Former CIA and NSA employee source of intelligence leaks

[jimmy olsen]

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.

I agree 100%.

[Ed Anger]

Valmy: tainted

[Sheilbh]

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.

There is oversight by the legislature. The intelligence services are acting based on a law passed by the legislature and approved by the President. There is judicial oversight and there's internal procedures to try and catch inevitable mistakes. Of course most of that shouldn't be public, by its nature it's dealing in state secrets. But in a democratic system I can't think of another way of managing those secrets. And if we don't trust judicial oversight, the legislature, the executive and in the US the constitution then I don't really know what we're left with, but the broiling tempests of Glenn Greenwald's outrage.

D'Ancona said and I agree that it did provoke a useful debate. My view is that it's similar to Wikileaks. For all the sound and fury the truth is that what a lot of these published leaks so far show is what the public would want. American diplomats weren't nefariously influencing or toppling foreign regimes. They were generally trying to do their best at reporting on their host countries and projecting American interests. Similarly there isn't some terrifying cyber-Stasi. Rather the intelligence services are conscientiously trying to do their job - as set by the laws elected bodies and governed by an independent judiciary.

However when you're then in China and Russia, or treating this data as some sort of blackmail then it's a different issue. In terms of public debate and the public interest, I cannot think of a single good reason for publishing this article, for example:

Exclusive: Edward Snowden leaks reveal UK's secret Middle-East internet surveillance base
Data-gathering operation is part of a £1bn web project still being assembled by GCHQ
DUNCAN CAMPBELL , OLIVER WRIGHT , JAMES CUSICK , KIM SENGUPTA   THURSDAY 22 AUGUST 2013

Britain runs a secret internet-monitoring station in the Middle East to intercept and process vast quantities of emails, telephone calls and web traffic on behalf of Western intelligence agencies, The Independent has learnt.

The station is able to tap into and extract data from the underwater fibre-optic cables passing through the region.

The information is then processed for intelligence and passed to GCHQ in Cheltenham and shared with the National Security Agency (NSA) in the United States. The Government claims the station is a key element in the West's "war on terror" and provides a vital "early warning" system for potential attacks around the world.

The Independent is not revealing the precise location of the station but information on its activities was contained in the leaked documents obtained from the NSA by Edward Snowden. The Guardian newspaper's reporting on these documents in recent months has sparked a dispute with the Government, with GCHQ security experts overseeing the destruction of hard drives containing the data.

The Middle East installation is regarded as particularly valuable by the British and Americans because it can access submarine cables passing through the region. All of the messages and data passed back and forth on the cables is copied into giant computer storage "buffers" and then sifted for data of special interest.

Information about the project was contained in 50,000 GCHQ documents that Mr Snowden downloaded during 2012. Many of them came from an internal Wikipedia-style information site called GC-Wiki. Unlike the public Wikipedia, GCHQ's wiki was generally classified Top Secret  or above.

The disclosure comes as the Metropolitan Police announced it was launching a terrorism investigation into material found on the computer of David Miranda, the Brazilian partner of The Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald – who is at the centre of the Snowden controversy.

Scotland Yard said material examined so far from the computer of Mr Miranda was "highly sensitive", the disclosure of which "could put lives at risk".

The Independent understands that The Guardian agreed to the Government's request not to publish any material contained in the Snowden documents that could damage national security.

As well as destroying a computer containing one copy of the Snowden files, the paper's editor, Alan Rusbridger, agreed to restrict the newspaper's reporting of the documents.

The Government also demanded that the paper not publish details of how UK telecoms firms, including BT and Vodafone, were secretly collaborating with GCHQ to intercept the vast majority of all internet traffic entering the country. The paper had details of the highly controversial and secret programme for over a month. But it only published information on the scheme – which involved paying the companies to tap into fibre-optic cables entering Britain – after the allegations appeared in the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung. A Guardian spokeswoman refused to comment on any deal with the Government.

A senior Whitehall source said: "We agreed with The Guardian that our  discussions with them would remain confidential".

But there are fears in Government that Mr Greenwald – who still has access to the files – could attempt to release damaging information.

