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.

"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.

Of course, this is the same Dianne Feinstein who, exactly a week ago, said the following:

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.

Filed Under: abuses, dianne feinstein, intentional abuses, keith alexander, lying, nsa, nsa surveillance, violations

James Clapper Admits He Lied To Congress; His Punishment Will Likely Be A High Paying Private Sector Job

from the modern-politics dept

Greg Miller, at the Washington Post, has a great article discussing the government's continued misinformation campaign over its surveillance activities, going back through history to point out that this is nothing new:

President George W. Bush at times engaged in similarly careful phrasing to defend surveillance programs in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. In 2004, while calling for renewal of the Patriot Act, Bush sought to assuage critics by saying "the government can't move on wiretaps or roving wiretaps without getting a court order."

At the time, it had not yet been publicly disclosed that Bush had secretly authorized NSA surveillance of communications between U.S. residents and contacts overseas while bypassing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

When the wiretapping operation was exposed in the news media two years later, Bush defended it as a program "that listens to a few numbers, called from outside of the United States, and of known al-Qaeda or affiliate people." Subsequent revelations have made clear that the scope was far greater than his words would suggest.

He also discusses the way that defenders of the NSA's surveillance program use things like redefining the word "target" -- something we've been pointing out for a while now:

Obama's assurances have hinged, for example, on a term — targeting — that has a specific meaning for U.S. spy agencies that would elude most ordinary citizens.

"What I can say unequivocally is that if you are a U.S. person, the NSA cannot listen to your telephone calls and the NSA cannot target your e-mails," Obama said in his June 17 interview on PBS's "Charlie Rose Show."

But even if it is not allowed to target U.S. citizens, the NSA has significant latitude to collect and keep the contents of e-mails and other communications of U.S. citizens that are swept up as part of the agency's court-approved monitoring of a target overseas.

That said, what may be most interesting is the revelation that James Clapper has now admitted to lying to Congress, in responding to Ron Wyden's questions:

In early June, after the NSA leaks had brought renewed attention to Clapper's "No, sir," Clapper cited the difficulty of answering a question about a classified program and said in an interview on NBC News that he had responded in the "least most untruthful manner."

He made a new attempt to explain the exchange in his June 21 correspondence, which included a hand-written note to Wyden saying that an attached letter was addressed to the committee chairman but that he "wanted [Wyden] to see this first."

Clapper said he thought Wyden was referring to NSA surveillance of e-mail traffic involving overseas targets, not the separate program in which the agency is authorized to collect records of Americans' phone calls that include the numbers and duration of calls but not individuals' names or the contents of their calls.

Referring to his appearances before Congress over several decades, Clapper concluded by saying that "mistakes will happen, and when I make one, I correct it."

This is unbelievable on a variety of levels. First off, as Wyden made clear, his office had sent Clapper the question a day before the hearing so that he knew the question was coming. To argue that he was confused about the question is quite unbelievable. Furthermore, Senator Wyden claimed that: "after the hearing was over my staff and I gave his office a chance to amend his answer." Clapper now says that his staff "acknowledged the error to Senator Wyden soon after the hearing," but if that's the case, it doesn't appear that anyone else seems to know about this. Furthermore, if this were true, then wouldn't Clapper have said this back in early June when people first started asking about those statements? But he did not. This sounds like after-the-fact rationalizations for lying to Congress and being called on it.

Similarly, Chris Soghoian rightly mocks Clapper for the claim that "mistakes will happen, and when I make one, I correct it," by pointing out that Clapper appears to have left off a few important caveats to the end of that sentence: "3 months later, after a front-page scandal."

On top of that, we're talking about perjury, in lying to Congress. If other people perjure themselves, do they get to -- many months later -- go back and say "whoops, my bad" and get away with it?

Finally, when looked at in the context of Clapper's previous answer that he gave the "least untruthful" answer to Wyden, in which he suggested that he fully understood the question, would that now compound the lies? Did he give the least untruthful answer to a complex question, or did he not understand the question. He's now claimed both, and under either case, he seems to be continuing to lie, rather than answer honestly.

Unfortunately, it appears that Clapper is likely to get away with blatant lying to Congress as well, as experts are saying there's almost no chance of prosecution in this case. Why? Well, in part because apparently everyone seems to accuse everyone else of lying to Congress so frequently that no one pays any attention to when it actually happens.

