NSA Admits: Okay, Okay, There Have Been A Bunch Of Intentional Abuses, Including Spying On Love Interests
from the and-we're-just-now-telling-congress dept
So, this week, we wrote about the NSA quietly admitting that there had been intentional abuses of its surveillance infrastructure, despite earlier claims by NSA boss Keith Alexander and various folks in Congress that there had been absolutely no "intentional" abuses. Late on Friday (of course) the NSA finally put out an official statement admitting to an average of one intentional abuser per year over the past ten years. The AP is reporting that at least one of the abuses involved an NSA employee spying on a former spouse. Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal suggests that spying on love interests happens somewhat more often:The practice isn’t frequent — one official estimated a handful of cases in the last decade — but it’s common enough to garner its own spycraft label: LOVEINT.A handful is still significantly more than once. And it's a lot more than the "zero" times we'd been told about repeatedly by defenders of the program.
While the NSA says it takes these abuses seriously, there's no indication that the analyst was fired.
Much more troubling is that it appears that the NSA only told its oversight committee in the Senate about all of this a few days ago:
The Senate Intelligence Committee was briefed this week on the willful violations by the NSA's inspector general's office, as first reported by Bloomberg.Of course, this is the same Dianne Feinstein who, exactly a week ago, said the following:
"The committee has learned that in isolated cases over the past decade, a very small number of NSA personnel have violated NSA procedures — in roughly one case per year," Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who chairs the committee, said in a statement Friday.
As I have said previously, the committee has never identified an instance in which the NSA has intentionally abused its authority to conduct surveillance for inappropriate purposes.Yeah. Because apparently the NSA chose not to tell the committee until a few days later, despite it happening for years.
And, of course, they release this all on a Friday night, hoping that it'll avoid the news cycle...
In the meantime, the NSA just made Senator Feinstein look like a complete fool. She's been its strongest defender in Congress for years, and has stood up for it time and time again, despite all of this questionable activity. Then, last week, it lets her tell lies about it without telling her beforehand that there had been such abuses. At this point, it's abundantly clear that Feinstein's "oversight" of the NSA is a joke. She's either incompetent or lying. Either way, it appears that the NSA is running circles around her, and isn't subject to any real Congressional oversight. At some point, you'd think that maybe she'd stop defending it and actually start doing her job when it comes to oversight. You'd think the fact that it let her make a complete fool of herself by claiming there had been no intentional abuses should make Feinstein realize that the NSA situation is out of control. But, tragically, this seems unlikely. Even her statement seems to want to minimize the seriousness of the fact that she -- the person in charge of oversight -- was completely kept in the dark about very serious intentional abuses. Senator Feinstein just got hung out to dry by the NSA. You'd think she'd stop going to bat for it and its lies.
Either way, we've now gone from General Keith Alexander and Feinstein claiming "no abuses," to them saying no "intentional" abuses, to this latest admission of plenty of intentional abuses, including spying on lovers. Perhaps, instead of lying, it's time for the NSA to come clean and to get some real oversight.
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Filed Under: abuses, dianne feinstein, intentional abuses, keith alexander, lying, nsa, nsa surveillance, violations
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Had to tweet this at her...
So, Senator, what is your response to all of this?
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Re: Had to tweet this at her...
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Re: Re: Had to tweet this at her...
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Re: Re: Re: Had to tweet this at her...
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Re: Had to tweet this at her...
Now who did they had over all that private information and what did they do with it.
Another NSA deceit, where did all that information go, who got it and what did they do with it. What other three letter agencies are incolved.
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Re: Had to tweet this at her...
I'm laughing all the way to the bank.
http://www.indypendent.org/2013/07/16/nsa-follows-you-we-follow-money
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Re: Re: Had to tweet this at her...
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Let her keep it up, every time she carries the NSA's water she ends up all wet.
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Re:
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Re: Re:
Wow.