He said after the arrest of Mr Miranda: "I will be far more aggressive in my reporting from now. I am going to publish many more documents. I have many more documents on England's spy system. I think  they will be sorry for what they did." []

One of the areas of concern in Whitehall is that details of the Middle East spying base which could identify its location could enter the public domain.

The data-gathering operation is part of a £1bn internet project still being assembled by GCHQ. It is part of the surveillance and monitoring system, code-named "Tempora", whose wider aim is the global interception of digital communications, such as emails and text messages.

Across three sites, communications – including telephone calls – are tracked both by satellite dishes and by tapping into underwater fibre-optic cables.

Access to Middle East traffic has become critical to both US and UK intelligence agencies post-9/11. The Maryland headquarters of the NSA and the Defence Department in Washington have pushed for greater co-operation and technology sharing between US and UK intelligence agencies.

The Middle East station was set up under a warrant signed by the then Foreign Secretary David Miliband, authorising GCHQ to monitor and store for analysis data passing through the network of fibre-optic cables that link up the internet around the world

The certificate authorised GCHQ to collect information about the "political intentions of foreign powers", terrorism, proliferation, mercenaries and private military companies, and serious financial fraud.

However, the certificates are reissued every six months and can be changed by ministers at will. GCHQ officials are then free to target anyone who is overseas or communicating from overseas without further checks or controls if they think they fall within the terms of a current certificate.

The precise budget for this expensive covert technology is regarded as sensitive by the Ministry of Defence and the Foreign Office.

However, the scale of Middle East operation, and GCHQ's increasing use of sub-sea technology to intercept communications along high-capacity cables, suggest a substantial investment.

Intelligence sources have denied the aim is a blanket gathering of all communications, insisting the operation is targeted at security, terror and organised crime.

Given that the article hints at far more details they're choosing not to reveal, it annoys me that that's in the hands of the Russians and the Chinese intelligence services. It's also a very good reason to detain someone carrying that information around.

The public mood is changing and political pushback is coming. 

I doubt it. The people who care are already engaged.

Edit: On the other hand I do worry about the use of contractors for this sort of thing. Snowden went for a job at his firm precisely so he could steal this information. I don't think there's any way you can get private companies to vet candidates as much as the intelligence services should. Generally I'm very reluctant to see private companies being given widespread access to top secret material.

[jimmy olsen]

The public mood is changing and political pushback is coming. 

I doubt it. The people who care are already engaged.

Not true, I posted polling data that shows that public view on these matters has radically changed on this matter, and the congress has followed. A vote so close on the matter as what we had last month would have been unthinkable two years ago.

[CountDeMoney]

I think polling data should be posted to you with a fucking staple gun.

[Sheilbh]

Not true, I posted polling data that shows that public view on these matters has radically changed on this matter, and the congress has followed. A vote so close on the matter as what we had last month would have been unthinkable two years ago.

I've read all of that I just don't think it matters. I think it's like the environment. Some people feel they should care and consciously try to, some people care after an unusually hot summer and a few people genuinely really, really care. It's mid-summer and mid-elections, so it's perfect conditions for niche concerns to suddenly seem important.

When it comes to an election people will really vote about the economy and taxes and immigration and how they feel and what people have always voted about. People say they care about lots of things (Europe, climate change, civil liberties, animal welfare), but the truth is that almost no elections turn on those issues.

There was a close vote in Congress. Luckily there's enough sensible Republicans and Democrats for the leadership to keep this going.

I imagine there'll be another vote, say when a Republican's in the White House. Suddenly less Republicans will care about this issue. Many Democrats will start to regard civil liberties with the same type of self-loathing that Bush-era Republicans feel about the deficit. The result will be much the same.

[jimmy olsen]

Not true, I posted polling data that shows that public view on these matters has radically changed on this matter, and the congress has followed. A vote so close on the matter as what we had last month would have been unthinkable two years ago.

I've read all of that I just don't think it matters. I think it's like the environment. Some people feel they should care and consciously try to, some people care after an unusually hot summer and a few people genuinely really, really care. It's mid-summer and mid-elections, so it's perfect conditions for niche concerns to suddenly seem important.

When it comes to an election people will really vote about the economy and taxes and immigration and how they feel and what people have always voted about. People say they care about lots of things (Europe, climate change, civil liberties, animal welfare), but the truth is that almost no elections turn on those issues.

