Global surveillance watch.....
Watch out for "Hema."
A security training test created by a Defense Department agency warns federal workers that they should consider the hypothetical Indian-American woman a "high threat" because she frequently visits family abroad, has money troubles and "speaks openly of unhappiness with U.S. foreign policy."
That slide, from the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), is a startling demonstration of the Obama administration's obsession with leakers and other "insider threats." One goal of its broader "Insider Threat" program is to stop the next Bradley Manning or Edward Snowden from spilling classified or sensitive information.
But critics have charged that the Insider Threat program, as McClatchy first reported, treats leakers acting in the public interest as traitors -- and may not even accomplish its goal of preventing classified leaks.
Read More...
Source: Washington’s Blog
President Obama said last night that the government doesn’t spy on Americans:
A handful of congress critters – who rake in the dough by acting as apologists for the NSA – say that spying is necessary to protect American from terrorists.
And the NSA pretends that its spying program is overseen by Congress and the courts.
They’re all full of hot air.
The Government Is Spying on American Citizens On U.S. Soil
The government is spying on just about everything we do. It’s not just “metadata” (… although that ismuch worse than you think.)
The government has adopted a secret interpretation of the Patriot Act which allows it topretend that “everything” is relevant … so it spies on everyone.
Former NSA head Michael Hayden just confirmed that the government spies on our communications:
Spying Is Not Used Just to Prevent Terrorism
The NSA isn’t the only agency which spies on Americans. Many other agencies – concerned only withdomestic issues – spy on Americans as well.
Moreover, Reuters reports that – since the late 1990s – the NSA has been funneling its spying information to agencies throughout the country to prosecute petty crimes:
The Washington Post points out:
Top security experts say that mass spying doesn’t keep us safe.
NSA spying did not prevent a terror attack on Wall Street. While the government initially claimed that mass surveillance on Americans prevented more than 50 terror attacks, the NSA’s deputy director John Inglis walked that position back all the way to saying that – at themost – one (1) plot might have been disrupted by the bulk phone records collection alone.
And no, it didn’t lead to last week’s tip about a new terror threat. AP reports:
In fact, the argument that the new terror warning shows that NSA spying is necessary is so weak that American counter-terrorism experts have slammed it as “crazy pants”.
Remember, top counter-terrorism experts say that mass spying actually hurts U.S. counter-terror efforts. And that we can keep everyone safe without violating the Constitution … more cheaply and efficiently than the current system.
There’s No Real Congressional or Judicial Oversight
There is no real oversight by either Congress or the courts. And see this and this.
Indeed, most Congress members have no idea what the NSA is doing.
And a Federal judge who was on the secret spying court for 3 years says that it’s a kangaroo court.
Revealing Spying Programs Does Not Harm National Security
The top counter-terrorism Czar under Clinton and Bush says that revealing NSA spying programs doesnot harm national security. Many other counter-terrorism experts agree.
(TechDirt also points out that it makes no sense that whistleblower revelations about spyinghurt our security … while U.S. official revelations that they’re tapping the communications of Al Qaeda doesn’t.)
Spying Is Destroying the Economy
Mass surveillance by the NSA directly harms internet companies, Silicon Valley, California … and theentire U.S. economy. And see this.
Mass spying creates an easy mark for hackers. And IT and security professionals are quite concernedabout government spying
(A handful of fatcats make a lot of money off of mass spying; but the government isn’t using the spying program to stop the worst types of lawlessness.)
The American People Hate Spying
Polls show that the public doesn’t believe the NSA … and thinks that the government hasgone way too far in the name of terrorism.
While leaker Edward Snowden is treated as a traitor by the fatcats and elites, he is considered a hero by the American public. (Remember, in the last 10 years, whistleblowers have had no “legal” way to get the information out).
What’s It Good For?
Even President Obama admits that the terrorism threat is drastically overblown. And yet the American government is doing everything possible to spy on us and to destroy anonymity..
