Thread: Privacy Alert! Big Brother is watching and listening, UPDATED

Republicans demand consequences for 'willful lie' by intelligence chief

• Seven congressmen take issue with James Clapper's testimony
• Obama administration unlikely to turn against director
Spencer Ackerman in New York

• Thursday 19 December 2013 16.11 EST

Director of national Intelligence James Clapper testifies at a House select intelligence committee hearing. Photograph: Shawn Thew/EPA

Seven Republican members of Congress called on attorney general Eric Holder on Thursday to open an investigation into the leader of the US intelligence community.
In a letter issued the day after a White House surveillance review placed new political pressure on the National Security Agency, the seven members of the House judiciary committee said that James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, ought to face consequences for untruthfully telling the Senate that the NSA was “not wittingly” collecting data on Americans.
“Congressional oversight depends on truthful testimony – witnesses cannot be allowed to lie to Congress,” wrote representatives James Sensenbrenner, Darrell Issa, Trent Franks, Raul Labrador, Ted Poe, Trey Gowdy and Blake Farenthold, citing “Director Clapper’s willful lie under oath.”
During testimony in March that has become infamous, Clapper told Senator Ron Wyden, a member of the intelligence committee, that the NSA was not intercepting data on millions of Americans.
After the revelations from whistleblower Edward Snowden, Clapper eventually apologized to the Senate panel, citing a momentary memory failure – although he initially said he gave the “least untruthful” answer he could publicly provide.
The Justice Department has shown no appetite for investigating Clapper, who, as director of national intelligence, is an institutional partner with the attorney general for internally overseeing NSA surveillance. The White House has consistently defended Clapper against calls for his job.
Both the director of national intelligence and the NSA are currently attempting to navigate what they concede are inevitable curtailments of US surveillance authorities. In public remarks and congressional testimony, they are seeking to retain as much ability to conduct bulk surveillance as possible, a task made more complicated after Wednesday’s report from a White House advisory panel that suggested several curtailments of NSA powers.
The letter’s authors include surveillance skeptics like Sensenbrenner as well as those who voted against an earlier curtailment of NSA authorities, like Franks and Issa, the chairman of the House oversight committee.
“There can be no disagreement, however, on the basic premise that congressional witnesses must answer truthfully,” read the letter, which requested a reply by 10 January.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/201...pper-testimony

Intelligence Director Clapper Is In Big Trouble

Posted on December 20, 2013 by WashingtonsBlog

Senator: Clapper’s Crimes More Harmful to America than Snowden’s

Director of National Security James Clapper is in trouble. For example:

• The author of the Patriot Act and former chairman of the House Judiciary Committee – Congressman James Sensenbrenner – says that Clapper should be prosecuted for lying to Congress and the American people about NSA spying

• One of the co-chairs of the 9/11 Commission – Lee Hamilton agrees

• As does Congressman Tom McClintock

• 7 members of the House Judiciary Committee (Sensenbrenner, Issa, Franks, Farenthold, Gowdy, Labrador and Poe ) have asked the Department of Justice to investigate Clapper for perjury

• And Senator Rand Paul says that Clapper’s crimes have hurt America far more than Snowden’s

And a huge majority of Americans agree that Clapper should be prosecuted for perjury.

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/...-snowdens.html

All 3 Branches of Government Say Mass Spying On Americans Is Unnecessary

Posted on December 20, 2013 by WashingtonsBlog

Congress Members, Executive Branch Officials and Judges Agree: Spying on Americans’ Metadata Is Unnecessary

Officials in the legislative, judicial and executive branches of government all say that the mass surveillance on Americans’ “metadata” is unnecessary:

• 3 Senators with top secret clearance “have reviewed this surveillance extensively and have seen no evidence that the bulk collection of Americans’ phone records has provided any intelligence of value that could not have been gathered through less intrusive means”

• Another Senator with top secret clearance agrees, and so does the congress member who wrote the Patriot Act, and more than 100 congress members from both parties

• As does the official panel created by President Obama to review NSA spying, made up of top former White House officials and other government insiders, including the head of counter-terrorism under Clinton and Bush

• As does former president Clinton (and apparently Carter, as well)

• As do the chairs of the 9/11 Commission which was created by Congress and the White House

• As does a federal judge (and see this)

Top terrorism and security experts also agree, saying that:

• Mass spying by the NSA has never stopped a single terrorist attack

• Mass surveillance doesn’t protect us from terrorism

• Mass spying actually interferes with our ability to stop terrorism
  
  
  http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/...necessary.html

Even Commission Which Obama Created Says We Should Rein In the NSA … and Shouldn’t Blindly Trust Government

The White House panel on NSA spying released its report today, slamming mass surveillance and vindicating what critics have been saying all along.

