Reddit Mods Bury Glenn Greenwald's Story On GCHQ/NSA Use Of Internet To 'Destroy Reputations'

from the what-is-this?-Reddigg? dept

Mike's coverage of leaks showing the NSA and GCHQ using the internet to "manipulate, deceive and destroy reputations" (as reported by Glenn Greenwald at firstlook.org) hit the front page of Reddit yesterday, generating lots of traffic for Techdirt. This traffic truly should have gone to firstlook.org, but never made it there. A look at the top comments on our coverage show why:

Why is this story being removed from all the popular subs over and over by mods?

Message the admins about the censorship of this article by /r/news and /r/worldnews mods. They have never seemed to care about this in the past but if enough users message them it will hopefully at least provoke a response of some kind. Something needs to be done about this or this site needs to be abandoned as a platform for legitimate political discourse.

Important Update: So, it turns out that the /r/news mod /u/BipolarBear0 who has been deleting all the instances of this story has previously been caught running a voting brigade to get anti-Semitic content upvoted on /r/conspiracy to discredit the sub. A fact which he admitted to me in another thread just a few minutes ago (he claims he was doing an "experiment"...) . This guy needs to be banned from the site.

A little further down in the thread:

Last night, the original article from firstlook.org was taken down and tagged as "not appropriate subreddit." Meanwhile, another copy of the story was allowed to rise, despite having an editorialized title. Later, the version that had been taken down--which was older and had fewer upvotes because it had been removed--was put back up and the younger version with more upvotes was removed, allegedly because the topic was "already covered."

This tactic has been used to keep other similar stories from rising, such as the one about the NSA sharing information with Israel.

Time and time again, the content on /r/worldnews, /r/technology, /r/news, and /r/politics is manipulated by moderator intervention.

While everyone lets the implications of this kind of content manipulation on reddit regarding stories about online content manipulation sink in, I think it's worth noting that /r/technology has a bot that removes stories about the NSA.

Ninja edit: subscribe to /r/undelete and /r/longtail if you're interested in keeping an eye on popular content that's been removed by mods.

Censorship on reddit? It seems almost ridiculous considering the amount of subreddits available for those submitting stories. But it's there all the same (although not actually "censorship" so much as a bad direction for a community based on meritocracy to go in). According to commenters, both r/news and r/worldnews (two of the biggest subreddits), the firstlook.org post was removed over and over again once they began collecting upvotes, forcing each submission to start over at "0" and face an uphill struggle for visibility.

Screenshots and lists of removed posts have been compiled showing the various subs' mods' actions to bury the firstlook.org story. But why? Sooner or later, it was bound to sneak through, like ours did (a link to the Examiner's coverage did as well).

Speculation on this runs rampant, but most commenters agree that too many mods are abusing their power in order to bury anything they don't like. We saw some of this infighting late last year when r/politics composed a very arbitrary list [since rescinded, mostly] of banned submissions sources (including us) in an effort to crack down on overly-politicized articles (on a politics sub no less) and what the mods declared to be "blogspam," a catchall term that somehow included award-winning news outlets like Mother Jones.

The decision to clamp down on news detailing this particular leak brought a whole lot of irony with it. The efforts made to remove an unflattering story about intelligence agencies' dirty little efforts to use the internet to destroy reputations and manipulate public perception led to tongue-in-cheek speculation that Reddit itself is compromised. (And there's certainly no way to be sure it isn't…)

Techdirt may have been the inadvertent beneficiary of bad behavior by subreddit mods, but that's hardly reason to celebrate. If the mod situation is as bad as it appears to be, Reddit is going to start heading down the path of Digg, whose infamous "bury brigade" worked tirelessly to ensure only certain news coverage made its way to the top of the list.

This isn't an easily-solvable problem, thanks to Reddit's hydra-like structure, with hundreds of subreddits and no clear demarcation of command. The corporate Reddit, which ostensibly "controls" the community, has largely taken a hands-off approach. This is still the best option and the reversal of the r/politics arbitrary ban list shows the community still has the power to solve some of its mod problems. But widespread story burial, coupled with evidence of subreddits being gamed by mods, isn't exactly comforting, especially considering Reddit's journalistic aspirations.

Like any platform with millions of users, issues will never be non-existent. But a failure to address the abuse of power by mods of larger subreddits will hurt Reddit in the long run. Power coupled with an almost-complete lack of accountability is always a bad thing. But this problem will need to be solved internally by the subreddits themselves. There's power in numbers, something subreddit subscribers should be able to leverage to start cleaning this mess up.

