US spy chief Clapper defends Prism and phone surveillance

[Peter Lemkin]

Revelations of an alleged programme to tap into servers of nine internet firms were "reprehensible", he said.
....
The director of US national intelligence issued a strong-worded statement late on Thursday, after the UK's Guardian newspaper said a secret court order had required phone company Verizon to hand over its records to the National Security Agency (NSA) on an "ongoing daily basis".

Oh, so it is the revelation of the massive government spy programme that Orwell could only dream of that is reprehensible not the daily and ongoing massive Orwellian spying programme itself.

Would be funny, were it not some of the last nails in America's coffin as a Democratic State under Rule of Law with Rights and Freedoms. Stalin or Hitler and their ilk would have given anything for a system like this....and would have also punished only the disclosure of it. If this doesn't start riots, I give up on my countrypersons and they get what they didn't fight against. While most of us here on this Forum have long known that exactly this was going on, now the government admits it and the reaction......underwhelming IMHO.

[Peter Lemkin]

Obama Asks Military to Draw Up Plans for Offensive Overseas Cyber-Strikes

Glenn Greenwald who broke the phone and internet spying stories this week has a new exposé … this time on offensive cyber-warfare:

Barack Obama has ordered his senior national security and intelligence officials to draw up a list of potential overseas targets for US cyber-attacks, a top secret presidential directive obtained by the Guardian reveals.
***
An intelligence source with extensive knowledge of the National Security Agency's systems told the Guardian … "We hack everyone everywhere. We like to make a distinction between us and the others. But we are in almost every country in the world."
***
The full classified directive repeatedly emphasizes that all cyber-operations must be conducted in accordance with US law and only as a complement to diplomatic and military options. But it also makes clear how both offensive and defensive cyber operations are central to US strategy.
Under the heading "Policy Reviews and Preparation", a section marked "TS/NF" top secret/no foreign states: "The secretary of defense, the DNI [Director of National Intelligence], and the director of the CIA … shall prepare for approval by the president through the National Security Advisor a plan that identifies potential systems, processes and infrastructure against which the United States should establish and maintain OCEO capabilities…" The deadline for the plan is six months after the approval of the directive.
The directive provides that any cyber-operations "intended or likely to produce cyber effects within the United States" require the approval of the president, except in the case of an "emergency cyber action". When such an emergency arises, several departments, including the department of defense, are authorized to conduct such domestic operations without presidential approval.
Obama further authorized the use of offensive cyber attacks in foreign nations without their government's consent whenever "US national interests and equities" require such nonconsensual attacks. It expressly reserves the right to use cyber tactics as part of what it calls "anticipatory action taken against imminent threats".
The directive makes multiple references to the use of offensive cyber attacks by the US military.

Greenwald and others have long reported that the Obama administration claims the right to bejudge, jury and executioner in both drone assassinations and offensive cyber attacks.Greenwald also reports that the head of the cyber command is the NSA boss … the same guyresponsible for much of the spying we've been hearing about:

In January, the Pentagon announced a major expansion of its Cyber Command Unit, under the command of General Keith Alexander, who is also the director of the NSA. That unit is responsible for executing both offensive and defensive cyber operations.

(There are other overlaps and interconnections between spying and warfare as well.)

The War Comes Home

Offensive cyber operations are not only occurring overseas …The Department of Defense has long waged cyber-war against Americans by censoring and manipulating social media and other websites. More proof here and here.This is not entirely surprising, given that:

• Programs which the government claims are aimed at foreign entities have long been used against American citizens living in the United States
  

• The "war on terror" has come home. If the government claims the power to assassinate and indefinitely detain American citizens living on U.S. soil … it' s not going to hesitate in targeting them for propaganda and cyber-warfare
  

• The government has long sought to spread propaganda through mainstream media, video games, movies, television, and every other popular medium. Famed Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein says the CIA bought and paid for many successful journalists. See also this New York Times piece, this essay by the Independent, this speech by one of the premier writers on journalism, and this and this roundup. And the CIA is investing in technology which lets them cut out the middle man altogether … by having a computer write news stories
  

• On the other hand, real reporters who criticize those in power are being harassed, targeted and smeared
  

• Government agencies are scouring the Web for any critical comments about them, actively manipulating social media for propaganda purposes, and to help the too big to fail businesses compete against smaller businesses (and here), and to promote viewpoints which havenothing to do with keeping us safe
  

[Magda Hassan]

Revelations of an alleged programme to tap into servers of nine internet firms were "reprehensible", he said.
....
The director of US national intelligence issued a strong-worded statement late on Thursday, after the UK's Guardian newspaper said a secret court order had required phone company Verizon to hand over its records to the National Security Agency (NSA) on an "ongoing daily basis".

