Is Snowden Inspiring A New Wave Of Whistleblowers?

from the courage-is-contagious dept

We noted last week that Japan was bringing in severe new punishments designed to discourage whistleblowing. That might suggest that following Snowden's leaks, there will now be a period of repression where potential whistleblowers lie low to avoid bringing down the wrath of governments on their heads. One person with a better idea than most about what is really going on here is Jesselyn Radack. She's employed by the General Accountability Project (GAP), a leading US whistleblower protection and advocacy organization. Here's part of her biography on the GAP site:

she works primarily with national security and intelligence community whistleblowers, including those from the Defense Department, Department of Homeland Security, NSA and CIA -- with a special focus on torture, secret surveillance, secrecy, and political discrimination.

That clearly puts her in an excellent position to judge to what extent whistleblowers within the intelligence community are intimidated by the actions being taken by the US government against leaks and the people who make them. This is what she says is happening, as told to ABC News:

"I think the government hopes to chill speech by employees in the national security and intelligence fields, especially those at the NSA and CIA, but the unintended consequence is [that] more and more whistleblowers are coming through the doors of the Government Accountability Project (GAP)," said Jesselyn Radack, referring to the organization where she works as the National Security and Human Rights Director. "I think courage is contagious, and we see more and more people from the NSA coming through our door after Snowden made these revelations."

It would be a truly extraordinary development if a new wave of whistleblowers started to come forward now -- not least because they might inspire yet more people to do the same, leading to a cascade of revelations, and bringing an unstoppable momentum to moves to reform the NSA.

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Filed Under: ed snowden, jesselyn radack, nsa, nsa surveillance, whistleblowers

Keith Alexander Sarcastically Blames Ambassadors For NSA's Foreign Spying

from the winning-friends,-left-and-right dept

It would appear that NSA boss Keith Alexander is beginning to get tired of all these questions about the NSA, and the supposed lack of support from the White House concerning the revelations of spying on foreign leaders. One of the things that is most often said about Alexander is that he can be very charming and charismatic in talking to people one on one, which has helped him in various political matters for years, but given his latest exchange, it sounds like he's beginning to crack a bit. When confronted by Maryland state senator James Rosapepe, who had been the US ambassador to Romania back in the 90s, Alexander decided to get sarcastic and blame US diplomats and the administration for having the NSA spy on foreign leaders:

"We all joke that everyone is spying on everyone," [Rosapepe] said. "But that is not a national security justification."

Alexander replied: "That is a great question, in fact as an ambassador you have part of the answer. Because we the intelligence agencies don't come up with the requirements. The policymakers come up with the requirements."

He went on: "One of those groups would have been, let me think, hold on, oh: ambassadors."

Of course, even if this is true, it's a fairly incredible statement, where the head of the NSA now seems to think it's appropriate to go sarcastic over such a question. It may be true that the NSA is "just following orders," but that hardly excuses the behavior, nor the near constant stream of misleading to outright false statements spread by the NSA, even while it searches for every loophole it can find to expand its spying efforts.

Filed Under: james rosapepe, keith alexander, nsa, nsa surveillance

The Best Comments From The Worst Video: The Internet Vs. The NSA's Charm Offensive

from the patented-internet-'Preparation-H8'-does-nothing-for-agency-asshurt dept

The NSA continues to battle for hearts and minds, mostly aiming for those that matter (elected officials), but occasionally stepping down to street level to tell everyday Americans how they've got the spy agency all wrong.

To that end, the Dept. of Defense produced an incredibly awkward video featuring Captain James Tiberius Kirk General Keith Alexander answering a series of questions from a supposed interviewer (although her voice is never actually heard). It's all shot in a "look how open we are!" sort of way, which means seeing glimpses of the recording crew, extension cords, the back of the "interviewer's" head and, most surprisingly, Alexander without a tie.

In a thirty-minute version of the Official Talking Points, Alexander talks about how spy people are the best people and compares the Section 215 program to being forced to take a bath. He invites a discussion on how to better surveil the world while also recommending journalists publishing leaked documents be "stopped." Sadly, he doesn't invite too much discussion on this topic, although he does use the royal "we" when detailing who should be preventing journalists from performing journalism.

"We ought to come up with a way of stopping it. I don't know how to do that. That's more of the courts and the policymakers but, from my perspective, it's wrong to allow this to go on."

