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Is national security state in the USA gone rogue ?

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[June 21, 2013] Is Obama presiding over a national security state gone rogue? by

National security state gone rogue is fascism. Frankly, I don't see evidence of huge abuse of US liberties. But I do see our foreign policy distorted by a counter-terror obsession
21 June 2013 | The Guardian

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Two weeks ago, the Guardian began publishing a series of eye-opening revelations about the National Security Agency and its surveillance efforts both in the United States and overseas. These stories raised long-moribund and often-ignored questions about the pervasiveness of government surveillance and the extent to which privacy rights are being violated by this secret and seemingly unaccountable security apparatus.

However, over the past two weeks, we've begun to get a clearer understanding of the story and the implications of what has been published – informed in part by a new-found (if forced upon them) transparency from the intelligence community. So here's one columnist's effort to sort the wheat from the chaff and offer a few answers to the big questions that have been raised.

These revelations are a big deal, right?

To fully answer this question, it's important to clarify the revelations that have sparked such controversy. The Guardian (along with the Washington Post) has broken a number of stories, each of which tells us very different things about what is happening inside the US government around matters of surveillance and cyber operations. Some are relatively mundane, others more controversial.

The story that has shaped press coverage and received the most attention was the first one – namely, the publication of a judicial order from the Fisa court to Verizon that indicated the US is "hoovering" up millions of phone records (so-called "metadata") into a giant NSA database. When it broke, the story was quickly portrayed as a frightening tale of government overreach and violation of privacy rights. After all, such metadata – though it contains no actual content – can be used rather easily as a stepping-stone to more intrusive forms of surveillance.

But what is the true extent of the story here: is this picture of government Big Brotherism correct or is this massive government surveillance actually quite benign?

First of all, such a collection of data is not, in and of itself, illegal. The Obama administration was clearly acting within the constraints of federal law and received judicial approval for this broad request for data. That doesn't necessarily mean that the law is good or that the government's interpretation of that law is not too broad, but unlike the Bush "warrantless wiretapping" stories of several years ago, the US government is here acting within the law.

The real question that should concern us is one raised by the TV writer David Simon in a widely cited blogpost looking at the issues raised by the Guardian's reporting, namely:

"Is government accessing the data for the legitimate public safety needs of the society, or are they accessing it in ways that abuse individual liberties and violate personal privacy – and in a manner that is unsupervised."

We know, for example, that the NSA is required to abide by laws that prevent the international targeting of American citizens (you can read more about that here). So, while metadata about phone calls made can be used to discover information about the individuals making the calls, there are "minimization" rules, procedures and laws that guide the use of such data and prevent possible abuse and misuse of protected data.

The minimization procedures used by the NSA are controlled by secret Fisa courts. In fact, last year, the Fisa court ruled that these procedures didn't pass constitutional muster and had to be rewritten.

Sure, the potential for abuse exists – but so, too, does the potential for the lawful use of metadata in a way that protects the privacy of individual Americans – and also assists the US government in pursuit of potential terrorist suspects. Of course, without information on the specific procedures used by the NSA to minimize the collection of protected data, it is impossible to know that no laws are being broken or no abuse is occurring.

In that sense, we have to take the government's word for it. And that is especially problematic when you consider the Fisa court decisions authorizing this snooping are secret and the congressional intelligence committees tasked with conducting oversight tend to be toothless.

But assumptions of bad faith and violations of privacy by the US government are just that … assumptions. When President Obama says that the NSA is not violating privacy rights because it would be against the law, we can't simply disregard such statements as self-serving. Moreover, when one considers the privacy violations that Americans willingly submit to at airports, what personal data they give to the government in their tax returns, and what is regularly posted voluntarily on Facebook, sent via email and searched for online, highly-regulated data-mining by the NSA seems relatively tame.

Edward Snowden: is he a hero or a traitor?

One of the key questions that have emerged over this story is the motivation of the leaker in question, Edward Snowden. In his initial public interview, with Glenn Greenwald on 9 June, Snowden explained his actions, in part, thus:

"I'm willing to sacrifice … because I can't in good conscience allow the US government to destroy privacy, internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they're secretly building."

Now, while one can argue that Snowden's actions do not involve personal sacrifice, whether they are heroic is a much higher bar to cross. First of all, it's far from clear that the US government is destroying privacy, internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world. Snowden may sincere about being "valiant for truth", but he wouldn't be the first person to believe himself such and yet be wrong.

Second, one can make the case that there is a public interest in knowing that the US is collecting reams of phone records, but where is the public interest – and indeed, to Snowden's own justification, the violation of privacy – in leaking a presidential directive on cyber operations or leaking that the US is spying on the Russian president?

