures relating to the protection of Snowden; we condemn the US government for violating our rights and privacy; and we call on the US not to prosecute Snowden,” the group said in a statement.”
Interview with Snowden is linked at Greenwald’s twitter.
sprite,
“What, exactly, is a “false myth”? is that an upside down and backward way of implying that the myth is true?”
(-: Someone needs to ask him those questions.
O in the sky …
A Washington laundromat fav …
It is breathtaking how comfort rules … the comfort (COM FORT) zone …
michael murry:
Obama and his group arent republicans, sorry. They are on the Marxist/Socialist side of things. Harry Truman, JFK and Sam Nunn are long gone. Too bad too. They were actually democrats, well maybe not Kennedy, the apple doesnt fall to far from the tree.
michael murry:
how about refuting what I said. I say most people in the federal government are liberal/progressives.
We can debate how many of them have a totalitarian streak. Certainly many in this administration have that streak.
“Gen. Keith B. Alexander, the N.S.A. director, has reportedly also given such false statements. N.S.A.’s general counsel, Rajesh De, called rumors of such spying merely “false myths” and that the suggestion that the “N.S.A. is spying on Americans at home and abroad with questionable or no legal basis.””
What, exactly, is a “false myth”? is that an upside down and backward way of implying that the myth is true?
Clapper, a highly educated man, has been loyal to his employers, members of the MIC. He has consistently lied as directed, on behalf of his employers. He has been grateful to them. And you people want to hang him for breaking the law by lying to Congress and subverting the Constitution? People here are seriously messed up!! Shut up and pass out the medal of freedom.
This clip is a perfect metaphor for how the American Public will deal with the latest news of our growing police state. Just substitute the word “Scratch” with “Illegal data mining”.
Sorry, I must be dumb or something…
… Since when do Americans fall under FOREIGN Intel Court?
Why wont Congress just construct a DOMESTIC Intel COurt?
… Must be something about warrant specific stuffs like person, affect, place, etc.
Pesky Constitution…
I fail to see how a NSL issued to Verison asking for ANY and ALL DATA falls into the realm of Clappers, perhaps could but not wittingly world. As is the case with AT&T, YAHOO, Google, etc.
I wish there was a way to embolden the most important words in the question… ANY, AT ALL. And Clappers response, COULD, PERHAPS, NOT WITTINGLY.
The Question: Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans
The Answer: There are cases where they could inadvertently… perhaps… collect… but not… not wittingly.
WAS CLAPPER LYING TO CONGRESS THEN OR IS SNOWDEN LYING ABOUT THE ACCESS TO ALL CONSUMER INFORMATIONS?
“I swar ‘pon th’ holy bibl
‘t tell the littlest lies I can
so help me Ronda”
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/06/response-nsa-we-need-new-church-commission-and-we-need-it-now
In Response to the NSA, We Need A New Church Committee and We Need It Now
By Cindy Cohn and Trevor Timm
“[The National Security Agency’s] capability at any time could be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would be no place to hide.” —Senator Frank Church, 1975
In short, we need a new Church Committee.
In the mid-70s, in response to revelation that the government was engaging in systematic domestic surveillance on domestic targets—including anti-war activists, academics, and government critics like Martin Luther King Jr., John Lennon and Daniel Ellsberg—the distinguished Senator from Idaho, Frank Church, convened a Senate investigative committee that ultimately put a stop to large scale domestic spying for decades.
The Church Committee report, which can be read in full here, led to the passage of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), setting up the secret FISA court that put strict procedures in place for conducting surveillance for intelligence activities. Most importantly, following a Supreme Court ruling in 1973, FISA required an individualized, probable cause warrant for national security spying, just as the Fourth Amendment requires.
While there is much to criticize in the original FISA, it did rein in the government, and its system of checks and balances remained largely in place until shortly after September 11, 2001, when President George W. Bush first authorized a broad warrantless wiretapping program. The government decided to illegally bypass the FISA court and started warrantlessly wiretapping the communications, as well as collecting and data-mining the communications records of innocent Americans.
When a portion of the NSA warrantless surveillance was revealed by the New York Times in 2005, there was widespread outrage among the American people. Unfortunately, Congress reacted in the opposite way as the Church Committee once did. Instead of fixing the problems, they institutionalized most of them and swept the rest under the rug.
In 2008, Congress gutted the original balance of FISA with the FISA Amendments Act, which allowed the government to get court orders with less than probable cause that would target groups of people—instead of individuals, like the Constitution requires. The law also allowed the NSA to collect information on innocent Americans when they are talking to people outside the US who are targeted by the government.
