US spy chief Clapper defends Prism and phone surveillance

[Peter Lemkin]

"Useful idiot" seems fair.

I don't disagree...but 'useful' to whom is the point.....I'm sure you agree, such are useful to those who would like to rule as under neo-feudalism....[i.e. such are not in any way 'useful' to the average person, nor to Truth and Justice, understanding how the World Polity really is run, exposing the crimes of the Oligarchy, nor State Secrets.] They are Useful to keep the status quo...which we desperately need to expose and then overthrow!

[David Guyatt]

A more than interesting twist on US intelligence about Syria from the indomitable Craig Murray:

The Troodos Conundrum

by craig on August 31, 2013 8:43 am in Uncategorized

The GCHQ listening post on Mount Troodos in Cyprus is arguably the most valued asset which the UK contributes to UK/US intelligence cooperation. The communications intercept agencies, GCHQ in the UK and NSA in the US, share all their intelligence reports (as do the CIA and MI6). Troodos is valued enormously by the NSA. It monitors all radio, satellite and microwave traffic across the Middle East, ranging from Egypt and Eastern Libya right through to the Caucasus. Even almost all landline telephone communication in this region is routed through microwave links at some stage, picked up on Troodos.
Troodos is highly effective the jewel in the crown of British intelligence. Its capacity and efficiency, as well as its reach, is staggering. The US do not have their own comparable facility for the Middle East. I should state that I have actually been inside all of this facility and been fully briefed on its operations and capabilities, while I was head of the FCO Cyprus Section in the early 1990s. This is fact, not speculation.
It is therefore very strange, to say the least, that John Kerry claims to have access to communications intercepts of Syrian military and officials organising chemical weapons attacks, which intercepts were not available to the British Joint Intelligence Committee.
On one level the explanation is simple. The intercept evidence was provided to the USA by Mossad, according to my own well placed source in the Washington intelligence community. Intelligence provided by a third party is not automatically shared with the UK, and indeed Israel specifies it should not be.
But the inescapable question is this. Mossad have nothing comparable to the Troodos operation. The reported content of the conversations fits exactly with key tasking for Troodos, and would have tripped all the triggers. How can Troodos have missed this if Mossad got it? The only remote possibility is that all the conversations went on a purely landline route, on which Mossad have a physical wire tap, but that is very unlikely in a number of ways - not least nowadays the purely landline route.
Israel has repeatedly been involved in the Syrian civil war, carrying out a number of illegal bombings and missile strikes over many months. This absolutely illegal activity by Israel- which has killed a great many civilians, including children - has brought no condemnation at all from the West. Israel has now provided "intelligence" to the United States designed to allow the United States to join in with Israel's bombing and missile campaign.
The answer to the Troodos Conundrum is simple. Troodos did not pick up the intercepts because they do not exist. Mossad fabricated them. John Kerry's "evidence" is the shabbiest of tricks. More children may now be blown to pieces by massive American missile blasts. It is nothing to do with humanitarian intervention. It is, yet again, the USA acting at the behest of Israel.

[Magda Hassan]

Very interesting. I noticed this the other day but was otherwise distracted with resurrecting the forum. Craig makes perfect sense. The whole CW attack does not make sense. I'll copy this to the Syrian thread as well.

[David Guyatt]

The Guardian:

US intelligence chiefs urge Congress to preserve surveillance programs

Officials refuse to say in Senate testimony whether cell site data had ever been used to pinpoint an individual's location
Paul Lewis and Dan Roberts in Washington
theguardian.com, Thursday 26 September 2013 23.08 BST