Specifically, the commission set up by President Obama – formally known as the Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies – found (page 104):

Our review suggests that the information contributed to terrorist investigations by the use of section 215 telephony meta-data was not essential to preventing attacks and could readily have been obtained in a timely manner using conventional section 215 orders.

The commission also said (footnote 119, pages 119-120):

The section 215 telephony meta-data program has made only a modest contribution to the nation’s security.

… and there has been no instance in which NSA could say with confidence that the outcome would have been different without the section 215 telephony meta-data program.

In other words, sucking up every American’s metadata is unnecessary.The panel recommends that National Security Letters be reviewed by a real court before being approved (page 93):The panel further warns that unchecked spying always leads to abuses (page 114):

We cannot discount the risk, in light of the lessons of our own history, that at some point in the future, high-level government officials will decide that this massive database of extraordinarily sensitive private information is there for the plucking. Americans must never make the mistake of wholly “trusting” our public officials. As the Church Committee observed more than 35 years ago, when the capacity of government to collect massive amounts of data about individual Americans was still in its infancy, the “massive centralization of . . . information creates a temptation to use it for improper purposes, threatens to ‘chill’ the exercise of First Amendment rights, and is inimical to the privacy of citizens.”

Background.
And the Commission says that the government should stop industrial espionage … and undertake manipulation of financial systems (page 221):

(1) Governments should not use surveillance to steal industry secrets to advantage their domestic industry;
(2) Governments should not use their offensive cyber capabilities to change the amounts held in financial accounts or otherwise manipulate the financial systems ….

Indeed, economic advantage has always been one of the main reasons for spying.
As one of the commissioners – former counter-terrorism czar Richard Clarke – told the New York Times, the government shouldn’t do things just because they can:

Just because we can doesn’t mean we should.

The 9/11 Commission chairs agree.
As Senator Patrick Leahy said today on the Senate floor:

The message is very clear. The message to the NSA is now coming from every branch of government, from every corner of our nation, ‘NSA you have gone too far.’ [The report says] what many of us have been saying, that just because we can collect massive amounts of data doesn’t mean we should do so.


http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/...necessary.html

Is the U.S. Government Changing the Amount In People’s Financial Accounts and Manipulating Financial Systems with Its Offensive Cyber Capabilities?

Posted on December 19, 2013 by WashingtonsBlog

Official White House Spying Panel Implies that It Might Be …

Hidden in the report which the White House panel on NSA released today is a stunning implication: that the U.S. government has been using its massive offensive cyber capabilities to change the amounts held in financial accounts and otherwise manipulating financial systems.
Specifically, the panel’s report states (page 221):

(1) Governments should not use surveillance to steal industry secrets to advantage their domestic industry;
(2) Governments should not use their offensive cyber capabilities to change the amounts held in financial accounts or otherwise manipulate the financial systems ….

The government certainly massively manipulates the economy and financial system.
There are already numerous examples of offensive cyber actions by the NSA:

• A high-level intelligence source said, “we hack everyone everywhere”

• The largest German newspaper – Süddeutsche Zeitung – alleges that the U.S. government helped Monsanto attack the computers of activists opposed to genetically modified food

• Edward Snowden says that NSA spying is used for “diplomatic manipulation”

• And we’ve long noted that the U.S. government manipulates social media and news through cyber manipulation

As spying expert Trevor Timm from the Electronic Frontier Foundation Tweeted (and Glenn Greenwald – who has seen the Snowden documents – re-tweeted):

Does this NSA report recommendation imply that NSA is conducting offensive cyber attacks against financial systems?

Remember, the NSA is tapping into and spying on the biggest financial payments systems such as VISA and Swift.
Top financial experts say that the NSA and other intelligence agencies are using information gained from spying to profit from this inside information. And the NSA wants to ramp up its spying on Wall Street … to “protect” it.
Whose money, exactly, is the NSA “protecting” … and how are they protecting it?
What about the money of people that the U.S. government considers undesirables?

