How is these 'genie' going to be put back into the lamp?! A real Pandora's Box, this! Short of a revolution in several countries I can't see how this can be controlled. They'll have a commission - say they have reformed things - but everything will go on as now and worse...............::
I was speaking about this kind of panopticon of electronic eavesdropping 25 years ago - and I'm sure everyone I told or lectured to thought I was paranoid. I had long ago met a man who worked at the NSA...and was being held against his will in a psychiatric hospital and dosed with Haldol and given sessions of some kind of mind control...because he had leaked a little of this information [then they didn't have the same technological capabilities - but the exact same interest and 'mandate' = collect it ALL!]
See the new post I just made on the panopticon thread!!!....its worse than Snowden has even said [so far].
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
The entirety runs forty-three minutes and eight seconds. It's available on the White House website if you're in the mood for severe self-abuse and nails in your eyes just aren't enough.
Psychologists are aware that when children are constantly exposed to behavior which diametrically opposes what they're being told, they develop serious emotional disorders and intense confusion about other people. That's the situation of loyal Democrats these days, five years of speeches going one way and policies going the other. A Nobel Peace Prize winner who exports more arms than any other President in history and boasts of it. A President who wants to end the nuclear arms race while budgeting more than $1 trillion for future nukes. An environmentalist who sabotages the EPA and air quality rules, supports nuclear power and fracking in the face of Fukushima and the poisonous disasters of hydraulic fracturing. A man who decries the influence of lobbyists while appointing more of them to positions in the White House and in his cabinet departments than any President in history. It's a common sight these days: Democrats who still defend Obama becoming increasingly irrational, shrill, defensive, and morose. Look, I voted for him in 2008. I was wrong.
One thing you can count on with a Republican President: a unified Democratic Party defending the Bill of Rights and harsh in its criticism of incursions out of the White House.
Barack Obama gave his much-anticipated speech on the NSA today and managed to justify destroying the Constitution and constitutional principles in order to "prevent" another 9-11.
Never mind that earlier claims out of the NSA and its congressional screwheads like Mike Rogers about how applying the Nazi Greatest Hits as a domestic security theme song has prevented or averted "more 9-11s," have been thoroughly discredited by every investigation and study, including the one by Obama's own advisers and another by the panel he appointed to bring him recommendations. The President assures the nation that we can fix this little problem of massive surveillance by tightening a couple of bolts and adding a layer or two of Saddler's Neatsfoot Oil.
The speech on the website features a large photograph of Obama flanked by the requisite enormous national flags, and this: "President Obama delivers remarks presenting the outcomes (sic) of the Administration's review of our signals intelligence programs, and how, in light of new technologies, we can use them in a way that optimally protects our national security while supporting our foreign policy, respecting privacy and civil liberties, maintaining the public trust, and reducing the risk of unauthorized disclosures."
For those without their horseshit-to-english dictionaries, here's what he meant:
"We're not going to stop the massive spying on American citizens. We're going to expand the operation and adopt new methods of preventing more whistle blowing. We're going to obliterate the constitution in the interests of the security state, and of foreign policies designed to maximize access to the resources of other countries on behalf of the corporations who own my ass. I'm going to tell you I'm protecting your civil liberties while my Justice Department goes to court every day to attack them…"
Hint: anytime a President whose poll numbers are in free fall says he wants to maintain a public trust he's already lost, the sirens should go off in your head.
The President wants to protect our civil liberties. That's why he's initiated a program in all federal departments and agencies which require employees to inform on one another if they have reason to think a fellow worker is disloyal or is simply depressed. It's called Insider Threat.
I can readily believe that many members of Congress are just that stupid that they really believe all the terrorist threat' nonsense. Mike Rogers is an obvious example. But Obama isn't. He surely knows that there is now, essentially, zero terrorist danger in America.
I can buy that many members of Congress are cowards so rattled by 9-11 that they'd happily cede all their rights, burn the Constitution itself, if someone would only keep them safe. Their minds are so far gone that they can't grasp the reality, which is that people are more at risk from peanut butter allergies, falling in a bathtub, or being struck by lightning than they are from terrorists.
We've turned airports and, increasingly, bus stations, trains, and public highways into routine physical searches of Americans without probable cause, a wholesale violation of the 4th Amendment, all because, we officially claim, nineteen guys with box cutters and who couldn't fly a Cessna managed to hijack four commercial planes and then elude for more than an hour the most sophisticated and powerful air defense command in the world. It's a ludicrous story, of course, but being repeated relentlessly by the media it's found its way into the nation's lore.