Oh, so it is the revelation of the massive government spy programme that Orwell could only dream of that is reprehensible not the daily and ongoing massive Orwellian spying programme itself.

Would be funny, were it not some of the last nails in America's coffin as a Democratic State under Rule of Law with Rights and Freedoms. Stalin or Hitler and their ilk would have given anything for a system like this....and would have also punished only the disclosure of it. If this doesn't start riots, I give up on my countrypersons and they get what they didn't fight against. While most of us here on this Forum have long known that exactly this was going on, now the government admits it and the reaction......underwhelming IMHO.

Puts the Stasi to shame. Where are all those people who used to write about them? Why are't they doing it now?

[Peter Lemkin]

Oh, so it is the revelation of the massive government spy programme that Orwell could only dream of that is reprehensible not the daily and ongoing massive Orwellian spying programme itself.

Would be funny, were it not some of the last nails in America's coffin as a Democratic State under Rule of Law with Rights and Freedoms. Stalin or Hitler and their ilk would have given anything for a system like this....and would have also punished only the disclosure of it. If this doesn't start riots, I give up on my countrypersons and they get what they didn't fight against. While most of us here on this Forum have long known that exactly this was going on, now the government admits it and the reaction......underwhelming IMHO.

Puts the Stasi to shame. Where are all those people who used to write about them? Why are't they doing it now?

911 changed everything [along with the PRE-written and ready to go unPatriot Act]! The greatest false-flag op and psyop ever! So many 'buy' the Big Lies of the need for a 'war on terror' and all the 'sacrifices' needed to achieve 'victory - [i.e. no more freedoms, democracy, privacy, rights, rule of law, civil authority....et al.] - they have caved in to the FASCISM and the LIES. I begin to loose hope for my beloved Country...as the Sheeple don't even bleat, let alone rebel!

[Peter Lemkin]

Facebook and Google insist they did not know of Prism surveillance program

Larry Page and Mark Zuckerberg sharply deny knowledge of Prism until Thursday even as Obama confirms program's existence
Mark Zuckerberg called the press reports about the existence of Prism 'outrageous'. Photograph: Robert Galbraith/Reuters