That's pretty harsh, dude. You really think that DiFi is working with the NSA? C'mon… DiFi? Really? Wow.
DiFi working with the NSA. The Senator from California. Working with the NSA. Can you believe it?
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How many times do they get to lie before we stop listening?
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Re:
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Doing the job
At some point, you'd think that maybe voters would stop voting for this and actually start doing their job when it comes to elections.
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Re: Doing the job
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Re: Doing the job
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Re: Re: Doing the job
Well then, maybe it's a good thing the NSA is spying the fuck all over those dirty enemies!
;-)
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Re: Re: Doing the job
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Re: Doing the job
And don't pretend there is a 3rd choice.
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Re: Re: Doing the job
That's at least 75% of the problem right now, and why we don't vote these idiots out of office. Because people like you still think there's only an "us or them" choice to make. Our 'two party system' hasn't really worked for us since Kennedy was shot, or even before that. But we still forget that WE CAST THE VOTES! WE IMPACT POLICY! All to the extent that we take action to do so.
When idiots like you stop thinking the choice is between bad and worse and there's nothing we can do about it, and start looking for GOOD CANDIDATES outside the giftboxes that, let's face it, the huge corporations that are the DNC and RNC place neatly in the middle of your favorite TV show with messages that have been field tested to make you like them...Maybe, just maybe then we'll get some meaningful change. But honestly, for the sake humanity, progress, and all things good, if you just want to spout off about how you're too weak and ignorant to make an effort at improving the world, just keep it to yourself. Because those of us that do want things to get better don't need you gunking up the gears of change.
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Re: Re: Re: Doing the job
Until we start voting for people who are the best candidate even when there is little chance of them winning, we will be stuck with this crap. You have to view it like planting an acorn, you may not live to build a tree-house in the tree but your grand children will love you for your foresight.
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Re: Re: Re: Doing the job
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Re: Re: Doing the job
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Re: Doing the job
You just can't expect people do to do their jobs, not in 2013.
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Re: Doing the job
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Re: Doing the job
Impossible to do when the system has been corrupted.
Money is what counts, and the average voter doesn't have the financial means to influence government or policy. That's where A.L.E.C. comes into play.
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With the way they lie
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Or celebrities
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One abuse a year...
As AC notes the NSA is not very good at coming clean about anything.
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Re: One abuse a year...
Or that they know about....
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Re: Re: One abuse a year...
Somehow, I think whatever she's saying is relevant to this “one abuse a year” claim. But—but—it's late on a Friday, and I'm tired, and I can't quite figure it out. I've read through her post twice without any real comprehension, and have just come to the conclusion that it's late on Friday evening and I'm tired.
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Re: Re: One abuse a year...
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Re: Re: One abuse a year...
Is easy to cover up intentional administrative spying as an accident. They just have to get a court order for something close, then the operator or programmer inserts a "typo". That's where the thousands of "unintentional" abuses occur.
In the case of LOVEINT, is pretty tough to try to cover that up, since it wasn't planned ahead of time, and fairly easy to call BS on.
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Re: Re: One abuse a year...
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WSJ sources
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Re: WSJ sources
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Re: What NSA has on Diane Feinstein
Back when she was Mayor of San Francisco, she had firefighters drive her around instead of the S.F.P.D.
Evidently, the firemen are not as tight lipped as the police department.
I was told by a retired firefighter that on numerous occasions, they picked up Dianne and her lesbian lover, driving them around on "dates".
As to what the NSA has on her, it's probably a lot and definitely embarrassing.
So, she'll be a good little girl and do as she's told.
Even if it makes her look like an ass.
Information is power.
Those with the information hold all the power.
NSA's mandate since it's creation. Know EVERYTHING!
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One news reporter claimed that the NSA was loosing it's believability. Sounds to me more like another trying to cover up what's already been exposed. No the NSA is far past loosing it's creditability and we are now looking at the government for how much is there. So far doesn't appear to be any to be found there either with a few rare exceptions.