Posted in Politics / World News | 1 Comment
KEEPING IT REAL

Posted on December 18, 2013 by JimQ
“One only needs to reflect on the dramatic decline in the value of the dollar that has taken place since the Fed was established in 1913. The goods and services you could buy for $1.00 in 1913 now cost nearly $21.00. Another way to look at this is from the perspective of the purchasing power of the dollar itself. It has fallen to less than $0.05 of its 1913 value. We might say that the government and its banking cartel have together stolen $0.95 of every dollar as they have pursued a relentlessly inflationary policy.” - Ron Paul – End the Fed

The BLS reported the CPI this morning. They tell me that inflation is well contained and has only risen by 1.2% in the past twelve months. Our beloved Federal Reserve chairman is worried inflation is too low. It is fascinating that the only people worried about inflation being too low are Ivy League educated economists and bankers whose wealth depends upon the middle class sinking further into poverty. As a person who lives in the real world, I can honestly say I like it when the things I need to buy cost less today than they did last year. When did inflation become a good thing for the average American? Our country was somehow able to grow from a fledgling new country to a world power in just over a century while experiencing mild deflation, except during times of war. The fallacy that inflation is beneficial to the common man has been peddled by bankers since 1971 when Nixon and his cronies closed the gold window and unleashed the inflationary boogeyman in the form of feckless politicians, captured Keynesian academics, and greedy soulless bankers.

It is no coincidence inflation accelerated the moment politicians, academics and bankers were unleashed to spend your money at will in order to obtain votes, Nobel prizes in economics, and ill-gotten obscene levels of wealth. David Stockman described Nixon’s dreadful sellout of the American people in his brilliant new book:
“Nixon’s estimable free market advisors who gathered at the Camp David weekend were to an astonishing degree clueless as to the consequences of their recommendation to close the gold window and float the dollar. In their wildest imaginations they did not foresee that this would unhinge the monetary and financial nervous system of capitalism. They had no premonition at all that it would pave the way for a forty-year storm of financialization and a debt-besotted symbiosis between central bankers possessed by delusions of grandeur and private gamblers intoxicated with visions of delirious wealth.” -David Stockman – The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America
The USD has lost 83% of its purchasing power since 1971. The moment Nixon began playing politics with the USD and bullied the Federal Reserve Chairman into pumping up the money supply prior to the 1972 election, the inflation genie got out of the bottle and led to the miserable stagflation of the 1970′s. It took extreme measures by Paul Volcker to get it back under control in the early 1980′s. Since Volcker we’ve had nothing but academics and toadies who have chosen to change the definition of inflation in order to mislead the average American regarding how badly they are getting screwed. Every refinement, tweak, adjustment, or revision to the calculation of CPI has been designed to produce a lower figure. Why control inflation when you can just change the calculation to suit your purposes?
Over the proceeding decades, the BLS has sliced and diced the CPI in such a way that they can make it say whatever TPTB want it to say. They need to keep the mushrooms (you) in the dark regarding your standard of living deteriorating, while the beneficiaries of inflation (bankers, politicians) see their standard of living soaring. They have made hedonistic “adjustments”, quality “adjustments”, substitution “adjustments” and geometric weighting “adjustments”, all with the sole purpose to reduce the level reported to the American people on a monthly basis.
CPI was supposed to measure a common basket of goods and services that Americans needed to purchase in order to live their lives. If the price for this basket rose, you had inflation. If the price for this basket fell, you had deflation. The politicians, academics, bankers and government bureaucrats decided if the price of steak went up by 10%, you would switch to chicken, therefore the price of steak did not go up by 10%. They decided if the price of a new car went up 5%, but you now had heated seats, the price didn’t really go up 5%. They now want to change to a chained CPI, which will further depress the reported figure. CPI no longer represents the increase in price of goods and services you need to live your day to day life.
Even the composition of the index doesn’t match the true cost picture for the average American. Somehow they bury the energy component within multiple categories and have the gall to argue that energy costs only comprise 9.6% of the average American expense budget. Tell that to the suburban two worker family that drives 30,000 miles per year and has to heat and cool a 2,000 square foot home. I doubt that too many families only spend 7% of their money on medical care. Housing accounts for 41% of the CPI calculation, but it is again a made up calculation called owner’s equivalent rent. Only an Ivy League economist could explain the calculation. The fact that home prices have risen by 12%, rents have risen by 4% and mortgage rates have risen from 3.25% to 4.5% in the last year somehow results in a 2.4% annual rate of inflation for housing.

