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Update: Huge new NSA story on WaPo.
Note that they quote @20committee (with whom I'm arguing on Twitter) as the NSA defender.
NSA infiltrates links to Yahoo, Google data centers worldwide, Snowden documents say
THE LATEST: The National Security Agency has secretly broken into the main communications links that connect Yahoo and Google data centers around the world.
THE BIG STORY: Documents provided to The Washington Post and the British newspaper The Guardian have revealed new details about surveillance programs carried out by the National Security Agency. Stories based on those documents have also triggered public debates in the United States and overseas about privacy and civil liberties
John Schindler, a former NSA chief analyst and frequent defender who teaches at the Naval War College, said it was obvious why the agency would prefer to avoid restrictions where it can.
“Look, NSA has platoons of lawyers and their entire job is figuring out how to stay within the law and maximize collection by exploiting every loophole,” he said. “It’s fair to say the rules are less restrictive under Executive Order 12333 than they are under FISA.”
Just before the House Intelligence hearing yesterday, an article came out in the WSJ saying that France and Spain did the spying on world leaders, not the NSA.
Marcy Wheeler does some debunking here that is a must read. I've never seen the actual text of the WSJ articles. Most people probably haven't since it costs $27/month for a subscription (though they have a 12 week special at the moment). Clever of the intelligence community (IC) to use a Murdoch news organization with a heavy paywall as a vehicle. It makes it more difficult for people to read the full context for themselves. But that seems to be their leaking organization of choice. Then during the hearing, which in my opinion couldn't really be called a hearing, it was more like a scripted lovefest between Mike Rogers and Keith Alexander and his cohorts Clapper, Cole and Inglis, they continued the lies and there were some other really interesting statements and exchanges that I probably won't have time to document here but I'll pull in what I can through the live tweets (which means there will be fewer news exceprts today but for those reading who are not familiar with What's Happenin', you'll find a lot of great references to the news and opinion of the day from our community in the comments).
Anyway, we'll have to see how well their propaganda stuck to the wall. You have to keep in mind that all the people involved are in jeopardy right now. All of their jobs are on the line and maybe worse. This still doesn't answer the question about whether or not Obama knew that Merkel's phones were being tapped. That in itself seems really hard to believe and up until now I was not even willing to entertain it, But the fact that Alexander and the IC are going to such lengths to put lies out there makes it a bit more plausible and another exchange between Rogers and Adam Schiff, a committee member, makes it even more plausible. An exchange between Rogers and Schiff about what the committee knew was very telling, perhaps the most telling thing of the whole hearing. And we also know from Justin Amash that Rogers makes it difficult or impossible for members to view some of the classified "product" at times. Let's see who pursues this in the media.
You'll need to read the full post over at Emptywheel to get the gist of this and it's important that you do. I included some reference materials at the end of the news section as well for your convenience.
In Which the I Con Uses Top Secret Spy Weapon, the “Conjunction,” Against Journalists
As I noted last week, James Clapper used a poor translation of a French article which clearly talked about collecting metadata, denied that the NSA was collecting call content, and based on that gimmick claimed Le Monde had made an error.
Then, in remarkable timing that has been replicated several times during this scandal, the WSJ reported just before the hearing on a topic that both Mike Rogers and Keith Alexander had rehearsed answers for during the hearing. I believe the original lede of the WSJ story (it has been updated) read the same as the current article does,
Millions of phone records at the center of a firestorm in Europe over spying by the National Security Agency were secretly supplied to the U.S. by European intelligence services—not collected by the NSA, upending a furor that cast a pall over trans-Atlantic relations
I don’t think the story ever said all the records were collected by Europeans, just that millions were. But in any case, I have zero doubt that WSJ’s secret sources told them something like this, that Europeans gave us data, which got reported in a way to suggest the Europeans collected all of it.
At the end of a long sequence in the hearing itself, in a comment not read from prepared statement, Alexander said this (all transcriptions here my own — please let me know of any errors):
Those screen shots that show–or at least, lead people to believe that we, NSA, or the United States, collected that information is false. And it’s false that it was collected on European citizens. It was neither.
