US spy chief Clapper defends Prism and phone surveillance

[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
  

[Peter Lemkin]

Snowden' Second Interview To Hong Kong Paper: "I Am Not Here To Hide From Justice; I Am Here To Reveal Criminality"

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 06/12/2013 11:49 -0400



Following the dramatic self-revelatory interview/profiling of Edward Snowden by the Guardian's Glenn Greenwald, the media world, and everyone else, has been abuzz about what other revelations the NSA whistleblower may bring to light. Moments ago, the South China Morning Post releases the much anticipated second interview with the 29 year old. While hardly earth-shattering, it does provide some additional insight into the mind of the administration's current persona most non grata.
From South China Morning Post:

Snowden said last night that he had no doubts about his choice of Hong Kong.

"People who think I made a mistake in picking Hong Kong as a location misunderstand my intentions. I am not here to hide from justice; I am here to reveal criminality," Snowden said in an exclusive interview with the South China Morning Post.

"I have had many opportunities to flee HK, but I would rather stay and fight the United States government in the courts, because I have faith in Hong Kong's rule of law," he added.

Snowden says he has committed no crimes in Hong Kong and has "been given no reason to doubt [Hong Kong's legal] system".

"My intention is to ask the courts and people of Hong Kong to decide my fate," he said.

...

Beijing will seek to interfere in a likely extradition case.

The Hong Kong government has so far refused to comment on Snowden's case. While many Hong Kong lawmakers, legal experts, activisits and members of the public have called on the city's courts to protect Snowden's rights, others such as Beijing loyalist lawmaker and former security chief Regina Ip Lau Suk-yee said he should leave.

Hong Kong Human Rights Monitor director Law Yuk-kai said he was surprised by Snowden's choice, adding: "Snowden's positive view of Hong Kong no longer matches the reality."

Law said a possible reason for his choice could be Hong Kong's role as the region's news hub.

"Hong Kong remains a hub of the global media, not least because of its proximity to the economic boom in southern China and the ease of access to many other Asian cities. The publicity could complicate efforts by the United States to charge Snowden and have him deported," he said.

Snowden said yesterday that he felt safe in the city.

"As long as I am assured a free and fair trial, and asked to appear, that seems reasonable," he said.

He says he plans to stay in Hong Kong until he is "asked to leave".

The United States has not yet filed an application for extradition.

Snowden could choose to fight any extradition attempt in court. Another option open to him is to seek refugee status from the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in Hong Kong.

...
Local activists plan to take to the streets on Saturday in support of Snowden. Groups including the Civil Human Rights Front and international human rights groups will march from Chater Gardens in Central to the US consulate on Garden Road, starting at 3pm.

The march is being organised by In-media, a website supporting freelance journalists.

"We call on Hong Kong to respect international legal standards and procedures relating to the protection of Snowden; we condemn the US government for violating our rights and privacy; and we call on the US not to prosecute Snowden," the group said in a statement.

[Peter Lemkin]

'I am not afraid, because this is the choice I've made'

Three weeks ago, Snowden made final preparations that resulted in last week's series of blockbuster news stories. At the NSA office in Hawaii where he was working, he copied the last set of documents he intended to disclose.
He then advised his NSA supervisor that he needed to be away from work for "a couple of weeks" in order to receive treatment for epilepsy, a condition he learned he suffers from after a series of seizures last year.
As he packed his bags, he told his girlfriend that he had to be away for a few weeks, though he said he was vague about the reason. "That is not an uncommon occurrence for someone who has spent the last decade working in the intelligence world."
On May 20, he boarded a flight to Hong Kong, where he has remained ever since. He chose the city because "they have a spirited commitment to free speech and the right of political dissent", and because he believed that it was one of the few places in the world that both could and would resist the dictates of the US government.
In the three weeks since he arrived, he has been ensconced in a hotel room. "I've left the room maybe a total of three times during my entire stay," he said. It is a plush hotel and, what with eating meals in his room too, he has run up big bills.
He is deeply worried about being spied on. He lines the door of his hotel room with pillows to prevent eavesdropping. He puts a large red hood over his head and laptop when entering his passwords to prevent any hidden cameras from detecting them.
Though that may sound like paranoia to some, Snowden has good reason for such fears. He worked in the US intelligence world for almost a decade. He knows that the biggest and most secretive surveillance organisation in America, the NSA, along with the most powerful government on the planet, is looking for him.
Since the disclosures began to emerge, he has watched television and monitored the internet, hearing all the threats and vows of prosecution emanating from Washington.
And he knows only too well the sophisticated technology available to them and how easy it will be for them to find him. The NSA police and other law enforcement officers have twice visited his home in Hawaii and already contacted his girlfriend, though he believes that may have been prompted by his absence from work, and not because of suspicions of any connection to the leaks.
"All my options are bad," he said. The US could begin extradition proceedings against him, a potentially problematic, lengthy and unpredictable course for Washington. Or the Chinese government might whisk him away for questioning, viewing him as a useful source of information. Or he might end up being grabbed and bundled into a plane bound for US territory.
"Yes, I could be rendered by the CIA. I could have people come after me. Or any of the third-party partners. They work closely with a number of other nations. Or they could pay off the Triads. Any of their agents or assets," he said.
"We have got a CIA station just up the road the consulate here in Hong Kong and I am sure they are going to be busy for the next week. And that is a concern I will live with for the rest of my life, however long that happens to be."
Having watched the Obama administration prosecute whistleblowers at a historically unprecedented rate, he fully expects the US government to attempt to use all its weight to punish him. "I am not afraid," he said calmly, "because this is the choice I've made."
He predicts the government will launch an investigation and "say I have broken the Espionage Act and helped our enemies, but that can be used against anyone who points out how massive and invasive the system has become".
The only time he became emotional during the many hours of interviews was when he pondered the impact his choices would have on his family, many of whom work for the US government. "The only thing I fear is the harmful effects on my family, who I won't be able to help any more. That's what keeps me up at night," he said, his eyes welling up with tears.

