-=PCTechTalk=- "Sombody's watching me..." If you remember the '80s song by Rockwell... was he just being prescient?
- From: "Larry Southerland" <larrysoutherland@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
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- Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2012 09:33:07 -0400
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NSA whistleblowers: Government spying on every single American
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Published: 25 July, 2012, 01:55
Edited: 25 July, 2012, 12:09
Reuters/Jason Reed
Reuters/Jason Reed
TAGS: USA <http://rt.com/tags/usa/> , Security
<http://rt.com/tags/security/>
The TSA, DHS and countless other security agencies have been established to
keep America safe from terrorist attacks in post-9/11 America. How far
beyond that does the feds' reach really go, though?
The attacks of September 11, 2001 were instrumental in getting the US
government to establish counterterrorism agencies to curb future tragedies.
Some officials say that they haven't stopped there, though, and are spying
on everyone in America.
Testimonies delivered in recent weeks by former employees of the National
Security Agency suggest that the government is going beyond what most of
America thinks they do in order to keep the country terrorist-free. Former
NSA staffers even say that theirs old agency has actually been spying on the
entire country - all in the name of national security.
On an interview carried on Current TV's Viewpoint program on Monday, former
NSA Technical Director William Binney commented on the state of blanketing
surveillance along with colleagues Thomas Drake and Kirk Wiebe, the agency's
former senior official and senior analyst, respectively. The broadcast comes
on the heels of a series of speeches given by Binney, who has quickly become
more known for his whistle-blowing than his work with the NSA. In their
latest appearance this week, though, all three former staffers corroborated
on earlier accounts by suggesting that America's spy program is really more
dangerous that others deem it to be.
Speaking to Viewpoint host Eliot Spitzer, Drake said there was a "key
decision made shortly after 9/11, which began to rapidly turn the United
States of America into the equivalent of a foreign nation for dragnet
blanket electronic surveillance."
Although this accusation has been supported by claims that it is for
national security, says that it doesn't stop there. In fact, warns the
former NSA official, the government is giving themselves the power to put
intel on every American aside for potential future crimes.
"When you open up the Pandora's Box of just getting access to incredible
amounts of data, for people that have no reason to be put under suspicion,
no reason to have done anything wrong, and just collect all that for
potential future use or even current use, it opens up a real danger - and to
what else what they could use that data for, particularly when it's all
being hidden behind the mantle of national security," Drake said.
Although Drake's accusations seem astounding, they corroborate allegations
launched by Binney only a week earlier. Speaking at the Hackers On Planet
Earth conference in New York City earlier in the month, Binney addressed a
room of thousands by speaking about the NSA's domestic spying. But in a
candid interview with journalist Geoff Shively during HOPE, the ex-agency
official admitted that things really are rather scary.
"Domestically, they're pulling together all the data about virtually every
U.S. citizen in the country and assembling that information, building
communities that you have relationships with, and knowledge about you; what
your activities are; what you're doing. So the government is accumulating
that kind of information about every individual person and it's a very
dangerous process," Binney claims.
Both statements from the former NSA official come on the heels of a
revelation that law enforcement officers collected the cell phone records of
1.3 million Americans in 2011 alone. By carrying out this and similar
requests under provisions in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act
(FISA) and using National Security Letters, though, news articles are
emerging everyday suggesting that the surveillance of Americans - off the
radar and under wraps - is becoming occurring more and more exponentially by
the minute.
NSA under fire: Supreme Court to review legality of warrantless wiretapping
of Americans
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Published: 22 May, 2012, 01:12
AFP Photo / Paul J. Richards
AFP Photo / Paul J. Richards
Phone calls to Prague? Emails to Ecuador? The United States government can
currently sift through any international communication that crosses outside
of American territory, but all that might soon change.
The US Supreme Court decided on Monday this week that they will consider a
case that challenges the powers for the federal government established in
the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, a legislation that allows authorities a
wide breadth when getting away with snooping into private conversation in
the name of national security.
Although US President Barack Obama campaigned on changing FISA back in 2008,
the law on the books right now is carrying over the authoritarian powers
installed under the administration of his predecessor, President George W.
Bush. As it stands right now, the National Security Agency is allowed
unfettered access to listening in on the conversations of Americans as long
as they extend over international borders. The American Civil Liberties
Union has been trying to change that, however, and might finally be able to
take that fight to the highest court in the land.
The ACLU claims that Americans should be protected from government
surveillance without warrant or reason; the White House, on the other hand,
says the plaintiffs in the case should be able to prove that they are being
watched before bringing this case to trial.
The ACLU challenged FISA as soon as it went on the books in July 2008, to
which the government quickly dismissed. Nearly four years later, though, the
ACLU is adamant in ending the legalized eavesdropping of Americans and the
Supreme Court says they will think about hearing their case.
