risking his life to tell you about NSA surveillance [ot]

Snowden leak: Microsoft added Outlook.com backdoor for Feds
NSA praises Redmond for 'collaborative teamwork'
By Iain Thomson in San Francisco, 11th July 2013

Agentless Backup is Not a Myth

There are red faces in Redmond after Edward Snowden released a new batch of documents from the NSA's Special Source Operations (SSO) division covering Microsoft's involvement in allowing backdoor access to its software to the NSA and others.

Documents seen by The Guardian detail how the NSA became concerned when Microsoft started testing Outlook.com, and asked for access. In five months Microsoft and the FBI created a workaround that gives the NSA access to encrypted chats on Outlook.com. The system went live in December last year – two months before Outlook.com's commercial launch.

Those Outlook users not enabling encryption get their data slurped as a matter of course, the documents show. "For Prism collection against Hotmail, Live, and Outlook.com emails will be unaffected because Prism collects this data prior to encryption," an NSA newsletter states.

Microsoft's cloud storage service SkyDrive is also easy to access, thanks to Redmond's work with the NSA. The agency reported on April 8, 2013 that Microsoft has built PRISM access into Skydrive in such a way as to remove the need for NSA analysts to get special authorization for searches in Microsoft's cloud.

"Analysts will no longer have to make a special request to SSO for this – a process step that many analysts may not have known about," the leaked NSA document states. "This new capability will result in a much more complete and timely collection response. This success is the result of the FBI working for many months with Microsoft to get this tasking and collection solution established."

The documents also detail how Microsoft and Skype have also been working with the intelligence agencies to install monitoring taps. Work began on integrating Prism into Skype in November 2010, they state, three months before the company was issued with an official order to comply by the US Attorney General.

Data collection began on February 6, 2011, and the NSA document says the planned systems worked well, with full metadata collection enabled. It praised Microsoft for its help, saying "collaborative teamwork was the key to the successful addition of another provider to the Prism system."

Work to integrate Skype into Prism into Skype didn't stop there, however. In July 2012 an NSA newsletter states Microsoft installed an upgrade that tripled the amount of Skype videos that can be monitored by NSA analysts.

...So they’re storing the actual content of phone calls and emails in some NSA database somewhere. No big deal, and rest assured, they won’t look at it unless they really don’t like you. I guess that’s what Representative Loretta Sanchez meant when she said that Snowden’s leaks were just the "tip of the iceberg."

This shouldn’t come as a shock, but look at it for what it is: to date, the government has only acknowledged that they receive (not "collect") telephone records on millions of American citizens. They have not acknowledged that they also get the content from those phone calls. They’ve noted that the specific FISC order that Snowden leaked does not apply to content, but they’ve stopped short of denying that similar court orders exist that would apply to content. And really, they wish we’d stop asking them about it because it’s classified.

Need more evidence? In a recent interview about the Boston Marathon investigation, former FBI counterterrorism agent Tim Clemente shocked CNN’s Erin Burnett when he nonchalantly revealed that the government could listen in on past phone conversations between suspect Tsarnaev and his wife, or indeed any Americans. When CNN dragged him back in the next day for follow-up questioning, he stuck to his guns, adding that "all digital communications" are recorded and stored, and that "no digital communication is secure."

BURNETT: Tim, is there any way, obviously, there is a voice mail they can try to get the phone companies to give that up at this point. It's not a voice mail. It's just a conversation. There's no way they actually can find out what happened, right, unless she tells them?

TIM CLEMENTE, FORMER COUNTERTERRORISM AGENT, FBI: No, there is a way. We certainly have ways in national security investigations to find out exactly what was said in that conversation. It's not necessarily something that the FBI is going to want to present in court, but it may help lead the investigation and/or lead to questioning of her. We certainly can find that out.

In a statement, Microsoft said that it only complies with legal demands for customer information for law enforcement and national security purposes, and that the company isn't involved in giving "the kind of blanket orders discussed in the press over the past few weeks."