Nobody seems to believe that America's air defense command could easily stop any future such terrorist attack. Perhaps nobody mentions this because it raises embarrassing questions about the first one.
One deceit Obama especially likes has been adopted by quite a few progressive' Democrats. That is that we need to "balance" our liberties with the requirements of security. This particular lie is very dangerous because it sounds so reasonable. If we fail to examine it, the equation sounds true, like one of those balancing acts we uncritically accept such as work and play.' But there is no such balance. Freedom is not secured by taking it away.
The framers got it. They knew this day was likely to come. They knew that tyrants bled the people dry by officious rules and overbearing laws. They knew that tyrants wanted to scare the people into giving up their freedoms for an illusion of safety. Benjamin Franklin warned us of this precisely. Those who would trade their liberty for that illusion, he said, deserved neither.
When Americans talk at all about their Constitution, they usually do so from a profound ignorance. Schools don't teach it anymore. Politicians misstate its terms and purpose. It is not surprising, then, however alarming, that most Americans think the Fifth Amendment is the hiding place for subversives and criminals, that the Fourth doesn't apply in times of crisis. They think the First offers protection to their own views but does not shield the ideas they find hateful or which dissent too strongly from the government's policies.
Those whose vision is so ideologically crabbed that they want to shelve the meaning of the 2nd Amendment the revisionist view is that it was designed to assist slave states in suppressing rebellion like to say it couldn't possibly have meant automatic weapons since the framers couldn't have envisioned them, but are silent on the question whether the framers envisioned urban police forces armed to the teeth and directed at ordinary people as if they were an occupying army.
We have a black Democratic President who campaigned against the policies he implements every day. When the first Snowden documents emerged, he looked like a deer in the headlights, unable to coherently frame a public response. Much of his party in the Congress then fell into line, with such liberal' stalwarts as Durbin, Schumer, and Franken issuing reassuring statements about how agencies such as NSA keep us safe.'
The Constitution is not negotiable. The First Amendment itself can't be compromised or we lose our country. But the existence of mass NSA spying against Americans the mere existence, not its rules or the absence of a flimsy oversight' such as the fig leaf the President is trying to sucker us with the existence alone makes a free press impossible. Reporters and journalists can't investigate and no one will speak to them; everyone is under surveillance. If people inside this government are not dissuaded by the unmistakeable message of Insider Threat,' they are going to worry that the reporter's phone calls, email, and internet search history are being intercepted by government spooks, or that their own are.
Fools that a lot of Americans are, we heard the predictable commentaries: no one should be troubled if they aren't doing anything wrong; the government has to do these things to save us from danger. But those who own America want to kill the free press, and this certainly does it.
Obama endorses the complete abandonment of the Fourth Amendment. Compare his rhetoric with this:
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and he persons or things to be seized."
Is any part of that hard to understand? No Warrants shall issue' does not mean that the government and the cops can make it easier on themselves by skipping the Warrant business entirely. Warrants are required before you can go snooping into people's private business, and that includes their mail, their pockets, their personal address books, their luncheon conversations, their sexual habits and proclivities, what they read, who they see, and where their curiosity takes them. Before you can do any of that you're required to get one of those Warrants, and for that you need something called probable cause,' which is one of the cornerstones of American jurisprudence and any lawyer knows it, and before a judge gives you one of those you have to make a showing. You can't just say, Judge, we're suspicious of three hundred million people.
The NSA operates secretly and, for reasons known only to the country's more egregious fools, its Warrants' are issued by a secret court on the kind of presentation typical of a 2nd grader at Show-and-Tell. The secret court, hilariously, was created in order to provide safeguards' for our liberties. I know, but that's what they say, even now.
The President gave us big lies about security and a sleight-of-hand on privacy, saying he'd like to move some of the data stolen from all of us into the control of private companies. This is supposed to reassure us. What happens when private companies and public government begin to resemble one another? Look it up on Google. There's a word for it.
That's the situation. It turns out you can go before a secret tribunal and get permission to spy without probable cause or even a Warrant under the obvious meaning of the Fourth Amendment. You can spy on everyone in the world, including foreign leaders, members of Congress, future Presidents, business leaders, anyone you might want to blackmail.
You can get a Warrant to eavesdrop on and open the mail of everyone. Everyone. Which makes this operation endorsed by Barack Obama the greatest criminal act in history. No country can be free when the secret police compile dossiers on everyone, to be accessed and used against anyone who causes trouble or otherwise comes to the attention of the monster we have created.