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Senator Dianne Feinstein speaks with director of national intelligence James Clapper, NSA director general Keith Alexander and deputy attorney general James Cole. Photograph: James Reed/Reuters
US intelligence chiefs used an appearance before Congress on Thursday to urge lawmakers not to allow public anger over the extent of government surveillance to result in changes to the law that would impede them from preventing terrorist attacks.
General Keith Alexander, the director of the National Security Agency, conceded that disclosures by the whistleblower Edward Snowden "will change how we operate". But he urged senators, who are weighing a raft of reforms, to preserve the foundational attributes of a program that allows officials to collect the phone data of millions of American citizens.
In testy exchanges at the Senate intelligence committee, Alexander and the director of national intelligence, James Clapper, refused to say on the record where the NSA had ever sought to trawl cell site data, which pinpoints the location of individuals via their phones.
They were challenged by Democratic senator Ron Wyden who, as a member of the committee, has for years been privy to classified briefings that he cannot discuss in public. "You talk about the damage that has been done by disclosures, but any government official who thought this would never be disclosed was ignoring history. The truth always manages to come out," he said.
"The NSA leadership built an intelligence data collection system that repeatedly deceived the American people. Time and time again the American people were told one thing in a public forum, while intelligence agencies did something else in private."
Wyden and his fellow Democrat Mark Udall used the public hearing to press the intelligence chiefs on aspects of the top-secret surveillance infrastructure.
Asked by Udall whether it was the NSA's aim to collect the records of all Americans, Alexander replied: "I believe it is in the nation's best interest to put all the phone records into a lockbox yes."
He would not be drawn on any past attempts or plans to store cell site data for security reasons. The NSA director evaded repeated questions from Wyden over whether the NSA had either collection of cell site phone data, or planned to do so. Alexander eventually replied: "What I don't want to do senator is put out in an unclassified form anything that is classified."
Alexander and Clapper also strongly criticised the media for over its publication of Snowden's disclosures, which they suggested had been misleading. Neither of the intelligence chiefs, nor any of the senators who criticised media reporting, indicated which news organisations or particular reports were misleading, or in what way.
Alexander said that while recent disclosures were likely to impact public perceptions of the NSA and "change how we operate", any diminution of the intelligence community's capabilities risked terrorist attacks on US territory.
He told the committee that over one seven-day period this month, 972 people had been killed in terrorist attacks in Kenya, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen and Iraq. "We need these programs to ensure we don't have those same statistics here," he said.
Alexander said that violations of the rules governing surveillance powers were not common and "with very rare exceptions, are unintentional". Clapper also admitted to violations, saying "on occasion, we've made mistakes, some quite significant", but stressed those were inadvertent and the result of human or technical errors.
In a joint written submission with James Cole, the deputy attorney general, who also gave evidence to the committee, they said they were "open to a number of ideas that have been proposed in various forms" relating to the routine trawl of millions phone records of Americans under section 215 of the Patriot Act.
The trio said they would consider statutory restrictions on their ability to query the data they gather and disclosing publicly how often they use the system. However, there was no suggestion in the written submission that they would contemplate any infringement on the bulk collection and storage of the phone records, a proposal contained in bills being put forward in the House of Representatives and Senate.
"To be clear, we believe the manner in which the bulk telephony metadata collection program has been carried out is lawful, and existing oversight mechanisms protect both privacy and security," they stated.
The trio said they were also open to discussing legislation under which the foreign intelligence surveillance (Fisa) court would at its discretion solicit the views of some kind of independent figure in cases that raise broader civil liberties issues.
This falls short of the draft legislation calling for the appointment of a "constitutional advocate", which Wyden, Udall and other senators are pushing for in a bipartisan bill unveiled on Wednesday night.
At the start of the hearing, the Democratic chair of the committee, Diane Feinstein, outlined a separate bill she is introducing with Republican vice-chairman Saxby Chambliss.
Their proposed legislation broadly echoes the small tweaks the intelligence establishment says it will consider, but does not go further. Feinstein said their bill would change but preserve the program of collecting and storing phone records of Americans under section 215 of the Patriot Act.
She echoed criticisms of the media reporting of Snowden disclosures, said she was confident NSA surveillance programs were "lawful, effective and they are conducted under careful oversight". She asserted that the program by which intelligence officials secretly collect millions of phone metadata, and can be used to provide a detailed breakdown of an individual's movements life, was not a form of covert monitoring. "Much of the press has called this as surveillance program," she said. "It is not."
Chambliss said that "while we are here in large part because of the Snowden leaks", they had caused huge damage to the US and its interests and "would ultimately claim lives", something he said Snowden should be held to account for.
Feinstein and Chambliss are the two members of Congress who arguably have the biggest mandate to hold the intelligence establishment to account.
Their bill would not limit the collection of phone records, but rather introduce some restrictions on when intelligence officials are permitted to search the data, and requirements of the intelligence agencies to disclose how often they use the program.
It would also partly widen the powers of the NSA, allowing laws that authorise foreign spying to be continued for a period of time after targets enter US territory.
Mid-hearing on Thursday, Feinstein read out excerpts from an email she said she had received on her BlackBerry from the Obama administration, pertaining to the wording that might be used to describe a special advocate lawyer in the Fisa court.
Other senators on the committee criticised media reporting and argued the essence of the surveillance apparatus should be left in place. Republican senator Dan Coats said journalists were throwing "raw meat out there", suggesting the reporting was misleading the public. He cautioned against overreacting "for fear of the public saying, 'Oh, that headline makes me nervous.'"
Democrat Jay Rockefeller said that public misunderstandings risked dismantling a system of surveillance that has taken a decade to construct in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. "You don't build a Roman fort and then build another one next door because you've made a mistake," he said.
Clapper responded that the agencies were finding ways to "counter the popular narrative".

