Former CIA and NSA employee source of intelligence leaks

[DGuller]

  So they actually thought that merely pulverizing computers would destroy data?  While leaving the monitors intact?

[citizen k]

So they actually thought that merely pulverizing computers would destroy data?  While leaving the monitors intact?

Probably not. Just sending a message to the Guardian and the press in general.

[Razgovory]

Or possibly compliance with existing policy regarding computers with classified information.

[The Minsky Moment]

a desperate attempt at personal intimidation by a scared, and truly evil empire in its last death throes . . . truly speechless at how far the "democratic" fascist regimes have fallen and fondly reminiscing of the times when dictatorial, tyrannical regimes did not pretend to be anything but.

Dig the calm rhetoric.

[Bluebook]

Really telling reactions.. "Nothing to see here citizen, move along."

[Razgovory]

Indeed, "OMG the Evul Americans are listening in on all our calls!".  If it was revealed the US was collecting metadata on phones in Angola or Pakistan or Bolivia our European friends wouldn't give a flying fuck.  Likewise I don't really see why I should care if the US collects this information on Europeans.

[Bluebook]

Indeed, "OMG the Evul Americans are listening in on all our calls!".  If it was revealed the US was collecting metadata on phones in Angola or Pakistan or Bolivia our European friends wouldn't give a flying fuck.  Likewise I don't really see why I should care if the US collects this information on Europeans.

Im not really concerned that US intelligence is gathering information about me, or anyone else living outside the US. To be spied upon by other nations is a possibility that has always been there.

What concerns me is when governments start spying on their own citizens, gathering, collecting and saving information that each taken on its own is harmless, but when used in a systematic way will become parts of a really frightening information database.

Traffic cameras are really ok. Adding a computer program to read license plates is ok. But building a database where every vehicle is tracked as it passes various traffic cameras, and then have this information stored indefinitively is not ok. And adding this vehicle-movement information to the owners phone traffic metadata, internet activity history, credit card transactions etc, and then storing all this information indefinitively is really really frightening.

To hide behind some "but the intelligence agencies and the police are not allowed to do searches in that database unless they have permission from a secret court" or "the intelligence agencies and the police have functioning internal control systems in place that prevent any missuse"  is very naive. Not to mention that it  has been proven wrong several times in the past weeks.

One must always find a balance between personal integrity and the states interest of maintaining security. What the Snowden leak has shown is that this point of balance is currently not where most people thought it was. That is what is new with Snowden, despite the fact that the laws were known before him. And that is why this is such an eye-opener for most people. 

[citizen k]

[The Minsky Moment]

To hide behind some "but the intelligence agencies and the police are not allowed to do searches in that database unless they have permission from a secret court" or "the intelligence agencies and the police have functioning internal control systems in place that prevent any missuse"  is very naive. Not to mention that it  has been proven wrong several times in the past weeks.

I agree it would be foolish to rely solely on FISA and on the NSA's internal audit function.
I disagree that evidence about the NSA's internal audit catching failures of protocol should be read as evidence that the NSA internal audit function doesn't work.

[CountDeMoney]

An 'Overwhelmed' NSA Still Doesn't Know What Snowden Took
The Atlantic Wire

Despite the NSA's statements to the contrary, it looks like the intelligence agency doesn't know everything that whistleblower Edward Snowden took from them after all. Intelligence officials told NBC News that the NSA was still "overwhelmed" with the work of finding out what else Snowden has. The news comes just two days after British authorities detained journalist Glenn Greenwald's partner David Miranda for nearly 9 hours.

Here's why the agency hasn't yet caught up to Snowden's leaks, according to NBC:

    The NSA had poor data compartmentalization, said the sources, allowing Snowden, who was a system administrator, to roam freely across wide areas. By using a "thin client" computer he remotely accessed the NSA data from his base in Hawaii. One U.S. intelligence official said government officials "are overwhelmed" trying to account for what Snowden took. Another said that the NSA has a poor audit capability, which is frustrating efforts to complete a damage assessment.

