President
Barack Obama while speaking about the government’s surveillance
practices during a news conference at the Department of Justice in
Washington, Jan. 17, 2014. (Photo: Stephen Crowley / The New York Times) Tuesday, January 28, 2014
Monday, January 27, 2014
Obama's Bouquet of Roses for NSA Traitors
Obama's NSA Speech Makes Orwellian Surveillance Patriotic
By Michael Ratner, Truthout | Op-EdPresident
Barack Obama while speaking about the government’s surveillance
practices during a news conference at the Department of Justice in
Washington, Jan. 17, 2014. (Photo: Stephen Crowley / The New York Times)
When considering the revolutionary history of the United States, most
would think of fighting for freedom, the enshrinement of basic human
and civil rights in a constitutional government of the people, by the
people and for the people.
But in his speech on reforms to the NSA and the United States' intelligence gathering systems last week, President Obama had a creative new addition to the legacy of the American Revolution: surveillance.
"At the dawn of our Republic, a small, secret surveillance committee borne out of the Sons of Liberty was established in Boston," said the president. "And the group's members included Paul Revere. At night, they would patrol the streets, reporting back any signs that the British were preparing raids against America's early Patriots."
Collecting the meta-data of billions of phone calls and 200 million text messages a day, as well as gathering data through the government's PRISM program and placing bugs in 100,000 computers all over the world seems significantly more extensive than monitoring British troop movement via horseback and candlestick - especially when you consider that the data being collected is in large part that of the American people, not a foreign enemy during war time. Such metadata information would still be collected and stored in President Obama's "reformed" NSA.
The reforms proposed by the President's speech amount to nothing short of a bouquet of roses for American intelligence agencies. The changes detailed in the speech do almost nothing to actually rein in the growing national surveillance state. Billions of phone calls by Americans would still be collected and retained every single day - too much information for even the NSA to wade through properly. We're creating a massive database that could be used at basically any time to determine peoples' associates and behaviors.
While no cause would be necessary to collect this information, the president recommended requiring a court order for analysis of the retained data. This court order is far from a warrant under the Fourth Amendment, but is instead a rubber stamp from a secret court with a tendency to never say no. Considering that the definition of terrorism has sometimes included civil disobedience at demonstrations, the loose standard for issuing a court order for retained data is not a strong enough protection. Warrantless surveillance should be stopped altogether, and metadata should only be collected and retained on an individual basis by a court order under the Fourth Amendment, with a standard of probable cause.
Then there's the continued question of national security letters.
And when "legal standards" do exist in the realm of government spying, they prove very different than the constitutional measures American citizens should be able to expect.
The president left the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court alone, despite its horrendous track record of authorizing a massive spying operation on all of us. This secret court has authorized wide-scale surveillance, issuing 35 opinions upholding metadata collection and consistently granting secret warrant requests. Rather than opening up the court, limiting its powers or changing the method of judge selection (as of now, all FISA judges are handpicked by Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts), the president instead suggested that Congress establish a panel of advocates to argue in these secret courts on behalf of civil liberties and privacy. Again, with no timetable or guarantee of Congressional action, it's unclear whether or when this change would be enacted.
But even with a set of privacy and civil liberties advocates, these secret courts operate on a corrupted base. What good is someone arguing on behalf of privacy and civil liberties when the law allows for the unlimited collection of metadata and wiretapping on Americans without probable cause?
In and of itself, disappointment in the president's proposed reforms isn't surprising - in some way it was expected, as the purpose of the speech was most likely to take the pressure off the president to make real change. What is shocking is that speech did not even do that. Instead, it told all of us, both here and abroad, that massive, Orwellian surveillance is somehow patriotic.
President Obama's assertion that our nation was formed as a result of a heroic history of surveillance, and that such surveillance is among the only things keeping us safe, is not only a striking misappropriation of the facts, but a misleading scare tactic clearly aimed at making Americans comfortable with the far-reaching government spying he seems bent to protect. The American Revolution was fought to prevent more than just taxes on tea. The British Empire's use of general warrants - including "writs of assistance" that allowed agents of the king to search and seize colonial property, including letters and papers - was an abuse of power that the writers of our Constitution specifically sought to address and protect against in the newly formed government they had fought so hard for.
The American people should never accept the collection and retention of millions of records by a government calling for our trust. Because, as President Obama said himself, "History has too many examples when that trust has been breached."
But in his speech on reforms to the NSA and the United States' intelligence gathering systems last week, President Obama had a creative new addition to the legacy of the American Revolution: surveillance.
"At the dawn of our Republic, a small, secret surveillance committee borne out of the Sons of Liberty was established in Boston," said the president. "And the group's members included Paul Revere. At night, they would patrol the streets, reporting back any signs that the British were preparing raids against America's early Patriots."
Collecting the meta-data of billions of phone calls and 200 million text messages a day, as well as gathering data through the government's PRISM program and placing bugs in 100,000 computers all over the world seems significantly more extensive than monitoring British troop movement via horseback and candlestick - especially when you consider that the data being collected is in large part that of the American people, not a foreign enemy during war time. Such metadata information would still be collected and stored in President Obama's "reformed" NSA.
The reforms proposed by the President's speech amount to nothing short of a bouquet of roses for American intelligence agencies. The changes detailed in the speech do almost nothing to actually rein in the growing national surveillance state. Billions of phone calls by Americans would still be collected and retained every single day - too much information for even the NSA to wade through properly. We're creating a massive database that could be used at basically any time to determine peoples' associates and behaviors.
While no cause would be necessary to collect this information, the president recommended requiring a court order for analysis of the retained data. This court order is far from a warrant under the Fourth Amendment, but is instead a rubber stamp from a secret court with a tendency to never say no. Considering that the definition of terrorism has sometimes included civil disobedience at demonstrations, the loose standard for issuing a court order for retained data is not a strong enough protection. Warrantless surveillance should be stopped altogether, and metadata should only be collected and retained on an individual basis by a court order under the Fourth Amendment, with a standard of probable cause.
Then there's the continued question of national security letters.
And when "legal standards" do exist in the realm of government spying, they prove very different than the constitutional measures American citizens should be able to expect.
The president left the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court alone, despite its horrendous track record of authorizing a massive spying operation on all of us. This secret court has authorized wide-scale surveillance, issuing 35 opinions upholding metadata collection and consistently granting secret warrant requests. Rather than opening up the court, limiting its powers or changing the method of judge selection (as of now, all FISA judges are handpicked by Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts), the president instead suggested that Congress establish a panel of advocates to argue in these secret courts on behalf of civil liberties and privacy. Again, with no timetable or guarantee of Congressional action, it's unclear whether or when this change would be enacted.
But even with a set of privacy and civil liberties advocates, these secret courts operate on a corrupted base. What good is someone arguing on behalf of privacy and civil liberties when the law allows for the unlimited collection of metadata and wiretapping on Americans without probable cause?
In and of itself, disappointment in the president's proposed reforms isn't surprising - in some way it was expected, as the purpose of the speech was most likely to take the pressure off the president to make real change. What is shocking is that speech did not even do that. Instead, it told all of us, both here and abroad, that massive, Orwellian surveillance is somehow patriotic.
