No Morsel Too Minuscule for All-Consuming N.S.A.

[jimmy olsen]

This is a long 7 page article, but it has a lot of interesting information, so I recommend taking a look.

I posted the first two pages here, you can find the rest at the NY Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/03/world/no-morsel-too-minuscule-for-all-consuming-nsa.html?hp&_r=0

No Morsel Too Minuscule for All-Consuming N.S.A.
By SCOTT SHANE
Published: November 2, 2013

When Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary general, sat down with President Obama at the White House in April to discuss Syrian chemical weapons, Israeli-Palestinian peace talks and climate change, it was a cordial, routine exchange.

The National Security Agency nonetheless went to work in advance and intercepted Mr. Ban's talking points for the meeting, a feat the agency later reported as an "operational highlight" in a weekly internal brag sheet. It is hard to imagine what edge this could have given Mr. Obama in a friendly chat, if he even saw the N.S.A.'s modest scoop. (The White House won't say.)

But it was emblematic of an agency that for decades has operated on the principle that any eavesdropping that can be done on a foreign target of any conceivable interest — now or in the future — should be done. After all, American intelligence officials reasoned, who's going to find out?

From thousands of classified documents, the National Security Agency emerges as an electronic omnivore of staggering capabilities, eavesdropping and hacking its way around the world to strip governments and other targets of their secrets, all the while enforcing the utmost secrecy about its own operations. It spies routinely on friends as well as foes, as has become obvious in recent weeks; the agency's official mission list includes using its surveillance powers to achieve "diplomatic advantage" over such allies as France and Germany and "economic advantage" over Japan and Brazil, among other countries.

Mr. Obama found himself in September standing uncomfortably beside the president of Brazil, Dilma Rousseff, who was furious at being named as a target of N.S.A. eavesdropping. Since then, there has been a parade of such protests, from the European Union, Mexico, France, Germany and Spain. Chagrined American officials joke that soon there will be complaints from foreign leaders feeling slighted because the agency had not targeted them.

James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, has repeatedly dismissed such objections as brazen hypocrisy from countries that do their own share of spying. But in a recent interview, he acknowledged that the scale of eavesdropping by the N.S.A., with 35,000 workers and $10.8 billion a year, sets it apart. "There's no question that from a capability standpoint we probably dwarf everybody on the planet, just about, with perhaps the exception of Russia and China," he said.

Since Edward J. Snowden began releasing the agency's documents in June, the unrelenting stream of disclosures has opened the most extended debate on the agency's mission since its creation in 1952. The scrutiny has ignited a crisis of purpose and legitimacy for the N.S.A., the nation's largest intelligence agency, and the White House has ordered a review of both its domestic and its foreign intelligence collection. While much of the focus has been on whether the agency violates Americans' privacy, an issue under examination by Congress and two review panels, the anger expressed around the world about American surveillance has prompted far broader questions.

If secrecy can no longer be taken for granted, when does the political risk of eavesdropping overseas outweigh its intelligence benefits? Should foreign citizens, many of whom now rely on American companies for email and Internet services, have any privacy protections from the N.S.A.? Will the American Internet giants' collaboration with the agency, voluntary or otherwise, damage them in international markets? And are the agency's clandestine efforts to weaken encryption making the Internet less secure for everyone?

Matthew M. Aid, an intelligence historian and author of a 2009 book on the N.S.A., said there is no precedent for the hostile questions coming at the agency from all directions.

"From N.S.A.'s point of view, it's a disaster," Mr. Aid said. "Every new disclosure reinforces the notion that the agency needs to be reined in. There are political consequences, and there will be operational consequences."

A review of classified agency documents obtained by Mr. Snowden and shared with The New York Times by The Guardian, offers a rich sampling of the agency's global operations and culture. (At the agency's request, The Times is withholding some details that officials said could compromise intelligence operations.) The N.S.A. seems to be listening everywhere in the world, gathering every stray electron that might add, however minutely, to the United States government's knowledge of the world. To some Americans, that may be a comfort. To others, and to people overseas, that may suggest an agency out of control.

The C.I.A. dispatches undercover officers overseas to gather intelligence today roughly the same way spies operated in biblical times. But the N.S.A., born when the long-distance call was a bit exotic, has seen its potential targets explode in number with the advent of personal computers, the Internet and cellphones. Today's N.S.A. is the Amazon of intelligence agencies, as different from the 1950s agency as that online behemoth is from a mom-and-pop bookstore. It sucks the contents from fiber-optic cables, sits on telephone switches and Internet hubs, digitally burglarizes laptops and plants bugs on smartphones around the globe.

Mr. Obama and top intelligence officials have defended the agency's role in preventing terrorist attacks. But as the documents make clear, the focus on counterterrorism is a misleadingly narrow sales pitch for an agency with an almost unlimited agenda. Its scale and aggressiveness are breathtaking.

