Every Time The NSA Is Asked About Its Ability To Spy On Everyone... It Answers About Its Authority
from the nsa-beats-terrorism-by-forbidding-unauthorized-terrorist-activity! dept
One of the more surprising/awful aspects of the NSA leaks is just how much of what it does is perfectly legal. As we've discussed before, the NSA (and other agencies) have basically explored the outer limits of any laws pertaining to domestic and foreign surveillance, and once they've hit those walls, they've been granted exceptions, expansions and secret interpretations that permit broad, non-targeted surveillance programs to remain strictly legal.
NSA reps currently on the receiving end of hearings and committee inquiries have repeatedly stressed this point: it's all completely legal and subject to oversight. Glossed over is the fact that the legality can rarely be challenged because the spied-upon are rarely granted standing. Also routinely glossed over is the fact that Congress has been lied to repeatedly about the details and extent of these programs.
Slate's Ryan Gallagher has a post taking Michael Hayden, former director of the NSA and CIA, to task for statements he made supporting X-KEYSCORE shortly after the Guardian released the leaked documents.
Following the disclosures, Hayden appeared on CNN to discuss the agency’s surveillance programs. The general, who directed the NSA from 1999 through 2005, was remarkably candid in his responses to Erin Burnett’s questions about the Guardian’s XKEYSCORE report. Was there any truth to claims that the NSA is sifting through millions of browsing histories and able to collect virtually everything users do on the Internet? “Yeah,” Hayden said. “And it's really good news.”Hayden's enthusiasm for expanded haystack construction notwithstanding, there's more to this interview than just the former boss applauding the work of his successors. The interview, conducted by Erin Burnett of CNN, presses a question NSA supporters like Hayden (and Gen. Alexander) have been dodging since day one. Namely: does the NSA have the ability to spy on Americans' phone calls, emails and internet usage in real time?
Not only that, Hayden went further. He revealed that the XKEYSCORE was “a tool that's been developed over the years, and lord knows we were trying to develop similar tools when I was at the National Security Agency.” The XKEYSCORE system, Hayden said, allows analysts to enter a “straight-forward question” into a computer and sift through the “oceans of data” that have been collected as part of foreign intelligence gathering efforts.
The interview runs just over 8 minutes, but by the end of it you'll be sick of a couple of phrases Hayden repeats ad absurdum -- "lawfully collected" and "authority."
Before getting to the X-KEYSCORE questions, Burnett runs a clip of Gen. Alexander being lobbed softballs by Sen. Mike Rogers back on June 18th. Note Alexander's verbal head fake that makes it appear he has actually answered what was asked.
Rogers: Does the NSA have the ability to listen to American's phone calls and read their emails?That wasn't what was asked. Without a doubt, the agency does not have the authority to perform these acts. But what was asked was if the agency had the ability, whether or not it was being utilized.
Alexander: No. We do not have that authority.
When Burnett presses Hayden on this point, he provides the same dodge. She asks if the NSA has the ability to collect this kind of data and Hayden responds by saying the NSA can utilize this data, but only after it's been lawfully collected.
When she pushes further, asking what's stopping the NSA from "collecting whatever the heck you want on whoever the heck you want," Hayden goes right back to claiming NSA analysts are only authorized to query the data that's been already lawfully collected. The question about ability continues to be danced around.
Hayden even reiterates Alexander's pseudo-answer:
"General Alexander made it clear: we don't have the authorization to do that."Then he goes further, claiming that an order to view real-time data would be rejected by the analyst, simply because the request is unlawful. Hayden cannot possibly believe this statement is true. Sure, some analysts might reject legally-dubious requests from superiors but there is no way this is true across the board.
Hayden's continual reference to "lawfully collected" and "authorization" (along with the usual mentions of "oversight" and "checks and balances") is nothing short of ridiculous. It's as if he wants everyone to believe that because analysts aren't "authorized" to perform certain actions, they simply won't perform them. In Hayden's bizarrely credulous narrative, laws prevent lawbreaking.
Over and over again, he stresses the point that the data has been "lawfully collected" and that the NSA is only "authorized" to perform certain actions with the collected data. His ultra-simplistic responses are almost laughable. Of course an analyst wouldn't perform real-time data monitoring! It's not permitted!
If Hayden's narrative holds true, then we need to be asking ourselves why criminal activity of any kind occurs. After all, the laws are in place and people who know what's illegal and what isn't simply won't perform illegal activities. The alternative is to assume Hayden believes intelligence agency employees are sinless wonders above reproach, who have never abused their position or power. But nothing about the agency's past bears that out.
NSA officials have repeatedly lied to Congress. Rather than simply claim something is classified or can't be discussed publicly, they dance around straightforward questions, offering up "least untruthful" answers.
NSA analysts have abused their power. Multiple times. The agency has illegally spied on journalists, broken wiretapping laws, viewed President Clinton's emails and recorded calls from American soldiers back to America, passing around tapes of ones containing "phone sex" or "pillow talk." That's just a few instances that we KNOW about. To pretend the abuse is limited to the events revealed by whistleblowers is the height of condescension. To make the assertion that NSA analysts will only act within the limits of laws (not that much is limited) is downright insulting.