The latter is both not a crime it's actually what the NSA was established to do! In his recent online chat hosted by the Guardian, Snowden suggested that the US should not be spying on any country with whom it's not formally at war. That is, at best, a dubious assertion, and one that is at odds with years of spycraft.

On the presidential directive on cyber operations, the damning evidence that Snowden revealed was that President Obama has asked his advisers to create a list of potential targets for cyber operations – but such planning efforts are rather routine contingency operations. For example, if the US military drew up war plans in case conflict ever occurred between the US and North Korea – and that included offensive operations – would that be considered untoward or perhaps illegitimate military planning?

This does not mean, however, that Snowden is a traitor. Leaking classified data is a serious offense, but treason is something else altogether.

The problem for Snowden is that he has now also leaked classified information about ongoing US intelligence-gathering efforts to foreign governments, including China and Russia. That may be crossing a line, which means that the jury is still out on what label we should use to describe Snowden.

Shouldn't Snowden be protected as a whistleblower?

This question of leakers v whistleblowers has frequently been conflated in the public reporting about the NSA leak (and many others). But this is a crucial error. As Tara Lee, a lawyer at the law firm DLA Piper, with expertise in defense industry and national security litigation said to me there is an important distinction between leakers and whistleblowers, "One reports a crime; and one commits a crime."

Traditionally (and often technically), whistleblowing refers to specific actions that are taken to bring to attention illegal behavior, fraud, waste, abuse etc. Moreover, the US government provides federal employees and contractors with the protection to blow the whistle on wrongdoing. In the case of Snowden, he could have gone to the inspector general at the Department of Justice or relevant congressional committees.

From all accounts, it appears that he did not go down this path. Of course, since the material he was releasing was approved by the Fisa court and had the sign-off of the intelligence committee, he had good reason to believe that he would have not received the most receptive hearing for his complaints.

Nevertheless, that does not give him carte blanche to leak to the press – and certainly doesn't give him carte blanche to leak information on activities that he personally finds objectionable but are clearly legal. Indeed, according to the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act (ICWPA), whistleblowers can make complaints over matter of what the law calls "urgent concern", which includes "a serious or flagrant problem, abuse, violation of law or executive order, or deficiency relating to the funding, administration, or operations of an intelligence activity involving classified information, but does not include differences of opinion concerning public policy matters [my italics]."

In other words, simply believing that a law or government action is wrong does not give one the right to leak information; and in the eyes of the law, it is not considered whistleblowing. Even if one accepts the view that the leaked Verizon order fell within the bounds of being in the "public interest", it's a harder case to make for the presidential directive on cyber operations or the eavesdropping on foreign leaders.

The same problem is evident in the incorrect description of Bradley Manning as a whistleblower. When you leak hundreds of thousands of documents – not all of which you reviewed and most of which contain the mundane and not illegal diplomatic behavior of the US government – you're leaking. Both Manning and now Snowden have taken it upon themselves to decide what should be in the public domain; quite simply, they don't have the right to do that. If every government employee decided actions that offended their sense of morality should be leaked, the government would never be able to keep any secrets at all and, frankly, would be unable to operate effectively.

So, like Manning, Snowden is almost certainly not a whistleblower, but rather a leaker. And that would mean that he, like Manning, is liable to prosecution for leaking classified material.

Are Democrats hypocrites over the NSA's activities?

A couple of days ago, my Guardian colleague, Glenn Greenwald made the following assertion:

"The most vehement defenders of NSA surveillance have been, by far, Democratic (especially Obama-loyal) pundits. One of the most significant aspects of the Obama legacy has been the transformation of Democrats from pretend-opponents of the Bush "war on terror" and national security state into their biggest proponents."

This is regular line of argument from Glenn, but it's one that, for a variety of reasons, I believe is not fair. (I don't say this because I'm an Obama partisan – though I may be called one for writing this.)

First, the lion's share of criticism of these recent revelations has come, overwhelmingly, from … Democrats and, indeed, from many of the same people, including Greenwald, who were up in arms when the so-called warrantless wiretapping program was revealed in 2006. The reality is that outside a minority of activists, it's not clear that many Americans – Democrats or Republicans – get all that excited about these types of stories. (Not that this is necessarily a good thing.)

Second, opposition to the Bush program was two-fold: first, it was illegal and was conducted with no judicial or congressional oversight; second, Bush's surveillance policies did not occur in a vacuum – they were part of a pattern of law-breaking, disastrous policy decisions and Manichean rhetoric over the "war on terror". So, if you opposed the manner in which Bush waged war on the "axis of evil", it's not surprising that you would oppose its specific elements. In the same way, if you now support how President Obama conducts counter-terrorism efforts, it's not surprising that you'd be more inclined to view specific anti-terror policies as more benign.