Edward Snowden said in a live webchat on Thursday: 'Returning to the US is the best resolution for the government, the public, and myself.' Photograph: AP
The attorney general, Eric Holder, has indicated that the US could allow the national security whistleblower Edward Snowden to return from Russia under negotiated terms, saying he was prepared to "engage in conversation" with him.
Holder said in an MSNBC interview that full clemency would be "going too far", but his comments suggest that US authorities are prepared to discuss a possible plea bargain with Snowden, who is living in exile in Russia.
Snowden, who took part in a live webchat at about the same time Holder's remarks were made public, defended his leaks, saying weak whistleblower protection laws prevented him from raising his concerns through formal channels.
"If we had ... a real process in place, and reports of wrongdoing could be taken to real, independent arbiters rather than captured officials, I might not have had to sacrifice so much to do what at this point even the president seems to agree needed to be done," Snowden said.
He gave no indication in the live chat whether he would consider any plea bargain or negotiated return to the US. Asked under what conditions he would return to his native country, Snowden replied: "Returning to the US, I think, is the best resolution for the government, the public, and myself, but it's unfortunately not possible in the face of current whistleblower protection laws, which through a failure in law did not cover national security contractors like myself."
The Obama administration's official line is that Snowden is a suspected felon and should be extradited from Russia, where he has been granted temporary asylum, to face trial in the US. Snowden has yet to be publicly indicted by the Justice Department, but in June it charged him with violations of the Espionage Act.
But Holder is the third senior administration official, including the president, who has made comments that raise the question of Snowden returning to the US under some kind of negotiated terms.
Jay Carney, the White House spokesman, was repeatedly pressed on Thursday over whether the administration "ruled out" clemency for the whistleblower. "He has been charged with felonies," Carney replied. "I am not going to wade into those kind of assessments."
MSNBC only released short excerpts of its interview with Holder, but reported the attorney general said he "would engage in conversation" with Snowden if he accepted responsibility for leaking government secrets.
Holder also said full clemency "would be going too far", according to the network. Asked whether Snowden was a whistleblower, he replied: "I prefer the term defendant. That's the most apt title."
The network said Holder made similar remarks at the University of Virginia, quoting him as saying: "We've always indicated that the notion of clemency isn't something that we were willing to consider. Instead, were he coming back to the US to enter a plea, we would engage with his lawyers. "
Snowden has never denied leaking the documents, but insisted his decision to provide top-secret documents to reporters working for the Guardian and Washington Post was an act of conscience, designed to inform the public about the nature of NSA surveillance.
In the webchat, Snowden said he did not believe he would receive a fair trial in the US. "The 100-year-old law under which I've been charged, which was never intended to be used against people working in the public interest, and forbids a public interest defence," he said. "This is especially frustrating, because it means there's no chance to have a fair trial, and no way I can come home and make my case to a jury."
Snowden's critics have argued that he is not a legitimate whistleblower because he did not take his concerns to intelligence inspectors general or members of Congress on the intelligence oversight committees.
A former NSA contractor with Booz Allen Hamilton, Snowden defended his leaks in the live chat, pointing out that intelligence-community contractors are not covered by whistleblower protection laws.
"There are so many holes in the laws, the protections they afford are so weak, and the processes for reporting they provide are so ineffective that they appear to be intended to discourage reporting of even the clearest wrongdoing," he said.
"If I had revealed what I knew about these unconstitutional but classified programs to Congress, they could have charged me with a felony."
The whistleblower's supporters argue out that he would unable to mount a proper defence in a US courtroom, in part because he would be barred from discussing the classified government programs.
A judge would also be likely to instruct the jury that Snowden's intentions would not constitute a defence of the charges against him. Some scholars have said Holder should adapt the rules to recognise the unique nature of the case.
"The Department of Justice and Snowden's attorneys could agree to conduct it by a slightly different set of rules, rules that would permit the jury to consider the full extent of the alleged governmental wrongdoing he uncovered along with the full scope of his alleged crimes," Alex Little, a former CIA analyst and assistant US attorney, wrote recently.
Holder's remarks are the latest in a series of hints the administration might consider some kind of plea bargain with the former contractor. Such a move that would be deeply unpopular with intelligence officials and their supporters on Capitol Hill.
In remarks published six days ago, Obama appeared to leave the door open to some kind of arrangement with Snowden.
