The Lies Your Government Tells You About NSA Surveillance

from the all-in-one-place dept

The folks over at ProPublica have collected a series of flat-out lies by government officials concerning NSA snooping and put them all together in a short video. It includes statements from Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, NSA boss Keith Alexander, Senate Intelligence boss Senator Dianne Feinstein and President Barack Obama -- all stating false claims about NSA surveillance publicly. It then shows how those statements were false. We've said it before but as these very same officials now are trying to assure us there's nothing wrong with the program, given their past lies, how can we take them seriously?

Filed Under: barack obama, dianne feinstein, james clapper, keith alexander, lies, nsa, nsa surveillance

NSA-To-English Dictionary: I Don't Think These Words Mean What You Think They Do

from the if-you-can-redefine-the-language dept

For the last few weeks I'd been meaning to write up a "dictionary" of how the NSA translates certain words, completely different from the way any other English speaker does, in order to argue that what it does with its surveillance programs is "legal" under the law. I hadn't gotten around to it because every time I started, it seemed like there was more breaking news. Thankfully Jameel Jaffer and Brett Max Kaufman from the ACLU beat me to it, and put together a fantastic NSA lexicon, which highlights how the NSA has simply changed the meaning of many basic English words in order to argue that their efforts are, in fact, legal and above board. You can and should read the full and detailed explanations that Jaffer and Kaufman have put together for each word, but I'm going to take their same list and simplify it down a little. In bold is the word, and after it is what the NSA thinks it means.

• Surveillance: When we actually access full content of your calls and emails, but not when we access all the data about who you talk to, where you are and what you do.
• Collect: When we run a search on data we collected er... "stored for safe keeping."
• Relevant: Everything. It might become relevant in the future, thus it's relevant today.
• Targeted: As long as we're collecting the info for an investigation that involves a "target" then any info is "targeted" even if that info has nothing to do with the "target."
• Incidental: Everything that we collect... er... store that may become "relevant" at some point but isn't now even though it's "targeted." In short: everything.
• Inadvertent: Stuff we did on purpose on a massive scale that looks bad when exposed publicly.
• Minimize: A term we use to pretend that we delete information on Americans, but which has many exceptions, including if you encrypted your communications or if we have a sneaking suspicion that you're 51% foreign based on a hunch.
• No: When said to Congress in response to questions about whether we collect data on millions of Americans, this means "fuck you."

I would imagine there are a few more words that will need to be added at some point.

Filed Under: collect, definitions, incidental, laws, legality, minimization, nsa surveillance, relevance, surveillance, targeted

Congressional Oversight? Dianne Feinstein Says She's 'Not A High-Tech Techie' But Knows NSA Can't Abuse Surveillance

from the oh-really? dept

As the NSA and defenders of NSA surveillance are trying to minimize the damage from the latest leak, which revealed the details of the XKeyscore program, they're bending over backwards to insist that this program is both limited and immune from abuse. We've already mentioned that the claims that it can't be abused are laughable since there's already a well-documented history of abuse. However, even more bizarre is the following quote from Senate Intelligence Committee boss, Senator Dianne Feinstein (a staunch defender of the surveillance programs):

Feinstein said, “I am not a high-tech techie, but I have been told that is not possible.”

Note that among Feinstein's jobs is oversight of this program. Yet, what kind of "oversight" is it when she admits that she's not qualified to understand the technology but "has been told" that such abuses are not possible? That doesn't seem like oversight. That seems like asking the NSA "can this system be abused?" and the NSA saying "oh, no no no, not at all." That's not exactly oversight, now is it?

Filed Under: dianne feinstein, nsa, nsa surveillance, oversight, surveillance, technology

This Sunday Is 1984 Day: Go Out And Protest Unconstitutional Surveillance

from the big-brother-says-so dept

Back on July 4th, there were the very successful Restore the 4th rallies around the country. In the month since then, public opinion has increasingly moved towards rejecting the federal government's support for a surveillance state, and it's increasingly clear that Congress is going to put limits on the surveillance campaign as well. But a big part of why that shift is happening is that the folks who are most aware of this are out there letting others know.

