Category: Privacy

Is Anyone Surprised That the NSA Tried to Get Backdoors in Linux?

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I’m not surprised, given that they have conspired to make security protocols less secure in order to make it easier for the NSA to hack into systems:

The NSA has asked Linus Torvalds to inject covert backdoors into the free and open operating system GNU/Linux. This was revealed in this week’s hearing on mass surveillance in the European Parliament. Chalk another one up of the United States NSA trying to make information technology less secure for everyone.

The father of Linus Torvalds, Nils Torvalds, is a Member of the European Parliament for Finland. This week, Nils Torvalds took part in the European Parliament’s hearing on the ongoing mass surveillance, and brought a revelation:

The United States security service NSA has contacted Linus Torvalds with a request to add backdoors into the free and open operating system GNU/Linux.

The entire inquiry is available here on YouTube (uploaded by Hax).

Nils Torvalds’ revelation was presented in an episode which started (at 3:06:58) by me pointing out to the Microsoft representative in the panel, that in a system like GNU/Linux, built on open source, you can examine the source code to see that there aren’t any back doors. In Microsoft’s systems, this possibility is absent, since the source code is secret to outsiders.

Backdoors are deliberate security holes in a system, and notwithstanding the claims of its proponents, (largely debunked by the evidence of abuse by NSA personnel) regarding checks and balances, this is just a complete clusterf%$# for American tech.

Any foreign company that does not think twice about working with a US tech firm is deluded.

Your Police State in Action

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Yes, the FBI is trying to suppress the activities of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) wielding activist because he might actually learn what is going on:

Ryan Shapiro has just wrapped up a talk at Boston’s Suffolk University Law School, and as usual he’s surrounded by a gaggle of admirers. The crowd­, consisting of law students, academics, and activist types, is here for a panel discussion on the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, a 2006 law targeting activists whose protest actions lead to a “loss of profits” for industry. Shapiro, a 37-year-old Ph.D. student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, contributed a slideshow of newspaper headlines, posters, and government documents from as far back as the 1800s depicting animal advocates as a threat to national security. Now audience members want to know more about his dissertation and the archives he’s using. But many have a personal request: Would Shapiro help them discover what’s in their FBI files?

 He is happy to oblige. According to the Justice Department, this tattooed activist-turned-academic is the FBI’s “most prolific” Freedom of Information Act requester—filing, during one period in 2011, upward of two documents requests a day. In the course of his doctoral work, which examines how the FBI monitors and investigates protesters, Shapiro has developed a novel, legal, and highly effective approach to mining the agency’s records. Which is why the government is petitioning the United States District Court in Washington, DC, to prevent the release of 350,000 pages of documents he’s after.

 Invoking a legal strategy that had its heyday during the Bush administration, the FBI claims that Shapiro’s multitudinous requests, taken together, constitute a “mosaic” of information whose release could “significantly and irreparably damage national security” and would have “significant deleterious effects” on the bureau’s “ongoing efforts to investigate and combat domestic terrorism.”

 ………

 When he started using privacy waivers, Shapiro realized he was on to something. Suppose you and I volunteered for the animal rights group PETA. If Shapiro requested all PETA-related FBI documents, he might get something back, but any references to us would be blacked out. If he requested documents related to us, he’d probably get nothing at all. But if he filed his PETA request along with privacy waivers signed by us, the FBI would be compelled to return all PETA documents that mention us—with the relevant details uncensored.

 ……….

 Armed with signed privacy waivers, he sent out a few experimental requests—he calls them “submarine pings”—and when the FBI returned more than 100 pages on a close friend, he knew he’d struck gold. The response included pages of information that Shapiro had requested previously, but that the FBI had claimed didn’t exist. Using case details from those documents and a handful of additional waivers, he filed a new set of requests.

The FBI wants a Seven Year Stay on his requests.

Remember also, we are not talking about al Quaeda, we are talking about animal rights activists, folks who have not only killed fewer fewer people than Osama’s bully boys, but they have also killed fewer people than the militia movement and the anti-abortion movement.

I’d really like to see him at the helm of a well funded non-profit to continue his work once that he is done with dissertation.

We desperately need to enshrine the Swedish concept of Offentlighetsprincipen (openness) in our constitution.

Here is a video of one of his talks.

What he shows, it appears that there are no real security issues, but any close examination of their techniques and focus is pathetic and embarrassing.

