Category: Secrecy

There is a Lot More to Come From Edward Snowden

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The NSA is now admitting that Snowden impersonated NSA officials to get his documents.

I think that this quote is particularly telling:

“Every day, they are learning how brilliant [Snowden] was,” said a former U.S. official with knowledge of the case. “This is why you don’t hire brilliant people for jobs like this. You hire smart people. Brilliant people get you in trouble.”

That comment won the Internet. 

More significantly, they still don’t know what Snowden got his hands on:

The NSA still doesn’t know exactly what Snowden took. But its forensic investigation has included trying to figure out which higher level officials Snowden impersonated online to access the most sensitive documents.

The NSA has as many as 40,000 employees. According to one intelligence official, the NSA is restricting its research to a much smaller group of individuals with access to sensitive documents. Investigators are looking for discrepancies between the real world actions of an NSA employee and the online activities linked to that person’s computer user profile. For example, if an employee was on vacation while the on-line version of the employee was downloading a classified document, it might indicate that someone assumed the employee’s identity.

The NSA has already identified several instances where Snowden borrowed someone else’s user profile to access documents, said the official.

This official called the damage a 12 on a scale of 10 to 12.

If you believe, as I do, that our society and our security have been harmed by the secrecy fetish of our state security apparatus, then this is an unalloyed good.

Obama Claims that the Reports of NSA Spying on US Citizens Show that the System Works

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Inadvertent, My Ass

The fact that Barack Obama is being sent out to tell blatant lies by the state security apparatus like some sort of poodle does not fill me with confidence.

No I’m serious. He is saying that because the system sorked”, because a strongly worded report was issued:

President Barack Obama said in an interview that aired Friday that recent revelations the National Security Agency had collected Americans’ emails prove that oversight for such surveillance programs is working properly.

 Obama told CNN’s “New Day” the data collection was “inadvertent” and attributed it to “technical problems,” which were then presented to the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

 “The court said, ‘This isn’t going to cut it. You’re going to have to improve the safeguards, given these technical problems.’ That’s exactly what happened,” he said. “So the point is, is that all these safeguards, checks, audits, oversight worked.”

He claims that the errors were unintentional.  He is lying through his teethe:

Some National Security Agency analysts deliberately ignored restrictions on their authority to spy on Americans multiple times in the past decade, contradicting Obama administration officials’ and lawmakers’ statements that no willful violations occurred.

 “Over the past decade, very rare instances of willful violations of NSA’s authorities have been found,” the NSA said in a statement to Bloomberg News. “NSA takes very seriously allegations of misconduct, and cooperates fully with any investigations – responding as appropriate. NSA has zero tolerance for willful violations of the agency’s authorities.”

 The incidents, chronicled in a new report by the NSA’s inspector general, provide more evidence that U.S. agencies sometimes have violated legal and administrative restrictions on domestic spying, and may add to the pressure to bolster laws that govern intelligence activities.

 The inspector general documented an average of one case per year over 10 years of intentionally inappropriate actions by people with access to the NSA’s vast electronic surveillance systems, according to an official familiar with the findings. The incidents were minor, the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss classified intelligence.

BTW, one a year is a lie from the inspector general is a gross understatement, because we know that for years, NSA agents listened to and recorded for later amusement phone sex between overseas soldiers and their loved ones:

There have been allegations of abuse. Back in 2008 it was widely reported that NSA employees were listening to phone sex calls between American soldiers and their partners. NSA employees would save these calls and share them around for their own personal amusement. This is a textbook example of abuse. This is the kind of invasion of privacy that deeply concerns most Americans.

 The most likely reasons we haven’t heard about more abuses is because the NSA is incredibly secretive, basically never audited, and the Obama administration has engaged in such an aggressive war on whistleblowers people are scared to come forward.