America's tech giants continued to deny any knowledge of a giant government surveillance programme called Prism, even as presidentBarack Obama confirmed the scheme's existence Friday.
With their credibility about privacy issues in sharp focus, all the technology companies said to be involved in the program issued remarkably similar statements.
All said they did not allow the government "direct access" to their systems, all said they had never heard of the Prism program, and all called for greater transparency.
In a blogpost titled 'What the…?' Google co-founder Larry Page and chief legal officer David Drummond said the "level of secrecy" around US surveillance procedures was undermining "freedoms we all cherish."
"First, we have not joined any program that would give the US government or any other government direct access to our servers. Indeed, the US government does not have direct access or a 'back door' to the information stored in our data centers. We had not heard of a program called Prism until yesterday," they wrote.
"Second, we provide user data to governments only in accordance with the law. Our legal team reviews each and every request, and frequently pushes back when requests are overly broad or don't follow the correct process."
The Google executives said they were also "very surprised" to learn of the government order made to obtain data from Verizon, first disclosed by the Guardian. "Any suggestion that Google is disclosing information about our users' internet activity on such a scale is completely false," they wrote.
Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO of Facebook, described the press reports about Prism as "outrageous". He insisted that the Facebook was not part of any program to give the US government direct access to its servers.
He said: "Facebook is not and has never been part of any program to give the US or any other government direct access to our servers. We have never received a blanket request or court order from any government agency asking for information or metadata in bulk, like the one Verizon reportedly received. And if we did, we would fight it aggressively. We hadn't even heard of Prism before yesterday."
Zuckerberg also called for greater transparency. "We strongly encourage all governments to be much more transparent about all programs aimed at keeping the public safe. It's the only way to protect everyone's civil liberties and create the safe and free society we all want over the long term."
Yahoo said: "We do not provide the government with direct access to our servers, systems, or network."
The leaked National Security Agency (NSA) document obtained by the Guardian claims Prism operates with the "assistance of communications providers in the US".
The document names AOL, Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, PalTalk and Yahoo and gives dates when they "joined" the scheme, aimed at intercepting data from people outside the US.'' The presentation talks of "legally compelled collection" of data.
All the companies involved have now denied knowledge of the scheme to the Guardian.
In one slide, the presentation identifies two types of data collection: Upstream and Prism. Upstream involves the collection of communications on "fibre cables and infrastructure as data flows past." Prism involves: "Collection directly from the servers of these US service providers: Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, Apple."
Obama confirmed the existence of the scheme Friday and said Congress was "fully apprised" of the situation and that it was being conducted legally with a "whole range of safeguards involved".
But despite Obama's acknowledgment, senior figures said they remained puzzled and surprised by the news. Speaking off the record one said their company regularly complied with subpoenas for information but had never allowed "collection directly" from their servers.
Some speculated that the wording of the document was incorrect or that the author had over-hyped the scheme.
Security experts and civil liberty figures were less convinced. "I was assuming that these tech companies were just lying," said security guru Bruce Schneier. "That's the most obvious explanation."
"Could it possibly be that there's a department within these companies that hides this from the executives? Maybe," he said. "I don't know, we don't know. This points to the problem here. There's so much freaking secrecy that we don't know enough to even know what is going on."
He said he was not surprised by the news. "There are no surprises here. We all knew what was going on and now they have finally admitted it."
"The NSA would not have done this surreptitiously, they want the tech companies on their side," said Jameel Jaffer, director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). "I can't make sense of their statements at all."
He said it was clear that tech companies in general were more than happy to co-operate with the US authorities and said he was puzzled why there seemed to be such a gap between the two sides' story.
Ali Reza Manouchehri, CEO and co-founder of MetroStar Systems, an IT consultant that works closely with government agencies, said: "There are situations that come up where they have to communicate with the security agencies. At the end of the day they are working in the interest of national security."
"I can't comment on what's going on inside the company. It's hard for me to believe that Google doesn't know," he said. "It is either transparent or it is surreptitious. It is hard for me to believe that at this level, at this volume it is surreptitious." He said if the companies really did not know then "we have some serious issues."
The news has sparked widespread concern in the US. Nearly 20,000 people have signed a petition at Progressive Change Campaign Committee calling on Congress to hold investigations.

[Phil Dragoo]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]4830[/ATTACH]

[Jim Hackett II]

Send lawyers, guns and money, I heard somewhere.....can't recall where nor who said it.

Warren Zevon:Lawyers,Guns,and Money




Lyrics:

Well, I went home with the waitress
The way I always do
How was I to know
She was with the Russians, too

I was gambling in Havana
I took a little risk
Send lawyers, guns and money
Dad, get me out of this

I'm the innocent bystander
Somehow I got stuck
Between the rock and the hard place
And I'm down on my luck
And I'm down on my luck
And I'm down on my luck

Now I'm hiding in Honduras
I'm a desperate man
Send lawyers, guns and money
The shit has hit the fan

Send lawyers, guns and money...

They are busted.
At first James Bamford said in Puzzle Palace a spy shop for domestic ideas MAY NOT be a good idea in a Democratic Republic.
Each of his "expose" books has put forth a stronger version of questioning the existence of the NSA deployed against American Citizens
not guilty of anything.
So the spook approved version is released. And we are supposed to presume the NSA and etc. are now restrained by policy.
MSM still only repeating "You have the freedom to do as we tell you. You are free to do as we tell you. Go back to sleep AmeriKKKa."
There is never ever a point in asking a corrupt Spook anything, They will only lie to you. You will get NO straight answers.

I ain't buying it for a second.

Thanks again
Jim

[Magda Hassan]

This is how Verizon, et. al. can say they are not directly letting the USG have access to their data:

I don't see anyone out there with this theory, and TPM is my favorite news source, so here goes: "PRISM" is the government's name for a program that uses technology from Palantir. Palantir is a Silicon Valley start-up that's now valued at well over $1B, that focuses on data analysis for the government.
With my theory in mind, re-read the denials from the tech companies in the WSJ (emphasis mine):
Apple: "We do not provide any government agency with direct access to our servers…"
Google: "… does not have a back door' for the government to access private user data…"
Facebook: "… not provide any government organization with direct access to Facebook servers…"
Yahoo: "We do not provide the government with direct access to our servers, systems, or network…"

These denials could all still be technically true if the government is accessing the data through a government contractor, such as Palantir, rather than having direct access.
I just did a quick Google search of "Palantir PRISM" to see if anyone else had this theory, and the top results were these pages:

https://docs.palantir.com/metropolisdev/...rview.html
https://docs.palantir.com/metropolisdev/...mples.html

Apparently, Palantir has a software package called "Prism": "Prism is a software component that lets you quickly integrate external databases into Palantir." That sounds like exactly the tool you'd want if you were trying to find patterns in data from multiple companies.