'You can't wait around for someone else to act'

Snowden did not always believe the US government posed a threat to his political values. He was brought up originally in Elizabeth City, North Carolina. His family moved later to Maryland, near the NSA headquarters in Fort Meade.
By his own admission, he was not a stellar student. In order to get the credits necessary to obtain a high school diploma, he attended a community college in Maryland, studying computing, but never completed the coursework. (He later obtained his GED.)
In 2003, he enlisted in the US army and began a training program to join the Special Forces. Invoking the same principles that he now cites to justify his leaks, he said: "I wanted to fight in the Iraq war because I felt like I had an obligation as a human being to help free people from oppression".
He recounted how his beliefs about the war's purpose were quickly dispelled. "Most of the people training us seemed pumped up about killing Arabs, not helping anyone," he said. After he broke both his legs in a training accident, he was discharged.
After that, he got his first job in an NSA facility, working as a security guard for one of the agency's covert facilities at the University of Maryland. From there, he went to the CIA, where he worked on IT security. His understanding of the internet and his talent for computer programming enabled him to rise fairly quickly for someone who lacked even a high school diploma.
By 2007, the CIA stationed him with diplomatic cover in Geneva, Switzerland. His responsibility for maintaining computer network security meant he had clearance to access a wide array of classified documents.
That access, along with the almost three years he spent around CIA officers, led him to begin seriously questioning the rightness of what he saw.
He described as formative an incident in which he claimed CIA operatives were attempting to recruit a Swiss banker to obtain secret banking information. Snowden said they achieved this by purposely getting the banker drunk and encouraging him to drive home in his car. When the banker was arrested for drunk driving, the undercover agent seeking to befriend him offered to help, and a bond was formed that led to successful recruitment.
"Much of what I saw in Geneva really disillusioned me about how my government functions and what its impact is in the world," he says. "I realised that I was part of something that was doing far more harm than good."
He said it was during his CIA stint in Geneva that he thought for the first time about exposing government secrets. But, at the time, he chose not to for two reasons.
First, he said: "Most of the secrets the CIA has are about people, not machines and systems, so I didn't feel comfortable with disclosures that I thought could endanger anyone". Secondly, the election of Barack Obama in 2008 gave him hope that there would be real reforms, rendering disclosures unnecessary.
He left the CIA in 2009 in order to take his first job working for a private contractor that assigned him to a functioning NSA facility, stationed on a military base in Japan. It was then, he said, that he "watched as Obama advanced the very policies that I thought would be reined in", and as a result, "I got hardened."
The primary lesson from this experience was that "you can't wait around for someone else to act. I had been looking for leaders, but I realised that leadership is about being the first to act."
Over the next three years, he learned just how all-consuming the NSA's surveillance activities were, claiming "they are intent on making every conversation and every form of behaviour in the world known to them".
He described how he once viewed the internet as "the most important invention in all of human history". As an adolescent, he spent days at a time "speaking to people with all sorts of views that I would never have encountered on my own".
But he believed that the value of the internet, along with basic privacy, is being rapidly destroyed by ubiquitous surveillance. "I don't see myself as a hero," he said, "because what I'm doing is self-interested: I don't want to live in a world where there's no privacy and therefore no room for intellectual exploration and creativity."
Once he reached the conclusion that the NSA's surveillance net would soon be irrevocable, he said it was just a matter of time before he chose to act. "What they're doing" poses "an existential threat to democracy", he said.

A matter of principle

As strong as those beliefs are, there still remains the question: why did he do it? Giving up his freedom and a privileged lifestyle? "There are more important things than money. If I were motivated by money, I could have sold these documents to any number of countries and gotten very rich."
For him, it is a matter of principle. "The government has granted itself power it is not entitled to. There is no public oversight. The result is people like myself have the latitude to go further than they are allowed to," he said.
His allegiance to internet freedom is reflected in the stickers on his laptop: "I support Online Rights: Electronic Frontier Foundation," reads one. Another hails the online organisation offering anonymity, the Tor Project.
Asked by reporters to establish his authenticity to ensure he is not some fantasist, he laid bare, without hesitation, his personal details, from his social security number to his CIA ID and his expired diplomatic passport. There is no shiftiness. Ask him about anything in his personal life and he will answer.
He is quiet, smart, easy-going and self-effacing. A master on computers, he seemed happiest when talking about the technical side of surveillance, at a level of detail comprehensible probably only to fellow communication specialists. But he showed intense passion when talking about the value of privacy and how he felt it was being steadily eroded by the behaviour of the intelligence services.
His manner was calm and relaxed but he has been understandably twitchy since he went into hiding, waiting for the knock on the hotel door. A fire alarm goes off. "That has not happened before," he said, betraying anxiety wondering if was real, a test or a CIA ploy to get him out onto the street.
Strewn about the side of his bed are his suitcase, a plate with the remains of room-service breakfast, and a copy of Angler, the biography of former vice-president Dick Cheney.
Ever since last week's news stories began to appear in the Guardian, Snowden has vigilantly watched TV and read the internet to see the effects of his choices. He seemed satisfied that the debate he longed to provoke was finally taking place.
He lay, propped up against pillows, watching CNN's Wolf Blitzer ask a discussion panel about government intrusion if they had any idea who the leaker was. From 8,000 miles away, the leaker looked on impassively, not even indulging in a wry smile.
Snowden said that he admires both Ellsberg and Manning, but argues that there is one important distinction between himself and the army private, whose trial coincidentally began the week Snowden's leaks began to make news.
"I carefully evaluated every single document I disclosed to ensure that each was legitimately in the public interest," he said. "There are all sorts of documents that would have made a big impact that I didn't turn over, because harming people isn't my goal. Transparency is."
He purposely chose, he said, to give the documents to journalists whose judgment he trusted about what should be public and what should remain concealed.
As for his future, he is vague. He hoped the publicity the leaks have generated will offer him some protection, making it "harder for them to get dirty".
He views his best hope as the possibility of asylum, with Iceland with its reputation of a champion of internet freedom at the top of his list. He knows that may prove a wish unfulfilled.
But after the intense political controversy he has already created with just the first week's haul of stories, "I feel satisfied that this was all worth it. I have no regrets."

[Jan Klimkowski]

Another asepct of this, which is hardly being discussed, is that private military contractors appear to have unfettered access to search for anything they want (subject to the fig leaf of a single "dodgy" connection at any stage in a person's history).

So, in addition to the ability of intelligence agencies to use illegally obtained information as leverage over a person, private military contractors also now have the ability to blackmail or blacklist anyone they like.

Good point! And it is not being explored anywhere that I can see. As well as blackmail it can also be used for insider trading and other stock market type system gaming as welll as taking out competitors. Most of the intel corporations have other business interests like media holdings and aerospace.

The military-multinational-intelligence complex and the false Church of Free Market Capitalism are now so dominant that it is assumed as an article of unquestionable faith that:

Public Service = bad, inefficient and wasteful

Private for Profit = good, efficient and lean

Of course in reality the Private for Profit model will lie, cheat and charge exorbitantly for every transaction in the cause of profit maximisation for shareholders and obscene bonuses for executives.

As Shock Therapy is being implemented in the so-called First World, the privatisation of state assets (eg the Greek public service broadcaster) and contracting out of state functions (eg intelligence analysis), continues apace.

The reality is that private companies now have essentially unfettered access to every aspect of our lives, and noone is even questioning this.

