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Big document dump by Clapper last night. First and foremost, without ACLU and EFF, these would never have been released. Clapper, Alexander and the Obama admin would like you to believe this is just their aura of transparency. This article was published yesterday morning, prior to the release of documents last night and it helps you understand what documents were expected. There is a lot of conversation this morning since the docs were released pretty late last night. I'll add more articles and info to this news section as the morning goes on in an update section following the stories related to this topic.
More NSA Documents Coming Today
First, in our long-running Freedom of Information Act suit for documents relating to the government's interpretation of Section 215 of the Patriot Act, we're expecting the third (and possibly final) release of documents from the government. The first two releases came — pursuant to a scheduling order in our lawsuit — on September 10 and October 28. (We have compiled them all here, along with all of the other NSA documents released by the government and the press since June.)
We do not yet know what documents the government will disclose in this third release, but still outstanding are: an opinion of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) dated February 24, 2006; government applications submitted to the FISC under Section 215; and internal government documents analyzing Section 215.
Second, in our motion asking the FISC to disclose legal opinions concerning Section 215, we are expecting the possible release of a FISC opinion dated February 19, 2013. After we filed our motion, the FISC ordered the government to conduct a declassification review of any opinions not already being processed in response to our FOIA request. The government responded that there was one such opinion, and that it would process it by today.
IC on the Record, the intelligence community's (relatively, since Snowden) new Tumblr site. Or as Marcy Wheeler calls it, changing it only by adding one space: "I Con the Record). DNI Clapper, out of the kindness and integrity of his own least untruthful heart, gives you new, redacted documents. Go read it when you get a chance. I could probably reproduce the whole thing since it is a govt site but I'll do about half, and you'll find the extensive links to documents in the latter part of the document. We should expect a lot of articles on this in the coming weeks as people go through documents.
DNI Clapper Declassifies Additional Intelligence Community Documents Regarding Collection Under Section 501 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act
November 18, 2013
In June of this year, President Obama directed me to declassify and make public as much information as possible about certain sensitive programs while being mindful of the need to protect sensitive classified intelligence activities and national security. Since then, I have authorized the declassification and public release of numerous documents pertaining to the government’s collection under Sections 501 and 702 of FISA.
Today I authorized the declassification and public release of additional documents relating to collection under Section 501, bringing the total to nearly 2000 pages of documents released to the public so far, including 20 orders and opinions of the Foreign Surveillance Court, 11 pleadings and other documents submitted to the Court, 24 documents provided to Congress, and 20 reports, training slides, and other internal documents describing the legal basis for the programs and how they operate. The information released today includes a number of internal NSA documents, training slides and internal guidance, which demonstrate the care with which NSA’s foreign intelligence collection pursuant to Section 501 is run, managed, and overseen. Also included is the United States Signals Intelligence Directive 18 which details policies and procedures to ensure NSA’s missions and functions are conducted in a manner that safeguards the constitutional rights of U.S persons, and two opinions from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court concerning a now-discontinued NSA bulk electronic communications metadata program. These documents were properly classified and their declassification was not done lightly.
Release of these documents reflects the Executive Branch’s continued commitment to making information about this intelligence collection program publicly available when appropriate and consistent with the national security of the United States. Additionally, they demonstrate the extent to which the Intelligence Community kept both Congress and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court apprised of the status of the collection program under Section 215. Some information has been redacted because these documents include discussion of matters that continue to be properly classified for national security reasons and the harm to national security would be great if disclosed. These documents will be made available at the website of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and at ICOntheRecord.tumblr.com, the public website dedicated to fostering greater public visibility into the intelligence activities of the U.S. Government.
James R. Clapper
Director of National Intelligence
Today’s Releases
Minimization Procedures. In addition, as part of the Government’s continuing effort to provide the public with additional information about how NSA conducts its activities, the DNI is publicly releasing United States Signal Intelligence Directive 18. This directive details policies and procedures designed to ensure that NSA’s missions and functions are conducted as authorized by law and in a manner that is consistent with the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution. The directive sets forth the minimization policies and procedures regarding NSA’s SIGINT activities, including the rules for the collection, retention, and dissemination of information about U.S. persons.
