NSA documents released by Edward Snowden have revealed years of false statements by the government, the capture of calls and emails from every citizen, the monitoring of tens of millions of people globally, the surveillance of world leaders including close allies, and the perjury by National Intelligence Director James Clapper. It has caused the Obama Administration — after denials of violations — to admit violations of U.S. laws and abuse of surveillance powers. Now General Keith Alexander, NSA director, says enough. We simply cannot stand any more disclosures of wrongdoing so Alexander wants to see actions taken against the media to prevent further disclosures.
The NSA surveillance has triggered the greatest diplomatic crisis in decades. The Obama Administration is promising reforms and investigations as if these were acts committed by some alien power. Alexander however has returned to the root of the problem in his view — and that of many politicians. It is the media. They are the ones who are continuing to disclose abuses. Stop the media, stop the disclosures. Stop the disclosures, stop the questions. It is so simple and Alexander cannot understand why we cannot come up with a way to shut the media up. He raised the question in an interview with one of the few remaining media sites viewed as friendly, the Defense Department’s own “Armed With Science” blog:
“I think it’s wrong that that newspaper reporters have all these documents, the 50,000 – whatever they have and are selling them and giving them out as if these – you know it just doesn’t make sense . . .We ought to come up with a way of stopping it. I don’t know how to do that. That’s more of the courts and the policy-makers but, from my perspective, it’s wrong to allow this to go on.”
Alexander’s hostility to the free press is so distortive that he actually views the press as “selling” secrets by informing the public of surveillance abuses by his agency. This would of course mean that the Pentagon Papers were “sold” by the press and should have also been stopped.
Just to be clear, the “wrong” can cannot be allowed to go on is the exercise of a free press. Just as other civil liberties have been discarded by the Obama Administration in the name of fighting terrorism, it is now time to curtail the free press — just another demonstration of loyalty demanded from citizens by their government.
SOTB,
Yes, I’ve read Alexander’s excuses regarding Iraq … he’s very good at blaming others. Rumsfeld looooved him.
Why don’t we split the $500 chicken feed fee and go together … you get the leg and the back, I’ll take the breast and the wing. We can sit in the back of the room and catch this … I know how to throw my voice. I’m really good at it. We can make all sorts of comments and no one will know it’s coming from our table.
@Anonymously Posted – I don’t get your cyber-vitriol and cyber-ire. The NSA was caught doing WORSE than anything you’re posting here at SBC Building Room 641A in San Fransisco back in 2003. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A
They appear to be “bulletproof” as the EFF lost it’s case in 2006. It appears Congress backs telecommunications companies like AT&T helping the NSA catch terrorists and “rowdy fiends”. SCOTUS refused to hear the case.
Why the hell do you think the “rowdy friends” are buying up property in Paraguay??? Because they know the end is near? Maybe Obama is going to make good on his promise? But he’s doing it his way and not your way? There’s a reason why people use stealth and guile to accomplish their goals. Because letting in too many chefs will spoil the broth? No one has a need to know ANYTHING. Just wait for Mr. Obama’s other shoe to drop before 2016. I predict it will exonerate any bad feelings you (et al) have for him… I think the “rowdy friends” know it too and they are prepping for it… or not.
P.S. “Rowdy Friends” is a self-coined euphemism for an old American family (et al) of oligarchs who feel that they are Ultra Vires. Either your with them or against them:
@Blouise – No I won’t be going to any “chicken dinners” as I hear some of them are $500 per plate! 😯
OK Alexander is no Boy Scout – granted… Abu Gharab was another clusterphuq that I believe he commented on somewhere on the INTERNETS… he was just as outraged as the rest of us. But as Truman used to say: “The buck stops here…” right?
Well anyway he’s “kicking rocks” now and he’s taking his #2 boy with him. Probably going over the river to 930 Dolley Madison Blvd like his predecessor and old West Point buddy did. Can’t make that place any worse than it all ready is I guess.
