NSA Whistle-blower Ed Snowden

[Brad Sallows]

I didn't suggest "do nothing".  There are going to be limits on the exchange of liberty for security, and denial of call records should be one of them.  Governments have proven repeatedly that they can't keep information under control.  There are people willing to leak information for money, there are people willing to leak information for political gain, and there are people elsewhere devoted to seeking information they are not supposed to have.

Anyone who happens to obtain files of call detail records can convert those into lists of who (name and address) called whom in a few hours.  Telephone switch manuals (to interpret the CDRs) are publicly available, and web-based directory services are even more publicly available.  Writing simple program's to parse CDR files to extract phone numbers and scrape web sites to match numbers to names and addresses is child's play.

Here are two security principles which should never be violated:
1) Control of public utilities' equipment should never be accessible on public networks.
2) Data from public utilities should never be in any hands except the utilities', and also never accessible on public networks.

To violate either of those is to ask to be gut-fu<ked by foreigners who don't like you.
2)

 

[cupper]

What about tinfoil bras (and other articles of clothing) for Snowden's pole-dancing girlfriend?  >

link

To borrow a gag from Bill Maher:

Dude went a long way to dump the broad. Gotta give him an A for covering all the possibilities.

 

[cupper]

Metadata reveals the secrets of social position, company hierarchy, terrorist cells

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/metadata-reveals-the-secrets-of-social-position-company-hierarchy-terrorist-cells/2013/06/15/5058647c-d5c1-11e2-a73e-826d299ff459_story_1.html

The general’s mistress thought she was being clever by using anonymous e-mail accounts and sending messages using hotel WiFi networks. But metadata — in this case the Internet protocol addresses pointing to network locations — gave her away.

The IP addresses of the networks Paula Broadwell logged into this past fall to send threatening messages to a woman she perceived as a rival for the affection of Gen. David H. Petraeus traced back to the hotels. There, records corresponding to the dates the e-mails were sent revealed one common guest: Broadwell.

Petraeus resigned as CIA director over the affair, and the episode has since receded from the public’s attention. But it is instructive as one simple but powerful way in which metadata — or data about communications — can reveal so much about who we are, where we go and whom we associate with.

Metadata is so rich with clues that entities from Google and eBay to the world’s largest spy agency, the National Security Agency, are collecting and mining this deceptively innocuous information: e-mail addresses to and from, times of e-mails, phone numbers dialed and received, lengths of calls, unique device serial numbers.

A week and a half ago, U.S. officials acknowledged for the first time that the NSA since 2006 has been amassing a database of metadata on the phone-call records of tens of millions of U.S. customers.

And, according to new documents obtained by The Washington Post, the NSA until 2011 gathered e-mail and other digital metadata from major Internet data links, presumably to detect and thwart terrorist plots.

But the government has resisted explaining its legal justification for gathering such massive amounts of data, which hold the potential to permit vast intrusions into the personal lives of Americans.

“When you can get it all in one place and analyze the patterns, you can learn an enormous amount about the behavior of people,” said Daniel J. Weitzner, a principal research scientist at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.

Analysts can gain clues to sleep patterns (when people are asleep, they send no e-mails and make no calls), religion (based on locations of calls made or the absence of communications on the Sabbath) or even social position (based on how often people get calls and e-mails and how quickly they receive responses).

In 2007, researchers at Columbia University were able to identify the senior-most company officers at the bankrupt Enron Corp. by studying individual e-mail volume and average response time in 620,000 company e-mails. The highest-ranking officers got the most e-mail and the quickest responses.

Similarly, federal agents use software and social-network analysis to map out terrorist cells and criminal groups. They look, for instance, at who calls whom most frequently, in a technique known as “link analysis.”

“It’s remarkable how just the phone-call data can give you at least a preliminary picture of how the organization operates and who its members are,” said Jason Weinstein, a former deputy assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s criminal division. “It’s by no means the whole picture, but it’s a critical piece of the puzzle to solve the most serious crimes people can commit.”

Sometimes, metadata patterns can be tip-offs — a driver or courier in a terrorist cell or criminal group may be the one to receive short phone calls from several different operatives just before and after an operation.

Cellular-tower location data can help place criminals at the scene if they are using their phones just before they commit a robbery, murder or attack.

“Every day, law enforcement officers are using this data to place suspects at the scene of murders and other crimes,” said Weinstein, now a partner at Steptoe & Johnson.

Data about a communication may be just as revealing as the content itself, said Christopher Soghoian, principal technologist with the American Civil Liberties Union.

“If you call an abortion clinic and make an appointment, the fact that you’re making the appointment is far more sensitive than what time your appointment is,” he said. “If you’re calling Alcoholics Anonymous or a suicide counselor, what you’re saying will certainly be sensitive. But the fact that you’re calling Al Anon or a suicide counselor is extremely sensitive, too.”

Under U.S. law, it’s easier for the government to obtain metadata than content. Authorities generally need to show probable cause for a wiretap or intercept of communications.

Telephone records, but not e-mail metadata, can be obtained by law enforcement agencies without any kind of court order.

Weitzner said metadata is “arguably more revealing because it’s actually much easier to analyze the patterns in a large universe of metadata and correlate them with real-world events than it is to go through a semantic analysis of all of someone’s e-mail and all of someone’s telephone calls, if you could get that.

“Metadata is objective: I called you. You called me.”

Cellphone data helped Italian authorities identify CIA agents who abducted an Egyptian cleric suspected of terrorist involvement in Milan in 2003. The investigators pulled the records and identified the agents by their aliases, where they had stayed and whom they had called — including each other. Similarly, in 2011, Hezbollah identified a half-dozen CIA informants through analysis of their cellphone records and calling patterns.

Critical as metadata is, Weinstein said, it does not give you the subject’s words and thoughts. “Only the content,” he said, “will provide you with the evidence you need that the conversations are about terrorism or other crimes.”