"When we upgrade or update products legal obligations may in some circumstances require that we maintain the ability to provide information in response to a law enforcement or national security request. There are aspects of this debate that we wish we were able to discuss more freely," it said.

Not that Microsoft hasn't been making a big thing about the privacy of its communications systems in the past. Its Gmail Man ad campaign lambasted Google for snooping in people's mail to match them with advertisers, and the tagline "Your email is your business" seems somewhat ironic these days. The advert is no longer on Microsoft's YouTube channel.

The leaked documents come from the NSA's Special Source Operations (SSO) division, which handles commercial company liaison for data collection by the agency. The documents show that, once collected by Prism, the NSA shares its data directly with the CIA and FBI via a custom application.

"The FBI and CIA then can request a copy of Prism collection of any selector..." the document says. "These two activities underscore the point that Prism is a team sport!"

In a joint statement, Shawn Turner, spokesman for the director of National Intelligence, and Judith Emmel, spokeswoman for the NSA, told The Guardian that the wiretapping referred to in the document was court-ordered and was subject to judicial oversight.

"Not all countries have equivalent oversight requirements to protect civil liberties and privacy," they said. "In practice, US companies put energy, focus and commitment into consistently protecting the privacy of their customers around the world, while meeting their obligations under the laws of the US and other countries in which they operate."

" The only reason to keep the interpretation of the law a secret is because it'll be a huge embarrassment and show widespread abuse."

DOJ Says Public Has No Right To Know About The Secret Laws The Feds Use To Spy On Us
from the what,-you-want-to-know-that-stuff? dept
So, we were just discussing the insanity of the FISA court (FISC) basically acting as a shadow Supreme Court, making broad rulings in total secrecy that have created a secret body of law that the public is not allowed to know about. Given increasing revelations about these shadow laws, the ACLU and other public interest groups are trying, yet again, to get access to some of these key rulings. All along, they've been extremely careful to note that they're not asking FISC to reveal specific foreign intelligence issues, operations or targets: merely the parts of the rulings that identify what the law is -- i.e., how it's being interpreted by the courts. Because that seems rather fundamental to a functioning democracy.

However, as you might expect, the Justice Department has now hit back with a new filing that says, flat out, the public has no right to know what the secret court is ruling on and how it's codifying secret laws. The argument is, basically, that because FISC rulings have almost always been secret, then it's perfectly reasonable that they're secret. In other words, it's perfectly legal for secret laws to remain secret, because they're secret. Later it also argues that actually revealing the law would be (oooooooh, scary!) dangerous.

Let's make this simple: yes, revealing specific details of various surveillance efforts and targets could create security issues, no doubt. But revealing how a United States' law is interpreted can never by itself create a national security issue. And that's all that's being asked of here. The DOJ is being incredibly dishonest and disingenuous in conflating the two issues, arguing that because the FISC deals with intelligence operations, that its rulings on the interpretation of the law must also be secret. But that's wrong. You can reveal the basic interpretation of the law without revealing the specific intelligence efforts and methods. The only reason to keep the interpretation of the law a secret is because it'll be a huge embarrassment and show widespread abuse.

NSA Bosses Mantra: Who Cares What The Law Says, 'Collect It All'
from the law-enforcement's-job-isn't-supposed-to-be-easy dept
The Washington Post has a profile of NSA boss Keith Alexander in which they make it clear that his passion is to "collect it all" when it comes to data.

“Rather than look for a single needle in the haystack, his approach was, ‘Let’s collect the whole haystack,’ ” said one former senior U.S. intelligence official who tracked the plan’s implementation. “Collect it all, tag it, store it. . . . And whatever it is you want, you go searching for it.”