Sure, Hayden may be projecting an idealized version of the agency solely for the purpose of answering these questions, but the continual dodging of the "ability" query simply raises more questions. Nothing about this Q&A inspires trust, considering it relies on meaningless terms like "lawful," "oversight" and "collected," the latter term seemingly completely resistant to definition.
Hayden's mantra of "We don't because we're not authorized" veers into self-parody by the end of the interview, presenting the former NSA head as an automaton among
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Filed Under: ability, authority, keith alexander, legality, michael hayden, nsa, nsa surveillance
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It's like saying when asked did you murder this person. And you did but you answer this way.
No (with nothing else) means one thing and with a qualifier...
No, I committed justifiable homicide.
Means a completely different thing.
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Re:
So by that logic I agreed with you?
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NSA spokespersons
Their lips are moving.
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Much Ado about nothing
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Hayden doesn't want analysts using moral judgement
I've never heard a more inconsistent spokesman. This is the same Hayden who recently criticized Snowden with these words:
What kind of sense of moral superiority does it take, to feel like your moral judgment trumps the moral judgment of not one but two Presidents, both houses of Congress, and bipartisan majorities, the American court system, and 35,000 of your coworkers at the NSA?
Which is it, Hayden? Should analysts be making calls about the legality of requests, or should they blindly trust the judgment of others?
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Re: Hayden doesn't want analysts using moral judgement
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Re: Hayden doesn't want analysts using moral judgement
Sure does sound like bandwagon fallacy from a man in office.
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I don't know what is scarier, that these guys think people are stupid enough to actually believe this nonsense, or that a fair amount of people really are this stupid.
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Just once...
NSA rep:'...we absolutely do not have the authority to do that.'
Interviewer: 'That's nice, but I asked about your ability to do that, not your authority. As you employ human beings, with all that entails, 'authority' only matters until one of them decides to break the rules, for whatever reason, an action that has happened before, and will happen as long as the ability to do so exists. So I ask you again, do you have the ability to do so?'
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Re: Just once...
But, mainstream press will only go so far in pushing for a non-dodge answer before giving up and moving on, essentially letting them off the hook. Most everyone watching the interview are left with an incomplete and oftentimes incorrect picture of what is going on unless they were paying very close attention to the dodge answer that took place (ie., the difference between ability and authority).
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Real time loop hole
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Re: Real time loop hole
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What happens to all that data if the Supreme Court should rule that what NSA did was un-Constitutional?
If there were cases relying on this un-Constitutional data are they now null and void?
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It should be destroyed, but we can't trust that will happen w/o it being documented by trusted IT (since they are knowledgeable to understand what's being done) people watching to make sure.
Yes, anything that relied on something that it Unconstitutional is null & void. If a terrorist was locked up, & something that was obtained Unconstitutionally was the only proof, he could go free.
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relied on something that is* Unconstitutional
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The only thing I need to assume is that dodging questions indicated a lie by ommission.
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The more they talk...
I wonder if there's any data that supports the number of times an analyst has rejected a request like this. I'd love to know what would happen to an analyst who exercises his moral judgement and refuses. Would the person making the unlawful request just drop the request? Or would they simply drop the analyst?
/rhetorical question - we already know he's full of shit
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http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057012/quotes
President Merkin Muffley: General Turgidson, I find this very difficult to understand. I was under the impression that I was the only one in authority to order the use of nuclear weapons.
General "Buck" Turgidson: That's right, sir, you are the only person authorized to do so. And although I, uh, hate to judge before all the facts are in, it's beginning to look like, uh, General Ripper exceeded his authority.
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They have the authority
Look at what happens when you stand up to the "authority".
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Understand what you are asking the NSA and their answers won't confuse you. If they have a program to do it, you can make one in your basement with some friends that can stop it.
OPEN. YOUR. EYES.
NOT. YOUR. MOUTH.
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Sadly by the time enough is known about these days for the movie dramatisation, Jack (and probably the rest of us) will have left this flawed existence and moved on.
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Asshat keeps dropping words
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We need to quit saying it is legal. Granting an exception does not make an action legal.
If a police officer sees me jaywalking and decides not to charge me, it does not make my jaywalk legal, it just means I am being let away with it.
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Infra Red Switches
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Statement from HPSCI Chairman Mike Rogers – Reax to NYT Article by Charlie Savage
“The House Intelligence Committee is fully informed of the NSA’s collections programs and through intensive oversight ensures that all of its programs are conducted consistent with the law. The article portrays the program in an inaccurate light and is very misleading in its description as to how these programs operate.”
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Recording Future
I can say that this public concept showed me that there are more serious government spy technology on the Internet.
If such technologies as "recorded future" available for public beta testing, what the government is developing a technology in secret bunkers?
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