Hey wait a minute don’t bad mouth the ROCK STAR (aka Tenet)! 😆 He was set up… or at least that’s the story he’s sticking to… That mess with Colin Powell at the UN about WMD was all Darth Vader’s (aka John Dimitri Negroponte) idea! Notice how smug he was sitting next to the Rock Star behind Powell? One thing about RS he knows how to shift loyalties midstream. Like how that newsman on the Simpsons when the aliens attacked?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKbFb6TPVEA
😆
Farewell General Alexander… hope your next gig is more interesting and challenging for you. Rogers will do you proud… He’ll have ALL of your home and office phones bugged for old time sake… 😆
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/10/30/revealed-nsa-pushed911askeysoundbitetojustifysurveillance.html
Revealed: NSA pushed 9/11 as key ‘sound bite’ to justify surveillance
by Jason Leopold
October 30, 2013 12:09PM ET
Excerpt:
“An internal NSA document recommended that officials use fear of attack when pressed to explain its programs
The National Security Agency advised its officials to cite the 9/11 attacks as justification for its mass surveillance activities, according to a master list of NSA talking points.
The document – obtained by Al Jazeera through a Freedom of Information Act request – contains talking points and suggested statements for NSA officials (PDF) responding to the fallout from media revelations that originated with former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
Invoking the events of 9/11 to justify the controversial NSA programs, which have caused major diplomatic fallout around the world, was the top item on the talking points agency officials were encouraged to use.
Under the sub-heading, “Sound Bites that Resonate,” the document suggests the statement: “I much prefer to be here today explaining these programs, than explaining another 9/11 event that we were not able to prevent.””
———-
NSA Talking Points — PDF from excerpt, above:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/813055/nsa-talking-points.pdf
http://www.emptywheel.net/2013/10/30/nsa-returns-to-stealing-from-yahoo-and-google/
NSA Returns to Stealing from Yahoo and Google
By: emptywheel Wednesday October 30, 2013 1:07 pm
“The entire point of the Protect America Act and FISA Amendments Act was to provide a way for NSA to collect data from Yahoo and Google without stealing it from telecom switches, which is what they had been doing for 6 years. That was the primary goal: provide a legal means, with oversight, to collect intelligence from the multinational US-based Internet companies that dominated the free email market.
Yet, as I’ve been predicting for weeks, that wasn’t good enough for NSA. In addition to all the intelligence they collect legally using PRISM under Section 702 authority, it turns out they’ve been busy returning to their thieving ways.”
NSA infiltrates links to Yahoo, Google data centers worldwide, Snowden documents say
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-infiltrates-links-to-yahoo-google-data-centers-worldwide-snowden-documents-say/2013/10/30/e51d661e-4166-11e3-8b74-d89d714ca4dd_story.html
“The National Security Agency has secretly broken into the main communications links that connect Yahoo and Google data centers around the world, according to documents obtained from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden and interviews with knowledgeable officials.
By tapping those links, the agency has positioned itself to collect at will from among hundreds of millions of user accounts, many of them belonging to Americans. The NSA does not keep everything it collects, but it keeps a lot.”
Boobie Official Mendacity
(from Fernando Po, U.S.A., America’s post-linguistic retreat to Plato’s Cave)
The characters in government
Will change from time to time
As fashion colors change from green
To slightly lemon-lime
But lying never changes, like
The meter of this rhyme
The former Clinton government
Once wanted to inflict
The normal needless bombing on
A country it had picked
Because its petty potentate
Our boots had never licked
It seems that of the suspects whom
We normally accuse
One stood apart in infamy
Thus him we would abuse
Because he could not stop us so
That made him great to use
Inspectors roamed across his land
Discovering not much
Of mass-destructive weaponry,
And gas, and germs, and such
Thus did Saddam Hussein refuse
To come through in the clutch
So in frustration Bubba Bill
Turned Madam Albright loose
To use up some “diplomacy”
Much like a hangman’s noose
To threaten peace with war until
War seemed our only ruse
A decade’s worth of sanctions failed
To bring the tyrant down
But only starved his children which
Caused few of us to frown
If hungry Arab kids can’t swim
We say: “Then let them drown”
“We think the price is worth it,” said
Ms Albright in her way
Yet glib and airy phrases left
No food upon the tray
Just surly scorn for diplomats
Who never have to pay
But still those damned inspectors caused
Our President to pout:
To bomb might make them hostages