Electronic Communications Metadata Collection Opinions. Finally, the DNI has authorized the declassification and public release of two opinions of the FISC concerning a now-discontinued NSA bulk electronic communications metadata program. The FISC authorized this program under Section 402 of FISA, the Pen Register and Trap and Trace (PR/TT) provision. Previous public releases by the DNI, including the FISC’s opinion from October 3, 2011, referenced this program, and the fuller explanation of the program provided by today’s release extends the DNI’s commitment to providing greater transparency for FISA activities. Except for a brief period, the FISC reauthorized this program approximately every 90 days from its inception until it was discontinued in 2011. Throughout its operation, the program was briefed to the Intelligence and Judiciary Committees of Congress and generally referenced in the then-classified white papers provided to Congress during reauthorization of the USA PATRIOT Act in 2009 and 2010.
The discontinued PR/TT program shared certain similarities to the NSA’s bulk telephony metadata program—the subject of previous releases—in that the PR/TT program sought only the metadata associated with electronic communications and not their content; moreover, querying the metadata for both programs was permitted only for authorized counterterrorism purposes. Additionally, both programs operated with similar access, retention, and dissemination restrictions proposed by the Government and approved by the FISC. Given these operational similarities, many of the documents released today address both programs, sometimes side by side, even though, as noted above, the PR/TT program was conducted pursuant to a different legal authority from that authorizing the NSA’s bulk telephony metadata program. At all times, the PR/TT program collected metadata from only a small percentage of world wide electronic communications traffic.
Spencer Ackerman at
The Guardian.
Court order that allowed NSA surveillance is revealed for first time
Fisa court judge who authorised massive tapping of metadata was hesitant but felt she could not stand in the way
A secret court order that authorised a massive trawl by the National Security Agency of Americans' email and internet data was published for the first time on Monday night, among a trove of documents that also revealed a judge's concern that the NSA "continuously" and "systematically" violated the limits placed on the program.
The order by the Fisa court, almost certainly its first ruling on the controversial program and published only in heavily redacted form, shows that it granted permisson for the trawl in part beacause of the type of devices used for the surveillance. Even the judge approving the spying called it a “novel use” of government authorities.
Another later court order found that what it called "systemic overcollection" had taken place.
[...]
While at times Kollar-Kotelly appeared in her ruling to be hesitant about granting NSA broad authorities to collect Americans’ internet metadata, “deference”, she wrote, “should be given to the fully considered judgment of the executive branch in assessing and responding to national security threats and in determining the potential significance of intelligence-related information.”
Some conversation about it last night:
der Spiegel from a few days ago.
Passively 'Sniffing' Data: How Mobile Network Spying Works
SPIEGEL ONLINE: The British intelligence agency GCHQ is hacking into the networks of mobile phone companies operating so-called GRX routers. What are these networks and why are they an attractive target?
Philippe Langlois: These are the "roaming tubes" of the worldwide mobile system. You can basically track every user in the world who is roaming with their smartphone. When roaming, all the Internet surfing and accesses to corporate networks go through these exchanges, and can be eavesdropped on by passively "sniffing" all data, all web pages and all emails.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Is it possible to defend against that kind of snooping?
Langlois: Basic security such as encrypted web pages (https), encrypted email (PGP) or encrypted chat (Jabber OTR) will prevent such interception. In that sense, the GRX is not different from a traditional Internet Service Provider. If you're using safe Internet best practice there, you can protect your communication secrecy, but you cannot protect your location.
[...]
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Does access to a GRX network also allow access to other, local mobile networks from there?
Langlois: A GRX network is called a "walled garden." The theory is that only "nice people" are on the network, that is, only clean telecom mobile operators. That was the theory, so the mobile operators didn't really protect themselves against other operators on the GRX network. The user traffic, which is potentially harmful to operators, is neatly encapsulated into the "roaming tubes," preventing users from reaching the infrastructure of the GRX network itself. But operators themselves can do that. And therefore, anyone having compromised one operator or the GRX network can attack other mobile operators with a much better chance to compromise them than by attacking through, say, Internet access. The unknown, dark, insider-only networks are always less secure than the ones which are heavily exposed and attacked, and thus more protected.
Dean Baker.
Bubbles Are Not Funny
First, while the economy may presently need asset bubbles to maintain full employment (a point I made in Plunder and Blunder: The Rise and Fall of the Bubble Economy)[PDF], it doesn't follow that we should not be concerned about asset bubbles. The problem with bubbles is that their inflation and inevitable deflation lead to massive redistribution of wealth.
[...]
Finally, as an alternative to trying to increase demand to deal with secular stagnation, countries could try to reduce supply. This should not sound too crazy. Western Euroepans work on average 20 percent fewer hours a year than do people in the United States. These countries mandate paid vacation (at least four weeks a year), paid sick days, paid parental leave and other forms of paid time off. France has a 35-hour work week. Remember, the problem is too much supply not too little. Reduced work hours (i.e. more leisure) is an easy way to deal with this "problem."