So the obvious follow-up questions are of the "am I right?" variety, but if I am, here's what I really want to know: which Palantir clients have access to this data? Just CIA & NSA? FBI? What about municipalities, such as the NYC police department? What about the governments of other countries?

What do you think?

FWIW, I know a guy who works at Palantir. I asked him what he/they did once, and he was more secretive than my friends at Apple.

PS, please don't use my name if you decide to publish any of this it's a small town/industry. Let them Prism me instead.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/20...?ref=fpblg

Apparently Palantir is a CIA start up.[/QUOTE]
Yep. Sure is.
[URL="http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2013/06/palantir-prism-nsa/66013/"]http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2013/06/palantir-prism-nsa/66013/

A[/URL]nd then Palantir can deny they have a relationship with the NSA because they will have a relationship with some NSA cut out or front company.

[Magda Hassan]

Washington Is Trapped in Its Own Prism of Data-Mining Self-Defense

ELSPETH REEVE

JUN 7, 2013
The defenses of the National Security Agency's program to collect and store records of every phone call and every email have not been very impressive. The NSA defenders point to a secret court that rarely says no. They point out congressional oversight, even though it's clear intelligence agencies have misled Congress. And some even dismiss the information being collected on Americans as unimportant, it seems because they do not know what "metadata" is. With the revelation of domestic surveillance on a scale that's hard for the human brain to conceive of a Library of Congress's worth of data every six hours you'd expect something more stirring than Trust us and Who cares about metadata anyway?
On Wednesday night, The Guardian's Glenn Greenwald reported a secret court order to give the NSA metadata on every Verizon call made over three months. Subsequent reporting and statementsfrom senators revealed that it's a regular, quarterly thing to collect the data from several major telecom companies. Further, the NSA's PRISM program, The Guardian also revealed on Thursday night, allows the government to grab emails, chats, what you've searched for, and what files you've shared, thanks to the apparent cooperation of Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, PalTalk, YouTube, Skype, AOL, Apple, and possibly more, anddefinitely abroad. A career intelligence officerrevealed a PowerPoint about PRISM to The Washington Post's Barton Gellman and Laura Poitrasbecause of concerns about privacy. The officer said, "They quite literally can watch your ideas form as you type."
And what is the response to that panopticon from the government and the NSA surveillance program's supporters? It is ridiculous. This ridiculous:
It's just metadata no eavesdropping!
At a press briefing ostensibly about his health-care program and its success on Friday afternoon, President Obama defended the specificity of the NSA program that has become "the most prolific contributor" to his daily intelligence briefings. Don't worry, the president said, "No one is listening to your phone calls," and the NSA is not looking at names or their content. But metadata reveals the phone numbers, and the time, length, and location of calls. "The program does not allow the Government to listen in on anyone's phone calls," Director of National Intelligence James Clapper (right) wrote in his two-page response to The Guardianarticle on Thursday night, which President Obama largely echoed on Friday. California Sen. Dianne Feinstein assured reporters on Thursday, "As you know, this is just metadata. There is no content involved. In other words, no content of a communication." The Wall Street Journal's editorial board is sure there's nothing to be worried about. "We bow to no one in our desire to limit government power, but data-mining is less intrusive on individuals than routine airport security," the Journalsays, in an editorial titled "Thank You for Data-Mining." Yes, it can be embarrassing to know that when you go through the body scanner at the airport, one person will be able to see the fat deposits you're sensitive about. But it is not more intrusive than collecting metadata on all your calls and your emails.
The metadata is more revealing than the content, mathematician and former Sun Microsystems engineer Susan Landau explained to The New Yorker's Jane Mayer. "If you can track that, you know exactly what is happeningyou don't need the content," Landau says. Take this example: "You can see a call to a gynecologist, and then a call to an oncologist, and then a call to close family members." Geolocation can reveal a reporter's sources, or an extra-marital affair, or when political leaders are meeting.
A 'robust legal regime' acts as a check on this power.