A 17,000-word New Yorker profile of the the president, written by the magazine's editor, David Remnick, quoted him as saying Snowden was "not akin to Watergate or some scandal in which there were coverups involved". He also insisted "the benefit of the debate he generated was not worth the damage done, because there was another way of doing it".
However, in remarks to Remnick the day before he gave last week's long-awaited speech on the NSA, Obama said: "I do not have a yes/no answer on clemency for Edward Snowden. This is an active case, where charges have been brought."
Last month, Richard Ledgett, the NSA official in charge of assessing the alleged damage caused by Snowden's leaks, raised the possibility of an amnesty in return for assurances that top-secret material could be secured.
"My personal view is, yes, it's worth having a conversation about," he told CBS News. "I would need assurances that the remainder of the data could be secured, and my bar for those assurances would be very high. It would be more than just an assertion on his part."
In Thursday's webchat, Snowden also said a report by the government's independent civil liberties watchdog, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, vindicated his actions. The divided board found that the bulk collection of Americans' phone data was illegal and ought to end.
"There is simply no justification for continuing an unconstitutional policy with a 0% success rate," Snowden said.
The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.
After Big Obama Speech NSA Programs are Still Illegal
By Donn Marten [/TD]
[TD="width: 16%"][/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]
(Article changed on January 25, 2014 at 15:19)
Obama giving talk on NSA 'reform'
(image by msnbc screen grab)
The latest blow to the ongoing national disgrace of the unconstitutional mass surveillance that is being conducted by the NSA with zero oversight came Thursday morning. The government's own Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board released a report that confirms what any rational, thinking American who is not in the bag for big surveillance already knew: that the NSA programs to collect phone metadata are illegal. Not that this is a big deal to President Barack Obama who is still riding high after basically telling everyone to go to hell in his overly hyped speech last Friday at the Justice Department. It was a real stem-winder filled with obfuscations, hedged admissions, vague half promises and the type of sheer malarkey that is the coin of the realm in the sad remnants of a once great country that has been turned into something abominable and called The Homeland. His speech earned him accolades from those who are most guilty in aiding and abetting the criminal conduct of the National Security Agency, in particular House Intelligence Committee overlord Mike Rogers and Senate Intelligence Committee queen Dianne Feinstein, who both belong in prison.
According to an article in the Guardian by Spencer Ackerman entitled "US government privacy board says NSA bulk collection of phone data is illegal":
According to the report, first published by the Washington Post and the New York Times, the privacy board found that the mass phone data collection was at best marginally useful for US counter-terrorism, a finding that went further than similar assessments by a federal judge and Obama's own surveillance advisory board.
Not only did the board conclude that the bulk surveillance was a threat to constitutional liberties, it could not find "a single instance" in which the program "made a concrete difference in the outcome of a terrorism investigation".
"Moreover, we are aware of no instance in which the program directly contributed to the discovery of a previously unknown terrorist plot or the disruption of a terrorist attack."
That one has to smart for the White House, especially after they were finally starting to gain a bit of traction in the massive counter-offensive to preserve the obscenity that is the NSA and to prevent further revelations of the boat load of illegal activities being conducted from being exposed. Obama fudged and punted the ball last week but what he did not do was to put any sort of at least a temporary restraint on the wanton criminality being conducted out of American Stasi HQ at Fort Meade. The programs are still in place and while the current 'debate' is over metadata what is not being discussed at all is that the metadata is likely just an indexing system that allows the instantaneous review of the real content that is within that data. This was brought up in an interview by Rob Kall of the progressive website OpEd News with NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake who calls the metadata collection the "cloak and cover" of the real secrets that involve "content collection". It comes at around the 40 minute mark in what is a very informative discussion with a patriotic American. Obama and his minions as well as the guardians and profiteers of the surveillance state's data-mining programs would love to keep the national discussion based solely on metadata but this is a truly a snakepit without a bottom.
The report is not going to sit well with the establishment. It was the same type of rebuke that was rudely issued to the Obama regime back in December by federal judge Richard Leon who ruled that the NSA programs are "Orwellian" and "likely unconstitutional" raising the hopes of privacy rights advocates that the data-mining for undefined future purposes would be checked. That was not to happen though as the wagons were circled immediately and the propaganda pushback came after another ruling, this one by Manhattan based federal judge William Pauley saved the day for the authoritarians who have been playing offense ever since.