I'm still wanting to know what Obama knew and if he purposely lied to try and cover it all up. It's quite evident from his actions in trying to control whistle blowers what he thinks. He's uncomfortable with being exposed for what he is doing much less for what his underlings are doing.
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Credibility [was Re: ]
Back in June, the New York Times said that the Obama administration had lost its credibility on this issue. Past tense. “Lost”. That was back in June.
“President Obama’s Dragnet”, by the Editorial Board, New York Times, June 6, 2013
That editorial position made news waves on its own. You can google for news stories covering that New York Times opinion.
Now some other reporter —unnamed— says they're losing credibility? Present tense. “Losing”. Really?
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Re: Credibility [was Re: ]
Or, you can search for news stories using a search engine that isn't run by a pack of lying, MAFIAA/NSA-collaborating fascist fucks who couldn't care less about privacy...
DuckDuckGo and Ixquick/Startpage come to mind.
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No intentional Abuse? Did Feinstein read the FISC Opinion?
"The Court is troubled that the government's revelations regarding NSA's acquisition of Internet transaction marks the third instance in less than three years in which the government has disclosed a substantial misrepresentation regarding the scope of a major collection program. In March 2009, the Court concluded that its authorization of the NSA's bulk acquisition of telephone call detail records from [redacted out] in the so-called 'big-business records' matter "ha[d] been premised on a flawed depiction of how the NSA uses [the acquired] metadata, " and "[t]his misperception by FISC existed from the inception of its authorized collection in May 2006, butressed by repeated inaccurate statements made in the government's submissions, and despite a government-devised and court mandated oversight regime" "Contrary to the government's repeated assurances, NSA has been routinely running queries of the metadata using quering terms that did not meet the required standard of querying. The Court concluded that this requirement had been "so frequently and systematically violated that it can fairly be said that this critical element of the overall...regime has never functioned effectively."
The Court is troubled that the government's revelations regarding NSA's acquisition of Internet transaction marks the third instance in less than three years in which the government has disclosed a substantial misrepresentation regarding the scope of a major collection program. In March 2009, the Court concluded that its authorization of the NSA's bulk acquisition of telephone call detail records from [redacted out] in the so-called 'big-business records' matter "ha[d] been premised on a flawed depiction of how the NSA uses [the acquired] metadata, " and "[t]his misperception by FISC existed from the inception of its authorized collection in May 2006, butressed by repeated inaccurate statements made in the government's submissions, and despite a government-devised and court mandated oversight regime" "Contrary to the government's repeated assurances, NSA has been routinely running queries of the metadata using quering terms that did not meet the required standard of querying. The Court concluded that this requirement had been "so frequently and systematically violated that it can fairly be said that this critical element of the overall...regime has never functioned effectively."
My question is why isn't the court penalizing the NSA for these flagrent abuses? Isn't there a legal charge for misrepresenting information to a court?
When a court who regularly reviews requests to collect information writes something like this it's clear that the Emperor is running around in his underoos.
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Re: No intentional Abuse? Did Feinstein read the FISC Opinion?
It's not really a big deal when a government attorney does it.
For instance, see “Federal Prosecutor Disciplined for Making False Statements”, Blog of Legal Times, August 8, 2013
Not really a big deal for a government attorney.
No big deal.
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Re: No intentional Abuse? Did Feinstein read the FISC Opinion?
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Twice a fool
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Re: Twice a fool
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Re: Re: Twice a fool
She knows of 2 days in the week...
1: Show up and not work.
2: Vacation time.
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Abuse of power, we all know it happens, we all know why most of the time it happens, but somehow congress believes we should grant unprecedented access to people without any effective safeguards in place and it will magically.
What is hysterical on all of this, is that the government is made up of people, the same people as people on the streets, with the same basic psychological characteristics of most of the population, so if you can't trust the public why do you trust a public servant in the first place?
