Hot Air.....

( NSA Chief Keith Alexander calls BS on John Kerry and President Obama deflection attempts.... And on the record I might add ...... )

Kerry, Alexander pointing fingers over spying on foreign leaders

POSTED AT 1:01 PM ON NOVEMBER 2, 2013 BY ED MORRISSEY

The dispute over American surveillance of foreign leaders took a sharp inward turn yesterday, as key figures in the Obama administration pointed fingers at each other over the NSA’s activities. Secretary of State John Kerry got the ball rolling by telling a UK audience that the NSA had gone “too far” and that the White House would rein in its intelligence agencies in the future:

“The president and I have learned of some things that have been happening in many ways on an automatic pilot, because the technology is there and the ability is there,” Kerry said.

“In some cases, some of these actions have reached too far and we are going to try to make sure it doesn’t happen in the future.”

He was quick to defend the US intelligence services for their efforts, however, arguing their motivation was clear.

“We have actually prevented airplanes from going down, buildings from being blown up, and people from being assassinated because we’ve been able to learn ahead of time of the plans,” Kerry added.

“I assure you, innocent people are not being abused in this process, but there’s an effort to try to gather information. And yes, in some cases, it has reached too far inappropriately.”

He said president Barack Obama was conducting a “thorough review” which would ensure that the “sense of abuse” would not continue in the future.

NSA chief Keith Alexander responded with an immediate rebuke, claiming that the NSA didn’t just decide to target foreign leaders on its own. Instead, Alexander made clear that he and his agency had been specifically tasked to do so — by the Obama administration:

The director of the National Security Agency has blamed US diplomats for requests to place foreign leaders under surveillance, in a surprising intervention that risks a confrontation with the State Department.

General Keith Alexander made the remarks during a pointed exchange with a former US ambassador to Romania, lending more evidence to suggestions of a rift over surveillance between the intelligence community and Barack Obama’s administration. …

Alexander replied: “That is a great question, in fact as an ambassador you have part of the answer. Because we the intelligence agencies don’t come up with the requirements. The policymakers come up with the requirements.”

He went on: “One of those groups would have been, let me think, hold on, oh: ambassadors.”

Alexander said the NSA collected information when it was asked by policy officials to discover the “leadership intentions” of foreign countries. “If you want to know leadership intentions, these are the issues,” the NSA director said.

The State Department declined to respond to Alexander’s assertion:

At today’s State Department briefing, spokeswoman Jen Psaki deflected questions on whether the State Department bears responsibility for the wiretaps.

“We’re all working together, the White House, the State Department, any department that has any connection with foreign governments,” Psaki said, when pressed on whether the department accepts Alexander’s assertions.

This was the most public response yet to the White House’s claim to know nothing about espionage on foreign leaders. Earlier this week, the Los Angeles Times got an earful from the intelligence community pushing back on Barack Obama’s supposed ignorance of the program. “Certainly the National Security Council and senior people across the intelligence community knew exactly what was going on,” one source said, “and to suggest otherwise is ridiculous.” The only way Obama could have failed to know about the program, other sources told the LA Times, was if he didn’t bother to ever read his briefing books.

This shot from Alexander is different. It’s on the record, for one, but also it turns the Obama administration from being a passive recipient of these intel streams into being an active quarterback in their operation. It’s yet another instance in which a threadbare cover story has been blown apart for the White House, this time from within.

By the way, let’s not forget that John Kerry is just a recent arrival. If Alexander was being driven to supply this data by “the policymakers” and “ambassadors,” then perhaps Hillary Clinton has a few questions to answer as well on this point.

Anti War....

White House Rejects Criticism of Obama on NSA Spying

Administration and Spies at Increasing Odds

by Jason Ditz, November 01, 2013

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Facing growing criticism of President Obama’s attempts to ditch responsibility for the NSA’s surveillance of foreign leaders, the White House once again rejected the idea of blaming the president for the program, insisting President Obama would never think of spying on friendly leaders.

“When the president wants to find out what the heads of state of friendly nations think, he calls them,” insisted press secretary Jay Carney, who added Obama’s interest in terrorism centered on “terrorism intercepts.”

There’s a growing fight between the NSA and the State Department as well,with the NSA insisting that they were only tapping all these foreign leaders because ambassadors keep asking them for intelligence.

Former Ambassador Thomas Pickering said it was far-fetched that the NSA was perceiving every request for intelligence as a green-light to bug friendly leaders, adding that he didn’t think ambassadors would be nearly so persuasive with such a request.

and...

Interior Ministry Suggests He May Comment From Russia

by Jason Ditz, November 01, 2013

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A letter from Edward Snowden to a German MP is making the rounds, and adding to speculation that Germany may call on the whistleblower as a witness in their ongoing investigation of NSA surveillance against German companies and government leaders.

