Guarding and Post break story of the NSA's PRISM domestic spying

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants-nsa-data
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/06/nsa-phone-records-verizon-court-order

We know that some quasi-legal, mostly-secret spying programs were launched post-9/11 by the Bushies, and were continued/reauthorized by Obama. The Senate Intel. Cmte. has sent a letter to AG Holder expressing concern for the magnitude of domestic surveillance that our intel. infrastructure wants legal authority to conduct. They think that there is a major gulf between what Americans think the gov't is entitled to do, and what the gov't actually interprets their authority to allow.

The FISA (Foreign Intel. Surveil. Act) was recently reauthorized and grants the gov't the power to monitor int'l and non-American comm. But recently the Guardian and WP broke the story that the NSA has had a program called PRISM since 2007 that would basically grant them direct access to the data on the servers of major internet comm. companies like Microsoft, Skype, Google, Yahoo, and most recently Apple - for the purpose of domestic spying that FISA doesn't allow (they were tired of FISA's legal red tape too). And the program was conducted with basically zero oversight. This is all described in a PowerPoint training deck that was leaked (BTW the NSA makes really crappy slides). So far the NSA has not denied the legitimacy of that source.

The Director of Nat. Intel., James Clapper, has also not denied the existence of PRISM (and its $200M/year budget). In line with the Obama admin's "war on whistle-blowers", he lashed out that leaking the story would harm national security. Right, like how Jane Fonda helped the Viet Cong. By Clapper's own words, secret surveillance has foiled one (= 1, uno) domestic terror plot on record since the program started (target unknown, potential losses averted unknown). Democrats on the Senate Intel. Cmte. say they have no evidence that surveil. stopped any plots. So the benefit of the program is 0-1 plots stopped over 12 years. I don't think exposing the program is going to matter at all, except maybe compromise their surveil. budgets and autonomy. Also, what terrorist worth his weight in salt doesn't already know to "stay off their airwaves"?

Interestingly, the tech companies issued statements saying that they have no knowledge of PRISM, and do not give the gov't a backdoor to their servers. So either they are lying and actively colluded with the gov't, or the gov't broke a ton of laws and hacked into those companies totally discreetly (eat your heart out, China). I have no data to back this up, but my suspicion is the cyber security folks at those prestigious companies are a lot better than the hackers at the NSA. So the likelihood that Google would get caught with their pants down is low. But maybe those were the terms of the agreement: they would let the gov't snoop, but in return they get full denial and release of liability, so their users don't revolt and sue.

Another revelation is that the gov't got access to the "metadata" on Verizon's telco network. So they weren't actually eavesdropping without a warrant on calls, but instead knew which #s were talking to each other, when the calls were made, and what was the closest cell tower. Tracking and call patterns in other words. While that was probably clever by "Zero Dark Thirty" standards, I am not sure if it is legal to do it indiscriminately without probable cause.

This leak comes at a horrible time for Obama, who is about to sit down with Chinese leaders to chastise them for hacking US companies (we previously blogged about this). It kind of undermines his credibility and moral high ground when our gov't is caught hacking its own people and companies too.

What I don't understand is why Greenwald was permitted to publish these articles. I saw "Bourne"... isn't he supposed to get whacked in a London train station?

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He was on DN this morning.  Amy Goodman asked him, 'Are you concerned that you will be attacked for publishing such things?'  His response was basically, 'I'm emboldened by the attacks.  Let them attack me.'  Basically, he can't be silenced.  What are they going to do?  Out him?  Um, too late.  If i was boarding a plane and saw GG and Jeremy Scahill boarding, I would take a different plane....those two will very soon NOT be seen on MSM, is my guess.  GG will never be on Bill Maher after his calling Maher out for being an Islamophobe(and, he is).   These two are the heroes of our time.  Oh, add Bradley Manning and you got the makings of a superhero cartoon!

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Yeah the Manning case is interesting. He has already pleaded guilty to some major crimes, but the gov't wants to convict him for "aiding the enemy" (presumably his leaks helped Al Qaeda? Impossible to prove unless we have a smoking gun - which we don't). And they won't even accept all his prison time up to this point as time served, to reduce his remaining sentence (not to mention the torture).