Critics will, of course, argue – and rightly so – that we are a country of laws first. In which case it shouldn't matter who is the president, but rather what the laws are that govern his or her conduct. Back in the world of political reality, though, that's not how most Americans think of their government. Their perceptions are defined in large measure by how the current president conducts himself, so there is nothing at all surprising about Republicans having greater confidence in a Republican president and Democrats having greater confidence in a Democratic one, when asked about specific government programs.

Beyond that, simply having greater confidence in President Obama than President Bush to wield the awesome powers granted the commander-in-chief to conduct foreign policy is not partisanship. It's common sense.

George Bush was, undoubtedly, one of the two or three worst foreign policy presidents in American history (and arguably, our worst president, period). He and Dick Cheney habitually broke the law, including but not limited to the abuse of NSA surveillance. President Obama is far from perfect: he made the terrible decision to surge in Afghanistan, and he's fought two wars of dubious legality in Libya and Pakistan, but he's very far from the sheer awfulness of the Bush/Cheney years.

Unless you believe the US should have no NSA, and conduct no intelligence-gathering in the fight against terrorism, you have to choose a president to manage that agency. And there is nothing hypocritical or partisan about believing that one president is better than another to handle those responsibilities.

Has NSA surveillance prevented terrorist attacks, as claimed?

In congressional testimony this week, officials from the Department of Justice and the NSA argued that surveillance efforts stopped "potential terrorist events over 50 times since 9/11". Having spent far too many years listening to public officials describe terrifying terror plots that fell apart under greater scrutiny, this assertion sets off for me a set of red flags (even though it may be true).

I have no doubt that NSA surveillance has contributed to national security investigations, but whether it's as extensive or as vital as the claims of government officials is more doubtful. To be honest, I'm not sure it matters. Part of the reason the US government conducts NSA surveillance in the first place is not necessarily to stop every potential attack (though that would be nice), but to deter potential terrorists from acting in the first place.

Critics of the program like to argue that "of course, terrorists know their phones are being tapped and emails are being read", but that's kind of the point. If they know this, it forces them to choose more inefficient means of communicating, and perhaps to put aside potential attacks for fear of being uncovered.

We also know that not every terrorist has the skills of a Jason Bourne. In fact, many appear to be not terribly bright, which means that even if they know about the NSA's enormous dragnet, it doesn't mean they won't occasionally screw up and get caught.

Yet, this gets to a larger issue that is raised by the NSA revelations.

When is enough counter-terrorism enough?

Over the past 12 years, the US has developed what can best be described as a dysfunctional relationship with terrorism. We've become obsessed with it and with a zero-tolerance approach to stopping it. While the former is obviously an important goal, it has led the US to take steps that not only undermine our values (such as torture), but also make us weaker (the invasion of Iraq, the surge in Afghanistan, etc).

To be sure, this is not true of every anti-terror program of the past dozen years. For example, the US does a better job of sharing intelligence among government agencies, and of screening those who are entering the country. And military efforts in the early days of the "war on terror" clearly did enormous damage to al-Qaida's capabilities.

In general, though, when one considers the relatively low risk of terrorist attacks – and the formidable defenses of the United States – the US response to terrorism has been one of hysterical over-reaction. Indeed, the balance we so often hear about when it comes to protecting privacy while also ensuring security is only one part of the equation. The other is how do we balance the need to stop terrorists (who certainly aspire to attack the United States) and the need to prevent anti-terrorism from driving our foreign policy to a disproportionate degree. While the NSA revelations might not be proof that we've gone too far in one direction, there's not doubt that, for much of the past 12 years, terrorism has distorted and marred our foreign policy.

Last month, President Obama gave a seminal speech at the National Defense University, in which he essentially declared the "war on terror" over. With troops coming home from Afghanistan, and drone strikes on the decline, that certainly seems to be the case. But as the national freakout over the Boston Marathon bombing – and the extraordinary over-reaction of a city-wide lockdown for one wounded terrorist on the loose – remind us, we still have a ways to go.

Moreover, since no politician wants to find him- or herself in a situation after a terrorist attack when the criticism "why didn't you do more?" can be aired, that political imperative of zero tolerance will drive our counterterrorism policies. At some point, that needs to end.

In fact, nine years ago, our current secretary of state, John Kerry, made this exact point; it's worth reviewing his words:

"We have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they're a nuisance … I know we're never going to end prostitution. We're never going to end illegal gambling. But we're going to reduce it, organized crime, to a level where it isn't on the rise. It isn't threatening people's lives every day, and fundamentally, it's something that you continue to fight, but it's not threatening the fabric of your life.''