Filed Under: gchq, glenn greenwald, moderation, nsa, traffic
Companies: reddit

New Snowden Doc Reveals How GCHQ/NSA Use The Internet To 'Manipulate, Deceive And Destroy Reputations'

from the and-not-just-terrorists dept

A few weeks ago, Glenn Greenwald, while working with NBC News, revealed some details of a GCHQ presentation concerning how the surveillance organization had a "dirty tricks" group known as JTRIG -- the Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group. Now, over at The Intercept, he's revealed the entire presentation and highlighted more details about how JTRIG would seek to infiltrate different groups online and destroy people's reputations -- going way, way, way beyond just targeting terrorist groups and threats to national security.

Among the core self-identified purposes of JTRIG are two tactics: (1) to inject all sorts of false material onto the internet in order to destroy the reputation of its targets; and (2) to use social sciences and other techniques to manipulate online discourse and activism to generate outcomes it considers desirable. To see how extremist these programs are, just consider the tactics they boast of using to achieve those ends: “false flag operations” (posting material to the internet and falsely attributing it to someone else), fake victim blog posts (pretending to be a victim of the individual whose reputation they want to destroy), and posting “negative information” on various forums.

For years, people have said that the purpose of groups like the NSA and GCHQ were merely "signals intelligence," which were about understanding and decoding signals, not about taking any sort of offensive standpoint. However, as the Snowden docs have repeatedly revealed, the mandate of these organizations has long been much more offensively based, and they seem to have little problem with using questionable tactics to destroy people's lives. As Greenwald notes, is this really a power you trust a totally secretive government agency with almost no real oversight to use without it being abused?

There's a lot more in Greenwald's writeup, which you should read, but just a few of the key slides are worth reading to get a sense of what's going on here. This isn't just about infiltrating terrorist organizations. They seem to be using these kinds of techniques on just about anyone they dislike, which harkens back to the Hoover-era FBI infiltrating and seeking to discredit anti-war groups. It also raises very serious questions about whether these efforts are being used to stifle political expression.









The full presentation is embedded below. The cover slide is really something...

Filed Under: gchq, glenn greenwald, jtrig, nsa

Terrorists Have Known Their Cellphones Are Surveillance Targets For Over A Decade But Suddenly It's Greenwald And Snowden's Fault?

from the al-Qaeda-now-celebrating-'Snowden-Day'-every-June-6th dept

The NSA's defenders (including those on the other side of the pond) have been making the claim for the last several months that each new revelation is enabling terrorists to find ways to beat the surveillance system. But much of what has been revealed has either been a.) something that was long suspected (the Section 215 program, communications being harvested from underseas cables) or b.) something any careful terrorist would have avoided (popular platforms, services and software).

Another minor ruckus was raised when the New York Times screwed up its redaction of documents (again, apparently Snowden's "fault" because he turned sensitive documents over to incompetents) related to cell phone tracking and accidentally exposed one of the program's targets: al Qaeda's operations in Mosul, Iraq. It's no secret al Qaeda has been public enemy #1 since before the 9/11 attacks, which makes claims that stuff like this "tips off" terrorists completely inexplicable. They've been targeted for well over a decade. Why would this be a surprise?

Tracing cellphones, tracking their location and intercepting communications have all been detailed by Snowden's leaks, but not only is this fairly basic (and expected) surveillance, it's also nothing new and nothing that hasn't been previously reported by the national media.

Poyan Nahrvar, a Canadian engineer, tweeted this out on Friday.

Because of @ggreenwald terrorists now know their cellphones are being tracked. Oh wait! http://t.co/HmUHqCHaw9 — Poyan Nahrvar (@poyannah) February 14, 2014

The link in the tweet leads to a 2004 story by The Christian Science Monitor, which details all of the above in its rundown of the success these cellphone-tracking efforts were having in the fight against terrorism.

An ordinary-looking grid map of Riyadh adorns one wall of a command-and-control center deep inside a government building in Saudi Arabia's capital.

