This morning we have yet another article detailing a warrantless surveillance program by the National Security Agency that contradicts representations made by President Barack Obama and members of Congress. You may recall how Obama has tried to get citizens to embrace a new surveillance-friendly model of privacy after the disclosure of massive surveillance of citizens, including programs acquiring every call made by citizens. Various Democratic members came forward to admit that they knew of such programs and not to be afraid . . . they have our backs. Yet every story that has surfaced has contradicted claims that such programs are limited and do not involve the content of communications in emails and messages. The latest program being reported is called XKeyscore and is described as scouring emails, chat rooms, and browsing histories . . . all without a warrant. In the meantime, citizens in polls are saying that they are more concerned with the threat of their own government to their privacy than the threat of terrorism. Once again, citizens learned of this program not from their representative or their media but largely from the foreign press and the disclosures of Edward Snowden.
Of course, media allies of the President are expressing exasperation with people like Snowden in keeping them from moving on to other subjects and away from the eradication of privacy in America.
The NSA for its part has denied reports “of widespread, unchecked analyst access to NSA collection data are simply not true.” Something tells me it is the “unchecked” that the agency is stressing. The Obama Administration is infamous for replacing due process and privacy guarantees with its own self-evaluation and monitoring guarantees.
This program is described as allowing the agency access to “nearly everything a typical user does on the internet” in “real time.”
As these reports mount, the Democratic Party remains largely silent. While there was a highly orchestrated vote on the surveillance program recently (that predictably failed by just a few votes), the Democratic Party has now joined prior Bush supporters in attacking the most fundamental protections of U.S. citizens. The winner is a growing security state that employs hundreds of thousands and pours hundreds of billions of dollars into the pockets of agencies and their contractors. Citizens have become the subjects of such programs like raw material for an insatiable and unstoppable surveillance machine.
Journalist Glenn Greenwald has detailed how low-level employees have access to such material. My guess is that the NSA will focus on that issue rather than the existence of these programs. It is now a common technique of the Obama Administration: focusing on the procedures rather than the privacy concerns. We are likely to hear about criteria and internal reviews as part of the “trust me I am Obama” approach to authoritarian powers. After all, they got away with that in announcing a policy allowing Obama to vaporize U.S. citizens based on his sole authority.
With Congress now fully supporting this surveillance state, citizens are left with a dangerous vacuum in our constitutional system. The federal courts have created a blind spot where they bar judicial review on the basis of increasingly narrow standing rules and classification barriers. Even reading about these issues is difficult. As we have been discussing, the U.S. media has largely yielded to demands of the White House not to call Snowden a whistleblower and we often have to read about these programs from foreign sources like the Guardian.
How did we come to this point as a nation?
OKY1, I remember back at the beginning of the Snowden situation that his dad was on the other side of the fence, I wonder what changed his mind.
From Steve M:
If the phone surveillance is pretty much useless, I’m not surprised — it seems to me that the theory behind the program, and behind a lot of what we now know the NSA is doing, is that the best way to find a needle in a haystack is to pile as much hay on the stack as humanly possible. The vast majority of the money, effort, human labor, and computing power is dedicated to amassing more and more hay. The priority is hay collection and management, not needle identification.
It’s pretty good if you like legal/political issues:
Snowden’s Father Calls Out Obama On Nuremberg Crimes
Kurt Nimmo
Prison Planet….
August 1, 2013
http://www.prisonplanet.com/snowdens-father-calls-out-obama-on-nuremberg-crimes.html
A recent quote I found seems most fitting for our so called leaders of today:
“I don’t think they will come to their senses for the simple reason that insane people don’t realize that they are insane.”
Dredd,
Yep.
(And here’s another one: http://boingboing.net/2013/07/31/nsa-loving-internet-hating-re.html
NSA-loving, Internet-hating Rep Mike Rogers’ staffers say criticism is “defamation”
Cory Doctorow at 5:51 pm Wed, Jul 31, 2013
Rep Mike Rogers (R-MI) is a former FBI spook turned Congressman. In addition to being an authoritarian creep (he was one of CISPA’s co-sponsors) who hates Internet users (he dismissed CISPA’s millions of vociferous opponents as “14-year-olds in their basement clicking around on the internet”) and loves warrantless NSA spying — he’s also apparently a coward, whose staffers reportedly say that criticizing him on the Internet is defamation. According to a Michigan reporter, they told the press that Rogers could sue Techdirt’s Mike Masnick for “defamation” for closely and critically covering his policies. As Masnick says, it’s “unbecoming of an elected official to try to chill the free speech of those who criticize his statements and actions with implied threats of lawsuits to silence their public participation.”
I had a fun phone call with a reporter in Michigan earlier today who is apparently working on a story about Rep. Mike Rogers. In doing some research for the article, he spoke with staffers in Rogers’ office about some of the things I’ve written about Rogers and his position on internet surveillance and cybersecurity. The reporter told me that the staffers said they’re “well aware of” me, but that they felt I was “an extreme liberal” and that I was using “liberal” talking points to attack him. Also, according to this reporter, they said that they could sue me for defamation concerning things I’d said about Rogers. Yes, it’s come to this.
Staffers For Rep. Mike Rogers Apparently Claim They Could Sue Me For Defamation)
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Sue me, Mike.
They are cold, calculating, and psychopathic liars.