This is the most common Real reason for the state security apparatus for invoking secrecy.  It’s not about protecting us, it is about covering their own asses.

Well, they Did Get Capone for Tax Evasion

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So I am amused that AT&T might be liable for violation of telemarketing rules over its data sharing with the CIA:

It’s like getting Al Capone for tax evasion. The CIA and AT&T figured out how to get around legal restrictions on giving the CIA access to domestic phone call information, but in doing so they violated a Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rule that protects you against telemarketing.

According to this story in the New York Times, the CIA paid AT&T to provide them with information on calls passing through its international telephone system. Because federal law prevents the CIA from spying inside the United States, the CIA could not legally get info on calls terminating in the U.S. But, of course, calls from suspected foreign terrorists (aka “anyone outside the United States”) that terminate in the United States are the most interesting to the CIA.

So what’cha gonna do if you’re a poor spy agency or a patriotic mega-corp who understand that sometimes you have to break few privacy eggs to make a freedom omelet? According to the article, when a call originated or terminated in the United States, AT&T would “mask” the person’s identity by revealing only some of the digits of their phone number. The CIA could then refer this information to the FBI, which can get a court order and require AT&T to provide the rest of the phone number and all other relevant identifying information. Then the FBI can kick that information back to the CIA.

Unfortunately for the CIA and AT&T, while this might work to get around the limits Congress imposed on the CIA, it looks like it violates the law requiring phone companies like AT&T to protect your privacy. Section 222 of the Communications Act, also known as the rule on “customer proprietary network information” (CPNI), prohibits AT&T from selling anyone information on who you call or who calls you without your consent. Nor does this contract with the CIA fit into any of the law’s exemptions for information sharing. This is a private contract, just the same as if AT&T had contracted with Blue Cross to let them know if anyone Blue Cross insured sent out too many times for pizza and other unhealthy food.

The fact that AT&T did not fully disclose the full phone number or the name of the subscriber associated with the call does not make it any less of a violation. Under the law, AT&T violates the CPNI rules just by looking at any records associated with the phone number for any purpose other than actually providing service, billing, 9-1-1, or other exemptions found in the statute. The phone company doesn’t even have to disclose the information to anyone else (which, of course, it did, and which, of course, is also illegal) to violate the law.

If you have AT&T, you might want to call them and opt out of this program, which is your right under federal regulations.

Better yet, get a lawyer, and get a class action on.

A Couple of Important Education Stories from New York State

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I would note that the New York Daily News has looked at administrator salaries, and discovered that executives at 16 charter schools in the city are payed more than the New York City school chancellor.

Like I said, looterz want to loot.

More significant is that the Southold School District Superintendent on Long Island has demanded that all student data be removed from Bill Gates’ latest attempt to monetize our children:

After finding out that student data is being shared through the New York State Department of Education Department with a private third-party vendor, Southold School District Superintendent David Gamberg has formally requested to have its students’ data removed from the controversial software system, citing privacy concerns.

 Newsday has reported that although student data is currently kept on state computer systems, New York is moving toward contracting with nonprofit Atlanta data company inBloom, Inc. to “store student test scores, disciplinary records, disabilities and other vital subjects.”

 Mr. Gamberg fired off a letter to inBloom CEO Iwan Streichenberger on Monday, requesting to “opt-out” from its data storing system, known as the Shared Learning Infrastructure. He has found a clause in the contract that allows districts to request their records be removed from the system, according to Mr. Gamberg’s letter.

 “It is our position that this data contains sensitive and highly personal student information that we prefer not be subjected to the potential for breach, unintentional distribution, access, or abuse without parental consent.,” Mr. Gamberg wrote.

Gee, you think?

I figured out that it was evil when I heard Bill Gates.

The NSA is the Inmate Running the Asylum

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Eugene Robinson says that the, “NSA, in its quest for omniscience beyond anything Orwell could have imagined, is simply out of control.”

He’s right, and he is right when he says that their, “This is not just a massive invasion of privacy that the people of France, Spain and other countries understandably resent. It’s also a mistake.”

The problem here is that the NSA, By Design wants it all. It is their organizational imperative.

This is why Obama’s fondness for “bringing in stakeholders” has failed.

They are not a reasonable stakeholder whose needs to be heard, they are akin to the barbarian warriors hired by the Romans toward the end of their empire.