In order to continue that momentum, the same loose coalition of folks who organized the July 4th rallies have set up a second set of rallies for this Sunday, August 4th, for what they're calling 1984 Day (get it? it's on 8/4). There will be rallies and marches in various cities around the country, so check out the website to see if one is near you. I know that at least some of them are going to try to rope in various politicians as well. There are some great speakers planned in San Francisco, including two of the most important whistleblowers of government abuse in our lifetimes: Daniel Ellsberg and Mark Klein.

Filed Under: 1984 day, 4th amendment, nsa surveillance, surveillance

Now That The Intelligence Community Got Away With Lying, How Can You Trust Anything They Say?

from the there's-no-punishment dept

We've already discussed how Director of National Intelligence James Clapper flat out lied to Congress (and the American public) and gets away with it completely. While the Obama administration and other surveillance defenders have been almost universal in support for Clapper, despite his lying to Congress and the American public, this seems like a really bad strategy. As has been discussed, at the Black Hat conference, NSA director General Keith Alexander was heckled by someone who accused him of lying to Congress as well, perhaps confusing Alexander for Clapper or perhaps assuming that Alexander told lies another time.

But here's the thing: given Clapper's admitted lying combined with the complete lack of any direct consequences for doing so, there's simply no reason at all to take anything that Clapper or Alexander says at face value. Alexander, especially, has been trying to go on a charm offensive to convince people that the press reports are exaggerated. He even "cursed" during his speech at Black Hat, and then pretended that it was by accident, and asked that it not be mentioned, trying to show how "honest" he was being. But all the charm in the world can't overcome the simple fact that everyone knows that there appear to be no direct consequences for lying. Even if we want to believe him, it's pretty difficult.

If the administration really wants to convince us that the surveillance programs are above board, it seems that keeping on an admitted liar to both Congress and the American public as the "face" of such programs isn't a particularly intelligent idea. It just makes people that much less likely to believe anything that Clapper, Alexander or others say about the program in their attempts to defend it.

Filed Under: james clapper, keith alexander, lies, nsa, nsa surveillance, trust

NSA Boss & Defenders Insist NSA Can't Abuse Surveillance Systems; Forgets To Mention It Already Has

from the just-saying dept

As NSA boss Keith Alexander was in Vegas to present at the Black Hat conference this week, much of the attention has been paid to the fact that he was heckled by audience members, though others in attendance said that the audience was "mostly supportive" of Alexander's statements. Either way, I'd like to focus in on a key point that he made, when he claimed that NSA analysts wouldn't abuse their surveillance powers, because they're audited and trained not to break the rules:

“The assumption is our people are just out there wheeling and dealing. Nothing could be further from the truth. We have tremendous oversight over these programmes. We can audit the actions of our people 100%, and we do that,” he said.

[....] Should anyone in the NSA try to circumvent that, in defiance of policy, they would be held accountable, he said: “There is 100% audibility.” Only 35 NSA analysts had the authority to query a database of US phone records, he said.

Meanwhile, Rep. Mike Rogers, who really doesn't know when to give up, went out on Twitter to "defend" the leaks about XKeyscore, insisting that they're magically immune from abuse because of "legal constraints, comprehensive training and layers of oversight built into all NSA programs."

You see, that sounds great... except for the fact that we already know that they have abused those powers. Back in 2009, it was revealed that NSA analysts viewed former President Bill Clinton's emails:

An anonymous former intelligence analyst tells reporters James Risen and Eric Lichtblau that during much of the Bush years, the NSA “tolerated significant collection and examination of domestic e-mail messages without warrants.” Reportedly, one of the accessed domestic e-mail accounts belonged to former President Bill Clinton.

This same report gets to the supposed "training" that Alexander insists helps to prevent abuse:

The former analyst added that his instructors had warned against committing any abuses, telling his class that another analyst had been investigated because he had improperly accessed the personal e-mail of former President Bill Clinton.