Liar-liar-pants-on-fire charges have become so ordinary and expected in Washington, that few pay serious attention to them. Such charges are understood as merely another weapon in the partisan's arsenal.

But there is another reality about false statements to Congress. Lying is always easy to charge, but never easy to prove. Before anyone can be formally and criminally charged with lying to Congress, the committee before which the purported false testimony was given must vote to refer the matter to the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia for prosecution.

Such votes are not easily nor lightly taken. Such a referral for prosecution cannot be based on a hunch or a hope; rather it requires solid evidence that one or more of the relevant statutes has been violated, along with supporting evidence.

That article also notes that there have been "less than a dozen successful prosecutions of witnesses testifying falsely before Congress." Of course, in this case, unlike elsewhere, we have Clapper flat out admitting to lying to Congress. In fact, as the article notes above, Clapper's admission shows that he violated three separate relevant laws. So the "proof" is a lot lower a burden. And yet, still nothing is likely to be done. As that article notes, the prosecutions tend to be around scandals that have pissed off Congress, and that doesn't appear to the case here (ridiculously).

In other words, there's almost certainly no punishment for lying to Congress, and the NSA and other intelligence officials have a long history of basically doing just that, knowing that there's no harm in it. In fact, as that article notes, Clapper's eventual "punishment" is likely to be that he leaves his current job to get a "much higher salary, as an executive in the private sector that provides most of America's digital-intelligence operations."

Filed Under: congress, james clapper, lying, nsa surveillance, perjury, ron wyden, surveillance

DailyDirt: Journalism FAIL

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

While journalists are expected to follow a certain set of standards or code of ethics, that's not always the case. Every now and again, someone breaks the rules and gets away with it -- if only temporarily, since they usually get caught in the end. One famous example is former U.S. journalist Stephen Glass, who had fabricated many articles while he was working for the magazine The New Republic in the 1990s. (Apparently, he's now fighting for the right to practice law in California, after he was denied a license in 2007 on moral grounds.) Here are a few more examples of bad journalism.

• Jonah Lehrer, who had blogged for Wired for several years and was recently hired (and then fired) by The New Yorker, reportedly fabricated quotes and recycled or outright plagiarized parts of articles. While Wired had initially agreed to keep Lehrer on as a features writer, after carefully examining a number of his posts, the magazine just recently decided to end its relationship with him due to his failure to "meet WIRED editorial standards" or to "follow basic good journalism practices." [url]
• Ryan Holiday, marketing director at American Apparel, calls himself a "media manipulator." He wrote a book called "Trust Me, I'm Lying" on how to exploit the media by lying. Even worse, he used Help a Reporter Out (HARO) and pretended to be an expert on pretty much everything -- by lying, of course -- and managed to fool reporters from MSNBC, ABC News, CBS, The New York Times, and more. He claims it was all part of an experiment. [url]
• Margaret Wente has been accused of plagiarism -- copying the words of another Canadian columnist for her own article in 2009 about genetically modified foods in Africa. She has responded to the allegations, but her employers have also disciplined her (without revealing the details of her punishment and obviously not firing her). [url]
• Poynter.org has a wrap-up of the year's journalistic failings (so far) -- which it calls Journalism's Summer of Sin -- and it prescribes some measures for news organizations to prevent (and deal with) plagiarism and fabrication. The year isn't over, though, so place your bets on how many more journalistic fumbles will occur before 2013. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

Filed Under: ethics, haro, jonah lehrer, journalism, labvertisements, lying, margaret wente, plagiarism, ryan holiday, stephen glass

DOJ Two Step: It Should Be A Criminal Offense To Lie About Your Age On Facebook... But We Probably Won't Go After You For It

from the well,-that's-comforting dept

While we obviously spent a lot of time on the SOPA hearings this week, there was another Judiciary Committee meeting of interest this week concerning cybersecurity. Part of the discussion focused on the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), which is being regularly abused by law enforcement to bring all sorts of questionable charges against people. This, by the way, is one of the reasons why we fear the felony provisions in SOPA, because we know how the DOJ abuses similar laws.

In this case, one of the key issues is that law enforcement has used the law in the past to say that any violation of a terms of service agreement -- such as lying about your age when signing up for a dating site -- could be a criminal offense under the CFAA. That, of course, is insane. Even more ridiculous, however, is that the DOJ's official testimony at the hearing was about how important it was to keep this part of the law in place, allowing it to add questionable charges.