[Peter Lemkin]

JUNE 13, 2013RE ON FACEBOOKSHARE ON TWITTERSHARE ON GOOGLERE SHARING SERVICES[URL="http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/06/13/the-nsa-and-the-infrastructure-of-the-surveillance-state/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-nsa-and-the-infrastructure-of-the-surveillance-state#"]12
In Search of Real Liberty[/URL]



Th[B]e NSA and the Infrastructure of the Surveillance State[/B]
by ERIC DRAITSER
It has long been known that cyberspace is one of the main battlegrounds in the 21[SUP]st[/SUP] century. However, last week's shocking revelations about the NSA's surveillance and data-gathering activities illustrate the extent to which US intelligence seeks "full-spectrum dominance" in cyberspace.
Although there have been myriad articles in recent days about the various aspects of the NSA surveillance story, none seem to focus on the fact that US intelligence effectively has access to all data transmitted, not just that on Verizon or Google servers. Essentially, the intelligence community a convenient euphemism for that complex that includes private contractors and government agencies acts much like a filter, sifting and straining all information through its various systems. However, it is important to realize that the system that the government has established is an all-encompassing one, including access to data in company servers in addition to access to the cable and fiber-optic infrastructure that actually transmits the data.
On the one hand, there is the PRISM system which, as the Washington Post reported, allows "The National Security Agency and the FBI [to tap] directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. internet companies, extracting audio and video chats, photographs, emails, documents, and connection logs." Aside from being a blatant violation of the 4[SUP]th[/SUP] Amendment of the US Constitution, Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, and countless other international standards, the program has been vigorously defended by Obama Administration officials who, like their predecessors in the Bush Administration, invoke the always convenient "National Security" trump card to justify their illegal actions.
The PRISM system should be understood as a collusion between the NSA and major internet companies against the interests of ordinary Americans. Because the PRISM system is justified as being used solely to "target and track foreign targets," somehow American citizens are supposed to feel at ease. It is important to note that PRISM makes use of obviously illegal tactics which "circumvent formal legal processes…to seek personal material such as emails, photos and videos." This is the crux of the PRISM aspect of this scandal: it is blatantly illegal.
If PRISM were the only system being used by the government agencies, then the story would not be nearly as frightening as it is. Instead, we must also examine the so-called BLARNEY system which "Gathers up metadata from choke points along the backbone of the internet as part of an ongoing collection program the leverages IC (intelligence community) and commercial partnerships to gain access and exploit foreign intelligence obtained from global networks." This system allows the NSA (and likely other government agencies) to control the flow of all information transmitted via fiber-optic cables.
As the Electronic Frontier Foundation wrote in its summary of the testimonies of former AT&T technician Mark Klein and former Senior Advisor for Internet Technology at the FCC Scott Marcus, "Using a device called a splitter' a complete copy of the internet traffic that AT&T receives…is diverted onto a separate fiber-optic cable which is connected to a room which is controlled by the NSA." Therefore, unlike PRISM, which the government and its apologists attempt to justify as being used to target key individuals, BLARNEY has no such capacity. Rather, it is designed solely to collect data, all internet data, to be used and likely stored.
Naturally, the revelations about the BLARNEY system shed light on the possible motivations of the NSA for the construction of enormous data storage facilities such as the Utah Data Center in Bluffdale, Utah. As reported in Wired magazine:

But "this is more than just a data center," says one senior intelligence official who until recently was involved with the program. The mammoth Bluffdale center will have another important and far more secret role that until now has gone unrevealed… According to another top official also involved with the program, the NSA made an enormous breakthrough several years ago in its ability to cryptanalyze, or break, unfathomably complex encryption systems employed by not only governments around the world but also many average computer users in the US. The upshot, according to this official: "Everybody's a target; everybody with communication is a target."

This facility, along with others that likely exist but remain secret, is an integral part of the surveillance state system. It is not enough to simply capture all the communications data, it must be stored and readily available. What the NSA primarily, and other agencies secondarily, are doing is developing a cyber-infrastructure that both incorporates, and is independent of, internet companies and service providers. While relying on corporations' for access to data and networks, the NSA simultaneously has developed a parallel structure for information gathering and storage that is not only outside the control of private companies, it is outside the law.
Of course, there are many political and economic factors that play into this issue. The legal framework developed in the post-9/11 era including draconian legislation such as the PATRIOT Act, the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), and many others, laid the foundation for the systemic and systematic stripping away of civil liberties and human rights. The technical infrastructure has been steadily evolving since 9/11 as technology continues to improve, providing the intelligence agencies with ever more tools for surveillance and intelligence gathering. The continued, unrestrained neoliberal policy of privatization has created a complex network of companies, contractors, and subcontractors, usually working independently of each other, all in the service of the security state. Finally, the political landscape in the United States has so thoroughly devolved that elected officials are more concerned about stopping the whistleblowers and leakers, than about addressing America's continued descent into a fascist police state.
Despite all of this, Americans continue to be told that this is the "sweet land of liberty". We may be able to buy Nike sneakers and flat screen TVs, but that's not liberty. We may be able to tweet with our iPhones and download our favorite movies, but that's not liberty either. Rather, as George Orwell famously wrote, "If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear." So yes, tell the people what they don't want to hear. Just know this…someone will be listening.
Eric Draitser is the founder of StopImperialism.com. He is an independent geopolitical analyst based in New York City. You can reach him at ericdraitser@gmail.com.

[Peter Lemkin]

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We want to go on to the National Security Agency director, General Keith Alexander, who testified before Congress Wednesday, a week after a trove of secret documents about his agency's widespread surveillance program stunned the nation and sparked heated debate. During his testimony, Alexander denied claims he has personal wiretapping abilities at the agency and insisted phone data collection has helped prevent dozens of terrorist attacks. He refused to publicly answer questions about how the NSA had made the transition to collecting phone records of Americans. Alexander also said he hoped for greater transparency around the surveillance programs, but he argued some secrecy helps the agency's mission. He was also asked about the impact of the NSA leaks. This was his response.