I would also note that one of the controls that Obama taunts is the FISA court, and they say that the NSA program was unconstitutional and also that the NSA lied to them:

In a strongly worded opinion, the chief judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court expressed consternation at what he saw as a pattern of misleading statements by the government and hinted that the NSA possibly violated a criminal law against spying on Americans.

 “For the first time, the government has now advised the court that the volume and nature of the information it has been collecting is fundamentally different from what the court had been led to believe,” John D. Bates, then the surveillance court’s chief judge, wrote in his Oct. 3, 2011, opinion.

This really is a profile in cowardice.

Update:
I did not realize that the video clip was auto-playing. I have corrected this. Sorry.

Linkage

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I really want to know the backstory.

Worst Constitutional Law Professor Ever………

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Look at the White House transcripts of the most recent press conference:

Q: Can you understand, though, why some people might not trust what you’re saying right now about wanting to —

 THE PRESIDENT: No, I can’t.

This is wrong on so many levels:

  • The constitution was explicitly created to make sure that we did not have to trust the authorities.  It was intended to create contention, and quite honestly distrust, to make sure that powers are limited.
  • He does not understand how people might be concerned that he might not be completely forthcoming.

I am not sure what is more alarming, his complete lack of understanding of the critical in the Constitution concept of the separation of powers, or the pervasive narcissism.

I would be hard pressed to find a better illustration of why the founding fathers were concerned about the possibility of excesses by the executive.

Well, That’s Mighty White of Them

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The judge at the Bradley Manning trial has issued a ruling that reduces his maximum potential sentence from 136 years:

Bradley Manning’s maximum possible sentence for leaking state secrets to WikiLeaks was cut from 136 years to a possible 90 years on Tuesday, marking a rare victory for the defence in a trial that has so far swung almost exclusively in the US government’s direction.

The judge presiding over the court martial, Colonel Denise Lind, granted the most elements of a defence motion calling for some of the 20 counts for which Manning has been found guilty to be merged on grounds that they repeat each other. In the motion, defence lawyers argued that the government had taken single acts of criminality and split them into several separate violations – thus multiplying the possible sentence.

“By dividing this ongoing act into two separate specifications,” the motion says, referring to the soldier’s transmission of the US embassy cables to WikiLeaks, “the government takes what should be a 10-year offence and makes it a 20-year offence and unfairly increases Pfc Manning’s punitive exposure”.

FYI, this isn’t justice, this is, this is the illusion of justice, and it is telling that the judge read her ruling too fast for professional stenographers to record what she said.

Linkage

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Three men deny Oompa Loompas attack The Guardian (I feel bad for laughing)
NSA Director Heckled at Blackhat computer hacker conference. Forbes
Ted Cruz Still Needs to Be Ditched: The Rude Pundit (Must read)
New York Times editors cut Obama a new one over secrecy. (I think that the persecution prosecution of James Risen may have pissed them off)
Obama Starting to Lose It Over Snowden Naked Capitalism (also must read)
Bubble Alert!! Morgan Stanley predicts buy-to-rent boom (HousingWire)

Pic H/t Police the Police

This is Beyond Orwell’s Wildest Imaginings

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In his seminal work 1984, he coined the idiom, “We’ve always been at war with Eastasia.”

Well, Obama and His Evil Minions™ have done this one better, and they claim that the list of people that we are at war with is classified:

Back in May, we noted the oddity of the charges in Bradley Manning’s trial, in which he was accused of aiding three different “enemies,” with the last one being classified. Specifically, he was accused of aiding Al-Qaida, Al-Qaida of the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP, which is different than AQ itself) and… mystery enemy. Back at the beginning of July, the government quietly dropped the charge against the classified enemy, so that’s no longer in play in that case. That said, apparently this concept of classifying who we’re at war with wasn’t just limited to the Manning trial. ProPublica has the ridiculous and frightening tale of finding out that the answer to the simple question of who the US is at war with, is apparently classified as well.

At a hearing in May, Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., asked the Defense Department to provide him with a current list of Al Qaeda affiliates.