"There is a robust legal regime in place governing all activities conducted pursuant to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which ensures that those activities comply with the Constitution and laws and appropriately protect privacy and civil liberties," Clapper writes. "This renewal is carried out by the FISA Court under the business records section of the Patriot Act. Therefore, it is lawful. It has been briefed to Congress..." Feinstein said.
President Obama insisted that there are multiple levels of oversight "This program is fully overseen not just by Congress, but by the FISA court," he said Friday but Clapper has a different definition of robust than many people. "This is a court that meets in secret, allows only the government to appear before it, and publishes almost none of its opinions," Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, explained to the Post. The Guardian's Spencer Ackerman notes, "critics have pointed out that the Fisa Court has almost never, in its 35-year history, rejected a US surveillance request." And there's reason to doubt the FISA court is rigorously scrutinizing each government request. Wired's Kevin Poulsen points out that the Verizon Business Services court order posted by The Guardian "demands cell phone data, like customers' IMSI (International Mobile Subscriber Identity) number and another identifier that reveals the make and model of the phone." But Verizon Business Services isn't a mobile carrier it is a landline business. It's obvious, Poulsen writes, that the FISA court "uses the same catchall boilerplate order over and over again, just changing the company name and the date. The court that's supposed to be protecting Americans from abusive domestic surveillance is not only failing in that duty, it's also lazy."
As for congressional oversight, Bruce Schneier explains at The Atlantic, "We know that the NSA has many domestic-surveillance and data-mining programs with codenames like Trailblazer, Stellar Wind, andRagtime deliberately using different codenames for similar programs to stymie oversight and conceal what's really going on." And Poulsen argues that the NSA has been able to trick Congress by manipulating numbers, too. Each year, the Justice Department is required to give Congress a tally of how many times it requested classified wiretaps and "business records" under the Patriot Act. The Obama administration only went to the FISA court 200 times to request Americans' "business records" in 2012, Poulsen notes. In 2011, it was 205 times; in 2010, it was 96 times; in 2009, it was 21 times. But the Verizon court order demanding metadata on all phone calls for three months counts as one request. President Obama's reassurances Friday on Congressional oversight don't even make sense.
"The Department's testimony left the Committee with the impression that the Administration was using the business records provision sparingly and for specific materials," Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner wrote on Thursday. When a reporter asked Sen. Feinstein if the program was limited to Verizon or other companies got similar court orders, she replied, "We cannot answer that. Fortunately, I don't know."
It won't affect you!
"The court only allows the data to be queried when there is a reasonable suspicion, based on specific facts, that the particular basis for the query is associated with a foreign terrorist organization," Clapper says. The Obama administration told The Washington Post, "extensive procedures, specifically approved by the court, to ensure that only non-U.S. persons outside the U.S. are targeted, and that minimize the acquisition, retention and dissemination of incidentally acquired information about U.S. persons." South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham said on Fox and Friends on Thursday, "I don't think you're talking to the terrorists. I know you're not. I know I'm not. So we don't have anything to worry about."
The PRISM program is only supposed to go after foreigners. "This does not apply to U.S. citizens and it does not apply to people in the United States," Obama said at his Obamacare press conference Friday. But The Washington Post reports:

Analysts who use the system from a Web portal at Fort Meade, Md., key in 'selectors,' or search terms, that are designed to produce at least 51 percent confidence in a target's 'foreignness.' That is not a very stringent test. Training materials obtained by The Post instruct new analysts to make quarterly reports of any accidental collection of U.S. content, but add that 'it's nothing to worry about.'

Foreign or foreignish, no big deal. The NSA looks at everyone in their terror suspects' contact list, and at everyone in their contact lists' contact lists. That's how a good deal of "incidental" American data can be swept up in a search, the Post reports. And we have plenty of reason to be skeptical that the government won't use this trove of Americans' communications, even though it has it, and the Brits, too. There ispublic record of the NSA abusing its surveillance power, when, under the Bush administration, warranetless wiretapping was allowed on calls in which at least one person was overseas. NSA analysts told ABC News in 2008 they had a good time listening to soldiers' phone sex.
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/...sis/66006/

[Jan Klimkowski]

More change you can't believe in...

US government invokes special privilege to stop scrutiny of data mining

Officials use little-known 'military and state secrets privilege' as civil liberties lawyers try to hold administration to account

Ed Pilkington
guardian.co.uk, Friday 7 June 2013 20.57 BST
Jump to comments (101)

Attorney general Eric Holder
The use of the privilege has been personally approved by Eric Holder, the attorney general, and others. Photograph: Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP

The Obama administration is invoking an obscure legal privilege to avoid judicial scrutiny of its secret collection of the communications of potentially millions of Americans.