The law must allow "prosecutions based upon a violation of terms of service or similar contractual agreement with an employer or provider," -- Richard Downing, Justice Department's deputy computer crime chief

But then, Downing also seems to be saying the exact opposite:

“The DoJ is in no way interested in bringing cases against people who lie about their age on dating sites, or anything of the sort. We don’t have the time or resources to do that,”

So.... the law must allow such prosecutions, but it has no interest in bringing such prosecutions. That makes perfect sense. If you're a DOJ official, I guess. For the rest of us... huh?

Filed Under: cfaa, doj, felony, hacking, lying, orin kerr, richard downing, terms of service

Justice Department Drops Its Request To Be Allowed To Lie In Response To FOIA Requests

from the now-it'll-just-lie-without-permission? dept

After taking a pretty widespread public mocking for its proposal to lie to people when receiving requests for documents it didn't want to give out, the Justice Department says it is dropping that plan. As you may recall, the Justice Department wanted to be able to say that documents didn't exist, even if they did. In the past, the DOJ has been able to say that it "cannot confirm or deny" the existence, which might force people to file suit to find out about certain documents. However, the DOJ wanted to deny their existence entirely, even when they did, in fact, exist. For rather obvious reasons, this troubled people.

Of course, the DOJ's capitulation is done rather petulantly. While it admits that, having heard the comments to its proposal, its suggested language "falls short" of the necessary transparency, it still defends the basic idea behind lying to the public, while denying that it's lying. It first notes that the practice of responding with "there exist no records responsive to your FOIA request" even if there were such records, has been in place since 1987, under the guidance of then Attorney General Ed Meese. And then they try to explain how that's not lying:

The logic is simple: When a citizen makes a request pursuant to the FOIA, either implicit or explicit in the request is that it seeks records that are subject to the FOIA; where the only records that exist are not subject to the FOIA, the statement that "there exist no records responsive to your FOIA request" is wholly accurate....

It then insists that this practice is never "lying," but that the DOJ will try to come up with ways to be more transparent. Somehow, I'm not sure I believe that will really happen.

Filed Under: foia, government, justice department, lying

UK Politician Tossed Out Of Parliament For Lying About Opponent During Election

from the wouldn't-that-be-nice... dept

Having just gone through election season here in the US, with all sorts of crazy political claims made in political commercials, it's interesting to see that, over in the UK, one elected member of Parliament, Phil Woolas, recently lost his seat after a court threw out the results of the election because Woolas went "too far in distorting his opponent's positions" (found via Dave Farber). Not only was the election thrown out, and Woolas removed from office, but he's prohibited from serving in Parliament for three years. Harsh.

Of course, while this might seem appealing for folks who are fed up with insane and misleading political advertising, as FactCheck.org notes in the link above, thanks to the First Amendment, we actually say it's legal for a politician to lie in that way (though, I would imagine that a defamation lawsuit might be possible). And while that might not seem fair, as FactCheck points out, the idea behind this is that we actually trust the voters to figure things out:

We certainly don't approve of false or misleading political claims, by any candidate or party. But the founders of our democracy left it to the voters, not the courts, to sort fact from fiction.

Filed Under: free speech, lying, politics, uk

Telltale Signs A CEO Is Lying (Or Not)

from the moving-his-lips? dept

NPR has a story about a study that tried to figure out indicators that a CEO is lying. The researchers went through the statements made by executives on earnings calls for companies that later had to restate earnings, and found a few key signals that indicate lies. The researcher's own summary:

We find that answers of deceptive executives have more references to general knowledge, fewer non-extreme positive emotions, and fewer references to shareholders value and value creation. In addition, deceptive CEOs use significantly fewer self- references, more third person plural and impersonal pronouns, more extreme positive emotions, fewer extreme negative emotions, and fewer certainty and hesitation words.

Honestly though, reading through this, it seems pretty difficult to use this to really come to any serious conclusions. For example, one of the indicators is that:

lying executives tend to overuse words like "we" and "our team" when they talk about their company. They avoid saying "I."

The argument is that the CEO doing so is trying to avoid responsibility for the statement, but couldn't it also be that they actually appreciate the work of the team around them? My initial reaction to a CEO who uses "I" repeatedly is that he or she is hogging the credit and not a good leader.