The Pentagon responded – but Levin’s office told ProPublica they aren’t allowed to share it. Kathleen Long, a spokeswoman for Levin, would say only that the department’s “answer included the information requested.”

The Pentagon also went on to tell ProPublica that revealing who we’re actually at war with would do “serious damage to national security.” The main reason? They think those groups would use the info as good publicity and allow them to recruit more.………

If the UK were to hook up a generator to the grave of Eric Arthur Blair, they could power all of Europe, because he is surely spinning in his grave at unbelievable speed.

What Stefan Svallfors Said

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He has nominated Edward Snowden for the Nobel Peace Prize as a way for the Nobel committee to atone for giving the aware do Obama:

In his letter addressed to the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Stefan Svallfors praised Snowden for his“heroic effort at great personal cost.” He stated that by revealing the existence and the scale of the US surveillance programs, Snowden showed “individuals can stand up for fundamental rights and freedoms.”

“This example is important because since the Nuremberg trials in 1945 has been clear that the slogan ‘I was just following orders’ is never claimed as an excuse for acts contrary to human rights and freedoms,” Professor Svallfors wrote.

He emphasized that the decision to award the 2013 prize to Edward Snowden would also “help to save the Nobel Peace Prize from the disrepute incurred by the hasty and ill-conceived decision to award US President Barack Obama 2009 award.”

Not being George W. Bush is an insufficient reason to give someone a f%$#ing Nobel f%$#ing Peace prize.

Why Ellsberg Could Turn Himself In, and Edward Snowden Cannot

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Basically, it comes down to the fact that while Ellsberg might have been at risk by illegal activities of the Nixon administration, he was not at risk by the law itself, while Edward Snowden would be tortured as a matter of law and Department of Justice policy:

Many people compare Edward Snowden to me unfavorably for leaving the country and seeking asylum, rather than facing trial as I did. I don’t agree. The country I stayed in was a different America, a long time ago.

After the New York Times had been enjoined from publishing the Pentagon Papers — on June 15, 1971, the first prior restraint on a newspaper in U.S. history — and I had given another copy to The Post (which would also be enjoined), I went underground with my wife, Patricia, for 13 days. My purpose (quite like Snowden’s in flying to Hong Kong) was to elude surveillance while I was arranging — with the crucial help of a number of others, still unknown to the FBI — to distribute the Pentagon Papers sequentially to 17 other newspapers, in the face of two more injunctions. The last three days of that period was in defiance of an arrest order: I was, like Snowden now, a “fugitive from justice.”

Yet when I surrendered to arrest in Boston, having given out my last copies of the papers the night before, I was released on personal recognizance bond the same day. Later, when my charges were increased from the original three counts to 12, carrying a possible 115-year sentence, my bond was increased to $50,000. But for the whole two years I was under indictment, I was free to speak to the media and at rallies and public lectures. I was, after all, part of a movement against an ongoing war. Helping to end that war was my preeminent concern. I couldn’t have done that abroad, and leaving the country never entered my mind.

There is no chance that experience could be reproduced today, let alone that a trial could be terminated by the revelation of White House actions against a defendant that were clearly criminal in Richard Nixon’s era — and figured in his resignation in the face of impeachment — but are today all regarded as legal (including an attempt to “incapacitate me totally”).

(FYI, “incapacitate me totally” means assassination by Nixon’s people)

I hope Snowden’s revelations will spark a movement to rescue our democracy, but he could not be part of that movement had he stayed here. There is zero chance that he would be allowed out on bail if he returned now and close to no chance that, had he not left the country, he would have been granted bail. Instead, he would be in a prison cell like Bradley Manning, incommunicado.

He would almost certainly be confined in total isolation, even longer than the more than eight months Manning suffered during his three years of imprisonment before his trial began recently. The United Nations Special Rapporteur for Torture described Manning’s conditions as “cruel, inhuman and degrading.” (That realistic prospect, by itself, is grounds for most countries granting Snowden asylum, if they could withstand bullying and bribery from the United States.)