The map is higher-tech than it appears at first glance. Tiny embedded lights flash red when certain cellphones - those belonging to suspected terrorists - initiate or receive a call. [O]fficials… decide instantly whether simply to watch and listen to the suspected terrorist - or to send in screaming police cars to nab him…

It doesn't take long for terrorists to figure out how authorities are tracing them and then change methods. Still, the technology has proved helpful in rolling up cells in Europe, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and America…

Terrorists, of course, catch on to the new tracking procedures and seek safer ways to communicate. Osama bin Laden, for example, stopped using satellite phones because he found out - with the delivery of a guided missile - that the US was tracking his position via the satellite…

After years of tracking terrorists, investigators have amassed a large database of land-line and traditional cellphone numbers they are watching (or listening to). All it takes is a call from one of those numbers to a phone with a SIM card to discover who's using the undetectable phone.

All of this reported and yet no hand-wringing about how the government's surveillance techniques had been exposed giving the terrorists the upper hand. Everything detailed here isn't too far removed from what's been published in the last seven months. Terrorists have known about cellphone tracking for well over a decade and have been making adjustments ever since.

To imply that it's only now that terrorists are being alerted to surveillance techniques is to be deliberately obtuse and/or intellectually dishonest. Cellphones aren't to be trusted and haven't been for several years. Any terrorist who says, "But I only used it for Angry Birds" (the topic of the New York Times article with the faulty redaction) to his droned companions isn't going to stay alive long enough for the US to finish him or her off. His colleagues will take care of that themselves.

Without a doubt, there are stupid terrorists out there who may only now be aware their cellphone is selling them out to a variety of intelligence agencies, but that's only because they're stupid, not because a majority of the information Snowden leaked is actually new or even unexpected. Snowden's leaks exposed the NSA's programs in greater detail and, more importantly, exposed the fact that the NSA's activities aren't always targeted at terrorism. He also exposed the "collect it all" mentality, which is the most dangerous aspect of its many programs, which goes far beyond its stated "national security" goals. But acting as though terrorists would only now be aware their cellphones are being tracked is asinine.

Filed Under: edward snowden, glenn greenwald, nsa, surveillance, terrorism

UK Court Rules Miranda Detention At Heathrow Airport Was Lawful, But Questions Remain About What Was Seized

from the journalism-equals-terrorism dept

A UK Court has ruled that the nine-hour detention of Glenn Greenwald's partner David Miranda, and the seizure of his electronic equipment, was lawful and proportionate, and did not breach freedom of expression rights in Europe:

Three high court judges have dismissed a challenge that David Miranda, the partner of the former Guardian journalist, Glenn Greenwald, was unlawfully detained under counter-terrorism powers for nine hours at Heathrow airport last August.

The judges accept that the stop and seizure of computer material was "an indirect interference with press freedom" but says this was justified by legitimate and "very pressing" interests of national security.

The three judges, Lord Justice Laws, with Mr Justice Ouseley and Mr Justice Openshaw, conclude that Miranda's detention at Heathrow under schedule 7 of the Terrorism 2000 Act was lawful, proportionate and did not breach the European human rights protections of freedom of expression.

Reading the full judgment (pdf), it's clear that the judges believed that national security outweighed the issues of press freedom, which the judges acknowledged. As well as proportionality, the other key question the judges had to address was whether schedule 7 of the UK Terrorism 2000 Act actually applied in this situation. It might seem surprising that they decided that it did, since Miranda was carrying documents for the purpose of journalism -- hardly what most people regard as terrorism. But the judges came to this conclusion because of the very broad framing of the UK's Terrorism 2000 Act, which says:

(1) In this Act 'terrorism' means the use or threat of action where --

(a) the action falls within subsection (2),

(b) the use or threat is designed to influence the government or an international governmental organisation or to intimidate the public or a section of the public, and

(c) the use or threat is made for the purpose of advancing a political, religious, racial or ideological cause.

Subsection (2) includes:

(c) endangers a person's life, other than that of the person committing the action,

(d) creates a serious risk to the health or safety of the public or a section of the public

The court seems to have been persuaded by the UK government's statements that the material carried by Miranda could put lives at risk if disseminated, even though the documents were encrypted "very heavily". No evidence was offered that Miranda had leaked anything to anyone -- unlike GCHQ, say, which had allowed its top secret materials to be seen by many individuals in the US, one of whom was Edward Snowden.

Speaking of encryption, there's a mystery here. Throughout the judgment, there is a reference to "approximately 58,000 highly classified UK intelligence documents". This figure comes from Oliver Robbins, Deputy National Security Adviser for Intelligence, Security and Resilience in the UK government's Cabinet Office, who stated that:

the encrypted data contained in the external hard drive taken from the claimant contains approximately 58,000 highly classified UK intelligence documents. Many are classified SECRET or TOP SECRET. Mr Robbins states that release or compromise of such data would be likely to cause very great damage to security interests and possible loss of life.