[Peter Lemkin]

NSA Chief: All Phone Records Should Be in Searchable "Lockbox"


[Yeah, YOUR BOX..&..YOUR KEY!::]



Top U.S. intelligence officials appeared before the Senate Intelligence Committee Thursday to defend the National Security Agency's sweeping collection of domestic phone logs. The NSA's director, General Keith Alexander, dodged questions from Democratic Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon about whether the NSA had used cell phone signals to collect data on the location of U.S. citizens. General Alexander also faced questions from Democratic Senator Mark Udall of Colorado.

Sen. Mark Udall: "Is it the goal of the NSA to collect the phone records of all Americans? You talk about building a haystack, you want the haystack to be the ultimate size."

General Keith Alexander: "I believe it is in the nation's best interest to put all the phone records into a lockbox that we can search when the nation needs to do it, yes. And the way we do it, and the way we comply would ensure better security for this nation."
::::willynilly::::

Senators Udall and Wyden are backing a bill that would ban the NSA's massive collection of phone records. Democratic Sen. Diane Feinstein, the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss of Georgia are drafting a rival bill that would preserve the NSA program.

[David Guyatt]

A nice little abuse of power - always one of several things to beware of when governments spy on individuals and break the law.

NSA employee spied on nine women without detection, internal file showsTwelve cases of unauthorised surveillance documented in letter from NSA's inspector general to senator Chuck Grassley