The report which is the latest example of how far these people have gone will now be attacked, smeared and targeted by the legal eagles within the bowels of this corrupt administration just as Judge Leon's ruling was. Already Obama's flacks in the White House have taken to the media podium to denounce it with the same obscene indignity of the entitled that we have been forced to swallow for well over a decade over the terms of two presidents running now. In a decent country we would not be ruled by the likes of George W. Bush and Barack Obama, both of whom due to their ongoing authorization of these programs should have been impeached and removed from office.
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
Edward Snowden tells German TV the NSA is involved in industrial espionage
Public broadcaster ARD airs interview in which whistleblower says National Security Agency is involved in industrial espionage
ARD is scheduled to broadcast its interview with Edward Snowden on Sunday night.
The National Security Agency is involved in industrial espionage and will take intelligence regardless of its value to national security, the former NSA contractor Edward Snowden has told a German television network.
In a lengthy interview broadcast on the public broadcaster ARD TV on Sunday, Snowden said the NSA did not limit its espionage to issues of national security and cited the German engineering firm Siemens as one target.
"If there's information at Siemens that's beneficial to US national interests even if it doesn't have anything to do with national security then they'll take that information nevertheless," Snowden said in the interview conducted in Russia, where Snowden has claimed asylum.
Snowden also told the German public broadcasting network he no longer had possession of any documents or information on NSA activities and had turned everything over to select journalists. He said he did not have any control over the publication of the information.
Questions about US government spying on civilians and foreign officials arose last June, when Snowden leaked documents outlining the widespread collection of telephone records and email to media outlets including the Guardian.
Reports that the NSA monitored Chancellor Angela Merkel's mobile phone have added to anger in Germany, which has been pushing for a "no-spy" agreement with the US, a country it considers to be among its closest allies.
Snowden also talked about US reports that his life was in danger for leaking the documents. But he said that he sleeps well because he believes he did the right thing by informing the public about the NSA's activities.
"There are significant threats but I sleep very well," he said before referring to a report on a US website that he said quoted anonymous US officials saying his life was in danger.
"These people, and they are government officials, have said they would love to put a bullet in my head or poison me when I come out of the supermarket and then watch me die in the shower," Snowden said.
Snowden's claim the NSA is engaged in industrial espionage follows a New York Times report earlier this month that the NSA put software in almost 100,000 computers around the world, allowing it to carry out surveillance on those devices and could provide a digital highway for cyberattacks.
The NSA planted most of the software after gaining access to computer networks, but has also used a secret technology that allows it entry even to computers not connected to the internet, the newspaper said, citing US officials, computer experts and documents leaked by Snowden.
The newspaper said the technology had been in use since at least 2008 and relied on a covert channel of radio waves transmitted from tiny circuit boards and USB cards secretly inserted in the computers. Frequent targets of the programme, code-named Quantum, included units of the Chinese military and industrial targets.
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
Link to video: Legality of GCHQ surveillance questioned by leading lawyerGCHQ's mass surveillance spying programmes are probably illegal and have been signed off by ministers in breach of human rights and surveillance laws, according to a hard-hitting legal opinion that has been provided to MPs.
The advice warns that Britain's principal surveillance law is too vague and is almost certainly being interpreted to allow the agency to conduct surveillance that flouts privacy safeguards set out in the European convention on human rights (ECHR).
The inadequacies, it says, have created a situation where GCHQ staff are potentially able to rely "on the gaps in the current statutory framework to commit serious crime with impunity".
At its most extreme, the advice raises issues about the possible vulnerability of staff at GCHQ if it could be proved that intelligence used for US drone strikes against "non-combatants" had been passed on or supplied by the British before being used in a missile attack.
"An individual involved in passing that information is likely to be an accessory to murder. It is well arguable, on a variety of different bases, that the government is obliged to take reasonable steps to investigate that possibility," the advice says.
The opinion suggests the UK should consider publishing a memorandum of understanding with any country with which it intends to share intelligence.
This would clarify what the intelligence can be used for under British law, and how the data will be stored and destroyed.
The legal advice has been sent to the 46 members of the all-party parliamentary group on drones, which is chaired by the Labour MP, Tom Watson.
Following disclosures over mass surveillance provided by the whistleblower Edward Snowden, the committee began looking at how intelligence is transferred from UK agencies to those in the US, such as the National Security Agency and CIA.
In a 32-page opinion, the leading public law barrister Jemima Stratford QC raises a series of concerns about the legality and proportionality of GCHQ's work, and the lack of safeguards for protecting privacy.