But it gets worse. EFF and others had long alleged that, despite the rhetoric surrounding the Patriot Act and the FISA Amendments Act, the government was still vacuuming up the records of the purely domestic communications of millions of Americans. And yesterday, of course, with the Verizon order, we got solid proof.. And it appears that the reach of this vacuum goes much further, into the records of our Internet service providers as well.
Now it’s not as if these efforts haven’t been challenged. EFF has been seeking judicial review of the dragnet surveillance, both wiretapping and records collection, since 2006, facing one procedural maneuver after another by the government. The ACLU brought a strong constitutional challenge to the FISA Amendments Act that was dismissed by the Supreme Court only two months ago for lack of “standing.” The court ruled in a contentious 5-4 decision that because the ACLU couldn’t prove for a “certainty” that their clients were being surveilled, they couldn’t challenge the law.
Well, it turns out, the new revelations prove everything the ACLU was arguing, in addition to confirming all of the allegations in EFF’s warrantless wiretapping case, Jewel v. NSA.
Of course, the evidence has been there all along. Even after the FISA Amendments Act passed, the New York Times reported in 2009 the NSA was still collecting purely domestic communications in a “significant and systematic” way after the original bill passed in 2008. And just last year, the government admitted, the secret FISA court has ruled “on at least one occasion” that the government’s surveillance under the law had violated the Fourth Amendment.
That secret FISA court ruling is still classified, as are the OLC memos that supposedly give the government’s best case that all this purely domestic surveillance is legal. But one has to wonder, if the FISA court “routinely” authorizes the collection of all US call data, what kind of surveillance was the NSA conducting that they couldn’t approve?
Shamefully, Congress has had a chance to add provisions to both the Patriot Act and FISA Amendments Act in the last two years. In 2011, the Obama administration opposed all transparency and accountability amendments to the Patriot Act when key provisions were renewed for another five years. Just six months ago in Decemebr 2012, the administration again opposed all oversight amendments, even those more moderate than the ones he voted for as Senator in 2008.
So here’s your wake up call Congress, and an opportunity to be a hero. We need a Church Committee for a new era. It could be headed by Ron Wyden and Mark Udall, the two Senators who have been trying to warn the American people about the government dangerous interpretation of the Patriot Act for years. Udall said today, he “did everything short of leaking classified information” to stop it.
But someone in Congress needs to step up and fill Frank Church’s shoes. They are big ones, but EFF stands willing to help. And so, we suspect, will millions of innocent Americans whose privacy has been violated and who are ready to have their constitutional rights back.
Here’s something interesting
http://breakingbrown.com/2013/06/dont-look-now-but-off-duty-cops-in-alabama-are-collecting-dna-swabs-at-roadblocks/
Don’t Look Now, But Off Duty Cops in Alabama Are Collecting DNA Swabs at Roadblocks
June 11, 2013 News, ybw 1
Since Americans are already abuzz over the NSA’s collection of meta-data, now is as good a time as any to discuss how local law enforcement draws its direction cops at road blocksfrom the Feds. Meaning, if you give up privacy to the Feds, then you may be giving it up to local law enforcement as well, making the area of privacy an extremely slippery slope.
For example, over the weekend two Alabama counties had cops out at roadblocks asking for voluntary samples of blood and sal!va. Drivers who agreed to provide samples, which will reportedly be used in research for a study being conducted by the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, were compensated for their troubles.
“They’ve got big signs up that says ‘paid volunteer survey’ and if they want to participate they pull over there and they ask them questions and if they are willing to give them a mouth swab they give them $10 and if they are willing to give them a blood sample they give them $50. And if they don’t do anything they drive off,” said Freddie Turrentine of the St. Clair County Sheriff’s Department.
According to Turrentine, there were five roadblocks from Friday afternoon through the early Sunday morning.
But shouldn’t there have been a better way to implement a voluntary collection of fluid samples? What sort of study uses the cops to collect their study samples anyway? There is also a certain intimidation factor that goes along with being forcibly pulled over by cops requesting anything.
A spokesman said this was the first time the police ever participated in a study of this kind.
The ACLU lawsuit gives me some hope. I do not know who the judge is that they were assigned. They need a good judge.
Here is the introductory section of the Complaint filed by the ACLU versus James R. Clapper and the other defendants in the privacy deprivation case.
COMPLAINT FOR DECLARATORY AND INJUNCTIVE RELIEF
1. This lawsuit challenges the government’s dragnet acquisition of Plaintiffs’ telephone records under Section 215 of the Patriot Act, 50 U.S.C. § 1861.1 In response to information published by the media, the government has acknowledged that it is relying on Section 215 to collect “metadata” about every phone call made or received by residents of the United States. The practice is akin to snatching every American’s address book—with annotations detailing whom we spoke to, when we talked, for how long, and from where. It gives the government a comprehensive record of our associations and public movements, revealing a wealth of detail about our familial, political, professional, religious, and intimate associations.
