Former CIA and NSA employee source of intelligence leaks

[jimmy olsen]

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

Why? I would expect the opposite.

[Admiral Yi]

Why? I would expect the opposite.

Because the foreign operation seems to be more intrusive and Krauts are more hung up about the Stasi and because they don't get as much benefit out of it as we do.

[CountDeMoney]

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.

That's a lot of tape reels and punch cards, people.

[The Minsky Moment]

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." []

indeed.  That is gross unprofessionalism. He should not have a job writing for a junior high school paper.
If he really has newsworthy material that can be responsibly published without endangering others, he should have published it already.
If he doesn't have it, he is a liar and a blackmailer.
And if he has it and refrained from publishing because it would endanger others, but is now willing to do so out of revenge, no reputable publisher should associate with him.

[CountDeMoney]

Welcome to the post-apocalyptic landscape of Dead Professional Journalism.

[Syt]

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/25/us-usa-security-nsa-un-idUSBRE97O0DD20130825

U.S. spy agency bugged U.N. headquarters: Germany's Spiegel

(Reuters) - The U.S. National Security Agency has bugged the United Nations' New York headquarters, Germany's Der Spiegel weekly said on Sunday in a report on U.S. spying that could further strain relations between Washington and its allies.

Citing secret U.S. documents obtained by fugitive former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, Der Spiegel said the files showed how the United States systematically spied on other states and institutions.

Der Spiegel said the European Union and the U.N.'s Vienna-based nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), were among those targeted by U.S. intelligence agents.

In the summer of 2012, NSA experts succeeded in getting into the U.N. video conferencing system and cracking its coding system, according one of the documents cited by Der Spiegel.

"The data traffic gives us internal video teleconferences of the United Nations (yay!)," Der Spiegel quoted one document as saying, adding that within three weeks the number of decoded communications rose to 458 from 12.

Internal files also show the NSA spied on the EU legation in New York after it moved to new rooms in autumn 2012. Among the documents copied by Snowden from NSA computers are plans of the EU mission, its IT infrastructure and servers.

According to the documents, the NSA runs a bugging program in more than 80 embassies and consulates worldwide called "Special Collection Service". "The surveillance is intensive and well organized and has little or nothing to do with warding off terrorists," wrote Der Spiegel.

OPEN LETTER

Snowden's leaks have embarrassed the United States by exposing the global extent of its surveillance programs. Washington has said its spies operate within the law and that the leaks have damaged national security.

A week ago Britain, a staunch U.S. ally in the intelligence field, detained the partner of a Brazil-based journalist working for London's Guardian newspaper who has led coverage of Snowden's leaks. British police said documents seized from David Miranda were "highly sensitive" and could put lives at risk if disclosed.

The Guardian last week destroyed computer equipment containing Snowden files after it was threatened with possible legal action by senior British government advisers.

In an open letter to British Prime Minister David Cameron published on Sunday, editors of leading Nordic newspapers said Miranda's detention and moves against the Guardian were "undermining the position of the free press throughout the world".

"(We are) deeply concerned that a stout defender of democracy and free debate such as the United Kingdom uses anti-terror legislation in order to legalize what amounts to harassment of both the paper and individuals associated with it," said the letter from Sweden's Dagens Nyheter, Finland's Helsingin Sanomat, Denmark's Politiken and Norway's Aftenposten.

Earlier this month, U.S. President Barack Obama announced plans to limit U.S. government surveillance programs, saying the United States could and should be more transparent.

The issue has also become a hot topic in Germany before an election next month. Some reports have suggested that German intelligence agents have cooperated with U.S. spies.

There could be a voter backlash if it emerges that Chancellor Angela Merkel, tipped to win a third term, knew more about such cooperation than she has so far acknowledged.

(Reporting by Madeline Chambers; Additional reporting by Gwladys Fouche; Editing by Jon Boyle)

[jimmy olsen]

Why? I would expect the opposite.

Because the foreign operation seems to be more intrusive and Krauts are more hung up about the Stasi and because they don't get as much benefit out of it as we do.

Americans won't care about complaining foreigners. If the government changes policy, it'll be because their domestic constituency pressures them to do so.

[garbon]

I'm with Yi though. I don't think Americans care that much about the issue but the administration will want to play nice with Europe.

People here may dislike it but it isn't a burning, important issue for them.

[Phillip V]

D.E.A. Uses Vast Phone Trove, Eclipsing N.S.A.'s

'The scale and longevity of a data storage program run by the government in partnership with AT&T is unmatched by other government programs.

The government pays AT&T to place its employees in drug-fighting units around the country. Those employees sit alongside Drug Enforcement Administration agents and local detectives and supply them with the phone data from as far back as 1987.'

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/02/us/drug-agents-use-vast-phone-trove-eclipsing-nsas.html

[jimmy olsen]

Given how close the last major vote was, with the NRA coming out against NSA surveillance, this should be enough to change the outcome.

http://investigations.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/09/15/20483283-nra-fearing-gun-registry-joins-aclu-in-opposing-nsa-phone-records-sweep?lite

NRA, fearing gun registry, joins ACLU in opposing NSA phone records sweep
By Michael Isikoff

National Investigative Correspondent, NBC News

Leaders of the National Rifle Association plan to press members of Congress in the coming weeks to block the National Security Agency's controversial program to collect records of Americans' phone calls, arguing that the surveillance efforts can be used as a "backdoor" to construct a national gun registry.