It makes clear the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (Ripa), the British law used to sanction much of GCHQ's activity, has been left behind by advances in technology. The advice warns:
Ripa does not allow mass interception of contents of communications between two people in the UK, even if messages are routed via a transatlantic cable.
The interception of bulk metadata such as phone numbers and email addresses is a "disproportionate interference" with article 8 of the ECHR.
The current framework for the retention, use and destruction of metadata is inadequate and likely to be unlawful.
If the government knows it is transferring data that may be used for drone strikes against non-combatants in countries such as Yemen and Pakistan, that is probably unlawful.
The power given to ministers to sanction GCHQ's interception of messages abroad "is very probably unlawful".
The advice says Ripa "provides too wide a discretion" to the foreign secretary, William Hague, and "provides almost no meaningful restraint on the exercise of executive discretion in respect of external communications".
Such surveillance may also be a breach of the ECHR, it adds.
"We consider the mass interception of external contents and communications data is unlawful. The indiscriminate interception of data, solely by reference to the request of the executive, is a disproportionate interference with the private life of the individuals concerned."
Last June, Snowden leaked thousands of files about the surveillance activities of GCHQ and its US counterpart the NSA.
One of the key revelations focussed on Operation Tempora, a GCHQ programme that harvests vast amounts of information by tapping into the undersea cables that carry internet and phone traffic passing in and out of the UK. GCHQ and Hague, have repeatedly insisted the agency acts in accordance with the law.
Last year, Hague told MPs: "It has been suggested GCHQ uses our partnership with the US to get around UK law, obtaining information that they cannot legally obtain in the UK. I wish to be absolutely clear that this accusation is baseless."
However, the legal advice poses awkward new questions about the framework GCHQ operates within, the role of ministers and the legality of transferring bulk data to other spy agencies.
The advice makes clear Ripa does not allow GCHQ to conduct mass surveillance on communications between people in the UK, even if the data has briefly left British shores because the call or email has travelled to an internet server overseas.
GCHQ can seek a warrant allowing it to spy on a named person or premises in the UK but Ripa was not intended to permit untargeted fishing expeditions in the UK.
The advice also takes issue with Ripa's distinction between metadata and content of messages; when Ripa was passed this was analogous to the difference between the address on an envelope and the letter within it.
Under Ripa, GCHQ is allowed to gather and store metadata with few restrictions, but requires more exacting ministerial approval to read the content of messages.
However, the advice notes that "the significance of that boundary has been eroded by the realities of modern internet usage" because metadata can allow you to build up a much more complete picture of an individual's private life.
"The distinction between contents and communications data has become increasingly artificial. Many of the most 'important' aspects of an individual's online 'private life' can be accessed via their communications data or 'metadata'."
The advice concludes: "In short, the rules concerning communications data are too uncertain and do not provide sufficient clarity to be in accordance with the law … we consider the mass interception of communications via a transatlantic cable to be unlawful, and that these conclusions would apply even if some or all of the interception is taking place outside UK territorial waters."
Leaving decisions about whether data can be shared with agencies abroad to the "unfettered discretion" of ministers is also a probable breach of the convention, the advice warns.
"First, the transfer of private data is a significant interference with an individual's article 8 rights. That interference will only be lawful when proportionate.
"Secondly, the ECHR has held on more than one occasion that surveillance, and the use of surveillance data, is an area in which governments must conduct themselves in a transparent and 'predictable' manner. The current framework is uncertain: it relies on the discretion of one individual.
"Thirdly, on a pragmatic level,there is a real possibility that the NSA might function as GCHQ's unofficial 'backup' service. If GCHQ is not entitled to hold onto data itself, it might transfer it to the NSA. In time, and if relevant, that data might be transferred back to GCHQ. Without strong guidelines and scrutiny, the two services might support each other to (in effect) circumvent the requirements of their domestic legislation."
The opinion adds: "If GCHQ transfers communications data to other governments it does so without any statutory restrictions. Such transfers are a disproportionate interference with the article 8 rights of the individuals concerned. There are no restrictions, checks or restraints on the transfer of that data."
The opinion notes that the UK has not adopted the doctrine of "anticipatory self-defence" in the same way as the US to provide legal cover for drone strikes in countries where it is not involved in an international armed conflict.
"Accordingly, in our view, if GCHQ transferred data to the NSA in the knowledge that it would or might be used for targeting drone strikes, that transfer is probably unlawful," the advice states.
"The transferor would be an accessory to murder for the purposes of domestic law … We consider that, pursuant to the transfer, the agent is likely to become an accessory to murder."