They are a tool that must be kept on a tight leash.

It is also clear that the NSA is pushing back aqainst Obama, because even as they officially deny that Obama was notified, anonymous sources are saying that their wiretapping were authorized:

The White House and State Department signed off on surveillance targeting phone conversations of friendly foreign leaders, current and former U.S. intelligence officials said Monday, pushing back against assertions that President Obama and his aides were unaware of the high-level eavesdropping.

Professional staff members at the National Security Agency and other U.S. intelligence agencies are angry, these officials say, believing the president has cast them adrift as he tries to distance himself from the disclosures by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden that have strained ties with close allies.

Think about this: Is there anyone in the NSA who would even talk to a reporter without assuming that the NSA was listening?

This is the NSA sending a not so subtle message, “Don’t f%$# with us,” and if be it’s not NSA director General Keith Alexander, he gave tacit approval to the leak.

I Hope that He Has Some ITEOD Arrangements

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Edward Snowden has told the The New York Times that he no longer has copies of any of his files:

Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor, said in an extensive interview this month that he did not take any secret N.S.A. documents with him to Russia when he fled there in June, assuring that Russian intelligence officials could not get access to them.

Mr. Snowden said he gave all of the classified documents he had obtained to journalists he met in Hong Kong, before flying to Moscow, and did not keep any copies for himself. He did not take the files to Russia “because it wouldn’t serve the public interest,” he said.

“What would be the unique value of personally carrying another copy of the materials onward?” he added.

He also asserted that he was able to protect the documents from China’s spies because he was familiar with that nation’s intelligence abilities, saying that as an N.S.A. contractor he had targeted Chinese operations and had taught a course on Chinese cybercounterintelligence.

“There’s a zero percent chance the Russians or Chinese have received any documents,” he said.

American intelligence officials have expressed grave concern that the files might have fallen into the hands of foreign intelligence services, but Mr. Snowden said he believed that the N.S.A. knew he had not cooperated with the Russians or the Chinese. He said he was publicly revealing that he no longer had any agency documents to explain why he was confident that Russia had not gained access to them. He had been reluctant to disclose that information previously, he said, for fear of exposing the journalists to greater scrutiny.

I hope that he has made some sort of In The Event of Death (ITEOD) arrangements, because, this otherwise means that if the US and UK state security apparatus can get to Glenn Greenwald and documentarian Laura Poitras, particularly with him leaving the Guardian to move to a new journalistic endeavor funded by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar.

There are a lot of people in our government who are determined to destroy all of them, and to the degree that they are in a fledgling organization, this makes the task easier, because potential blow-back is less.

Awwwww!!!! The NSA Has a Sad.

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Longtime NSA operatives feel that Barack Obama has not been vocal enough in supporting on their spying on the rest of us:

Gen. Keith Alexander and his senior leadership team at the National Security Agency (NSA) are angry and dispirited by what they see as the White House’s failure to defend the spy agency against criticism of its surveillance programs, according to four people familiar with the NSA chiefs’ thinking. The top brass of the country’s biggest spy agency feels they’ve been left twisting in the wind, abandoned by the White House and left largely to defend themselves in public and in Congress against allegations of unconstitutional spying on Americans.

 “There has been no support for the agency from the President or his staff or senior administration officials, and this has not gone unnoticed by both senior officials and the rank and file at the Fort,” said Joel Brenner, the NSA’s one-time inspector general, referring to the agency’s headquarters at Fort Meade, Md.

 The weak backing from top administration officials has aggravated the relationship between Alexander and the White House, where he has never been warmly embraced. The NSA now finds itself without the strong, visible support of the President at a time of extraordinary political vulnerability, with the agency’s secrets laid bare and its future in doubt.

 ………

 Obama has only made one set of substantial remarks about the NSA’s collection of Americans phone records and monitoring of Internet and email data, during a news conference in August. He did not distance himself from the programs, but he has not made a point of reminding the American people or lawmakers that he thinks they are vital. Neither the president’s national security adviser, Susan Rice, nor his top counterterrorism adviser, Lisa Monaco, have given any public remarks arguing that the NSA programs are legal and necessary. And no Cabinet official has mounted a concerted effort to back the agency in public.