Paul Lewis in Washington
theguardian.com, Friday 27 September 2013 22.08 BST

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General Keith Alexander said abuse of the NSA's powerful monitoring tools were 'with very rare exception' unintentional mistakes. Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images
A National Security Agency employee was able to secretly intercept the phone calls of nine foreign women for six years without ever being detected by his managers, the agency's internal watchdog has revealed.
The unauthorised abuse of the NSA's surveillance tools only came to light after one of the women, who happened to be a US government employee, told a colleague that she suspected the man with whom she was having a sexual relationship was listening to her calls.
The case is among 12 documented in a letter from the NSA's inspector general to a leading member of Congress, who asked for a breakdown of cases in which the agency's powerful surveillance apparatus was deliberately abused by staff. One relates to a member of the US military who, on the first day he gained access to the surveillance system, used it to spy on six email addresses belonging to former girlfriends.
The letter, from Dr George Ellard, only lists cases that were investigated and later "substantiated" by his office. But it raises the possibility that there are many more cases that go undetected. In a quarter of the cases, the NSA only found out about the misconduct after the employee confessed.
It also reveals limited disciplinary action taken against NSA staff found to have abused the system. In seven cases, individuals guilty of abusing their powers resigned or retired before disciplinary action could be taken. Two civilian employees kept their jobs and, it appears, their security clearance and escaped with only a written warning after they were found to have conducted unauthorised interceptions.
The abuses technically breaches of the law did not result in a single prosecution, even though more than half of the cases were referred to the Department of Justice. The DoJ did not respond to a request for information about why no charges were brought.
The NSA's director, Gen Keith Alexander, referred to the 12 cases in testimony to a congressional hearing on Thursday. He told senators on the intelligence committee that abuse of the NSA's powerful monitoring tools were "with very rare exception" unintentional mistakes.
"The press claimed evidence of thousands of privacy violations. This is false and misleading," he said.
"According to NSA's independent inspector general, there have been only 12 substantiated case of willful violation over 10 years. Essentially, one per year."
He added: "Today, NSA has a privacy compliance program any leader of a large, complex organization would be proud of."
However, the small number cases depicted in the inspector general's letter, which was published by Republican senator Chuck Grassley, could betray a far larger number that NSA managers never uncovered.
One of the cases emerged in 2011 ,when an NSA employee based abroad admitted during a lie-detector case that he had obtained details about his girlfriend's telephone calls "out of curiosity". He retired last year.
In a similar case, from 2005, an NSA employee admitted to obtaining his partner's phone data to determine whether she was "involved" with any foreign government officials. In a third, a female NSA employee said she listened to calls on an unknown foreign telephone number she discovered stored on his cell phone, suspecting he "had been unfaithful".
In another case, from two years ago, which was only discovered during an investigation another matter, a woman employee of the agency confessed that she had obtained information about the phone of "her foreign-national boyfriend and other foreign nationals". She later told investigators she often used the NSA's surveillance tools to investigate the phone numbers of people she met socially, to ensure they were "not shady characters".
The case of the male NSA employee who spied on nine women occurred between 1998 and 2003. The letter states that the member of staff twice collected communications of an American, and "tasked nine telephone numbers of female foreign nationals, without a valid foreign intelligence purpose, and listened to collected phone conversations".

[Magda Hassan]

Here are the FOI documents for the above post
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/...ocument/p1

[Peter Lemkin]

NSA Mapping Social Networking of Americans






The latest disclosures from the leaks of Edward Snowden show the National Security Agency is mapping out the social media connections of an unknown number of American targets. Using phone metadata and online activity, the NSA has created intricate graphs showing an individual's social networking and extensive personal information including whereabouts, religious or political activity, and private behavior. The mapping has been in effect since 2010, when the NSA lifted restrictions that barred the targeting of Americans. The NSA says the aim is to uncover ties between Americans and foreign terror suspects.

[David Guyatt]

Now there's a quandry for the electronic spooks.

I can't see civil rights groups winning, because state security is always regarded as above the law (even if it legally, isn't), but I can't fault their logic in trying.

GCHQ faces legal challenge in European court over online privacyCampaigners accuse British spy agency of breaching privacy of millions in UK and Europe via online surveillance


