Former CIA and NSA employee source of intelligence leaks

[Phillip V]

In 2009, Snowden told a friend via chat that leakers "should be shot" in their genitals.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/27/world/under-snowdens-screen-name-a-declaration-in-09-that-leakers-should-be-shot.html

[Darth Wagtaros]

Well that was before the Chinese gave him a good deal for it.

[garbon]

Arsificial sounds like Languish.

[Syt]

[jimmy olsen]

It's probably just going to be published with so many black lines so as to be unreadable.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/07/16/yahoo_wins_crucial_fisc_battle_in_secret_prism_spying_case.html

Yahoo Wins Crucial Court Battle in Secret PRISM Spying Case

By Ryan Gallagher
Posted Tuesday, July 16, 2013, at 5:11 PM

Yahoo doesn't have the best reputation when it comes to protecting users' data from surveillance. But the company is bolstering its privacy credentials by taking on the government in a fight to reveal details about secret spying.

On Monday, Yahoo won a partial but significant victory in an effort to force the release of a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act order demanding it that it turn over users' data, which it first unsuccessfully challenged in 2008. The case was revived after the recent leaks about NSA surveillance programs, including an Internet spy initiative called PRISM, which the government uses to collect information under FISA from major companies including Yahoo, Google, and Apple.

Yahoo asked the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to release the decision in the 2008 case, citing "the current controversy" about the FISA-PRISM surveillance as one of the reasons why disclosure is necessary. In a decision published on Monday, FISC Judge Reggie Walton ruled in Yahoo's favor, ordering the government to conduct a "declassification review," after which time Walton said the court "anticipates publishing" the 2008 documents "in a form that redacts any properly classified information."

In a statement, Yahoo said it was pleased with the decision and added that publication of the documents would "contribute constructively to the ongoing public discussion around online privacy."

The company's complicity in the PRISM program was a public relations disaster. But by challenging the surveillance, Yahoo has earned back some credibility, even receiving a "gold star" from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Since the series of stories about the NSA's surveillance programs broke last month, an unprecedented amount of pressure has been on the government to justify its spy efforts. The FISC has also been under heavy scrutiny, with critics blasting its excessive secrecy and branding it a "rubber stamp" court because it rarely rules against the government. Notably, the FISC's Yahoo decision is the second it has issued against the government since the NSA revelations. Last month, the court rejected an ongoing attempt by the Justice Department to prevent the release of a classified 2011 opinion detailing unlawful surveillance. It may be the case that the NSA revelations have indirectly had an impact on the FISC judges, making them more inclined to favor less secrecy and increased transparency in a effort to prove that they aren't just government lapdogs, after all

[jimmy olsen]

Hope he succeeds!

http://www.salon.com/2013/07/22/gop_civil_war_leaders_target_rising_star/

GOP insurrection heats up over surveillance
Rep. Justin Amash wants to deprive the NSA of funds for spying. Now, his angry House leadership is fighting back
By David Sirota

Topics: Republican Party, U.S. House of Representatives, Congress, NSA, Budget, Justin Amash, Editor's Picks, John Boehner, Politics News
GOP insurrection heats up over surveillanceJustin Amash, John Boehner (Credit: AP/Carlos Osorio/J. Scott Applewhite)

In an attempt to prevent Washington lawmakers from having to publicly declare their position on the National Security Administration's mass surveillance, will congressional leaders formally snuff out one of the last embers of democracy in the U.S. House? This is one of the big questions this week in Washington, as the Republicans who control the House are resorting to brass knuckled tactics in an effort to thwart one of their own.

Before getting to that stunning story, it's worth reviewing how the Congress actually operates.

As I learned from four-plus years working in the Capitol's lower chamber during President Bush's first term, the U.S. House of Representatives runs like a politburo did in a typical Soviet satellite state. Decisions about what even gets voted on — much less passed — usually happen behind closed doors, with a handful of party leaders handing down orders to the rest of the body's loyal apparatchiks. That means most legislative drama can't be seen by voters, and it means congresspeople rarely have to cast public votes on anything the House Speaker doesn't want them to vote on. By design, this system (which differs from the Senate, where all members can force votes on almost anything) deliberately protects majority party House members from having to cast embarrassing campaign-ad-worthy public votes against the minority party's proposals.