"We will be up there and we will be making our feelings known,"  David Keene, a member of the NRA's executive board who served until this spring as the group's president, told NBC News. "Our members are concerned about this. This metadata can be used to construct a list" of every gun owner.

Keene's comments signaled a new determination by the gun lobby to take up opposition to the NSA surveillance efforts as a political cause, joining with civil liberties groups and others on the left who have been lobbying against the program for months, and potentially complicating the Obama administration's efforts to preserve the phone surveillance program.

The comments came as  NRA board members gathered this weekend in Arlington, Va., for a quarterly  meeting and to celebrate the gun lobby's latest political coup: Its  defeat of two  state senators in Colorado — including the state Senate president — in a special recall election pushed by the NRA as payback for the lawmakers' support of gun control measures.

"Everybody is feeling insufferably proud of how things are going today," said Grover Norquist, the veteran conservative activist who also serves on the NRA board.

Board members also will hear a report on the NRA's surprise decision this month to file a friend-of-the- court brief on behalf of an ACLU lawsuit to halt the  NSA collection program as an unconstitutional violation of American privacy rights. Norquist predicted  the move, which is being promoted on the web page of the Institute for Legislative Action, the NRA's lobbying arm, will tip the political balance in Congress over the issue.

"This is the beginning of a game changer," Norquist said. "It will solidify conservative and Republican opposition to the program, without endangering the left-of-center opposition. ... If you're the (Obama) administration, you will begin to offer tactical retreats. "

Laura Murphy, legislative director for the ACLU in Washington, recruited the NRA to join efforts to stop the program and said its participation will have a big impact. "We've got momentum going," she said. "They (the NRA) have got access to all the Republicans."

Murphy said a recently declassified FBI training manual on how agents can use their authorities under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in the course of terrorism and espionage cases helped sway the NRA leadership.  The manual, a copy of which she provided to NBC News, instructs agents how they can use the Patriot Act to collect a wide range of "sensitive records" --  including "firearms sales."

Although there was nothing especially secret about using the Patriot Act to obtain such records — all business records, including firearms sales,  are routinely subpoenaed during  federal law enforcement investigations — the fact that they were specifically highlighted in the manual made a big impact with the NRA,  Murphy said. "They were surprised," she said. "It was like, 'wow!"

Keene, the NRA leader, said the FBI training manual was especially disturbing because other federal laws require the destruction of records of gun purchases after they are used for a federally mandated background check.  And it showed how federal agents can stretch their legal authorities to collect data on gun owners.

A spokesman for Director of National Intelligence  James Clapper, who has taken the Obama administration lead in defending the surveillance program, declined comment about the NRA's opposition to the NSA program.   "We do not as a matter of policy, comment on matters under litigation," said Michael Birmingham, a Clapper spokesman.

But Kristen Rand, legislative director of the Violence Policy Center, a leading gun control group, called  the NRA's stance self-serving. "Leave it to the NRA to exploit legitimate privacy concerns for their own purposes — stoking gun owners' paranoia to raise money," she said.

Under the so-called NSA "metadata" program, first disclosed last June by ex-contractor Edward Snowden, the agency has collected tens of millions of records on the time, duration and destination of every phone call in the country as part of a wide ranging and highly classified surveillance effort aimed at identifying potential terrorist threats.  The agency has received the records from phone companies  under secret orders by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) based on a provision of the U.S. Patriot Act that allows the FBI to collect "business records" deemed relevant to terrorist investigations.

Even before the NRA got involved, the NSA program was facing political trouble. An amendment brought by Reps. Justin Amash, R-Mich.,  and John Conyers, D-Mich., to pare back the program was defeated  last July by just 12 votes in the House, 205 to 217.

Since then, the U.S. intelligence community has made a series of disclosures about "compliance" problems with the program, including a previously classified finding by a federal judge that U.S. intelligence misled the FISC about how the phone numbers were being used.

President Barack Obama, who has vigorously defended the NSA collection as "an important tool in our effort to disrupt terrorist plots," last month named a five-member review panel to study the program and report back to him within 60 days.

In its friend of the court brief filed Sept. 4, the NRA argued that the NSA collection of all phone records, as well as other agency collection efforts revealed by Snowden, threatens  NRA members' s First Amendment rights.

"Under the programs revealed so far, the government may already possess information about everyone who has called the NRA by phone, emailed the NRA or visited the NRA's website," it wrote in the brief.

In addition, the brief states, the mass phone collection would make it easier for the government to create a nationwide "registry" of all gun owners.

"For example, a person whose phone records show a pattern of repeated calls to gun stores, shooting ranges, and the NRA, is considerably more likely to be a gun owner than a person who makes no such calls. If phone records are combined with other information, far more detailed profiles could be assembled," it said.