There was a close vote in Congress. Luckily there's enough sensible Republicans and Democrats for the leadership to keep this going.

I imagine there'll be another vote, say when a Republican's in the White House. Suddenly less Republicans will care about this issue. Many Democrats will start to regard civil liberties with the same type of self-loathing that Bush-era Republicans feel about the deficit. The result will be much the same.

Election of 1800

And if that Republican in the White House is someone like Rand Paul?

[Sheilbh]

Election of 1800

As an aside, 'almost no', that may be the exception that proves the rule.

And if that Republican in the White House is someone like Rand Paul?

I generally don't like alternative history.

If you've elected Rand Paul something catastrophically terrible's happened in the next 3 years because generally speaking voters are sensible and don't elect extremists.

[garbon]

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.

I think you are in for a world of disappointment then. People just don't really care about this.

[garbon]

I generally don't like alternative history.

If you've elected Rand Paul something catastrophically terrible's happened in the next 3 years because generally speaking voters are sensible and don't elect extremists.

[jimmy olsen]

I think you are in for a world of disappointment then. People just don't really care about this.

If that was really true, the congress wouldn't have shifted at all. Since it has, they believe otherwise. Since they're mainly concerned with reelection, I assume that as a collective group they have a decent handle on what their constituents care about.

[garbon]

I think you are in for a world of disappointment then. People just don't really care about this.

If that was really true, the congress wouldn't have shifted at all. Since it has, they believe otherwise. Since they're mainly concerned with reelection, I assume that as a collective group they have a decent handle on what their constituents care about.

Sure it makes them sound good (to some people) at this moment in the media cycle.

[Sheilbh]

If that was really true, the congress wouldn't have shifted at all. Since it has, they believe otherwise. Since they're mainly concerned with reelection, I assume that as a collective group they have a decent handle on what their constituents care about.

Republicans wanted to embarrass Obama. Democrats are probably a bit more worried about at least seeming to care about civil liberties issues. As Garbon says they all wanted to 'do something' during the media cycle - which as I say is mid-election and I believe the fag end of a Congressional session. I think they were all also emboldened in the knowledge that there were enough votes for it to fail.

[Admiral Yi]

My prediction is for substantial changes to protocols overseas and cosmetic changes domestically.

[citizen k]

THE SILENT POWER OF THE N.S.A.
By David Burnham
Published: March 27, 1983

     
    A Federal Court of Appeals recently ruled that the largest and most secretive intelligence agency of the United States, the National Security Agency, may lawfully intercept the overseas communications of Americans even if it has no reason to believe they are engaged in illegal activities. The ruling, which also allows summaries of these conversations to be sent to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, significantly broadens the already generous authority of the N.S.A. to keep track of American citizens.   

    Over the years, this virtually unknown Federal agency has repeatedly sought to enlarge its power without consulting the civilian officials who theoretically direct the Government, while it also has sought to influence the operation and development of all civilian communications networks. Indeed, under Vice Adm. Bobby Ray Inman, N.S.A. director from 1977 to 1981, the agency received an enlarged Presidential mandate to involve itself in communications issues, and successfully persuaded private corporations and institutions to cooperate with it.   

    Yet over the three decades since the N.S.A. was created by a classified executive order signed by President Truman in 1952, neither the Congress nor any President has publicly shown much interest in grappling with the far-reaching legal conflicts surrounding the operation of this extraordinarily powerful and clandestine agency. A Senate committee on intelligence, warning that the N.S.A.'s capabilities impinged on crucial issues of privacy, once urged that Congress or the courts develop a legislative or judicial framework to control the agency's activities. In a nation whose Constitution demands an open Government operating according to precise rules of fairness, the N.S.A. remains an unexamined entity. With the increasing computerization of society, the conflicts it presents become more important. The power of the N.S.A., whose annual budget and staff are believed to exceed those of either the F.B.I. or the C.I.A., is enhanced by its unique legal status within the Federal Government. Unlike the Agriculture Department, the Postal Service or even the C.I.A., the N.S.A. has no specific Congressional law defining its responsibilities and obligations. Instead, the agency, based at Fort George Meade, about 20 miles northeast of Washington, has operated under a series of Presidential directives. Because of Congress's failure to draft a law for the agency, because of the tremendous secrecy surrounding the N.S.A.'s work and because of the highly technical and thus thwarting character of its equipment, the N.S.A. is free to define and pursue its own goals.