The strained informality of the video isn't fooling anyone. Currently, it sports a gaudy "dislike" ratio of 57:1 (280 "likes," 15,381 "dislikes").


There are also more than 4,000 comments on the video, almost every single one of them disparaging. The comments range to-the-point "screw the NSA" variations to longer, unhinged spiels tying the NSA leaks to the commenter's pet conspiracy theory. One commenter was moved to give the NSA frontman both barrels of his (presumably British) derision.


Between the expected flow of vitriol (mostly deserved), all-caps screeds/Illuminati rantings (because this is the internet) and ways to earn money at home, there are a few hidden gems.


That faux-openness? Fooling nobody. But it's amazing what a single unbuttoned button does for someone's public persona. Sure, you might feel you could have a drink with the Chief Spook, but I imagine you'd take your wallet, phone or purse to the restroom with you when nature called.

Another commenter feels the removal of the necktie doesn't go quite far enough towards making General Alexander a man of the people.


And the music (ffs!). Motherboard calls the video out for its pseudo-NOVA episode feel, asking simply "Why?" in its one word critique of the soundtrack. Alphaville refers to the music as "narco-ambient." A (misspelled?) Alex Vance gives credit where credit is due, however.


But maybe there's more to the music than simply being the first track off the first library music album grabbed by the DoD's producers.


Beyond critiquing the video's look and soundtrack, some commenters offered their impressions of Alexander himself...


as well as Alexander's preferred nickname…


and the sort of reaction the queasy music and queasier talking points recitation has on the average viewer.


I, for one, am looking forward to more awkward openness from intelligence officials in the coming months. The power of social media should be harnessed by the NSA and others (but from the outside, like the rest of us), if for no other reason than it provides immediate feedback on the credibility of the talking points. Sure, the NSA may learn nothing from this experience, but if it thought the country was fairly evenly split on the merits of intrusive surveillance, it can look to its 57:1 dislike ratio for further guidance. Even Texas Governor Rick Perry's atrocious presidential campaign video only sports a dislike ratio of 29:1, and that video criticizes gays in the military and complains about the separation of church and state.

Perhaps the next video could be Clapper, Comey, Alexander, Michael Hayden and Stewart Baker "casually" discussing the merits of broad surveillance programs while playing poker, sitting on lawn furniture, taking a nature hike or closing a field office. Maybe some "citizens" could be on tap to ask "natural-sounding" softballs about how 9/11 was caused by civil liberties groups or how basement-dwelling losers shouldn't expect to be allowed into "adult" discussions on intelligence policies -- you know, whatever it takes to turn public opinion around.

Filed Under: dod, keith alexander, nsa, nsa surveillance, propaganda, youtube

The Rogers Doctrine: More Transparency Creates More Privacy Violations, Since You'll Find Out About Them

from the we-deserve-better dept

We recently wrote about the absolutely bizarre claims of Rep. Mike Rogers, the man supposedly in charge of "oversight" of the Intelligence Community, claiming that there can be no privacy violations "if you don't know your privacy is violated." This has resulted in plenty of mocking, including with satire so good many people believed it. It's also been picked up, somewhat, by the bastions of pop culture, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. Stewart covered it on Wednesday's episode of The Daily Show, though it feels like he sort of underplayed the absolute ridiculousness of Rogers' statement. Colbert's version, however, was quite well done, and gets better as you go along (and, yes, I know, that video can't be seen in many regions, but if you can't watch the video, you can see the animated gif version instead: The key lines from Colbert, after playing the tape of Rogers' shocked statement at the idea that anyone's privacy could possibly be violated so long as they didn't know about it, followed by Stephen Vladeck's comment that "if a tree falls in a forest, it makes a noise whether you're there to see it or not," Colbert explains in his usual satirical manner that it all "makes perfect sense if you don't think about it" and also notes that when someone lies to you, "technically they're telling the truth, so long as you never find out it's a lie":

Let's say, instead of falling in the forest, the tree is standing outside your house and I'm hiding in it watching you shower. So far, I'm not violating your privacy. But the second you see me through the window, suddenly I'm the criminal? What about my privacy? I'm trying to masturbate here. Come to think of it, there are all sorts of victimless crimes like this. We know people getting assaulted because they call the police. But I've never heard of anyone calling the cops because they were murdered. Therefore, clearly, no one was killed. By the same logic, folks, I have not insulted Mike Rogers as long as he never hears me say: The reason Mike Rogers uses circular logic is because his head is jammed up his own ass.