GEN. KEITH ALEXANDER: Great harm has already been done by opening this up. And the consequence, I believe, is our security is jeopardized. There is no doubt in my mind that we will lose capabilities as a result of this and that not only the United States, but those allies that we have helped, will no longer be as safe as they were two weeks ago. And so, I am really concerned about that. I'm also concerned that, as we go forward, we now know that some of this has been released. So what does it make sense to explain to the American people so they have confidence that their government is doing the right thing? Because I believe we are, and we have to show them that.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: The disclosure of the secret NSA surveillance program was based on information leaked by Edward Snowden, a former CIA employee who most recently worked inside the NSA's Hawaii office for the private firm Booz Allen Hamilton. In an exclusive interview with the South China Morning Post, Snowden said, quote, "I'm neither traitor nor hero, I'm an American." He also said he intends to stay in Hong Kong until he's asked to leave, and he intends to fight any extradition attempts by the U.S. government. Snowden also told the paper, quote, "People who think I made a mistake in picking [Hong Kong] as a location misunderstand my intentions. I am not here to hide from justice; I am here to reveal criminality."
AMY GOODMAN: Well, for more, we're joined by Christopher Pyle, who first exposed domestic spying in the 1970s here in the U.S. Pyle discovered the CIA was spying on millions of Americans engaged in lawful activity while he was in the Army and worked as an instructor. After he left, he wrote about the Army's vast and growing spy operations. His article from 1971 began, quote, "For the past four years, the U.S. Army has been closely watching civilian political activity within the United States." Pyle's story prompted Senate hearings, including Senator Frank Church's Select Committee on Intelligence. These ultimately led to a series of laws aimed at curbing government abuse. Chris Pyle is the co-author of Military Surveillance of Civilian Politics, Getting Away with Torture and The Constitution Under Siege. He now teaches constitutional law and civil liberties at Mount Holyoke College and recently wrote a piece headlined, "Edward Snowden and the Real Issues." He joins us from Chicopee, Massachusetts.
Welcome to Democracy Now!, Professor Pyle. Talk about what you feel those real issues are. But before you do, explain what happened to you, how it was you revealed in the early '70s what was going on in the military.
CHRISTOPHER PYLE: I received a briefing at the U.S. Army Intelligence Command that showed me the extent of the surveillance system. There were about 1,500 Army agents in plain clothes watching every demonstration in the United States of 20 people or more. There was also a records system in a giant warehouse on about six million people. I disclosed the existence of that surveillance and then recruited 125 of the Army's counterintelligence agents to tell what they knew about the spying to Congress, the courts and the press. As a result of those disclosures and the congressional hearings, the entire U.S. Army Intelligence Command was abolished. This was before Watergate.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Professor Pyle, did you, at that time, suffer any repercussions from your willingness to step forward and reveal what was going on to Congress?
CHRISTOPHER PYLE: Well, two things happened. The Army created a 50-man unit in the Pentagon whose sole job was to discredit my disclosures. That effort failed: The disclosures were all quite accurate. I was also put on President Nixon's enemies list, which resulted in a tax audit.
AMY GOODMAN: Christopher Pyle, let's turn for a minute to the Church Committee's special Senate investigation of government misconduct, which you played a key role in the mid-'70s, U.S. Senate committee chaired by Democratic Senator Frank Church of Idaho, who conducted a massive investigation of the CIA and FBI's misuse of power at home and abroad, the multi-year investigation examining domestic spying, the CIA's attempts to assassinate foreign leaders, the FBI and CIA's efforts to infiltrate and disrupt leftist organizations, and a lot more. This is Senator Frank Church speaking during one of the committee's hearings.

SEN. FRANK CHURCH: You have seen today the dark side of those activities, where many Americans who were not even suspected of crime were not only spied upon, but they were harassed, they were discredited and, at times, endangered.

AMY GOODMAN: And this is another clip from the Church Committee Senate hearing. This is CIA Director William Colby testifying. He was asked if he found the work of the committee unwelcome.

WILLIAM COLBY: No, I do not. I'veas I've said to the chairman, I welcome the chance to try to describe to the American people what intelligence is really about today. It's ait is an opportunity to show how we Americans have modernized the whole concept of intelligence.

AMY GOODMAN: That was then-CIA Director William Colby. So, if you would, Chris Pyle, take this forward, from what came out of the Church Committee hearings, that started with your exposé from being a military whistleblower, to what you're seeing today with Edward Snowden.
CHRISTOPHER PYLE: Well, what we've seen in the ensuing years has been a vast explosion in intelligence-gathering capabilities. But the most significant part of that is the fact that civilian corporations are now doing the government's work. Seventy percent of the intelligence budget of the United States today goes to private contractors like Booz Allen, which employed Edward Snowden. This is a major change in the power of surveillance. It now goes not only to the government, but to private corporations.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, you seemin a recent article, you seem to raise what you think are the real issues in these Snowden leaks. You mention, one, the inability of Congress to actually do legitimate oversight over intelligence. You say that the secrecy system is out of control. And you also say that the system is also profoundly corrupt because of all this use of private contractors who make huge amounts of money that no one can actually hold them accountable for. Could you talk about those issues?
CHRISTOPHER PYLE: Yes. The forerunner of the PRISM system that Snowden disclosed was called Trailblazer. It wasted $1 billion on private contracts. It replaced a much less expensive system called ThinThread, which had more privacy protections and had been developed inside the government. Now, the reason that private contractors get this business is because members of Congress intercede with them with government agencies. And we now have a situation where members of the Intelligence Committee and other committees of Congress intercede with the bureaucracy to get sweetheart contracts for companies that waste taxpayers' money and also violate the Constitution and the privacy of citizens. This is a very serious situation, because it means that it's much more difficult to get effective oversight from Congress.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go back to the Senate Appropriation Committee hearing with the NSA director, General Keith Alexander, defending the phone surveillance practices exposed by Edward Snowden.

GEN. KEITH ALEXANDER: I thought the great part about this program was that we brought Congress, the administration and the courts all together. We did that. That's what our government stands for, under the same Constitution. We follow that Constitution. We swear an oath to it. So I am concerned, and I think we have to balance that. I will notI would rather take a public beating and people think I'm hiding something than to jeopardize the security of this country.

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Pyle, could you respond?
CHRISTOPHER PYLE: Well, we all want to protect the security of the country. We all want to protect the Constitution. But when government agencies are totally unaccountable, we can't do that. Members of Congress do not go to those briefings, even if they're offered, because once you go to the briefing, then you can't talk about what you've been told, because it's classified. So the briefing system is designed to silence Congress, not to promote effective oversight.
Members of Congress don't want to spend time on oversight. They're too busy raising money. New members of the House of Representatives this winter were told by the Democratic Campaign Committee that they should spend between four and six hours a day dialing for dollars. They have no time to do the public's business. They're too busy begging for money. President Obama himself attended 220 fundraisers last year. Where does he get the time to be president when he's spending so much time asking wealthy people for money to support his campaign?
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Chris Pyle, in Wednesday's Senate hearing, Senator Dick Durbin asked NSA director, General Keith Alexander, why someone like Booz Allen employee Edward Snowden was in a position in which he had access to the classified information he leaked.