I can just imagine sitting in that "training" in which the NSA says don't look at people's emails, because someone once looked at Bill Clinton's emails. That seems more like daring them to spy on emails. It's telling them "holy shit, you can look at famous and powerful people's emails." And, of course, that's not the only story of abuse. A year earlier, it was reported that NSA linguists listened in on phone sex calls between Americans living abroad.

Adrienne Kinne, a former U.S. Army Reserves Arab linguist, told ABC News the NSA was listening to the phone calls of U.S. military officers, journalists and aid workers overseas who were talking about "personal, private things with Americans who are not in any way, shape or form associated with anything to do with terrorism."

David Murfee Faulk, a former U.S. Navy Arab linguist, said in the news report that he and his colleagues were listening to the conversations of military officers in Iraq who were talking with their spouses or girlfriends in the United States.

According to Faulk, they would often share the contents of some of the more salacious calls stored on their computers, listening to what he called "phone sex" and "pillow talk."

So, forgive us for being skeptical when Alexander and Rogers insist that abuse is basically impossible because of "oversight" and "training." We've already seen that abuse occur. As far as I know, the NSA still hires analysts from the human race, and with that comes people who are given great responsibility -- and the ability to give in to temptation, such as scouring a former President's emails. To claim that there isn't any abuse just isn't credible.

Filed Under: abuse, keith alexander, mike rogers, nsa, nsa surveillance, privacy

President Obama: NSA Surveillance Was Necessary To Make Sure Boston Bombings Weren't Part Of Bigger Plot

from the sorry-about-the-explosions... dept

Huffington Post has an article about how President Obama is meeting with many of the biggest Congressional critics of the NSA surveillance programs to discuss their concerns. However, on Wednesday he also met with larger groups in the House and Senate, where he continued to stand behind the programs. At the very bottom of the article is this stunning tidbit:

Obama reiterated his call for a "balance" between privacy and national security, but also invoked the Boston Marathon bombings as an example of where data collected by the NSA helped "identify whether there was a great plot."

Right. So, after there was a bombing which no intelligence agency spotted beforehand, he's now claiming that the NSA got to jump into action to find out that there wouldn't be any more bombings because there was no bigger plot. We're not even in the silly debunked realm of "preventing terrorist events" anymore. Now we're at "Great work everyone! We found out that there's no larger plot to worry about -- sorry about the explosions and related mess." Using the discovery of a lack of further threats after a bombing happened undetected to justify spying on all Americans? That's crazy.

When that's the best you can do to defend this program, something is clearly wrong. The program didn't prevent the bombing. It may have allowed law enforcement to be more confident that there wasn't a larger plot behind it slightly faster than regular police work did, but that's not exactly a reason to violate everyone's privacy, now is it?

Filed Under: barack obama, boston bombings, nsa, nsa surveillance

NSA 'Leaks' Own Documents Before Senate Committee Grilling; Inadvertently Reveals Its Previous Lies To Congress

from the charge-the-NSA-with-espionage!-the-terrorists-have-our-number-now,-etc.! dept

Perhaps spurred on by the success of the Snowden leaks, the NSA has made its own "me too" effort and declassified a few documents ahead of Senate Judiciary Committee hearing dealing with bulk records collection and FISA oversight.

Given the choice, I'm sure we'd all rather read the unredacted versions of these documents, like those supplied by Ed Snowden, but all the same, it's refreshing to see an intelligence agency being forced into some minimal transparency.

What the NSA revealed isn't necessarily a surprise, but there are a few (perhaps unintentional) aspects of the declassified documents that are worth noting.

The first notable aspect, one that simply can't be ignored, is the statement from James Clapper's office that accompanied the unveiling.

A statement issued by Clapper’s office said he “has determined that the release of these documents is in the public interest.”

So, when Clapper releases documents, it's in the "public's interest." When Snowden does it, it's espionage that does "grave and serious damage to national security."

Granted, the NSA's releases are heavily redacted (for security!), but if all that's being sought is so-called "business records/metadata" that have no expectation of privacy, what difference does it make who breaks the news and how much they expose? It's all above board and, according to the DNI's general counsel, everyone affected already knows they have no "expectation of privacy" in terms of the data collected. If we follow that logic, there's no reason these documents should ever have been classified. After all, it's pretty much the NSA/FBI equivalent of a FOIA request -- all public records, all available without a warrant.