 Former intelligence officials who remain in regular contact with those still in government say that morale at the NSA is low, both because of the reaction to leaks by former contractor Edward Snowden, which put the normally secretive agency under intense scrutiny, and because of budget cutbacks and the continuing government shutdown, which has left some employees furloughed without pay.

 Brenner, who also served as the government’s director of counterintelligence, said that Obama could have lifted morale had he gone to Fort Meade and made a speech vigorously defending the NSA’s work. “A president who had real feeling for the intelligence business and the people laboring in that vineyard would have paid them a visit,” Brenner said.

 Instead, said former senior CIA official Mark Lowenthal, “They are hurting.”

Three words:

Suck
It
Up!!!!

What a bunch of f%$#ing whiners.

Get over yourself.

The head of your agency (Keith Alexander) lies for you, and his boss (James Clapper) lies for you even more, and you are upset because Barack Obama isn’t playing cheerleader for the folks in Fort Meade.

Like the chicken said, “You knew the job was dangerous when you took it.”

Mark Zuckerberg is Making Larry Ellison Look Like a Mindful Human Being

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Because only a few percent of users are availing themselves of the feature, Facebook has dropped a feature that allowed users to exempt themselves from search, because, I guess, they need to sell ads to stalkers:

Facebook is getting rid of a privacy feature that let users limit who can find them on the social network.

 Facebook Inc. said Thursday that it is removing a setting that controls whether users could be found when people type their name into the website’s search bar.

Yes, I do Facebook, because, there is no viable alternative.

Google Plus?  Surely you jest?

The NSA’s War on Privacy Continues

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It looks the NSA and its British poodles are going after the TOR network:

The National Security Agency has made repeated attempts to develop attacks against people using Tor, a popular tool designed to protect online anonymity, despite the fact the software is primarily funded and promoted by the US government itself.

Top-secret NSA documents, disclosed by whistleblower Edward Snowden, reveal that the agency’s current successes against Tor rely on identifying users and then attacking vulnerable software on their computers. One technique developed by the agency targeted the Firefox web browser used with Tor, giving the agency full control over targets’ computers, including access to files, all keystrokes and all online activity.

But the documents suggest that the fundamental security of the Tor service remains intact. One top-secret presentation, titled ‘Tor Stinks’, states: “We will never be able to de-anonymize all Tor users all the time.” It continues: “With manual analysis we can de-anonymize a very small fraction of Tor users,” and says the agency has had “no success de-anonymizing a user in response” to a specific request.

Another top-secret presentation calls Tor “the king of high-secure, low-latency internet anonymity”.

Tor – which stands for The Onion Router – is an open-source public project that bounces its users’ internet traffic through several other computers, which it calls “relays” or “nodes”, to keep it anonymous and avoid online censorship tools.

It is relied upon by journalists, activists and campaigners in the US and Europe as well as in China, Iran and Syria, to maintain the privacy of their communications and avoid reprisals from government. To this end, it receives around 60% of its funding from the US government, primarily the State Department and the Department of Defense – which houses the NSA.

Live in obedient fear, citizen.

“Welcome the Interest of the American People,” My Ass

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If Barack Obama “Welcomed” a discussion on NSA surveillance, he would not be fighting the tech company’s request for transparency on the spying orders:

The U.S. Justice Department has told a secret surveillance court that it opposes a request from technology companies to reveal more about the demands they receive for user information, according to court papers released on Wednesday.

Negotiations between the federal government and companies such as Google Inc have gone on for months, and while U.S. spy agencies said they plan to be more transparent, they have opposed company requests to disclose more detailed data.

The court papers were filed under seal on Monday in the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, a body originally created to curb intelligence abuses.

Microsoft Corp, Yahoo! Inc, LinkedIn Corp and Facebook Inc are among the companies seeking permission to publish statistics about the extent of the demands placed on them.

Don’t listen to what he says, watch what he does.