The question is: how did he know there were 58,000 GCHQ documents if the hard drive was encrypted? Miranda is quoted in the judgment as saying he was "unable to open it himself": did GCHQ manage to break the encryption, perhaps with some help from its friends at the NSA? Or did it already know what Snowden had copied, and assumed all those documents were on the hard drive? Or perhaps it just made up those figures; some clarification from Glenn Greenwald would be welcome here.

Meanwhile, we're left with an awful result for freedom of the press in the UK. Miranda's lawyers have said that they have applied for permission to take the case to the Court of Appeal:

Despite recognising that the proper functioning of a modern participatory democracy requires that the media be free, active, professional and enquiring, this judgment leaves little room for responsible investigative journalism which touches on national security issues. Journalism is currently at risk of being conflated with terrorism. Therefore, our client has no option but to appeal. In the meantime, whilst the courts consider our appeal, we understand that journalists are making alternative travel plans to safeguard their material, sources and confidential working systems when they have to travel via the UK. The Government should be very concerned about this and the message it sends internationally.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+

Filed Under: david miranda, detention, ed snowden, glenn greenwald, heathrow, schedule 7, uk

NSA Targets Pirate Bay And Wikileaks Despite 'Inadvertent' Collection Of US Data According To Latest Leak

from the speech-keeps-getting-chillier dept

The Intercept (Glenn Greenwald's new home) has just published a new leaked document that shows, among other things, the NSA's interest in both Wikileaks and The Pirate Bay. An included NSA internal-wiki page mentions both sites by name, along with analyst's concerns about Anonymous. The Intercept has also added two additional slides to the deck previously published by NBC News on SQUEAKY DOLPHIN, the NSA's cross-platform, real-time data harvesting tool that attempts to quantify the "human networks" surrounding its targets utilizing information gleaned from YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, etc.

The additional slides give some insight as to who the NSA believes is a worthy target.

The efforts – detailed in documents provided previously by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden – included a broad campaign of international pressure aimed not only at WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, but at what the U.S. government calls “the human network that supports WikiLeaks.” The documents also contain internal discussions about targeting the file-sharing site Pirate Bay and hacktivist collectives such as Anonymous...

Illustrating how far afield the NSA deviates from its self-proclaimed focus on terrorism and national security, the documents reveal that the agency considered using its sweeping surveillance system against Pirate Bay, which has been accused of facilitating copyright violations. The agency also approved surveillance of the foreign “branches” of hacktivist groups, mentioning Anonymous by name.

While some concern is expressed by NSA guidance that US citizens' data will be caught in this program's nets, the general response seems to be, "report it," but otherwise "it's nothing to worry about." What's worse, however, is how simple it is for the NSA to flip the switch on total surveillance (including US persons) while still remaining in the clear, legally-speaking.

A third document, from July 2011, contains a summary of an internal discussion in which officials from two NSA offices – including the agency’s general counsel and an arm of its Threat Operations Center – considered designating WikiLeaks as “a ‘malicious foreign actor’ for the purpose of targeting.” Such a designation would have allowed the group to be targeted with extensive electronic surveillance – without the need to exclude U.S. persons from the surveillance searches.

This designation itself is relatively meaningless, needing only a 51% "confidence" (whatever that means) to be able to search "without defeats" (minimization). This low bar puts the designation on par with other tools deployed frequently by intelligence and investigative agencies, like NSLs (national security letters) and administrative subpoenas.

So, simply visiting any of the sites listed could result in your data being swept up "inadvertently." This will probably be noted on the OGC's report, but otherwise it just seems to be considered unavoidable collateral damage. Anything on those reports isn't considered to be abuse because of the lack of intent. The document seems very clear that intentionally targeting US persons or US-to-US communications is forbidden (and indeed the latter will return "no results"), but the inadvertent collection is still a concern, especially when the only obstacle can easily be removed by calling TPB, Wikileaks and others "malicious foreign actors."

How targeting these sites (and their users) fights terrorism is completely unclear. The TPB may post a link to "stolen documents" but it's not the host (unless the NSA has also been tasked with playing copyright cop). As for Wikileaks, the "stolen documents" discussed in the internal wiki have been public for years without creating anything more serious than diplomatic embarrassment.