If you have the feeling your standard of living has been falling for the last few decades even though your owners tell you the economy is expanding, inflation is contained, unemployment is falling, the stock market is rising, and consumer spending is growing, then you might be smarter than a 5th grader. The financial elite ruling class are counting on the dreadful public education system, along with their mainstream corporate media propaganda arms, to keep the techno-distracted math challenged masses from understanding how the financialization of the country has resulted in their demise.
Being a skeptical sort, I decided to verify the accuracy of the CPI propaganda issued by the Bureau of Lies and Scams. The combination of the internet and memories from my youth provide a powerful and accurate assessment about the truthfulness of our government. I decided to create a chart of goods and services that average Americans have spent their hard earned wages on for decades. In a matter of minutes I was able to obtain prices from 1971 for various items common to most people. I was eight years old in 1971, being raised in a middle class one earner household on the salary of a truck driver. The chart below provides the proof the government CPI data is a bad joke and the American people are the butt of that joke.

Category	1971	2013	% Change
Average Price of New Car	$3,470	$31,252	800.6%
Average Price of New Home	$26,000	$245,800	845.4%
Gallon of Gasoline	$0.36	$3.50	872.2%
Natural Gas	$0.35	$4.00	1042.9%
Loaf of Bread	$0.20	$2.20	1000.0%
Sirloin Steak per pound	$1.19	$7.00	488.2%
Dozen Eggs	$0.25	$1.90	660.0%
Box of cereal 12 oz	$0.36	$3.50	872.2%
Pack of Cigarettes	$0.32	$6.00	1775.0%
College Tuition – Private	$1,832	$30,094	1542.7%
Monthly Rent	$150	$1,073	615.3%
Baseball ticket – Phila	$2	$23	1050.0%
Movie ticket	$1.50	$9.00	500.0%
Maximum Social Security Tax	$406	$8,950	2104.4%
Median Household Income	$9,028	$51,017	465.1%
Median wage per worker	$6,497	$27,519	323.6%
Average Hourly Earnings	$3.60	$20.31	464.2%
CPI	40.5	232.0	472.8%
Consumer Credit Outstanding (tril.)	$0.14	$3.07	2092.9%
Mortgage Debt Outstanding (tril.)	$0.51	$13.18	2484.3%

The BLS tells me the CPI has risen by 473% since 1971. The very same agency also tells me average hourly earnings have risen by 464% since 1971. This means the average worker is earning less than they did in 1971 in real terms. The median wage per worker has lagged CPI dramatically, as the averages have been skewed by those making outrageous compensation in the financial world. Median household income has barely kept pace with inflation even though households were forced to send both parents into the workforce, with the expected consequences of higher divorce rates and children left to fend for themselves or be raised by strangers.
By the government’s own measures, the average American’s standard of living has fallen since 1971. But, we also know the government has been manipulating the CPI figure lower since the mid-1980′s. After examining the true cost increases for housing, transportation, energy, food, education and entertainment, you would have to be brain dead or an Ivy League economist to believe inflation since 1971 has only been 473%. If home prices and car prices are 800% higher, while the energy needed to power and heat them are 900% to 1,000% higher, and the cost of food is 500% to 1,000% higher, how could the CPI only be 473% higher?
There are far more people going to college today than in 1971. With college tuition 1,500% higher, how can this not be reflected in the CPI? It certainly isn’t because the education is better. Statistics show the uneducated poor are more likely to smoke. Lucky for them, cigarette prices have risen at a rate of 4 times CPI due to the government taxing the crap out of them to fund their various taxpayer boondoggles. Inflation always hurts the poor and enriches the peddlers of debt.
My dad would take me to the brand new Veterans Stadium (built for $50 million in 1971) to see the Phillies in the early 1970′s. He paid $2.00 for a general admission seat and kids got in for 50 cents. We would buy a bag of soft pretzels outside the stadium and bring them into the park. We’d get a hot dog and soda for another $1. The entire outing to see a baseball game was about $5. Today, if I wanted to bring my family of five to a Phillies game at Citizen Bank Park (built for $458 million and paid for by the taxpayer) the lowest cost for the outing would be about $200. In 1971, you could spend a vacation week at the Jersey shore for $200. Now it gets you 3 hours of watching spoiled millionaires playing a child’s game while sitting with a bunch of foul mouthed drunks.
I also found it fascinating that the most regressive tax on earth, the Social Security tax, which hammers the poor and middle class while leaving the rich virtually unscathed has gone up by 2,100% since 1971. The rate in 1971 was 5.2% and the maximum salary level was $7,800. Today, the rate is 7.65% and the maximum level is $113,700. This increased cost for every middle class American is not factored into the inflation figures. Why would the government need to increase the maximum taxable wages by 1,500% when wages have gone up by less than 500%? The hard working truck driver bears the full impact, while Jamie Dimon not so much.
So now that I’ve proved beyond a shadow of a doubt the prices of everything we need to live have far outpaced our wages and the patently false drivel published by the BLS and parroted by the MSM, what are the implications? Well that is an easy one and is summed up by the last two entries in the chart. The average American has been lured into $16 trillion of debt over the last forty years in a pathetic attempt to keep up with the Joneses. Consumer credit (credit cards, auto loans, student loans) has gone up by 2,100% and mortgage debt has gone up by 2,500%. The American people have been sold a false lifestyle dream built on easy credit by evil bankers and Madison Avenue <acronym title="Google Page Ranking">PR</acronym> maggots.
There are those who would blame the people who have chosen to live far beyond their means. They have a point. The American people certainly haven’t shown a penchant for delayed gratification, saving for the future, or consuming less than they produce. But it takes two to tango and the lead in this dance of debt has been and continues to be the Federal Reserve and their Wall Street bank owners. It’s always reasonable to ask – Who benefits? – when trying to figure out why something has happened over time. Did the American people benefit by increasing the debt owed to Wall Street banks from $650 billion in 1971 to $16.25 trillion today? I don’t think so, based upon the visible deterioration I am witnessing in my suburban paradise.
The financialization of America; where Wall Street con artists,shysters and swindlers rake in billions for shuffling paper and making risky casino bets; mega-corporations ship blue collar middle class jobs to Asia in an all out effort to increase quarterly profits; politicians spend future generations into the poor house in order to get re-elected; and the Federal Reserve purposefully creates monetary inflation to prop up the corrupt system; has systematically destroyed the working middle class and created generations of debt slaves. The American people have been foolish, infantile, and easily duped. But it is clear to me who the real culprits in our long downward spiral have been. Lord Acton stated the obvious, many years ago:
“The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the banks.” ― John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