But I think what makes him ineligible for hero status is his indiscriminate data dump to Wikileaks. At least with the Pentagon Papers, Ellsberg "edited" them and only leaked snippets of the docs that would tell the story with minimal exposure of gov't sources/processes (apart from the guilty parties). In Manning's case, he didn't even know all the stuff he was leaking, and just trusted Wikileaks to decide what was fit to print. I am glad that he exposed some horrible war crimes from Iraq that the gov't was trying to bury. But I think he also set back our peaceful State Dept. diplomatic efforts in other parts of the world. Clearly people like Rummy and Cheney have hurt this nation a lot worse than Manning ever could.

http://www.kqed.org/a/forum/R201306030900




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I don't know if it helps the moral high ground but the verizon thing was signed by a judge.

I just have a hard time understanding who, anywhere in the us, thinks this should be an ok thing to do.  Who thinks it makes sense to have a secret court issue secret orders unreviewable and unchallengeable by those it affects?  And it always begs the question what are they doing we DON'T know about?

Extra embarrassing with a nominally dem president in charge.

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Yeah, though a judge also approved Bush's harsh interrogation and rendition policies too. Heck a judge ruled that Bush won the election. :)

As you said, lord knows WTF is going on that we don't know about. Makes those conspiracy guys a little more credible at times. It was embarrassing to see Obama in Si Valley today defending the programs like a stooge. Same argument with the drone kills: TRUST us that we are making these decisions carefully (in secret) and we are protecting you from the bad men. Either Obama doesn't truly believe that and is just delivering lines that will please the defense establishment (which makes him a coward, appeaser, and poor leader), or he really believes it (which makes him dumber and less moral that I previously gave him credit for). Nixon would have loved the 21st Century.

M sent me this which was thought-provoking: http://m.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2007/11/just-asking/306288/?mrefid=twitter

Thanks, I haven't seen this before. I think the author has a point. 9/11 was a freaking OUTLIER. Yes the stakes are higher now with WMDs and the borderless global world, but even an event as horrific as 9/11 was not a society-ender (we'll it was... for Iraq). "Sacrifices for freedom" are often much smaller than that, and would be even smaller if our brash and unjust foreign and economic policies didn't piss off so many. Even today, Obama said "We can't have 100% security and 100% freedom." It is a false choice as many have said (http://www.kqed.org/a/forum/R201306070900). But we're NEVER going to have 100% security, even if we have 0% freedom. Random violence and tragic accidents are part of the human condition, even in the Utopia of Scandinavia (Brevik shooting, car accidents with reindeer, suicides inspired by 6 months of darkness). Americans are hysterical and selfish, and they don't want to fear that one day they may be the victim of a crazy bomber. So they endorse all these stupid policies to just "feel safer". The soccer mom philosophy of "I'll do anything to protect my kids", even if that means ironically supporting policies that put many other no-less-worthy people's kids in danger. And we wonder why they hate us.

Strangely this line of thinking doesn't apply to the gun debate, where the opposite psychology reigns: freedom is the precious thing worth dying for (or letting children die for), where thousands more brown-skinned youth have to be sacrificed each year just so said soccer mom's husband can dream about stopping a home invasion (perpetrated by Mookie Hernandez) with his Bushmaster. And in the gun debate, there can be no gray area; limitless magazines and no paper trails of gun purchases. Any encroachment on that is fascist tyranny. It's not like the constant pushing-of-the-envelope with the privacy-security debate as the tech evolves (that has gone on since the times of J. Edgar), where it's "OK" to secretly gather metadata, but not actual telephony content. And we promise to not cross that line. It's OK to kill Americans without trial, as long as they're overseas and saying hateful things. But we won't go past that, trust us.

Should we find new ways to use technology in uncontroversial ways to make our society safer (not just from terrorism, but from car accidents, sickness, etc.)? Certainly. Should we have a debate on when other priorities need to trump privacy? Sure. So let's talk it out in public rather than let a few scheming powerful men make all the decisions in secret, because we're too scared to live up to our civic duty.