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Re: skeletons
Makes me think a forensic audit would turn up some interesting stuff on her. But that's probably true of any senator who truckles to corporate lobbyists.
Anyone with a checkbook can buy a Senator's vote and Feinstein has always been a corporate tool. Let's not forget where the real spiders live, inside the NSA, CIA, DIA and other spy-on-Americans bureaucracies.
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That being said, having worked with those kinds of people, I'd be mildly surprised if it averaged out to only once per year per person.
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Millions of instances of copyright infringement in the last decade = no prob.
Raging douchenozzle Mike Masnick in a nutshell.
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Response to: Anonymous Coward on Aug 24th, 2013 @ 3:56am
"Millions of instances of copyright infringement in the last decade = no prob."
Spot on; mass-surveillance of innocents and the very concept of imaginary "property" are both liberty-crushing crimes against humanity.
As far as I'm concerned, the "copyright" means the right of the people to copy that which is not private/confidential.
PROTIP: If don't want "your" idea copied, keep it to yourself.
How about you owe me a nickel for having been allowed to read this comment, and you're not allowed to copy it without my say-so? Of course not, because that would be stupid and insane — just like every other imaginary property scheme.
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Re:
('Steal' and 'stealing' are used tongue-in-cheek. I don't believe either is really theft.)
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Surveillance vs. Piracy
I juxtapose them and they look very different. I support those artists I can, and when I actually know the artists are going to get the money. Unlike in the 90s when I had to buy songs bundled in blocks of fifteen, pay exorbitant prices and it all went to the gatekeepers.
In the meantime, I gain nothing from the NSA knowing when I'm taking a shit, except the fear that some day they're going to decide I'm a deviant or a security risk and get the DoJ to bust me for conspiracy.
So, dude, give your priorities a clue.
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It reminds me of that old joke..
-Oh yeah, I would.
-Would you go to bed with me for a dollar?
-No way! What kind of a girl do you think I am?
-Oh, that's already been established, I'm just negotiating a price.
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Is it past time to disband the NSA entirely?
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Re: Is it past time to disband the NSA entirely?
Given the inner logic of mass surveillance and its official justification (that it enhances security), a hypothetically seriously weakened but still existent agency will have a strong incentive to demonstrate that its weakening has indeed led to a significant loss of security. So they might tend to not prevent attacks that they could have prevented with their remaining tools.
So, no matter wether mass surveillance actually leads to a significant gain in security or not we can expect a weakening of the nsa to lead to a real loss of security. The problem is: those two cases (actual versus simulated loss of security) might be indistinguishable and that will be a very difficult propaganda battle.
To prevent that scenario completely dismantling the agencies (and starting foreign intelligence from scratch) seems to be the only option.
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Is it past time to disband the NSA entirely?
Even though we need a department that safeguards our communications, there is just too much of the old guard in the NSA to trust it with that (or any) duty. Much Germany would have to disband the SS or Gestapo for its loyalty to Hitler (as opposed to the police or Wehrmacht which were loyal to the flag of Germany).
Something tells me that the NSA is not loyal to the US flag or the US constitution or the territory of the United States of America. Something tells me that the NSA's loyalties are to something else entirely.
We still need to safeguard our communications, but that's from all surveillance and sabotage, and we may want an approach more akin to FEMA or the CDC which focuses on keeping users informed and centralizing data about zero-day threats and their fixes. A white-hat approach, in other words.
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Vote 3rd Party
We need to vote 3rd party (or in the case of europe non-established civil-rights-oriented parties), not necessarily to get them into power (it will be very difficult to achieve that) but to make them viable, to demonstrate that your vote has to be earned by the 95%-parties and to show that you are not fooled by the pretend partisanship circus.
Obama has not only fooled the liberals into thinking he would do things differently. Conservatives' strong opposition indicated that they also expected him to be very easily distinguishable from a republican president, which he simply isn't. If Obama has shown us one thing it is that voting the lesser of two evils doesn't work. We must vote against both of them.