Which could extend the bout
To something more than half a round
And not the hoped-for rout
This Bubba Bill could not abide:
So he asked the UN
To have its people leave and tell
Him where and how and when
So he could blame their absence on
Saddam and all his men
To pull off this duplicity
He needed lies to spout
And so he took the muzzle off
Of Madam Albright’s snout
So she could lie and say Saddam
Had forthwith “kicked them out”
And so with the inspectors gone
And nothing more to say
The bomber pilots got to fly
Three miles above harm’s way
And blitz some helpless cities
Just to earn their monthly pay
Just so with Boobie Bumbler George
Who also wanted in
To knock about the whipping boy
And all his clan and kin
Yet once again inspectors proved
An obstacle to spin
They’d gone ahead and done their jobs
And found no smoking gun
Which vexed another President
Who so much needed one
To validate more lies and his
Vendetta left undone
“He tried to kill my daddy!” swore
The vengeful Boobie Bush
“I know because the CIA
Has searched the Hindu Kush;
And found out lots of stuff, so now
I say shove comes to push”
So Boobie George told the UN
That its men hadn’t found
What Boobie George and Dick and Don
Knew lay somewhere around
Someplace where only they could see
On undiscovered ground
And Boobie Condoleeza Rice
And Colin Powell, too,
Proved once again that Black folks lie
Just like the White ones do
Repeating what no one believed
Exactly right on cue
With summer coming on so soon
And springtime cool so short
The bombing had to start at once
Lest hot weather abort
Mad plans to land upon a ship
Sent steaming back to port
And so once more the snoops and hounds
Packed up and left Iraq
The UN wished to take no part
In Bush’s planned attack
Yet still the obvious and bald
Required a little slack
To cover for their rush to war
The Bush Bunch needed spin
They claimed they had no choice because
They wanted so to win
And bad Saddam had not allowed
Inspectors to come in
Thus here we have a sorry tale
Of two groups sworn to tell
No truth if they could help it
And they could, so what the hell?
And Boobies, anyway, had grown
Accustomed to the smell
Saddam Hussein had let a host
Of spies stay at his inn
But yet it didn’t change a thing
Or mitigate his sin
Bill lied about the “kicking out”
And George the “letting in”
The Presidents who work for us
Decline to let us know
The things we need to supervise
Their fumbling tell-and-show
So wars begin on schedule and
The piles of bodies grow
Bill Clinton swore one type of lie;
George Bush another kind
They both had lied so much that each
Thought none would ever mind
With Boobies all so fast asleep
The bland could lead the blind
If once their lips commence to move
A lie we should suspect
And if their lips should move again
We should at once reflect
That we can — in their moving lips —
A naked lie detect
Their lying we should not expect
To bother them that much
To make them tell the truth would be
To rob them of their crutch
If they could choose, they’d lie so that
They wouldn’t loose their touch
Michael Murry, “The Misfortune Teller,” Copyright © 2005
Time for some more official oaths swearing to protect and defend stuff (from everyone but the “protectors”).
Military Academy Cadet Honor Code:
“I will not lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those who do.”
So much for that steaming pile of ethical excrement. Alexander, Clapper, Hayden, Betrayus … They lie just to keep in practice; just so they won’t forget how.
Now, if only those barely armed Afghan goat-herders in the Hindu Kush would allow the U.S. military to haul ass for the exits without making a gruesome public spectacle of it like they did with the British and Russians, we could have ourselves:
Another Catastrophic Success!
With their tails tucked proudly ‘tween their legs,
Advancing towards the exits march the dregs
Of empire, whose retreat this question begs:
“No promised omelets, just the broken eggs?”
Michael Murry, “The Misfortune Teller”
Who in the hell decided to let these stuffed-shirt military retards meddle in the affairs of a free citizenry at home and abroad? Not a good idea, to say the least.
Glenn Greenwald, this morning:
http://ggsidedocs.blogspot.com.br/2013/10/on-nsa-claims-about-misreporting-of-two.html
” On NSA claims about misreporting of two slides
NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander asserted yesterday that two “Boundless Informant” slides we published – one in Le Monde and the other in El Mundo – were misunderstood and misinterpreted. The NSA then dispatched various officials to the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post to make the same claim, and were (needless to say) given anonymity by those papers to spout off without accountability. Several US journalists (also needless to say) instantly treated the NSA’s claims as gospel even though they (a) are accompanied by no evidence, (b) come in the middle of a major scandal for the agency at home and abroad and (c) are from officials with a history of lying to Congress and the media.
