Spying on everyone news of the day......
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_NSA_SURVEILLANCE_SNOWDEN?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-08-24-09-41-24
Continuing the strategy of lying at the worst possible time, Obama’s claims were immediately followed by a report from the NSA Inspector General, which showed that there were several instances of “willful violations” in which the NSA deliberately broke rules so they could spy on Americans.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/exclusive-edward-snowden-leaks-reveal-uks-secret-middleeast-internet-surveillance-base-8781082.html
Edward Snowden (AFP/Getty)
David Miranda, left, with Glenn Greenwald (AP)
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_NSA_SURVEILLANCE_SNOWDEN?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-08-24-09-41-24
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The U.S. government's efforts to determine which highly classified materials leaker Edward Snowden took from the National Security Agency have been frustrated by Snowden's sophisticated efforts to cover his digital trail by deleting or bypassing electronic logs, government officials told The Associated Press. Such logs would have showed what information Snowden viewed or downloaded.
The government's forensic investigation is wrestling with Snowden's apparent ability to defeat safeguards established to monitor and deter people looking at information without proper permission, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to discuss the sensitive developments publicly.
The disclosure undermines the Obama administration's assurances to Congress and the public that the NSA surveillance programs can't be abused because its spying systems are so aggressively monitored and audited for oversight purposes: If Snowden could defeat the NSA's own tripwires and internal burglar alarms, how many other employees or contractors could do the same ?
In July, nearly two months after Snowden's earliest disclosures, NSA Director Keith Alexander declined to say whether he had a good idea of what Snowden had downloaded or how many NSA files Snowden had taken with him, noting an ongoing criminal investigation.
NSA spokeswoman Vanee Vines told the AP that Alexander "had a sense of what documents and information had been taken," but "he did not say the comprehensive investigation had been completed." Vines would not say whether Snowden had found a way to view and download the documents he took without the NSA knowing.
In defending the NSA surveillance programs that Snowden revealed, Deputy Attorney General James Cole told Congress last month that the administration effectively monitors the activities of employees using them.
"This program goes under careful audit," Cole said. "Everything that is done under it is documented and reviewed before the decision is made and reviewed again after these decisions are made to make sure that nobody has done the things that you're concerned about happening."
The disclosure of Snowden's hacking prowess inside the NSA also could dramatically increase the perceived value of his knowledge to foreign governments, which would presumably be eager to learn any counter-detection techniques that could be exploited against U.S. government networks.
It also helps explain the recent seizure in Britain of digital files belonging to David Miranda - the partner of Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald - in an effort to help quantify Snowden's leak of classified material to the Guardian newspaper. Authorities there stopped Miranda last weekend as he changed planes at Heathrow Airport while returning home to Brazil from Germany, where Miranda had met with Laura Poitras, a U.S. filmmaker who has worked with Greenwald on the NSA story.
Snowden, a former U.S. intelligence contractor, was employed by Booz Allen Hamilton in Hawaii before leaking classified documents to the Guardian and The Washington Post. As a system administrator, Snowden had the ability to move around data and had access to thumb drives that would have allowed him to transfer information to computers outside the NSA's secure system, Alexander has said.
In his job, Snowden purloined many files, including ones that detailed the U.S. government's programs to collect the metadata of phone calls of U.S. citizens and copy Internet traffic as it enters and leaves the U.S., then routes it to the NSA for analysis.
Officials have said Snowden had access to many documents but didn't know necessarily how the programs functioned. He dipped into compartmentalized files as systems administrator and took what he wanted. He managed to do so for months without getting caught. In May, he flew to Hong Kong and eventually made his way to Russia, where that government has granted him asylum.
NBC News reported Thursday that the NSA was "overwhelmed" in trying to figure what Snowden had stolen and didn't know everything he had downloaded.
Insider threats have troubled the administration and Congress, particularly in the wake of Bradley Manning, a young soldier who decided to leak hundreds of thousands of sensitive documents in late 2009 and early 2010.
NSA abuses include Stalking ex-Girlfriends
Posted on 08/24/2013 by Juan Cole
We have HUMINT, or human intelligence gathered from agents. We have SIGINT or signals intelligence. And now we have LOVEINT or NSA analystsoccasionally reading the emails of ex-lovers. It doesn’t happen a lot, the NSA told the WSJ, but often enough that there is a word for it.
The NSA has dealt with the spying scandal with the classic techniques of government manipulation of the public: Deny for as long as possible, then make few gradual small admissions, so when the big abuses come out the press views the story as stale and is unconcerned about the new scale of abuse coming out.