Next up: the timing. The NSA released these documents "moments" before the hearing began. This makes the move look like nothing more than throwing the public (and some pesky representatives) a bone so that it can claim to be actively participating in openness, transparency, the "debate," or whatever when the grilling starts. Sen. Franken took note of the disingenuousness of the selective, last-minute document dump.

Some senators were perturbed that the government waited until moments before the hearing to release the FISA court order and two other documents about the National Security Agency’s bulk collection programs. They suggested that the timing did not give them the opportunity to prepare adequately to question the witnesses about the documents.

“Ad hoc transparency doesn’t engender trust,” Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) complained during Wednesday’s hearing.

Third: the released documents reinforce the NSA's expansive definition of the word "relevant." In its dictionary, "relevant" means pretty much anything it can collect, store and "interrogate" at its convenience. This is certainly not limited to metadata.

[FISA Judge Roger] Vinson's order also accepted a key legal claim of the government: that the bulk, ongoing collection of millions of Americans' phone data was relevant to ongoing terrorism and espionage cases, the standard spelled out under Section 215 of the Patriot Act.

"It can be things that will lead you to things you need," Cole said, arguing that the actual surveillance occurs not when NSA collects the phone records but when NSA analysts sift through it.

In a technical sense, the NSA is right: surveillance isn't occurring during the collection. The problem is that the collection is open to search by both agents and algorithms with very little concern given towards the non-relevant data being swept up by these court orders. This logic was pounced on by Sen. Mike Lee.

"I assure you as a recovering lawyer myself there is no context in civil discovery or otherwise to take in information from each and every American who owns a telephone," senator Mike Lee (Republican, Utah) said. Leahy questioned the "limits under this theory" and wondered why they permit NSA to also collect firearms records, bookmarked Internet searches, medical records or credit card information.

Jameel Jaffer of the ACLU also took a swing at Vinson and Cole's rationalization:

Jameel Jaffer, the deputy legal director of the ACLU, criticized Vinson's reasoning. "Saying that the metadata of all Americans' phone calls, including ones that haven't happened yet, are 'relevant' to an investigation stretches that word beyond any meaning," Jaffer told the Guardian.

Yes, even future events are "relevant" to terrorist investigations, whether or not they actually occur, or show up during the actual "surveillance" process of interrogating the data haul.

Finally, and this is probably the most important revelation, the documents show definitively that the NSA has lied to Congress about its activities, as noted by Ron Wyden.

“The newly declassified briefing documents released today show that the executive branch repeatedly made inaccurate statements to Congress about the value and effectiveness of the bulk email records collection program that was carried out under the USA PATRIOT Act until 2011. These statements had the effect of misleading members of Congress about the usefulness of this program.

The briefing documents that were provided to Congress in December 2009 and February 2011 clearly stated that both the bulk email records and bulk phone records collection programs were “unique in that they can produce intelligence not otherwise available to NSA.” The 2009 briefing document went on to state that the two programs “provide a vital capability to the Intelligence Community,” and the 2011 briefing document stated that they provided “an important capability.”

Wyden goes on to point out that this "unique" and "important" bulk email collection program was so desperately needed that the NSA shut it down in 2011 for "lack of operational value," as has now been publicly confirmed. Wyden goes on to question the effectiveness of its still-ongoing "bulk collection" program.

This experience demonstrated that intelligence agencies’ assessments of the usefulness of particular collection programs – even significant ones – are not always accurate. In particular, I continue to be skeptical of claims that the ongoing bulk phone records collection program provides the government with any unique value, as I have not yet seen any evidence to support this claim.

This again lends more credence to the theory that the NSA is collecting data because it can, not because it's relevant, no matter whose definition you're using. And there's no way the NSA can skirt the fact that its grudging nod to transparency is a direct result of Snowden's leaks, no matter how Clapper and his office try to spin it. The last thing the NSA cares about is the interests of the public.