Repressive as the House is, tradition provides lawmakers with a few ways to hack the system — that is, if they happen to know what they are doing (which most lawmakers and staff, alas, don't). The best of these hacks is what's known as the appropriations "rider" — or what can alternately be called the Amendment Hack.

For various reasons, any lawmaker of either party has — up until now — been permitted to go the floor of the House and offer an amendment to any annual spending bill, as long as the amendment is germane to the bill. Translated from legislativese: roughly speaking, any House member of either party can get an amendment to an appropriations bill ruled in order — and thus force a vote on it — as long as the amendment doesn't add to the cost of the bill, and either transfers money from one program in the bill to another in the bill, or simply blocks funding for something in the bill.
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Because these parameters for getting a piece of legislation ruled in order tend to (by design) obscure the legislation's ostensible goal, there is a distinct art to writing the best of these kinds of amendments. And, if you are one of the relatively few working in Washington who actually wants to challenge the establishment, I can attest that there is little that's more professionally satisfying than succeeding in the craft of getting a bill ruled in order and preserving its intent. Indeed, one of my most cherished experiences in my four years working in the House was helping then-Rep. Bob Filner, D-Calif., successfully sculpt an amendment that — somehow — was both germane to an annual appropriations bill yet forced every member of the House to publicly disclose whether or not they supported Social Security privatization (the vote was later used in campaign commercials against the GOP's pro-privatization lawmakers).

The contemporary era's Picasso of the Amendment Hack was my old boss Bernie Sanders — indeed, so successful were his maneuvers against the Tom Delay-run Congress that they became the subject of a Rolling Stone profile identifying the Vermont lawmaker as "the amendment king" of the House. Today, that distinction may go to Florida Rep. Alan Grayson on the Democratic side, and, soon, to Michigan Rep. Justin Amash on the Republican side.

Now, let's stop for a moment because I can sense you wondering: Why would a lawmaker from the House's majority party like Amash ever use the Amendment Hack? It's a good question because normally, lawmakers from the House's majority party don't have to — or want to — resort to the Amendment Hack. Usually, because they ideologically agree with the Speaker, they can convince the Speaker to embed their priorities in legislation at the committee level so that their priorities never face real scrutiny when the larger bill comes up for a final-passage vote. And in the rare instance when they diverge from the Speaker on a given issue, majority-party legislators often just back down and avoid the Amendment Hack, for fear of punishment for disloyalty. Indeed, a majority-party legislator using the Amendment Hack against his own leadership is seen as the ultimate form of apostasy.

This brings us to Amash, the simmering fight over mass surveillance in America — and just how committed transpartisan Permanent Washington is to preserving that surveillance.

According to The Hill, Amash is openly defying his party's leadership by championing a simple amendment to the annual Defense Appropriations Bill based on the larger bill he's co-sponsoring with Democratic Rep. John Conyers. As National Journal suggests, Amash's amendment would ostensibly get his legislation ruled in order for an up-or-down vote by simply barring funds in the bill from going to the NSA for the purpose of "collecting telephone and other records from anyone who is not the subject of an investigation."

It's a brilliant example of the Amendment Hack, raising precisely the questions that Washington doesn't even want to talk about. Do lawmakers support an NSA that inherently presumes all Americans are guilty and worthy of surveillance? Or do they want surveillance resources aimed only at those who truly warrant probable cause? Amash's amendment would tell us exactly where each member of the House stands on those critical queries — which is why, of course, Permanent Washington is in a tizzy and why the House leadership is now hustling to figure out some way to stop the amendment from even being voted on.