    According to an unpublished analysis by the House Government Operations Committee, the N.S.A. may have employed 120,000 people in 1976 when armed-services personnel were included in the official count. (According to a letter from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, overseas listening posts numbered 2,000.) In comparison, the F.B.I. had one employee for every six working for the N.S.A. The House report also estimated that the agency's annual expenditures were as high as $15 billion.

    During the course of the investigation, its chairman, Senator Frank Church, repeatedly emphasized his belief that the N.S.A.'s intelligence-gathering activities were essential to the nation's security. He also stressed that the equipment used to watch the Russians could just as easily "monitor the private communications of Americans.'' If such forces were ever turned against the country's communications system, Senator Church said, "no American would have any privacy left. ... There would be no place to hide."

    The N.S.A. gradually developed a "watch list" of Americans that included those speaking out against the Vietnam War.

    According to the subsequent investigation by the Senate Intelligence Committee, a total of 1,200 Americans were targeted by the N.S.A. between 1967 and 1973 because of their political activities. The subjects – chosen by the F.B.I., the Secret Service, the C.I.A. and the Defense Intelligence Agency -included members of radical groups, celebrities and ordinary citizens. When it appeared that Congress might learn about the eavesdropping, the surveillance halted.

    The records obtained by the committee indicate that from the project's earliest stages, both Government officials and corporate executives understood that the surveillance flatly violated a Federal law against intercepting or divulging telegrams. Certainly, they were aware that such interception violated the Fourth Amendment, guaranteeing against unreasonable searches and seizures, which also holds that a court warrant can be issued only when there is probable cause to believe a crime has been committed.

    Using the information thus gathered, the N.S.A. between 1952 and 1974 developed files on approximately 75,000 Americans, some of whom undoubtedly threatened the nation's security. However, the agency also developed files on civil-rights and antiwar activists, Congressmen and other citizens who lawfully questioned Government policies. For at least 13 of the 22 years the agency was building these files, the C.I.A. had access to them and used the data in its Operation Chaos, another computerized and illegal tracking system set up during the Vietnam War. At its peak, the Chaos files had references to more than 300,000 Americans.

    Certainly, precedent had been established in 1971, when the N.S.A. was the lead agency in the Nixon Administration's attempt to stop newspapers from printing the Pentagon Papers, the bureaucratic history of the war in Vietnam. After blocking publication for 15 days, the Supreme Court ruled that the Government had failed to show why the material should not be published and that "without compelling reasons" prior restraint would be an unreasonable infringement of the freedom of the press.

    Until that time, the Federal Government sought to control and protect only those military and diplomatic secrets that had been declared confidential, secret or top secret under a long-established and formally prescribed classification procedure. But now, President Carter had decided to create a huge new category of material worthy of Government protection: information that "would be useful to an adversary."   

    A few years before, the director of the National Science Foundation, Richard C. Atkinson, and Inman had begun privately discussing whether the role of the spy agency in supervising cryptographic research should be expanded. The precise outcome of the talks remains murky, but the N.S.A. apparently won the debate. Today, the National Science Foundation routinely allows the N.S.A. to review any request for the funding of cryptographic research.

    Speaking before the annual meeting of the American As-sociation for the Advancement of Science last year, Inman said that other areas where restrictions were required because publication of certain "technical information could affect the national security in a harmful way. Examples include computer hardware and software, other electronic gear and techniques, lasers, crop projections and manufacturing procedures."

    The American Association for the Advancement of Science passed a brief resolution on the day Inman spoke: "Whereas freedom and national security are best preserved by adherence to the principles of openness that are a fundamental tenet of both American society and the scientific process, be it resolved that the A.A.A.S. opposes governmental restrictions on the dissemination, exchange or availability of unclassified knowledge."

    Every day, in almost every area of culture and commerce, systems and procedures are being adopted by private companies and organizations as well as by the nation's security leaders that make it easier for the N.S.A. to dominate American society should it ever decide such action is necessary.

http://www.nytimes.com/1983/03/27/magazine/the-silent-power-of-the-nsa.html