The agency's Dishfire database — nothing happens without a code word at the N.S.A. — stores years of text messages from around the world, just in case. Its Tracfin collection accumulates gigabytes of credit card purchases. The fellow pretending to send a text message at an Internet cafe in Jordan may be using an N.S.A. technique code-named Polarbreeze to tap into nearby computers. The Russian businessman who is socially active on the web might just become food for Snacks, the acronym-mad agency's Social Network Analysis Collaboration Knowledge Services, which figures out the personnel hierarchies of organizations from texts.

The spy agency's station in Texas intercepted 478 emails while helping to foil a jihadist plot to kill a Swedish artist who had drawn pictures of the Prophet Muhammad. N.S.A. analysts delivered to authorities at Kennedy International Airport the names and flight numbers of workers dispatched by a Chinese human smuggling ring.

The agency's eavesdropping gear, aboard a Defense Department plane flying 60,000 feet over Colombia, fed the location and plans of FARC rebels to the Colombian Army. In the Orlandocard operation, N.S.A. technicians set up what they called a "honeypot" computer on the web that attracted visits from 77,413 foreign computers and planted spyware on more than 1,000 that the agency deemed of potential future interest.

The Global Phone Book

No investment seems too great if it adds to the agency's global phone book. After mounting a major eavesdropping effort focused on a climate change conference in Bali in 2007, agency analysts stationed in Australia's outback were especially thrilled by one catch: the cellphone number of Bali's police chief.

"Our mission," says the agency's current five-year plan, which has not been officially scheduled for declassification until 2032, "is to answer questions about threatening activities that others mean to keep hidden."

The aspirations are grandiose: to "utterly master" foreign intelligence carried on communications networks. The language is corporate: "Our business processes need to promote data-driven decision-making." But the tone is also strikingly moralistic for a government bureaucracy. Perhaps to counter any notion that eavesdropping is a shady enterprise, signals intelligence, or Sigint, the term of art for electronic intercepts, is presented as the noblest of callings.

"Sigint professionals must hold the moral high ground, even as terrorists or dictators seek to exploit our freedoms," the plan declares. "Some of our adversaries will say or do anything to advance their cause; we will not."

The N.S.A. documents taken by Mr. Snowden and shared with The Times, numbering in the thousands and mostly dating from 2007 to 2012, are part of a collection of about 50,000 items that focus mainly on its British counterpart, Government Communications Headquarters or G.C.H.Q.

While far from comprehensive, the documents give a sense of the agency's reach and abilities, from the Navy ships snapping up radio transmissions as they cruise off the coast of China, to the satellite dishes at Fort Meade in Maryland ingesting worldwide banking transactions, to the rooftops of 80 American embassies and consulates around the world from which the agency's Special Collection Service aims its antennas.

[Sheilbh]

Good

There is immense hypocrisy in a lot of the foreign response to this as well. Most European intelligence agencies cooperate with the NSA, including the Germans.

Similarly for all the moaning about trying to eavesdrop on allies one former Europe Minister said he was advised not to say anything sensitive on his mobile because a transcript would be on his counterparts desk in Paris that day. There's always been strong suggestions that the UK and France use our intelligence agencies in European policy - building an ever closer union

I suppose they have to pull the Captain Renaud act for political purposes and maybe try and get something out of it, but it doesn't mean we should play along.

Edit: I thought former Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner was honest about this:
"The magnitude of the eavesdropping is what shocked us," former French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner told France Info radio. "Let's be honest, we eavesdrop too. Everyone is listening to everyone else."

The difference, he added, is that "we don't have the same means as the United States — which makes us jealous."

[Syt]

I agree with Kouchner, too.

What struck me as almost funny (though it may have been in the way the media presented it) that Merkel was relatively quiet about the NSA surveillance of Germans, but got much more involved once news broke that her own phone was also tapped.

[The Brain]

She uses it to discuss lady things.

[The Larch]

I suppose they have to pull the Captain Renaud act for political purposes and maybe try and get something out of it, but it doesn't mean we should play along.

I also used the Casablanca scene with Captain Renault being shocked about gambling going on in the establishment as a comparison for the political reaction to this case the other day talking with a friend. 

[dps]

If spies aren't, well, spying, on foreign leaders, they aren't doing their job.  And yes, that includes spies from other countries spying on our leaders.

[crazy canuck]

Spies like us

[Barrister]

Spies like us

Terrible movie.

[The Brain]

If spies aren't, well, spying, on foreign leaders, they aren't doing their job.  And yes, that includes spies from other countries spying on our leaders.

Not getting caught is part of their job. Probably, unless Obama wanted to send a message.

[Ed Anger]

Spies like us

Terrible movie.

You are: disowned

[Zanza]

There is a word for that: totalitarian.

[derspiess]

Spies like us

Terrible movie.

You are: disowned

No shit.  I saw it in the theater back in the day.  Excellent cold war comedy.

[Razgovory]

There is a word for that: totalitarian.

I wonder what it's called when they spy on their own citizens.

[The Brain]

There is a word for that: totalitarian.

It's just Ed being Ed.

[Ed Anger]

There is a word for that: totalitarian.

It's just Ed being Ed.