Greenwald writes: "Decent people see tragedy and barbarism when viewing a
terrorism attack. American politicians and intelligence officials see
something else: opportunity."
Glenn Greenwald. (photo: Getty)
Why the CIA Is Smearing Edward Snowden After the Paris Attacks
By Glenn Greenwald, Los Angeles Times
27 November 15
Decent people see tragedy and barbarism when viewing a terrorism attack.
American politicians and intelligence officials see something else:
opportunity.
Bodies were still lying in the streets of Paris when CIA operatives began
exploiting the resulting fear and anger to advance long-standing political
agendas. They and their congressional allies instantly attempted to heap
blame for the atrocity not on Islamic State but on several preexisting
adversaries: Internet encryption, Silicon Valley's privacy policies and
Edward Snowden.
The CIA's former acting director, Michael Morell, blamed the Paris attack on
Internet companies "building encryption without keys," which, he said, was
caused by the debate over surveillance prompted by Snowden's disclosures.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) blamed Silicon Valley's privacy safeguards,
claiming: "I have asked for help. And I haven't gotten any help."
Former CIA chief James Woolsey said Snowden "has blood on his hands"
because, he asserted, the Paris attackers learned from his disclosures how
to hide their communications behind encryption. Woolsey thus decreed on CNN
that the NSA whistleblower should be "hanged by the neck until he's dead,
rather than merely electrocuted."
In one sense, this blame-shifting tactic is understandable. After all, the
CIA, the NSA and similar agencies receive billions of dollars annually from
Congress and have been vested by their Senate overseers with virtually
unlimited spying power. They have one paramount mission: find and stop
people who are plotting terrorist attacks. When they fail, of course they
are desperate to blame others.
The CIA's blame-shifting game, aside from being self-serving, was deceitful
in the extreme. To begin with, there still is no evidence that the
perpetrators in Paris used the Internet to plot their attacks, let alone
used encryption technology.
CIA officials simply made that up. It is at least equally likely that the
attackers formulated their plans in face-to-face meetings. The central
premise of the CIA's campaign - encryption enabled the attackers to evade
our detection - is baseless.
Even if they had used encryption, what would that prove? Are we ready to
endorse the precept that no human communication can ever take place without
the U.S. government being able to monitor it? To prevent the CIA and FBI
from "going dark" on terrorism plots that are planned in person, should we
put Orwellian surveillance monitors in every room of every home that can be
activated whenever someone is suspected of plotting?
The claim that the Paris attackers learned to use encryption from Snowden is
even more misleading. For many years before anyone heard of Snowden, the
U.S. government repeatedly warned that terrorists were using highly advanced
means of evading American surveillance.
Then-FBI Director Louis Freeh told a Senate panel in March 2000 that
"uncrackable encryption is allowing terrorists - Hamas, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda
and others - to communicate about their criminal intentions without fear of
outside intrusion."
Or consider a USA Today article dated Feb. 5, 2001, eight months before the
9/11 attack. The headline warned "Terror groups hide behind Web encryption."
That 14-year-old article cited "officials" who claimed that "encryption has
become the everyday tool of Muslim extremists."
Even the official version of how the CIA found Osama bin Laden features the
claim that the Al Qaeda leader only used personal couriers to communicate,
never the Internet or telephone.
Within the Snowden archive itself, one finds a 2003 document that a British
spy agency called "the Jihadist Handbook." That 12-year-old document, widely
published on the Internet, contains instructions for how terrorist
operatives should evade U.S. electronic surveillance.
In sum, Snowden did not tell the terrorists anything they did not already
know. The terrorists have known for years that the U.S. government is trying
to monitor their communications.
What the Snowden disclosures actually revealed to the world was that the
U.S. government is monitoring the Internet communications and activities of
everyone else: hundreds of millions of innocent people under the largest
program of suspicionless mass surveillance ever created, a program that
multiple federal judges have ruled is illegal and unconstitutional.
That is why intelligence officials are so eager to demonize Snowden: rage
that he exposed their secret, unconstitutional schemes.
But their ultimate goal is not to smear Snowden. That's just a side benefit.
The real objective is to depict Silicon Valley as terrorist-helpers for the
crime of offering privacy protections to Internet users, in order to force
those companies to give the U.S. government "backdoor" access into
everyone's communications. American intelligence agencies have been
demanding "backdoor" access to encryption since the mid-1990s. They view
exploitation of the outrage and fear resulting from the Paris attacks as
their best opportunity yet to achieve this access.
The key lesson of the post-9/11 abuses - from Guantanamo to torture to the
invasion of Iraq - is that we must not allow military and intelligence
officials to exploit the fear of terrorism to manipulate public opinion.
Rather than blindly believe their assertions, we must test those claims for
accuracy. In the wake of the Paris attacks, that lesson is more urgent than
ever.