2. The government has confirmed the authenticity of an order issued six weeks ago by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (“FISC”) requiring Verizon Business Network Services Inc. (“VBNS”) to turn over, every day, metadata about the calls made by each of its
subscribers over the three-month period ending on July 19, 2013. Government officials have indicated that the VBNS order is part of a program that has been in place for seven years and that
collects records of all telephone communications of every customer of a major phone company, including Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint.
3. Plaintiffs the American Civil Liberties Union and the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation are current VBNS subscribers whose communications have already been monitored by the government under the VBNS order and whose communications continue to be
monitored under that order now. Plaintiffs the New York Civil Liberties Union and the New York Civil Liberties Union Foundation are former customers of VBNS whose contract of service recently expired but whose telephony metadata likely remains in government databases. The
1 “The Patriot Act” is the common name for the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001, Pub. L. No. 107-56, 115 Stat. 272.
2 government’s surveillance of their communications (hereinafter “Mass Call Tracking”) allows the government to learn sensitive and privileged information about their work and clients, and it is likely to have a chilling effect on whistleblowers and others who would otherwise contact
Plaintiffs for legal assistance. This surveillance is not authorized by Section 215 and violates the First and Fourth Amendments. Plaintiffs bring this suit to obtain a declaration that the Mass Call Tracking is unlawful; to enjoin the government from continuing the Mass Call Tracking under the VBNS order or any successor thereto; and to require the government to purge from its databases all of the call records related to Plaintiffs’ communications collected pursuant to the Mass Call Track.
end.
Go to ACLU.org for the entire Complaint.
The NSA is censoring our attempts to post here.
June 11, 2013
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: 212-549-2666, media@aclu.org
NEW YORK – The American Civil Liberties Union and the New York Civil Liberties Union today filed a constitutional challenge to a surveillance program under which the National Security Agency vacuums up information about every phone call placed within, from, or to the United States. The lawsuit argues that the program violates the First Amendment rights of free speech and association as well as the right of privacy protected by the Fourth Amendment. The complaint also charges that the dragnet program exceeds the authority that Congress provided through the Patriot Act.
“This dragnet program is surely one of the largest surveillance efforts ever launched by a democratic government against its own citizens,” said Jameel Jaffer, ACLU deputy legal director. “It is the equivalent of requiring every American to file a daily report with the government of every location they visited, every person they talked to on the phone, the time of each call, and the length of every conversation. The program goes far beyond even the permissive limits set by the Patriot Act and represents a gross infringement of the freedom of association and the right to privacy.”
The ACLU is a customer of Verizon Business Network Services, which was the recipient of a secret FISA Court order published by The Guardian last week. The order required the company to “turn over on ‘an ongoing daily basis’ phone call details” such as who calls are placed to and from, and when those calls are made. The lawsuit argues that the government’s blanket seizure of and ability to search the ACLU’s phone records compromises sensitive information about its work, undermining the organization’s ability to engage in legitimate communications with clients, journalists, advocacy partners, and others.
“The crux of the government’s justification for the program is the chilling logic that it can collect everyone’s data now and ask questions later,” said Alex Abdo, a staff attorney for the ACLU’s National Security Project. “The Constitution does not permit the suspicionless surveillance of every person in the country.”
The ACLU’s 2008 lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the FISA Amendments Act, which authorized the so-called “warrantless wiretapping program,” was dismissed 5–4 by the Supreme Court in February on the grounds that the plaintiffs could not prove that they had been monitored. ACLU attorneys working on today’s complaint said they do not expect the issue of standing to be a problem in this case because of the FISA Court order revealed last week.
Yesterday, the ACLU and Yale Law School’s Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic filed a motion with the FISA Court, requesting that it to publish its opinions on the meaning, scope, and constitutionality of Patriot Act Section 215. The ACLU is also currently litigating a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, filed in October 2011, demanding that the Justice Department release information about the government’s use and interpretation of Section 215.
“There needs to be a bright line on where intelligence gathering stops,” said NYCLU executive director Donna Lieberman. “If we don’t say this is too far, when is too far?”
Attorneys on the case are Jaffer and Abdo along with Brett Max Kaufman and Patrick Toomey of the ACLU, and Arthur N. Eisenberg and Christopher T. Dunn of the NYCLU.
An interactive graphic examining the secret FISA Court order revealed last week is available here.
I tried ten times to post an excerpt from the ACLU blog here regarding their new lawsuit against Clapper for invading their privacy. Go to ACLU.org