What the NSA revelations should spark is not just a debate on surveillance, but on the way we think about terrorism and the steps that we should be willing to take both to stop it and ensure that it does not control us. We're not there yet.

The NSA may not be allowed to return to the shadows - FT.com by John Schindler

It is difficult to see how the Obama administration, which declared an end to its predecessor’s “war on terror”, can indefinitely justify the invasive intelligence techniques that the Bush administration began and which the current White House has, if anything, expanded.

... ... ...

So the US intelligence community now confronts a degree of scrutiny it has not faced in four decades. Beginning with the Patriot Act after the 9/11 attacks, US defence and security agencies have been accustomed to an understanding public, fearful of more and worse terrorism, willing to give the secret government a wide berth in the name of protecting the citizenry. This may no longer be the case.

One of the issues certain to now be questioned is how the Pentagon has spent countless billions of dollars in recent years on outsourcing contractors such as Booz Allen Hamilton, a company that will likely be the poster child for misconduct in intelligence as Halliburton was in contracting over the Iraq war.

The public is right to wonder about both the ethics and efficiency of ostensibly private companies that are wholly dependent on defence contracts while being run by retired top officials of the agencies that provide the contracts.

The writer is a professor at the US Naval War College and a former National Security Agency analyst. Any opinions expressed are his own

The internet is at risk of transforming from an open platform to myriad national networks

Revelations about US surveillance of the global internet – and the part played by some of the biggest American internet companies in facilitating it – have stirred angst around the world.

Far from being seen as the guardian of a free and open online medium, the US has been painted as an oppressor, cynically using its privileged position to spy on foreign nationals. The result, warn analysts, could well be an acceleration of a process that has been under way for some time as other countries ringfence their networks to protect their citizens’ data and limit the flow of information.

“It is difficult to imagine the internet not becoming more compartmentalised and Balkanised,” says Rebecca MacKinnon, an expert on online censorship. “Ten years from now, we will look back on the free and open internet” with nostalgia, she adds.

At the most obvious level, the secret data-collection efforts being conducted by the US National Security Agency threaten to give would-be censors of the internet in authoritarian countries rhetorical cover as they put their own stamp on their local networks.

But the distrust of the US that the disclosures are generating in the democratic world, including in Europe, are also likely to have an impact. From the operation of a nation’s telecoms infrastructure to the regulation of the emerging cloud computing industry, changes in the architecture of networks as countries seek more control look set to cause a sea change in the broader internet.

America Church versus state - FT.com

Fears about privacy intrusions are forging new and unpredictable coalitions between politicians on the left, such as Mark Udall, a Democratic senator from Colorado, and the libertarian right, such as Rand Paul, the Republican senator from Kentucky. The risk for President Barack Obama is that if he does not take this opportunity to try to build confidence in what the intelligence services are doing, he could face a second term of further leaks and growing recriminations that will overwhelm his legacy. As the president put it in a May speech about terrorism: “We must define the nature and scope of this struggle or else it will define us.”

Mr Snowden has revealed details about two top-secret surveillance programmes that he hopes will start to shift the debate. First, a leaked court order showed that the NSA has been collecting the phone records of millions of Americans who are business customers of Verizon. Second, documents claimed the NSA operates a programme that allows it to siphon off large volumes of data, including emails and photos, from the servers of nine big technology companies.

The government has admitted the first disclosure but says that the nature of the programme is misunderstood. The database stores only numbers, not names, officials say. Rather than listening to calls, the intelligence services use the “metadata” from the call records to look for a terror suspects’ connections.

Mike Rogers, chairman of the House intelligence committee, said that it was too expensive for the telephone companies to keep all the details of call records so they were stored at the NSA. To access any specific part of the database, the intelligence services needed a warrant based on a genuine national security threat, he said.

The second charge is less clear. Reports indicated that the NSA was using a computer program called Prism to swallow large chunks of data directly from Google, Yahoo and other companies in a manner that goes well beyond anything covered by federal court warrants. In a Guardian interview, Mr Snowden described an almost casual illegality at the NSA. “Sitting at my desk, I had the authorities to wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant, to a federal judge or even the president,” he said.

... ... ...

Some experts say that the dispute over the legality of Prism obscures the reality that court orders permit the NSA to monitor far more than had been understood, including near real-time access to email traffic. A former intelligence official said that a court order under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (Fisa) could allow monitoring for a period of several months. “This is much more than the companies periodically handing over emails,” he said.

... ... ...

Many Americans would also be surprised to learn that the government is pre-emptively collecting their phone records in secret, especially as the data collection almost certainly does not end there. A Department of Justice official admitted in 2011 that the law used to justify the Verizon warrant had also been used to obtain drivers license, car rental, hotel and credit card records.