Of course, obviously, I do not mean a word of that. I admire what historians will now call "The Rogers' Doctrine": when it comes to privacy vs. security, we can have one of them, as long as we don't know which one it is. That way, we can maintain our constitutional rights. Or, if they do take away our rights, just don't let us find out. That way, we'll still have them.

Meanwhile, over at Slate, Will Oremus has also written about Rogers' comment, and also come up with a name for it. He calls it "Rogers' Paradox," noting that it's a variation on the historical concept of "what you don't know can't hurt you," and how this is "an age-old excuse for people in power to trample on the rights of those without it."

But, Oremus makes an even more pertinent point. If Rogers' statement is accurate (and it's not), then it would actually mean that greater transparency itself would harm people's privacy because they'd find out about it. Think about that for a second. Under the logic of Mike Rogers' twisted mind, the more transparency there is about privacy violations, the more those non-privacy violations become privacy violations -- and thus he must fight against such transparency at all costs to protect our privacy.

And this is a guy in power.

Filed Under: mike rogers, nsa, nsa surveillance, privacy, transparency

Former NSA Boss Says NSA Should Just Reveal Everything Itself And Move On

from the rip-off-that-bandaid dept

While former NSA boss Michael Hayden has been out there defending everything the NSA has been doing, another former NSA boss, Bobby Ray Inman, is taking a different approach. A couple months ago, he argued that the NSA's lies were a big mistake, and now he's gone a step further. The NY Times had a big article this weekend revealing a bunch of things about how the NSA acts based on going through a bunch of Snowden documents. There's a lot of new stuff in there, but mostly minor, targeted issues, rather than the big bombshells that have been coming out every few days.

But all the way at the very, very end, they get to a quote from Inman, suggesting a more radical way for the NSA to get ahead of these leaks: just reveal everything and move on:

Bobby R. Inman, who weathered his own turbulent period as N.S.A. director from 1977 to 1981, offers his hyper-secret former agency a radical suggestion for right now. "My advice would be to take everything you think Snowden has and get it out yourself," he said. "It would certainly be a shock to the agency. But bad news doesn't get better with age. The sooner they get it out and put it behind them, the faster they can begin to rebuild."

That's surprisingly similar to the suggestion made by Bruce Schneier a few months ago. As it stands now, the info keeps coming out anyway, and, each time, it makes the NSA look bad -- and their weak reactions and claims that people just don't understand ring very hollow. If the NSA actually got all this stuff out then there could be a real discussion. Somehow, I just don't see it happening, though.

Filed Under: bobby ray inman, nsa, nsa surveillance

Bruce Schneier Speculates On NSA Double Laundering Information It Obtains Via Network Infiltration

from the double-reverse-parallel-construction dept

Bruce Schneier has a worth-reading post about the latest reports on the NSA infiltrating the network connections for Google and Yahoo's datacenter, making a number of good points about that story. We'll discuss a few of the points, but I wanted to focus in on this one first:

In light of this, PRISM is really just insurance: a way for the NSA to get legal cover for information it already has. My guess is that the NSA collects the vast majority of its data surreptitiously, using programs such as these. Then, when it has to share the information with the FBI or other organizations, it gets it again through a more public program like PRISM.

While it's just speculation, there is some reason to suggest it might be the case, and that would show just how far the NSA goes in some cases. After all, until June, PRISM itself was a secret. Yet, now, it's possible that the secret PRISM program was really just a way to put a legal-looking coat of paint on far more invasive activities. After all, it's already been revealed that the NSA and others make use of what they call "parallel construction" to "refind" evidence that they found through means they don't want to be challenged in court. As we said, this is just a way of laundering illegally obtained evidence. If Schneier's suspicion is right, then the NSA was actually probably happy that PRISM info came out first, since it does have at least some claims to being legal under Section 702.

But, if he's correct, it would mean that the NSA has secretly backdoored its way into networks, sucking up pretty much everything -- and then when it finds something useful, it will then use Section 702 under the FAA and the FISA Court to come up with some reasoning why that same info should be "collected" via either PRISM or the upstream telco traps, and then it can do more with it. This might not be true, but layering secret programs on top of secret programs to hide how the info was actually obtained would be something.