President Obama's assertion that our nation was formed as a result of a heroic history of surveillance, and that such surveillance is among the only things keeping us safe, is not only a striking misappropriation of the facts, but a misleading scare tactic clearly aimed at making Americans comfortable with the far-reaching government spying he seems bent to protect. The American Revolution was fought to prevent more than just taxes on tea. The British Empire's use of general warrants - including "writs of assistance" that allowed agents of the king to search and seize colonial property, including letters and papers - was an abuse of power that the writers of our Constitution specifically sought to address and protect against in the newly formed government they had fought so hard for.
The American people should never accept the collection and retention of millions of records by a government calling for our trust. Because, as President Obama said himself, "History has too many examples when that trust has been breached."
Direct Action Against Surveillance State
Common Dreams
The National Security Agency depends on huge computers that guzzle
electricity in the service of the surveillance state. For the NSA’s top
executives, maintaining a vast flow of juice to keep Big Brother
nourished is essential—and any interference with that flow is
unthinkable.Cut Off the NSA’s Juice
But interference isn’t unthinkable. And in fact, it may be doable.
Grassroots activists have begun to realize the potential to put the NSA on the defensive in nearly a dozen states where the agency is known to be running surveillance facilities, integral to its worldwide snoop operations.
Organizers have begun to push for action by state legislatures to impede the electric, water and other services that sustain the NSA’s secretive outposts.
Those efforts are farthest along in the state of Washington, where a new bill in the legislature—the Fourth Amendment Protection Act—is a statutory nightmare for the NSA. The agency has a listening post in Yakima, in the south-central part of the state.
The bill throws down a challenge to the NSA, seeking to block all state support for NSA activities violating the Fourth Amendment. For instance, that could mean a cutoff of electricity or water or other state-government services to the NSA site. And the measure also provides for withholding other forms of support, such as research and partnerships with state universities.
Here’s the crux of the bill: “It is the policy of this state to refuse material support, participation, or assistance to any federal agency which claims the power, or with any federal law, rule, regulation, or order which purports to authorize, the collection of electronic data or metadata of any person pursuant to any action not based on a warrant that particularly describes the person, place, and thing to be searched or seized.”
If the windup of that long sentence has a familiar ring, it should. The final dozen words are almost identical to key phrases in the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
In recent days, more than 15,000 people have signed a petition expressing support for the legislation. Launched by RootsAction.org, the petition is addressed to the bill’s two sponsors in the Washington legislature—Republican Rep. David Taylor, whose district includes the NSA facility in Yakima, and Democrat Luis Moscoso from the Seattle area.
Meanwhile, a similar bill with the same title has just been introduced in the Tennessee legislature—taking aim at the NSA’s center based in Oak Ridge, Tenn. That NSA facility is a doozy: with several hundred scientists and computer specialists working to push supercomputers into new realms of mega-surveillance capacities.
A new coalition, OffNow, is sharing information about model legislation. The group also points to known NSA locations in other states including Utah (in Bluffdale), Texas (San Antonio), Georgia (Augusta), Colorado (Aurora), Hawaii (Oahu) and West Virginia (Sugar Grove), along with the NSA’s massive headquarters at Fort Meade in Maryland. Grassroots action and legislative measures are also stirring in several of those states.
One of the key organizations in such efforts is the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, where legal fellow Matthew Kellegrew told me that the OffNow coalition “represents the discontent of average people with … business-as-usual failure to rein in out-of-control domestic spying by the NSA and other federal departments like the FBI. It is a direct, unambiguous response to a direct, unambiguous threat to our civil liberties.”
In the process—working to counter the bipartisan surveillance-state leadership coming from the likes of President Obama, House Speaker John Boehner, the House Intelligence Committee’s chair Mike Rogers and the Senate Intelligence Committee’s chair Dianne Feinstein—activists urging a halt to state-level support for the NSA include people who disagree on other matters but are determined to undermine the Big Brother hierarchies of both parties.
“By working together to tackle the erosion of the Fourth Amendment presented by bulk data collection,” Kellegrew said, “people from across partisan divides are resurrecting the lost art of collaboration and in the process, rehabilitating the possibility of a functional American political dialogue denied to the people by dysfunction majority partisan hackery.
From another vantage point, this is an emerging faceoff between reliance on cynical violence and engagement in civic nonviolence.
Serving the warfare state and overall agendas for U.S. global dominance to the benefit of corporate elites, the NSA persists in doing violence to the Constitution’s civil-liberties amendments—chilling the First, smashing the Fourth and end-running the Fifth.
Meanwhile, a nascent constellation of movements is striving to thwart the surveillance state, the shadowy companion of perpetual war.
This is a struggle for power over what kind of future can be created for humanity.
I
t’s time to stop giving juice to Big Brother.
Sunday, January 26, 2014
Banks Convince Holder to do Business
Feds Will Grant Banking Rights to Marijuana Businesses
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said yesterday that the U.S. Treasury and Department of Justice will allow legal marijuana sellers
to conduct business with banks and credit unions. The DOJ will provide
operating guidelines to marijuana businesses and banks similar to those
provided to Colorado and Washington.
Banks will now be able to deposit and withdraw money in and out of bank accounts, obtain loans, build credit, and accept debit and credit cards payments.
Banks did deny opening their doors to legal marijuana businesses for fear of being an accessory to perceived illegal activities such as money laundering. Having the DOJ’s blessing for such a relationship, banks can now rest assured that they can hold legal marijuana money without fear of law enforcement interaction. Holder said that barring legal marijuana business from financial institutions causes the pot sellers grave problems.
Operating on cash-only basis creates issues for legal marijuana sellers. Marijuana businesses usually have large amounts of cash on-hand and fear that they are prime targets for robberies, forcing them to spend lots of money on tighter security. Businesses also have a difficult time claiming their money for federal tax purposes.In order to have their money accounted for, owners must deliver thousands in hard currency to revenue offices.
Holder said allowing legal marijuana businesses banking access would curtail any such problems. It has certainly become an accounting headache for legal marijuana business. He also noted that such issues cause concern for law enforcement.
“There’s a public safety component to this,” Holder said. “Huge amounts of cash – substantial amounts of cash just kind of lying around with no place for it to be appropriately deposited – is something that would worry me just from a law enforcement perspective.”
Legal marijuana is still a budding industry, but it is appearing to be a quite prosperous one. Legal marijuana proprietors in Colorado have enjoyed booming business. In legal marijuana’s first week, sales in Colorado exceeded $5 million, and the state is expected to earn $70 million in tax revenue from legal marijuana this year.
Washington state marijuana businesses will begin operations later this year with other states, mainly on the west coast, wanting to follow suit and implement their own recreational marijuana legislation. The legal marijuana industry is likely to outpace last year’s revenue by over 60 percent, expecting $2.3 billion of sales for 2014.
Josh is a writer and researcher with Ring of Fire. Follow him on Twitter @dnJdeli.