If the NSA is Geeks, They are Really Bad Geeks

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All on the Taxpayer’s Dime

It turns out that the deranged mind of NSA chief General Keith Alexander has created an “Information Dominance Center” based on the bridge of the Star Ship Enterprise:

But a perhaps even more disturbing and revealing vignette into the spy chief’s mind comes from a new Foreign Policy article describing what the journal calls his “all-out, barely-legal drive to build the ultimate spy machine”. The article describes how even his NSA peers see him as a “cowboy” willing to play fast and loose with legal limits in order to construct a system of ubiquitous surveillance. But the personality driving all of this – not just Alexander’s but much of Washington’s – is perhaps best captured by this one passage, highlighted by PBS’ News Hour in a post entitled: “NSA director modeled war room after Star Trek’s Enterprise”. The room was christened as part of the “Information Dominance Center”:

“When he was running the Army’s Intelligence and Security Command, Alexander brought many of his future allies down to Fort Belvoir for a tour of his base of operations, a facility known as the Information Dominance Center. It had been designed by a Hollywood set designer to mimic the bridge of the starship Enterprise from Star Trek, complete with chrome panels, computer stations, a huge TV monitor on the forward wall, and doors that made a ‘whoosh’ sound when they slid open and closed. Lawmakers and other important officials took turns sitting in a leather ‘captain’s chair’ in the center of the room and watched as Alexander, a lover of science-fiction movies, showed off his data tools on the big screen.

 “‘Everybody wanted to sit in the chair at least once to pretend he was Jean-Luc Picard,’ says a retired officer in charge of VIP visits.”

It’s not just that it’s wasteful and silly.

It’s also  that it shows a level of narcissism that should disqualify anyone who is going to be going to have anything close to his level of access to personal information.

The fact that General Alexander really appears to be really nuts should scare the hell out of all of us.

Also, it’s the wrong series.

Not only should it be the original, but it should be modeled on the one from this episode:

That is, after all, the reality of what he really wants.

Quote of the Day

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The upshot is that it is now known that “the N.S.A. cannot be trusted on the issue of cyber security,” said Soghoian. He continued, “My sincere hope is that the N.S.A. loses its shine. They’re the bad guy; they’re breaking into systems; they’re exploiting vulnerabilities.” It’s conceivable that they have good intentions. And yet, Soghoian continued, “they act like any other hacker. They steal data. They read private communications.” With that methodology, how easy can it be, though, to give the agency the benefit of the doubt? As many have, Thomas Drake compared the worldview of what he calls the “rogue agency” to the total surveillance of George Orwell’s “1984,” in which the only way to escape was “to cower in a corner. I don’t want to live like that. I’ve already lived that and it’s not pleasant.”

—Matt Buchanan in The New Yorker

(Emphasis mine)

Pass the Popcorn………

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Pass the Popcorn

The NRA has joined with the ACLU’s lawsuit against NSA surveillance of Americans. They are maintaining that it violates the law against maintaining a national gun registry:

The National Rifle Association has joined a lawsuit against the federal government’s sweeping surveillance program, claiming the collection of phone records and other data violates First Amendment rights and amounts to an illegal gun registry.

In supporting the American Civil Liberties Union’s lawsuit, the NRA on Wednesday filed a supporting brief arguing the National Security Agency’s datamining “could allow identification of NRA members, supporters, potential members, and other persons with whom the NRA communicates, potentially chilling their willingness to communicate with the NRA.”

The NSA’s phone database would let the government track whether gun owners called the NRA, gun stores, shooting ranges or others.
The brief also says the database “could allow the government to circumvent legal protections for Americans’ privacy, such as laws that guard against the registration of guns or gun owners,” thereby creating an illegal “national gun registry.”

The ACLU welcomed the gun group’s support.

As strange as it sounds, I welcome the NRA’s support as well.

Obama’s “Independent Panel” to Review Domestic Spying Isn’t

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Outside experts, you say?
Note: this is the actual caption of the photo used in Washington Post story

As you may be aware, Obama has promised to bring in “Outside Experts.” What will surprise no one, including the graphic editors at the Washington Post, (See pic and caption) is that these “experts” are all
tightly connected to the administration or the state security apparatus:

ABC reports that the Obama administration’s surveillance review panel will include former intelligence and White House staffers, including Michael Morell, Richard Clarke, Cass Sunstein and Peter Swire. An official announcement of the members of the panel is expected soon.

 The review panel was first announced in a White House press conference on Aug. 9, when Obama said the administration would form “a high-level group of outside experts to review our entire intelligence and communications technologies.”

 Privacy advocates aren’t happy with the composition of the group revealed so far. Some privacy groups believe that the White House will insist on all members having top secret clearances, effectively barring most independent privacy watchdogs from consideration for the panel.