That is the deeply authoritarian and government-subservient strain of American political and media culture personified: if a US national security official says something, then it shall mindlessly be deemed tantamount to truth, with no evidence required and without regard to how much those officials have misled in the past. EFF’s Trevor Timm last night summarized this bizarre mentality as follows: “Oh, NSA says a story about them is wrong? Well, that settles that! Thankfully, they never lie, obfuscate, mislead, misdirect, or misinform!”
Over the last five months, Laura Poitras and I have published dozens and dozens of articles reporting on NSA documents around the world: with newspapers and a team of editors and other reporters in the US, UK, Germany, Brazil, India, France and Spain. Not a single one of those articles bears even a trivial correction, let alone a substantive one, because we have been meticulous in the reporting, worked on every article with teams of highly experienced editors and reporters, and, most importantly, have published the evidence in the form of NSA documents that prove the reporting true.
It’s certainly possible that, like all journalists, we’ll make a mistake at some point. And if and when that does happen, we’ll do what good journalists do: do further reporting and, if necessary, correct any inaccuracy. But no evidence of any kind (as opposed to unverified NSA accusations) has been presented that this was the case here, and ample evidence strongly suggests it was not:”
…
Finally, contrary to the suggestions of one particularly gullible reporter that these slides are fake and of unknown origin, their authenticity is beyond dispute, just like every document we’ve thus far published. A separate top secret NSA document on Boundless Informant, to be published very shortly, in its title describes Boundless Informant as “Describing Mission Capabilities from Metadata Records”.
“Greenwald: Of Course Cheney Hates NSA Leaks! Snowden Exposed His ‘Criminal Conduct’”
by Josh Feldman | 9:11 pm, October 29th, 2013
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/greenwald-of-course-cheney-hates-nsa-leaks-snowden-exposed-his-criminal-conduct/
Please fire this antithesis to freedom.
Alexander should be asked for his resignation. It would be a smart PR move by our overlords.
Oops… the above was i.e. pt. 3 and here is i.e. pt. 4
The obvious one…
As Europe erupts over US spying, NSA chief says government must stop media
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/25/europe-erupts-nsa-spying-chief-government
There is a reason pols hate information…
… Who knew that the biggest enemies of a free press would include the Nation’s that championed the Rights of Press Freedoms.
pogo… A cartoon with depth.
CPJ alarmed by Cameron’s threat against UK press
http://www.cpj.org/2013/10/cpj-alarmed-by-camerons-threat-against-uk-press.php
i.e. pt. 2
Egyptian prosecutor censors journalists
http://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2013/oct/29/press-freedom-egypt
i.e.
Marine could be booted from Corps for warning troops about rapist Afghanistan cop
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/10/29/marine-could-be-booted-from-corps-for-warning-troops-about-rapist-afghanistan-cop/
Well… that’s a bad example. That’s the USA punishing an American…
It appears that many world governments are censoring ‘reporting’ of various means…
I agree 100% with the US Government Military Industrial Complex (“GMIC”). All rights of civilians must be abrogated and any people deemed meddlesome or even possibly irritating by authorities must be jailed or sent to detention camps for reprograming or termination, if conditions of GMIC so require. All patriots feel as I do. GMIC is infallible and its actions are beyond question or reproach.
SOTB,
I won’t be paying to go see him and I bet you won’t either.
Alexander headed the Army Intelligence and Security Command, where in 2001 he was in charge of 10,700 spies and eavesdroppers worldwide.
“Alexander and the rest of the American intelligence community suffered a devastating defeat when they were surprised by the attacks on 9/11.” (Wired by Bamford)
So let’s not forget that Alexander was part of the group that failed to see 9/11 coming but figured he’d make up for it by over-reaching afterward.
Oh yeah, I nearly forgot, In 2003, he was named deputy chief of staff for intelligence for the U.S. Army. Under his command were the units responsible for Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse in Baghdad, Iraq.
And, wait a minute, wasn’t he the guy who was less than truthful about NSA’s warrantless wiretapping in front of the House Intelligence Committee
Big deal, pin another medal on his chest and build him another Star Trek “swoosh” door to exit through. Hey, Tenent got the Medal of Freedom for his failures.
Since I certainly don’t want to canonize him, your devil’s adevocate position is wasted. ➡ (back to you)
What’s one more amendment? He’s trying to break all of them. They’re betting on who is the first to breaks them all. It’s all the rage in the WH office pool!