Civil liberties lawyers trying to hold the administration to account through the courts for its surveillance of phone calls and emails of American citizens have been repeatedly stymied by the government's recourse to the "military and state secrets privilege". The precedent, rarely used but devastating in its legal impact, allows the government to claim that it cannot be submitted to judicial oversight because to do so it would have to compromise national security.

The government has cited the privilege in two active lawsuits being heard by a federal court in the northern district of California Virginia v Barack Obama et al, and Carolyn Jewel v the National Security Agency. In both cases, the Obama administration has called for the cases to be dismissed on the grounds that the government's secret activities must remain secret.

The claim comes amid a billowing furore over US surveillance on the mass communications of Americans following disclosures by the Guardian of a massive NSA monitoring programme of Verizon phone records and internet communications.

The director of national intelligence, James Clapper, has written in court filings that "after careful and actual personal consideration of the matter, based upon my own knowledge and information obtained in the course of my official duties, I have determined that the disclosure of certain information would cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security of the United States. Thus, as to this information, I formally assert the state secrets privilege."

The use of the privilege has been personally approved by President Obama and several of the administration's most senior officials: in addition to Clapper, they include the director of the NSA Keith Alexander and Eric Holder, the attorney general. "The attorney general has personally reviewed and approved the government's privilege assertion in these cases," legal documents state.

In comments on Friday about the surveillance controversy, Obama insisted that the secret programmes were subjected "not only to congressional oversight but judicial oversight". He said federal judges were "looking over our shoulders".

But civil liberties lawyers say that the use of the privilege to shut down legal challenges was making a mockery of such "judicial oversight". Though classified information was shown to judges in camera, the citing of the precedent in the name of national security cowed judges into submission.

"The administration is saying that even if they are violating the constitution or committing a federal crime no court can stop them because it would compromise national security. That's a very dangerous argument," said Ilann Maazel, a lawyer with the New York-based Emery Celli firm who acts as lead counsel in the Shubert case.

"This has been legally frustrating and personally upsetting," Maazel added. "We have asked the government time after time what is the limit to the state secrets privilege, whether there's anything the government can't do and keep it secret, and every time the answer is: no."

Virginia Shubert, a housing expert from Brooklyn who is the first named plaintiff in the case, said she joined it because she considered the vast monitoring of telecommunications and emails in the wake of 9/11 to be an erosion of her rights. She called the use of the state secret privilege in blocking the action "absurd. When the government faces allegations that it has violated the constitution, it cannot hide behind state secrets to avoid accountability."

The Shubert lawsuit, first lodged with the courts in May 2006, alleges that the US government has operated a massive dragnet of private citizens' communications across the country. Drawing on the testimony of several whistleblowers, the suit accuses the Bush and then Obama administration of having broken the fourth amendment of the US constitution that guards against unwarranted searches and seizures by intercepting "en masse the communications of millions of ordinary Americans".

In the course of protracted legal argument the government has invoked the military and state secrets privilege no fewer than three times. The privilege was originally laid down in 1953 in a case in which the widows of Air Force personnel involved in a secret test run of a B-29 bomber that crashed sued to see a copy of the accident investigation report and were rebuffed under a claim of privilege that disclosure of the document would "expose military matters … in the interest of national security".

In court motions, the Obama administration has set out the information that it claims is exempt from legal scrutiny under the privilege, including "information that may tend to confirm or deny whether the plaintiffs have been subject to any alleged NSA intelligence activity" and "any information concerning NSA intelligence activities, sources, or methods that may relate to or be necessary to adjudicate plaintiffs' allegations."

The government goes further and says that the state secrets privilege also covers "allegations that the NSA, with the assistance of telecommunications carriers such as AT&T and Verizon, indiscriminately intercepts the content of communications and also collects the communication records of millions of Americans."

The second case, Jewel versus National Security Agency, was lodged in 2008 following the disclosures of an AT&T whistleblower, Mark Klein. He revealed in 2006 that the telecoms firm had set up a secret NSA room within its San Francisco office in which all phone calls from the region were passing through a splitter cabinet that sent a copy to the NSA.

Mark Rumold, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation working on Jewel, said that this week's disclosures by the Guardian would make it increasingly difficult for the administration to claim the state secrets privilege.

"The Guardian's disclosures may fundamentally alter the government's approach as they are going to have a tough time convincing a judge that this stuff is secret," he said.