What he is saying here is that Snowden will be tortured if he ever enters US custody.

Hell, they did that almost 20 years ago in the case of Wen Ho Lee, where he spent months in pretrial solitary, largely because the prosecutors, and the counter-espionage apparatus, wanted to break him.

BTW, when we look at the NSA surveillance regime, it is what a former East German Stasi officer would call a totalitarian state’s wet dream:

Wolfgang Schmidt was seated in Berlin’s 1,200-foot-high TV tower, one of the few remaining landmarks left from the former East Germany. Peering out over the city that lived in fear when the communist party ruled it, he pondered the magnitude of domestic spying in the United States under the Obama administration. A smile spread across his face.

“You know, for us, this would have been a dream come true,” he said, recalling the days when he was a lieutenant colonel in the defunct communist country’s secret police, the Stasi.

In those days, his department was limited to tapping 40 phones at a time, he recalled. Decide to spy on a new victim and an old one had to be dropped, because of a lack of equipment. He finds breathtaking the idea that the U.S. government receives daily reports on the cellphone usage of millions of Americans and can monitor the Internet traffic of millions more.

You know, if your surveillance regime is something that gives a former Stasi agent a stiffie, you are doing something profoundly evil.

What the F%$#?

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This business will get out of control. It will get out of control and we’ll be lucky to live through it.

Authorities, forced down Bolivian President Evo Morales’ plane because he was suspected to be carrying Edward Snowden to Bolivia:

The plane carrying Bolivian President Evo Morales home from Russia was rerouted to Austria on Tuesday after France and Portugal refused to let it cross their airspace because of suspicions that NSA leaker Edward Snowden was on board, the country’s foreign minister said.

Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca denied that Snowden was on the plane, which landed in Vienna, and said France and Portugal would have to explain why they canceled authorization for the plane.

“We don’t know who invented this lie. We want to denounce to the international community this injustice with the plane of President Evo Morales,” Choquehuanca said from Vienna, where the plane landed.

………

“This is a hostile act by the United States State Department which has used various European governments,” said Bolivian Defense Minister Ruben Saavedra, who was on the flight.

Choquehuanca said in a statement that after France and Portugal canceled authorization for the flight, Spain’s government allowed the plane to be refueled in its territory. From there the Falcon plane flew on to Vienna.

He said the decision by France and Portugal “put at risk the life of the president.”

They f%$#ing interfered with the f%$#ing flight of a f%$#ing diplomatic f%$#ing flight carrying a f%$#ing President of a f%$#ing sovereign f%$#ing nation, almost certainly as the result of a fairly explicit request from the United States.

This is insane.  I’m beginning to think that Snowden knows a lot more than just the fact that the NSA spies on Americans and ignores the law and/or uses a completely obedient FISA court as a fig leaf, because this level of pressure is a clear disaster for both the reputation and the foreign policy of the United States.

Seriously.  What ……… the ……… f%$#?

When you are making Vladimir Putin, who is saying that Snowden has to stop leaking if he wants asylum in Russia, seem like the only sensible person with an ounce of compassion in this entire affair.

Seriously.  Vladimir Putin?  What ……… the ……… Oh, never mind.

Adding Chris Hayes to the List

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The list of People I Do Not Want to Piss Off, of course.

Here is an essay worthy of Keith Olbermann’s best special comments.

He notes that by any rational standard, the officially sanctioned leaks over the last few days are almost certainly more damaging to national security than anything that Edward Snowden has released to date.

He demonstrates how leaks, even potentially damaging ones, are acceptable, so long as they serve to glorify our state security apparatus:

H/t Digby.

Talk About Irony

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Glenn Greenwald lives in Brazil because DOMA does not recognize his partner for the purposes of immigration, and Brazil does.