1. First, deny everything. Say it is impossible to access individual Americans’ email as they are typing.
2. Use the difference between statute (laws passed by Congress) and Ronald Reagan’s 1981 Executive Order (which responded to earlier intel abuses and forbids spying on Americans) to deny that any “laws” have been broken. (An Executive Order has the force of law but isn’t exactly a law.). Notorious authoritarians like Mike Rogers (R-MI), head of the House Intelligence Committee, have used this ploy. Rogers wouldn’t know a civil liberty if he tripped over it.
3. admit the capability but insist there are strict controls absolutely preventing abuse.
4. Insist that the FISA court and the House and Senate intelligence committees have full oversight.
5. Admit that the NSA repeatedly lied to the FISA court.
6. Admit a few tens of thousands of in-country US emails were collected before the FISA judges found out and stopped it.
7. Admit you haven’t actually been telling Congress about the abuses
8. Admit that you’ve been sharing info on Americans gained through warrantless surveillance with the Drug Enforcement Agency and local law enforcement, who then lied about how they came by the evidence
9. admit that just a handful of LOVEINT stalking abuses have occurred
Yet to come: revelations that the British GCHQ, having been paid $150 million to do it, spies on Americans for the NSA & then shares the info
And: Perhaps, the ‘handful of times’ the NSA has engaged in insider trading and affected stock movements
And: Perhaps, the handful of times the NSA has blackened the reputations of politicians it didn’t like
and other handfuls of times Secret Government, which is always tyranny, has trumped democracy and the Constitution
Obama Keeps Lying on NSA: Insists Violations ‘Inadvertent’
NSA Inspector General Admits Analysts Deliberately Broke Rules
by Jason Ditz, August 23, 2013
On Wednesday, President Obama insisted there was no NSA spying on Americans, just hours after the government was forced to release documents showing broad, systematic spying on Americans had been going on for years. Today, President Obama insisted that all the violations were “inadvertent and accidental” and, well you can probably see where this is headed.
Continuing the strategy of lying at the worst possible time, Obama’s claims were immediately followed by a report from the NSA Inspector General, which showed that there were several instances of “willful violations” in which the NSA deliberately broke rules so they could spy on Americans.
President Obama’s latest flat out lie came during a CNN interview in which he insisted he was determined to “do a better job” convincing Americans that the NSA programs are being carried out legally and aren’t being abused.
His efforts to sell the surveillance state to the American public have centered pretty much entirely on overt lying, which seems unlikely to be effective. At the same time, the truth about the surveillance program is so bad that leveling with the public is bound to fail just as badly.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/exclusive-edward-snowden-leaks-reveal-uks-secret-middleeast-internet-surveillance-base-8781082.html
Britain runs a secret internet-monitoring station in the Middle East to intercept and process vast quantities of emails, telephone calls and web traffic on behalf of Western intelligence agencies,The Independent has learnt.
The station is able to tap into and extract data from the underwater fibre-optic cables passing through the region.
The information is then processed for intelligence and passed to GCHQ in Cheltenham and shared with the National Security Agency (NSA) in the United States. The Government claims the station is a key element in the West’s “war on terror” and provides a vital “early warning” system for potential attacks around the world.
The Independent is not revealing the precise location of the station but information on its activities was contained in the leaked documents obtained from the NSA by Edward Snowden. The Guardian newspaper’s reporting on these documents in recent months has sparked a dispute with the Government, with GCHQ security experts overseeing the destruction of hard drives containing the data.
The Middle East installation is regarded as particularly valuable by the British and Americans because it can access submarine cables passing through the region. All of the messages and data passed back and forth on the cables is copied into giant computer storage “buffers” and then sifted for data of special interest.
Information about the project was contained in 50,000 GCHQ documents that Mr Snowden downloaded during 2012. Many of them came from an internal Wikipedia-style information site called GC-Wiki. Unlike the public Wikipedia, GCHQ’s wiki was generally classified Top Secret or above.
The disclosure comes as the Metropolitan Police announced it was launching a terrorism investigation into material found on the computer of David Miranda, the Brazilian partner of The Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald – who is at the centre of the Snowden controversy.
Edward Snowden (AFP/Getty)
Scotland Yard said material examined so far from the computer of Mr Miranda was “highly sensitive”, the disclosure of which “could put lives at risk”.
The Independent understands that The Guardian agreed to the Government’s request not to publish any material contained in the Snowden documents that could damage national security.
