In 2009, the FISA Court Shut Down an NSA Program for 6 Months Because It Had "Frequently and Systemically" Violated the Rules Last month we learned that in 2011 a FISA judge slammed the NSA for "the third instance in less than three years" in which an NSA surveillance program had been misrepresented to the court. Today, the Obama administration released a set of documents that describes one of the previous instances. It involves the NSA's collection of phone records, which are supposed to be governed by strict minimization procedures that prevent analysts from illegally accessing the records of U.S. persons who are not reasonably suspected of terrorist ties. But it turned out that for three years, from 2006 to 2009, NSA had been routinely breaking its own rules; had been routinely providing false affirmations to the court; and apparently had no one on their staff who even understood how their own systems worked. Here is Judge Reggie Walton's conclusion: Josh Gerstein has more details here.
NSA surveillance: The rest of the Snowden files should be destroyed Photo by the Guardian via Getty Images Privacy is fundamental in an open democracy. Without privacy, there is no democracy. Security is also fundamental. Edward Snowden’s leaks revealed that America’s and Britain’s signal intelligence agencies are capable of intercepting vast amounts of Internet traffic, that they have developed sophisticated data-mining tools, that the agencies cooperate with the private sector in their collection effort, that they spy on allies, that the government’s code breakers have cracked encryption that was previously considered safe—and more. The New York Times and the Guardian justify this drip-drip of ongoing intelligence revelations with "the value of a public debate." The revelations have had three major benefits. The second benefit follows from the first: The public is learning. Thirdly, tech companies now take security more seriously. So what about the costs and the downsides of the revelations? There are several items on the list.
Docs: Officials misused US surveillance program SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Government officials for nearly three years accessed data on thousands of domestic phone numbers they shouldn't have and then misrepresented their actions to a secret spy court to reauthorize the government's surveillance program, documents released Tuesday show. The government's explanation points to an enormous surveillance infrastructure with such incredible power that even the National Security Agency doesn't fully know how to properly use it: Officials told a judge in 2009 that the system is so large and complicated that "there was no single person who had a complete technical understanding" of it. The documents, which the Obama administration was compelled to release as part of a lawsuit by a civil liberties group, show that National Security Agency analysts routinely exceeded their mission to track only phone numbers with reasonable connections to terrorism. "This report was not sufficiently detailed to allay the court's concerns," Walton wrote.
Gems Mined from the NSA Documents and FISA Court Opinions Released Today Today, in response to Freedom of Information Act lawsuits, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released hundreds of pages of documents about the NSA telephone call record program. The documents primarily concern events in 2009, when the FISA court first learned that the NSA had been misusing its phone records surveillance program for years. We're still reviewing the documents, but here are a few particularly interesting items we've uncovered so far. Clapper's Continued Trouble with the Truth On June 6, just days after the Guardian newspaper published the first of many articles on NSA spying, Director of National Intelligence Clapper attempted to reassure the public that the NSA telephone record program was limited and restrained. Documents released today show this to be false. The Search for a Basis for Searching The Court noted that, nevertheless, the spying was approved, based on the Court's confidence in the NSA's assurances of a good process and strict controls. Gen.
Johns Hopkins and the Case of the Missing NSA Blog Post The university, which works closely with the NSA, apologizes to a professor after he was asked to remove his post. Sept. 10: This post has been updated [1]. Citing concerns about linking to classified material, Johns Hopkins University asked a professor this morning to remove a blog post [2] discussing last week’s revelations about the NSA’s efforts to break encryption. The post had linked to government documents [3] published by ProPublica, the Guardian, and the New York Times. Several hours later, after computer science professor Matthew Green tweeted about [4] the request, the university reversed itself. Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins, which is short drive from the NSA’s headquarters at Fort Meade, works closely with the spy agency. The university’s Applied Physics Laboratory, which employs [5] about 5,000 people, does many projects [6] with the NSA. Green said [7] on Twitter that he had “been told” that someone from the Applied Physics Laboratory had first flagged his blog post.