SEN. DICK DURBIN: He was a high school dropout. He was a community college dropout. He had a GED degree. He was injured in training for the U.S. Army and had to leave as a result of that. And he took a job as a security guard for the NSA in Maryland. Shortly thereafter, he took a job for the CIA in what is characterized as IT security in The Guardian piece that was published. At age 23, he was stationed in an undercover manner overseas for the CIA and was given clearance and access to a widea wide array of classified documents. At age 25, he went to work for a private contractor and most recently worked for Booz Allen, another private contractor working for our government. I'm trying to look at this résumé and backgroundit says he ended up earning somewhere between $122,000 and $200,000 a year. I'm trying to look at the résumé background for this individual who had access to this highly classified information at such a young age, with a limited educational and work experience, part of it as a security guard, and ask you if you're troubled that he was given that kind of opportunity to be so close to important information that was critical to the security of our nation?

GEN. KEITH ALEXANDER: I do have concerns about that, over the process, Senator. I have grave concerns over that, the access that he had, the process that we did. And those are things that I have to look into and fix from my end, and that across the intel community, Director Clapper said we're going to look across that, as well. I think those absolutely need to be looked at. I would point out that in the IT arena, in the cyber-arena, some of these folks have tremendous skills to operate networks. That was his job, for the most part, from the 2009-'10, was as an IT, a system administrator within those networks. He had great skills in that areas. But the rest of it, you've hit onyou've hit on the head. We do have to go back and look at these processes, the oversight in thosewe have thosewhere they went wrong, and how we fix those.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: That was NSA director, General Keith Alexander, speaking before the Senate on Wednesday. Well, in 2012, General Alexander spoke at DEF CON, the annual hacker convention. During his speech, Alexander tried to court hackers to work at the National Security Agency. The third bullet on his PowerPoint presentation that he refers to is privacy and civil liberties must be protected.

GEN. KEITH ALEXANDER: I think the third bullet down is what we really want to do is innovate freedom, how we're going to look at where we take this next. This is a great opportunity for not only our nation, but for the world. And, you know, one of the things that I'm really proud of saying is, when you look at Vint Cerf and the others, we're the ones who helped develop, we're the ones who built this Internet. And we ought to be the first ones to secure it. And I think you folks can help us do that.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: That was General Keith Alexander speaking in 2012 at DEF CON. For our radio listeners, I should note that he was in a black T-shirt and wearing jeans as he spoke to the hackers. Chris Pyle, your response?
CHRISTOPHER PYLE: Well, it's true. NSA doesn't want to hire people like you and me. We don't know enough about the Internet. That said, it's important to note that the vice chairman of Booz Allen happens to be Mike McConnell, who was former director of NSA and of national intelligence. There is a revolving door between high government positions and private corporations, and this revolving door allows these people to make a great deal more money upon leaving the government, and then being rented back to the government in a contractor capacity. And that's part of the corruption of the system.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Now, one of the things you've also said is that the top-secret designation is a way tois more of a way for the government officials, the bureaucrats and the contractors not to be held accountable than it is to actually protect secrets that the government needs to protect. Could you expand on that?
CHRISTOPHER PYLE: Well, yes. The Fourth Amendment of the Constitution, which protects us from unreasonable searches and seizures, only binds the government, doesn't bind corporations. That's a serious problem. The reason we have privatization of prisons, in some ways, is for governments to escape liability. They put the liability on the private corporations that run the prisons, and they just charge their liabilities as an operating cost.
AMY GOODMAN: Chris Pyle, the attack on Edward SnowdenI mean, you've got the pundits. What Jeffrey Toobin, the legal pundit, quickly blogged: Snowden is "a grandiose narcissist who deserves to be in prison." Thomas Friedman writes, "I don't believe [that] Edward Snowden, the leaker of all this secret material, is some heroic whistle-blower." David Brooks says, "Though obviously terrifically bright, he could not successfully work his way through the institution of high school. Then he failed to navigate his way through community college." That's the pundits. And then, of course, there's the NSA. Can you talk about the attack on the whistleblower today and back when you were blowing the whistle?
CHRISTOPHER PYLE: Well, when I was blowing the whistle and they couldn't get any dirt on meI had led a very uninteresting lifethey made up dirt and tried to peddle it on Capitol Hill in order to discredit me and prevent me from testifying before Senator Ervin's Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights. Every bureaucracy hates dissenters. They must expel dissenters and discredit dissenters, because dissenters force them to reconsider what it is they're doing, and no bureaucracy wants anybody to interrupt what they're doing. And so, this is the natural, organic response of any bureaucracy or any establishment.
Now, I think it is inappropriate and quite irrelevant to analyze Ed Snowden's motivations. It doesn't matter muchexcept in court, to prove that he either did or did not intend to aid a foreign power or hurt the United States. But separate from that motivation, whether he's a narcissist, like many people on television are, no, I don't think that's relevant at all. He's neither a traitor nor a hero, and he says this himself. He's just an ordinary American. He's trying to start a debate in this nation over something that is critically important. He should be respected for that, taken at face value, and then we should move on to the big issues, including the corruption of our system that is done by massive secrecy and by massive amounts of money in politics.

[Jan Klimkowski]

My emphasis in bold:

AMY GOODMAN: Well, for more, we're joined by Christopher Pyle, who first exposed domestic spying in the 1970s here in the U.S. Pyle discovered the CIA was spying on millions of Americans engaged in lawful activity while he was in the Army and worked as an instructor. After he left, he wrote about the Army's vast and growing spy operations. His article from 1971 began, quote, "For the past four years, the U.S. Army has been closely watching civilian political activity within the United States." Pyle's story prompted Senate hearings, including Senator Frank Church's Select Committee on Intelligence. These ultimately led to a series of laws aimed at curbing government abuse. Chris Pyle is the co-author of Military Surveillance of Civilian Politics, Getting Away with Torture and The Constitution Under Siege. He now teaches constitutional law and civil liberties at Mount Holyoke College and recently wrote a piece headlined, "Edward Snowden and the Real Issues." He joins us from Chicopee, Massachusetts.
Welcome to Democracy Now!, Professor Pyle. Talk about what you feel those real issues are. But before you do, explain what happened to you, how it was you revealed in the early '70s what was going on in the military.
CHRISTOPHER PYLE: I received a briefing at the U.S. Army Intelligence Command that showed me the extent of the surveillance system. There were about 1,500 Army agents in plain clothes watching every demonstration in the United States of 20 people or more. There was also a records system in a giant warehouse on about six million people. I disclosed the existence of that surveillance and then recruited 125 of the Army's counterintelligence agents to tell what they knew about the spying to Congress, the courts and the press. As a result of those disclosures and the congressional hearings, the entire U.S. Army Intelligence Command was abolished. This was before Watergate.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Professor Pyle, did you, at that time, suffer any repercussions from your willingness to step forward and reveal what was going on to Congress?
CHRISTOPHER PYLE: Well, two things happened. The Army created a 50-man unit in the Pentagon whose sole job was to discredit my disclosures. That effort failed: The disclosures were all quite accurate. I was also put on President Nixon's enemies list, which resulted in a tax audit.