Other key points from Schneier are that we cannot assume it was just Google and Yahoo infiltrated this way. It's likely that others have been as well, just under different programs. And, more importantly, this demonstrates how legislative change to fix these things likely won't be enough. If you block the NSA from getting the data from door number 1, they're already in doors numbered 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6. Not only does there need to be a full independent investigation of everything the NSA is doing, but we need to build much more secure systems at the same time.

Filed Under: bruce schneier, infiltration, nsa, nsa surveillance, prism

Dumbest Logic Ever: 9/11 Happened Without Today's NSA Surveillance, And That's Proof Why It's Necessary

from the how-do-these-people-get-to-be-in-power dept

Oh, Stewart Baker. You may recall this former top NSA and DHS official from the time he said the Boston bombing proved that civil liberties advocates were wrong about cybersecurity. Or, maybe the time he blamed 9/11 on civil libertarians. Or, how about the time he said privacy advocates were to blame for the TSA groping you at the airport? And those are all just in the past few months. Baker always seems good for a head-smackingly ridiculous quote, and it appears that The Guardian got him to provide yet another one.

The Guardian has a big, overly designed (pretty, but... not clear for what good) piece called NSA Files: Decoded, which goes through many of the revelations in the Snowden docs and why they're important. It's a good read, interspersed with videos (which annoyingly autoplay as you get to them). Baker appears a few times, with his second video being another insane quote (as far as I can tell, there's no way to embed the video here):

You can say, well show me proof that this really worked. I can show you proof that the lack of this really failed. And when you lose 3,000 people, that proof is pretty compelling.

That statement is shockingly non-sensical. With that sort of logic, you can argue for almost any abuse of power. You know what else we didn't have before 9/11? Surgically implanted chips in our brains that would transmit our every thought to Stewart Baker's home computer. Is that "compelling proof" that we should now have that? The fact that we didn't have this kind of surveillance at the time of 9/11 is not "compelling proof" that it makes sense now, and you have to have no comprehension of basic logic and reasoning to think so.

The logic here is "9/11 happened, so anything we didn't have in place during 9/11 is automatically compelling proof that it should be in place." You know what else we didn't have when 9/11 happened? Well, the list is pretty damn long. We didn't have a US monarchy. Perhaps we need that. We had airplanes, which were used in the attacks. Perhaps it's compelling evidence that we should get rid of airplanes. You can use this kind of brain dead logic to justify just about anything.

But, of course, that's now how you actually do things. You don't justify something by saying "this went wrong, we have to do something, something has been done, and that's compelling proof." There's a big black box that Baker skips over, and it's the question he was originally asked and declined to answer: does the "something" actually work? But, in Baker's distorted view of the world, that doesn't seem to matter.

Filed Under: 9/11, dhs, nsa, nsa surveillance, stewart baker

Apparently James Clapper And The NSA Don't See Eye-To-Eye On Transparency

from the that-could-get-interesting dept

For the most part, following the fallout from the NSA surveillance leaks, the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, and the head of the NSA, Keith Alexander, have seemed almost interchangeable. While Clapper technically ranks above Alexander in the administration pecking order, both have basically presented the same (dubious) arguments in favor of the NSA's activities, and their statements have been in such lockstep that you could exchange quotes from one for the other without noticing much, if any, difference. However, in a recent Washington Post profile of Clapper, it appears that there may at least be some cracking of the facade of unity. While it's not a major part of the Clapper profile, the article, by David Ignatius, does note that when that important 2011 FISA court ruling was declassified a couple of months ago, the NSA wanted to redact large parts of the decision, and Clapper actually pushed back, demanding greater transparency, before having his own top lawyer redo the redactions, so that much less ended up being redacted:

One example is Clapper’s pressure on the NSA to disclose more about its surveillance programs. The NSA initially wanted to “redact” (a fancy word for censor) far more of a 2011 ruling by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that the agency had engaged in illegally broad surveillance. Clapper thought NSA lawyers were suppressing too much, so he instructed his general counsel, Robert Litt, to go back through the document and make public more information. Clapper ignored NSA and Justice Department protests, including to the White House, and backed Litt’s less-redacted version.

Of course, this story leaves out the part about how pretty much everyone, including Clapper, initially fought against having any part of this decision released until they were forced to do so by the EFF in a lawsuit.