NBC's report fits right into a PR war over what the government knows about Snowden's secret stash. Here's the recap: in early June, investigators figured out that Snowden probably took information from the NSA's servers using a thumb drive, leading one official to say that they "know how many documents he downloaded and what server he took them from," implying that the government was well on its way to getting a handle on the damage. But later that month, Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes told reporters that the White House still didn't know what Snowden took. Then, an anonymously-sourced story at CNN confidently claimed that Snowden didn't have the "instruction manual" to the NSA's surveillance programs, in response to a comment from Greenwald indicating that Snowden had something like a "blueprint" to the agency in his hands. But the most overtly omniscient statement on the NSA's capacity to figure out what Snowden has comes from the agency's director Keith Alexander:

    We have tremendous oversight over these programs. We can audit the actions of our people 100 percent, and we do that.

The Atlantic previously raised some doubts over that claim. For one thing, Alexander said in June that the agency was "now putting in place actions that would give us the ability to track our system administrators." Alexander has since said that he was going to just replace almost all of the system administrators working for the NSA with machines.

NSA followers won't be terribly surprised at the discrepancy between public and private statements from the agency. Just last week, an internal audit obtained by Snowden and leaked to the Washington Post revealed that the agency has very little oversight from the secret court designed to keep it legal. That report was, if not the last, one of the final nails in the coffin for the agency's "oversight" rebuttal to criticism of their secret data collection programs.

The detention of Greenwald's partner Miranda, and the ensuing reports of apparent intimidation from British officials towards the Guardian over their reporting on Snowden's leaks, indicates that some authorities might be taking harder tactic towards the whole damage control problem. According to the Guardian's editor, British intelligence officials even forced the paper to destroy hard drives containing encrypted versions of the leaks. British intelligence officials could be worried about potential reports in the future on some of the information authorities are pretty sure Snowden took: details of the data collection programs in the U.K., Canada, Australia and New Zealand, who work closely with the NSA. But don't worry: the White House is ready to assure Americans that such tactics wouldn't happen in the U.S. of A.: Deputy Press Secretary Josh Earnest told reporters today in a press briefing that it was "very difficult to imagine a scenario in which" destroying the hard drive of a journalist "would be appropriate."

[jimmy olsen]

Looks like the court is also in the dark about a lot that goes on. How surprising...

Posted the first page, click the link to read page 2 and 3
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-gathered-thousands-of-americans-e-mails-before-court-struck-down-program/2013/08/21/146ba4b6-0a90-11e3-b87c-476db8ac34cd_story.html

NSA gathered thousands of Americans' e-mails before court ordered it to revise its tactics

By Ellen Nakashima, Thursday, August 22, 4:07 AM E-mail the writer

For several years, the National Security Agency unlawfully gathered tens of thousands of e-mails and other electronic communications between Americans as part of a now-revised collection method, according to a 2011 secret court opinion.

The redacted 85-page opinion, which was declassified by U.S. intelligence officials on Wednesday, states that, based on NSA estimates, the spy agency may have been collecting as many as 56,000 "wholly domestic" communications each year.


In a strongly worded opinion, the chief judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court expressed consternation at what he saw as a pattern of misleading statements by the government and hinted that the NSA possibly violated a criminal law against spying on Americans.

"For the first time, the government has now advised the court that the volume and nature of the information it has been collecting is fundamentally different from what the court had been led to believe," John D. Bates, then the surveillance court's chief judge, wrote in his Oct. 3, 2011, opinion.

The court, which meets in secret, oversees the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the law authorizing such surveillance in the United States. It has been criticized by some as a "rubber stamp" for the government, but the opinion makes clear the court does not see itself that way.

Bates's frustration with the government's lack of candor extended beyond the program at issue to other NSA surveillance efforts.

"The court is troubled that the government's revelations regarding NSA's acquisition of Internet transactions mark the third instance in less than three years in which the government has disclosed a substantial misrepresentation regarding the scope of a major collection program," Bates wrote in a scathing footnote.