Matthew Taylor and Nick Hopkins
The Guardian, Thursday 3 October 2013 14.57 BST
Jump to comments (398)
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GCHQ's offices in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire. Photograph: GCHQ/British Ministry of Defence/EPA
The UK spy agency GCHQ is facing a legal challenge in the European courts over claims that its mass online surveillance programmes have breached the privacy of tens of millions of people across the UK and Europe.
Three campaign groups Big Brother Watch, the Open Rights Group and English PEN together with the German internet activist Constanze Kurz, have filed papers at the European court of human rights alleging that the collection of vast amounts of data, including the content of emails and social media messages, by Britain's spy agencies is illegal.
The move follows revelations by the US whistleblower Edward Snowden that GCHQ has the capacity to collect more than 21 petabytes of data a day equivalent to sending all the information in all the books in the British Library 192 times every 24 hours.
Daniel Carey, solicitor at Deighton Pierce Glynn, which is taking the case, said: "We are asking the court to declare that unrestrained surveillance of much of Europe's internet communications by the UK government, and the outdated regulatory system that has permitted this, breach our rights to privacy."
Files leaked by Snowden show GCHQ and its American counterpart, the National Security Agency, for which he worked, have developed capabilities to undertake industrial-scale surveillance of the web and mobile phone networks.
This is done by trawling the servers of internet companies and collecting raw data from the undersea cables that carry web traffic.
Two of the programmes, Prism and Tempora, can sweep up vast amounts of private data, which is shared between the two countries.
The revelations have led to widespread concern in Europe and the US about the power of the UK and US security services to gather online communications. Last week Lord King, a former Conservative defence secretary, called for a review of the laws used to justify surveillance and interception techniques.
Nick Pickles, director of Big Brother Watch, one of the groups bringing the legal challenge, said the system of oversight was no longer fit for purpose.
"The laws governing how internet data is accessed were written when barely anyone had broadband access and were intended to cover old-fashioned copper telephone lines," he said.
"Parliament did not envisage or intend those laws to permit scooping up details of every communication we send, including content, so it's absolutely right that GCHQ is held accountable in the courts for its actions."
The principal piece of legislation used by the UK government to oversee the collection of data is the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (Ripa). It has been in force since 2000 and is used by British intelligence to provide legal authority for the Tempora programme, which gives GCHQ, based in Cheltenham, the ability to tap into vast amounts of data carried by undersea internet cables. Separately, the Prism programme set up to help the US monitor traffic of potential suspects abroad was used by GCHQ to generate 197 intelligence reports
Jim Killock, executive director of Open Rights Group, said the extent of the UK and US surveillance created risks for everyone and placed "extreme degrees of power in the hands of secret agencies.
"This is made worse by the lack of democratic accountability and judicial oversight. People living across the UK, Europe, the USA and beyond need the courts to protect their rights and start the process of re-establishing public trust."
The legal challenge came as the Council of Europe passed a resolution calling for better protection for whistleblowers who reveal state wrongdoing.
A motion on "national security and access to information" debated on Wednesday said that while "legitimate, well-defined national security interests" were valid grounds for withholding information held by public authorities, access to information should be granted where "public interest in the information in question outweighs the authorities' interest in keeping it secret" including when such information "would make an important contribution to an ongoing public debate".
The campaigners' legal action will be funded through donations at Privacy Not Prism.

[Peter Lemkin]

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The NSA Deserves a Permanent Shutdown

By Norman Solomon [/TD]
[TD="width: 16%"][/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]







To the people in control of the Executive Branch, violating ourcivil liberties is an essential government service. So -- to ensuretotal fulfillment of Big Brother's vast responsibilities -- theNational Security Agency is insulated from any fiscaldisruption.
The NSA's surveillance programs are exempt from a governmentshutdown. With typical understatement, an unnamedofficial told TheHill that "a shutdown would be unlikely to affect core NSAoperations."
At the top of the federal government, even a brief shutdown of"core NSA operations" is unthinkable. But at the grassroots, apermanent shutdown of the NSA should be more than thinkable; weshould strive to make it achievable.
NSA documents, revealed by intrepid whistleblower EdwardSnowden, make clear what's at stake. In aword: democracy.
Wielded under the authority of the president, the NSA is themain surveillance tool of the U.S. government. For a dozen years,it has functioned to wreck our civil liberties. It's a tool thatshould not exist.