Watson said he would be submitting the legal opinion to the parliamentary intelligence and security committee, which is undertaking an inquiry into mass surveillance.
"MPs now have strong independent advice questioning the legality of major UK intelligence programmes," he said.
"If ministers are prepared to allow GCHQ staff to be potential accessories to murder, they must be very clear that they are responsible for allowing it. We have seen a step change in mass covert surveillance and intelligence gathering, underpinned on dubious legal grounds and with virtually no parliamentary oversight.
"The leadership of all the main parties should stop turning a blind eye to a programme that has far-reaching consequences around the globe."
The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.
James Clapper testifies before the Senate intelligence committee hearing on current and projected national security threats. Photograph: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP
James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, has issued a blistering condemnation of Edward Snowden, calling the surveillance disclosures published by the Guardian and other news outlets a "perfect storm" that would endanger American lives.
Testifying before a rare and unusually raucous public session of the Senate intelligence committee that saw yet another evolution in the Obama administration's defense of bulk domestic phone records collection, Clapper called on "Snowden and his accomplices" to return the documents the former National Security Agency contractor took, in order to minimize what he called the "profound damage that his disclosures have caused and continued to cause".
Snowden has repeatedly said he acted alone in assembling and leaking a vast trove of information on the scope of US surveillance efforts, a conclusion also reportedly reached by the NSA's official investigation into the Snowden leaks.
Asked if the journalists who possess leaked surveillance information counted in Clapper's definition of an "accomplice", Clapper spokesman Shawn Turner clarified: "Director Clapper was referring to anyone who is assisting Edward Snowden to further threaten our national security through the unauthorized disclosure of stolen documents related to lawful foreign intelligence collection programs."
Turner declined to be more specific.
At the hearing, senator Ron Wyden, the Oregon Democrat whose questioning last March ended with Clapper lying to the panel about the deliberate collection of Americans' data, pressed Clapper to give public answers on surveillance activities on American information "sent over the web or stored in the cloud" references to NSA's so-called "upstream" collection capabilities, which allow the agency to harvest data in transit. He also questioned Clapper on whether the NSA had conducted "warrantless searches" for "specific" Americans' identifying information in its vast databases of foreigners' internet content, an authority first reported by the Guardian.
"Can you tell us today whether any such searches have ever been conducted?" Wyden asked.
"Senator Wyden, I think, at a threat hearing, this would ... I would prefer not to discuss this and have this as a separate subject. There are very complex legal issues here, I just don't think this is the appropriate time or place," Clapper said.
Wyden extracted a promise from Clapper to issue a declassified answer in 30 days.
Backed by the leaders of several intelligence agencies but not the NSA director, Keith Alexander, who was not present Clapper claimed Snowden's disclosures had left the intelligence community less able to detect terrorist activity. Those testifying were less definitive about any specific dangers to the US that might result from what Snowden did, more often describing it as an over-the-horizon concern.
"It certainly puts us at risk of missing something that we are trying to see, which could lead to [an attack]," said Matthew Olsen, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center.
"Terrorists and other allies have gone to school," Clapper said, employing some of the most fervent language that the intelligence agencies have used publicly to describe Snowden's disclosures. The impact "includes putting the lives of members, or assets of, the intelligence community at risk", Clapper said.
The counter-intelligence capabilities of al-Qaida are "increasingly good and, unfortunately, I think they just have to pick up the paper or do a Google search on what's been leaked", said John Brennan, the CIA director.
Lt Gen Michael Flynn, the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, said the "greatest cost" of the NSA disclosures was "unknown today, but [what] we will likely face is costs of human lives on tomorrow's battlefield, some place we put our mil[itary] forces when we ask them to go into harm's way".
This particular hearing, known as the Worldwide Threat briefing, was where Clapper did major damage to his reputation last March. Under questioning from Wyden, Clapper said the government did "not wittingly" collect data on millions of Americans, a lie for which he would apologize to the panel, though not before changing his story about what prompted it.
Clapper first said it was the "least untruthful" answer he could give publicly. Then he said he "simply didn't think" of the correct claimed legal authority under which the mass data collection occurs.
President Obama has stuck by Clapper, a decision that foreshadowed his recent call to preserve the vast majority of the NSA's bulk surveillance authorities while transferring its phone records database to the custody of an undefined private entity. But six legislators, led by congressman Darrell Issa of California, wrote to Obama on Monday in an effort to get Clapper fired.