 

[Nemo888]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/17/edward-snowden-nsa-files-whistleblower?commentpage=1

The interview the world's media organisations have been chasing for more than a week, but instead Edward Snowden is giving Guardian readers the exclusive.

The 29-year-old former NSA contractor and source of the Guardian's NSA files coverage will – with the help of Glenn Greenwald – take your questions today on why he revealed the NSA's top-secret surveillance of US citizens, the international storm that has ensued, and the uncertain future he now faces. Ask him anything.

Snowden, who has fled the US, told the Guardian he "does not expect to see home again", but where he'll end up has yet to be determined.

He will be online today from 11am ET/4pm BST today. An important caveat: the live chat is subject to Snowden's security concerns and also his access to a secure internet connection. It is possible that he will appear and disappear intermittently, so if it takes him a while to get through the questions, please be patient.

To participate, post your question below and recommend your favorites. As he makes his way through the thread, we'll embed his replies as posts in the live blog. You can also follow along on Twitter using the hashtag #AskSnowden.

We expect the site to experience high demand so we'll re-publish the Q&A in full after the live chat has finished.


Updated at 10.03am ET
11.07am ET
Question:


Guardian staff
GlennGreenwald
17 June 2013 2:11pm
Let's begin with these:

1) Why did you choose Hong Kong to go to and then tell them about US hacking on their research facilities and universities?

2) How many sets of the documents you disclosed did you make, and how many different people have them? If anything happens to you, do they still exist?

Answer:

1) First, the US Government, just as they did with other whistleblowers, immediately and predictably destroyed any possibility of a fair trial at home, openly declaring me guilty of treason and that the disclosure of secret, criminal, and even unconstitutional acts is an unforgivable crime. That's not justice, and it would be foolish to volunteer yourself to it if you can do more good outside of prison than in it.

Second, let's be clear: I did not reveal any US operations against legitimate military targets. I pointed out where the NSA has hacked civilian infrastructure such as universities, hospitals, and private businesses because it is dangerous. These nakedly, aggressively criminal acts are wrong no matter the target. Not only that, when NSA makes a technical mistake during an exploitation operation, critical systems crash. Congress hasn't declared war on the countries - the majority of them are our allies - but without asking for public permission, NSA is running network operations against them that affect millions of innocent people. And for what? So we can have secret access to a computer in a country we're not even fighting? So we can potentially reveal a potential terrorist with the potential to kill fewer Americans than our own Police? No, the public needs to know the kinds of things a government does in its name, or the "consent of the governed" is meaningless.

2) All I can say right now is the US Government is not going to be able to cover this up by jailing or murdering me. Truth is coming, and it cannot be stopped.

11.13am ET
Question:


Guardian staff
ewenmacaskill
17 June 2013 3:07pm
I should have asked you this when I saw you but never got round to it........Why did you just not fly direct to Iceland if that is your preferred country for asylum?

Answer:

Leaving the US was an incredible risk, as NSA employees must declare their foreign travel 30 days in advance and are monitored. There was a distinct possibility I would be interdicted en route, so I had to travel with no advance booking to a country with the cultural and legal framework to allow me to work without being immediately detained. Hong Kong provided that. Iceland could be pushed harder, quicker, before the public could have a chance to make their feelings known, and I would not put that past the current US administration.

11.17am ET
Question:


ActivistGal
17 June 2013 2:15pm
You have said HERE that you admire both Ellsberg and Manning, but have argued that there is one important distinction between yourself and the army private...


"I carefully evaluated every single document I disclosed to ensure that each was legitimately in the public interest," he said. "There are all sorts of documents that would have made a big impact that I didn't turn over, because harming people isn't my goal. Transparency is."

Are you suggesting that Manning indiscriminately dumped secrets into the hands of Wikileaks and that he intended to harm people?

Answer:

No, I'm not. Wikileaks is a legitimate journalistic outlet and they carefully redacted all of their releases in accordance with a judgment of public interest. The unredacted release of cables was due to the failure of a partner journalist to control a passphrase. However, I understand that many media outlets used the argument that "documents were dumped" to smear Manning, and want to make it clear that it is not a valid assertion here.

11.20am ET
Question:


D. Aram Mushegian II
17 June 2013 2:16pm
Did you lie about your salary? What is the issue there? Why did you tell Glenn Greenwald that your salary was $200,000 a year, when it was only $122,000 (according to the firm that fired you.)

Answer:

I was debriefed by Glenn and his peers over a number of days, and not all of those conversations were recorded. The statement I made about earnings was that $200,000 was my "career high" salary. I had to take pay cuts in the course of pursuing specific work. Booz was not the most I've been paid.

11.23am ET
Question:


Gabrielaweb
17 June 2013 2:17pm
Why did you wait to release the documents if you said you wanted to tell the world about the NSA programs since before Obama became president?

Answer:

Obama's campaign promises and election gave me faith that he would lead us toward fixing the problems he outlined in his quest for votes. Many Americans felt similarly. Unfortunately, shortly after assuming power, he closed the door on investigating systemic violations of law, deepened and expanded several abusive programs, and refused to spend the political capital to end the kind of human rights violations like we see in Guantanamo, where men still sit without charge.

11.27am ET
Question:


Anthony De Rosa
17 June 2013 2:18pm
1) Define in as much detail as you can what "direct access" means.

2) Can analysts listen to content of domestic calls without a warrant?

Answer:

1) More detail on how direct NSA's accesses are is coming, but in general, the reality is this: if an NSA, FBI, CIA, DIA, etc analyst has access to query raw SIGINT databases, they can enter and get results for anything they want. Phone number, email, user id, cell phone handset id (IMEI), and so on - it's all the same. The restrictions against this are policy based, not technically based, and can change at any time. Additionally, audits are cursory, incomplete, and easily fooled by fake justifications. For at least GCHQ, the number of audited queries is only 5% of those performed.