With DOMA being overturned, it means that if he were to move back to the United States, his partner would get a spouse visa:

Glenn Greenwald has been living in Brazil (where he has a permanent visa*) for the past eight years with his partner, David Michael Miranda. Now that the Defense of Marriage Act has been struck down, Greenwald says they’re considering moving back to the United States.

Here’s how he described his reason for moving in an interview with Out Magazine in 2011:

Brazil recognizes our relationship for immigration purposes, while the government of my supposedly “free,” liberty-loving country enacted a law explicitly barring such recognition.

Does Wednesday’s ruling mean Greenwald will move back? Here’s what he said in an email to Slate senior editor Emily Bazelon today:

 It’s certainly something we’ll consider. It’s a huge choice with many complicated factors, and it’s not the kind of thing you seriously evaluate when the option isn’t available to you. We haven’t made up our minds in the 90 minutes or so since the decision was announced!

 We’ve lived here together for 8 years and built a life. My partner is finishing school. All of his family is here. So it’s something that will take time to resolve. But it’s definitely something that we both have a desire at some point to do, and will now spend the time figuring out how and when we can do it.

What is also clear is that, at least until Barack Obama leaves office, is that he, and his partner, would be mercilessly targeted by the authorities if they would set foot back in the United States because of their roles in exposing the NSA spying on US citizens.

So now, because he has effectively been declared an enemy of the state, he cannot safely exercise he new rights his partner got today.

Welcome to the United States of Kafka.

Barack Milhaus* Obama

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Yes, Barack Obama has stepped it up a notch in his war against transparency in government by requiring federal employees to snitch on each other, and declaring both leaking and investigative journalism as tantamount to treason:

Even before a former U.S. intelligence contractor exposed the secret collection of Americans’ phone records, the Obama administration was pressing a government-wide crackdown on security threats that requires federal employees to keep closer tabs on their co-workers and exhorts managers to punish those who fail to report their suspicions.

 President Barack Obama’s unprecedented initiative, known as the Insider Threat Program, is sweeping in its reach. It has received scant public attention even though it extends beyond the U.S. national security bureaucracies to most federal departments and agencies nationwide, including the Peace Corps, the Social Security Administration and the Education and Agriculture departments. It emphasizes leaks of classified material, but catchall definitions of “insider threat” give agencies latitude to pursue and penalize a range of other conduct.

 Government documents reviewed by McClatchy illustrate how some agencies are using that latitude to pursue unauthorized disclosures of any information, not just classified material. They also show how millions of federal employees and contractors must watch for “high-risk persons or behaviors” among co-workers and could face penalties, including criminal charges, for failing to report them. Leaks to the media are equated with espionage.

 “Hammer this fact home . . . leaking is tantamount to aiding the enemies of the United States,” says a June 1, 2012, Defense Department strategy for the program that was obtained by McClatchy.

 The Obama administration is expected to hasten the program’s implementation as the government grapples with the fallout from the leaks of top secret documents by Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who revealed the agency’s secret telephone data collection program. The case is only the latest in a series of what the government condemns as betrayals by “trusted insiders” who have harmed national security.

(emphasis mine)

This really is chilling and truly evil.

Mr. Obama is truly the worst constitutional law professor ever.™

Snowden Has Flown to Russia, Is Expected to Ask for Asylum in Ecuador

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I am not surprised.  Hong Kong is not a safe haven in the long term, and if he returns to the United States, he will be tortured through extended solitary confinement in an attempt to break him, as was done with Wen Ho Lee.

So he is in Moscow negotiating asylum with Ecuador:

Fugitive former US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden is due to fly out of Russia in the next few hours in a bid to seek asylum in Ecuador.

Reports suggest he will be on an early afternoon flight out of Moscow, heading first to the Cuban capital Havana.

Washington says it is urging countries in the “Western Hemisphere” not to let Mr Snowden enter their territory.

The US has charged him with espionage over leaked secret documents revealing US internet and phone surveillance.

In a series of rapidly moving developments on Sunday, Mr Snowden flew to Moscow from Hong Kong where he had been holed up since fleeing the US.