Thursday, January 23, 2014
States Battle Illegal NSA Surveillance
Some States Have a Sneaky Plan to Stop the NSA
Thursday, 23 January 2014 09:56 By Kevin Mathews, Care2 | Report
(Photo:
Protesters rally against mass surveillance during an event organized by
the group Stop Watching Us in Washington, DC on October 26, 2013 via Shutterstock)What are outraged American citizens to do after the federal government has pretty much decided to do nothing to
fix the unconstitutional NSA spy program? Get the states involved! A
handful of states across the country have already begun devising plans to thwart the dubious agency with state laws, including stopping the NSA facilities’ water and electricity access.So far, six states (Missouri, California, Oklahoma, Kansas, Washington, and Indiana) have introduced bills that target the NSA. Though they all differ somewhat, each state's bill would impede NSA operations within their boundaries.
In Washington, for example, the bill would attack the NSA on multiple fronts:
- State and local officials would be barred from providing information or “support” to the NSA.
- The NSA would be forbidden from researching and recruiting at state universities.
- Evidence collected by the NSA would be inadmissible in state courts.
- Businesses that have contracts with the state would not be allowed to conduct business with the NSA in any capacity; companies that disobeyed would lose their contracts and face criminal charges.
- Access to water and electricity provided by the state would be cut off altogether.
That’s precisely the point, anyway. If the states can’t eliminate spying and mass data collection on innocent citizens altogether, they can at least put up obstacles that may deter them. Will the federal government still find it worthwhile to spy on citizens in a particular state when officials aren’t allowed to assist them? How about when the evidence they’ve gathered is ultimately banned from the courtroom?
Remarkably, participating states are seeing bipartisan support for these retaliatory steps. Though the NSA may be a contentious issue, opponents are hardly divided by party lines. Politicians from both sides of the aisle have taken issue with the assault on the Fourth Amendment and are willing to work together to protect constitutional rights.
As Mother Jones points out, it’s not unprecedented for states to take issue with national agencies. Colorado and Washington don’t work with the Drug Enforcement Administration to pursue marijuana smokers. Meanwhile, California passed its own laws to prevent turning over illegal aliens to U.S. Immigration for likely deportation.
It’s too soon to project whether the states will have any success getting these anti-NSA bills through their respective state legislatures – even critics of the program may be too shy to disobey a federal agency on this issue. Nonetheless, the early action has been enough to inspire additional bills, with politicians in Arizona, Utah, and Michigan indicating that they’re preparing to introduce similar legislation. If even just a couple of the states can put these bills into action, it will speak volumes on a symbolic level.
If President Obama isn’t willing to put a stop to this alarming program, it’s nice to see that many on the state level are set on honoring the U.S. Constitution – even if it means shutting the lights off by literally cutting off its electricity.
NSA Spying Yields No Terrorists
Dear William,
The spying-industrial complex always rationalizes pervasive domestic spying on the basis that, supposedly, it is necessary to keep us safe. But as I pointed out in a speech on the Floor of the House a few months ago, there is no threat to national security when I call my mother. On Monday, in the landmark decision of Klayman v. Obama, No. 13-0851 (D.D.C. Dec. 16, 2013), Judge Richard Leon ordered an end to NSA monitoring of the two innocent plaintiffs. The NSA's "bulk telephony metadata program" generates a report to the NSA on every phone call that every American makes. Judge Leon invited the NSA to prove in court that this program had ever contributed in any way to thwarting a terrorist attack. The NSA came up empty. Here is the key element of Judge Leon's ruling on that issue:
The Government asserts that the Bulk Telephony Metadata Program serves the "programmatic purpose" of "identifying unknown terrorist operatives and preventing terrorist attacks." Govt.'s Opp'n at 51 - an interest that everyone, including this Court, agrees is "of the highest order of magnitude," In re Directives Pursuant to Section 105B of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, 551 F.3d 1004, 1012 (FISA Ct. Rev. 2008); see also Haig v. Agee, 453 U.S. 280, 307 (1981) ("It is obvious and unarguable that no governmental interest is more compelling than the security of the Nation." (internal quotation marks omitted)).[63] A closer examination of the record, however, reveals that the Government's interest is a bit more nuanced - it is not merely to investigate potential terrorists, but rather, to do so faster than other investigative methods might allow. . . .
Yet, turning to the efficacy prong, the Government does not cite a single instance in which analysis of the NSA's bulk metadata collection actually stopped an imminent attack, or otherwise aided the Government in achieving any objective that was time-sensitive in nature. In fact, none of the three "recent episodes" cited by the Government that supposedly "illustrate the role that telephony metadata analysis can play in preventing and protecting against terrorist attack" involved any apparent urgency. See Holley Decl. ¶¶ 24-26. In the first example, the FBI learned of a terrorist plot still "in its early stages" and investigated that plot before turning to the metadata "to ensure that all potential connections were identified." Id. ¶ 24. Assistant Director Holley does not say that the metadata revealed any new information - much less time-sensitive information - that had not already come to light in the investigation up to that point. Id. In the second example, it appears that the metadata analysis was used only after the terrorist was arrested "to establish [his] foreign ties and put them in context with his U.S. based planning efforts." Id . ¶ 25. And in the third, the metadata analysis "revealed a previously unknown number for [a] co-conspirator . . . and corroborated his connection to [the target of the investigation] as well as to other U.S.-based extremists." Id. ¶ 26. Again, there is no indication that these revelations were immediately useful or that they prevented an impending attack. Assistant Director Holley even concedes that bulk metadata analysis only "sometimes provides information earlier than the FBI's other investigative methods and techniques." Id. ¶ 23 (emphasis added).[64] Given the limited record before me at this point in the litigation - most notably, the utter lack of evidence that a terrorist attack has ever been prevented because searching the NSA database was faster than other investigative tactics - I have serious doubts about the efficacy of the metadata collection program as a means of conducting time-sensitive investigations in cases involving imminent threats of terrorism.[65] See Chandler, 520 U.S. at 318-19 ("Notably lacking in respondents' presentation is any indication of a concrete danger demanding departure from the Fourth Amendment's main rule."). Thus, plaintiffs have a substantial likelihood of showing that their privacy interests outweigh the Government's interest in collecting and analyzing bulk telephony metadata and therefore the NSA's bulk collection program is indeed an unreasonable search under the Fourth Amendment.[66]
[65] The Government could have requested permission to present additional, potentially classified evidence in camera, but it chose not to do so. Although the Government has publicly asserted that the NSA's surveillance programs have prevented fifty-four terrorist attacks, no proof of that has been put before me. See also Justin Elliott & Theodoric Meyer, Claim on 'Attacks Thwarted' by NSA Spreads Despite Lack of Evidence, PROPUBLICA.ORG (Oct. 23, 2013), http://www.propublica.org/
. . . I cannot imagine a more "indiscriminate" and "arbitrary invasion" than this systematic and high-tech collection and retention of personal data on virtually every single citizen for purposes of querying and analyzing it without prior judicial approval. Surely, such a program infringes on "that degree of privacy" that the Founders enshrined in the Fourth Amendment. Indeed, I have little doubt that the author of our Constitution, James Madison, who cautioned us to beware "the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power," would be aghast. [67]
I applaud Judge Leon's ruling. In my opinion, the NSA has run a giant con game on the American People, telling us that we have to give up our freedom to preserve our safety, when in fact the NSA has done little or nothing to keep us safe. The NSA has tried to fool us, knowing that a fool and his freedom are soon parted. Thank you, Judge Leon, for telling the truth to the American People.
Let Freedom Ring.