Updated at 11.41am ET
11.40am ET

Anthony De Rosa
17 June 2013 2:18pm
1) Define in as much detail as you can what "direct access" means.

2) Can analysts listen to content of domestic calls without a warrant?

2) NSA likes to use "domestic" as a weasel word here for a number of reasons. The reality is that due to the FISA Amendments Act and its section 702 authorities, Americans’ communications are collected and viewed on a daily basis on the certification of an analyst rather than a warrant. They excuse this as "incidental" collection, but at the end of the day, someone at NSA still has the content of your communications. Even in the event of "warranted" intercept, it's important to understand the intelligence community doesn't always deal with what you would consider a "real" warrant like a Police department would have to, the "warrant" is more of a templated form they fill out and send to a reliable judge with a rubber stamp.

Glenn Greenwald follow up: When you say "someone at NSA still has the content of your communications" - what do you mean? Do you mean they have a record of it, or the actual content?

Both. If I target for example an email address, for example under FAA 702, and that email address sent something to you, Joe America, the analyst gets it. All of it. IPs, raw data, content, headers, attachments, everything. And it gets saved for a very long time - and can be extended further with waivers rather than warrants.

11.41am ET
Question:


HaraldK
17 June 2013 2:45pm
What are your thoughts on Google's and Facebook's denials? Do you think that they're honestly in the dark about PRISM, or do you think they're compelled to lie?

Perhaps this is a better question to a lawyer like Greenwald, but: If you're presented with a secret order that you're forbidding to reveal the existence of, what will they actually do if you simply refuse to comply (without revealing the order)?

Answer:

Their denials went through several revisions as it become more and more clear they were misleading and included identical, specific language across companies. As a result of these disclosures and the clout of these companies, we're finally beginning to see more transparency and better details about these programs for the first time since their inception.

They are legally compelled to comply and maintain their silence in regard to specifics of the program, but that does not comply them from ethical obligation. If for example Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Apple refused to provide this cooperation with the Intelligence Community, what do you think the government would do? Shut them down?

11.55am ET
Question:


MonaHol
17 June 2013 4:37pm
Ed Snowden, I thank you for your brave service to our country.

Some skepticism exists about certain of your claims, including this:

I, sitting at my desk, certainly had the authorities to wiretap anyone, from you, or your accountant, to a federal judge, to even the President if I had a personal email.

Do you stand by that, and if so, could you elaborate?

Answer:

Yes, I stand by it. US Persons do enjoy limited policy protections (and again, it's important to understand that policy protection is no protection - policy is a one-way ratchet that only loosens) and one very weak technical protection - a near-the-front-end filter at our ingestion points. The filter is constantly out of date, is set at what is euphemistically referred to as the "widest allowable aperture," and can be stripped out at any time. Even with the filter, US comms get ingested, and even more so as soon as they leave the border. Your protected communications shouldn't stop being protected communications just because of the IP they're tagged with.

More fundamentally, the "US Persons" protection in general is a distraction from the power and danger of this system. Suspicionless surveillance does not become okay simply because it's only victimizing 95% of the world instead of 100%. Our founders did not write that "We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all US Persons are created equal."

12.04pm ET
Question:


Guardian staff
Spencer Ackerman
17 June 2013 4:16pm
Edward, there is rampant speculation, outpacing facts, that you have or will provide classified US information to the Chinese or other governments in exchange for asylum. Have/will you?

Answer:

This is a predictable smear that I anticipated before going public, as the US media has a knee-jerk "RED CHINA!" reaction to anything involving HK or the PRC, and is intended to distract from the issue of US government misconduct. Ask yourself: if I were a Chinese spy, why wouldn't I have flown directly into Beijing? I could be living in a palace petting a phoenix by now.

12.10pm ET
Question:


Answer:

US officials say this every time there's a public discussion that could limit their authority. US officials also provide misleading or directly false assertions about the value of these programs, as they did just recently with the Zazi case, which court documents clearly show was not unveiled by PRISM.

Journalists should ask a specific question: since these programs began operation shortly after September 11th, how many terrorist attacks were prevented SOLELY by information derived from this suspicionless surveillance that could not be gained via any other source? Then ask how many individual communications were ingested to acheive that, and ask yourself if it was worth it. Bathtub falls and police officers kill more Americans than terrorism, yet we've been asked to sacrifice our most sacred rights for fear of falling victim to it.

Further, it's important to bear in mind I'm being called a traitor by men like former Vice President Dick Cheney. This is a man who gave us the warrantless wiretapping scheme as a kind of atrocity warm-up on the way to deceitfully engineering a conflict that has killed over 4,400 and maimed nearly 32,000 Americans, as well as leaving over 100,000 Iraqis dead. Being called a traitor by Dick Cheney is the highest honor you can give an American, and the more panicked talk we hear from people like him, Feinstein, and King, the better off we all are. If they had taught a class on how to be the kind of citizen Dick Cheney worries about, I would have finished high school.

Updated at 12.11pm ET
12.12pm ET
Question:


Mathius1
17 June 2013 2:54pm
Is encrypting my email any good at defeating the NSA survelielance? Id my data protected by standard encryption?

Answer:

Encryption works. Properly implemented strong crypto systems are one of the few things that you can rely on. Unfortunately, endpoint security is so terrifically weak that NSA can frequently find ways around it.

12.24pm ET
Question:


Answer:

Binney, Drake, Kiriakou, and Manning are all examples of how overly-harsh responses to public-interest whistle-blowing only escalate the scale, scope, and skill involved in future disclosures. Citizens with a conscience are not going to ignore wrong-doing simply because they'll be destroyed for it: the conscience forbids it. Instead, these draconian responses simply build better whistleblowers. If the Obama administration responds with an even harsher hand against me, they can be assured that they'll soon find themselves facing an equally harsh public response.