As well as destroying a computer containing one copy of the Snowden files, the paper’s editor, Alan Rusbridger, agreed to restrict the newspaper’s reporting of the documents.
The Government also demanded that the paper not publish details of how UK telecoms firms, including BT and Vodafone, were secretly collaborating with GCHQ to
intercept the vast majority of all internet traffic entering the country. The paper had details of the highly controversial and secret programme for over a month. But it only published information on the scheme – which involved paying the companies to tap into fibre-optic cables entering Britain – after the allegations appeared in the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung. A Guardian spokeswoman refused to comment on any deal with the Government.
A senior Whitehall source said: “We agreed with The Guardian that our discussions with them would remain confidential”.
But there are fears in Government that Mr Greenwald – who still has access to the files – could attempt to release damaging information.
He said after the arrest of Mr Miranda: “I will be far more aggressive in my reporting from now. I am going to publish many more documents. I have many more documents on England’s spy system. I think they will be sorry for what they did.”
David Miranda, left, with Glenn Greenwald (AP)
One of the areas of concern in Whitehall is that details of the Middle East spying base which could identify its location could enter the public domain.
The data-gathering operation is part of a £1bn internet project still being assembled by GCHQ. It is part of the surveillance and monitoring system, code-named “Tempora”, whose wider aim is the global interception of digital communications, such as emails and text messages.
Across three sites, communications – including telephone calls – are tracked both by satellite dishes and by tapping into underwater fibre-optic cables.
Access to Middle East traffic has become critical to both US and UK intelligence agencies post-9/11. The Maryland headquarters of the NSA and the Defence Department in Washington have pushed for greater co-operation and technology sharing between US and UK intelligence agencies.
The Middle East station was set up under a warrant signed by the then Foreign Secretary David Miliband, authorising GCHQ to monitor and store for analysis data passing through the network of fibre-optic cables that link up the internet around the world
The certificate authorised GCHQ to collect information about the “political intentions of foreign powers”, terrorism, proliferation, mercenaries and private military companies, and serious financial fraud.
However, the certificates are reissued every six months and can be changed by ministers at will. GCHQ officials are then free to target anyone who is overseas or communicating from overseas without further checks or controls if they think they fall within the terms of a current certificate.
The precise budget for this expensive covert technology is regarded as sensitive by the Ministry of Defence and the Foreign Office.
However, the scale of Middle East operation, and GCHQ’s increasing use of sub-sea technology to intercept communications along high-capacity cables, suggest a substantial investment.
Intelligence sources have denied the aim is a blanket gathering of all communications, insisting the operation is targeted at security, terror and organised crime.
Cass Sunstein on a Panel to review NSA is beyond nuts !
Obama’s Former Information Czar On Panel To Review NSA
Authoritarian Cass Sunstein previously called for banning opinions that differed from government
Steve Watson
Infowars.com
Aug 22, 2013
Steve Watson
Infowars.com
Aug 22, 2013
Image: Wikimedia Commons
One of the men heading up the so called “independent” panel to review the NSA’s domestic spying programs will be Cass Sunstein, the former Obama regulatory czar, who has a history of seeking to strictly control information and stifle dissent against government.
The announcement came yesterday with the president describing the panel as a “high-level group of outside experts” that will examine potential abuses of the NSA’s data gathering programs.
Insisting that the group is completely independent of government, despite the fact that all of those on it are former White House and intelligence agency officials, the administration also announced that the group will determine if “insider threats” and unauthorized disclosures are “appropriately” accounted for by the government.
In addition to Sunstein, the panel will be manned by lifelong CIA official, and recent acting head of the agency, Michael Morell, former senior White House adviser Richard Clarke, and former Obama special assistant Peter Swire.
The group will have 2 months to prepare a report for director of national intelligence James Clapper, who has already admitted to lying to Congress about the NSA’s spying techniques. Clapper will then brief the President and submit a report on what is effectively his own spying program.
Critics will certainly argue that the likelihood of this panel finding anything remotely amiss with the NSA’s actions is a long shot at best. Indeed, with Sunstein’s record they are likely to advocate beefing up the NSA’s architecture and expanding the crack down on whistleblowers.
During his time in the Obama administration, Sunstein called for taxing or banning outright, as in making illegal, opinions, ideas and information that the government does not approve of.
On page 14 of a 2008 paper, Sunstein proposed that “under imaginable conditions” the government “might ban conspiracy theorizing” and could “impose some kind of tax, financial or otherwise, on those who disseminate such theories.”