The Washington Post reported last week that the court had ruled the collection method unconstitutional. The declassified opinion sheds new light on the volume of Americans' communications that were obtained by the NSA and the nature of the violations, as well as the FISA court's interpretation of the program.

The release marks the first time the government has disclosed a FISA court opinion in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. The lawsuit was brought a year ago by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy group.

"It's unfortunate it took a year of litigation and the most significant leak in American history to finally get them to release this opinion," said foundation staff attorney Mark Rumold, "but I'm happy that the administration is beginning to take this debate seriously."

The pressure to release the opinion was heightened by a series of recent revelations about government surveillance based on documents leaked to The Washington Post and Britain's Guardian newspaper by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

Over the past 21 / 2 months, those revelations have reignited a national debate on the balance between privacy and security, and President Obama has promised to assuage concerns about government overreach, in part through more transparency.

[Sheilbh]

I think the dangerous thing is the NSA don't know what he took, I imagine Snowden doesn't. I bet Chinese and Russian intelligence services have a better idea.

As an aside, I agree with this:

Matthew d'Ancona: In this spy story the state is not so clear-cut a villain
Its heavy-handed response to the NSA leaks does not make the Government wrong to worry about security

MATTHEW D'ANCONA

Published: 21 August 2013 Updated: 17:25, 21 August 2013
The detention of David Miranda: it sounds like a movie title, as much as a gripping news story. Why was the partner of a Guardian journalist held for nine hours at Heathrow under the Terrorism Act 2000? Why did shadowy figures from GCHQ insist on witnessing the destruction of hard drives in the newspaper's basement? Does the trail of the Edward Snowden saga — the tale of the US National Security Agency contractor who went public — lead all the way to the Prime Minister's study?

At first blush, this looks like a straightforward tale of good and bad, of plucky hacks versus the overmighty state. We live in an age in which government is held in contempt and transparency venerated. A journalist's instinct is to side with his fellow journalists, with glasnost against disk-smashers. Nice Guardian, nasty spooks. Right?

Look closer and the nuances of this apparently straightforward story emerge. Miranda was detained because of his relationship with Glenn Greenwald, who has written a series of reports based on Snowden's disclosures. Those stories initially prompted a legitimate debate on the activities of the NSA and the proper limits of the agency's powers of surveillance over US citizens. But Snowden quickly shifted from domestic surveillance to global intelligence — disclosing information about America's interception of Chinese and Russian communications. He sought refuge in Hong Kong and then in Russia, where he was granted temporary asylum. His objective no longer seemed quite so clear. Was he trying to protect US citizens, or to embarrass America?

Last month, Greenwald told the Argentinian daily newspaper, La Nacion, that Snowden had "enough information to cause more harm to the US government in a single minute than any other person has ever had". Since the detention of his partner, the journalist has declared that "I am going to publish a lot about England, too, I have a lot of documents about the espionage system in England". That may just be a statement of fact, of course. But it has the ring of a threat, too — or, more accurately, the promise of reprisal.

Who truly has the advantage here? As Ethan Zuckerman says in Rewire, his brilliant new book on the social significance of the web: "Infrastructures of connection can allow small groups to be disproportionately powerful." Culturally, we are still steeped in the imagery and assumptions of the 20th century — from Kafka's The Trial, via Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four, to A Clockwork Orange and Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest — of the individual crushed by the totalitarian system. Yet, thanks to the digital revolution, the changing nature of the state, and globalisation, the reality in 2013 is much more complex.

The laureate of the new institutional order, Philip Bobbitt, has spoken of the "unique vulnerabilities of globalised, network market states" and a "connectivity that allows a cascading series of vulnerabilities to be exploited". What Bobbitt calls the "market state" is semi-privatised (note that Snowden was a contractor), hyper-technological and digitally configured (and therefore porous), and lacks  the "immune systems" that a secure structure requires.