Once at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport it is thought he was met by Ecuador’s ambassador to Moscow whose car was seen arriving by reporters.

On Sunday night it was unclear exactly where Mr Snowden was, but he was believed to be still at the airport.

BBC Moscow correspondent Daniel Sandford says it is being reported that he will fly first to Cuba and then to Venezuela before heading to Ecuador. The first plane scheduled to fly to Havana was due to leave Sheremetyevo at 14:05 Moscow time (10:05 GMT).

He will be trying to avoid any country that might arrest him on behalf of the US, our correspondent adds.

At this point, I expect that Obama is looking into ways of having Snowden whacked, and Glenn Greenwald might be on his latest kill list as well.

Like Rendering for Torture, Only With Data

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In another scoop, the Guardian has revealed that GCHQ, the British Equivalent of the NSA, engaged in the same sort of massive data drift net as the NSA:

Britain’s spy agency GCHQ has secretly gained access to the network of cables which carry the world’s phone calls and internet traffic and has started to process vast streams of sensitive personal information which it is sharing with its American partner, the National Security Agency (NSA).

 The sheer scale of the agency’s ambition is reflected in the titles of its two principal components: Mastering the Internet and Global Telecoms Exploitation, aimed at scooping up as much online and telephone traffic as possible. This is all being carried out without any form of public acknowledgement or debate.

 One key innovation has been GCHQ’s ability to tap into and store huge volumes of data drawn from fibre-optic cables for up to 30 days so that it can be sifted and analysed. That operation, codenamed Tempora, has been running for some 18 months.

 ………

 By May last year 300 analysts from GCHQ, and 250 from the NSA, had been assigned to sift through the flood of data.

 The Americans were given guidelines for its use, but were told in legal briefings by GCHQ lawyers: “We have a light oversight regime compared with the US“.

 When it came to judging the necessity and proportionality of what they were allowed to look for, would-be American users were told it was “your call”.

 The Guardian understands that a total of 850,000 NSA employees and US private contractors with top secret clearance had access to GCHQ databases.

(Emphasis mine)

What we are seeing here is the moral equivalent of the rendition for torture that the CIA engaged in with despotic governments.

In this case, the NSA is not allowed to spy on Americans, so they have the British do it for them and then they review the data under the British “Light oversight regime.”

Note that this in addition to the exceptions and shadings on the NSA’s own surveillance discussed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Taken together, it’s a blue print for a lawless surveillance state.

(updated title)

Once Again, Obama Invokes the 96 Year Old Espionage Act Yet Again

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Yes, this time Worst Constitutional Law Professor Ever™ is using the act, originally drafted to prohibit expressing anti-war sentiments, to pursue a leaker, in this case, go after Edward Snowden:

Federal prosecutors have filed a criminal complaint against Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who leaked a trove of documents about top-secret surveillance programs, and the United States has asked Hong Kong to detain him on a provisional arrest warrant, according to U.S. officials.

 Snowden was charged with theft, “unauthorized communication of national defense information” and “willful communication of classified communications intelligence information to an unauthorized person,” according to the complaint. The last two charges were brought under the 1917 Espionage Act.

Rolling Glenn Greenwald:

Prior to Barack Obama’s inauguration, there were a grand total of three prosecutions of leakers under the Espionage Act (including the prosecution of Dan Ellsberg by the Nixon DOJ). That’s because the statute is so broad that even the US government has largely refrained from using it. But during the Obama presidency, there are now seven such prosecutions: more than double the number under all prior US presidents combined. How can anyone justify that?

For a politician who tried to convince Americans to elect him based on repeated pledges of unprecedented transparency and specific vows to protect “noble” and “patriotic” whistleblowers, is this unparalleled assault on those who enable investigative journalism remotely defensible? Recall that the New Yorker’s Jane Mayer said recently that this oppressive climate created by the Obama presidency has brought investigative journalism to a “standstill”, while James Goodale, the General Counsel for the New York Times during its battles with the Nixon administration, wrote last month in that paper that “President Obama will surely pass President Richard Nixon as the worst president ever on issues of national security and press freedom.” Read what Mayer and Goodale wrote and ask yourself: is the Obama administration’s threat to the news-gathering process not a serious crisis at this point?