Courage,
Rep. Alan Grayson
Monday, January 20, 2014
CCR's Rattner on Obama's NSA Speech
Obama NSA Reforms Are "a Bouquet of Roses" to the Intelligence Agencies
Monday, 20 January 2014 11:32 By Paul Jay, The Real News Network | Video Interview
TRANSCRIPT:
PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Paul Jay in Baltimore. And welcome to this week's edition of The Ratner Report with Michael Ratner.
But before we go to Michael, I'm going to introduce a little clip from President Obama, who spoke on Friday, giving his new regulations. He suggests new limitations, he says, on the NSA's surveillance activities. And here's how he opened his speech.
~~~
BARACK OBAMA, U.S. PRESIDENT: At the dawn of our Republic, a small, secret surveillance committee borne out of the "The Sons of Liberty" was established in Boston. And the group's members included Paul Revere. At night, they would patrol the streets, reporting back any signs that the British were preparing raids against America's early Patriots. Throughout American history, intelligence has helped secure our country and our freedoms.
~~~
JAY: Now joining us from New York is Michael Ratner. Michael is the president emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York. He's the U.S. attorney for Julian Assange. And he's also a board member of The Real News Network.
Thanks very much for joining us, Michael.
MICHAEL RATNER, PRESIDENT EMERITUS, CENTER FOR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS: Paul, thank you for having me.
JAY: So how did you respond, or how would you like to respond to President Obama?
RATNER: Well, I responded--my own--I sat there watching it really astounded, because I didn't expect a lot, but I think we got almost nothing in terms of actually reining in what I call this national surveillance state.
And what was really amazing to me--you could tell it from the beginning--the clip you played, which is about the role of the Sons of Liberty and Paul Revere and the Revolution as spies, are essentially saying spies are our patriots, spies are our heroes, surveillance, as he goes on to say, surveillance is essentially freedom.
And so he's reversing, really, the way I would have begun a speech, which is to say, we're citizens, we're Americans, we're protected by a constitution. We have a right to privacy. We have a right to First Amendment associations. And that's our core right. And yes, we may need to do surveillance for reasons, but we can't interfere with the core rights.
So I knew from the beginning, when he starts by saying essentially Paul Revere, a spy, is a patriot, that this thing was going in a very bad direction. And if I had to characterize it in one way, it would be a bouquet of roses to the national security agencies and the intelligence agencies, which us normal citizens, normal people came in really for the short shrift of protection.
And as I said, it said very little that was positive. And when you go and look at what we are facing in the surveillance state--a billion phone calls a day, metadata taken--a statistic that came out yesterday or today: 200 million text messages a day are taken in by the NSA. A hundred thousand computers all over the world have bugs in them through a program called PRISM that can get into our internet and computers. So you have this vast surveillance apparatus.
And then you have a speech that basically lauds the people who are spies, talks about them really as, oh, they're your neighbor, they don't want to do anything wrong to you, they're only out to protect you. And then he goes through the history of how important spies are. In the Civil War, the used balloons to look at the Confederate troops, in the Second World War what we did, against the Soviet Union what we did, etc., and on and on. So you know from that opening where Obama is going.
JAY: Well, his main point out of all that was now, after the Soviet Union was the great threat and we needed spies--he uses the word to defend us against aggression, in other words, picks up the whole Cold War narrative. But now he says the threat is this al-Qaeda types, terrorist types. And, I mean, you know, I mean, we've said on The Real News many times, and you end I have discussed this many times, much of or all of this threat is the product or to a large extent the product of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East and other places. But that being said, there actually are, are there not, people out there that would--that see terrorism is a tactic and in some ways the only way to fight back against such an overwhelming American military. And they would, like, attack in the United States, one presumes, if they could get away with it. I mean, that much is real, don't you think, that there actually is such a threat?
RATNER: You know, what was sad about what he said about 9/11 is that it was a lie. Basically, we had the information to be able to stop 9/11. What they didn't do was put the information together. In other words, we had enough surveillance before 9/11 to stop 9/11, but they didn't do it.
And the question you have to ask yourself are two: how does taking in a billion phone calls a day, every single American's phone call, really help do that? And in fact, the judge, Judge Leon, who ruled that the program of the metadata collection was unconstitutional, said the government has not been able to show that they've been able to stop any imminent attack with this information, nor been able to show that the need for immediacy, in other words, without a court ordered warrant, is necessary. So he was throwing us, you know, in my view, just a lot of ways of scaring us. Oh, this big threat. So that's the first thing.
The second thing, of course, you'd say about the big threat is what's come out in a lot of the information from Ed Snowden and others is that a lot of this surveillance is not about keeping us safe, but it's about two other things. One is about competitive advantages for U.S. businesses, with the US government knowing what other businesses are doing. We know that about the spying in Brazil on Petrobras, which is the Brazilian oil company, the Canadians spying on the mining companies, the taking in of the phone calls in France of businesses and political leaders. So it's about business.
And it's also, obviously, about finding out what even our allies are doing in terms of their politics.
It's not about 9/11. It's not about stopping terrorism. They could do a much more limited program if that's what it was about.
So he tries to throw us, the scare, 9/11, which, of course, everybody's sitting there, well, you know, 9/11, so what? He takes in all of our information. If it'll start the next terrorist attack, let's do it. But in fact what it does is it eliminates completely our First Amendment rights to association, our rights to privacy, both under international law as well as under our own law, our right to associate under international law, a right to have any kind of privacy on our own, whether it's, you know, medical records, who we're marrying, etc. [crosstalk]
JAY: Is there anything in his suggested reforms that you think's any good?
RATNER: Well, let's start with the reforms, because I think that's--we want to get there. One, he starts with a lot of BS about oversight, transparency, kicks a bunch of it to Congress, all completely meaningless. And he starts on, let's say--well, his main point when he started talking about the reforms was also interesting to me. He says, after he talks about all of, you know, the 9/11 and the patriots who were spies, then he says it's not enough to trust us, the government. We have to put into place, laws, etc. So it's not just us as the government, not enough to trust us.
But in fact, everything that he says, we're going to have to trust the government, which we've shown that we can't trust. So the first one, the big one, two big ones: national security letters. Those are the letters that the FBI can simply issue to your library, to your phone company, to your bank to get all of your records. We had hoped that there would be a judicial warrant requiring a national security letter. It's not a small matter. There's 50,000 of those a year. They're secret. You can't--you're gagged when the business gets one. It's a huge hole in all of our data and all of our records. Did they do anything about that? Zero. All he said was, after the fact, we'll have to reveal more of the information about that. [incompr.] for national security letters. Terrible.
The second big thing, of course, is the metadata. What we're talking about is the billion phone calls and all the data that's caused a huge storm because of everything you can get from metadata. And on that issue he said, we're going to continue to collect metadata. They're going to continue to collect it. My view is they shouldn't be collecting metadata at all, and the only way they can collect any data on my phone call or your phone call is with a judicial warrant. But no, they're going to continue to collect it all.
The only two things he said was, we're not sure where we're going to store it, whether it'll be stored in the federal government or outside or where, and that's going to be kicked over to Congress.
And the one thing they said that people are planning is something good is it'll require some kind of a judicial authority to begin to look into that metadata. Well, you know, what that's telling me is you have this huge database that you've retained, that you've collected, that can be used at any time to find out who my associates are to the second, third, and fourth and fifth degree. But they're not going to use it, except with the court. Well, as we go through this life in this country, I don't know what the court procedures are going to be, I don't know that we're going to allow just one person to look at one phone number, or whether when the government has that kind of data and there's anything serious that happens in this country, whether it's serious union strike, it's an Occupy Wall Street, or something, they will have the databases on every one of us. The demand should be and has been: get rid of the metadatabase. So the second thing is a failure. It's a cosmetic--something on top of it. But it's on top of a base. The judicial requirements are on top of a base that's completely, completely corrupted.
The third reform that he was--talked about was the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. And that--everything is secret. They've issued 35 opinions upholding the metadata and other kinds of surveillance, the 15 judges have done that. They never turn down any warrants, secret warrant requests, one in thousands, if that many. Secret court.
What does he suggest for that? He suggests, like, sort of a panel of advocates to argue for the civil liberties side. Again, kicks it over to Congress. When is that going to happen? You and I just don't know.
And let me tell you what's wrong with it. Yeah, sure, it's good to have somebody in there arguing for civil liberties, but again, it's on a corrupted base. If you have a law that allows the collection of metadata of all of us or wiretapping with a warrant, what good does it do to get someone in there arguing on privacy and civil liberties when it's on top of basically a corrupt set of laws?
So look at those three things: national security letter, metadata, and the FISA court. None of them really any--none of them really with any significant protections for this vast surveillance system that we have. And finally, of course, he did mention Ed Snowden, Edward Snowden. And what he said about Edward Snowden, you know, was not something that I think is meant to give comfort to a man who has actually got us into this debate and actually, you know, took a heroic gesture in doing so.
JAY: Yeah. Michael, we're going to play a clip of that right now. This is President Obama's statement to Snowden. And here's the clip.
~~~
JAY: I mean, it seems to me this is President Obama's shot across the bow of anyone talking about amnesty that that's not on. Go ahead, Michael.
RATNER: Yes. I mean, people weren't sure he would mention Snowden, and he lied in saying that we've been considering reforms to the NSA before Ed Snowden. But he basically says, this is a--our system depends on secrecy. He's giving methods to our adversary. It's sensational what he did. And yes, I think that's correct. I think it's correct to say that Ed Snowden is not going to get amnesty or clemency anytime within the Obama administration.
So all in all, [incompr.] I was disappointed in the speech, you know, and that's not strong enough. I knew--we knew we'd all be disappointed. We knew we're living in a massive surveillance state, expected the speech to cover over some of the problems so that he would lessen the tension around the issue of massive government spying. Maybe this speech will have some of that effect. I think it wasn't good enough to have that effect to stop the waters from roiling. People are giving it very, very low marks. It was not--it's not a good speech, but it doesn't go to any of the hearts of problem that we're living in an incredible national security state, where everything we do, think, associate with is taken in by our government.
JAY: He didn't deal at all with some of the points some of the NSA whistleblowers have raised recently. We interviewed William Binney, and he said that they actually have the technology (and Binney had actually proposed it before he left the NSA) where they could really isolate people of real suspicion. They have reason to believe so and so is involved in some kind of terrorist activities. They have ways to create interconnections of the phone calls that start with someone of real interest. And not only is this actually a way to exempt people who are innocent from this blanket surveillance and thus actually defend people's constitutional rights, but it's also way more effective. As you say said in the beginning, if you have too much data, as Binney said, if you're looking for a needle in a haystack, you don't want to make the haystack any bigger, which is what the current methods are, that the NSA's actually rejected methods of more focused surveillance, because they really want everybody's records.
RATNER: You know, the Binney is really smart on this. And, of course, he's completely right. And that's why you have to ask yourself what's really going on here. Aren't they really trying to build up a database on every single American, nothing to do it terrorism, a lot more to do with, ultimately, social control? It's not--this is not about terrorism. This is--either it's conscious social control, it's an agency that's gone wild. Obama's been either--either feels the way the agencies do or he's been captured by the agency. Obama's really become in Nineteen Eighty-Four terms, you know, our big brother.
JAY: Yeah. And I think it's--we shouldn't forget there were days in the 19-teens where American citizens were deported. There were mass internments, including of American citizens during World War II. Let's not forget McCarthyism, the House Un-American Activities Committee. I mean, it's not like this is all some dystopian vision. There is some historical precedent for being concerned about this stuff.
RATNER: You Know, Paul, that's right, and it's not right that people should accept collection and retention of millions of records and simply put on top of it you can only look at them with a court order. Our government should not have billions of records on every single American.
JAY: Thanks for joining us, Michael.
RATNER: Thank you for having me, Paul.
JAY: And thank you for joining us on The Real News Network.
PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Paul Jay in Baltimore. And welcome to this week's edition of The Ratner Report with Michael Ratner.
But before we go to Michael, I'm going to introduce a little clip from President Obama, who spoke on Friday, giving his new regulations. He suggests new limitations, he says, on the NSA's surveillance activities. And here's how he opened his speech.
~~~
BARACK OBAMA, U.S. PRESIDENT: At the dawn of our Republic, a small, secret surveillance committee borne out of the "The Sons of Liberty" was established in Boston. And the group's members included Paul Revere. At night, they would patrol the streets, reporting back any signs that the British were preparing raids against America's early Patriots. Throughout American history, intelligence has helped secure our country and our freedoms.
~~~
JAY: Now joining us from New York is Michael Ratner. Michael is the president emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York. He's the U.S. attorney for Julian Assange. And he's also a board member of The Real News Network.
Thanks very much for joining us, Michael.
MICHAEL RATNER, PRESIDENT EMERITUS, CENTER FOR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS: Paul, thank you for having me.
JAY: So how did you respond, or how would you like to respond to President Obama?
RATNER: Well, I responded--my own--I sat there watching it really astounded, because I didn't expect a lot, but I think we got almost nothing in terms of actually reining in what I call this national surveillance state.
And what was really amazing to me--you could tell it from the beginning--the clip you played, which is about the role of the Sons of Liberty and Paul Revere and the Revolution as spies, are essentially saying spies are our patriots, spies are our heroes, surveillance, as he goes on to say, surveillance is essentially freedom.
And so he's reversing, really, the way I would have begun a speech, which is to say, we're citizens, we're Americans, we're protected by a constitution. We have a right to privacy. We have a right to First Amendment associations. And that's our core right. And yes, we may need to do surveillance for reasons, but we can't interfere with the core rights.
So I knew from the beginning, when he starts by saying essentially Paul Revere, a spy, is a patriot, that this thing was going in a very bad direction. And if I had to characterize it in one way, it would be a bouquet of roses to the national security agencies and the intelligence agencies, which us normal citizens, normal people came in really for the short shrift of protection.
And as I said, it said very little that was positive. And when you go and look at what we are facing in the surveillance state--a billion phone calls a day, metadata taken--a statistic that came out yesterday or today: 200 million text messages a day are taken in by the NSA. A hundred thousand computers all over the world have bugs in them through a program called PRISM that can get into our internet and computers. So you have this vast surveillance apparatus.
And then you have a speech that basically lauds the people who are spies, talks about them really as, oh, they're your neighbor, they don't want to do anything wrong to you, they're only out to protect you. And then he goes through the history of how important spies are. In the Civil War, the used balloons to look at the Confederate troops, in the Second World War what we did, against the Soviet Union what we did, etc., and on and on. So you know from that opening where Obama is going.
JAY: Well, his main point out of all that was now, after the Soviet Union was the great threat and we needed spies--he uses the word to defend us against aggression, in other words, picks up the whole Cold War narrative. But now he says the threat is this al-Qaeda types, terrorist types. And, I mean, you know, I mean, we've said on The Real News many times, and you end I have discussed this many times, much of or all of this threat is the product or to a large extent the product of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East and other places. But that being said, there actually are, are there not, people out there that would--that see terrorism is a tactic and in some ways the only way to fight back against such an overwhelming American military. And they would, like, attack in the United States, one presumes, if they could get away with it. I mean, that much is real, don't you think, that there actually is such a threat?
RATNER: You know, what was sad about what he said about 9/11 is that it was a lie. Basically, we had the information to be able to stop 9/11. What they didn't do was put the information together. In other words, we had enough surveillance before 9/11 to stop 9/11, but they didn't do it.
And the question you have to ask yourself are two: how does taking in a billion phone calls a day, every single American's phone call, really help do that? And in fact, the judge, Judge Leon, who ruled that the program of the metadata collection was unconstitutional, said the government has not been able to show that they've been able to stop any imminent attack with this information, nor been able to show that the need for immediacy, in other words, without a court ordered warrant, is necessary. So he was throwing us, you know, in my view, just a lot of ways of scaring us. Oh, this big threat. So that's the first thing.
The second thing, of course, you'd say about the big threat is what's come out in a lot of the information from Ed Snowden and others is that a lot of this surveillance is not about keeping us safe, but it's about two other things. One is about competitive advantages for U.S. businesses, with the US government knowing what other businesses are doing. We know that about the spying in Brazil on Petrobras, which is the Brazilian oil company, the Canadians spying on the mining companies, the taking in of the phone calls in France of businesses and political leaders. So it's about business.
And it's also, obviously, about finding out what even our allies are doing in terms of their politics.
It's not about 9/11. It's not about stopping terrorism. They could do a much more limited program if that's what it was about.
So he tries to throw us, the scare, 9/11, which, of course, everybody's sitting there, well, you know, 9/11, so what? He takes in all of our information. If it'll start the next terrorist attack, let's do it. But in fact what it does is it eliminates completely our First Amendment rights to association, our rights to privacy, both under international law as well as under our own law, our right to associate under international law, a right to have any kind of privacy on our own, whether it's, you know, medical records, who we're marrying, etc. [crosstalk]
JAY: Is there anything in his suggested reforms that you think's any good?
RATNER: Well, let's start with the reforms, because I think that's--we want to get there. One, he starts with a lot of BS about oversight, transparency, kicks a bunch of it to Congress, all completely meaningless. And he starts on, let's say--well, his main point when he started talking about the reforms was also interesting to me. He says, after he talks about all of, you know, the 9/11 and the patriots who were spies, then he says it's not enough to trust us, the government. We have to put into place, laws, etc. So it's not just us as the government, not enough to trust us.
But in fact, everything that he says, we're going to have to trust the government, which we've shown that we can't trust. So the first one, the big one, two big ones: national security letters. Those are the letters that the FBI can simply issue to your library, to your phone company, to your bank to get all of your records. We had hoped that there would be a judicial warrant requiring a national security letter. It's not a small matter. There's 50,000 of those a year. They're secret. You can't--you're gagged when the business gets one. It's a huge hole in all of our data and all of our records. Did they do anything about that? Zero. All he said was, after the fact, we'll have to reveal more of the information about that. [incompr.] for national security letters. Terrible.
The second big thing, of course, is the metadata. What we're talking about is the billion phone calls and all the data that's caused a huge storm because of everything you can get from metadata. And on that issue he said, we're going to continue to collect metadata. They're going to continue to collect it. My view is they shouldn't be collecting metadata at all, and the only way they can collect any data on my phone call or your phone call is with a judicial warrant. But no, they're going to continue to collect it all.
The only two things he said was, we're not sure where we're going to store it, whether it'll be stored in the federal government or outside or where, and that's going to be kicked over to Congress.
And the one thing they said that people are planning is something good is it'll require some kind of a judicial authority to begin to look into that metadata. Well, you know, what that's telling me is you have this huge database that you've retained, that you've collected, that can be used at any time to find out who my associates are to the second, third, and fourth and fifth degree. But they're not going to use it, except with the court. Well, as we go through this life in this country, I don't know what the court procedures are going to be, I don't know that we're going to allow just one person to look at one phone number, or whether when the government has that kind of data and there's anything serious that happens in this country, whether it's serious union strike, it's an Occupy Wall Street, or something, they will have the databases on every one of us. The demand should be and has been: get rid of the metadatabase. So the second thing is a failure. It's a cosmetic--something on top of it. But it's on top of a base. The judicial requirements are on top of a base that's completely, completely corrupted.
The third reform that he was--talked about was the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. And that--everything is secret. They've issued 35 opinions upholding the metadata and other kinds of surveillance, the 15 judges have done that. They never turn down any warrants, secret warrant requests, one in thousands, if that many. Secret court.
What does he suggest for that? He suggests, like, sort of a panel of advocates to argue for the civil liberties side. Again, kicks it over to Congress. When is that going to happen? You and I just don't know.
And let me tell you what's wrong with it. Yeah, sure, it's good to have somebody in there arguing for civil liberties, but again, it's on a corrupted base. If you have a law that allows the collection of metadata of all of us or wiretapping with a warrant, what good does it do to get someone in there arguing on privacy and civil liberties when it's on top of basically a corrupt set of laws?
So look at those three things: national security letter, metadata, and the FISA court. None of them really any--none of them really with any significant protections for this vast surveillance system that we have. And finally, of course, he did mention Ed Snowden, Edward Snowden. And what he said about Edward Snowden, you know, was not something that I think is meant to give comfort to a man who has actually got us into this debate and actually, you know, took a heroic gesture in doing so.
JAY: Yeah. Michael, we're going to play a clip of that right now. This is President Obama's statement to Snowden. And here's the clip.
~~~
JAY: I mean, it seems to me this is President Obama's shot across the bow of anyone talking about amnesty that that's not on. Go ahead, Michael.
RATNER: Yes. I mean, people weren't sure he would mention Snowden, and he lied in saying that we've been considering reforms to the NSA before Ed Snowden. But he basically says, this is a--our system depends on secrecy. He's giving methods to our adversary. It's sensational what he did. And yes, I think that's correct. I think it's correct to say that Ed Snowden is not going to get amnesty or clemency anytime within the Obama administration.
So all in all, [incompr.] I was disappointed in the speech, you know, and that's not strong enough. I knew--we knew we'd all be disappointed. We knew we're living in a massive surveillance state, expected the speech to cover over some of the problems so that he would lessen the tension around the issue of massive government spying. Maybe this speech will have some of that effect. I think it wasn't good enough to have that effect to stop the waters from roiling. People are giving it very, very low marks. It was not--it's not a good speech, but it doesn't go to any of the hearts of problem that we're living in an incredible national security state, where everything we do, think, associate with is taken in by our government.
JAY: He didn't deal at all with some of the points some of the NSA whistleblowers have raised recently. We interviewed William Binney, and he said that they actually have the technology (and Binney had actually proposed it before he left the NSA) where they could really isolate people of real suspicion. They have reason to believe so and so is involved in some kind of terrorist activities. They have ways to create interconnections of the phone calls that start with someone of real interest. And not only is this actually a way to exempt people who are innocent from this blanket surveillance and thus actually defend people's constitutional rights, but it's also way more effective. As you say said in the beginning, if you have too much data, as Binney said, if you're looking for a needle in a haystack, you don't want to make the haystack any bigger, which is what the current methods are, that the NSA's actually rejected methods of more focused surveillance, because they really want everybody's records.
RATNER: You know, the Binney is really smart on this. And, of course, he's completely right. And that's why you have to ask yourself what's really going on here. Aren't they really trying to build up a database on every single American, nothing to do it terrorism, a lot more to do with, ultimately, social control? It's not--this is not about terrorism. This is--either it's conscious social control, it's an agency that's gone wild. Obama's been either--either feels the way the agencies do or he's been captured by the agency. Obama's really become in Nineteen Eighty-Four terms, you know, our big brother.
JAY: Yeah. And I think it's--we shouldn't forget there were days in the 19-teens where American citizens were deported. There were mass internments, including of American citizens during World War II. Let's not forget McCarthyism, the House Un-American Activities Committee. I mean, it's not like this is all some dystopian vision. There is some historical precedent for being concerned about this stuff.
RATNER: You Know, Paul, that's right, and it's not right that people should accept collection and retention of millions of records and simply put on top of it you can only look at them with a court order. Our government should not have billions of records on every single American.
JAY: Thanks for joining us, Michael.
RATNER: Thank you for having me, Paul.
JAY: And thank you for joining us on The Real News Network.
Friday, January 17, 2014
NSA Snares Millions of Texts via "Dishfire""
NSA collects millions of text messages daily in 'untargeted' global sweep
• NSA extracts location, contacts and financial transactions
• 'Dishfire' program sweeps up 'pretty much everything it can'
• GCHQ using database to search metadata from UK numbers
• Dishfire presentation on text message collection – key extracts
• 'Dishfire' program sweeps up 'pretty much everything it can'
• GCHQ using database to search metadata from UK numbers
• Dishfire presentation on text message collection – key extracts
The untargeted collection and storage of SMS messages – including their contacts – is revealed in a joint investigation between the Guardian and the UK’s Channel 4 News based on material provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.
The documents also reveal the UK spy agency GCHQ has made use of the NSA database to search the metadata of “untargeted and unwarranted” communications belonging to people in the UK.
The NSA program, codenamed Dishfire, collects “pretty much everything it can”, according to GCHQ documents, rather than merely storing the communications of existing surveillance targets.
The NSA has made extensive use of its vast text message database to extract information on people’s travel plans, contact books, financial transactions and more – including of individuals under no suspicion of illegal activity.
An agency presentation from 2011 – subtitled “SMS Text Messages: A Goldmine to Exploit” – reveals the program collected an average of 194 million text messages a day in April of that year. In addition to storing the messages themselves, a further program known as “Prefer” conducted automated analysis on the untargeted communications.
On average, each day the NSA was able to extract:
• More than 5 million missed-call alerts, for use in contact-chaining analysis (working out someone’s social network from who they contact and when)
• Details of 1.6 million border crossings a day, from network roaming alerts
• More than 110,000 names, from electronic business cards, which also included the ability to extract and save images.
• Over 800,000 financial transactions, either through text-to-text payments or linking credit cards to phone users
The agency was also able to extract geolocation data from more than 76,000 text messages a day, including from “requests by people for route info” and “setting up meetings”. Other travel information was obtained from itinerary texts sent by travel companies, even including cancellations and delays to travel plans.
The revelation the NSA is collecting and extracting personal information from hundreds of millions of global text messages a day is likely to intensify international pressure on US president Barack Obama, who on Friday is set to give his response to the report of his NSA review panel.
While US attention has focused on whether the NSA’s controversial phone metadata program will be discontinued, the panel also suggested US spy agencies should pay more consideration to the privacy rights of foreigners, and reconsider spying efforts against allied heads of state and diplomats.
In a statement to the Guardian, a spokeswoman for the NSA said any implication that the agency’s collection was “arbitrary and unconstrained is false”. The agency’s capabilities were directed only against “valid foreign intelligence targets” and were subject to stringent legal safeguards, she said.
The ways in which the UK spy agency GCHQ has made use of the NSA Dishfire database also seems likely to raise questions on the scope of its powers.
While GCHQ is not allowed to search through the content of messages without a warrant – though the contents are stored rather than deleted or “minimized” from the database – the agency’s lawyers decided analysts were able to see who UK phone numbers had been texting, and search for them in the database.
The GCHQ memo sets out in clear terms what the agency’s access to Dishfire allows it to do, before handling how UK communications should be treated. The unique property of Dishfire, it states, is how much untargeted or unselected information it stores.
“In contrast to [most] GCHQ equivalents, DISHFIRE contains a large volume of unselected SMS traffic,” it states (emphasis original). “This makes it particularly useful for the development of new targets, since it is possible to examine the content of messages sent months or even years before the target was known to be of interest.”
It later explains in plain terms how useful this capability can be. Comparing Dishfire favourably to a GCHQ counterpart which only collects against phone numbers that have specifically been targeted, it states “Dishfire collects pretty much everything it can, so you can see SMS from a selector which is not targeted”.
The document also states the database allows for broad, bulk searches of keywords which could result in a high number of hits, rather than just narrow searches against particular phone numbers: “It is also possible to search against the content in bulk (e.g. for a name or home telephone number) if the target’s mobile phone number is not known.”
Analysts are warned to be careful when searching content for terms relating to UK citizens or people currently residing in the UK, as these searches could be successful but would not be legal without a warrant or similar targeting authority.
However, a note from GCHQ’s operational legalities team, dated May 2008, states agents can search Dishfire for “events” data relating to UK numbers – who is contacting who, and when.
“You may run a search of UK numbers in DISHFIRE in order to retrieve only events data,” the note states, before setting out how an analyst can prevent himself seeing the content of messages when he searches – by toggling a single setting on the search tool.
Once this is done, the document continues, “this will now enable you to run a search without displaying the content of the SMS, especially useful for untargeted and unwarranted UK numbers.”
A separate document gives a sense of how large-scale each Dishfire search can be, asking analysts to restrain their searches to no more than 1,800 phone numbers at a time.
The note also adds that the NSA automatically removes all “US-related SMS” from the database,
so it is not available for searching.
A GCHQ spokesman refused to comment on any particular matters, but said all its intelligence activities were in compliance with UK law and oversight.
But Vodafone, one of the world’s largest mobile phone companies with operations in 25 countries including Britain, greeted the latest revelations with shock.
“It’s the first we’ve heard about it and naturally we’re shocked and surprised,” the group’s privacy officer and head of legal for privacy, security and content standards told Channel 4 News.
“What you’re describing sounds concerning to us because the regime that we are required to comply with is very clear and we will only disclose information to governments where we are legally compelled to do so, won’t go beyond the law and comply with due process.