This does, however, seem to fall in line with the law enforcement and intelligence agencies' increasing tendency to portray "dissent" as "terrorism" when the only similarity between the two is an antipathy towards those in power.

Filed Under: data collection, glenn greenwald, nsa, privacy, the pirate bay, wikileaks

The Intercept Releases Photos To The Public Domain... But Unfortunately Locks Up Text Content With Copyfraud Claims

from the kudos-and-boos dept

We already wrote about the launch of The Intercept, the first new publication from Pierre Omidyar's First Look Media, helmed by Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras and Jeremy Scahill, and about its first big article about the NSA's use of questionable metadata in telling the CIA where to drop bombs from drones. However, the other article that the publication launches with is also worth noting. It's by photographer Trevor Paglen, who rented a helicopter and took aerial photographs of the headquarters of the NSA, the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) which builds spy satellites, and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), which maps and analyzes imagery caught from those spy satellites. As Paglen notes:

My intention is to expand the visual vocabulary we use to “see” the U.S. intelligence community. Although the organizing logic of our nation’s surveillance apparatus is invisibility and secrecy, its operations occupy the physical world. Digital surveillance programs require concrete data centers; intelligence agencies are based in real buildings; surveillance systems ultimately consist of technologies, people, and the vast network of material resources that supports them. If we look in the right places at the right times, we can begin to glimpse America’s vast intelligence infrastructure.

But here's the part that caught my eye:

These new images of the NSA, NRO, and NGA are being placed in the public domain without restriction, to be used by anyone for any purpose whatsoever, with or without attribution. They can be found on Creative Time Reports, which commissioned this piece, as well as on Flickr, Wikimedia Commons and The Intercept.

Download high resolution images of these photos: NSA, NRO, NGA

Here are the three images: NSA:

NRO:

NGA:
Unfortunately, it doesn't appear that First Look/The Intercept is nearly as open about the text of its articles. They have a big copyright symbol on the bottom and no Creative Commons or other permissive license. In fact, their copyright statement appears to go to the other extreme, pretending that fair use and other user rights can be ignored -- and seems to go beyond what copyright allows, moving into the territory of copyfraud.

The Intercept is made available for your personal, noncommercial use only. All content and other material on this Service is the property of First Look Productions or its licensors and is protected by U.S. copyright laws, other copyright laws, and international conventions. Except as explicitly provided in these Terms of Use, you may not reproduce, distribute, display, perform, create derivative works from, or otherwise exploit any of the content or other material on this Service. You may display and occasionally print or store single copies of individual pages of the Service for your personal use, provided that you keep intact all credits and copyright and other proprietary notices, but you may not otherwise reproduce, store, or distribute copies of any content or other material found on this Service, in any form (including electronic form), or exploit any of the content you find here for any commercial purpose, without prior written permission from the copyright owner.

That statement above ignores even the possibility of fair use, which you can't do. I'm sure it's just boilerplate that First Look got from some lawyer, but for a publication with such lofty goals, and which used one of its first articles to release images into the public domain, you'd hope they wouldn't have started out with such a bogus copyright statement.

Filed Under: copyfraud, copyright, glenn greenwald, photographs, pierre omidyar, public domain, the intercept, trevor paglen
Companies: first look media

New Whistleblower Reveals NSA Picking Drone Targets Based On Bad Data: 'Death By Unreliable Metadata'

from the but-it's-just-metadata dept

Late last night, the new publication from Laura Poitras, Glenn Greenwald and Jeremy Scahill launched. It's called The Intercept, and I imagine that it's going to be a must-follow for a variety of reasons. Its first major article digs deep into the NSA's role in killing people with drones (often innocent people) based on questionable metadata. Remember how NSA defenders kept insisting that "it's just metadata" as if that was no big deal? Well, what about when that metadata is being used to kill people?

Just last week, we wrote about Rep. Mike Rogers complaining about new "red tape" that was making it more difficult to indiscriminately kill people with drones. That "red tape" is actually just a new set of guidelines designed to try to prevent more killing of innocent people with drones. This new report highlights how the US government's infatuation with drones, combined with the NSA's obsessive collection of metadata, means that drones are frequently used to kill people based on very little evidence that the people being killed are actually terrorist threats.