Clapper, the intelligence director, and other administration officials have repeatedly said there are tight controls on the use of the NSA database of phone records and the records can only be accessed for terrorism investigations.

[Savonarola]

The most important manifesto since Ted Kaczynski's:

Report: NSA, GCHQ among worst surveillance offenders, Snowden says

(CNN) -- Leaked classified documents show the U.S. National Security Agency and its British counterpart are among the "worst offenders" of mass surveillance without oversight, according to an open letter purportedly written by Edward Snowden and published Sunday by the German magazine Der Spiegel.

The publication of the letter, titled "A Manifesto for the Truth," comes as leaks by the former NSA contract analyst have roiled U.S.-European relations amid allegations that the NSA and the UK's Government Communications Headquarters monitored the communication data of some world leaders.

"The world has learned a lot in a short amount of time about irresponsibly operated security agencies and, at times, criminal surveillance programs. Sometimes the agencies try to avoid controls," Snowden wrote, according to the news magazine.

"While the NSA and GCHQ (the British national security agency) appear to be the worst offenders -- at least according to the documents that are currently public -- we cannot forget that mass surveillance is a global problem and needs a global solution." 

Glenn Greenwald on NSA spying on allies
The letter, published in German by Der Spiegel, was written on Friday in Moscow and provided to Der Spiegel through a "locked channel," the news magazine said. It was published in German and has been translated by CNN.

Snowden, 30, has admitted in interviews he was the source behind the leak of classified NSA documents, which revealed the existence of top-secret surveillance programs that collect records of domestic e-mails and telephone calls in the United States and monitor the cell phone and Internet activity of overseas residents. He is wanted in the United States on espionage charges.

A recent report by Der Spiegel, citing documents provided by Snowden, alleged the NSA monitored German Chancellor Angela Merkel's cell phone. Some reports also suggest the United States carried out surveillance on French and Spanish citizens.

The allegations have prompted some European countries to call for investigations. It also has prompted congressional hearings in the United States, where some are calling for more transparency and more oversight of American spy programs.

'Witch hunt'

The letter also accused governments of trying to squash debate about mass surveillance "with a never before seen witch hunt" that threatens journalists and criminalizes the publication of details about the programs.

In the letter, Snowden purportedly writes that his actions were bringing about change.

"The debate they wanted to avoid is now taking place in countries around the world," the letter said.

"And instead of causing damage, the use of this new public knowledge is causing society to push for political reforms, oversight and new laws."

Snowden has been in Moscow since June after fleeing from Hong Kong. In August, Russia granted him asylum for one year.

Snowden gets website job in Russia

The release of the open letter is the second in a matter of days from Snowden, who released a letter to German authorities through an intermediary.

Last week, Hans-Christian Stroebele, a member of Germany's parliament, met with Snowden in Russia. Stroebele returned from the meeting with a letter from Snowden to German authorities, which was distributed to the media.

In it, Snowden said he is confident that with international support, the United States would abandon its efforts to "treat dissent as defection" and "criminalize political speech with felony charges."

"I hope that when the difficulties of this humanitarian situation have been resolved, I will be able to cooperate in the responsible finding of fact regarding reports in the media, particularly in regard to the truth and authenticity of documents, as appropriate and in accordance with the law," he wrote.

Report: Snowden's Russia asylum not breached by NSA spying reports

'Face justice'

The White House did not immediately respond to Snowden's claims in the letter.

But earlier Sunday, White House Senior Adviser Dan Pfeiffer said on ABC's "This Week" that there has been no discussion of granting Snowden clemency.

"Mr. Snowden violated U.S. law," Pfeiffer said. "And our belief has always been that he should return to the U.S. and face justice."

It was a sentiment echoed by the heads of the House and Senate intelligence committees.

"He had an opportunity -- if what he was, was a whistle-blower -- to pick up the phone and call the House Intelligence Committee, the Senate Intelligence Committee, and say, 'I have some information,'" Sen. Dianne Feinstein, chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Sunday on CBS' "Face the Nation."

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Michigan, said Snowden has to "own up with what he's done."

"If he wants to come back and open up to the responsibility of the fact that he took and stole information, he violated his oath, he disclosed classified information -- that by the way has allowed three different terrorist organizations, affiliates of al Qaeda to change the way they communicate -- I'd be happy to have that discussion with him," Rogers said on "Face the Nation."

Good job on the witch hunt, Barack.  I haven't heard of a single instance of witchcraft since you took office.   

[grumbler]

I wonder how much of The man Without a Country's claims stem from actual belief, and how much they stem from his need to justify his own botched attempt to become famous.  As he gets more shrill, the vibe I get is closer to the latter.

[The Minsky Moment]

The publication of the letter, titled "A Manifesto for the Truth,"

Creative.

[Bluebook]

I wonder how much of The man Without a Country's claims stem from actual belief, and how much they stem from his need to justify his own botched attempt to become famous.  As he gets more shrill, the vibe I get is closer to the latter.

Botched attempt to become famous?
The man is known around the world, he has become a hero and an icon to some and a traitor to others. But he is clearly famous.

[Razgovory]

Hey, if we got him back, what do you suppose he would be tried with?