Selected tweets from House Intel Hearing :
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Reference. From the Guardian back in June.
Boundless Informant: NSA explainer – full document text
View the three-page explanation document, which showed the NSA collected almost 3 billion pieces of intelligence from US computer networks over a 30-day period ending in March
Reference. House Intel hearing documents. The joint statement for the record is the one you'll want to look at.
Potential Changes to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)
Chairman Rogers' Opening Statement
Ranking Member Ruppersberger's Opening Statement
Joint Statement for the Record
James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence
James Cole, Deputy Attorney General, U.S. Department of Justice
General Keith Alexander, Director, National Security Agency/Chief, Central Security Service and Commander, U.S. Cyber Command
Chris Inglis, Deputy Director of the National Security Agency
Congressional duo launch NSA overhaul bill and urge 'meaningful reform'
Patrick Leahy and Jim Sensenbrenner introduce USA Freedom Act to curtail spying and 'restore confidence in our intelligence'
"It is time for serious and meaningful reforms so we can restore confidence in our intelligence community,” he said in a statement accompanying the legislation's formal introduction before Congress. “Modest transparency and oversight provisions are not enough. We need real reform.”
Leahy, the longest-serving US senator, launched the USA Freedom Act on Tuesday morning in partnership with congressman Jim Sensenbrenner, who in 2001 co-authored the Patriot Act, which first open the door to the wide-ranging surveillance programs.
The two veterans of House and Senate legal oversight said it was time to restore the balance between privacy and security.
“Following 9/11, the Patriot Act passed the judiciary committees with overwhelming bipartisan support,” said Sensenbrenner. “But somewhere along the way, the balance between security and privacy was lost. It’s now time for the judiciary committees to again come together in a bipartisan fashion to ensure the law is properly interpreted, past abuses are not repeated and American liberties are protected.”
White House offers tentative support for plans to rein in NSA surveillance
Administration says NSA leaks have already prompted changes in intelligence-gathering, including check on UN monitoring
The White House indicated on Tuesday that it would support at least some of the congressional efforts to rein in the controversial surveillance practices of the National Security Agency, as political opinion in Washington hardened against the country’s embattled intelligence community.
[...]
But wider checks on domestic surveillance practices also looked increasingly likely on Tuesday, as bipartisan legislation was introduced in the House of Representatives and Senate and party leaders united in calling for reform.
Even as the White House acknowledged that legislative reform of the NSA was inevitable, senior intelligence officials mounted a uncompromising defence of their current programs. At a congressional hearing, General Keith Alexander, the director of the NSA, forcefully and emotionally rejected calls to curtail his agency’s power. Alexander, who declared he was speaking “from the heart”, said the NSA would prefer to “take the beatings” from the public and in the media “than to give up a program that would result in this nation being attacked”.
[...]
“In general the president is supportive of the idea that we need to make some reforms,” Carney said in response to questions about the new legislation. He said that it was important “to increase the confidence that the American people have in these programmes, and to perhaps provide greater oversight and greater transparency as well as more constraints on the authorities that exist”.
Pakistani family of drone strike victim gives harrowing testimony to Congress
Translator brought to tears by family's plea as Congress hears from civilian victims of alleged US drone strike for the first time
The family of a 67-year-old midwife from a remote village in North Waziristan told lawmakers on Tuesday about her death and the "CIA drone" they say was responsible. Their harrowing accounts marked the first time Congress had ever heard from civilian victims of an alleged US drone strike.
Rafiq ur Rehman, a Pakistani primary school teacher who appeared on Capitol Hill with his children, Zubair, 13, and Nabila, 9, described his mother, Momina Bibi, as the "string that held our family together". His two children, who were gathering okra with their grandmother the day she was killed, on 24 October 2012, were injured in the attack.
"Nobody has ever told me why my mother was targeted that day," Rehman said, through a translator. "Some media outlets reported that the attack was on a car, but there is no road alongside my mother’s house. Others reported that the attack was on a house. But the missiles hit a nearby field, not a house. All of them reported that three, four, five militants were killed."
Instead, he said, only one person was killed that day: "Not a militant but my mother."
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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