One noteworthy point about this article: it relies on two new sources, one named, one kept secret, backed up by Snowden documents. That is, it appears that at least one other source (in this case, a recent member of JSOC’s High Value Targeting task force -- the group that's in charge of figuring out who to capture and kill) has come forward to Greenwald and others, calling foul on what the US government is doing. This person was privy to how targets are selected, and it's pretty scary how little info they're going on. The fact that the NSA was heavily involved in picking targets was revealed a while back, but this person explains how much those choosing targets rely on bad metadata from the NSA to kill people -- often revealed later to be totally innocent.

In one tactic, the NSA “geolocates” the SIM card or handset of a suspected terrorist’s mobile phone, enabling the CIA and U.S. military to conduct night raids and drone strikes to kill or capture the individual in possession of the device.

The former JSOC drone operator is adamant that the technology has been responsible for taking out terrorists and networks of people facilitating improvised explosive device attacks against U.S. forces in Afghanistan. But he also states that innocent people have “absolutely” been killed as a result of the NSA’s increasing reliance on the surveillance tactic.

One problem, he explains, is that targets are increasingly aware of the NSA’s reliance on geolocating, and have moved to thwart the tactic. Some have as many as 16 different SIM cards associated with their identity within the High Value Target system. Others, unaware that their mobile phone is being targeted, lend their phone, with the SIM card in it, to friends, children, spouses and family members.

Some top Taliban leaders, knowing of the NSA’s targeting method, have purposely and randomly distributed SIM cards among their units in order to elude their trackers. “They would do things like go to meetings, take all their SIM cards out, put them in a bag, mix them up, and everybody gets a different SIM card when they leave,” the former drone operator says. “That’s how they confuse us.”

The guy also points out that the metadata is often somewhat questionable in itself:

What’s more, he adds, the NSA often locates drone targets by analyzing the activity of a SIM card, rather than the actual content of the calls. Based on his experience, he has come to believe that the drone program amounts to little more than death by unreliable metadata.

“People get hung up that there’s a targeted list of people,” he says. “It’s really like we’re targeting a cell phone. We’re not going after people – we’re going after their phones, in the hopes that the person on the other end of that missile is the bad guy.”

You would think that someone like Rep. Rogers would be happy that we were trying to improve our targeting and to stop killing innocent people, but apparently making sure the people we target are actually guilty is just too much "red tape." But it hasn't stopped these killings. The source in the article notes that the "overwhelming majority" of the strikes they're doing these days are based almost entirely on the NSA's signals intelligence.

The report also reveals that the NSA has a program in which the drone itself has what's basically its own phone cell attached to the drone, in order to better target a particular phone (note: not person, but phone) when dropping a bomb. The report also reveals another program, this one from the CIA, called SHENANIGANS (really), that maps out WiFi networks from the sky and tries to suck up any data it can. When this program was used in Yemen, the mission was called (again, no joke) VICTORYDANCE.

There's a lot more in the article, which is well worth reading. It's good to see more sources who are uncomfortable with what the NSA, CIA and others are doing getting in touch with Greenwald and others. It's also worth noting that this guy claims he tried to raise these issues through the "proper channels" and was rebuffed.

Filed Under: cia, drones, glenn greenwald, jsoc, metadata, nsa, targeting, the intercept

Mike Rogers Tries To Make The Case That Glenn Greenwald Should Be Prosecuted For 'Selling Stolen Material'

from the is-he-insane? dept

Rep. Mike Rogers apparently just can't help but spin wild and ridiculous conspiracy theories. Fresh off his latest attempt to argue that Ed Snowden is a Russian spy -- an argument debunked by just about everyone, including his Senatorial counterpart Dianne Feinstein -- it appears he's now decided to pick up the ridiculously insane thread kicked off (purposefully) last week by Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, hinting that journalists who reported on Ed Snowden are somehow "accomplices" who can be prosecuted.

During a House Intelligence Committee in which many members (from both parties) angrily criticized the intelligence community, Rogers continued to do everything possible to defend them, including pushing the bogus argument that Glenn Greenwald "sold stolen goods" in questions to FBI director James Comey:

REP. ROGERS: You -- there have been discussions about selling of access to this material to both newspaper outlets and other places. Mr. Comey, to the best of your knowledge, is fencing stolen material -- is that a crime?

DIRECTOR JAMES COMEY: Yes, it is.

REP. ROGERS: And would be selling the access of classified material that is stolen from the United States government -- would that be a crime?