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Glenn Greenwald. (photo: Getty)
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-1126-greenwald-snowden-paris-encr
yption-20151126-story.htmlhttp://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-1126-gr
eenwald-snowden-paris-encryption-20151126-story.html
Why the CIA Is Smearing Edward Snowden After the Paris Attacks
By Glenn Greenwald, Los Angeles Times
27 November 15
ecent people see tragedy and barbarism when viewing a terrorism attack.
American politicians and intelligence officials see something else:
opportunity.
Bodies were still lying in the streets of Paris when CIA operatives began
exploiting the resulting fear and anger to advance long-standing political
agendas. They and their congressional allies instantly attempted to heap
blame for the atrocity not on Islamic State but on several preexisting
adversaries: Internet encryption, Silicon Valley's privacy policies and
Edward Snowden.
The CIA's former acting director, Michael Morell, blamed the Paris attack on
Internet companies "building encryption without keys," which, he said, was
caused by the debate over surveillance prompted by Snowden's disclosures.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) blamed Silicon Valley's privacy safeguards,
claiming: "I have asked for help. And I haven't gotten any help."
Former CIA chief James Woolsey said Snowden "has blood on his hands"
because, he asserted, the Paris attackers learned from his disclosures how
to hide their communications behind encryption. Woolsey thus decreed on CNN
that the NSA whistleblower should be "hanged by the neck until he's dead,
rather than merely electrocuted."
In one sense, this blame-shifting tactic is understandable. After all, the
CIA, the NSA and similar agencies receive billions of dollars annually from
Congress and have been vested by their Senate overseers with virtually
unlimited spying power. They have one paramount mission: find and stop
people who are plotting terrorist attacks. When they fail, of course they
are desperate to blame others.
The CIA's blame-shifting game, aside from being self-serving, was deceitful
in the extreme. To begin with, there still is no evidence that the
perpetrators in Paris used the Internet to plot their attacks, let alone
used encryption technology.
CIA officials simply made that up. It is at least equally likely that the
attackers formulated their plans in face-to-face meetings. The central
premise of the CIA's campaign - encryption enabled the attackers to evade
our detection - is baseless.
Even if they had used encryption, what would that prove? Are we ready to
endorse the precept that no human communication can ever take place without
the U.S. government being able to monitor it? To prevent the CIA and FBI
from "going dark" on terrorism plots that are planned in person, should we
put Orwellian surveillance monitors in every room of every home that can be
activated whenever someone is suspected of plotting?
The claim that the Paris attackers learned to use encryption from Snowden is
even more misleading. For many years before anyone heard of Snowden, the
U.S. government repeatedly warned that terrorists were using highly advanced
means of evading American surveillance.
Then-FBI Director Louis Freeh told a Senate panel in March 2000 that
"uncrackable encryption is allowing terrorists - Hamas, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda
and others - to communicate about their criminal intentions without fear of
outside intrusion."
Or consider a USA Today article dated Feb. 5, 2001, eight months before the
9/11 attack. The headline warned "Terror groups hide behind Web encryption."
That 14-year-old article cited "officials" who claimed that "encryption has
become the everyday tool of Muslim extremists."
Even the official version of how the CIA found Osama bin Laden features the
claim that the Al Qaeda leader only used personal couriers to communicate,
never the Internet or telephone.
Within the Snowden archive itself, one finds a 2003 document that a British
spy agency called "the Jihadist Handbook." That 12-year-old document, widely
published on the Internet, contains instructions for how terrorist
operatives should evade U.S. electronic surveillance.
In sum, Snowden did not tell the terrorists anything they did not already
know. The terrorists have known for years that the U.S. government is trying
to monitor their communications.
What the Snowden disclosures actually revealed to the world was that the
U.S. government is monitoring the Internet communications and activities of
everyone else: hundreds of millions of innocent people under the largest
program of suspicionless mass surveillance ever created, a program that
multiple federal judges have ruled is illegal and unconstitutional.
That is why intelligence officials are so eager to demonize Snowden: rage
that he exposed their secret, unconstitutional schemes.
But their ultimate goal is not to smear Snowden. That's just a side benefit.
The real objective is to depict Silicon Valley as terrorist-helpers for the
crime of offering privacy protections to Internet users, in order to force
those companies to give the U.S. government "backdoor" access into
everyone's communications. American intelligence agencies have been
demanding "backdoor" access to encryption since the mid-1990s. They view
exploitation of the outrage and fear resulting from the Paris attacks as
their best opportunity yet to achieve this access.
The key lesson of the post-9/11 abuses - from Guantanamo to torture to the
invasion of Iraq - is that we must not allow military and intelligence
officials to exploit the fear of terrorism to manipulate public opinion.
Rather than blindly believe their assertions, we must test those claims for
accuracy. In the wake of the Paris attacks, that lesson is more urgent than
ever.
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
