October 24, 1952: President Truman establishes
the National Security Agency (NSA) as an heir to
the Armed Forces Security Agency, which was
created on May 20, 1949 to help crack German and
Japanese communications codes during World War II. (Source)
July 27, 1993: United States Signals
Intelligence Directive 18 establishes policies
to âensure that the missions and functionsâ
of the United States Signals Intelligence System
(SIGINT) âare conducted in a manner that
safeguards the constitutional rights of U.S.
persons.â Section 4 of this Directive spells
out precisely the ways in which the NSA is
permitted to intercept the communications of U.S. citizens. (Source and Source)
January 13, 2000: Then-NSA Director Michael
Hayden states that his Agency's electronic surveillance of U.S. citizens:
may only target the communications of U.S.
residents after the NSA obtains a federal court
order suggesting that a particular individual
might be "an agent of a foreign power"; and
may not target any U.S. person overseas without
the prior approval of the Attorney General, who
must have probable cause to believe that the
individual in question "is an agent of a foreign
power, or a spy, terrorist, saboteur, or someone who aides or abets them."
With regard to the unintentional collection of
communications to, from, or about U.S. citizens,
Hayden stresses that such information is not
retained by the NSA "unless the information is
necessary to understand a particular piece of
foreign intelligence or assess its importance." (Source)
January 2001: Two longtime NSA employees,
William Binney and J. Kirk Wiebe, complete their
development of the so-called Thin Thread
data-collection and information-processing
system, which they have equipped with an
âanonymizingâ feature designed to ensure
Fourth Amendment protections for the private
communications of U.S. citizens. But NSA
leadership, including then-Director General
Michael Hayden, give preference istead to
Trailblazera system which thus far exists only
on paper and is on trackk toward becoming far
more costly than Thin Thread. (Source)
October 31, 2001: A number of whistleblowers
reveal the extent of the NSAâs surveillance of
the communications of U.S. citizens. The
aforementioned William Binney and J. Kirk Wiebe
resign from the Agency because they believe that
a component of Thin Thread (which they
developed) has been used to illegally spy on
Americans' private communications. Moreover,
Binney and Wiebe contend that if Thin Thread had
been utilized properly, it could have detected
the 9/11 plot in its planning phase and thus
could have prevented the attacks. (Source)
Early 2000s: Binney and Wiebe disclose details
about the NSAâs massive domestic spying
program, Stellar Wind, which intercepts domestic
communications (phone calls and emails) without
protections for U.S. citizens. According to
Binney, the NSA has been given access to
telecommunications companiesâ domestic and
international billing records, and has
intercepted between 15 and 20 trillion
communications since 9/11. Binney further
discloses that Stellar Wind, which is based on a
component of the Thin Thread capability but
lacks the latter's built-in privacy protections,
is classfied as a âTerrorist Surveillance
Programâ in order to give cover to its
possibly unconstitutional nature. (Source)
May 2006: The NSA begins violating the rules
governing telephone-record surveillance by
collecting metadata on millions of calls that
are made to (or from) a select list of nearly
4,000 phone numbers whose owners -- some of whom
are based in the United States -- clearly have
no terrorist ties. This abuse will continue
until January 24, 2009, by which time the list
of improperly monitored phone numbers has grown
to about 16,000. Moreover, the abuse will not be
publicly exposed until September 10, 2013.
2007: The NSA launches a clandestine
electronic-surveillance, data-mining program
whose government code name is PRISM. This
program stores Internet communications which the
NSA obtains from Internet companies (like
Google, Inc.) under Section 702 of the FISA
[Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act]. Through
these PRISM requests, the NSA can decode even
communications that were encrypted when they
were first transmitted, and can retrieve stored
data that telecommunication filtering systems
have already discarded. (The PRISM program's
existence will not be known to the public until
Edward Snowden's revelations in June 2013.)
2010: A Washington Post article reports that
âevery day, collection systems at the [NSA]
intercept and store 1.7bn emails, phone calls
and other type of communications.â (Source)
February 4, 2011: Attorney General Eric Holder
signs a directive ordering Skype to provide the
NSA not only with information about video and
audio chats (on Skype), but also about Skype's
cloud storage service known as SkyDrive. (Source)
May 2012: An NSA audit counts 2,776 incidents of
unauthorized collection, storage, access to, or
distribution of legally protected communications
that occurred during the preceding 12 months.