Posted in General | 26 Comments

Former Top NSA Official: “We Are Now In A Police State”

Posted on December 18, 2013 by WashingtonsBlog
32-year NSA Veteran Who Created Mass Surveillance System Says Government Use of Data Gathered Through Spying “Is a Totalitarian Process”

Bill Binney is the high-level NSA executive who created the agency’s mass surveillance program for digital information. A 32-year NSA veteran widely regarded as a “legend” within the agency, Binney was the senior technical director within the agency and managed thousands of NSA employees.
Binney has been interviewed by virtually all of the mainstream media, including CBS, ABC, CNN, New York Times, USA Today, Fox News, PBS and many others.
Last year, Binney held his thumb and forefinger close together, and said:

We are, like, that far from a turnkey totalitarian state.

But today, Binney told Washington’s Blog that the U.S. has already become a police state.
By way of background, the government is spying on virtually everything we do.
All of the information gained by the NSA through spying is then shared with federal, state and local agencies, and they are using that information to prosecute petty crimes such as drugs and taxes. The agencies are instructed to intentionally “launder” the information gained through spying, i.e. to pretend that they got the information in a more legitimate way … and to hide that from defense attorneys and judges.
This is a bigger deal than you may realize, as legal experts say that there are so many federal and state laws in the United States, that no one can keep track of them all … and everyone violates laws every day without even knowing it.
The NSA also ships Americans’ most confidential, sensitive information to foreign countries like Israel (and here), the UK and other countries … so they can “unmask” the information and give it back to the NSA … or use it for their own purposes.
Binney told us today:

The main use of the collection from these [NSA spying] programs [is] for law enforcement. [See the 2 slides below].
These slides give the policy of the DOJ/FBI/DEA etc. on how to use the NSA data. In fact, they instruct that none of the NSA data is referred to in courts – cause it has been acquired without a warrant.
So, they have to do a “Parallel Construction” and not tell the courts or prosecution or defense the original data used to arrest people. This I call: a “planned programed perjury policy” directed by US law enforcement.
And, as the last line on one slide says, this also applies to “Foreign Counterparts.”
This is a total corruption of the justice system not only in our country but around the world. The source of the info is at the bottom of each slide. This is a totalitarian process – means we are now in a police state.