Filed Under: lies, nsa, nsa surveillance

Senator Leahy Calls Bulls**t On Claim That Metadata Collection Stopped Terrorist Attacks

from the good-for-him dept

One of the key claims that defenders of the NSA bulk data collection keep making is that the program was necessary to stop various terrorist "events" (note the careful choice of the word "events" rather than "attacks"). In fact, last week in arguing against the Amash Amendment, Rep. Mike Rogers directly claimed that "54 times this and the other program stopped and thwarted terrorist attacks." Of course, as we pointed out, he carefully added the "and the other program" to make it seem like the bulk data collection program being debated was necessary. Amazingly, that claim of 54 terrorist "events" is significantly more than what intelligence officials have claimed. They say it's more like 13. Yet, yesterday, Senators Ron Wyden and Mark Udall both said that there was no evidence to support this, and at this morning's Senate Judiciary Committee hearings about the surveillance program, Senator Patrick Leahy was fairly direct in making it clear that what Rogers claimed last week was completely bogus:

"If this program is not effective, it has to end," Leahy said, noting that a classified list of uses of the phone record program "does not reflect dozens or even several terrorist plots that Section 215 helped thwart or prevent, let alone 54 as some have suggested."

Perhaps Rep. Mike Rogers' staffers -- rather than threatening me with bogus defamation claims -- should focus on having their own boss not mislead Congress and the American public. Wouldn't that be nice?

Much of the rest of the hearing suggested, yet again, that Congress simply doesn't believe intelligence officials and the administration (and the dwindling number of defenders of this surveillance) any more, as multiple Senators discussed introducing bills to limit the surveillance, and noted various problems with the programs.

Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., raised the prospect of creating an independent counsel to consider surveillance requests presented to the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to guard against potential privacy violations.

"Don't you think we have left the state relevance?'' Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, asked, suggesting that the mass records collection was too large to be an effective counter-terrorism tool.

"How can one get one's mind around the concept (of) that amount of data?'' Lee said.

Said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn.: "It appears this system is failing in maintaining the trust and credibility of the American people.''

[....]

"When you look at the reach of this (phone record collection) program, it envelopes a substantial number of Americans,'' said Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill. "It seems to me that what is being described as a very narrow program is a very broad program.''

"There are going to be some proposals for changes to the law,'' Leahy said.

Intelligence officials tried to defend the program, but it didn't seem to win many people over. There was lots of talk of "connecting the dots" and "finding needles in haystacks," but considering the lack of evidence that the program actually helps with either of those things, they didn't make a very convincing case. Of course, the best response to all of this came, sarcastically, from Julian Sanchez's commentary on the hearings:

The only people who spend THIS much time "looking for needles" are addicts...

So true. Time to get intelligence officials into rehab.

Filed Under: metadata, mike rogers, nsa, nsa surveillance, patrick leahy, section 215, senate judiciary committee, surveillance, terrorism

Latest Leak Shows NSA Can Collect Nearly Any Internet Activity Worldwide Without Prior Authorization

from the the-NSA-should-really-stop-issuing-denials dept

The newest NSA leak has just been posted at the Guardian and it gives credence to Snowden's earlier claim the he could, "from his desk," wiretap nearly anyone in the world. US officials, including NSA apologist/CISPA architect/Internet hater Mike Rogers, denied Snowden's claim, with Rogers going so far as to call the former NSA contractor a liar. The documents leaked today seem to indicate otherwise.

A top secret National Security Agency program allows analysts to search with no prior authorization through vast databases containing emails, online chats and the browsing histories of millions of individuals, according to documents provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The NSA boasts in training materials that the program, called XKeyscore, is its "widest-reaching" system for developing intelligence from the internet.

[T]raining materials for XKeyscore detail how analysts can use it and other systems to mine enormous agency databases by filling in a simple on-screen form giving only a broad justification for the search. The request is not reviewed by a court or any NSA personnel before it is processed.