According to the Washington Post: âMost were
unintended. Many involved failures of due
diligence or violations of standard operating procedure.â (Source)
December 26, 2012: The Special Source Operations
(SSO) directorate inside the NSA announces that
it is now capable of collecting far more
Internet communications data than ever before.
March 12, 2013: At a Senate Intelligence
Committee hearing, Director of National
Intelligence James Clapper tells Senator Ron
Wyden (D-Oregon) that the NSA does not engage in
widespread surveillance of private U.S.
residents. The Clapper-Wyden exchange goes as follows:
Wyden: âDoes the NSA collect any type of data
at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?â
Clapper: âNo, sir.â
Wyden: âIt does not?â
Clapper: âNot wittingly. There are cases where
they could, inadvertently perhaps, collectbut not wittingly.â (Source)
April 25, 2013: The top-secret FISA Court issues
an order giving the NSA unlimited authority to
track phone and email information of American
citizens, regardless of whether they are
suspected of any wrongdoing, for a three-month
period that will end on July 19, 2013.
Specifically, the court order authorizes the
Agency to collect âmetadataâ on these
communicationsi.e., the phone numbers of both
parties on a call, the location of each party
(derived from cell-phone GPS records), the time
at which the call is made, and the duration of
the call. The FISA order also authorizes NSA
surveillance of the subject line of personal
emails. The order covers all metadata related to
communications where both parties are in the
United States, or where one party is in the U.S.
and the other is abroad. But it does not cover
the contents of the communications themselves. (Source, Source, and Source)
Peter Eckersley, the Technology Projects
Director at the digital civil-liberties group
Electronic Frontier Foundation, explains the
significance of metadata: âMetadata is the
perfect place to start if you want to troll
through millions of peopleâs communications to
find patterns and to single out smaller groups
for closer scrutiny. It will tell you which
groups of people go to political meetings
together, which groups of people go to church
together, which groups of people go to
nightclubs together or sleep with each other....
[Such information provides] a deeply intimate
window into a personâs psyche.â (Source)
June 5, 2013: Twenty-nine-year-old Edward
Snowden, a former technical assistant for the
CIA, issues a host of startling revelations
about the extent of the NSA's surveillance
activities. Snowden reveals, for instance, that
Verizon has been collecting the metadata of
millions of its customers' phone
recordsregardless of whether or not they were
suspected off any wrongdoingsince FISA's court order in April. (Source)ÂÂ
June 6, 2013: James Bamford, a journalist and
author of several books on the NSA, says:
âHere we are, under the Obama administration,
doing it sort of like the Bush administration on
steroids. This [April 2013 FISA] order here is
about as broad as it can possibly get, when it
comes to focusing on personal communications.
Thereâs no warrant, thereâs no suspicion,
thereâs no probable cause
it sounds liike
something from East Germany.â (Source)
June 6, 2013: The White House defends the NSA's
collection of Americans' telephone communication
records as âa critical tool in protecting the
nation from terrorist threats.â (Source)
June 6, 2013: At a U.S. Senate hearing, Attorney
General Eric Holder is asked about the NSA phone
surveillance program and responds evasively,
saying that this hearing is not an appropriate
place to talk about the matter, but that he will
be glad to discuss it at some other time and place. (Source)
June 6, 2013: Several former NSA
employees-turned-whistleblowers say that the
Agency's surveillance of private communications
has been going on for years, involving all the
major U.S. phone companies. One whistleblower
estimates that the NSA collects metadata records
on 3 billion phone calls per day. (Source)
June 6, 2013: The PRISM program -- a
collaboration between the NSA, FBI, and many
major tech companies -- is made public. Through
PRISM, the NSA has been tapping into the servers
of nine major U.S. Internet companies: Microsoft
(since May 2007), Yahoo (since 2008), Google
(since 2009), Facebook (since 2009), PalTalk
(since 2009), YouTube (since 2010), AOL (since
2011), Skype (since 2011), and Apple (since
2012). As such, the Agency has had the capacity
to monitor all audio and video chats,
photographs, e-mails, documents, connection
logs, videos, voice-over-IPs (Skype, for
example), file transfers, and social networking
details. It is also revealed that Congress has
given the Justice Department âauthority for a
secret order from the [FISA] Court to compel a
reluctant [Internet] company 'to comply.'â One
intelligence officer who leaked the information
to the press says, âThey quite literally can
watch your ideas form as you type.â (Source, Source)
June 7, 2013: During a press conference,
President Obama declares: âWhen it comes to
telephone calls, nobody is listening to your
telephone calls. That's not what this [NSA] program is about.â (Source)
June 8, 2013: Republicans and Democrats alike
issue statements against the Obama
administration as the NSA spying controversy
becomes prominent. Republican Senator Rand Paul states:
âI think the irony is that people voted for
President Obama hoping for something different.