This disclosure provides Obama an opportunity to appeal for a return to sanity, constitutional policy, and the rule of law rather than men. He still has plenty of time to go down in history as the President who looked into the abyss and stepped back, rather than leaping forward into it. I would advise he personally call for a special committee to review these interception programs, repudiate the dangerous "State Secrets" privilege, and, upon preparing to leave office, begin a tradition for all Presidents forthwith to demonstrate their respect for the law by appointing a special investigator to review the policies of their years in office for any wrongdoing. There can be no faith in government if our highest offices are excused from scrutiny - they should be setting the example of transparency.

12.28pm ET
Question:


Ryan Latvaitis
17 June 2013 2:34pm
What would you say to others who are in a position to leak classified information that could improve public understanding of the intelligence apparatus of the USA and its effect on civil liberties?

What evidence do you have that refutes the assertion that the NSA is unable to listen to the content of telephone calls without an explicit and defined court order from FISC?

Answer:

This country is worth dying for.

12.34pm ET
Question:


AhBrightWings
17 June 2013 2:12pm
My question: given the enormity of what you are facing now in terms of repercussions, can you describe the exact moment when you knew you absolutely were going to do this, no matter the fallout, and what it now feels like to be living in a post-revelation world? Or was it a series of moments that culminated in action? I think it might help other people contemplating becoming whistleblowers if they knew what the ah-ha moment was like. Again, thanks for your courage and heroism.

Answer:

I imagine everyone's experience is different, but for me, there was no single moment. It was seeing a continuing litany of lies from senior officials to Congress - and therefore the American people - and the realization that that Congress, specifically the Gang of Eight, wholly supported the lies that compelled me to act. Seeing someone in the position of James Clapper - the Director of National Intelligence - baldly lying to the public without repercussion is the evidence of a subverted democracy. The consent of the governed is not consent if it is not informed.

12.37pm ET
Follow-up from the Guardian's Spencer Ackerman:

Regarding whether you have secretly given classified information to the Chinese government, some are saying you didn't answer clearly - can you give a flat no?

Answer:

No. I have had no contact with the Chinese government. Just like with the Guardian and the Washington Post, I only work with journalists.

12.41pm ET
Question:

So far are things going the way you thought they would regarding a public debate? – tikkamasala

Answer:

Initially I was very encouraged. Unfortunately, the mainstream media now seems far more interested in what I said when I was 17 or what my girlfriend looks like rather than, say, the largest program of suspicionless surveillance in human history.

12.43pm ET
Final question from Glenn Greenwald:

Anything else you'd like to add?
Answer:

Thanks to everyone for their support, and remember that just because you are not the target of a surveillance program does not make it okay. The US Person / foreigner distinction is not a reasonable substitute for individualized suspicion, and is only applied to improve support for the program. This is the precise reason that NSA provides Congress with a special immunity to its surveillance.

 

[Retired AF Guy]

It appears that some of the shine is starting to come off of Mr Snowden's pearly white armour. Here is an article written by Terry Glavin re-produced under the Fair Dealings Section of the Copyright Act:

Terry Glavin: No, we’re not living in ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’

Terry Glavin, Special to National Post | 13/06/17 12:16 PM ET

Of all the sideshows to the recent hysterics about the U.S. National Security Agency and its worldwide deep-state Eye of Sauron surveillance operation — which, it is now turning out, is not watching you or tapping your telephone or reading your emails, after all — the most amusing has got to be the sudden spike in enthusiasm for George Orwell’s classic dystopian parable, Nineteen Eighty-Four.

No sooner had the Washington Post and the Guardian (U.K.) rushed to reveal NSA “whistleblower” Edward Snowden’s deeply disturbing (and now embarrassingly dubious) allegations than copies of the book were seen launching themselves off bookstore shelves. Three distinct editions were skyrocketing up Amazon’s Movers and Shakers’ charts by last Tuesday. By Thursday it was everything Barnes and Noble could do to keep copies in stock.

This was only partly because President Barack Obama had found it necessary to declaim that Americans were in fact not living inside the novel’s frightening pages, and the famously demented cable television personality Glenn Beck had similarly invoked the novel’s bleak police-state, only contrariwise.

It’s mostly because any moderately literate person will immediately recognize the outlines of Orwell’s Big Brother apparatus in the chilling architecture of the NSA’s deep-state surveillance regime, at least as we’ve all heard it described over the past 11 days owing the exertions of the Guardian and WaPo. The question was put directly by CBC’s The Current last Friday — Are we living in 1984? — and was answered most capably by the American novelist Joyce Carol Oates: “Well, no, I don’t think so.”

A totalitarian regime like Oceania would not allow a CBC chat show to ask such questions out loud — that should be the most obvious difference, one would have thought. If the problem is a docile and unconcerned public, then maybe Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World is what you would want to be reading, Oates suggested. We’re inside the dark masterpiece of Nineteen Eighty-Four? Get real: “Our society is in a way an eccentric society. One can write anything. You can publish anything in the Internet.”

You certainly can, and just one thing you can publish on the Internet and also in the old-fashioned way is the spectacular unravelling of the NSA-PRISM “scoops” that the Guardian and the Washington Post captured everyone’s attention with in the first place.

PRISM is merely a computer system that allows the NSA to gather court-approved foreign-intelligence information
For a few days there almost everybody had been spooked into believing that Facebook, Google, Apple, Skype and several other Silicon Valley majors were allowing NSA spies to tap directly into their systems and wander around at will picking up whatever they liked. As it has turned out, PRISM is not the top-secret information-gathering operation we have been lately hearing about, any more than the purported blockbuster about a court order instructing Verizon to give the FBI a whack of its “telephony metadata” (a fancy term for a mountain of phone bills) means G-men are listening in on people’s phone calls.

PRISM is merely a computer system that allows the NSA to gather court-approved foreign-intelligence information from communications service providers, under the authority of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act as amended in 2008. It isn’t even “news.”