The NSA now has more tools to make sense of the growing volume of information it collects. It is building a $2bn, 1m square foot facility in the Utah desert to store the data.

Suav | June 12 11:22pm

That the government tend to gather all information amenable to processing is hardly a news. We wouldn't have much in our museums and archives otherwise. First significant example from what we tend to call modern era would probably be Joseph Fouché.

Competition between the state and individual goes on and it probably can be defined in intersecting planes: How much government knows about us as “populus”; governed people and how much we know about ourselves as a society, a nation, a “demos” (bizarre how the tension between Roman – statist approach and Greek – democratic approach persists through millennia). How much government, through its agencies, knows about us as individuals and how much each of us knows about oneself. How big change of our very being can government bring about using information at their disposal and how big influence every separate person enjoys over own self. I want to argue that in all three we are witnessing a dramatic swing of balance to the situation not seen since deep Middle Ages. One can dwell on this topic for a while, but even before there is deeper analysis and thorough process of investigation takes place (which I sincerely hope for) there is one thing that some of us do and all of us, without exception, should. (Although I count myself guilty of not doing enough in this matter)

We have to know “what they know”. Everyone has to take an assumption that all that he says, does and is thinking is registered somewhere. One can call it a practical conservation of information rule. We should store all our phone (?) conversations, all our e-mails, we should apply GPS stamps to our photographs. We should track ourselves. It is the simplest, the cheapest and the most effective way to wrestle back control over oneself. (Let me do something that depends on me as there is still enough things going on that don't seem to depend on anybody) There is a huge market for mobile phone applications, hence, there is an army of talented, creative and efficient programmers out there. We can easily create demand for programmes that would analyse our lives for us. I, personally, know some Yuppies who do exactly that. Benefits are enormous. We can easily organise our lives better. We can be forewarned about which influences are we malleable to and to which we respond in a stubborn, contrariwise way. We can determine our “soft spots”, our vulnerabilities and try to mend them if we can. We can think of ways of insulating ourselves from some and exposing more to others. Even if the efforts seem mostly vain, we still would be better off knowing from which side the nudge may come and when it is more likely to be a punch.

There is more to be done on a cruder level of graining. It is an old obsession of all security forces to typify the subjects. With both perceptive and executive power so much enhanced we might suppose a huge amount of research being done there. Recently announced UK's “new class structure” closed up by “Precariat” seems to be a tip of an iceberg of underlying structuring. We should be able to place ourselves on this map (oriented graph?) of society with no less accuracy. This would allow us to search more easily for people whom we have enough in common with to form friendships and alliances more easily. We are entitled to other types of knowledge too. We should know relations between formal membership (work, interests, political affiliations) and other types of social classifications. It is of paramount importance to every one of us to see clearly where we stand in society and what is the tension between our own image and that which society through different levels of aggregation projects upon us (Lobachevsky ratio).

Our freedom was always formed in tension between social and individual. Our closest circle, spouse, children, parents, friends, co-workers define most of it enhancing in some ways and limiting in others. We are being constantly redefined by belonging to wider groups, although to some, who seem to, throughout their all life cycle, flow in one ensemble, it is hardly noticeable. National and super national structures play a much greater role in this process now but it does not make us totally helpless. We should take enough effort not to loose control over our own destiny.

P.S. This short sketch draws on some assumptions. These are – most of the people who engage in those procedures profess limited practical determinism (we know more which gives us the right to decide about more)

Since around 70' we witness diminishing returns in science as well as an effect of shorter horizon. Human understanding of nature does not move forward as fast as through the last 500 years. More importantly there are no new breakthrough on the horizon. It is akin to ancient Egypt of Pharaoh and Middle Ages Europe. This is the most important factor determining strategy of “running away” as less efficient than “kicking downhill”.
Understandably I declare myself as a believer in indeterminism (in the least on practical level, but rather on philosophical one) and would like to oppose any sort of remnant beliefs in predestination.

Gary Struthers | June 12 7:55pm
The law is specific about types of communication that are private: 1st class mail, phone calls from a land line, lawyer/client etc. Prince Charles taught us mobile calls are fair game because they use public airwaves. Internet traffic over the public network isn't private either for the same reason.

What's shocking to me is that people are surprised the government is taking advantage of all the information people give away.

rewiredhogdog | June 12 3:01pm

Who voted for the spies in the NSA and the CIA as our duly elected representatives and our trusted guardians to interpret the civil liberties guaranteed by the Constitution? Growing up in the Sixties, I am experiencing historical deja vu. But the stakes are much higher this time around for America. As William Burroughs, the beat writer, observed way back then, in a functioning police state the citizens will never actually see the police spying on them. With Prism and Boundless Informant we are there. Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked of the Pentagon Papers. wrote a guest column in The Guardian. It's entitled "The United Stasi of America." stasi referring to the state police in communist East Germany that spied on its citizens before the fall of the Berlin Wall.

It's uncanny how much back then resembles right now., and I mean more than just Edward Snowden filling in for Daniel Ellsberg. During the administrations of LBJ and Richard Nixon, the CIA had its Phoenix Program in the Vietnam War. It targeted for assassination VC cadres and guerrillas in South Vietnam. Presidents Bush and Obama have their drone program against suspected terrorists.. It's just an updated, high-tech version of the Phoenix program in the age of the Internet. Richard Nixon had his secret bombing in Cambodia. President Obama has violated the national sovereignty of many more nations with his drone program than President Nixon ever did while in office. LBJ and Nixon sicced the FBI and the CIA on the anti-war protesters and journalists: Obama goes after AP reporters and James Rosen, who was a designated as a "co-conspirator" in a DOJ indictment.

Now David Brooks and Thomas Friedman have written columns about Edward Snowden attacking his character and patriotism. The New York Times that fought the government in court to publish the Pentagon Papers leaked by Daniel Ellsberg. If this isn't deja vu, I don't know what is. We are way beyond just introducing legislation to redress grievances. We passed that point long ago in the long war of terror. Although I served as a medical corpsman in Vietnam, I actually feel like an old and cynical German veteran from the First World War living in the Weimar Republic.

But the revolution will NOT be televised this time around as it was during the Vietnam War era. It will be a silent coup d'etat brought to you without commercial interruptions by the national security state and the military/industrial complex. Then they can get back to fighting perpetual wars for perpetual peace.

www.icaact.org

Kel Murdock | June 12 1:26am
We must also consider that included in that wide sweep of data collection and algorithmic search for connections are the records of all of our elected representatives. Properly utilized that could make for very pliant public officials in the hands of the security services.
now what | June 11 9:50pm
you can't regulate fear
Michael McPhillips | June 11 9:19pm
We should also know whether the intelligence agencies use neuro-feedback technologies on targeted individuals, suspects, or prisoners, without their knowledge or permission. If administration officials have clearance to target those against war, climate change, gay marriage/rights, or other political or ideological issues that pose no threat to anyone but are directed against policies favored by government that would prefer no opposition because of commitments already given and though harmful to the country or its people, is unwilling to change them, freedom of speech would be being restricted punitively and unlawfully.

The NSA may not be allowed to return to the shadows - FT.com by John Schindler

It is difficult to see how the Obama administration, which declared an end to its predecessor’s “war on terror”, can indefinitely justify the invasive intelligence techniques that the Bush administration began and which the current White House has, if anything, expanded.

... ... ...

So the US intelligence community now confronts a degree of scrutiny it has not faced in four decades. Beginning with the Patriot Act after the 9/11 attacks, US defence and security agencies have been accustomed to an understanding public, fearful of more and worse terrorism, willing to give the secret government a wide berth in the name of protecting the citizenry. This may no longer be the case.

One of the issues certain to now be questioned is how the Pentagon has spent countless billions of dollars in recent years on outsourcing contractors such as Booz Allen Hamilton, a company that will likely be the poster child for misconduct in intelligence as Halliburton was in contracting over the Iraq war.

The public is right to wonder about both the ethics and efficiency of ostensibly private companies that are wholly dependent on defence contracts while being run by retired top officials of the agencies that provide the contracts.

The writer is a professor at the US Naval War College and a former National Security Agency analyst. Any opinions expressed are his own

The internet is at risk of transforming from an open platform to myriad national networks

Revelations about US surveillance of the global internet – and the part played by some of the biggest American internet companies in facilitating it – have stirred angst around the world.

Far from being seen as the guardian of a free and open online medium, the US has been painted as an oppressor, cynically using its privileged position to spy on foreign nationals. The result, warn analysts, could well be an acceleration of a process that has been under way for some time as other countries ringfence their networks to protect their citizens’ data and limit the flow of information.

“It is difficult to imagine the internet not becoming more compartmentalised and Balkanised,” says Rebecca MacKinnon, an expert on online censorship. “Ten years from now, we will look back on the free and open internet” with nostalgia, she adds.

At the most obvious level, the secret data-collection efforts being conducted by the US National Security Agency threaten to give would-be censors of the internet in authoritarian countries rhetorical cover as they put their own stamp on their local networks.

But the distrust of the US that the disclosures are generating in the democratic world, including in Europe, are also likely to have an impact. From the operation of a nation’s telecoms infrastructure to the regulation of the emerging cloud computing industry, changes in the architecture of networks as countries seek more control look set to cause a sea change in the broader internet.

America Church versus state - FT.com

Fears about privacy intrusions are forging new and unpredictable coalitions between politicians on the left, such as Mark Udall, a Democratic senator from Colorado, and the libertarian right, such as Rand Paul, the Republican senator from Kentucky. The risk for President Barack Obama is that if he does not take this opportunity to try to build confidence in what the intelligence services are doing, he could face a second term of further leaks and growing recriminations that will overwhelm his legacy. As the president put it in a May speech about terrorism: “We must define the nature and scope of this struggle or else it will define us.”

Mr Snowden has revealed details about two top-secret surveillance programmes that he hopes will start to shift the debate. First, a leaked court order showed that the NSA has been collecting the phone records of millions of Americans who are business customers of Verizon. Second, documents claimed the NSA operates a programme that allows it to siphon off large volumes of data, including emails and photos, from the servers of nine big technology companies.

The government has admitted the first disclosure but says that the nature of the programme is misunderstood. The database stores only numbers, not names, officials say. Rather than listening to calls, the intelligence services use the “metadata” from the call records to look for a terror suspects’ connections.

Mike Rogers, chairman of the House intelligence committee, said that it was too expensive for the telephone companies to keep all the details of call records so they were stored at the NSA. To access any specific part of the database, the intelligence services needed a warrant based on a genuine national security threat, he said.

The second charge is less clear. Reports indicated that the NSA was using a computer program called Prism to swallow large chunks of data directly from Google, Yahoo and other companies in a manner that goes well beyond anything covered by federal court warrants. In a Guardian interview, Mr Snowden described an almost casual illegality at the NSA. “Sitting at my desk, I had the authorities to wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant, to a federal judge or even the president,” he said.

... ... ...

Some experts say that the dispute over the legality of Prism obscures the reality that court orders permit the NSA to monitor far more than had been understood, including near real-time access to email traffic. A former intelligence official said that a court order under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (Fisa) could allow monitoring for a period of several months. “This is much more than the companies periodically handing over emails,” he said.

... ... ...

Many Americans would also be surprised to learn that the government is pre-emptively collecting their phone records in secret, especially as the data collection almost certainly does not end there. A Department of Justice official admitted in 2011 that the law used to justify the Verizon warrant had also been used to obtain drivers license, car rental, hotel and credit card records.

The NSA now has more tools to make sense of the growing volume of information it collects. It is building a $2bn, 1m square foot facility in the Utah desert to store the data.

Suav | June 12 11:22pm

That the government tend to gather all information amenable to processing is hardly a news. We wouldn't have much in our museums and archives otherwise. First significant example from what we tend to call modern era would probably be Joseph Fouché.

Competition between the state and individual goes on and it probably can be defined in intersecting planes: How much government knows about us as “populus”; governed people and how much we know about ourselves as a society, a nation, a “demos” (bizarre how the tension between Roman – statist approach and Greek – democratic approach persists through millennia). How much government, through its agencies, knows about us as individuals and how much each of us knows about oneself. How big change of our very being can government bring about using information at their disposal and how big influence every separate person enjoys over own self. I want to argue that in all three we are witnessing a dramatic swing of balance to the situation not seen since deep Middle Ages. One can dwell on this topic for a while, but even before there is deeper analysis and thorough process of investigation takes place (which I sincerely hope for) there is one thing that some of us do and all of us, without exception, should. (Although I count myself guilty of not doing enough in this matter)

We have to know “what they know”. Everyone has to take an assumption that all that he says, does and is thinking is registered somewhere. One can call it a practical conservation of information rule. We should store all our phone (?) conversations, all our e-mails, we should apply GPS stamps to our photographs. We should track ourselves. It is the simplest, the cheapest and the most effective way to wrestle back control over oneself. (Let me do something that depends on me as there is still enough things going on that don't seem to depend on anybody) There is a huge market for mobile phone applications, hence, there is an army of talented, creative and efficient programmers out there. We can easily create demand for programmes that would analyse our lives for us. I, personally, know some Yuppies who do exactly that. Benefits are enormous. We can easily organise our lives better. We can be forewarned about which influences are we malleable to and to which we respond in a stubborn, contrariwise way. We can determine our “soft spots”, our vulnerabilities and try to mend them if we can. We can think of ways of insulating ourselves from some and exposing more to others. Even if the efforts seem mostly vain, we still would be better off knowing from which side the nudge may come and when it is more likely to be a punch.