That said, it's still interesting to see that, when it comes to that situation, Clapper is at least willing to go against the NSA behind closed doors, even if he's in lock-step with them publicly.

Filed Under: james clapper, nsa, nsa surveillance, robert litt, transparency

John Kerry Admits That The NSA Has Gone Too Far; Will He Take Back His Labelling Ed Snowden A Traitor?

from the can-we-move-that-needle-over-to-whistleblower dept

Secretary of State John Kerry is among the many politicians who rushed to call Ed Snowden a traitor -- though, to be fair, he said "traitor to the oath he took to his fellow employees, to the duty he took freely by his own choice." That's not quite the same as saying he's a traitor "to the US," but it's still pretty strong. And yet, now, after more and more information has come out about the NSA's activities, thanks entirely to Snowden's leaks, even Kerry is admitting that the NSA has "gone too far."

"In some cases, I acknowledge to you, as has the President, that some of these actions have reached too far and we are going to make sure that that doesn't happen in the future.

"There is no question that the President and I, and others in government, have actually learned of some things that have been happening in many ways on automatic pilot because the technology has been there and the ability has been there over the course of a long period of time."

So, Secretary Kerry, can you at least now admit that Snowden was a whistleblower?

Filed Under: ed snowden, john kerry, nsa, nsa surveillance

How Feinstein's Fake NSA Reform Bill Could Actually Make It Easier For NSA To Record Your Phone Calls

from the sneaky-sneaky dept

We already pointed out that Dianne Feinstein's fake NSA reform bill is being positioned by her as real reform, when all it really does is codify the (probably currently illegal) status quo. Even worse, Feinstein is using highly misleading language to pretend that the bill "bans" the very things that it clearly allows. It's about as dishonest a statement about a bill as you can imagine.

We had noted in our original post that the talk about how the bill would prohibit the collection of "content of communications under Section 215" was a red herring. One of the NSA's go-to talking points is that there's "no surveillance" on the Section 215 collections because it's "just metadata." They keep repeating this claim over and over again that the leaked programs do not involve collecting the "content" of calls, pretending that this is what everyone's been complaining about. That statement alone is disingenuous. Most people following this know that the Section 215 collections don't involve the content of communications. What we're complaining about is the metadata collection, because that's very revealing. Separately, while the NSA may not collect contents "under this program," they absolutely do under other programs.

But, the actual language here may be even worse. It may be so misleading that the language being held up to "prohibit" the collection of actual call content is worded in a way that actually will allow for greater content collection. As Julian Sanchez notes at that link, the ban on content collection is only for "bulk data collection," which could be interpreted to mean it's okay for non-bulk collections, which most people believe 215 isn't regularly used for today.

The problem is, under canons of judicial interpretation, a narrow and explicit prohibition on getting content under bulk orders for communications records could easily be read to imply that content can be acquired via non-bulk orders, or even via bulk orders for other types of records. At present, it is not clear whether the statute allows for the acquisition of contents under 215, but there are strong arguments it does not—though, of course, I’d argue the Constitution would forbid this even if the statute didn’t. Under this law, though, a clever Justice Department lawyer could plausibly argue that a prohibition on content collection under one very specific type of 215 order would be senseless and redundant unless Congress intended for content to be accessible under 215 orders generally—and Courts generally have to interpret the law in a way that avoids making any provision redundant.

And, as Sanchez further points out, this isn't a theoretical concept. The Justice Department has already used exactly this type of argument to allow for the bulk data collection in the first place:

This is not at all a hypothetical concern. In 2006, Congress amended Section 215 to add special “protections” for educational and medical records. What Congress didn’t know is that, because those records are already protected under other federal laws, and 215 contained no language explicitly overriding those statutes, the Justice Department had determined that 215 simply could not be used to access those types of records—an interpretation that was reversed after the “protections” were added. Congress, in other words, inadvertently expanded the scope of 215 while trying to limit it—a fact that was discovered only later, when a report by the Inspector General revealed the unintended consequences of the amendment.

This is yet another example of the really evil word games the NSA and its defenders will use to increase spying, while pretending they're doing the opposite. Now would be a good time to reach out to your Senator to let them know that the Feinstein bill is absolutely unacceptable.

Filed Under: dianne feinstein, nsa, nsa surveillance, section 215