They were hoping for someone whoâd protect the
First Amendment, someone whoâd protect the Fourth Amendment ...â
Similarly, far-Left Independent Senator Bernie Sanders says:
âI worry what it would mean for American civil
liberties, but I will tell you I never ever
expected that under any definition of that
legislation that it would mean the phone calls
of millions and millions of Americansvirtually
none of whom the government has any reason to
belieeve is involved in terrorismwould be
checked by the United States ggovernment.â (Source)
June 9, 2013: Director of National Intelligence
spokesman Shawn Turner says that the NSA
controversy will be referred to the Department
of Justice for investigation. âThe
Intelligence Community is currently reviewing
the damage that has been done by these recent
disclosures,â says Turner. âAny person who
has a security clearance knows that he or she
has an obligation to protect classified
information and abide by the law.â (Source)
June 9, 2013: In response to the Obama
administration's claim that the PATRIOT Act
authorizes the NSA's surveillance of American
citizens' private communications, Rep. Jim
Sensenbrenner, one of the framers of the PATRIOT
Act, says that the expansive NSA surveillance
goes far beyond what the Act intended:
âThe administration claims authority to sift
through details of our private lives because the
Patriot Act says that it can. I disagree. I
authored the PATRIOT Act, and this is an abuse
of that law....â¨The legislation had to be
narrowly tailoredeveryone agreed that we couuld
not allow unrestrained surveillance.... [T]he
PATRIOT Act was never intended to allow the
daily spying the Obama administration is conducting.â (Source)
June 10, 2013: Edward Snowden states: âI,
sitting at my desk, [could] wiretap anyone, from
you or your accountant, to a federal judge or
even the president, if I had a personal email.â (Source)
June 10, 2013: Director of National Intelligence
spokesman Shawn Turner says that intelligence
officials are âcurrently reviewing the damage
that has been done by [Snowden's] recent
disclosures.â Justice Department spokeswoman
Nanda Chitre says, âThe Department of Justice
is in the initial stages of an investigation
into the unauthorized disclosure of classified
information by an individual with authorized access.â (Source)
June 10, 2013: White House spokesman Jay Carney
says that the Obama administration has no
comment regarding NSA leaker Edward Snowden
because there is an ongoing investigation into
the matter. âI think the President's record on
transparency is broad and significant,â states Carney. (Source)
June 11, 2013: The Guardian acquires Top Secret
documents about the NSA data-mining tool known
as Boundless Informant, which shows all data
that has been retrieved on a country-by-country
basis. For example, Boundless Informant reveals
that the NSA gathered 3 billion pieces of
intelligence from U.S. computer networks over a
30-day period ending in March 2013, and 97
billion pieces of intelligence from networks
worldwide during the same time period. (Source)
June 12, 2013: The ACLU becomes the first
organization to file a lawsuit against the NSA
for the secret monitoring of American citizens,
charging that the program violates the
constitutional rights of free speech, association, and privacy. (Source)
June 12, 2013: Director of National Intelligence
James Clapper, who told a Senate Intelligence
Committee hearing on March 12th that the NSA
does not collect information on millions of
Americans, tries to clarify that assertion, telling NBC News' Andrea Mitchell:
âI thought, though in retrospect, I was asked
[a] 'When are you going to ... stop beating your
wife' kind of question, which is meaning not
answerable necessarily by a simple yes or no. So
I responded in what I thought was the most
truthful, or least untruthful, manner by saying 'no'.â (Source)
June 12, 2013: Rep. Justin Amash (R-Michigan)
writes: âIt now appears clear that the
director of national intelligence, James
Clapper, lied under oath to Congress and the
American people. Members of Congress can't make
informed decisions on intelligence issues when
the head of the intelligence community wilfully
makes false statements. Perjury is a serious
crime. Mr Clapper should resign immediately.â (Source)
June 12, 2013: In testimony before the Senate
Appropriations Committee, NSA director Keith
Alexander states that his Agency's surveillance
has disrupted, or helped to disrupt, dozens of
terrorist threats. He adds that Edward Snowden
was incorrect in claiming that it was possible
for the NSA to tap in to any private phone call
or read any private email. (Source and Source)
June 14, 2013: An increasing number of polls
show that American citizens believe that the
NSA's surveillance activities are too broad and
intrusive; people are especially worried that
their private information will be leaked by a rogue operator. (Source)
June 14, 2013: A former NSA computer technician
says that thousands of technology, finance and
manufacturing companies work closely with U.S.