A Congressman noted that – even if a mass surveillance program is started for good purposes – it will inevitably turn into a witch hunt. Surveillance can be used to frame you if someone in government happens to take a dislike to you. Government spying has always focused on crushing dissent … not on keeping us safe. Indeed, every single American is vulnerable to being labeled a terrorist by the government … and so spying is aimed at everyone.
An NSA whistleblower says that the NSA is spying on – and blackmailing – top government officials and military officers (potentially including former presidents; and see this). Indeed, high-level US government officials have warned for 40 years that mass surveillance would lead to tyranny in America.
Spying started before 9/11 … and may have stemmed from an emergency program which has nothing to do with our current situation.
Oh, And Mass Spying Is Illegal
In addition to all of the above-described problems with spying, experts say that the spying program isillegal. Indeed, they point out that it’s exactly the kind of thing which King George imposed on the American colonists … which led to the Revolutionary War.
A former U.S. president says that the spying program is so bad that it shows that we no longer have a functioning democracy.
And top constitutional experts say that Obama and Bush are worse than Nixon … and theStasi East Germans.
Former NSA Chief Aggressively Attacks The Entire Hacking Community
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 08/08/2013 - 22:33
There’s an interesting trend happening in America today. A trend characterized by old, authoritarian, formerly “highly respected” figures in society becoming so confused and concerned that the zeitgeist of the nation is moving away from them, that they are overcome by dementia and publicly lash out like spoiled children in increasingly irrational manner. Two of our favorite examples of such behavior are Senator John McCain and NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Now we can add another character to the list, former CIA and NSA head Michael Hayden. Amongst other things, here is what he said about Snowden supporters: Nihilists, anarchists, activists, Lulzsec, Anonymous, twenty-somethings who haven’t talked to the opposite sex in five or six years.
Unhappy With U.S. Foreign Policy? Pentagon Says You Might Be A 'High Threat'
August 7, 2013
Source: Huffington Post
Watch out for "Hema."
A security training test created by a Defense Department agency warns federal workers that they should consider the hypothetical Indian-American woman a "high threat" because she frequently visits family abroad, has money troubles and "speaks openly of unhappiness with U.S. foreign policy."
That slide, from the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), is a startling demonstration of the Obama administration's obsession with leakers and other "insider threats." One goal of its broader "Insider Threat" program is to stop the next Bradley Manning or Edward Snowden from spilling classified or sensitive information.
But critics have charged that the Insider Threat program, as McClatchy first reported, treats leakers acting in the public interest as traitors -- and may not even accomplish its goal of preventing classified leaks.
Read More...
Government’s Mass Surveillance Justifications Are So Dumb They’re “Crazy Pants”
August 8, 2013Source: Washington’s Blog
President Obama said last night that the government doesn’t spy on Americans:
A handful of congress critters – who rake in the dough by acting as apologists for the NSA – say that spying is necessary to protect American from terrorists.
And the NSA pretends that its spying program is overseen by Congress and the courts.
They’re all full of hot air.
The Government Is Spying on American Citizens On U.S. Soil
The government is spying on just about everything we do. It’s not just “metadata” (… although that ismuch worse than you think.)
The government has adopted a secret interpretation of the Patriot Act which allows it topretend that “everything” is relevant … so it spies on everyone.
Former NSA head Michael Hayden just confirmed that the government spies on our communications:
Spying Is Not Used Just to Prevent Terrorism
The NSA isn’t the only agency which spies on Americans. Many other agencies – concerned only withdomestic issues – spy on Americans as well.
Moreover, Reuters reports that – since the late 1990s – the NSA has been funneling its spying information to agencies throughout the country to prosecute petty crimes:
A secretive U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration unit is funneling information fromintelligence intercepts, wiretaps, informants and a massive database of telephone records to authorities across the nation to help them launch criminal investigations of Americans.It’s not just drug offenses. The IRS and many other agencies use the information to go after petty violations of law.
Although these cases rarely involve national security issues, documents reviewed by Reuters show that law enforcement agents have been directed to conceal how such investigations truly begin – not only from defense lawyers but also sometimes from prosecutors and judges.