“But what you’re describing is something that sounds as if that’s been circumvented. And for us as a business this is anathema because our whole business is founded on protecting privacy as a fundamental imperative.”
He said the company would be challenging the UK government over this. “From our perspective, the law is there to protect our customers and it doesn’t sound as if that is what is necessarily happening.” The NSA’s access to, and storage of, the content of communications of UK citizens may also be contentious in the light of earlier Guardian revelations that the agency was drafting policies to facilitate spying on the citizens of its allies, including the UK and Australia, which would – if enacted – enable the agency to search its databases for UK citizens without informing GCHQ or UK politicians.
The documents seen by the Guardian were from an internal Wikipedia-style guide to the NSA program provided for GCHQ analysts, and noted the Dishfire program was “operational” at the time the site was accessed, in 2012.
The documents do not, however, state whether any rules were subsequently changed, or give estimates of how many UK text messages are collected or stored in the Dishfire system, or from where they are being intercepted.
In the statement, the NSA spokeswoman said: “As we have previously stated, the implication that NSA's collection is arbitrary and unconstrained is false.
“NSA's activities are focused and specifically deployed against – and only against – valid foreign intelligence targets in response to intelligence requirements.
“Dishfire is a system that processes and stores lawfully collected SMS data. Because some SMS data of US persons may at times be incidentally collected in NSA’s lawful foreign intelligence mission, privacy protections for US persons exist across the entire process concerning the use, handling, retention, and dissemination of SMS data in Dishfire.
“In addition, NSA actively works to remove extraneous data, to include that of innocent foreign citizens, as early as possible in the process.”
The agency draws a distinction between the bulk collection of communications and the use of that data to monitor or find specific targets.
A spokesman for GCHQ refused to respond to any specific queries regarding Dishfire, but said the agency complied with UK law and regulators.
“It is a longstanding policy that we do not comment on intelligence matters,” he said. “Furthermore, all of GCHQ's work is carried out in accordance with a strict legal and policy framework which ensures that our activities are authorised, necessary and proportionate, and that there is rigorous oversight, including from the Secretary of State, the Interception and Intelligence Services Commissioners and the Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee.”
GCHQ also directed the Guardian towards a statement made to the House of Commons in June 2013 by foreign secretary William Hague, in response to revelations of the agency’s use of the Prism program.
“Any data obtained by us from the US involving UK nationals is subject to proper UK statutory controls and safeguards, including the relevant sections of the Intelligence Services Act, the Human Rights Act and the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act,” Hague told MPs.
State Bill Outlaws NSA Listening Post
Washington State Bill Proposes Criminalizing Help to NSA, Turning Off Resources to Yakima Facility
Thursday, 16 January 2014 13:17 By Michael Boldin, Truthout | Report
NSA listening post in Yakima, Washington. (Image: via Google Maps)The campaign to turn off power to the NSA has gotten a big boost. Washington has become the first state with a physical NSA location to consider a Fourth Amendment protection act designed to make life extremely difficult for the massive spy agency.
The state-level campaign to turn off power to the NSA got a big boost January 15, 2014, as Washington became the first state with a physical NSA location to consider a Fourth Amendment protection act designed to make life extremely difficult for the massive spy agency.
Bills introduced in California, Oklahoma, Indiana, Missouri and Kansas seek to prevent the NSA from expanding further or sharing data and metadata in non-terror investigations.
But Washington's House Bill 2272 (HB2272) takes things a step farther because the state is home to the secretive "Yakima listening post" documented by famous NSA researcher James Bamford in his 1982 book, The Puzzle Palace.
HB2272 was introduced by a bipartisan team of legislators, Rep. David Taylor, a Republican from Moxee, and Rep. Luis Moscoso, a former three-term secretary of the state Democratic Party from Mountlake Terrace.
If passed, the bill would make it the policy of the state "to refuse material support, participation, or assistance to any federal agency which claims the power, or with any federal law, rule, regulation, or order which purports to authorize, the collection of electronic data or metadata of any person pursuant to any action not based on a warrant."
Taylor, whose district houses the Yakima post, said he "cannot sit idly by while a secretive facility in his backyard violates the rights of people everywhere."
"We're running the bill to provide protection against the ever-increasing surveillance into the daily lives of our citizens," Taylor said. "Our founding fathers established a series of checks and balances in the Constitution. Given the federal government's utter failure to address the people's concerns, it's up to the states to stand for our citizens' constitutional rights."
Practically speaking, the bill prohibits state and local agencies from providing any material support to the NSA within their jurisdiction. This includes barring government-owned utilities from providing water and electricity. It makes information gathered without a warrant by the NSA and shared with law enforcement inadmissible in state court. It blocks public universities from serving as NSA research facilities or recruiting grounds. And it bans corporations who continue to do business with the NSA from holding any contracts with the state.
According to documents made public by the US military, as of 2008, a company called PacifiCorp is the primary supplier of electric power and Cascade Natural Gas Corporation supplies natural gas to YTC. The Kittitas Public Utility District, a function of the state, provides electric power for the MPRC and the Doris site, but no documentation has yet proven that it also provides electricity used directly by the NSA facility. And while YTC does provide a bulk of its own water, documents also show that some of it gets there by first passing through upstream dams owned and operated by the state.
The Army report states, "YTC lies within three WAUs whose boundaries coincide with WRIAs, as defined by the State of Washington natural resource agencies."
WAU's are the state's Water Administration Units. WRIAs are state Water Resource Inventory Areas.
A Washington company has a strong link to the NSA. Cray Inc. builds supercomputers for the agency. Calls to the company for comment were not returned.
Taylor said he understands the need for "national security" but insists we can't trample over the Constitution in the process.
"Simply claiming 'national security' does not negate an individual's constitutional rights. We have a legal system which provides law enforcement agencies the means to conduct legal, constitutional surveillance. We're simply asking the government to follow the supreme law of the land," he said.
Three public universities in Washington are among 166 schools nationwide partnering with the NSA. Taylor's bill would address these schools' status as NSA "Centers of Academic Excellence" and would bar any new partnerships with other state colleges or universities.
OffNow national campaign leader Shane Trejo said that while people tend to focus on the banning of resources to NSA facilities, the bill's prohibition against using data gathered without a warrant in state court probably would have the most immediate impact. In fact, lawmakers in Kansas and Missouri are considering bills simply addressing this kind of data sharing.
"Last fall, Reuters reported that NSA is sharing information gathered without a warrant with local law enforcement. The documents said that most cases where this is happening are not terror-related. By banning this practice, the bill would lessen the practical effect of all that data collecting that NSA is doing."
Trejo said he expects at least three more states to introduce the act within the next few weeks.
"This idea is catching on. And if people in Washington make phone calls to committee members, the bill has a good chance of passing. That will just encourage even more states to do the same," Trejo said. "In the end, our goal is to put a stop to these NSA spying programs, whether the Congress wants us to or not."
Monday, January 13, 2014
ICC Names Top UK Officers for Torture
 | Sandy Davies | |
Exclusive: Devastating dossier on 'abuse' by UK forces in Iraq goes to International Criminal Court
Senior UK military and political figures could end up in the dock as 400 victims denounce 'systemic' use of torture and cruelty
Sunday 12 January 2014
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