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Re: Vote 3rd Party
First, idealistic voters want a close-to-ideal candidate, and often can't support a flawed third option. Second, the third-party options, whether Socialist, Libertarian, Green, Pirate, or whatever, have too much ideological baggage in the current US. Third, and perhaps most important, people who feel threatened tend to cling even more tightly to what little they have. Even when it is obvious that the old system is broken, it takes courage to take a leap of faith into a new system. And courage is in relatively short supply in the contemporary US.
Here's an illustrative example. Let's imagine a city with effectively 1-party rule, reasonably progressive on mainstream social issues but economically deeply influenced by well-established business interests -- banks, builders, commercial landlords, and the professionals that work in these areas. The "social liberals" get support for gay marriage, and the "economic conservatives" get public subsidies for commercial infrastructure -- malls, condos, and stadiums.
It's a stable system, not unsuccessful, and completely incapable of working outside a quite narrow range of conventional options, no matter what the occasion.
How does a 3rd party candidate realistically challenge that cozy system?
Imagine a reasonably good 3rd party candidate -- local "community activist" background, dedicated, hard-working, honest, smart, educated, well-spoken, and photogenic -- just the sort of candidate that might keep the local bastards honest and expand the range of acceptable political thinking.
Run her against one of the nice, bland, vaguely liberal-seeming pro-business guys. But stick any of those 3rd party labels on her, and watch people cringe away for a "safe" conventional choice from the major parties. Voters just aren't brave enough to take a risk on anything that seems even the slightest bit radical.
(example based on K. Sawant, who might give an establishment Democrat a scare in the upcoming Seattle City Council race.)
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Police State
Some questions / concerns / thoughts I would like to express on the NSA / Police State mess. ( Yes, you can use this for a posting if you want :)
I am going to list them in no particular order.
I. Database Logging Disabled
It seems that the NSA has disabled ALL logging on its collective database. ( The current leaks are of old log reports. )
No logging of who is accessing.
No logging of what is accessed.
No logging of what is copied / modified / deleted.
Why?
No abuses logged / reported.
No policy violations logged / reported.
No evidence of illegal activity logged / reported.
Result =
Nothing for any "oversight" to act on.
Untraceable industrial / commercial espionage.
Blackmail activities, by the NSA and/or Contractors/Sub-contractors, undetectable.
Espionage activities by other hostile nations intelligence services, accessing this NSA database, undetectable.
Easily constructed "Frames" for Criminal Activity harder to defend against, for the falsely accused.
Proof :
The NSA has no idea what is in Edward Snowden's document cache.
II. Low Security / Easy Access / No Access Controls
From the released documents, the phrase "Five Eyes" refers to five countries involved in this Database.
( US, UK, Canada, New Zealand, Australia ) All five countries have full access, apparently.
Do ??Allies?? really need the NSA to help them spy on US Citizens inside the United States? Why??
Upwards of 2.1 million people have "Top Secret" clearance. One news report stated that 60% of those cleared are "Contractors" ( i.e. 1,260,000 )
( Not addressing staffing realities in the other four countries, US ONLY. )
From the reports seen, background checks are not being done.
How many of the unchecked are "hostile foreign intelligence operatives", taking the easy route to FULL ACCESS??
Most of these are in "offsite facilities". How are they getting access remotely?
TelNet? NetBIOS? an XTerm? Using "Windoze remote assistance / remote desktop"?
( Yes, I did not mention OpenSSH. That might be considered competent. )
Or did they put this "distributed database" on the Web for access over the Internet?
Is there a remote database client, with easy access preconfigured, floating around?
( Hostile foreign intelligence services would just LOVE this! The proverbial "wet dream" come true. )
Question --
How do we know that hostile foreign intelligence operatives have not already established FULL REAL TIME access to this database?
Curious to see if anyone can give reasonable answers to these questions.