national security agencies and, in the process,
receive access to classified intelligence. These
companies provide sensitive information to the
agencies, in return for guarantees that they
will not be held liable in any future lawsuits
related to their actions in this capacity. (Source)
June 15, 2013: U.S. intelligence officials claim
that the data collected by the NSA has thwarted
terrorist plots in more than 20 countries,
including the United States. They also argue
that the NSA surveillance programs are far less
sweeping than their detractors allege. (Source)
June 15, 2013: Contrary to President Obamaâs
assurances, the NSA concedes in a classified
briefing (to members of Congress) that it does
not need court authorization to monitor the
contents of phone calls, emails, text messages,
and instant messages. Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-New
York), who attended that briefing, confirms that
he was told that the contents of any phone call
could be accessed âsimply based on an analyst decidingâ to do so. (Source)
June 15, 2013: Soon after the aforementioned
revelations, the Director of National
Intelligence Public Affairs Office says: âThe
statement that a single analyst can eavesdrop on
domestic communications without proper legal
authorization is incorrect and was not briefed to Congress.â (Source)
June 17, 2013: Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) says
that aside from members of the congressional
intelligence committees, most members of
Congress have been âkept totally in the
darkâ about the NSA surveillance programs.
Cruz adds that it is becoming increasingly
difficult for Americans to trust President Obama
after learning that the IRS targeted Obama's
political opponents, the Justice Department
targeted journalists with whom it was
dissatisfied, and the State Department misled
the public about the 9/11/12 terrorist attacks in Benghazi. (Source)
June 17, 2013: Several newly released polls
indicate that Americansâ level of trust in
government is nearly at an all-time low. (Source)
June 17, 2013: When President Obama is asked
about Edward Snowden in an interview with
PBSâs Charlie Rose, he says: âThe case has
been referred to the DOJ for criminal
investigation
and possibble extradition. I
will leave it up to them to answer those questions.â (Source)
June 17, 2013: President Obama tells interviewer
Charlie Rose: âWhat I can say unequivocally is
that if you are a U.S. person, the NSA cannot
listen to your telephone calls
by law and by
rule, and unleess they
go to a court, and
obtain a warrant, and seek probable caause, the
same way it's always been, the same way when we
were growing up and we were watching movies, you
want to go set up a wiretap, you got to go to a
judge, show probable cause.â (Source)
June 18, 2013: Obama further tells Charlie Rose:
âWe're going to have to find ways where the
public has an assurance that there are checks
and balances in place ... that their phone calls
aren't being listened into, their text messages
aren't being monitored, their emails are not
being read by some Big Brother somewhere.â (Source)
June 18, 2013: In testimony before the House
Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, NSA
Director General Keith Alexander says that his
Agency's surveillance program has thwarted
approximately 50 terrorist plots worldwide,
including one that was directed at the New York Stock Exchange. (Source)
June 18, 2013: Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Michigan),
Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee,
asks NSA Director General Keith Alexander
whether the NSA has the âability to listen to
Americansâ phone calls or read their emails
under these two programs.â Alexander responds,
âNo, we do not have that authority.â
Former state court judge Andrew Napolitano
subsequently tells Fox News: âOf course, he
[Alexander] doesnât have the legal authority
to [listen to] the phone calls. Thatâs not
what the question asked. The question asked,
âDoes he have the practical ability to do
so?â and he couldnât answer that because the
answer is âyes.ââ (Source)Â
June 18, 2013: New York City police commissioner
Ray Kelly lashes out against the NSA's phone and
Internet data-collection programs, saying: âI
think if you listen to Snowden, he indicates
that there's some sort of malfeasance, people
... sitting around and watching the data. So I
think the question is: What sort of oversight is
there inside the NSA to prevent that abuse, if it's taking place?" (Source)
June 20, 2013: It is reported that FISA
court-approved policies allow the NSA to:
keep data that could potentially contain details
about private American citizens for up to five years;
retain and make use of âinadvertently
acquiredâ domestic communications if they
contain usable intelligence, information on
criminal activity, encryptions, or any information relevant to cybersecurity;
preserve âforeign intelligence informationâ