Every time a Julian Assange or Edward Snowden steps up to the plate, he does so already posturing as the victim of persecution. The state frequently obliges them with ponderous, heavy-handed treatment. But what these episodes have in common is not the scary power of 21st-century government but its scary weakness. Digital technology has made it alarmingly easy to seize, to store and to disclose at whim extraordinarily sensitive information about the activities of those tasked with protecting our collective security.

Again, so deep is the general contempt for government that the default assumption in 2013 is that all information, no matter how sensitive, ought to be published — and damn the consequences. But consequences there will be. As one senior Whitehall source puts it: "The trouble is they [the journalists and campaigners] don't always realise what they've got." Every disclosure of intelligence files tells the target something about our modus operandi, the limits of our knowledge, and perhaps more.

There was a flurry of anxiety at the very apex of government yesterday, as Alan Rusbridger, the editor of The Guardian, revealed the gist of his negotiations with "a very senior government official claiming to represent the views of the Prime Minister". Those around Cameron, used to deal-making after three years of coalition, feel that a reasonable balance was struck: the Guardian got to publish its stories but the disks were destroyed. Not surprisingly, Rusbridger interprets the deal rather differently, as a "peculiarly pointless piece of symbolism" (the disk-smashing) carried out to fend off the threat of prior restraint.

The fact that Cameron was so closely involved with all this — along with Theresa May — means that the story is now deeply, inescapably political. It does not help the PM one bit that Miranda was held under Schedule 7 the Terrorism Act — a badly named statute that plainly deals with broad threats far removed from any normal definition of "terrorism". Schedule 7 itself is presently being amended by Parliament, following a Government review last year. But the mismatch of language and reality — Miranda was scarcely engaged in "terrorism" — is an embarrassment to the Government.

Even so, the seductions of this story should put us on our guard. Consider, indeed, the options: if one of the intelligence agencies learns that a passenger passing through Heathrow may be carrying data files stuffed with top secret information about national security, should that passenger be detained? What if the files include details of intelligence assets, or operational information, or anything else that might put lives at risk? Should the authorities at least take a look?

Imagine, then, that they don't. Instead, happy to take everyone and everything on trust, the airport officials wave through Miranda, his civil liberties quite intact, shrug their shoulders, and head home in a glow of righteousness. We'd all feel so much better. Wouldn't we?

[Valmy]

I think the dangerous thing is the NSA don't know what he took, I imagine Snowden doesn't. I bet Chinese and Russian intelligence services have a better idea.

The only danger is that their power to break the law with impunity may be curtailed through the political action of right thinking people. 

Again, so deep is the general contempt for government that the default assumption in 2013 is that all information, no matter how sensitive, ought to be published — and damn the consequences. But consequences there will be. As one senior Whitehall source puts it: "The trouble is they [the journalists and campaigners] don't always realise what they've got." Every disclosure of intelligence files tells the target something about our modus operandi, the limits of our knowledge, and perhaps more

What a goddamn strawman.  Yeah clearly there should be no public debate on programs nor any oversight by the legislature at all...or EVERYTHING WILL BE PUBLISHED OMG.  And yes our numerous enemies who combine for about 1 millionth of our resources may gain %0.0000001 of our intelligence.  Clearly we are all doomed and must panic at once.  What a bunch of scaremongering garbage.

[Berkut]

What a goddamn strawman. 

Yeah clearly there should be no public debate on programs nor any oversight by the legislature at all...or EVERYTHING WILL BE PUBLISHED OMG.

I am going to assume you are trying to be ironic. Or something.

[Valmy]

What a goddamn strawman. 

Yeah clearly there should be no public debate on programs nor any oversight by the legislature at all...or EVERYTHING WILL BE PUBLISHED OMG.

I am going to assume you are trying to be ironic. Or something.

I think my position on this is pretty clear.  These leaks are a Godsend as far as I am concerned.  The public mood is changing and political pushback is coming.  If the cost is some tiny bit of inconsequential information getting to our completely outclassed "enemies" well color me non-plussed, and unless somebody has something specific it is hard to not regard this sort of handwringing with contempt.