………

They haven’t learned anything from these disclosures that they didn’t already well know. The people who have learned things they didn’t already know are American citizens who have no connection to terrorism or foreign intelligence, as well as hundreds of millions of citizens around the world about whom the same is true. What they have learned is that the vast bulk of this surveillance apparatus is directed not at the Chinese or Russian governments or the Terrorists, but at them.

And that is precisely why the US government is so furious and will bring its full weight to bear against these disclosures. What has been “harmed” is not the national security of the US but the ability of its political leaders to work against their own citizens and citizens around the world in the dark, with zero transparency or real accountability. If anything is a crime, it’s that secret, unaccountable and deceitful behavior: not the shining of light on it.

(Emphasis Original)

He is correct.  The only potential “injury to the United States” (from the text of this law) is to subject the actions of the NSA, and the rest of the US state security apparatus to public discussions.

The terrorists already knew this, as it is clear from the approved leaks from the Obama administration made this clear to anyone with 2 working brain cells.

I wish that we had a less paranoid president with a greater devotion to openness and transparency.

Of course, Richard Nixon qualifies as less paranoid President with a greater devotion to openness and transparency, which just goes to show how far we have fallen as a society.

Obama Is Lying About the Prevented Terror Attacks, and Other NSA Scandal Stuff

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A review of the claims shows that either ordinary law enforcement actions uncovered the planned attacks, or that there never was a planned attack, there never was an attack:

This suspect, in turn, was in contact with an individual in the United States named Khalid Ouazzani. Thus warned, the FBI investigated Mr. Ouazzani through traditional law enforcement methods, and discovered a burgeoning plot to bomb the NYSE.

 “Ouazzani had been providing information and support to this plot,” FBI Deputy Director Sean Joyce told lawmakers.
However, Mr. Ouazzani pleaded guilty to providing material support – in his case, money – to Al Qaeda, not to terror planning. His May 2010 plea agreement makes no mention of anything related to the New York Stock Exchange, or any bomb plot, notes David Kravets in Wired magazine.

 Plus, Ouazzani’s defense attorney said Tuesday the stock market allegation was news to him.

 “Khalid Ouazzani was not involved in any plot to bomb the New York Stock Exchange,” attorney Robin Fowler told Wired.

 As to the New York subway plot, it was discovered not by analysis of vast amounts of Internet data of foreign users, but rather by old-fashioned police work, according to The Guardian, the British newspaper that first published a secret NSA document showing the agency collected phone metadata from Verizon Business Services.
A British intelligence investigation into a suspected terrorist cell in England’s northwest first turned up a crucial e-mail address of a Pakistani extremist, write The Guardian’s Ed Pilkington and Nicholas Watt. They passed this address to the US.

 Surveillance of this one address led the US to Najibullah Zazi, an Afghan-American living in Colorado who had asked the Pakistani extremist for explosives recipes. FBI agents followed Mr. Zazi as he traveled to New York. Search warrants turned up bomb components, and in 2010 Zazi confessed to a plot to bomb the city’s subway system with backpacks.

The NSA’s sweeping data interception capability “played a relatively minor role” in breaking this case, write Mr. Pilkington and Mr. Watt.

And the Guardian now hsa published the secret standards used by the NSA, and it appears we have another lie, because the standards do allow for emails to be read and phone calls to be listened to:(see here and here for the docs)

The Guardian is publishing in full two documents submitted to the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (known as the Fisa court), signed by Attorney General Eric Holder and stamped 29 July 2009. They detail the procedures the NSA is required to follow to target “non-US persons” under its foreign intelligence powers and what the agency does to minimize data collected on US citizens and residents in the course of that surveillance.