 Amie Stepanovich, director of the domestic surveillance project at the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) found the choices reported by ABC troubling:

An independent evaluation of the NSA’s surveillance programs is needed. But a worthwhile review requires an independent team of evaluators. We continue to learn how each of the oversight mechanisms that the Administration has pointed to have continuously failed. The background of this panel indicates that it, too, is unlikely to be meaningful or effective.

True dat.

First, it was James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, a man who unequivocally perjured himself to Congress over the program who was supposed to run the program, but when there was too much push-back over that, so they backed off, and now they have a panel of faux independent experts.

It’s so bad that the some anonymous graphic editor felt compelled to call out the lie in the accompanying photograph.

The Post also reports an interesting factoid about Cass Sunstein, one of the proposed members, has written a paper supporting the idea of government paid trolls to combat the tin-foil hat conspiracy crowd:

The Obama administration is reportedly proposing Cass Sunstein as a member of a panel to review the surveillance practices of the National Security Agency (NSA), among other former White House and intelligence staffers. Sunstein was the head of the White House’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs until last year, when he returned to teaching at Harvard Law School.

 As one of our intrepid commenters pointed out yesterday, while at Harvard in 2008, Sunstein co-authored a working paper that suggests government agents or their allies “cognitively infiltrate” conspiracy theorist groups by joining ”chat rooms, online social networks or even real-space groups” and influencing the conversation.

 Sunstein’s paper defined a conspiracy theory as “an effort to explain some event or practice by reference to the machinations of powerful people, who have also managed to conceal their role,” and acknowledges that some conspiracy theories have turned out to be true. It also specifically notes that his plan of “cognitive infiltration” should only be used against false conspiracy theories that could be harmful to the government or society.

The Washington Post is perhaps the 2nd most authoritative source (Politico being number 1) of the vapid blather that qualifies as villager “wisdom” in Washington, DC, and their pattern is to be relentlessly support of the security state, so this is a statement against interest.

What they are saying is not that Obama cannot be trusted, they are saying something far more radical, that the Obama administration’s statements are simply laughable.

They have quite literally become a laughing stock of the “very serious people”.

What a Surprise, General Alexander Lied

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The NSA still is not sure what information Edward Snowden took from the NSA, despite the firm assurances of NSA Chief Gen. Keith Alexander:

More than two months after documents leaked by former contractor Edward Snowden first began appearing in the news media, the National Security Agency still doesn’t know the full extent of what he took, according to intelligence community sources, and is “overwhelmed” trying to assess the damage.

Officials, including NSA Director Keith Alexander, have assured the public that the government knows the scope of the damage, but two separate sources briefed on the matter told NBC News that the NSA has been unable to determine how many documents he took and what they are.

Sources said authorities believe the trove of unreleased materials includes details of data collection by U.S. allies, including the U.K., Canada, Australia and New Zealand. These English-speaking allies, known along with the U.S. as the “Five Eyes,” are critical to U.S. intelligence efforts.

So, not only is the NSA lying with impunity, but they cannot find their ass with both hands.

That makes me feel much better about their spying on me.

Quote of the Day

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When a government detains someone who is very clearly not a terrorist for nine hours without access to an attorney under a terrorism statute, that government has proven every point Greenwald wanted to make. The argument is over right there.

 And every “progressive” with a beef against Greenwald who attempts to defend the UK’s actions does nothing more than prove Greenwald’s point. Governments that detain civil libertarian bloggers and journalists as terrorists deserve every heaping of scorn they get, as do those who defend them.

—David Atkins

I Really Don’t Think that I Have Ever Seen Rachel Maddow this Pissed Off

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Look at this video.

Rachel Maddow is pissed off, and she is pissed off at Barack Obama.

Here are the high points, but you should watch the whole 8:02:

Journalism is not terrorism. Journalism can be enraging to people in power; journalism can sometimes even be frightening to people in power, but journalism is not terrorism. Reporting on what governments do, even when those governments prefer to keep those actions secret, is not terrorism. Terrorism is a real and discrete thing in the world. It is not an all-encompassing term you apply to everything the government doesn’t want you to do.

The White House today said it had been given a heads-up in advance that the detention of David Miranda was likely to happen…. The White House went out of their way today to say that it was Britain’s decision to detain Glenn Greenwald’s partner — it was not something the US asked Britain to do; and okay fine, but the White House did know about it in advance and it still happened.