The Transnational Homeland Security State and the Decline of Democracy This is Part 4 in the series, “When Empire Hits Home.” Part 1: War, Racism and the Empire of PovertyPart 2: Western Civilization and the Economic Crisis: The Impoverishment of the Middle ClassPart 3: The Global Economic Crisis: Riots, Rebellion and Revolution As the western world is thrown into debt bondage and the harsh reality of the draconian economic ‘reforms’ to follow, a social collapse seems increasingly inevitable. We will soon witness the collapse of western ‘civilization’. The state structure itself will be altering; nation-states will become subordinate to supra-national continental governance structures and global governance entities simultaneously. As society collapses, the social foundations of the middle class will be pulled out from under their feet. When society collapses, the state will close itself over society to prevent the people from overtaking the levers of power and rebuilding a new social foundation. The US Commission on National Security in the 21st Century
Intellectuals as Subjects and Objects of Violence (Image: Jared Rodriguez / Truthout)Edward Snowden, Russ Tice, Thomas Drake, Jeremy Scahill, and Julian Assange, among others, have recently made clear what it means to embody respect for a public intellectual debate, moral witnessing and intellectual culture. They are not just whistle-blowers or disgruntled ex-employers but individuals who value ideas, think otherwise in order to act otherwise, and use the resources available to them to address important social issues with what might be called a fearsome sense of social responsibility and civic courage. Their anger is not treasonous or self-serving as some critics argue, it is the indispensable sensibility and righteous fury that fuels the meaning over what it means to take a moral and political stand and to continue the struggle to live in a substantive rather than fake democracy. Intellectuals of that older generation have become a rare breed who enriched public life.
New York City Council official urges Brooklyn College to hire 'professor from Israel' City Councilman Lew Fidler.(Photo via CSA-NYC.org) New York City Councilman Lew Fidler is still outraged over the Brooklyn College panel that took place in February on the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement. The Assistant Majority leader, an ardent advocate for Israel, has sent a letter to the City University of New York (CUNY) to suggest the hiring of a “professor from Israel” at Brooklyn College to correct what he calls bias in the school’s Political Science department, which co-sponsored the panel. His latest effort comes over three months after he sparked a furor by sending a separate letter suggesting that funding for Brooklyn College could be affected if the event featuring BDS proponents went through. The late April missive also blasts the CUNY report on the Brooklyn College panel, which found that while the planning and execution of the event went haywire, there was no anti-Semitism at hand–contrary to what Israel advocates alleged.
NSA shares raw intelligence including Americans' data with Israel | World news The National Security Agency routinely shares raw intelligence data with Israel without first sifting it to remove information about US citizens, a top-secret document provided to the Guardian by whistleblower Edward Snowden reveals. Details of the intelligence-sharing agreement are laid out in a memorandum of understanding between the NSA and its Israeli counterpart that shows the US government handed over intercepted communications likely to contain phone calls and emails of American citizens. The agreement places no legally binding limits on the use of the data by the Israelis. The disclosure that the NSA agreed to provide raw intelligence data to a foreign country contrasts with assurances from the Obama administration that there are rigorous safeguards to protect the privacy of US citizens caught in the dragnet. The deal was reached in principle in March 2009, according to the undated memorandum, which lays out the ground rules for the intelligence sharing.
Reporter Had To Decide If Snowden Leaks Were 'The Real Thing' hide captionAccording to Barton Gellman, Edward Snowden (above) specifically asked journalists not to make all the documents he leaked available to the public. Getty Images According to Barton Gellman, Edward Snowden (above) specifically asked journalists not to make all the documents he leaked available to the public. Since the beginning of June, Barton Gellman has been reporting on classified intelligence documents given to him by Edward Snowden, a former National Security Agency contractor. As a result of the Snowden leaks, Gellman and reporter Laura Poitras broke the story of the PRISM program, which mines data from nine U.S. Internet companies, including Microsoft, Yahoo, Google and Facebook. Gellman, who has been writing for The Washington Post, also found that the NSA has broken privacy rules or overstepped its legal authority thousands of times each year since Congress expanded the agency's powers in 2008. Interview Highlights On how he began corresponding with and trusting Snowden