DIR. COMEY: It would be. It’s an issue that can be complicated if it involves a news-gathering and news promulgation function, but in general, fencing or selling stolen property is a crime.

REP. ROGERS: So if I’m a newspaper reporter for -- fill in the blank -- and I sell stolen material, is that legal because I’m a newspaper reporter?

DIR. COMEY: Right, if you’re a newspaper report and you’re hocking stolen jewelry, it’s still a crime.

REP. ROGERS: And if I’m hocking stolen classified material that I’m not legally in possession of for personal gain and profit, is that not a crime?

DIR. COMEY: I think that’s a harder question because it involves a news-gathering functions -- could have First Amendment implications. It’s something that probably would be better answered by the Department of Justice.

REP. ROGERS: So entering into a commercial enterprise to sell stolen material is acceptable to a legitimate news organization?

DIR. COMEY: I’m not sure I’m able to answer that question in the abstract.

REP. ROGERS: It’s something we ought to think about, is it not?

DIR. COMEY: Certainly.

REP. ROGERS: And so if there are accomplices in purveying stolen information, shouldn’t we be concerned about that?

DIR. COMEY: We should be concerned about all the facts surrounding the theft of classified information and its promulgation.

REP. ROGERS: Hmm. And interesting that over the -- again, the Munich Conference, where we had individuals tell us that in fact there are individuals who are saying to be in possession of this information who are eager to sell this information to other news organizations, would that be a legitimate exercise on behalf of a reporter?

DIR. COMEY: That’s a question -- now you’re getting from the general to the particular. I don’t want to talk about the case in particular because it’s an active investigation of ours.

REP. ROGERS: It’s an active investigation for accomplices brokering in stolen information?

DIR. COMEY: We are looking at the totality of the circumstances around the theft and promulgation.

Glenn Greenwald is not named, but that's clearly who they are targeting. A few folks have brought up the ridiculous charges of him "selling" the Snowden leaks to news organizations, but that's clearly bullshit. Greenwald has been doing freelance journalism work for a while. Publications pay him in the same way they pay any freelancer. He's not selling any documents at all -- and in fact has shared many of the documents with multiple publications for their own reporting activities.

It's pretty clear that Rogers is continuing his desperate, despicable and downright McCarthy-like arguments in an attempt to create chilling effects and to protect his friends in the intelligence community. You'd think that someone who is supposed to uphold the Constitution would respect the freedom of the press, but Rogers seems to be actively trying to stifle it -- just like his staff did to me last year, when they lied about me and told reporters that they could sue me for defamation.

Rogers has shown time and time again that he's little more than a lumbering bully who will do pretty much anything to protect his friends in the intelligence community, even if that means trampling all over the Constitution. Rogers can push these claims as much as he wants. I think it's unlikely that the DOJ would go anywhere near charging a reporter with "selling stolen goods" in a case like this, because they know that argument would almost certainly fail. That means the only reason Rogers is doing this is to try to scare off people with bluster and threats. Thankfully, most of the people that's targeted at actually understand the law and the Constitution, and take such threats as clear suggestions that they're on the right track. It all makes you wonder, just what does Mike Rogers want to keep hidden so badly?

Filed Under: congress, ed snowden, glenn greenwald, house intelligence committee, james clapper, james comey, journalism, mike rogers, nsa, selling stolen goods

Canadian Gov't Responds To Spying Revelations By Saying It's All A Lie And Calling Glenn Greenwald A 'Porn Spy'

from the wtf? dept

We've seen various government officials act in all sorts of bizarre ways after revelations of illegal spying on their own people (and foreigners), but none may be quite as bizarre as the response from the Canadian government, following the release late last night from the CBC (with help from Glenn Greenwald) that they're spying on public WiFi connections. That report had plenty of detail, including an internal presentation from the Canadian electronic spying agency, CSEC. In the Canadian Parliament today, Prime Minister Stephen Harper's parliamentary secretary, Paul Calandra, decided to respond to all of this by by insisting it's all a lie and then flat out insulting both the CBC and Glenn Greenwald. If you can't watch the video, here's what he says:

Mr. Speaker, last night the CBC aired a misleading report on Canada's signals intelligence agency, Communications Security Establishment Canada. These documents were stolen by former NSA contractor, Edward Snowden and sold to the CBC by Glenn Greenwald. Canada's signals intelligence agency has been clear that the CBC story is incorrect, yet the CBC went ahead and published it anyway.