[F]ederal agents are trained to “recreate” the investigative trail to effectively cover up where the information originated, a practice that some experts say violates a defendant’s Constitutional right to a fair trial. If defendants don’t know how an investigation began, they cannot know to ask to review potential sources of exculpatory evidence – information that could reveal entrapment, mistakes or biased witnesses.
“I have never heard of anything like this at all,” said Nancy Gertner, a Harvard Law School professor who served as a federal judge from 1994 to 2011. Gertner and other legal experts said the program sounds more troubling than recent disclosures that the National Security Agency has been collecting domestic phone records. The NSA effort is geared toward stopping terrorists; the DEA program targets common criminals, primarily drug dealers.
“It is one thing to create special rules for national security,” Gertner said. “Ordinary crime is entirely different. It sounds like they are phonying up investigations.”
The unit of the DEA that distributes the information is called the Special Operations Division, or SOD. Two dozen partner agencies comprise the unit, including the FBI, CIA, NSA, Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Homeland Security. It was created in 1994 to combat Latin American drug cartels and has grown from several dozen employees to several hundred.
***
“Remember that the utilization of SOD cannot be revealed or discussed in any investigative function,” a document presented to agents reads. The document specifically directs agents to omit the SOD’s involvement from investigative reports, affidavits, discussions with prosecutors and courtroom testimony. Agents are instructed to then use “normal investigative techniques to recreate the information provided by SOD.”
***
A former federal agent in the northeastern United States who received such tips from SOD described the process. “You’d be told only, ‘Be at a certain truck stop at a certain time and look for a certain vehicle.’ And so we’d alert the state police to find an excuse to stop that vehicle, and then have a drug dog search it,” the agent said.
After an arrest was made, agents then pretended that their investigation began with the traffic stop, not with the SOD tip, the former agent said. The training document reviewed by Reuters refers to this process as “parallel construction.”
The two senior DEA officials, who spoke on behalf of the agency but only on condition of anonymity, said the process is kept secret to protect sources and investigative methods. “Parallel construction is a law enforcement technique we use every day,” one official said. “It’s decades old, a bedrock concept.”
***
“It’s just like laundering money – you work it backwards to make it clean,” said Finn Selander, a DEA agent from 1991 to 2008 and now a member of a group called Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, which advocates legalizing and regulating narcotics.
***
“You can’t game the system,” said former federal prosecutor Henry E. Hockeimer Jr. “You can’t create this subterfuge. These are drug crimes, not national security cases. If you don’t draw the line here, where do you draw it?”
***
“I was pissed,” the prosecutor said. “Lying about where the information came from is a bad start if you’re trying to comply with the law because it can lead to all kinds of problems with discovery and candor to the court.”
***
Current and former federal agents said SOD tips aren’t always helpful – one estimated their accuracy at 60 percent. But current and former agents said tips have enabled them to catch drug smugglers who might have gotten away.
The Washington Post points out:
Surveys show most people support the NSA’s bulk surveillance program strongly when the words “terrorism” or “courts” are included in the question. When pollsters draw no connection with terrorism, support tends to wane. What will happen when the question makes clear that the intelligence not only isn’t being used for terrorism investigations against foreign agents, but is actively being applied to criminal investigations against Americans?And Yves Smith notes:
This is only the part we’ve been permitted to see. Just imagine what else goes on.Spying Does Not Keep Us Safe
Top security experts say that mass spying doesn’t keep us safe.
NSA spying did not prevent a terror attack on Wall Street. While the government initially claimed that mass surveillance on Americans prevented more than 50 terror attacks, the NSA’s deputy director John Inglis walked that position back all the way to saying that – at themost – one (1) plot might have been disrupted by the bulk phone records collection alone.
And no, it didn’t lead to last week’s tip about a new terror threat. AP reports:
An intelligence official said the controversial NSA programs that gather data on American phone calls or track Internet communications with suspected terrorists playedno part in detecting the initial tip.And the New York Times writes:
Some analysts and Congressional officials suggested Friday that emphasizing a terrorist threat now was a good way to divert attention from the uproar over the N.S.A.’s data-collection programs, and that if it showed the intercepts had uncovered a possible plot, even better.(Indeed, the government has resorted to lamer and lamer excuses in a failed attempt to justify mass surveillance).
In fact, the argument that the new terror warning shows that NSA spying is necessary is so weak that American counter-terrorism experts have slammed it as “crazy pants”.
Remember, top counter-terrorism experts say that mass spying actually hurts U.S. counter-terror efforts. And that we can keep everyone safe without violating the Constitution … more cheaply and efficiently than the current system.
There’s No Real Congressional or Judicial Oversight
There is no real oversight by either Congress or the courts. And see this and this.
Indeed, most Congress members have no idea what the NSA is doing.
And a Federal judge who was on the secret spying court for 3 years says that it’s a kangaroo court.
Revealing Spying Programs Does Not Harm National Security
The top counter-terrorism Czar under Clinton and Bush says that revealing NSA spying programs doesnot harm national security. Many other counter-terrorism experts agree.
(TechDirt also points out that it makes no sense that whistleblower revelations about spyinghurt our security … while U.S. official revelations that they’re tapping the communications of Al Qaeda doesn’t.)
Spying Is Destroying the Economy
Mass surveillance by the NSA directly harms internet companies, Silicon Valley, California … and theentire U.S. economy. And see this.
Mass spying creates an easy mark for hackers. And IT and security professionals are quite concernedabout government spying
(A handful of fatcats make a lot of money off of mass spying; but the government isn’t using the spying program to stop the worst types of lawlessness.)
The American People Hate Spying
Polls show that the public doesn’t believe the NSA … and thinks that the government hasgone way too far in the name of terrorism.
While leaker Edward Snowden is treated as a traitor by the fatcats and elites, he is considered a hero by the American public. (Remember, in the last 10 years, whistleblowers have had no “legal” way to get the information out).
What’s It Good For?
Even President Obama admits that the terrorism threat is drastically overblown. And yet the American government is doing everything possible to spy on us and to destroy anonymity..
A Congressman noted that – even if a mass surveillance program is started for good purposes – it will inevitably turn into a witch hunt. Surveillance can be used to frame you if someone in government happens to take a dislike to you. Government spying has always focused on crushing dissent … not on keeping us safe. Indeed, every single American is vulnerable to being labeled a terrorist by the government … and so spying is aimed at everyone.
An NSA whistleblower says that the NSA is spying on – and blackmailing – top government officials and military officers (potentially including former presidents; and see this). Indeed, high-level US government officials have warned for 40 years that mass surveillance would lead to tyranny in America.
Spying started before 9/11 … and may have stemmed from an emergency program which has nothing to do with our current situation.
Oh, And Mass Spying Is Illegal
In addition to all of the above-described problems with spying, experts say that the spying program isillegal. Indeed, they point out that it’s exactly the kind of thing which King George imposed on the American colonists … which led to the Revolutionary War.
A former U.S. president says that the spying program is so bad that it shows that we no longer have a functioning democracy.
And top constitutional experts say that Obama and Bush are worse than Nixon … and theStasi East Germans.
New revelations: Germany sends ‘massive amounts’ of phone, email data to NSA
RT
Aug 8, 2013
Aug 8, 2013
Germany’s BND intelligence service sends “massive amounts” of intercepts to the NSA daily, according to a report based on Edward Snowden’s leaks. It suggests a tight relationship has been developed between the two agencies – which the BND claims is legal.
Documents leaked by former NSA contractor Snowden and obtained by Der Spiegel revealed that the 500 million pieces of phone and email communications metadata collected by the NSA in Germanylast December were “apparently” provided with the BND’s approval.
The data was allegedly handed over at two collection sites as part of the operation titled “Germany – Last 30 days.” One of those collection sites has been identified as the Bavarian BND facility at Bad Aibling, which the NSA is said to have officially left back in 2004.