Sunstein outlined plans for the government to infiltrate “conspiracy groups,” including those with questions pertaining to the 9/11 attacks, in order to undermine them via postings on chat rooms and social networks, as well as at real meetings.
The specifics of the plans must be read in full in order to gauge their extreme nature and the threat that Sunstein’s suggestions pose to freedom of speech.
Sunstein’s definition of a “conspiracy theorist” also encompasses those who question the notion of manmade global warming and, most bizarrely, anyone who believes that sunlight is healthy for their bodies.
Presumably if Sunstein had been in power in the latter middle ages he would have attempted to tax and then ban the work of Galileo Galilei for subscribing to the theory that the Earth was not the centre of the universe and that it actually revolved around the Sun.
Sunstein also advocated Internet censorship via enforced and regulated links to government approved opinions in news pieces. In other words, he called for an internet ‘Ministry of Truth’.
Sunstein himself later retracted that proposal, explaining that it would be “too difficult to regulate [the Internet] in a way that would respond to those concerns,” and admitting that it was “almost certainly unconstitutional.”
Sunstein has also called for the re-writing of the First Amendment, and has even proposed a mandatory celebration of tax day in America.
It is clear that Sunstein has little value for constitutional protections, and believes that questioning government should be outlawed. Therefore placing this man on a panel set up to examine and assess government abuses of power, is utterly ridiculous.
Great news: Surveillance review panel stacked with intel leaders and WH staffers
POSTED AT 6:41 PM ON AUGUST 22, 2013 BY ED MORRISSEY
Don’t you feel more confident in our NSA overlords already? ABC and the Washington Postfinds a number of familiar names on the panel created by Barack Obama to review the surveillance activities of the NSA and American intelligence in general. In fact, you could call them the usual suspects:
A group of veteran security experts and former White House officials has been selected to conduct a full review of U.S. surveillance programs and other secret government efforts disclosed over recent months, ABC News has learned.The recent acting head of the CIA, Michael Morell, will be among what President Obama called a “high-level group of outside experts” scrutinizing the controversial programs.Joining Morell on the panel will be former White House officials Richard Clarke, Cass Sunstein and Peter Swire. An announcement is expected Thursday, a source with knowledge of the matter told ABC News’ Jon Karl.
The Post’s Andrea Peterson reports that privacy advocates are less than impressed:
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. …Michael Morell was a career intelligence officer, serving in the CIA for 33 years. He retired from his position as deputy director of the CIA earlier this year after serving two stints as the agency’s acting head during President Obama’s tenure.Sunstein and and Swire are both former Obama administration White House staffers. Cass Sunstein left his position as the administrator of the White House’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in 2012, while Swire served on the Obama-Biden Transition team and as special assistant to president Obama for economic policy. Swire currently teaches at the Scheller College of Business at Georgia Tech. He previously worked in the Clinton White House where he chaired a working group on how to update wiretap laws for the Internet and has a high profile in privacy policy circles.Richard Clarke is a former national coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Counter-terrorism for the United States. He worked for the State Department during the Reagan administration and served on the National Security Council during the presidencies of George H.W. Bush, Clinton and George W. Bush. Clarke also endorsed then-Sen. Obama’s presidential campaign in 2007.
Yes, nothing says transparency that appointing some of your friends and staffers to review your performance. Morrell and Clarke are longtime establishment figures, but Sunstein is in a class by himself. Don’t forget that Sunstein once suggested that government covertly disseminate propaganda to combat narratives it finds inconvenient. In fact, as Glenn Greenwald himself noted in January 2010, Sunstein “propos[ed] that the U.S. Government employ teams of covert agents and pseudo-”independent” advocates to “cognitively infiltrate” online groups and websites — as well as other activist groups — which advocate views that Sunstein deems “false conspiracy theories” about the Government.”
Well, that’s a real confidence-builder, isn’t it? We’re asking the man who, theoretically at least, proposed covertly infiltrating opposition groups in order disseminate administration-serving propaganda to provide us with greater transparency on government operations. What could go wrong?
And why no privacy advocates, at least thus far? In one sense, that’s easy. Regardless of what one thinks of the NSA’s domestic surveillance activities, they have a key role in signals intelligence and what they do needs to be highly classified. People who spend their days issuing press releases are not exactly low security risks. However, there have to be some people who can pass a top-secret clearance and can be trusted to provide the kind of input needed to give this panel some balance. At least at the moment, the White House doesn’t seem to be terribly concerned about providing that kind of balance, which tells us most of what we need to know about their intentions for this panel.
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