NSA Boss & Defenders Insist NSA Can't Abuse Surveillance Systems; Forgets To Mention It Already Has
from the just-saying dept
As NSA boss Keith Alexander was in Vegas to present at the Black Hat conference this week, much of the attention has been paid to the fact that he was heckled by audience members, though others in attendance said that the audience was "mostly supportive" of Alexander's statements. Either way, I'd like to focus in on a key point that he made, when he claimed that NSA analysts wouldn't abuse their surveillance powers, because they're audited and trained not to break the rules:“The assumption is our people are just out there wheeling and dealing. Nothing could be further from the truth. We have tremendous oversight over these programmes. We can audit the actions of our people 100%, and we do that,” he said.Meanwhile, Rep. Mike Rogers, who really doesn't know when to give up, went out on Twitter to "defend" the leaks about XKeyscore, insisting that they're magically immune from abuse because of "legal constraints, comprehensive training and layers of oversight built into all NSA programs."
[....] Should anyone in the NSA try to circumvent that, in defiance of policy, they would be held accountable, he said: “There is 100% audibility.” Only 35 NSA analysts had the authority to query a database of US phone records, he said.
You see, that sounds great... except for the fact that we already know that they have abused those powers. Back in 2009, it was revealed that NSA analysts viewed former President Bill Clinton's emails:
An anonymous former intelligence analyst tells reporters James Risen and Eric Lichtblau that during much of the Bush years, the NSA “tolerated significant collection and examination of domestic e-mail messages without warrants.” Reportedly, one of the accessed domestic e-mail accounts belonged to former President Bill Clinton.This same report gets to the supposed "training" that Alexander insists helps to prevent abuse:
The former analyst added that his instructors had warned against committing any abuses, telling his class that another analyst had been investigated because he had improperly accessed the personal e-mail of former President Bill Clinton.I can just imagine sitting in that "training" in which the NSA says don't look at people's emails, because someone once looked at Bill Clinton's emails. That seems more like daring them to spy on emails. It's telling them "holy shit, you can look at famous and powerful people's emails." And, of course, that's not the only story of abuse. A year earlier, it was reported that NSA linguists listened in on phone sex calls between Americans living abroad.
Adrienne Kinne, a former U.S. Army Reserves Arab linguist, told ABC News the NSA was listening to the phone calls of U.S. military officers, journalists and aid workers overseas who were talking about "personal, private things with Americans who are not in any way, shape or form associated with anything to do with terrorism."So, forgive us for being skeptical when Alexander and Rogers insist that abuse is basically impossible because of "oversight" and "training." We've already seen that abuse occur. As far as I know, the NSA still hires analysts from the human race, and with that comes people who are given great responsibility -- and the ability to give in to temptation, such as scouring a former President's emails. To claim that there isn't any abuse just isn't credible.
David Murfee Faulk, a former U.S. Navy Arab linguist, said in the news report that he and his colleagues were listening to the conversations of military officers in Iraq who were talking with their spouses or girlfriends in the United States.
According to Faulk, they would often share the contents of some of the more salacious calls stored on their computers, listening to what he called "phone sex" and "pillow talk."
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: abuse, keith alexander, mike rogers, nsa, nsa surveillance, privacy
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
TD Update Request
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Was Snowden the 36th? ...and you claim to have 100% oversight? Uh-huh. How's that working out for you?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
a beautiful day, hey neighbor,
if you're online
your data is mine"
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHIJsCxRZFQ
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
Shame on Misrepresentative Mike Rogers for sharing the same name as Mister Rogers, the only famous person who really cared about "the children" 1000%.
Pity we don't have any politicians like that.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
One recalls the FBI and their NSLs. Which has been shown over and over to have been abused. Alexander is not a creditable source, working inside the NSA and bound by the non-disclosure of confidentiality and security agreements. What I am hearing here is the same BS that comes out every time one of them opens their mouth to defend the current policies. Mainly it boils down to being too much trouble to have to go to a judge and get the necessary permissions to actually be legal in the sense of obeying the Constitution. The whole thing is a scam to get around the intent and purpose of the law.
Every time one of these court cases comes up against just what they are doing it is a mad scramble between the executive branch and security branches to claim either no standing or national security interests. It's been done enough we all get the picture of why those excuses are being used. It's purpose is to prevent anyone from knowing how bad they are breaking the law. Each revealing that comes out just makes them look worse because those revealings are cut from lies patched together to try and make it appear better than it is.
If there was ever a scandal, you are staring at it.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Without proof, there is no way to accept their posit of NSA employee = infallible. This posit coming from a person already caught lieing is absurd. Training and oversight are NOT acceptable as a critical layer of defense against abuse either. He knows 'defense in depth' concepts, and it is mockery that he suggests oversight (and internal oversight at that!) is adequate. It is far to simple and a human tendancy to look away from what they consider minor wrongs because 'we all do it'.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
And then there is this..
How did the "Joint Terrorism Task Force" (sic) get this data?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: And then there is this..
Via the Atlantic Wire article:
If they were really doing this about 100 times a week, then wouldn't we have heard about it before now?
I don't think it's worth placing too much stock in this story. There's not a big downside to some healthy skepticism here: If they really are doing this about 100 times a week, then there will be more stories coming along to corroborate this one.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: And then there is this..
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Bunch of POS's who spy on us and want to turn our Nation into a Police State.No Respect at all for our Great Constitution.
Glad Russia took in Snowden as well.Hope that wipes some krap into your spying corrupt Arses.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Riiiiggghhhht...
Within 30 days, half my training class had been fired for doing exactly what they were warned not to do.
So how exactly does this work for the NSA again?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Riiiiggghhhht...
By doing this they were able to weed out all the "untrustworthy" employees [those who accessed the accounts] because they could potentially end up as a liability for AOL if they became full reps for the company, since the probability of them eventually stalking their favorite celebrities email account, or ending up as an inside source for all the gossip rags and paparazzi would be much higher because they accessed the accounts even after being explicitly warned not to do so.
Quite a creative way to evaluate the reliability of someone. Hung out the privacy of the celebrities through their email accounts as bait, but considering the chanc of a potentially company-destroying scandal if emails from private AOL accounts (celeb or otherwise) started getting leaked to the "press", in theory the tradeoff was worth it.
Didn't help AOHELL in the long run though, but there were other factors involved there...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
here is an immutable law of human nature:
i don't care where it is, i don't care who it is, ANY secret institution WILL BE CORRUPTED, sooner or later, probably sooner...
that goes DOUBLE for agencies *intended* to be secret, and quadruple for gummint institutions NOT amenable to virtually ANY effective oversight...
art guerrilla
aka ann archy
eof
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
If their lips are moving, they're LYING!
They no longer have any credibility.
If their lips are moving, they're LYING!
They have devastated our global image.
If their lips are moving, they're LYING!
They have criminally destroyed our Democracy.
If their lips are moving, they're LYING!
They have done enough damage to the United States and "We the People" need to restore our Constitution (and Privacy) by any & every means possible.
REMEMBER:
If their lips are moving, they're LYING!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
So they had an audit trail of everything Snowden had done and still he got out of the country, spoke to reporters, and published the information before they knew they had a breach?
Fabulous auditing guys...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
when we get rid of this system...will our budget problems fix?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Payback
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: email search
[ link to this | view in chronology ]