"The continued role of James Clapper as director of national intelligence is incompatible with the goal of restoring trust in our security programs and ensuring the highest level of transparency," they wrote, and were just as quickly rebuffed by the White House.
Clapper's defenders have said that Wyden placed the director in an untenable position by publicly querying him about a secret program, making his options either to lie or to decline to answer publicly, which they say would amount to public confirmation of a secret intelligence activity.
But on Tuesday, Clapper, joined by Brennan, opted to state instead that it was better to discuss certain unconfirmed intelligence activities in a classified hearing, where most of the panel's work is conducted. The panel, usually a bastion of support for the intelligence agencies on Capitol Hill, featured sharp questioning and internal disagreement over surveillance and the CIA's former torture programs.
Clapper reserved an answer on whether Russia had accessed the Snowden trove for a private session. Snowden has repeatedly stated that he did not take any documents to Russia, which granted him temporary asylum last summer after the US revoked his passport.
Clapper also declined to answer a question about European surveillance involving US businesses, and possibly upon them, in an open hearing.
Clapper did pledge to be more "transparent" in explaining surveillance actions in the future, in order to maintain public support for them. And while the NSA's Alexander did not attend the hearing, he reportedly announced a former Homeland Security official, Rebecca Richards, as the surveillance agency's first privacy and civil liberties officer.
Querying Clapper, Wyden said: "I don't think this culture of misinformation is going to be easily fixed."
Two powerful senators signalled their opposition to President Obama's plans to move the NSA out of the business of bulk collection and storage of domestic call records.
Jay Rockefeller, the West Virginia Democrat and former intelligence committee chairman, said he "absolutely opposes contracting out this core government function", saying the telecommunications firms would do a worse job of protecting US privacy and national security.
"I can't tell you how strongly I feel about this. The president left us in a very interesting situation," Rockefeller said.
His successor as chair, California Democrat Dianne Feinstein, who recently shepherded a bill through the committee that would entrench and expand NSA's authority over bulk phone data, backed Rockefeller.
"In my view, he knows what he's talking about."
Angus King, the Maine independent, urged the intelligence chiefs to make a thorough case that the bulk collection of domestic phone data was necessary for preventing terrorism, rather than a useful but optional tool as the latter, King said, was difficult to defend to constituents.
"It allows us to do in minutes what would otherwise take us hours" to determine if there was a domestic nexus to a foreign terrorist attack, said the FBI director, James Comey, who said "agility" was the primary value of bulk collection.
"Now, in most circumstances, the difference between hours and minutes isn't going to be material, except when it matters most," Comey said.
This is hardly the first time that the Obama administration's defense of surveillance has changed, and it is an even further cry from the claims made by the NSA this summer that it had actually stopped looming terrorist attacks at home.
Members of the panel also feuded among themselves, as senators tried to out-duel each other to condemn Snowden, and varied in the extent to which they challenged Clapper.
Feinstein began the hearing by warning the committee to stick to "unclassified details", a signal against pressing Clapper to address additional information about surveillance.
She ended it by permitting Wyden additional time to ask the intelligence chiefs to provide an example of when the spy agencies needed phone data urgently that was too old for telecoms to provide through normal processes.
"You had a long 10 seconds. Be grateful," Feinstein said.
.
The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.
:
![[Image: 0d95c253-41e9-4db6-837d-f426bf6585b1-460x276.jpeg]](http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2014/1/23/1390513517227/0d95c253-41e9-4db6-837d-f426bf6585b1-460x276.jpeg)
Edward Snowden said in a live webchat on Thursday: 'Returning to the US is the best resolution for the government, the public, and myself.' Photograph: AP![[Image: s_500_opednews_com_0_screen-shot-2014-01...25-491.gif]](http://www.opednews.com/populum/cachedimages/s_500_opednews_com_0_screen-shot-2014-01-17-at-2-21-42-pm-png_5421_20140125-491.gif)
::![[Image: 365e551e-06fb-41ec-a62b-cab1c86f931c-460x276.jpeg]](http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2014/1/26/1390744359484/365e551e-06fb-41ec-a62b-cab1c86f931c-460x276.jpeg)
ARD is scheduled to broadcast its interview with Edward Snowden on Sunday night. ![[Image: d3ea0917-4e25-4bbf-8bb3-bfcc9d19f507-460x276.jpeg]](http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2014/1/29/1391019829104/d3ea0917-4e25-4bbf-8bb3-bfcc9d19f507-460x276.jpeg)
James Clapper testifies before the Senate intelligence committee hearing on current and projected national security threats. Photograph: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP