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The latest revelation in MerkelGate is that the White House put out an anonymous source with a statement that well, the president did know about Merkel being under surveillance after all but not until this past summer when he had an internal review done and he didn't know anything about it before then. Based on a burst of reactions on Twitter last night it doesn't look like many people are buying it and if they are they're asking why the heck he didn't know and what else didn't he know? The anonymous source statement was in a Wall Street Journal article that is behind a paywall, so I can only excerpt what's available or what I've seen excerpted elsewhere. This is turning into a pretty big scandal and the Minister of the Interior in Germany is saying that wiretapping is illegal in Germany and the intelligence employees in the embassy in Berlin who did it, or somebody, needs to be held accountable. That doesn't sound like something that will blow over. Here is a quote provided by the Political Wire. Notice that they are giving themselves some wiggle room for future revelations that might happen about other kinds of spying. We're getting into the vast territory beyond the 215 and 702 programs now and these are authorized under Presidential Directive 12333 and there is no Congressional oversight over these things. My understanding, via Marcy Wheeler, is that things done by the NSA (or this new hybrid spying organization we're now learning about) under Article II powers and 12333, are things that are "tasked" by the White House. People in the White House basically order certain things to be done. Emptywheel says that the order to spy on Merkel, and to renew it, would have to come from the White House but Obama is saying he didn't know.
Obama Unaware as U.S. Spied on World Leaders
"Officials said the internal review turned up NSA monitoring of some 35 world leaders, in the U.S. government's first public acknowledgment that the U.S. government tapped the phones of world leaders... The White House cut off some monitoring programs after learning of them, including the one tracking Ms. Merkel and some other world leaders... Other programs have been slated for termination but haven't been phased out completely yet."
Big der Spiegel follow up article last night by Laura Poitras, Jacob Appelbaum and several others. This is a must read. The WSJ article is too, since they have the WH source but I can't get access to it yet.
Embassy Espionage: The NSA's Secret Spy Hub in Berlin
Research by SPIEGEL reporters in Berlin and Washington, talks with intelligence officials and the evaluation of internal documents of the US' National Security Agency and other information, most of which comes from the archive of former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, lead to the conclusion that the US diplomatic mission in the German capital has not merely been promoting German-American friendship. On the contrary, it is a nest of espionage. From the roof of the embassy, a special unit of the CIA and NSA can apparently monitor a large part of cellphone communication in the government quarter. And there is evidence that agents based at Pariser Platz recently targeted the cellphone that Merkel uses the most.
The NSA spying scandal has thus reached a new level, becoming a serious threat to the trans-Atlantic partnership. The mere suspicion that one of Merkel's cellphones was being monitored by the NSA has led in the past week to serious tensions between Berlin and Washington.
[...]
Finally, the document defines the units tasked with implementing the order: the "Target Office of Primary Interest": "F666E." "F6" is the NSA's internal name for the global surveillance unit, the "Special Collection Service."
Marcy quotes the speech that's referred to in the WSJ article and it looks like the WH admin source is not accuate about how the president mentioned this internal review before. I look forward to another post on this subject that she has promised for today. I suspect that she'll go into the legal authorities used for the 12333 programs, which is something we all need to know more about. 12333 goes way back, and was revised by Cheney.
“An internal and an external review”
But in my opinion, the most important detail in it reveals in addition to Obama’s James Clapper Committee to Make You Love the Dragnet, he has an internal review.
This summer, President Obama launched two reviews—an internal one and an external one. He highlighted them in a speech in August as part of a series of measures being taken to respond to the domestic uproar over NSA’s extensive spying practices in the U.S.
[snip]
The internal review, among different U.S. national security agencies, will be informed by findings from the external review, which is expected to deliver its final report in December, said White House spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden. [my emphasis]
Frankly, I don’t buy that Obama “highlighted” both these speeches in August. He highlighted his “independent” review, but mentioned nothing else that I can see.
Fourth, we’re forming a high-level group of outside experts to review our entire intelligence and communications technologies. We need new thinking for a new era. We now have to unravel terrorist plots by finding a needle in the haystack of global telecommunications. And meanwhile, technology has given governments — including our own — unprecedented capability to monitor communications.
So I am tasking this independent group to step back and review our capabilities — particularly our surveillance technologies. And they’ll consider how we can maintain the trust of the people, how we can make sure that there absolutely is no abuse in terms of how these surveillance technologies are used, ask how surveillance impacts our foreign policy — particularly in an age when more and more information is becoming public. And they will provide an interim report in 60 days and a final report by the end of this year, so that we can move forward with a better understanding of how these programs impact our security, our privacy, and our foreign policy.
The latest Snowden files story is in El Mundo and reveals that NSA is also hoovering up communications of Spanish citizens to the tune of 60 billion calls in one month. Another US ambassador has been summoned.
Spain summons US ambassador over claim NSA tracked 60m calls a month
El Mundo newspaper reports having seen NSA document that reveals extent of agency's monitoring of Spanish phone calls
The Spanish prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, has summoned the US ambassador to explain the latest revelations to emerge from the files leaked by Edward Snowden, which suggest the National Security Agency tracked more than 60m phone calls in Spain in the space of a month.
Spain's European secretary of state, Íñigo Méndez de Vigo, is meeting James Costos as the White House struggles to contain a growing diplomatic crisis following accusations that the NSA monitored the phones of scores of allies, including the German chancellor, Angela Merkel.
El Mundo newspaper reported on Monday that it had seen an NSA document that showed the US spy agency had intercepted 60.5m phone calls in Spain between 10 December 2012 and 8 January this year.
Bill Keller in the NYT. Among other things, this makes me think of the contrast between this discussion and the way the mainstream media treated "bloggers" 5-10 years ago. I would answer his question about what all of this means by saying that in part, he created all of this. Necessity is the motherhood of invention. If the media had not become so corrupt and consolidated and if they had not forgotten the reason why they were given a special amendment in the bill of rights, independent media would probably not have taken of the way it did. Technology is part of it, a big part of it, but not all of it. I remember people saying that the people will always find a way or the truth will always come out, etc. and it looks like they were right. But it's too late for Bill Keller anyway. It will be interesting to see if it's too late for the New York Times.
Is Glenn Greenwald the Future of News?
Much of the speculation about the future of news focuses on the business model: How will we generate the revenues to pay the people who gather and disseminate the news? But the disruptive power of the Internet raises other profound questions about what journalism is becoming, about its essential character and values. This week’s column is a conversation — a (mostly) civil argument — between two very different views of how journalism fulfills its mission.
Glenn Greenwald broke what is probably the year’s biggest news story, Edward Snowden’s revelations of the vast surveillance apparatus constructed by the National Security Agency. He has also been an outspoken critic of the kind of journalism practiced at places like The New York Times, and an advocate of a more activist, more partisan kind of journalism. Earlier this month he announced he was joining a new journalistic venture, backed by eBay billionaire Pierre Omidyar, who has promised to invest $250 million and to “throw out all the old rules.” I invited Greenwald to join me in an online exchange about what, exactly, that means.
Dear Glenn, [...]
One more thing. Emptywheel has been saying that one of the results of the Snowden files stories is that Five Eyes will become Ten Eyes. Just for the record and for the kos kops police who read this series regularly (hiya!), Moon of Alabama is speaking in metaphors when he talks about head chopping. He's talking about removing them from their positions, chopping off the heads of these agencies. And wow I didn't know there were rumors that Merkel was part of the Stasi herself.
Merkel Sells Out For 5 Eyes Access
President Obama allegedly claims (German report) that he did not know about the 10+ years long NSA wiretap on the German chancellor Merkel's cellphones. I do not believe that. He will have been briefed about Merkel, her thoughts and positions each and every time he was calling or meeting her. Did he never ask where the information he got in those briefings was coming from?
(If he indeed did not know that Merkal was tapped by the NSA he should chop off not only the heads of the NSA and the DNI but also of his National Security Adviser who is supposed to know and explain such stuff.)
But I assume there is deal behind Obama's "I did not know" assertions. Merkel does not want to get rid of the "collect it all" spying on Germans and other people. She, who some believe was herself an nonofficial associate (IM) of the infamous East German state security service (Stasi), does not mind the violation of German citizens' rights to privacy. She wants to be, against German public opinion, part of the club that does the spying. She wants to have Germany accepted in the 5 eyes club which consists of the United States, Great Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Those countries have pledged not to spy on each other but to share everything they have. But in effect the secret services of these countries are just NSA appendages. The NSA even pays for many of the other services efforts.
The terrible storm that was heading for the UK has hit.
Weather: teenage girl and man dead while boy missing in UK storm
St Jude's UK storm latest: A 17-year-old girl is killed in Kent when a tree falls on her caravan and a man in his 50s dies when his car is crushed by a tree
The storm, which hit overnight, caused huge travel disruption as commuters were left stranded on station platforms after train companies cancelled hundreds of services due to the risks of falling trees and debris.
[...]
• A crane near Downing Street fell onto the Cabinet Office, causing Nick Clegg to cancel a press conference due to be held there
• David Cameron raised concerns that trains had been cancelled too quickly, saying "We will be able to look back and see whether people made the right decisions"
• Virtually no trains in the south of England during rush hour, with severely limited service afterwards
• 220,000 homes suffered power cuts as winds of almost 100mph battered the South West, South, South East, the Midlands and the East of England
• More than 130 flights cancelled from Heathrow and four at Gatwick, with Gatwick and Stansted Express services cancelled
So this guy is running for mayor and he's using all the social media tools to do it. He's got an Ask Me Anything AMA at Reddit today but he began the campaign by getting some money from KickStarter. He's been somewhat of a hit on YouTube and apparently he's been a comedian and some other things I didn't spend that much time researching him but what I found indicates that he might be a closet right-winger seizing on populist issues, based on the fact that in previous years he was using issues like cutting taxes and meddling with public pensions. Now it's legalizing marijuana, building a cool cable car system for Miami Beach to boost tourism and be iconic. And he's also going after the establishment and corruption and playing David to a billionaire opponent's Goliath. I think we should expect to see a lot of this from politically savvy right-wingers and also astroturf candidates funded by the same kind of people who cooked up the kind of faux populist "The Can Kicks Back" created by our catfood friends at Fix the Debt. You know, I'm always putting that ridiculous Alan Simpson Gangnam Style video out there but I didn't know they also did a
Harlem Shake video, starring Alice Rivlin. Seriously.
What I'm afraid of is that the Democratic party and the Grassroots Left under Obama & the Neoliberals have become so reined in, veal penned, and afraid to burst out and be populists or liberals or even if we don't involve labels, so afraid to be proud of their natural political positions that candidates on the left won't take advantage of the one thing that might allow the people to raise and get candidates elected without having the backing of the 1%. But I'm just not seeing them jump forward and take advantage of it because they're too busy trying to shake off the "liberal" label and being neoliberal and serious and afraid to be populists.
I'm currently running for Mayor of Miami Beach against a near billionaire and a career politician and I'm making a documentary about the dirty political process, and the election is in 9 days.
My entire campaign is about transparency, so I am willing to answer any questions regarding the political process; specifically how money is the corrupting influence that is destroying our democratic process. Even though my opponents have outspent me 100-1, I am still only a few points behind, because rather than buying media, I am earning it. I have proposed the world's longest urban cable car system connecting Downtown Miami to South Beach as an iconic and spectacular public transportation system. Furthermore, I secured Richard Branson's endorsement of and interest in sponsoring the project, in order to help alleviate the burden to our taxpayers. I am also the first political candidate in history to release a campaign rap video: http://youtu.be/.... My two biggest missions are drug policy reform and campaign finance reform.
To learn more about me or my campaign, you can go to www.SteveBerkeforMayor.com
Mount Etna eruption lights up Sicilian sky
The plume of ash rising from Mount Etna can be seen across much of eastern Sicily. Its eruptions are not infrequent, but the last major one occurred in 1992.
Action
Stop Watching Us.
The revelations about the National Security Agency's surveillance apparatus, if true, represent a stunning abuse of our basic rights. We demand the U.S. Congress reveal the full extent of the NSA's spying programs.
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