This is a short diary responding to the idea that Snowden's allegations of easy NSA wiretapping of public officials is made up in his own mind.
In fact, for those who have been watching this closely, a second NSA whistleblower has corroborated the allegation, and provided more, but nobody's mentioning him in the discussions today. His name is Russell Tice.
Tice is a former NSA analyst who blew the whistle on massive FISA violations...in 2005. After Snowden went public, he gave an interview to Sibel Edmonds (an FBI whistleblower turned journalist), including the following quotes:
In the summer of 2004, one of the papers that I held in my hand was to wiretap a bunch of numbers associated with a 40-something-year-old wannabe senator for Illinois. You wouldn't happen to know where that guy lives right now would you? It's a big white house in Washington, D.C. That's who they went after, and that's the president of the United States now.
"Okay. They went after members of Congress, both Senate and the House, especially on the intelligence committees and on the armed services committees and judicial. But they went after other ones, too. They went after heaps of lawyers and law firms. They went after judges. One of the judges is now sitting on the Supreme Court that I had his wiretap information in my hand. Two are former FISA court judges. They went after State Department officials. They went after people in the White House–their own people. They went after antiwar groups. They went after U.S. companies that that do business around the world. They went after U.S. banking firms and financial firms that do international business. They went after NGOs like the Red Cross that that go overseas and do humanitarian work. They went after a few antiwar civil rights groups.
So, you know, don’t tell me that there’s no abuse, because I’ve had this stuff in my hand and looked at it."
This is all perfectly intelligible within the context of the NSA. They have the capacity to intercept the communications of all Americans. Why not, then, intercept the communications of Americans particularly able to affect the budget and powers of the NSA itself? Only an innate sense of professionalism would prevent them from doing it, so why does anyone think they wouldn't?
It's very simple, people. The price of having the technical ability to limit any of the NSA's activities is that the NSA has all of your communications, and therefore presumably has your b*lls in a vise. In that situation, it becomes very easy to give them exactly what they ask for.
Listen yourself to the interview if you like. But Snowden's revelations aren't coming out of nowhere. They situate perfectly within the context of what other whistleblowers have told us. What Snowden provided was not new allegations, but proof from top secret internal documents of allegations already out there.
[UPDATE:] Now the commenting has calmed down, a review, for those who don't have the time to plough through them.
Those defending the administration here argue that Tice cannot corroborate Snowden, because Tice left the agency in 2005; that, at best, he provides evidence of Bush-era abuses, and that the NSA has changed since Obama took office and particularly since the FISA Amendments Act of 2008.
The NSA has changed, sure. The FISA Amendments Act broadened surveillance, not narrowed it. Its purpose was to retroactively legalize some of the things the NSA was already doing. The top secret FISC order to Verizon released by Snowden is a case in point. Before, under Bush, the NSA wiretapped everybody; now, they wiretap everybody, but with a blatantly Fourth-Amendment-violating "we give you permission to wiretap everybody" order from the FISC as cover. Big whoop. That is not reform in the sense of changing anything they are actually doing.
As several commenters observed, Tice continues to be in contact with NSA operatives, and remains informed by them as to current activities there. He is qualified to speak to the current NSA as well as the NSA of 2005. Sadly, some people's love for Obama - and I voted for him too, even knowing a lot of this stuff - is so great that they will not believe anything from Jan. 20, 2009 onward.
Thanks to all of you who commented, and who put this on the rec list - it's a rare and delightful experience. And if you're interested in helping out my non-profit Digital Fourth which works on surveillance issues at the state level, that would be awesome.