That said, some of the other parts do make sense, such as answering a different question than the one asked. There was an example given of that:

For instance, in 2002 NPR interviewed Computer Associates CEO Sanjay Kumar, who later went to prison for securities fraud, about his company's auditing practices.

Here's what he said: "There's no one out there today in the world of public companies who has the former chief accountant for the SEC running their audit committee. We do. There's no one out there who has the pre-eminent governance leader, professor [Jay] Lorsch, for example, running their governance committee. We do."

In other words, Kumar was asked, "Can your books be trusted?" And he replied by saying, "We hire the very best auditors." Larcker says that can be a big warning sign.

Finally, the things to worry about are CEOs who use extremely positive wording on things:

"If all my speech is 'fantastic,' 'superb,' 'outstanding,' 'excellent' and all my speech sounds like a big hype -- it probably is," Larcker says.

Of course, if that's true, then Steve Jobs is the worst of the worst of the worst when it comes to lying CEOs. As an example, in the period of about thirty seconds during the iPad launch, he used the words "extraordinary... the best experience ever... it's phenomenal... it's unbelievably great... way better..." etc. Which I think sort of points out why this kind of research, by itself, is pretty tough to be used to indicate anything.

Filed Under: ceos, lying, studies

Fake Engineer Tries To Get Lighter Sentence... By Faking References

from the there's-dumb-and-then-there's... dept

Well, here's a fun one. A guy who was found guilty of faking his credentials to get a job as a maintenance engineer for the airline Qantas tried to get a lighter sentence by submitted four sterling references. But... it turns out that those references were faked as well (found via the Raw Feed). The guy didn't even do a particularly convincing job faking the references either. All four were formatted the same way and signed by the same hand, and one was from the president of a sports organization... that didn't even exist. You would think, in the age of the internet that people would assume that making up entire organizations wouldn't be particularly effective.

Filed Under: fraud, lying
Companies: qantas

Entellium Execs Simply Made Up Revenue

from the well,-that's-one-way-to-hit-your-numbers dept

It always surprises me when I hear about various tech startups that eventually resorted to outright scamming. I can understand the pressures of running a startup as things get tough, but I can't ever imagine resorting to making up revenue outright. Yet, whenever an economic downturn hits, these stories start popping up. You may recall back in 2001 when the hot startup Critical Path was caught making up about 10% of its revenue. A day later, one of the biggest speech recognition companies of the time, Lernout & Hauspie, announced that its Korean division had made up almost all of its revenue. In that case, it resulted in the end of L&H completely, as well as jail time for the CEO.

It looks like we may be getting another such story. Just a few weeks ago, CRM provider Entellium was announcing new products (which they spammed us with a press release about). On October 1st, we received another email pitch from Entellium, urging us to download its software for a free 30-day trial. That same day, the company's CEO and CFO suddenly quit. A couple days later, most of the company's employees were laid off and told that the company was out of money.

The whole thing seemed quite odd, especially considering that the company had raised over $50 million, had just launched this product and everything seemed to have been moving forward. Late Wednesday, however, the details came out. It turned out that the two execs who quit, Paul Johnston and Parrish Jones had been flat out lying to its board and its investors concerning revenue for years. For example, since 2006, the company made less than $3.8 million, but told the board it brought in $15.5 million. That's not just a slight fudging of the numbers -- that's extreme fraud, which was used to help the company raise that $50 million.

The biggest question, though, is where were the board and the investors on this. It's difficult to see how investors would hand over more than $50 million without ever conducting an audit. They simply believed the two execs. It's also worth noting how the fraud unraveled. Apparently, the VP of HR was cleaning out the desk of the former head of sales, and discovered the bogus set of books that the CEO & CFO had been showing the board. She turned them over to the company's comptroller, who gave them to a board member -- which resulted in the board pretty quickly calling the CEO to let him know that they were sending over their own "contract" CFO to "check some things out." That was the point at which the two execs resigned.

You always hope that these stories are simply cases of bad seeds, and that there aren't others doing the same, but it'll be worth watching to see if we start hearing other similar stories. They seem to come in bunches.

Filed Under: cooked books, fraud, lying, parrish jones, paul johnston
Companies: critical path, entellium, learnout & hauspie