The long and short of the matter is that secular stagnation is really a story of too much wealth. It is absurd that this ends up impoverishing countries and leading to mass suffering. Keynes taught us how to deal with this problem almost 80 years ago. We know how to prevent the suffering, we just lack the political force to stop it.
More Cuts in Military Spending Are Good for America
The sequester has been in effect since March, and even if it continues through all of next year, the base Pentagon budget will only return to the level of 2007 [PDF] (excluding wars). It will still be more, in real, inflation-adjusted terms, than it was at the height of the Vietnam War.
The Navy plans to spend $2.2 billion this year on the Littoral Combat Ship, and wants more ballistic missile submarines for as much as $8 billion each. Would you really rather have these special gifts for Pentagon contractors than thousands of teachers, or Head Start preschool programs for thousands of children? And these Navy luxury items are small change compared to the hundreds of billions of dollars of Pentagon waste that is planned for the coming decade.
The worst deal of all would be a “grand bargain” – a long-term budget deal to avoid the cuts in Pentagon spending by cutting Social Security and Medicare benefits instead. This is no bargain; it is more like “grand theft” from our senior citizens: their average Social Security check is about $1,100 a month and makes up most of their income.
It sounds like the explosives were sophisticated.
Devastating blasts hit Iran embassy in Beirut
At least 23 people killed in two explosions near Iran's embassy in the southern suburb of the Lebanese capital.
Two explosions have targeted the Iranian embassy in the Lebanese capital Beirut, killing up to 23 people, injuring at least 146 and damaging buildings in the embassy compound.
Lebanese sources told Al Jazeera that the Iranian ambassador was safe, but that the cultural attache, Ebrahim Ansari, was seriously injured. A source inside the embassy told Al Jazeera that earlier reports he was dead were not true.
"The sheer scale of the destruction is an indication as to how powerful the explosives were," reported Al Jazeera's Zeina Khodr from near the site, "with over five buildings damaged by the blasts."
Yemeni Civil Engineer, Who Had Two Family Members Killed by Drone, to Address Congress Members
UPDATE: It has now been announced that Reps. Barbara Lee, Alan Grayson and Jan Schakowsky will be the hosts of a 4 pm congressional briefing at the Rayburn building in Room 2456 tomorrow. During the briefing, a Yemeni delegation will speak about the impact of US drones on their country. Testimony will be given by Faisal bin Ali Jaber, whose relative, an outspoken al Qaeda critic, was killed by a US drone.
Original Post
A Yemeni civil engineer, who spoke at the 2013 Drone Summit organized by the peace group, CODEPINK, has come to the United States to share his story about how a US drone strike killed his two relatives.
[...]
Faisal described to Firedoglake how he had written letters and issued calls or demands to the Yemeni government, but questions asked to the government had gone ignored. He realized over time the decision had been made here in the US. It was time for him to travel to America and “talk to the people” of the US directly and “see the people here.”
Weird story. It's interesting that they say "in six months" things might be different. The "Fifth Estate" movie looked very much like a work of propaganda to me, much like "Zero Dark Thirty" where the government uses Hollywood to try to shape public opinion. I wondered if it was influenced by the government and was timed to undermine any public support that Assange has in the U.S. and internationally (since Hollywood movies are widely distributed) ahead of some kind of legal action. I mean, how long can they keep that grand jury going?
Unnamed ‘Senior Law Enforcement Sources’ Claim US Government Wouldn’t Arrest Assange Today
None of the unnamed “senior law enforcement sources” that The Washington Post spoke to were willing to go on the record, but multiple individuals appear to have made statements seeking to dispel the notion that the United States government has a “sealed indictment” against WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange.
One “law enforcement official,” whoever this person may be, said, “Nothing has occurred so far,” and, “If Assange came to the US today, he would not be arrested.”
“But,” the official continued, “I can’t predict what’s going to happen. He might be in six months.”
[...]
The critical nugget, beyond the statement, is that the Washington Post was able to confirm the federal grand jury investigation into WikiLeaks is ongoing.
If one ignores that Assange has an asylum struggle for a moment, so long as the grand jury continues to investigate whatever it may be investigating—and it has been investigating the media organization for about three years—there is no reason Assange should even allow the thought of traveling to the US to cross his mind.
Ah, look what happened. The quote was retracted. I'm not sure what this means.
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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