This brings us to a metaphor from Nineteen Eighty-Four that is notably inconvenient to the Wake Up Sheeple faction. It’s the “Memory Hole,” that system of orifices and tubes that carried documents and all else down to Oceania Airstrip One’s furnaces so that any shred of history found troublesome to Big Brother was incinerated and forever forgotten.

Here’s something awkward, up from the Memory Hole: “The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA Today.”

That isn’t an article USA Today published last week in some valiant effort to keep up with the Guardian and the Washington Post. It’s a USA Today article dated May 11, 2006.

So what is new in any of this?

One reason it’s hard to say is that it isn’t easy to describe perfectly lawful and sensible metadata aggregation without resort to euphemisms from our analog past. Noticing that, strictly speaking, the state’s computer-tracking of private communications data is merely what the Royal Mail has been doing since 1660 is true as far as it goes, but maybe not the most helpful metaphor.

The biggest problem is that from the get-go the journalism involved in all this has been mostly a shady collaboration between three dubious people.

The Guardian’s comically doctrinaire Glenn Greenwald is the Glenn Beck for people who fancy themselves too clever for Fox News. His friend Laura Poitras is a radical-chic activist and documentarist. Their so-called source, that “senior adviser to the Central Intelligence Agency,” has turned out to be the intensely paranoid 29-year-old high-school dropout Edward Snowden, who has further turned out to be an NSA security guard who was promoted to an IT job because of some “computer courses” he’d taken in community college.

Snowden, Poitras and Greenwald played the Guardian and WaPo off against one another, warning both newspapers in turn that they’d be scooped by the other if they didn’t run with Snowden’s claims
Poitras and Greenwald share places on a foundation that raises money for WikiLeaks, the information-vandalizing invention of the formerly globe-trotting celebrity techno-hipster Julian Assange, who has been holed up in the Ecuadorean embassy in London for a year now, hiding from rape charges in Sweden.

It has lately emerged that Snowden, Poitras and Greenwald played the Guardian and WaPo off against one another, warning both newspapers in turn that they’d be scooped by the other if they didn’t run with Snowden’s claims. While Poitras will say only “no comment” when asked for the specifics of this peculiar series of events, the NSA stories ended up appearing almost simultaneously in both newspapers.

Just one consequence for the Post’s rushed decision is that ever since, its editors have been busy deleting, scrubbing, correcting, backtracking, amending and clarifying its “scoop.” Watching the embarrassment unfold, Ed Bott, the highly respected technology writer and former editor of PC World, put it this way, in the trend-tracking technology zine ZDNet: “In short, one of the great journalistic institutions of the 20th Century is now engaged in outright click-baiting, following the same ‘publish first, fact-check later’ rules as its newer online competitors.”

As for journalistic integrity, it helps to know that Greenwald reinvented himself from litigation lawyer to libertarian pundit only in 2007 when he started writing a column for the online magazine Salon. It wasn’t until last year, that he got himself rebranded as a Guardian journalist, and that was mainly owing to his knack for reciting that newspaper’s most cherished pseudo-leftish imbecilities in ways that seem almost original.

The Guardian has walked back some of Greenwald’s NSA-PRISM mischief, but Greenwald is standing his ground. This has left the tech genius Mark Jaquith, a lead developer for the web publishing platform WordPress who calls the whole NSA-PRISM story a “yawn,” to conclude in an essay on his blog that the only way Snowden’s claims can be true is if everybody else is lying.

The Silicon Valley companies, the NSA, House Intelligence Committee chairman Mike Rogers, Senate Intelligence Committee chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, President Obama, the New York Times’ sources — everybody would have to be lying. “Everyone but Greenwald’s source would have to be lying,” Jaquith wrote.

For that to be true it would be something straight out of Orwell’s Ministry of Truth, and there is absolutely no reason to believe that it’s true, which means that from the beginning, this whole thing has been, to slightly misuse the term, utterly Orwellian.

Ottawa Citizen

Article Link

 

[Nemo888]

From South China Morning Post

WikiLeaks plane ‘ready’ to bring Snowden to Iceland
http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1265642/wikileaks-plane-ready-bring-snowden-iceland

A chartered private jet is ready to bring US intelligence leaker Edward Snowden to Iceland from Hong Kong, a businessman connected to whistleblowing website WikiLeaks said late on Thursday.

“Everything is ready on our side and the plane could take off tomorrow,” Icelandic businessman Olafur Sigurvinsson, head of WikiLeaks partner firm DataCell, told Channel2 television. ,.......

 

[a_majoor]

Restating why this is a particularly disturbing event. Reform would not only require reigning in the NSA and other intelligence agencies, but also the bureaucracies and massively pruning and rewriting the criminal code:

http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2013/06/no-one-is-innocent.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+marginalrevolution%2Ffeed+%28Marginal+Revolution%29

No One is Innocent

by Alex Tabarrok on June 21, 2013 at 7:22 am in History, Law, Political Science | Permalink

I broke the law yesterday and again today and I will probably break the law tomorrow. Don’t mistake me, I have done nothing wrong. I don’t even know what laws I have broken. Nevertheless, I am reasonably confident that I have broken some laws, rules, or regulations recently because its hard for anyone to live today without breaking the law. Doubt me? Have you ever thrown out some junk mail that came to your house but was addressed to someone else? That’s a violation of federal law punishable by up to 5 years in prison.

Harvey Silverglate argues that a typical American commits three felonies a day. I think that number is too high but it is easy to violate the law without intent or knowledge. Most crimes used to be based on the common law and ancient understandings of wrong (murder, assault, theft and so on) but today there are thousands of federal criminal laws that bear no relation to common law or common understanding. The WSJ illustrates:

    Last September (2011), retired race-car champion Bobby Unser told a congressional hearing about his 1996 misdemeanor conviction for accidentally driving a snowmobile onto protected federal land, violating the Wilderness Act, while lost in a snowstorm. Though the judge gave him only a $75 fine, the 77-year-old racing legend got a criminal record.