The documents show that even under authorities governing the collection of foreign intelligence from foreign targets, US communications can still be collected, retained and used.

………
The top secret documents published today detail the circumstances in which data collected on US persons under the foreign intelligence authority must be destroyed, extensive steps analysts must take to try to check targets are outside the US, and reveals how US call records are used to help remove US citizens and residents from data collection.

However, alongside those provisions, the Fisa court-approved policies allow the NSA to:

  • Keep data that could potentially contain details of US persons for up to five years;
  • Retain and make use of “inadvertently acquired” domestic communications if they contain usable intelligence, information on criminal activity, threat of harm to people or property, are encrypted, or are believed to contain any information relevant to cybersecurity;
  • Preserve “foreign intelligence information” contained within attorney-client communications;
  • Access the content of communications gathered from “U.S. based machine[s]” or phone numbers in order to establish if targets are located in the US, for the purposes of ceasing further surveillance.

………

The documents also show that discretion as to who is actually targeted under the NSA’s foreign surveillance powers lies directly with its own analysts, without recourse to courts or superiors – though a percentage of targeting decisions are reviewed by internal audit teams on a regular basis.

………

Those procedures state that the “NSA determines whether a person is a non-United States person reasonably believed to be outside the United States in light of the totality of the circumstances based on the information available with respect to that person, including information concerning the communications facility or facilities used by that person”.

It includes information that the NSA analyst uses to make this determination – including IP addresses, statements made by the potential target, and other information in the NSA databases, which can include public information and data collected by other agencies.

Where the NSA has no specific information on a person’s location, analysts are free to presume they are overseas, the document continues.

“In the absence of specific information regarding whether a target is a United States person,” it states “a person reasonably believed to be located outside the United States or whose location is not known will be presumed to be a non-United States person unless such person can be positively identified as a United States person.”

If it later appears that a target is in fact located in the US, analysts are permitted to look at the content of messages, or listen to phone calls, to establish if this is indeed the case.

Referring to steps taken to prevent intentional collection of telephone content of those inside the US, the document states: “NSA analysts may analyze content for indications that a foreign target has entered or intends to enter the United States. Such content analysis will be conducted according to analytic and intelligence requirements and priorities.“

(emphasis mine)

Translated from the bureaucratese, this is unlimited ability to record phone calls and emails, until it is proven that they are not in the United States, and even then, the data is retained.

All that the analyst has to do is to claim that you are “not sure” if the target is a “US Person”, and it’s no harm no foul for intercepting the contents of their communications.

As Glenn Greenwald notes, this is yet more evidence that FISA court oversight is a complete joke.

H/t to Washington’s blog for the links on the NSA false claims.

My Opinion of Ed Snowden Just Rose

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In his online chat for the Guardian, he said that, “Being called a traitor by Dick Cheney is the highest honor you can give an American.”

Asked during a live chat on The Guardian’s website to respond to U.S. officials who have called him a traitor, Edward Snowden, the self-proclaimed source of recently leaked top secret National Security Agency documents, said he considers it an honor to be called a traitor by the likes of former Vice President Dick Cheney.

“[I]t’s important to bear in mind I’m being called a traitor by men like former Vice President Dick Cheney,” Snowden wrote. “This is a man who gave us the warrantless wiretapping scheme as a kind of atrocity warm-up on the way to deceitfully engineering a conflict that has killed over 4,400 and maimed nearly 32,000 Americans, as well as leaving over 100,000 Iraqis dead. Being called a traitor by Dick Cheney is the highest honor you can give an American, and the more panicked talk we hear from people like him, Feinstein, and King, the better off we all are. If they had taught a class on how to be the kind of citizen Dick Cheney worries about, I would have finished high school.”

I’ve already called him a hero.

He also appears to be a bit of a wit in what must be an anxiety laden situation.

“Grace under pressure,” is how Hemingway described courage.