This week's decision out of Washington, D.C. is but only the beginning in
overturning FISA, but the act's opponents are considering it a victory,
albeit a small one, nonetheless.
"The appeals court properly recognized that our clients have a reasonable
basis to fear that the government may be monitoring their conversations,
even though it has no reason to suspect them of having engaged in any
unlawful activities," Jameel Jaffer, the ACLU's deputy legal director and
lead counsel in the case, says in a press release from the organization.
"The constitutionality of the government's surveillance powers can and
should be tested in court. We are hopeful that the Supreme Court will
agree."
Steven R. Shapiro, ACLU legal director , adds in a statement that it is
"disappointing" that "the Obama administration's effort to insulate the
broadest surveillance program ever enacted by Congress from meaningful
judicial review," but adds, "Given the importance of this law, the Supreme
Court's decision to grant review is not surprising."
Previously, attempts by the ACLU to challenge FISA have been halted by the
American justice system. Following their initial lawsuit in July 2008, an
appellate court decision last year reinstated their challenge, only for the
Obama administration to respond by asking for it to be overturned. An appeal
was filed with the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals by the plaintiffs,
citing Fourth Amendment-guaranteed rights, but now the Supreme Court will
consider who has the best case: Obama or the ACLU.
Court allows NSA and Google to keep their ties secret
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Published: 12 May, 2012, 01:40
Court Upholds Google-NSA Relationship Secrecy
Court Upholds Google-NSA Relationship Secrecy
A federal appeals court has refused to force the US National Security Agency
to explain any involvement it has had with Web giant Google, citing that a
revelation could threaten the entire United States government.
Friday's decision out of US Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of
Columbia Circuit reinforced a lower court's earlier ruling that the NSA does
not have to submit to Freedom of Information Act requests for materials
involving any relationship that the federal agency has with the Google
search engine and its related entities, such as Gmail.
The Electronic Privacy Information Center, or EPIC, took the matters to the
appeals court after their February 2010 FOIA requests were ignored by the
federal agency. Last July, EPIC brought the NSA to US District Court to
demand for evidence, to which Judge Richard Leon opted to side with the
government's security team. On their part, EPIC had insisted that the NSA's
refusal to acknowledge if any ties even existed between the agency and
Google was insufficient, and that the NSA should be forced to at least
acknowledge any relationship between the two before fighting off the FOIA
requests.
In legal fields, the NSA's claim that they could not confirm nor deny any
existence of ties is called a Glomar response. EPIC argued that that would
not suffice as far as even remotely fulfilling their requests.
"The Glomar response is appropriate where 'to confirm or deny the existence
of records . would cause harm cognizable under a FOIA exception," EPIC
argued earlier this year. On the contrary, however, EPIC claims, "The NSA
has failed to meet this standard and has failed to perform the segregability
analysis required by statute to determine whether non-exempt records may be
released."
"Without first conducting the search, not even the agency can know whether
there is a factual basis for its legal position. The decision of the
District Court should be reversed and the case remanded with an order
requiring the agency to conduct the search for responsive records," EPIC's
attorney said in a statement earlier this year.
Now this week in Washington, an appeals judge has upheld the last courtroom
ruling and the NSA will continue to be spared from responding to any FOIA
requests. Explaining the 3-0 ruling, Judge Janice Rogers Brown writes that
even acknowledging that a relationship exists between the government and
Google "might reveal whether the NSA investigated the threat," or "deemed
the threat a concern to the security of the U.S. government."
EPIC originally became interested in any connection between the two after
the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists were hacked in January
2010. At the time, Google responded and it was later reported in both the
Wall Street Journal and Washington Post that Google contacted the NSA.
In this week's decision, the justices quote a past Post article in which NSA
Director Mike McConnell said a collaboration between his agency and private
companies like Google was "inevitable."
Even still, the NSA will not go on the record to say what role, if any, they
have had with Google. The appeals court agrees, however, that saying
anything about any involvement would be bad for the US.
"[A]ny information pertaining to the relationship between Google and NSA
would reveal protected information about NSA's implementation of its
Information Assurance mission," explains the appeals ruling. "The existence
of a relationship or communications between the NSA and any private company
certainly constitutes an 'activity' of the agency subject to protection
under Section 6. Whether the relationship - or any communications pertaining
to the relationship - were initiated by Google or NSA is irrelevant to our
analysis. Even if EPIC is correct that NSA possesses records revealing
information only about Google, those records, if maintained by the agency,
are evidence of some type of interaction between the two entities, and thus
still constitute an NSA 'activity' undertaken as part of its Information
Assurance mission, a primary 'function' of the NSA.
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