    Mr. Unser says he was charged after he went to authorities for help finding his abandoned snowmobile. “The criminal doesn’t usually call the police for help,” he says.

Or how about this:

    In 2009, Mr. Anderson loaned his son some tools to dig for arrowheads near a favorite campground of theirs. Unfortunately, they were on federal land….

    There is no evidence the Andersons intended to break the law, or even knew the law existed, according to court records and interviews. But the law, the Archaeological Resources Protection Act of 1979, doesn’t require criminal intent and makes it a felony punishable by up to two years in prison to attempt to take artifacts off federal land without a permit.

The Anderson’s didn’t even find any arrowheads but the attempt to find was punishable by imprisonment. Under statutes such as the Lacey Act one can even face criminal prosecution for violating the laws of another country. Ignorance of another  country’s laws is no excuse.

If someone tracked you for a year are you confident that they would find no evidence of a crime? Remember, under the common law, mens rea, criminal intent, was a standard requirement for criminal prosecution but today that is typically no longer the case especially under federal criminal law .

Faced with the evidence of an non-intentional crime, most prosecutors, of course, would use their discretion and not threaten imprisonment. Evidence and discretion, however, are precisely the point. Today, no one is innocent and thus our freedom is maintained only by the high cost of evidence and the prosecutor’s discretion.

One of the responses to the revelations about the mass spying on Americans by the NSA and other agencies is “I have nothing to hide. What me worry?” I tweeted in response “If you have nothing to hide, you live a boring life.” More fundamentally, the NSA spying machine has reduced the cost of evidence so that today our freedom–or our independence–is to a large extent at the discretion of those in control of the panopticon.

- See more at: http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2013/06/no-one-is-innocent.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+marginalrevolution%2Ffeed+%28Marginal+Revolution%29#sthash.YMKn87Uf.dpuf

 

[MarkOttawa]

Plus ça change:

NSA secrets revealed — in 1960
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/nsa-secrets-revealed--in-1960/2013/06/21/35e0f072-d509-11e2-a73e-826d299ff459_story.html

Mark
Ottawa

 

[Retired AF Guy]

Well its now official. Snowden charged with committing offences under the Espionage Act and for the theft of government property. Re-produced under the usual caveats of the Copyright Act.

Edward Snowden charged with espionage, theft in NSA surveillance case

Pete Yost, The Associated Press. Published Friday, June 21, 2013 11:09PM EDT

WASHINGTON -- The Justice Department has charged former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden with espionage and theft of government property in the NSA surveillance case.
Snowden, believed to be holed up in Hong Kong, has admitted providing information to the news media about two highly classified NSA surveillance programs.

A one-page criminal complaint unsealed Friday in federal court in Alexandria, Va., says Snowden engaged in unauthorized communication of national defence information and wilful communication of classified communications intelligence information. Both are charges under the Espionage Act. Snowden also is charged with theft of government property. All three crimes carry a maximum 10-year prison penalty.

The federal court in the Eastern District of Virginia where the complaint was filed is headquarters for Snowden's former employer, government contractor Booz Allen Hamilton.

The complaint is dated June 14, five days after Snowden's name first surfaced as the leaker of information about the two programs in which the NSA gathered telephone and Internet records to ferret out terror plots.

The complaint could become an integral part of a U.S. government effort to have Snowden extradited from Hong Kong, a process that could turn into a prolonged legal battle. Snowden could contest extradition on grounds of political persecution. In general, the extradition agreement between the U.S. and Hong Kong excepts political offences from the obligation to turn over a person.

It was unclear late Friday whether the U.S. had made an extradition request. Hong Kong had no immediate reaction to word of the charges against Snowden.

The Espionage Act arguably is a political offence. The Obama administration has now used the act in eight criminal cases in an unprecedented effort to stem leaks. In one of them, Army Pfc. Bradley Manning acknowledged he sent more than 700,000 battlefield reports, diplomatic cables and other materials to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks. His military trial is underway.

Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, welcomed the charges. "I've always thought this was a treasonous act," he said in a statement. "I hope Hong Kong's government will take him into custody and extradite him to the U.S."

Michael di Pretoro, a retired 30-year veteran with the FBI who served from 1990 to 1994 as the legal liaison officer at the American consulate in Hong Kong, said "relations between U.S. and Hong Kong law enforcement personnel are historically quite good."

"In my time, I felt the degree of co-operation was outstanding to the extent that I almost felt I was in an FBI field office," said di Pretoro.

The U.S. and Hong Kong co-operate on law enforcement matters and have a standing agreement on the surrender of fugitives. However, Snowden's appeal rights could drag out any extradition proceeding. The success or failure of any extradition proceeding depends on what the suspect is charged with under U.S. law and how it corresponds to Hong Kong law under the treaty. In order for Hong Kong officials to honour the extradition request, they have to have some applicable statute under their law that corresponds with a violation of U.S. law.

In Iceland, a business executive said Friday that a private plane was on standby to transport Snowden from Hong Kong to Iceland, although Iceland's government says it has not received an asylum request from Snowden. Business executive Olafur Vignir Sigurvinsson said he has been in contact with someone representing Snowden and has not spoken to the American himself. Private donations are being collected to pay for the flight, he said.

"There are a number of people that are interested in freedom of speech and recognize the importance of knowing who is spying on us," Sigurvinsson said. "We are people that care about privacy."
Disclosure of the criminal complaint came as President Barack Obama held his first meeting with a privacy and civil liberties board as his intelligence chief sought ways to help Americans understand more about sweeping government surveillance efforts exposed by Snowden.

The five members of the little-known Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board met with Obama for an hour in the White House Situation Room, questioning the president on the two NSA programs that have stoked controversy.