Presidential revenge.

CHRISTOPHER PYLE: Well, what we've seen in the ensuing years has been a vast explosion in intelligence-gathering capabilities. But the most significant part of that is the fact that civilian corporations are now doing the government's work. Seventy percent of the intelligence budget of the United States today goes to private contractors like Booz Allen, which employed Edward Snowden. This is a major change in the power of surveillance. It now goes not only to the government, but to private corporations.

Private contractor abuse.

CHRISTOPHER PYLE: Well, it's true. NSA doesn't want to hire people like you and me. We don't know enough about the Internet. That said, it's important to note that the vice chairman of Booz Allen happens to be Mike McConnell, who was former director of NSA and of national intelligence. There is a revolving door between high government positions and private corporations, and this revolving door allows these people to make a great deal more money upon leaving the government, and then being rented back to the government in a contractor capacity. And that's part of the corruption of the system.

The military-multinational-intelliigence complex.

Grotesque.

[Peter Lemkin]

As the U.S. vows to take "all necessary steps" to pursue whistleblower Edward Snowden, James Bamford joins us to discuss the National Security Agency's secret expansion of government surveillance and cyberwarfare. In his latest reporting for Wired magazine, Bamford profiles NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander and connects the dots on PRISM, phone surveillance and the NSA's massive spy center in Bluffdale, Utah. Says Bamford of Alexander: "Never before has anyone in America's intelligence sphere come close to his degree of power, the number of people under his command, the expanse of his rule, the length of his reign or the depth of his secrecy." The author of "The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America," Bamford has covered the National Security Agency for the last three decades, after helping expose its existence in the 1980s.

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: FBI Director Robert Mueller has vowed to take "all necessary steps" to hold whistleblower Edward Snowden responsible for exposing secret surveillance programs run by the National Security Agency. Speaking days after NSA contractor Snowden claimed responsibility for the leaks, Mueller confirmed to the House Judiciary Committee Thursday that the U.S. has launched a criminal investigation.

ROBERT MUELLER: As to the individual who has admitted making these disclosures, he is the subject of an ongoing criminal investigation. These disclosures have caused significant harm to our nation and to our safety. We are taking all necessary steps to hold the person responsible for these disclosures. As this matter is actively under investigation, we cannot comment publicly on the details of the investigation.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Meanwhile, the head of the NSA, General Keith Alexander, defended the surveillance programs Wednesday and claimed they had helped prevent dozens of potential terrorist events. Several lawmakers who support the programs pushed the NSA to declassify information about these intercepted plots. Other lawmakers were critical of the monitoring of U.S. citizens. This is Democratic Congressman John Conyers of Michigan.

REP. JOHN CONYERS: It's my fear that we are on the verge of becoming a surveillance state, collecting billions of electronic records on law-abiding Americans every single day.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Snowden has pledged to fight any attempt to extradite him to the United States. In an interview at an undisclosed Hong Kong location published in the South China Morning Post on Wednesday, he said, quote, "All I can do is rely on my training and hope that world governments will refuse to be bullied by the United States into persecuting people seeking political refuge." The Associated Press reports the British government issued a travel alert to airlines around the world not to allow Snowden to fly to the United Kingdom.
AMY GOODMAN: For more, we go to Washington, D.C., where we're joined by James Bamford, investigative reporter who has covered the National Security Agency for the last three decades, helped expose the NSA's existence in the 1980s. His most recent book is The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America. In his latest article for Wired magazine, he profiles NSA Director Keith Alexander in "The Secret War." He also has a piece on "Connecting the Dots on PRISM, Phone Surveillance, and the NSA's Massive Spy Center." Bamford writes of NDAof NSA head, Alexander, quote, "Never before has anyone in America's intelligence sphere come close to his degree of power, the number of people under his command, the expanse of his rule, the length of his reign, or the depth of his secrecy."
James Bamford, welcome back to Democracy Now! Tell us just who NSA chief Alexander is.
JAMES BAMFORD: Thanks, Amy. Good to be back.
Keith Alexander is a four-star general. And if you walk down Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House, it's very unlikely that even members of Congress wouldn't even recognize who he is. His name is unfamiliar to most Americans. His face is unfamiliar to most people even in Washington. So, he's a very mysterious person, but he's the most powerful person that's ever existed in the American intelligence community. First of all, he runs the largest intelligence agency and the most secret intelligence agency on Earth, probably, which is the NSA, in charge of enormous numbers of people that do just amazing electronic spying, as we could see in the revelations just in the last week.
In addition to that, he runs basically his own military. It's the U.S. Cyber Command, which was just placed under his authority. The U.S. Cyber Command is an extremely powerful organization that's already launched aggressive, what they call "kinetic attacks." Kinetic attacks means destructive attacks using cyber to actually destroy things. And they destroyed the centrifuges in the Iranian nuclear development plant using cyber. So, as isas being commander of U.S. Cyber Command, he's also got three branches of the military under him. He's got the 2nd Army, the 24th Air Force and the 10th Navy Fleet. So you've got an enormously powerful person who's enormously secret and who can do things without even members of Congress knowing about it.
AMY GOODMAN: He's linked to Rumsfeld in his rise to power?
JAMES BAMFORD: Rumsfeld was the person who really gave him most of his stars. He came from almost nowhere. He was a West Point graduate, and he rose up through the ranks in the NSA's secret world. But then, when the Bush administration came in, he really began rising high in the administration, going from one-star to three-star in a very short period of time, and now four stars.
AMY GOODMAN: Abu Ghraib?
JAMES BAMFORD: Well, one of the people thatone of the groups that he was in charge of when he was head of the Army's Intelligence Command were the people in Abu Ghraib, the military intelligence people who were connected to a lot of the human rights abuses that went on there.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, some of the fears that have been expressed by some U.S. officials in terms of the Snowden revelations is that he has alluded to other information that he has, potentially about U.S. cyber-attacks abroad. Could you comment on that?
JAMES BAMFORD: Well, you know, the interesting thing here is that the administration, and particularly the NSA, has been coming out with all these charges against China going after our secrets, our information, and so forth. It's caused the Congress to give enormous amounts of money to NSA, this money for defensive use against the Chinese and so forth. What never comes out is the U.S. offensive capability against the rest of the world. The U.S.there's nobody that can even compare to the U.S. We've got an enormous Cyber Command. They're expanding NSA's secret city by a third to accommodate 14 new buildings, 10 parking garages, a new enormous supercomputer centerall this for this new, very secret Cyber Command. And it's dedicated largely to offensive, to creating wars, not preventing wars.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, there were some reports in the press in China, first commenting on the leaks of Snowden and saying that this could potentially change relationships between China and the United States because it's now become clear that the United States is involved in cyber-espionage on a massive scale around the world.
JAMES BAMFORD: Well, the U.S. have been involved in that since the very beginning. That's what NSA's job is, is espionage. And it was at the forefront of the electronic eavesdropping era, and it's at the forefront of the cyberwarfare era. I mean, the first thing you have to do when you're doing cyberwarfare is discover how their systems work. And you do that by inserting viruses, different kinds of malware into their systems, and that's what NSA's job is. So, we've got an entire command now. Fourteen thousand more people are going to be working for General Alexander now in Cyber Command. So, this is a serious command. As I said, he's got Army and Navy and Air Force under him. This isthis is the real thing.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, on Thursday, NSA director, General Keith Alexander, said the American people had been misinformed about the extent of the agency's surveillance. This is what he said.

GEN. KEITH ALEXANDER: I would tell you, I've been working with this committee for the past several years. They are very good about asking all the questions and providing tremendous oversight, as does the court and the administration. This is not a program where we are out free-wheeling it. It is a well-overseen and a very focused program. What we owe you, the American people, is now how good is that, with some statistics. And I think when the American people hear that, they're going to stop and say, "Wait, the information we're getting is incorrect." So I would just tell the American people that, let's take a step back, look at what's going on, the oversight and compliance, and then let's have this discussion.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: That was General Keith Alexander. Your response?
JAMES BAMFORD: Well, there's one area that I agree with him, and that's the information that the public is gettingthat the public is getting is incorrect. But it's incorrect because it's coming from Keith Alexander and the administration. What's incorrect is the fact that you had General Clapper up there denying in Congress that the U.S. was engaged in any of this kind of activity. General Alexanderwell, I wrote about this. Basically, the same things that are coming out from Mr. Snowden, I wrote about in Wired last year in a cover story, where I interviewed Bill Binney and so forth, and they verbally told me basically the same thing. And very soon after, Keith Alexander came out denying all this, which isgives me a lot of thought about what might have been going through Snowden's mind, for example.
If he sees the other whistleblowers coming out, like Bill Binney, other people, Tom Drake and so forth, and they come out and say that the government is doing these things, and then the administration and NSA comes out and says, "That's not true. We're not doing them," and then the mainstream media sort of just follows in linefalls in line with the NSA position, you know, what could go through somebody's mind is, well, the only way to actually get attention to this is show the real documents, show what really is going on. And you can't deny, if you'redeny it, if you're actually looking at a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court order that actually shows that all these telephone records are being collected, even local records, on a daily basis. So, that's the problem, is this escalation. You try to tell the public what's going on; the administration denies it. Well, what's next? You've got to show the proof. You've got to show the documents.
AMY GOODMAN: Jim Bamford, explain the spy center that's being built in Bluffdale, Utah.
JAMES BAMFORD: Well, it's a mammothactually, the best way to think of it is NSA's external hard drive. It's a storage place for all that NSA gets from its surveillance, including the daily records of everybody's telephone calls, which, again, we've just been hearing about in the news. But it's not just that. It's all this information that's coming in from the Internet that the NSA picks out. It's all their surveillance from all around the country, all around the world. And it all goes into this one place. It's basically a huge data warehouse where all this information is placed. But it also serves as the cloud for NSA, the cloud being the central repository where everywhere all the information is kept. And then, through these fiber-optic cables that go out from it, people at NSA headquarters, people at NSA listening posts in Georgia, Texas, all these places, are able to immediately go in. It's just like, like I said, a hard drive. You go in, and you analyze all that information that's in there. So if they're collecting my telephone records today, who I'm calling, then tomorrow or tonight the NSA could go into those records in Bluffdale, Utah, and analyze them. So, that's basically what it's for. It's this massive repository for all the information that NSA is collecting. And it's a million square feet. It's an enormous amount of space at a time when you can put a terabyte worth of data on just a blade on a Swiss Army knife, which can, like I said, hold a terabyte worth of data, and this is a million square feet, costing $2 billion.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, I wanted to ask you aboutin 2012, at the annual DEF CON convention, the hacker convention, NSA director, General Keith Alexander, was asked whether the NSA keeps a file on every U.S. citizen. This was his response.

GEN. KEITH ALEXANDER: No, we don't. Absolutely not. And anybody who would tell you that we're keeping files or dossiers on the American people know that's not true. And let me tell you why. First, under our agency, we have a responsibility. Our job is foreign intelligence. We get oversight by Congress, both intel committees and their congressional members and their staffs, so everything we do is auditable by them, by the FISA Courtso the judiciary branch of our governmentand by the administration. And everything we do is accountable to them. And within the administration, it's from the director of national intelligence, it's from the Department of Justice, it's from the Department of Defense. I feel like when I was a kid growing upand some of you may feel like this, too. You know, you might get in a little trouble. You're supervised a lot and maybe had to spend time in the hall. Well, that's the way I feel today. We are overseen by everybody. And I will tell you that those who would want to weave the story that we have millions or hundreds of millions of dossiers on people is absolutely false.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: James Bamford, that was General Keith Alexander, again, at the DEF CON convention in 2012 inas we mentioned yesterday, wearing jeans and a T-shirt, a black T-shirt. Your response, especially this whole thing that he raises about we're just involved in foreign intelligence gathering?
JAMES BAMFORD: Well, it's funny. I was there, too. I also spoke at the DEF CON conference there. But the comments that General Alexander made, I thought, were amazingly out of place, because here it is, we just discovered he has all these dossiers that he's listing, that he's got all these records on American people and all these links into American Internet. What he's talking about in terms of oversight also isis just nonsense. He talks about the courts. Well, the court he's talking about is a top-secret court that nobody is even allowed to know where it exists, where its address is, let alone getting any information from it. And in the lastor, the last time that they overhauled the legislation, they weakened the court a great deal. So, I'm surewas that the answer you were looking for? What was the question again?
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, basically, his emphasis on the foreign intelligence gathering, as well, the role of NSA.
JAMES BAMFORD: Right, right, right, yeah. Well, that's always what they claim, is that, "Look, we're not involved in the United States at all. We're not involved in U.S. interception at all. We're just involved in foreign communications." Well, you know, if you look at that Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court order that was released, what it talks about is getting from Verizon not just overseas calls, it talks about local calls. These are calls that aren't even going to be on your bill. I mean, these are local calls or, you know, somebody calling their grandmother next door. We've come down to that, where the government is trying to get access to even your local calls. And I don't see any connection between that and what they say. What they claim is that we're only doing international, we're only doing foreign communications. Well, when you're asking for local phone calls throughout the United States, everybody in the United States, on a daily basis, you know, where's the truth in all these claims?
AMY GOODMAN: Republican Senator Rand Paul said on Thursday he plans to take legal action against the NSA's nationwide surveillance of telephone records. He also argued the NSA's monitoring is ineffective.