contained within attorney-client communications; and
access the content of communications gathered
from âU.S.-based machine[s]â or phone
numbers in order to establish if targets are located in the U.S. (Source)
June 20, 2013: According to the Guardian, âThe
broad scope of the [FISA] court orders, and the
nature of the procedures set out in the
documents, appear to clash with assurances from
President Obama and senior intelligence
officials that the NSA could not access
Americans' call or email information without warrants.â (Source)
June 27, 2013: It is reported that for more than
two years, the Obama administration permitted
the NSA to continue collecting a vast number of
records pertaining to the email and Internet
usage of Americans, and that a judge on the FISA
Court had approved a bulk collection order for
Internet metadata âevery 90 days.â Shawn
Turner, the Obama administration's Director of
Communications for National Intelligence, says:
âThe Internet metadata collection program
authorized by the FISA court was discontinued in
2011 for operational and resource reasons and
has not been restarted. The program was
discontinued by the executive branch as the
result of an interagency review.â (Source)
June 29, 2013: Secret documents obtained by
Spiegel reveal that the NSA in recent years has:
(a) conducted online surveillance of European
citizens; (b) specifically bugged buildings that
housed European Union (EU) institutions; and (c)
infiltrated the EU representation's computer
network, thereby gaining the ability to monitor
discussions in EU rooms as well as emails and
internal documents on the computers. (Source)
Snowden obviously did not think of it first....
On Saturday, April 5, 2014, coderman
<<mailto:coderman@xxxxxxxxx>coderman@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 3, 2014 at 5:09 AM, John Young
<<mailto:jya@xxxxxxxxxxxx>jya@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> The CIA is the principal customer of NSA products outside
>> the military...
>>
>> CIA (long FBI opponents) thought FBI could not cope with inside
>> terrorists, using 9/11 as an example, and advocated NSA involvement
>> with its much greater technical capability, but more importantly, its
>> military-privileged secrecy not susceptible to full congressional
>> oversight, courts and FOIA.
>>
>> The joint CIA-NSA Special Collection Service (SCS) has
>> been doing for decades what NSA is now alone accused of doing:
>> CIA provided the targets, NSA did the technical collection from
>> those global stations identified by xKeyscore (most in embassies
>> or nearby).
>>
>> What is bizarre is how little CIA is mentioned in news furor about
>> NSA, as if NSA did its work in isolation from the IC and without
>> oversight of the 3 branches.
>
>
> FBI DITU also playing front-man as of late, it seems.
>
>
> FBI-DITU + NSA-SSO/TAO + CIA/NSA-SCS
> Â - this is a trifecta of fuckery!
>
>
> they're a legislative laundry designed to circumvent any constraints
> individually by collectively attaining ends via means so offensive
> they must remain hidden lest "National Security and The Future of our
> Nation" be at risk...
>
>
> were i a new age "Citizens for Intelligence Community Oversight" i
> would pwn all three, and dump the entirety of their operations to
> darknet. Â let the public sort it out...
> Â [exercise for the reader: would it take longer for the world to
> digest an entire dump than it would the current Snowden-subset
> processing via reporter privilege?]
>
>
>
>
>
>> SCS also does burglaries, code snatches, decrypts, doc drops,
>> stings, ploys, blackmail, the panoply of CIA operations. The increased
>> civilian target panoply bestowed upon NSA came from CIA demands
>> channeled through ODNI.
>>
>> Reviewing what little has been released of the Snowden documents
>> they are quite similar to what SCS has been doing with the addition
>> of the US as target. FISA had to be rejiggered for the US domain.
>
> the use of foreign, military IC tools against domestic targets is
> where many interesting stories lay. Â you think yesterday's battlefield
> exploits don't become today's domestic lawful access? epic lulz!
> Â what fucking tatters they've left our "Constitutional Rights"...
> Â Â [which should be afforded to all citizens of Eath, my over seas
> peers fucked harder, longer, in no offensive a manner]
>
>
>
>> NSA's recent attempt to slough off Cybercom and return to
>> its military mission, has been rejected by the civilian overseers
>> following CIA guidance and fear-mongering of civilians, especially
>> those inside the US. The last thing CIA and its supporters want
>> is a revelation of its manipulation of civilian leaders institutionalized
>> by the 1947 National Security Act (also opposed by the military).
>
> indeed. Â IC suffering a deluge of undue oversight and sunlight. Â are
> you crazy POTUS, you want more potential visibility? Â get tha fuck
> back in yer hole, servant...
>
>