Greenwald isn't kidding about the "broad justification." The slides tout the breadth of the search program, which provides results other programs can't. As is stated in the opening slides, XKeyscore allows agents to pull up tons of data (in search of "anomalies") and work backward to refine the results. The justification for these broad searches is available via a pulldown menu, as can (sort of) be seen in this screenshot, which gives agents a variety to choose from. (From the list, it appears that anything ending with "outside the US" is fair game.)


XKeyscore utilizes a variety of plugins to allow searches, including email addresses, phone numbers, IP addresses, full logs of every DNI session and machine-specific cookies. This gives agents an advantage other surveillance programs don't.

The purpose of XKeyscore is to allow analysts to search the metadata as well as the content of emails and other internet activity, such as browser history, even when there is no known email account (a "selector" in NSA parlance) associated with the individual being targeted.

Analysts can also search by name, telephone number, IP address, keywords, the language in which the internet activity was conducted or the type of browser used.

One document notes that this is because "strong selection [search by email address] itself gives us only a very limited capability" because "a large amount of time spent on the web is performing actions that are anonymous."

The slides warn that the data collected will be too large to parse (or even store for a great length of time). It recommends harvesting first and "selecting" second, in order to refine the results (using a "Strong Selector"). Agents are directed to look for "anomalous events," some of which seem a bit troubling.

• E.g., Someone whose language is out of place for the region they are in
• Someone who is using encryption
• Someone searching the web for suspicious stuff

These "anomalies" are common enough that plenty of non-terrorists will be getting a second look from agents utilizing this program. And again we see the NSA's instant distrust of anyone using encryption. This is one of the hazards of "collecting it all" and then working backwards. It's easy to make common behavior look suspicious if you start at an end assumption and connect the dots in reverse.

Also troubling are some of the suggested applications of the search program shown in the slide deck, including "show me all the VPNs startups in Country X" and "show me all exploitable machines in Country X."

On top of this, there's the sheer breadth of the program.

The quantity of communications accessible through programs such as XKeyscore is staggeringly large. One NSA report from 2007 estimated that there were 850bn "call events" collected and stored in the NSA databases, and close to 150bn internet records. Each day, the document says, 1-2bn records were added.

The XKeyscore system is continuously collecting so much internet data that it can be stored only for short periods of time. Content remains on the system for only three to five days, while metadata is stored for 30 days. One document explains: "At some sites, the amount of data we receive per day (20+ terabytes) can only be stored for as little as 24 hours."

Because of the massive size of the data haul, metadata is retained and stored longer while more specific data is released. This still allows agents to perform broad searches to gather as much data as possible while relying on the stored metadata to put other connections together. Once they have the connections, the shallow search can be better utilized with the "strong selectors."

The data harvested isn't solely relegated to foreign communications, no matter what the pulldown menu says. The power of the database pretty much guarantees the inadvertent collection of data on American citizens. This is exacerbated by the fact that some web traffic will be indeterminate in origin or termination. This leads to violations of the few laws that do pertain to NSA data collection, something the NSA documents admit is a problem. Of course, as Snowden pointed out, there's always a solution.

In recent years, the NSA has attempted to segregate exclusively domestic US communications in separate databases. But even NSA documents acknowledge that such efforts are imperfect, as even purely domestic communications can travel on foreign systems, and NSA tools are sometimes unable to identify the national origins of communications.

Moreover, all communications between Americans and someone on foreign soil are included in the same databases as foreign-to-foreign communications, making them readily searchable without warrants.

Some searches conducted by NSA analysts are periodically reviewed by their supervisors within the NSA. "It's very rare to be questioned on our searches," Snowden told the Guardian in June, "and even when we are, it's usually along the lines of: 'let's bulk up the justification'."

Speaking of "justification," the slides claim that over 300 terrorists have been caught using XKeyscore. And the NSA has responded to the Guardian's leak with the usual claims that everything here is legal and audited, etc., which, again, doesn't make it right or even constitutional. It just makes it what it is: the end result of more than a decade's worth of expansion, secret law interpretations and compliant administrations.

Filed Under: metadata, nsa, nsa surveillance, search, surveillance, xkeystone