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n. An unintentional omission or mistake.
n. Watchful care or management; supervision.
I'll give you odds on which definition Feinstein tends towards when it comes to the NSA. Politicians love flimsy definitions for backup.
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One person every ten years?
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"Self-Reported"
"Most of the incidents, officials said, were self-reported."
That's a pretty major admission in my book. What the NSA just said is "There are no willful violations. I mean, there are very very few willful violations. They're mostly about love interests. THE ONLY WAY WE TRACK AND MONITOR AND AUDIT ANY SORT OF WILLFUL VIOLATIONS IS THROUGH SELF-REPORTING BY EMPLOYEES."
i.e. They don't have algorithms,or software controls that prevent the analysts from using their spying powers improperly, they don't have internal compliance specialists or auditors, they don't make formal requests to the FISA court. They let the computer guys do WHATEVER THEY WANT with not even bare bones basic internal (or external, but we already knew that) oversight. And then they say they know there are few abuses because their employees have only SELF-REPORTED that there are few abuses.
So...our best line of defense against unconstitutional violations is unchecked technical power by thousands of employees who probably receive 1 day of training a year that says "oh by the way, there are these things called laws, and you should remember to follow them, because if you don't, and we get found out (which we probably won't, because we're super-secret) we might get in trouble."
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NSA - Sen. Dianne Feinstein
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Saw it coming a mile away.
Also, I feel the need to point out that had this program not existed in the first place then no abuse would have happened. And this program shouldn't exist.
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Feinstein Swinestain
I'm convinced that like many other Senators, she's only there because a) it's an easy job with plenty of time off and zero expenses. And b) to get rich by taking money for obeying the orders of her corporate/lobbyist masters.
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Abuse under color of authority
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Re: Abuse under color of authority
But their recent anti-terror and anti-hacker efforts have lost Bureau as a whole a lot of respect (at least from me).
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The name says it all...
No evidence has emerged in the Snowden leaks indicating that the NSA is intentionally spying on Americans or meddling in domestic politics. The agency's defenders argue that the disclosures actually prove how hard the NSA works to protect Americans' privacy.
Joshua Foust, a former Defense Intelligence Agency analyst, pointed out that the NSA performed about 240 million database searches per year. Noting that it reported 2,776 violations of privacy rules in a recent one-year period, it had an error rate of "about 0.001156666667%."
"What the Church Committee revealed was that the intelligence community, which was supposed to be focused on foreign threats, was actually directly meddling in domestic issues," Foust said in an interview. "What these [recent] disclosures show is that while the NSA does violate the rules, it also makes a good-faith effort to try to minimize both the number of violations and their scope."
Faust/Foust - wasn't he in league with the Devil? :-)
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NSA and Dianne Feinstein
NSA is listening to ALL of us. Their computers are collecting our communication continuously.
They have yet to PROVE that this surveillance has made any of us more secure.
NSA officials have repeatedly lied to Congress and the public with impunity. Our government continues to trample upon the Constitution.
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What we really need...is a 24 hour news channel that reports the news as it happens. Something that can keep the American People informed....Something edgy that makes people interested in watching, while doing real investigations and reports....
If we had something like that, then the American People could have digested this nasty news all weekend...
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But Snowden Does not work for them anymore
No company or organization can expect to be able to trust all their staff all the time.
There are always going to be Snowdens hiding somewhere, So if 1 postman gets a gun and shoots a heap of people, the post office and all it's employees are corrupt and will go out on a shooting spree all the time..
But how would you be able to milk this issue otherwise ?
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Re: But Snowden Does not work for them anymore
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I would love for such a thing to be true.
Sadly, most of the evidence tends to point towards empires rising by the the strings of fortune and falling by pandemics of stupid.
Maybe the CIA did kill Kennedy. But 911 probably happened because of stupid. And while I'd much prefer if Blofeld was behind the NSA, it probably came into power due to stupid. And we're becoming a police state thanks to stupid.
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