Others have certainly reported on this before, including long-time NSA watcher James Bamford, but more and more people are realizing how the NSA functions these days. Combine the "collect it all" mentality with the fact that Alexander is the head of both the NSA, which is supposed to do signal intelligence, and the US Cyber Command, which is supposed to handle cyber security, and you have a clear conflict of interests that can lead to some sticky situations.

“He is the only man in the land that can promote a problem by virtue of his intelligence hat and then promote a solution by virtue of his military hat,” said one former Pentagon official, voicing a concern that the lines governing the two authorities are not clearly demarcated and that Alexander can evade effective public oversight as a result. The former official spoke on the condition of anonymity to be able to talk freely.

Remember how we just had the talking points that the NSA used with the media concerning the Utah Bluffdale data center. In those talking points, the NSA played up the US Cyber Command aspects, and how they were "partnering" with tech companies for that purpose. They left out almost entirely the surveillance side of things. And that's the problem. The NSA under Alexander can hide under the claim that they're trying to "protect our networks" allowing them to avoid admitting that they're collecting everything and spying on everyone.

Furthermore, the moral panics and FUD that Alexander spews to make his job easier is really quite sickening:

“Everyone also understands,” he said, “that if we give up a capability that is critical to the defense of this nation, people will die.”

You can't have perfect security, and there are serious tradeoffs that Alexander doesn't seem to care about in collecting all data. There's little actual evidence that these activities have really prevented anything serious that couldn't have been prevented via more traditional means.

Furthermore, there's a key point in all of this that often gets ignored: the US Constitution was put in place, on purpose, with the idea that "making law enforcement's job easier" is not a valid excuse. The whole point of civil liberties is that we recognize that we give people more freedoms and that means law enforcement's job is harder. But we think that's a good thing, because we trust that on the whole, keeping the innocent from being spied upon and accused is much more important that stopping every possible crime or finding every criminal. But, General Alexander and others in the NSA appear to want to flip this concept on its head. And that's incredibly dangerous.

Yet Another Constitutional Scholar Explains Why NSA Surveillance Is Unconstitutional
from the worth-reading dept
We're seeing more and more legal experts weighing in on why the NSA's surveillance program is unconstitutional. The latest, from Randy Barnett, a professor of constitutional law at Georgetown, who has written an entire book on the subject, is a really detailed explanation for how the NSA's surveillance program is unconstitutional on multiple levels.

By banning unreasonable "seizures" of a person's "papers," the Fourth Amendment clearly protects what we today call "informational privacy." Rather than seizing the private papers of individual citizens, the NSA and CFPB programs instead seize the records of the private communications companies with which citizens do business under contractual "terms of service." These contracts do not authorize data-sharing with the government. Indeed, these private companies have insisted that they be compelled by statute and warrant to produce their records so as not to be accused of breaching their contracts and willingly betraying their customers' trust.

Barnett explains some of the history of the 4th Amendment, and how it was initially designed to allow juries of citizens to determine whether or not a search was reasonable, because the Founders of the country did not trust judges to "jealously guard the liberties of the people." However, over time that's consistently shifted, as law enforcement officials were made immune from civil suits and judges increasingly had power over whether or not such searches were reasonable. Further, he notes how hoovering up pretty much all metadata is quite similar to (I'd argue, in many ways much worse than) the "general warrants" issued by the Britsh crown, which colonial America was trying to get away from with things like the 4th Amendment.

However, he says this goes beyond just the 4th Amendment, but implicates the 5th Amendment as well:

Still worse, the way these programs have been approved violates the Fifth Amendment, which stipulates that no one may be deprived of property "without due process of law." Secret judicial proceedings adjudicating the rights of private parties, without any ability to participate or even read the legal opinions of the judges, is the antithesis of the due process of law.