We have that kind of special relationship with Britain where if our government were outraged that this detention was going to happen, we could have objected, right? We could have at least asked our dear friends, the British government, to not do this, maybe in the interests of not intimidating the activities of the free press, if not for any other reason. Did our government make any objections when it got advance notice from Britain that this detention was going to happen? Did our government protest? And if not, why not? I tend to think we did not protest, since it went ahead.

I know the US government is not happy about Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald and their reporting about US surveillance. The president said that the disclosures from their source have led to a disorderly debate about these issues and even though we ought to have a debate about these issues, it ought to be more orderly. Fine. But if the United States wants to convince the world that the Glenn Greenwalds and Laura Poitras’ of the world are correct when they say the US government is going too far — if they want to underline and put flashing red lights on that reporting that says that counter-terrorism is being used to justify all sorts of things that are not justified by the actual threat of terrorism, and that in fact have just greenlit gross government overreach and intrusion and intimidation of legitimate activity including journalism — then putting journalists and their families through marathon interrogations and seizing all their electronics is a really great way to start convincing the world that all that reporting is accurate.

Letting our closest allies do it while we stand silent is the same thing as us doing it. Journalism is not terrorism. Pretending otherwise is outrageous, and ridiculous, and a dangerous affront to who we are as a country and a democracy. It’s an absolute outrage.

My opinion is even stronger. I believe that the British called for permission, and they got it.

That being said, Obama has lost Maddow, at least on this specific instance, and this is significant.

H/t Dallasdoc at Daily Kos.,who dutifully transcribed the above quote.

Drip, Drip, Drip………

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So we have two more NSA revelations today.

First, the Washington Post uncovered an internal audit for the NSA which shows that it violated privacy regulations pretty routinely.

Additionally, the FISA court has admitted that it has no ability to verify that its orders are being followed.

It seems that every few days, another shoe drops, and each time, it reveal that both the state security apparatus and the Obama administration have been lying through their teeth.

Glenn Greenwald is Wondering if the Latest Intel Warning is Political Theater

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I’m inclined to agree with him:

Pointing to the recent revelations by leaker Edward Snowden that he has reported, Greenwald explains, “Here we are in the midst of one of the most intense debates and sustained debates that we’ve had in a very long time in this country over the dangers of excess surveillance, and suddenly, an administration that has spent two years claiming that it has decimated al-Qaeda decides that there is this massive threat that involves the closing of embassies and consulates around the world. … The controversy is over the fact that they are sweeping up billions and billions of emails and telephone calls every single day from people around the world and in the United States who have absolutely nothing to do with terrorism.”

I would go further, and suggest that politics has been a primary driver.

Why else would we see something as absurd as exploding pants, and by that I mean exploding clothing, not an underwear bomb:

The panic over an alleged al Qaeda plot went into overdrive Monday night, when ABC News reported that terrorists in Yemen were experimenting with a new and virtually undetectable bomb-making technique: dipping their clothes into liquid explosive that then dries and can be ignited.

 The cries of doom began almost immediately after the story went online. But people shouldn’t have been so quick to scream. A clothing bomb would almost certainly never work, explosive experts tell Foreign Policy.

………

 But given that none of his devices have worked as intended, should Americans be panicking? One explosives expert tells Foreign Policy that while this alleged blouse-bomb may sound terrifying, and remind us of something out of an action flick, it is very risky for the bomber. A device consisting of explosives-dipped clothing, the expert said, is certainly plausible. Cotton is a carbon, and if you add fuel to it, you can create an explosion. But once the attacker starts moving, the clothes will flex, causing heat, shock, friction, and static — all things that make a bomb go boom. “In my opinion, you’ll have a highly unstable bomb that doesn’t have enough power to kill someone within five feet of it,” the expert said.

 At the Aspen Security Forum, Pistole called [Chief Al Qaeda bomb maker Ibrahim al-]Asiri “our greatest threat,” and said, “All the intel folks know that is a clear-and-present danger.” If that’s true, perhaps we can take some shred of comfort: Unless Asiri, or anyone else, can come up with a device that actually kills more people than just the bomber, these plots are likely to remain aspirational. They may be the stuff of really good movies, but not very effective terror attacks.

I would argue that the US state security apparatus routinely exaggerates threats any time their prerogatives are threatened by scrutiny.