Here are the facts: Before the story aired, CSEC made clear that nothing in the stolen documents showed that Canadians' communications were targeted, collected, or used, nor that travellers' movements were tracked.

In addition, CSEC's activities are regularly reviewed by an independent watchdog who has consistently found it has followed the law.

Why is furthering porn-spy Glenn Greenwald's agenda and lining his Brazilian bank account more important than maintaining the public broadcaster's journalistic integrity?

Okay. Where to start? First off, the whole idea that Greenwald "sold" the documents to the CBC is just ridiculous. Every so often we've seen others raise this kind if idiotic argument and it's just silly. Greenwald -- like any other freelance journalist -- gets paid to do journalism. No one is paying him for the documents. They're paying him to work as a journalist, which, you know, is what he does. The attempt to portray it as selling the documents is just a completely bogus smear.

Second, for all the CSEC's denials, note that Calandra makes no effort whatsoever to explain what's in the actual (fairly damning) document that the CBC published. Instead, he's playing games with words -- games that you should be quite used to if you've followed the infamous NSA dictionary. Note that he says that none of Canadians' "communications were targeted, collected, or used." There are a few problems with that. No one's talking about their communications here, but rather details of their locations and the kinds of devices they were using, which is exactly what's shown in the powerpoint presentation.

Next, the fact that the CSEC's activities are regularly reviewed is somewhat meaningless. Was this program reviewed? By whom? What did they find? As we've seen in the US, the claims of independent oversight of the NSA turned out to not mean very much once people looked at the details.

And then... there's that last paragraph. First of all, what is a "porn spy" anyway, and how is Glenn Greenwald one of them? The word makes no sense at all. When government officials are talking gibberish, it does not bode well for them. Maybe he's trying to repeat the smear from a former US government official who bizarrely called Snowden an espionage pornographer, which made no sense, but makes at least marginally more sense than a "porn spy." And, yes, Glenn Greenwald lives in Brazil. Saying "Brazilian bank account" makes it seem, again, as if there's something nefarious going on here, rather than a well-known, accomplished and celebrated freelance reporter who happens to live in Brazil, doing some work for the CBC.

If this is the Harper government's official "response" to these revelations, they're just asking for trouble. This is so over-the-top silly and defensive, without even remotely responding to the actual issues, that it suggests that Harper has no legitimate response, knows that more is probably on the way, and has resorted to throwing out nonsensical insults at reporters.

Filed Under: canada, csec, ed snowden, glenn greenwald, paul calandra, porn spy, stephen harper, surveillance, wifi
Companies: cbc

Eric Holder Doesn't See Any Basis To Prosecute Glenn Greenwald... For Now

from the probably dept

It's not a complete promise, but in an interview with the Washington Post, Attorney General Eric Holder suggested that, while he disagrees with some of what Glenn Greenwald is doing, he still thinks it's legitimate journalism and he's not looking to prosecute him for anything related to the Ed Snowden NSA leaks:

Holder indicated that the Justice Department is not planning to prosecute former Guardian reporter Glenn Greenwald, one of the journalists who received documents from Snowden and has written a series of stories based on the leaked material. Greenwald, an American citizen who lives in Brazil, has said he is reluctant to come to the U.S. because he fears detention and possible prosecution.

“Unless information that has not come to my attention is presented to me, what I have indicated in my testimony before Congress is that any journalist who’s engaged in true journalistic activities is not going to be prosecuted by this Justice Department,” Holder said.

“I certainly don’t agree with what Greenwald has done,” Holder said. “In some ways, he blurs the line between advocate and journalist. But on the basis of what I know now, I’m not sure there is a basis for prosecution of Greenwald.”

That's not exactly a ringing endorsement of freedom of the press, nor is it probably enough to make Greenwald feel comfortable. There are enough caveats in those statements that I probably wouldn't trust it if I were Greenwald. As he noted in response to Holder's comments, just the fact that the question is out there shows how little the US government respects press freedom these days. Furthermore, he notes that Holder's statements are hardly reassuring as they're "caveat-riddled oral assertions."

Elsewhere in the interview, Holder notes that they're still looking to inform more defendants in criminal cases if warrantless data was used to arrest and prosecute them, and that he's still trying to get Snowden back from Russia -- something that seems unlikely to happen.

Filed Under: doj, ed snowden, eric holder, free press, free speech, glenn greenwald, journalism