“NSA/CSS is committed to Open Government and Transparency in accordance with the President’s 21 January 2009 Memorandum.”
http://www.nsa.gov/commitment/open_government/index.shtml
From the NSA/CSS:
Press Statement on 30 July 2013
http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/press_room/2013/30_July_2013.shtml
As the IC and NSA have stated previously, the implication that NSA’s collection is arbitrary and unconstrained is false. NSA’s activities are focused and specifically deployed against – and only against – legitimate foreign intelligence targets in response to requirements that our leaders need for information necessary to protect our nation and its interest. Public release of this classified material about NSA collection systems, without context, does nothing more than jeopardize sources and methods, and further confuse a very important issue for the country. Although it is impossible to provide full details of classified programs and still have them remain effective, we offer the following points for clarification:
1. XKEYSCORE is used as part of NSA’s lawful foreign signals intelligence collection system. By the nature of NSA’s mission, which is the collection of foreign intelligence, all of our analytic tools are aimed at information we collect pursuant to lawful authority to respond to foreign intelligence requirements – nothing more.
2. Allegations of widespread, unchecked analyst access to NSA collection data are simply not true. Access to XKEYSCORE, as well as all of NSA’s analytic tools, is limited to only those personnel who require access for their assigned tasks. Those personnel must complete appropriate training prior to being granted such access – training which must be repeated on a regular basis. This training not only covers the mechanics of the tool but also each analyst’s ethical and legal obligations. In addition, there are multiple technical, manual and supervisory checks and balances within the system to prevent deliberate misuse from occurring.
3. Our tools have stringent oversight and compliance mechanisms built in at several levels. One feature is the system’s ability to limit what an analyst can do with a tool, based on the source of the collection and each analyst’s defined responsibilities. Not every analyst can perform every function, and no analyst can operate freely. Every search by an NSA analyst is fully auditable, to ensure that they are proper and within the law.
These types of programs allow us to collect the information that enables us to perform our missions successfully – to defend the nation and to protect US and allied troops abroad. (For example, as of 2008, there were over 300 terrorists captured using intelligence generated from XKEYSCORE.)
Continuous and selective revelations of specific techniques and tools used by NSA to pursue legitimate foreign intelligence targets is detrimental to the national security of the United States and our allies, and places at risk those we are sworn to protect – our citizens, our war fighters, and our allies.
Defending Our Nation. Securing The Future.
How did we come to this point as a nation?
One thing is quite clear to me: it is not the fault of the people.
Our heritage, tradition, culture, history, and law has always had the notion that power corrupts those in the seats of power.
The constitution is structured to not allow power to be centralized to the point that the corruption of power can more easily manifest.
The government was split up to spread power more thinly so that its corrupting influence would be weakened.
We have seen the prescient words of “The Father of the Constitution” and other founders come true before our very eyes:
Rafflaw: “it seems that the FISA court does not have much to do.”
***
Sure they do, they have to be standing by and ready to give the sheen of legality to any request by any rogue element of the government that needs it on a moment’s notice.
Scary and sad at the same time. We have to rein in the NSA and make them accountable to someone. The FISA court also needs to drastically changed to not rubber stamp all requests. Plus, with all of this data mining and outright spying on Americans without warrants, it seems that the FISA court does not have much to do.
nick,
They’ve been suffering for a long time. I stopped delivery 3 years ago as coverage was lackluster.
“And get the &#@*&@* military out of the domestic spying business, period.” -James Knauer
Yep.
As Frank Church said:
“That 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. If this government ever became a tyranny, if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back, because the most careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government, no matter how privately it was done, is within the reach of the government to know. Such is the capability of this technology.
I don’t want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know the capability that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.”
Blouise, I was sad to see the cutbacks @ The Plain Dealer. Delivery 3 days a week and letting go veteran reporters is unfortunately a sign of the times.
There is one reporter who has been very good on covering this. Jake Tapper of CNN has a show @ 4pmET called The Lead. He has Greenwald on often and led w/ this story yesterday. He had Sen. Wyden on w/ a good interview. There are some good, straight, honest, non sycophant reporters in this country. However, they could all fit in a minivan!
Time to pull the plug on the NSA. Halt the obscene data-gathering temple to fascism in Utah. Repeal the Patriot Act, and mandate VPNs for all citizens in direct support of the 4th amendment.
And get the &#@*&@* military out of the domestic spying business, period.
Enough is enough. The overreach is astounding. This country almost elected Uncle Ruckus and Sarah Mae Havingdonenothing. Imagine them with these horrible powers.
Enough. Enough. 1001 times Enough.
Reblogged this on Politics Starts Here.
“How did we come to this point as a nation?”
Indeed.
(And there’s more… The worst of it is yet to come.)
Thanks for the asylum update, Blouise. Now I wonder if Snowden is “pro-gay” (refer to excerpt below):
Russia Will Not Suspend Anti-Gay Legislation For 2014 Sochi Olympic Games: Official
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/30/russia-anti-gay-olympic-games-sochi_n_3676311.html?icid=maing-grid7|main5|dl2|sec1_lnk3%26pLid%3D352079
“In effect, it seems as if foreign athletes and spectators at the 2014 Olympic Games will, in fact, be subject to the legalities of Russia’s recent stream of anti-LGBT legislation. Signed into law by President Vladimir Putin on June 30, the legislation gives the Russian government agency to detain gay or “pro-gay” foreigners up to 14 days before facing expulsion from the country.
Perhaps most disturbing out of this recent interview with Milonov is the claim that he has “spoken with many American politicians” and that “they support the stance I’ve taken on this issue.” He also cites support from German legislators surrounding the anti-gay crackdown.”
BTW … Russia has granted Snowden 1-Year Asylum
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/02/world/europe/edward-snowden-russia.html?emc=edit_na_20130801&_r=0
It’s almost as if Russia is doing more to protect our Constitution than our own government ..Obama must be spitting bricks.