Snowden appears willing to comment if he can do so safely, and while there has been some speculation about the prospect of him going to Germany to testify, a pledge to keep him safe from US extradition might be difficult to grant.

Still, Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich said that Germany would “find a way” if Snowden is indeed willing to comment, saying it was also possible he’d remain in Russia, where he has asylum, and provide testimony from there.

With its history of abusive surveillance states, Germany has taken the NSA scandals particularly seriously, and recent revelations that the NSA spent over a decade tapping German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s phone has sparked major controversy.

Naked Capitalism cross post from Washington's Blog....

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 2013

NSA Whistleblower: Government Failed to Stop Boston Bombing Because It Was Overwhelmed with Data from Mass Surveillance On Americans

Cross-Posted from Washington’s Blog.

We’ve extensively documented that mass surveillance does NOT help prevent terror attacks.

Top experts have said that treating everyone like a potential terrorist WEAKENS our ability to protect America.

The former head of the NSA’s global intelligence gathering operations – William Binney – says that the current spying program not only violates Americans’ privacy, but sucks up so much data that it INTERFERES with the government’s ability to catch bad guys.

Binney told Washington’s Blog:

The zone of suspects was for us limited to two degrees (hops). Beyond that increases the problem exponentially. So, three hops is going much too far.

(Explanation of degrees and hops).

In the following brief excerpt from an interview by PBS NewsHour, Binney explains that over-the-top spying actually interfered with the government’s ability to stop the Boston bombing:

Judy Woodruff: You know the government says that it is only doing this to keep us safe. This is the only way we can have that information at our fingertips when we then have a reason to believe that someone would do this country or its people harm.

Binney: That in my mind has been nonsense from the beginning. Because we had zero problem tracking all of these terrorists all along. We had no difficulty doing that.

And I left those principles in place at the NSA when I retired there. One was to use the 2 degree principle for zones of suspicion. That is, if a terrorist called someone in the U.S., that was the first degree from the terrorist. And the second degree was who that terrorist called inside the United States.

So far, all of the testimony I’ve been listening to by people down in D.C. about this program – and they refer to different cases they’ve been talking about, in terms of terrorists – everyone one fit into that zone of suspicion. None of them were outside it.

The rest of it means they’re collecting more data, making the haystack so much bigger so that’s making it more difficult to find the needles. That’s why they’re missing people, like the bombers in Boston.

Similarly, Israeli-American terrorism expert Barry Rubins points out:

What is most important to understand about the revelations of massive message interception by the U.S. government is this:

In counterterrorist terms, it is a farce. Basically the NSA, as one of my readers suggested, is the digital equivalent of the TSA strip-searching an 80 year-old Minnesota grandmothers rather than profiling and focusing on the likely terrorists.

There is a fallacy behind the current intelligence strategy of the United States, the collection of massive amounts of phone calls, emails, and even credit card expenditures, up to 3 billion phone calls a day alone, not to mention the government spying on the mass media. It is this:

The more quantity of intelligence, the better it is for preventing terrorism.

In the real, practical world this is—though it might seem counterintuitive—untrue.

***

And isn’t it absurd that the United States can’t finish a simple border fence to keep out potential terrorists, can’t stop a would-be terrorist in the U.S. army who gives a power point presentation on why he is about to shoot people (Major Nadal Hassan), can’t follow up on Russian intelligence warnings about Chechen terrorist contacts (the Boston bombing), or a dozen similar incidents must now collect every telephone call in the country?

***

It is not the quantity of material that counts but the need to locate and correctly understand the most vital material.

***

If one looks at the great intelligence failures of the past, these two points quickly become obvious. Take for example the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. U.S. naval intelligence had broken Japanese codes. They had the information needed to conclude the attack would take place. Yet a focus on the key to the problem was not achieved. The important messages were not read and interpreted; the strategic mindset of the leadership was not in place.

***

So what needs to be in place, again, is to focus on the highest priority material, to analyze correctly what is available, to have leaders accept it, and to act.

***

If, however, the material is almost limitless, that actually weakens a focus on the most needed intelligence regarding the most likely terrorist threats. Imagine, for example, going through billions of telephone calls even with high-speed computers rather than, say, following up a tip from Russian intelligence on a young Chechen man in Boston who is in contact with terrorists or, for instance, the communications between a Yemeni al-Qaida leader and a U.S. army major who is assigned as a psychiatrist to Fort Hood.

That is why the old system of getting warrants, focusing on individual email addresses, or sites, or telephones makes sense, at least if it is only used properly. Then those people who are communicating with known terrorists can be traced further. There are no technological magic spells.