Yes, in reaction to Amash's amendment, Republican leaders are considering a set of radical procedural moves to limit the total number of amendments on the defense spending bill — all while National Journal reports those leaders somehow insist "they are not abandoning the open amendment process they promised when they took the majority in 2011." Obviously, they are abandoning that promise — and they are abandoning it out of sheer fear that Permanent Washington is losing control of the national security debate. More specifically, they are apparently so afraid that public outrage over NSA surveillance will result in the amendment passing that they are trying to prevent it from even being voted on in the first place.

"Trying," though, is the key word. Amash's office told Politico on Friday that it believes enough Republicans will join with Democrats to procedurally stall out the entire Defense Bill if Republican leaders proceed with their plans to block a vote on the amendment. Calling Amash the leader of a bipartisan "insurrection" against civil liberties abuses by the Obama administration and NSA, Politico noted that this threat is why action on the Defense Bill was delayed last week — and why its future remains cloudy.

Assuming Amash and the bipartisan coalition around his amendment doesn't back down, there should be little doubt that Permanent Washington and supporters of mass surveillance will soon pivot to the "support our troops" frame. As they always do, they will insist that any delay of any bill relating to the military — in this case the Defense Appropriations Bill — is akin to not supporting the troops. Appealing to the most cartoonish mantras of militarism to try to force the bipartisan coalition to back down, the assertion will be that Amash's amendment is unpatriotic and treasonous because it might delay the passage of the bill, which would supposedly then leave American troops naked and unarmed on various battlefields across the world.

Not surprisingly, it's an absurd claim on two levels. Budget-wise, on top of the Pentagon's already huge appropriations, there are built-in "feed and forage" safeguards protecting resources for troops. Likewise, in terms of oversight, this inevitable "support the troops" argument on Defense appropriations bills effectively implies that there shouldn't be any oversight at all and that lawmakers shouldn't take extra time to even debate and vote on the specifics of what the bill actually funds — even if it happens to be funding an illegal and unconstitutional surveillance program aimed at millions of Americans.

Amash's amendment says the opposite — that Congress needs to have an open debate over that program. In the process, he and his bipartisan coalition have engineered a big moment in the fight over liberties and rights — and that includes Americans' basic right to know where their own elected officials stand on issues as fundamental as privacy and mass surveillance.

Should lawmakers respond to such a critical moment by blocking a vote on the amendment and then passing a defense bill funding more surveillance, the harrowing message should be clear: Congress will be saying that We the People shouldn't be permitted to see where our government officials stand on key public policy questions, but government officials should be allowed to continue surveilling, collecting and datamining the most intimate details of all of our lives.

[Valmy]

Hope he succeeds!

Justin Amash

[Ed Anger]

I hope Cantor crushes his balls.

[Sheilbh]

I hope Cantor crushes his balls.

Agreed. Paulite tendencies

[citizen k]

I hope Cantor crushes his balls.

Agreed. Paulite tendencies

Come out of the closet Ed and Sheilbh.


The fascist closet that is.

[jimmy olsen]

Vote lost but it was pretty close, it seems like the surveillance issue is gaining traction over time.

http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2013/roll412.xml

Ayes          Noes     PRES   NV
Republican   94   134       6
Democratic   111   83       6
Independent               
TOTALS      205   217       12

[Valmy]

It is amazing how bipartisan both sides of the issue are.

Considering how rather radical this bill was I think victory is at hand.  Just need to do enough to move a few votes.

Though I guess I need to check myself.  The Senate may not be as favorable.  And of course Obama can veto.

[Ed Anger]

I hope Cantor crushes his balls.

Agreed. Paulite tendencies

Come out of the closet Ed and Sheilbh.


The fascist closet that is.

It's fabulous in there.

[Phillip V]

U.S. Promises Snowden Won't Face Death Penalty

'U.S. authorities said NSA leaker Edward Snowden wouldn't face the death penalty—and promised he wouldn't be tortured—in a letter hoping to persuade Russia not to grant him asylum or refugee status.'

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324110404578629781061789620.html

[The Minsky Moment]

They would have better luck with the Russians if they said the opposite.  Torture and death are core values of the Putin justice system.