Here are the two slides which Binney pointed us to:

(Source: Reuters via RT; SOD stands for “Special Operations Division,” a branch of a federal government agency.)
We asked Binney a follow-up question:

You say “this also applies to ‘Foreign Counterparts.’” Does that mean that foreign agencies can also “launder” the info gained from NSA spying? Or that data gained through foreign agencies’ spying can be “laundered” and used by U.S. agencies?

Binney responded:

For countries like the five eyes (US, Canada, UK, Australia, New Zealand) and probably some others it probably works both ways. But for others that have relationships with FBI or DEA etc., they probably are given the data to used to arrest people but are not told the source or given copies of the data.

(See this for background on the five eyes.)
View past discussions between Washington’s Blog and Binney here, here, here and here.



Posted in Politics / World News | 36 Comments


http://www.washingtonsblog.com/page/2

Former Top NSA Official: “We Are Now In A Police State”

Posted on December 18, 2013 by WashingtonsBlog

32-year NSA Veteran Who Created Mass Surveillance System Says Government Use of Data Gathered Through Spying “Is a Totalitarian Process”

Bill Binney is the high-level NSA executive who created the agency’s mass surveillance program for digital information. A 32-year NSA veteran widely regarded as a “legend” within the agency, Binney was the senior technical director within the agency and managed thousands of NSA employees.
Binney has been interviewed by virtually all of the mainstream media, including CBS, ABC, CNN, New York Times, USA Today, Fox News, PBS and many others.
Last year, Binney held his thumb and forefinger close together, and said:

We are, like, that far from a turnkey totalitarian state.

But today, Binney told Washington’s Blog that the U.S. has already become a police state.
By way of background, the government is spying on virtually everything we do.
All of the information gained by the NSA through spying is then shared with federal, state and local agencies, and they are using that information to prosecute petty crimes such as drugs and taxes. The agencies are instructed to intentionally “launder” the information gained through spying, i.e. to pretend that they got the information in a more legitimate way … and to hide that from defense attorneys and judges.
This is a bigger deal than you may realize, as legal experts say that there are so many federal and state laws in the United States, that no one can keep track of them all … and everyone violates laws every day without even knowing it.
The NSA also ships Americans’ most confidential, sensitive information to foreign countries like Israel (and here), the UK and other countries … so they can “unmask” the information and give it back to the NSA … or use it for their own purposes.
Binney told us today:

The main use of the collection from these [NSA spying] programs [is] for law enforcement. [See the 2 slides below].
These slides give the policy of the DOJ/FBI/DEA etc. on how to use the NSA data. In fact, they instruct that none of the NSA data is referred to in courts – cause it has been acquired without a warrant.
So, they have to do a “Parallel Construction” and not tell the courts or prosecution or defense the original data used to arrest people. This I call: a “planned programed perjury policy” directed by US law enforcement.
And, as the last line on one slide says, this also applies to “Foreign Counterparts.”
This is a total corruption of the justice system not only in our country but around the world. The source of the info is at the bottom of each slide. This is a totalitarian process – means we are now in a police state.

Here are the two slides which Binney pointed us to:

(Source: Reuters via RT; SOD stands for “Special Operations Division,” a branch of a federal government agency.)
We asked Binney a follow-up question:

You say “this also applies to ‘Foreign Counterparts.’” Does that mean that foreign agencies can also “launder” the info gained from NSA spying? Or that data gained through foreign agencies’ spying can be “laundered” and used by U.S. agencies?

Binney responded:

For countries like the five eyes (US, Canada, UK, Australia, New Zealand) and probably some others it probably works both ways. But for others that have relationships with FBI or DEA etc., they probably are given the data to used to arrest people but are not told the source or given copies of the data.

(See this for background on the five eyes.)
View past discussions between Washington’s Blog and Binney here, here, here and here.


http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/...ice-state.html

NYT: Merkel Compared NSA to East German Stasi in Angry Convo w/ Obama

THE SURVEILLANCE STATE COMES APART AT THE SEAMS



By: John Hayward
12/20/2013 02:44 PM

While we’re understandably preoccupied with the astonishing spectacle of ObamaCare’s collapse, there are some other strange things going on in Washington. The past few weeks have seen a number of dismaying developments in the story that riveted America before HealthCareDotGov blew up on the launch pad: NSA surveillance. In a rapid series of events, the legal and practical justifications for the surveillance state have fallen apart.
The White House set up a review panel that was widely expected to whitewash claims from the other parts of the White House, but instead everything faded to black. As related by NBC News, panelists openly expressed their surprise at what they found:

“It was, ‘Huh, hello? What are we doing here?’” said Geoffrey Stone, a University of Chicago law professor, in an interview with NBC News. “The results were very thin.”
While Stone said the mass collection of telephone call records was a “logical program” from the NSA’s perspective, one question the White House panel was seeking to answer was whether it had actually stopped “any [terror attacks] that might have been really big.”
“We found none,” said Stone.
Under the NSA program, first revealed by ex-contractor Edward Snowden, the agency collects in bulk the records of the time and duration of phone calls made by persons inside the United States.
Stone was one of five members of the White House review panel – and the only one without any intelligence community experience – that this week produced a sweeping report recommending that the NSA’s collection of phone call records be terminated to protect Americans’ privacy rights.
The panel made that recommendation after concluding that the program was “not essential in preventing attacks.”
“That was stunning. That was the ballgame,” said one congressional intelligence official, who asked not to be publicly identified. “It flies in the face of everything that they have tossed at us.”

Stone hastened to add he was no fan of Edward Snowden’s pilfering of classified data:

“My emphatic view,” he said, “is that a person who has access to classified information — the revelation of which could damage national security — should never take it upon himself to reveal that information.”
Stone added, however, that he would not necessarily reject granting an amnesty to Snowden in exchange for the return of all his documents, as was recently suggested by a top NSA official. “It’s a hostage situation,” said Stone. Deciding whether to negotiate with him to get all his documents back was a “pragmatic judgment. I see no principled reason not to do that.”

Wonderful. Ironically, this is the same Administration that loves to describe its domestic political opponents as “hostage takers.”
What the panel findings are “flying in the face of” are repeated claims by President Obama that “lives have been saved” by these surveillance programs, which he said were responsible for averting “at least fifty threats.” That turns out to be – brace yourself – a lie, because the panel found there was not a single incident in which “NSA could say with confidence that the outcome would have been any different.”
This is more than just another scene from Barack Obama’s long and tortured relationship with the truth, because a judge brought up the same lack of results when declaring the NSA data-collection program unconstitutional. CNN details the rather stern decision of U.S. District Judge Richard Leon:

“I cannot imagine a more ‘indiscriminate’ and ‘arbitrary invasion’ than this systematic and high-tech collection and retention of personal data on virtually every citizen for purposes of querying and analyzing it without prior judicial approval,” said Leon, an appointee of President George W. Bush. “Surely, such a program infringes on ‘that degree of privacy’ that the Founders enshrined in the Fourth Amendment.”
Leon’s ruling said the “plaintiffs in this case have also shown a strong likelihood of success on the merits of a Fourth Amendment claim,” adding “as such, they too have adequately demonstrated irreparable injury.”
He rejected the government’s argument that a 1979 Maryland case provided precedent for the constitutionality of collecting phone metadata, noting that public use of telephones had increased dramatically in the past three decades.
Leon also noted that 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.”

The Administration plans to appeal the ruling. Recognizing “the significant national security interests at stake in this case and the novelty of the Constitutional issues,” Judge Leon withheld action on his ruling until the government’s appeal has been resolved.
The legal issues in this case parallel the popular debate over these bulk surveillance programs: Are they really necessary? Is proper care being taken to ensure they don’t get out of hand? There is a broad level of public sympathy for using fairly extreme measures in the pursuit of suspected terrorists, but that’s a lot different than casting surveillance nets over just about everyone. The argument that such indiscriminate tactics are necessary in the fast-moving world of Information Age asymmetrical warfare is hard to make when nobody can produce a solid example of success.
It’s also interesting to note Judge Leon’s mention of how much our lives have changed over the past generation. Our relationship to information technology is vastly different now. We carry incredibly advanced computers in our pockets, and they’re always online, constantly moving data that can be used to monitor our activities. It’s an environment wholly different from just a few decades ago, when the average person only made a couple of phone calls a day, and was otherwise largely “off the grid.” Concepts of privacy from 1983, or even 1993, have become obsolete.
It’s not surprising that intelligence officers see opportunities to enhance national security in this new world. It’s also not surprising that it makes people nervous, especially since we also happen to live in a hyper-legalized environment where almost all of us are technically guilty of breaking some law or other on a regular basis. Who knows what uses today’s seemingly innocuous metadata might be put to by adventurous agents in the future… especially given the equally troubling trend toward the abuse of government power for political purposes?
Monitoring international communications is still said to be effective by the White House panel – “the record is very impressive” for such intercepts according to Professor Stone, who said there is “no doubt the nation is safer and spared potential attacks because of them.” Of course, those aren’t the intercepts American citizens are really worried about, although there have been a few international embarrassments recently.
Despite all their unease about the NSA programs, and surprise at how the claims of effectiveness used to justify them turned out to be false, the White House panel recommended leaving the programs in place, but with more accountability and tighter controls. Accountability was very much on the minds of House Republicans when they asked Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate national intelligence director James Clapper for lying to Congress about the extent of NSA surveillance programs, as reported by the Washington Examiner:

“Congressional oversight depends on truthful testimony — witnesses cannot be allowed to lie to Congress,” several members of the House Judiciary Committee wrote in a letter to Holder. The letter is signed by Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., who introduced the Patriot Act, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., Rep. Trent Franks, R-Ariz., Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas, Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., Rep. Raul Labrador, R-Idaho, and Rep. Blake Farenthold, R-Texas.
“Accordingly, we request you investigate Director of National Intelligence James Clapper’s ‘erroneous’ statements to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence earlier this year.”
The letter notes that Ronald Reagan’s former National Security Advisor John Poindexter went to jail for lying to Congress, among others who lied to Congress.

Yes, kids, there was a time when lying to Congress was actually treated as a crime. It seems kind of mind-blowing now, doesn’t it? Obama Administration officials do it on a fairly regular basis; it’s easier to list the parts of ObamaCare-related testimony thatweren’t deliberately misleading. The past is a strange and distant land.

Clapper told Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., that the NSA did not collect any bulk data on millions of Americans, despite the existence of the phone records surveillance program.
“Senator Wyden had warned Director Clapper prior to the hearing that he would ask the question,” the letter states. “Following the hearing, Wyden privately offered Clapper the opportunity to correct the record. Clapper declined.”
Clapper said later that he answered in the “least untruthful” way that he could. “And certainly if any member, whether on the Intelligence Committee or the Judiciary Committee or any other committee would — who had asked for specific briefing or follow-up questions, we certainly would — would’ve responded,” Clapper told NBC’s Andrea Mitchell.

So oversight is now basically a big game of liar’s poker, in which Administration officials might be willing to admit the truth if they’re summoned to the necessary series of follow-up meetings. Maybe the third time Congress asks a question, they’ll get an honest answer… or maybe the fourth. You just never know.
I don’t suppose anyone has high hopes for Attorney General Holder – among the most politicized Attorney Generals in history – to start hauling his Administration associates off to the hoosegow for protecting regime secrets from those dratted congressional Republicans with their pesky questions.
While we wait for the case Judge Leon ruled upon to make its way through appeals – and quite possibly end up at the Supreme Court – the Washington Post judges that official defenses of the NSA’s phone surveillance program “may be unraveling.”

The president is “faced with a program that has intelligence value but also has political liabilities,” said Mark M. Lowenthal, a former senior CIA official. “Now that he has a set of recommendations from a panel he appointed, if he doesn’t follow them people are going to say, ‘are they just for show?’ Or if he does follow them, he scales back a program that he supported.”
Members of the panel met with Obama on Wednesday and said he was receptive to the group’s findings.
“Obama didn’t say, we accept this on the spot,” Clarke said in an interview. “But we didn’t get a lot of negative feedback. They’re going to talk to the agencies and see what the agencies’ objections are and then make their decisions.”
White House officials declined to comment on specific recommendations Thursday, but press secretary Jay Carney signaled that the administration remains reluctant to dismantle the data-collection program. “The program is an important tool in our efforts to combat threats against the United States and the American people,” Carney said.

But the White House’s own panel found little evidence to support that assertion. If they plan to keep making it, they’ll have to do a better job of backing it up. In the end, law enforcement and national security power is always tempered by the public’s faith in accountability and due process. We are asked to trust the government, with the understanding that many of the actions it takes on our behalf must be kept secret, or else effective intelligence gathering becomes impossible. When dealing with programs on the NSA scale, it becomes difficult to see how the checks and balances we expect could be implemented… and the consequences fall not just upon a few suspect individuals who nevertheless deserve due process, but upon all of us.

http://www.humanevents.com/2013/12/2...-at-the-seams/

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