One program collects billions of U.S. phone records. The second gathers audio, video, email, photographic and Internet search usage of foreign nationals overseas, and probably some Americans in the process, who use major providers such as Microsoft, Google, Apple, and Yahoo.

Article Link

 

[Nemo888]

Should the US throw the book at him and lock him up for 20 years for saying things everyone already knew? Prism is the bargain basement program that can't even cut encryption in real time. It's not designed for catching terrorists. It's more for dissidents and stupid criminals. Sources that were often used by Arab Spring type groups of unhappy citizens. It is so cheap conventional law enforcement are probably drooling over it. PRISM is a backdoor program. Never a good idea to leave the backdoor open.

I would make an example of him. Black list him and if all he released was the poorly done death by PowerPoint presentation 12 to 24 months. 20 years kind of proves him right. He wanted to start debate. Let's have one and then forget about him.

 

[cupper]

Whether everyone knew about it or not is not relevant.

He violated several laws by releasing the information to people who were not authorized to have access to it.

The reason he did it is not relevant either.


For an interview with Shane Harris, author of "The Watchers" and columnist for Foreign Policy Magazine that gives an excellent overview of the history of "snooping programs" within the intelligence communities, check out the link below.

http://www.npr.org/2013/06/19/192770397/the-watchers-have-had-their-eyes-on-us-for-years

The revelations about secret National Security Agency programs, leaked by Edward Snowden earlier this month, have stirred great controversy, but this type of surveillance is not entirely new, according to journalist Shane Harris.

In his 2010 book, The Watchers: The Rise of America's Surveillance State, Harris traced the evolution of these surveillance programs in the U.S.

He says that as the digital age advanced, the NSA reached a crossroads and realized that analog tactics like phone tapping were quickly becoming obsolete: There was a whole new world of digital information to be accessed.

"They're realizing," says Harris, "if we can get into this 'digital network' ... [that] they would effectively be able to monitor global communications."

Because these communications were traveling through lines inside the United States, the U.S. was the central switching station for the global communications grid. The laws at the time, however, forbade much of that kind of intelligence gathering in the United States.

"9/11 changed all that," Harris tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross.

Harris is a reporter at Foreign Policy. He's also written about intelligence, surveillance and cybersecurity for the Washingtonian and National Journal.

Interview Highlights

On how the dawn of the digital era created a crisis for surveillance agencies

"The law changed such that in the future, whenever the companies built and installed these digital network systems for communications, they too had to be built in a way that law enforcement could execute a warrant quickly and easily ...

"So they basically had to install and build in an architecture that allows for digital surveillance at a high volume ... so essentially what you have now is a phone system that can be easily tapped and quickly tapped ... and there was a real debate about ... whether this would give the government even more intrusive access into communications because you can just swallow up so many more kinds of digital communication at once rather than tapping one phone line at a time."

On John Poindexter's Total Information Awareness (TIA) program of 2002

"His goal was to create a system that could access all of the digital information anywhere in real time — everything from phone calls and emails, text messages, rental car reservations, credit card transactions, prescription records.

"And the idea behind TIA was it would go out and look through this huge ... universe of data, and look for patterns of activity or patterns of transactions that analysts had predetermined were associated with terrorist attacks.

"Any movement that you make today leaves a digital signature, a digital trail. Investigators, after a terrorist attack has occurred, go back and use all of those digital signatures and trails to figure out who these people were and how they did the plot. Why can't we look at it before the event occurs and try to predict with some degree of certainty where we should then be focusing our attention and which people we should be closely monitoring? But to do that you had to collect all of the information available everywhere."

On why TIA (Total Information Awareness) was shut down

"What he was proposing at the time — and this is before we realized what had been going on in secret at the NSA, sounded Orwellian. It sounded almost absurd. The idea that you would want to go out and give the government access to every single person's record and let them root through it, really seemed just a step too far, even in the one or two years after 9/11 when the country was still very much on edge and we were fighting a war in Afghanistan; it just seemed like it was just excessive.

"The name creeped people out. It was called 'Total Information Awareness.' It had this logo of the pyramid from the great seal of the United States with this floating eye on it casing a beam over the globe; it looked very menacing."

On Snowden working for a private contractor

"What I'm surprised by is how it is that any employee at his level, whether a contractor or not, would have access to some of the information that he had access to. The NSA prides itself on being one of the most secure agencies in government. This is the agency, after all, that specializes in cryptology. They are code-makers and code-breakers. So how is it that these incredibly sensitive documents — particularly the court order related to metadata — was just accessible to anyone and to remove with a thumb drive, regardless of whether they were a contractor or not?"

On the generational value gap

"There is a cultural collision, a clash that's going on here with these organizations that are built on compartmentalization and secrecy and deceit to a certain degree, needing the expertise of someone like Ed Snowden who grew up in the digital age, who grew up using computers as if they were regular household items.

"That's the workforce that the NSA has to pull from. The value systems may not be compatible, however. It strikes me that, you know, there are a lot of people, though, who work for the NSA who probably do feel the way that Snowden did, who believe in this idea of freedom of information. ... But you make a commitment when you go to work for these agencies, to keep the secrets and to almost kind of push your own beliefs to the side.

"It used to be, perhaps, that commitment to that secrecy and that code of ethic was more likely to trump anyone's personal beliefs. But the more that you have these people coming in who do see things differently, I think it does increase the likelihood that you're going to have leaks like this in the future. At the same time, the NSA can't afford to say, 'We won't hire anybody under the age of 35,' or, 'We won't hire anybody who has expressed an interest in digital privacy rights.' "

 

[Edward Campbell]

Well its now official. Snowden charged with committing offences under the Espionage Act and for the theft of government property. Re-produced under the usual caveats of the Copyright Act.


Article Link

And now will come the legal business of extraditing (or attempting to extradite) him from Hong Kong. It is not as straight forward as it appears; although HK has an extradition treaty with the USA there is still a legal process to be followed and there are potential traps in it.