He goes on to point out that the secrecy of these programs makes it all that much worse, and unconstitutional on a different level as well, where the government is supposed to serve the people, rather than the other way around:

The secrecy of these programs makes it impossible to hold elected officials and appointed bureaucrats accountable. Relying solely on internal governmental checks violates the fundamental constitutional principle that the sovereign people must be the ultimate external judge of their servants' conduct in office. Yet such judgment and control is impossible without the information that such secret programs conceal. Had it not been for recent leaks, the American public would have no idea of the existence of these programs, and we still cannot be certain of their scope.

It seems worth noting that many of these reasons are in addition to reasons that others have presented as well. And, yet, to date, we've seen no one in the government offer a serious rationale for why the programs are constitutional in any way, other than hand-waving at a single 1979 Supreme Court ruling about the "third party doctrine," which requires a real stretch to pretend that allowed the kind of dragnet surveillance happening today.

The Differences Between Obama And Bush On NSA Surveillance, According To Virtual Obama

It was concerning when the Bush administration was secretly collecting your information. Heck, I had concerns back then myself. But, everyone knows that George W. Bush was not a good President. Whereas, I am a good President. See the difference? So, while you could not trust George W. Bush to secretly collect your data, you can trust me. I'm a trustworthy guy.

Another important difference between my administration and the Bush administration is that when the Bush administration secretly spied on you, the Bush administration could not point to a single judge willing to say their program was legal. We, on the other hand, can point to such a judge. I'm not going to tell you who this judge is, or why he or she thinks our program is legal. If I did that, it would, obviously be harder for me to convince you that the program is legal. Instead, I'm just going to tell you that we secretly found one judge who was willingly to secretly say that it was legal for us to collect all of your data....

The Bush administration could not tell you that it had informed Congress. Whereas my administration took steps to ensure that if you ever found out about our secret surveillance program, we could tell you that we informed Congress. To be clear, when I say 'we informed Congress,' I am not saying that we did out best to ensure that Congress had enough information to have an informed debate on this vital national security issue. What I am saying is that we informed Congress enough for me to stand here and tell you that 'we informed Congress.' What Congress actually knew is not important....

If Congress did not want us to secretly interpret the law, then Congress should not have passed a law for us to secretly interpret....

If you, the American people, did not want me to secretly collect your data, then you should not have elected me President. Yes, I know many of you were probably unaware that I wanted to secretly collect your data, especially since I said I would not secretly collect your data. But, I choose to believe that you elected me to be your President, because you believe that if someone has to secretly collect your data, that someone should be me. And, as we all know, my secret interpretations of your support are more important than the reasons you actually supported me.

Finally, while I do not believe there is any reason to debate this issue, I will tell you that I welcome a debate on this issue. In fact, I'm so grateful that Edward Snowden started this debate that I have decided to stop at nothing to ensure he spends the rest of his life in a federal prison.

The Guardian has released part two of the Hong Kong interview with Edward Snowden, in which he clarifies his reasons for going public. He talks about how the warrantless demand for Verizon phone records was the misuse of a USA Patriot Act provision intended to allow monitoring of an individual, but which was applied to a whole society.

Toward the end of the interview Snowden said that his instinct was to let the system correct itself, but he watched in horror as it did not do so. In fact, he said, the abuses were growing over time, and were worse than in the previous administration.

Although Snowden did not name Obama specifically, it seems clear from what he said that disappointment with the president’s refusal to step back from Bush-era domestic spying, and, indeed, the ways in which the Obama administration was extending it, drove him to blow the whistle. He also expressed disappointment that NSA officials were lying to Congress about what they are doing. He clearly has concluded that it is a sneaky and manipulative government agency that is not subject to sufficient oversight, in part because it misrepresents its actions to the overseers.

Good god man think of all the Covert ops (that's spy lingo for u noobs) have been compromised... At Microsoft!

Snowden Honored by Ex-Intel Officials
July 8, 2013

Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence, an organization of former national security officials, has honored NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, praising his decision to reveal the extent of U.S. government electronic surveillance of people in the United States and around the world.

Edward Snowden, an ex-contractor for the National Security Agency, has been named recipient of this year’s award for truth-telling given by Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence, the group announced Monday.

Most of the Sam Adams Associates are former senior national security officials who, with the other members, understand fully the need to keep legitimate secrets. Each of the U.S. members took a solemn oath “to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

When secrecy is misused to hide unconstitutional activities, fealty to that oath – and higher duty as citizens of conscience – dictate support for truth-tellers who summon the courage to blow the whistle. Edward Snowden’s disclosures fit the classic definition of whistle-blowing.

Former senior NSA executive Thomas Drake, who won the Sam Adams award in 2011, has called what Snowden did “an amazingly brave act of civil disobedience.” Drake knows whereof he speaks. As a whistleblower he reported waste, fraud, and abuse – as well as serious violations of the Fourth Amendment – through official channels and, subsequently, to a reporter. He wound up indicted under the Espionage Act.

After a lengthy, grueling pre-trial proceeding, he was exonerated of all ten felony charges and pleaded out to the misdemeanor of “exceeding authorized use of a government computer.” The presiding judge branded the four years of prosecutorial conduct against Drake “unconscionable.”

The invective hurled at Snowden by the corporate and government-influenced media reflects understandable embarrassment that he would dare expose the collusion of all three branches of the U.S. government in perpetrating and then covering up their abuse of the Constitution. This same collusion has thwarted all attempts to pass laws that would protect genuine truth-tellers like Snowden who see and wish to stop unconstitutional activities.

“These are the times that try men’s souls,” warned Thomas Paine in 1776, adding that “The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.”

It is in this spirit that Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence are proud to confer on Edward Snowden the Sam Adams Award for 2013.

The Sam Adams Award, named in honor of the late CIA analyst Sam Adams, has been given in previous years to truth-tellers Coleen Rowley of the FBI; Katharine Gun of British Intelligence; Sibel Edmonds of the FBI; Craig Murray, former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan; Sam Provance; former U.S. Army Sergeant at Abu Ghraib; Maj. Frank Grevil of Danish Army Intelligence; Larry Wilkerson, Colonel, U.S. Army (ret.), former chief of staff to Colin Powell at State; Julian Assange of WikiLeaks; Thomas Drake, former senior NSA official; Jesselyn Radack, Director of National Security and Human Rights, Government Accountability Project; and Thomas Fingar, former Assistant Secretary of State and Director, National Intelligence Council.

Editor’s Note: Further helping to explain why Snowden should be honored for his brave actions – and responding to some of the criticism of his decisions from the mainstream news media – are: Daniel Ellsberg’s op-ed in The Washington Post, “Snowden Made the Right Call When He Fled the US” and Ray McGovern’s “Obama Needs to Take Charge on NSA Spying Scandal.”

Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence was established in 2002 by colleagues and admirers of the late CIA intelligence analyst Sam Adams to recognize those who uphold his example as a model for those in intelligence who would aspire to the courage to speak truth to power. In honoring Adams’s memory, SAAII confers an award each year to someone in intelligence or related work who exemplifies Sam Adam’s courage, persistence, and devotion to truth — no matter the consequences.

It was Adams who discovered in 1967 that there were more than a half-million Vietnamese Communists under arms. This was roughly twice the number that the U.S. command in Saigon would admit to, lest Americans learn that claims of “progress” were bogus.

"Funding for the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies will see a $4.4 billion decrease under President Barack Obama’s fiscal 2014 budget request, even as those agencies deal with the across-the-board spending cuts imposed last month."

But it's really not at the level of attention, even after what Snowden did, to claim it's being publicly debated.

"what are the estimates on CIA income generated by drug trafficking? What about hard evidence?"

And the people creating the outrage are making the same mistakes the Benghazi/IRS conspiracy nuts did - promoting wild, unfounded claims based on their agenda-based speculation

I'm looking at CNN's front page right now - nothing there about Snowden or the NSA.

I'm looking at CNN's front page right now