There is more to be done on a cruder level of graining. It is an old obsession of all security forces to typify the subjects. With both perceptive and executive power so much enhanced we might suppose a huge amount of research being done there. Recently announced UK's “new class structure” closed up by “Precariat” seems to be a tip of an iceberg of underlying structuring. We should be able to place ourselves on this map (oriented graph?) of society with no less accuracy. This would allow us to search more easily for people whom we have enough in common with to form friendships and alliances more easily. We are entitled to other types of knowledge too. We should know relations between formal membership (work, interests, political affiliations) and other types of social classifications. It is of paramount importance to every one of us to see clearly where we stand in society and what is the tension between our own image and that which society through different levels of aggregation projects upon us (Lobachevsky ratio).

Our freedom was always formed in tension between social and individual. Our closest circle, spouse, children, parents, friends, co-workers define most of it enhancing in some ways and limiting in others. We are being constantly redefined by belonging to wider groups, although to some, who seem to, throughout their all life cycle, flow in one ensemble, it is hardly noticeable. National and super national structures play a much greater role in this process now but it does not make us totally helpless. We should take enough effort not to loose control over our own destiny.

P.S. This short sketch draws on some assumptions. These are – most of the people who engage in those procedures profess limited practical determinism (we know more which gives us the right to decide about more)

Since around 70' we witness diminishing returns in science as well as an effect of shorter horizon. Human understanding of nature does not move forward as fast as through the last 500 years. More importantly there are no new breakthrough on the horizon. It is akin to ancient Egypt of Pharaoh and Middle Ages Europe. This is the most important factor determining strategy of “running away” as less efficient than “kicking downhill”.
Understandably I declare myself as a believer in indeterminism (in the least on practical level, but rather on philosophical one) and would like to oppose any sort of remnant beliefs in predestination.

Gary Struthers | June 12 7:55pm
The law is specific about types of communication that are private: 1st class mail, phone calls from a land line, lawyer/client etc. Prince Charles taught us mobile calls are fair game because they use public airwaves. Internet traffic over the public network isn't private either for the same reason.

What's shocking to me is that people are surprised the government is taking advantage of all the information people give away.

rewiredhogdog | June 12 3:01pm

Who voted for the spies in the NSA and the CIA as our duly elected representatives and our trusted guardians to interpret the civil liberties guaranteed by the Constitution? Growing up in the Sixties, I am experiencing historical deja vu. But the stakes are much higher this time around for America. As William Burroughs, the beat writer, observed way back then, in a functioning police state the citizens will never actually see the police spying on them. With Prism and Boundless Informant we are there. Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked of the Pentagon Papers. wrote a guest column in The Guardian. It's entitled "The United Stasi of America." stasi referring to the state police in communist East Germany that spied on its citizens before the fall of the Berlin Wall.

It's uncanny how much back then resembles right now., and I mean more than just Edward Snowden filling in for Daniel Ellsberg. During the administrations of LBJ and Richard Nixon, the CIA had its Phoenix Program in the Vietnam War. It targeted for assassination VC cadres and guerrillas in South Vietnam. Presidents Bush and Obama have their drone program against suspected terrorists.. It's just an updated, high-tech version of the Phoenix program in the age of the Internet. Richard Nixon had his secret bombing in Cambodia. President Obama has violated the national sovereignty of many more nations with his drone program than President Nixon ever did while in office. LBJ and Nixon sicced the FBI and the CIA on the anti-war protesters and journalists: Obama goes after AP reporters and James Rosen, who was a designated as a "co-conspirator" in a DOJ indictment.

Now David Brooks and Thomas Friedman have written columns about Edward Snowden attacking his character and patriotism. The New York Times that fought the government in court to publish the Pentagon Papers leaked by Daniel Ellsberg. If this isn't deja vu, I don't know what is. We are way beyond just introducing legislation to redress grievances. We passed that point long ago in the long war of terror. Although I served as a medical corpsman in Vietnam, I actually feel like an old and cynical German veteran from the First World War living in the Weimar Republic.

But the revolution will NOT be televised this time around as it was during the Vietnam War era. It will be a silent coup d'etat brought to you without commercial interruptions by the national security state and the military/industrial complex. Then they can get back to fighting perpetual wars for perpetual peace.

www.icaact.org

Kel Murdock | June 12 1:26am
We must also consider that included in that wide sweep of data collection and algorithmic search for connections are the records of all of our elected representatives. Properly utilized that could make for very pliant public officials in the hands of the security services.
now what | June 11 9:50pm
you can't regulate fear
Michael McPhillips | June 11 9:19pm
We should also know whether the intelligence agencies use neuro-feedback technologies on targeted individuals, suspects, or prisoners, without their knowledge or permission. If administration officials have clearance to target those against war, climate change, gay marriage/rights, or other political or ideological issues that pose no threat to anyone but are directed against policies favored by government that would prefer no opposition because of commitments already given and though harmful to the country or its people, is unwilling to change them, freedom of speech would be being restricted punitively and unlawfully.

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