SEN. RAND PAUL: I believe we can have liberty and security. I believe that we are actually more secure when we narrow our focus and target specific suspects. Despite mining billions of American phone calls, we still had the Boston bombing. Perhaps we are overwhelming ourselves with data. Perhaps this unfocused approach distracted us from knowing that one of the Boston bombers had gone back to Chechnya. Perhaps targeting everyone distracts us from stopping people such as the underwear bomber, who we were tipped off about in advance.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Republican Senator Rand Paul. James Bamford, your response?
JAMES BAMFORD: Well, I've been saying the same thing. And the fact is that, you know, if you're trying to find a needle in a haystack, the last thing you want to do is continually put more hay on that haystack. You want get people that are morehire people that are more capable of finding the needle, rather than hiring people towith a pitchfork to put more hay on the haystack. And that's always what happens. Every time there's an incident, they just say, "We need more information."
Not only that, this idea that they're doing this totally covertly is just anti-democratic. The BritishI just came back from about 10 days over in London. And before all this broke out over here, they were debating the same thing in England, because the government wanted access to all the metadata of the communications in the country, and they wanted to order the ISPs to store all the incoming and outgoing Internet data for a year, so the government can monitor it, go through the metadata and so forth. The difference, however, is, is that they decided to do that legally, through a bill through Parliament, where it was actually debated in Parliament and debated in the press. And people in the public were talking about it. And it was voted down. The public said that's too much of an intrusion for the balance ofwhat they were saying, the balances in security. So, here you have a democratic system in England where they'rethey have a choice, and they vote against it. Here, they probably figure, "Well, if we bring this out to a vote, people will vote against it, so we'll just impose it on them secretly." That's not a democraticthat's certainly not the democratic process.

[Lauren Johnson]

What good is a panopticon unless knows they are in one?

by Naomi Wolf from her Facebook page (H/T David)
I hate to do this but I feel obligated to share, as the story unfolds, my creeping concern that the NSA leaker is not who he purports to be, and that the motivations involved in the story may be more complex than they appear to be. This is in no way to detract from the great courage of Glenn Greenwald in reporting the story, and the gutsiness of the Guardian in showcasing this kind of reporting, which is a service to America that US media is not performing at all. It is just to raise some cautions as the story unfolds, and to raise some questions about how it is unfolding, based on my experience with high-level political messaging.

Some of Snowden's emphases seem to serve an intelligence/police state objective, rather than to challenge them.

a) He is super-organized, for a whistleblower, in terms of what candidates, the White House, the State Dept. et al call message discipline.' He insisted on publishing a power point in the newspapers that ran his initial revelations. I gather that he arranged for a talented filmmaker to shoot the Greenwald interview. These two steps which are evidence of great media training, really PR 101″ are virtually never done (to my great distress) by other whistleblowers, or by progressive activists involved in breaking news, or by real courageous people who are under stress and getting the word out. They are always done, though, by high-level political surrogates.

b) In the Greenwald video interview, I was concerned about the way Snowden conveys his message. He is not struggling for words, or thinking hard, as even bright, articulate whistleblowers under stress will do. Rather he appears to be transmitting whole paragraphs smoothly, without stumbling. To me this reads as someone who has learned his talking points again the way that political campaigns train surrogates to transmit talking points.

c) He keeps saying things like, "If you are a journalist and they think you are the transmission point of this info, they will certainly kill you." Or: "I fully expect to be prosecuted under the Espionage Act." He also keeps stressing what he will lose: his $200,000 salary, his girlfriend, his house in Hawaii. These are the kinds of messages that the police state would LIKE journalists to take away; a real whistleblower also does not put out potential legal penalties as options, and almost always by this point has a lawyer by his/her side who would PROHIBIT him/her from saying, come get me under the Espionage Act." Finally in my experience, real whistleblowers are completely focused on their act of public service and trying to manage the jeopardy to themselves and their loved ones; they don't tend ever to call attention to their own self-sacrifice. That is why they are heroes, among other reasons. But a police state would like us all to think about everything we would lose by standing up against it.

d) It is actually in the Police State's interest to let everyone know that everything you write or say everywhere is being surveilled, and that awful things happen to people who challenge this. Which is why I am not surprised that now he is on UK no-fly lists I assume the end of this story is that we will all have a lesson in terrible things that happen to whistleblowers. That could be because he is a real guy who gets in trouble; but it would be as useful to the police state if he is a fake guy who gets in trouble.'

e) In stories that intelligence services are advancing (I would call the prostitutes-with-the-secret-service such a story), there are great sexy or sex-related mediagenic visuals that keep being dropped in, to keep media focus on the issue. That very pretty pole-dancing Facebooking girlfriend who appeared for, well, no reason in the media coverage…and who keeps leaking commentary, so her picture can be recycled in the press…really, she happens to pole-dance? Dan Ellsberg's wife was and is very beautiful and doubtless a good dancer but somehow she took a statelier role as his news story unfolded…

f) Snowden is in Hong Kong, which has close ties to the UK, which has done the US's bidding with other famous leakers such as Assange. So really there are MANY other countries that he would be less likely to be handed over from…

g) Media reports said he had vanished at one point to an undisclosed location' or a safe house.' Come on. There is no such thing. Unless you are with the one organization that can still get off the surveillance grid, because that org created it.

h) I was at dinner last night to celebrate the brave and heroic Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights. Several of Assange's also brave and talented legal team were there, and I remembered them from when I had met with Assange. These attorneys are present at every moment when Assange meets the press when I met with him off the record last Fall in the Ecuadoran embassy, his counsel was present the whole time, listening and stepping in when necessary.

Seeing these diligent attentive free-speech attorneys for another whisleblower reinforced my growing anxiety: WHERE IS SNOWDEN'S LAWYER as the world's media meet with him? A whistleblower talking to media has his/her counsel advising him/her at all times, if not actually being present at the interview, because anything he/she says can affect the legal danger the whistleblower may be in . It is very, very odd to me that a lawyer has not appeared, to my knowledge, to stand at Snowden's side and keep him from further jeopardy in interviews.

Again I hate to cast any skepticism on what seems to be a great story of a brave spy coming in from the cold in the service of American freedom. And I would never raise such questions in public if I had not been told by a very senior official in the intelligence world that indeed, there are some news stories that they create and drive even in America (where propagandizing Americans is now legal). But do consider that in Eastern Germany, for instance, it was the fear of a machine of surveillance that people believed watched them at all times rather than the machine itself that drove compliance and passivity. From the standpoint of the police state and its interests why have a giant Big Brother apparatus spying on us at all times unless we know about it?

Naomi
http://willyloman.wordpress.com/2013/06/...rts-to-be/

[Magda Hassan]

Interesting and much more substantive than Scott's vague inuendo.