Der Spiegel’s investigation, which cites BND sources, says that the code name of the Bad Aibling facility is mentioned in Snowden’s papers as one of the signals intelligence activity designators (SIGADs) employed by the US spy agency to collect the data.
The BND source added that the mentioned name is “associated with telecommunications surveillance in Afghanistan.”
Officially, however, Berlin is still waiting for an answer from Washington as to where in Germany the metadata documented in the NSA files was obtained, according to Der Spiegel. The clarification of what and who are behind the so-called SIGADs, and what sort of information was passed on, is an extremely delicate matter for both the BND and the Chancellery – with Angela Merkel’s chief of staff Ronald Pofalla being nominally in charge of coordinating the country’s intelligence agencies.
The details in the recent report have sparked more uneasy questions to be fired at Merkel’s government. Hans-Christian Stroebele of Germany’s Green party has demanded an “immediate investigation” of allegations, reminding that it has been claimed up to now that the Americans had abandoned Bad Aibling years ago and transferred control to Germany.
- A D V E R T I S E M E N T
“Now we are reading that the NSA expanded their facility there, received data on site and also analyzed it there. That is a completely new development; that’s news that we have to follow up on,” said Stroebele, who is also a member of the German parliament’s intelligence oversight committee.
Frustrated that he and other committee members learned about the BND’s data transfers to the NSA from a media report, Stroebele stressed that “the government is playing the wrong game there.”
But officials from the German foreign intelligence service responded by saying the practice is completely legal, adding that the two agencies have been closely working together for decades.
“The BND has worked for over 50 years together with the NSA, particularly when it comes to intelligence on the situation in crisis zones. The cooperation with the NSA in Bad Aibling serves exactly these goals and it has taken place in this form for over ten years, based on an agreement made in the year 2002,” the BND said, as quoted by Deutsche Welle.
According to Snowden’s leaks, not only have the German agents enjoyed access to the NSA’s latest tools, such as XKeyscore, but the US agents have also shown a keen interest in several BND programs – which, according to the report, were deemed even more effective than those of the NSA.
But the BND has assured that no data transferred to the NSA contains information on German citizens – which, according to the German agency’s chief Wolfgang Bosbach, would explain why the government never mentioned the vast data transfers during the testimony they gave to parliamentary committees after the NSA scandal was unveiled.
“The transfer of data clearly did not involve German citizens but rather data that the BND had collected in accordance with its statutory mission,” Bosbach said.
“Before metadata relating to other countries is passed on, it is purged, in a multistep process, of any personal data about German citizens it may contain,” the BND said in response to inquiries, as quoted by Deutsche Welle. The agency added that there is currently “no reason” to believe that “the NSA gathers personal data on German citizens in Germany.”
The BND is strictly forbidden from monitoring the communications of German citizens by the G-10 law, a regulation anchored in the country’s constitution that limits the powers of the intelligence agencies.
However, it does not concern foreign intelligence, which, according to the report, includes hundreds of thousands of records from Middle Eastern satellite telephone providers, thousands of mobile communications, and daily eavesdropping on some 62,000 emails.
“The NSA benefits from this collection, especially the…intercepts from Afghanistan, which the BND shares on a daily basis,” the report says.
Such large-scale data transfer became possible after the BND established a direct electronic connection to the NSA network in Bad Aibling, it claims.
When the scandal initially emerged, German Chancellor Merkel claimed that she learnt about the US surveillance programs through press reports, and that she had had no knowledge of the BND’s collaboration with the NSA.
Merkel, who is under pressure from critics ahead of the September 22 election, also stressed that Germany “is not a surveillance state.”
However, she seemingly justified the NSA’s job, saying that “the work of intelligence agencies in democratic states was always vital to the safety of citizens and will remain so in the future.” While being asked to clear up the situation with the US allegedly bugging the embassies of European countries and EU facilities, Merkel stressed that the US will remain Germany’s “most loyal ally.”
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