In this century, the institutional momentum of the NSA -- nowfueled by a $10.8 billion annualbudget -- has been moving so fast in such a wrongdirection that the agency seems unsalvageable from the standpointof civil liberties. Its core is lethal to democracy.
A big step toward shutting down the National Security Agencywould be to mobilize political pressure for closure ofthe new NSA complex that has beenunder construction in Bluffdale, Utah: a gargantuan repository for ostensibly privatecommunications.
During a PBS "NewsHour" interview that aired on August 1 , NSAwhistleblower William Binney pointed out that the Bluffdalefacility has a "massive amount of storage that could store allthese recordings and all the data being passed along the fiberopticnetworks of the world." He added: "I mean, you could store 100years of the world's communications here. That's for contentstorage. That's not for metadata."
The NSA's vacuum-cleaner collection of metadata is highlyintrusive, providing government snoops with vast information aboutpeople's lives. That's bad enough. But the NSA, using the latestdigital technology, is able to squirrel away the content oftelephone, e-mail and text communications -- in effect, "TiVo-ing"it all, available for later retrieval.
"Metadata, if you were doing it and putting it into the systemswe built, you could do it in a 12-by-20-foot room for the world,"Binney explained. "That's all the space you need. You don't need100,000 square feet of space that they have in Bluffdale to dothat. You need that kind of storage for content."
Already the NSA's Bluffdale complex in a remote area of Utah --seven times the size of the Pentagon -- is serving as an archiverepository for humungous quantities of "private" conversations thatthe agency has recorded and digitized.
Organizing sufficient political power to shut down the entireNational Security Agency may or may not be possible. But in anyevent, we should demand closure of the agency's mega-Orwelliancenter in Bluffdale. If you'd like to e-mailthat message to your senators and representative in Congress, clickhere.
"The U.S. government has gone further than any previousgovernment " in setting up machinery that satisfies certaintendencies that are in the genetic code of totalitarianism,"Jonathan Schell wrote in The Nation as thisfall began. "One is the ambition to invade personal privacy withoutcheck or possibility of individual protection. This was impossiblein the era of mere phone wiretapping, before the recent explosionof electronic communications -- before the cellphones that disclosethe whereabouts of their owners, the personal computers with theirmasses of personal data and easily penetrated defenses, the e-mailsthat flow through readily tapped cables and servers, thebiometrics, the street-corner surveillance cameras."
"But now," Schell continued, "to borrow the name of anintelligence program from the Bush years, "Total InformationAwareness' is technologically within reach. The Bush and Obamaadministrations have taken giant strides in this direction."
Those giant strides have stomped all over the Fourth Amendment,leaving it gasping for oxygen. That amendment now reads like aprofound articulation of opposition to present-day governmentsurveillance -- a declaration of principle that balks at thelockstep of perpetual war mentality and rote surrender of preciouscivil liberties. To acceptance of the NSA and what it stands for,we must say and say and say: No way. No way. Noway.

------------------------------------------------------

Glenn Greenwald, Jeremy Scahill Working On New NSA Revelations

AP | By By JENNY BARCHFIELD Posted: 09/28/2013 8:46 pm EDT






















RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) Two American journalists known for their investigations of the United States' government said Saturday they've teamed up to report on the National Security Agency's role in what one called a "U.S. assassination program."
The journalists provided no evidence of the purported U.S. program at the news conference, nor details of who it targeted.
Jeremy Scahill, a contributor to The Nation magazine and the New York Times best-selling author of "Dirty Wars," said he will be working with Glenn Greenwald, the Rio-based journalist who has written stories about U.S. surveillance programs based on documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
"The connections between war and surveillance are clear. I don't want to give too much away but Glenn and I are working on a project right now that has at its center how the National Security Agency plays a significant, central role in the U.S. assassination program," said Scahill, speaking to moviegoers in Rio de Janeiro, where the documentary based on his book made its Latin American debut at the Rio Film Festival.
"There are so many stories that are yet to be published that we hope will produce 'actionable intelligence,' or information that ordinary citizens across the world can use to try to fight for change, to try to confront those in power," said Scahill.
"Dirty Wars" the film, directed by Richard Rowley, traces Scahill's investigations into the Joint Special Operations Command, or JSOC. The movie, which won a prize for cinematography at the Sundance Film Festival, follows Scahill as he hopscotches around the globe, from Afghanistan to Yemen to Somalia, talking to the families of people killed in the U.S. strikes.
Neither Scahill nor Greenwald, who also appeared at the film festival's question and answer panel, provided many details about their joint project.


Greenwald has been making waves since the first in a series of stories on the NSA spying program appeared in Britain's Guardian newspaper in June. Last week, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff postponed a scheduled state dinner with Obama after television reports to which Greenwald had contributed revealed that American spy programs had aggressively targeted the Brazilian government and private citizens.
Rousseff railed against the U.S. surveillance during her address to the United Nations General Assembly earlier this week.
Both Scahill and Greenwald applauded Rousseff's reactions to the revelations, but they warned that U.S. spying could be replaced espionage by another government if care isn't taken.
"The really important thing to realize is the desire for surveillance is not a uniquely American attribute," said Greenwald. "America has just devoted way more money and way more resources than anyone else to spying on the world.