 

[Nemo888]

The reason he did it is not relevant either.

Are you sure? There is a huge difference. Jeffrey Paul Delisle only got 20 years for selling secrets to the Russians, deliberately endangering lives and destroying our security in the process. Snowden also broke the law. But giving him the same punishment and adding 10 years more to it is not justice. By that logic self defense is murder because you ended up killing someone. Motivation is always important. Especially when it comes to sentencing. Using the Espionage Act of 1917 in unintended ways not even Cheney or Nixon thought were moral is  bit sick. Obviously Obama is not trustworthy and the Executive Branch has accumulated way too much power.

 

[tomahawk6]

Snowden thought his judgement was better than his bosses.He signed a contract not to reveal secrets for ANY reason.He could have gone the official whistle blower route but he revealed the secrets to he media and went to Hong Kong.

 

[Remius]

While I agree with Nemo that his motivations are indeed relevant (and I'm starting to think this guy is liking the attention) there is also the need to send a clear message in the type of punishment.  You can't compare Delisle with Snowden and the sentence he received.  While similar they are two different countries and two different legal systems.

If Bradley Manning had already received his sentence (life or worse) do you think that this guy snowden wouldn't have thought this out a bit more?  By giving him a light sentence you are practically giving anyone permission to go to the media, interweb or wherever under whatever sense of duty they have.  No, this guy needs the book thrown at him to send a message.

 

[devil39]

While I agree with Nemo that his motivations are indeed relevant (and I'm starting to think this guy is liking the attention) there is also the need to send a clear message in the type of punishment.  You can't compare Delisle with Snowden and the sentence he received.  While similar they are two different countries and two different legal systems.

If Bradley Manning had already received his sentence (life or worse) do you think that this guy snowden wouldn't have thought this out a bit more?  By giving him a light sentence you are practically giving anyone permission to go to the media, interweb or wherever under whatever sense of duty they have.  No, this guy needs the book thrown at him to send a message.

Yup.  When you are trusted under oath with access to your countries secrets, and you knowingly and willingly violate that oath.....you should get the maximum punishment available.  It will be found out at trial whether his actions were acceptable.

 

[Edward Campbell]

CBC Radio News is reporting that:

    1. Snowden has left Hong Kong, bound for Moscow - the US applied for a "hold" order, to prevent this, but the legalities were not all in place so Snowden was allowed to leave, legally; and

    2. Reports suggest that Moscow is only a stopover and his final interim destination is Havana.

By the way, I agree 100% with devil39: "When you are trusted under oath with access to your countries secrets, and you knowingly and willingly violate that oath.....you should get the maximum punishment available."

There is nothing inherently wrong with contractors handling very, very highly classified information - assuming they have been fully, positively vetted. There are, in every organization with which I am familiar, mechanisms for reporting concerns about the legality of morality of orders and directions; they are, often, slow and cumbersome, but they exist.

We always have choices and there are, always, consequences. I would have had some respect for Mr Snowden had he gone to HK to make his revelations and then hopped on a plane back to the USA to accept the consequences of his decision to "blow the whistle."


Edit: changed "final" to "interim" based on breaking news reports

 

[cupper]

Reports are coming out that Havana is only a stop over to either Caracas, Venezuela or Quito, Ecuador.

He's receiving advice from WikiLeaks legal representatives, including the same lawyer representing Julian Assange.

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/06/edward-snowden-nsa-hong-kong-93195.html?hp=f2

WikiLeaks said it was providing legal help to Snowden at his request and that he was being escorted by diplomats and legal advisors from the group. Its founder, Julian Assange, who has spent a year inside the Ecuadorean Embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden to face questioning about sex crime allegations, told the Sydney Morning Herald that his organization is in a position to help because it has expertise in international asylum and extradition law.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/snowden-departs-hong-kong-for-a-third-country-government-says/2013/06/23/08e9eff2-dbde-11e2-a9f2-42ee3912ae0e_story.html?hpid=z1

Snowden’s final destination was unclear. Russian news agency Interfax and Radio Ekho Moskvy reported that Snowden was booked on a flight to Cuba and then from Havana to Caracas, Venezuela. The next Aeroflot flight to Havana leaves Monday. Ecuador and Iceland have also been mentioned as possibilities.

A black BMW with diplomatic license plates assigned to the Ecuadorian Embassy was seen parked at Sheremetyevo, but it was unclear who might have been in the car.

The Post also provides a detailed travel itinerary on flights to get from Moscow to either Caracas or Quito.  :

 

[cupper]

Further to above, Senator Chuck Schumer accuses Vladimir Putin of having knowledge of the upcoming movements of Snowden and gave approval for Snowden to transit through Russia.

Schumer slams Putin over Snowden

http://www.politico.com/blogs/politico-live/2013/06/schumer-slams-russia-over-snowden-166815.html?hp=l1

Sen. Chuck Schumer on Sunday blasted Russian President Vladimir Putin, accusing him of "sticking a finger" in the eye of the U.S. by allowing Edward Snowden to land in Moscow.

"The bottom line is very simple: allies are supposed to treat each other in decent ways and Putin always seems almost eager to put a finger in the eye of the United States, whether it is Syria, Iran and now of course with Snowden," Schumer (D-N.Y.) said on CNN's "State of the Union." "That's not how allies should treat each other and I think it will have serious consequences for the United States-Russia relationship."

Schumer's comments came amid reports that Snowden, who took responsibility for leaking NSA secrets, had left Hong Kong and was allowed to land in Russia despite American wishes that he be turned over to U.S. law enforcement. Schumer said Putin likely was aware of Snowden's moves and slammed him for "aiding and abetting" Snowden.

 

[Journeyman]

Sen. Chuck Schumer on Sunday blasted Russian President Vladimir Putin, accusing him of "sticking a finger" in the eye of the U.S.....

I suspect that Putin responded with a  :boring: