Big Tech Calls On Senate To Stop NSA's Bulk Surveillance Program

from the speak-out dept

In honor of the Reset the Net campaign, and the one-year anniversary of the first Ed Snowden revelation, a bunch of big tech companies, including Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter, Apple, DropBox, LinkedIn, Yahoo and AOL, have published an open letter to the Senate asking it to pass real surveillance reform, rather than the weak sauce that the House passed in its massively watered-down USA Freedom Act. At the same time, a lobbyist representing a group of big tech companies specifically warned the Senate that the House version was too weak and needed to be much stronger. This is a good first step, but we need to see the pressure on the Senate ramp up even more.

Filed Under: nsa, reset the net, senate, surveillance, usa freedom act
Companies: aol, apple, dropbox, facebook, google, linkedin, microsoft, twitter, yahoo

Marc Andreessen Thinks Snowden, Administration Are To Blame For Backlash Against US Tech Industry

from the but-not-the-NSA,-for-some-reason dept

Marc Andreessen, venture capitalist, has weighed in on the Snowden leaks, putting forth what even he terms to be an "unpopular" view. On CNBC's Squawk Box, he lead with this statement:

Obviously, he's a traitor. Like, if you look up in the encyclopedia, traitor, there's a picture of Edward Snowden. He's a textbook traitor. I'm in the distinct minority out here. I think most people in Silicon Valley would pick the other designation.

Being a traitor and committing treason falls under a very distinct definition. In Andreessen's dictionary (the one with Snowden's picture), this definition runs as follows:

Because he stole national security secrets and gave them to everybody on the planet.

Whereas the Constitution clearly defines treason as this:

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.

Giving documents to "everybody on the planet" is not specifically "aiding or comforting" enemies of the United States. While it may have given some of them guidance on how to avoid surveillance, there's been no evidence presented that the leaks have done any specific harm to the US. There's been a lot of handwringing about the implications of the leaks, but the most specific claims released to date by the US government deal with Defense Dept. docs supposedly in Snowden's possession which, even if they exist (the NSA still doesn't know what Snowden took), haven't been released to anybody.

But Andreessen's most spectacular statement is also his most self-serving. He decries the damage done to US tech companies by the leaks, but rather than hold the NSA responsible, he shoots the messenger -- and wings the President.

[A]merican technology companies get a huge amount of revenue from outside the US. In fact, some of these companies get up to 70% of revenue outside the US and there's a big open question right now, how successful our companies will be when they go to sell products overseas. And there are a lot of foreign countries that are very envious of Silicon Valley and America's domination of tech and wish they could implement protection policies and will use this whole affair as a reason to do that…

The administration is just letting -- they're letting the American tech industry out to dry. I haven't met anybody who feels like the White House has a plan, It's just happening.

Andreessen's responses don't find anything necessarily wrong with the NSA's actions. The problem, as he sees it, lies with the "traitor" who exposed the NSA's subversion of tech company hardware and software. The administration is also partly to blame for not having done enough to shelter the tech world from the fallout of the NSA leaks. Andreessen also (via Twitter) blames both Americans for misunderstanding the NSA's programs and the media for misrepresenting the 702 program, implying that tech companies were working with the NSA to collect American communications.

But as far as he can see it, the agency itself is nearly blameless. He's "not surprised" the agency was spying. After all, it has thousands of employees and billions in funding (actual budget numbers exposed by another leak). What else were we Americans to believe it was doing with all that manpower and money?

Well, I'm fairly sure we weren't expecting to find it was grabbing bulk metadata on Americans' phone calls or sweeping up tons of "incidental" communications via its many surveillance programs. We weren't expecting it to have partnered with other nations to help them surveil their own citizens. And we certainly weren't expecting it to hand off unminimized data to other nations' intelligence agencies.

This is a very close-minded and self-centered view of the situation. That tech companies were damaged is unfortunate, but the blame lies with the agency that aims to "collect it all," rather than the person who exposed the egregious excesses done in the name of "security." And if the administration is to blame for anything, it's for not reining the NSA in over the years, rather than for not sheltering the industry from fallout.

Filed Under: ed snowden, marc andreessen, nsa, surveillance, traitor

The World Has Changed Since The First Snowden Revelation, But It's Only A Small Start

from the one-year-later dept

As noted earlier, today is the one year anniversary of the very first Snowden revelation, which revealed the FISA Court order to Verizon, ordering it to hand over every phone record it had. As such many sites, like us, are participating in Reset the Net (in case you missed it, we're now 100% SSL). However, many are also looking at what has happened in the last year -- and it's quite a lot, while at the same time, not nearly enough. Trevor Timm has a good look at four ways that Snowden has changed the world, including much more transparency into what's going on, more encryption, more awareness in the courts and a massive shift in public opinion. Furthermore, it's important that we're having this public debate. And yes, we've actually seen some real attempts at reform in Congress -- though so far those have mostly fallen flat.

Still, it's amazing how far we've already come because of Snowden. Much of what's happened in the last year never would have happened without him deciding to blow the whistle. And yet, it's not nearly far enough. The growing awareness is great, but real change needs to happen, and that's a process that's going to take a very long time.

Filed Under: ed snowden, nsa, one year, privacy, reform, security, surveillance

NSA Chief Defends Facial Recognition Database By Denying Claims That Weren't Made

from the we-don't-do-the-things-no-one-says-we-do dept

James Clapper's defense of leaked NSA programs have fallen into the "strictly legal + oversight" framework so often it's become a cliche that can be ably wielded by lower level staffers. Occasionally, Clapper fires off something longer, like his defense of the NSA's collection of French phone metadata. During this longer "debunking," Clapper denied accusations that were never made by attacking a lousy translation of the original French article. This provided for some plausible deniability ("NSA does not collect recordings"), even if the underlying claims -- correctly translated -- pointed to something the agency was actually doing (bulk phone metadata collection).

The new head of the NSA, Michael Rogers, is doing the same thing. Addressing the latest New York Times' article on the NSA's collection of images for its facial recognition database, Rogers denies claims that were never made and accusations that were never stated.

Rogers insisted the agency was not collecting such images of U.S. citizens, unless they were linked with an investigation of a foreign subject, and then only after taking the appropriate legal steps.

"We do not do this on some unilateral basis against U.S. citizens," he told a conference hosted by Bloomberg. "We just don’t ... decide, 'Hey, today I’m going to go after Citizen X, Y or Z.' We don’t do that. We can’t legally do that."

He said some people thought the NSA was combing through databases of photographs for U.S. drivers licenses but said that was not the case.

In terms of collecting images, no one stated anything to the contrary. The collection is likely operating like many other NSA collections -- on a large scale that increases the likelihood that incidental collection of American data and content will occur. The "appropriate legal steps" are the same ones that have been used as talking points over the last year.

Likewise, no one suggested in the article that the NSA targeted US citizens. In fact, one of the biggest complaints about the NSA's programs is the fact that they're clearly untargeted. The NSA doesn't select a person and start the surveillance from that point. The surveillance is pervasive and ongoing and any selection tends to occur long after tons of data/communications have been collected. It's the after-the-fact nature of the programs that makes them so dangerous. Further, the lack of solid minimization rules means tons of data from bulk collections sits around in NSA servers just waiting for someone to find a reason to look through it. So, while the NSA may not "unilaterally target American citizens," it has the mechanisms in place to do so.

As for Roger's last non-denial, it was clearly stated in the New York Times article that there was no indication that the NSA had access to US drivers license databases. Rogers' last denial addresses "some people" (whoever they are) that have a clearly wrong interpretation of the leaked documents, but doesn't address what was actually written. And it completely avoids the undeniable fact that, with as many "input" channels as the NSA has, collecting the sort of information a drivers license database holds would be simple enough, even without direct access.

Rogers also doesn't address the previous denial handed out by a spokesperson who refused to clarify whether or not the NSA collects images of Americans from social media outlets like Facebook or Twitter. Instead, Rogers focuses on the anonymous concerns of people who may or may not exist. Plausible deniability, delivered implausibly.

Filed Under: admiral mike rogers, face recognition, nsa, surveillance

Judge Says Supreme Court Should Overturn Awful Surveillance Precedent, But Until It Does, He Has To Reject Case Against NSA

from the a-small-step dept

We've written plenty about the case Smith v. Maryland, which established the dangerous Supreme Court precedent that there is no 4th Amendment expectation of privacy to be found in any data or information you give to a third party. Judge Richard Leon, back in December, ruled that the NSA surveillance efforts were so different from the situation in Smith (involving police getting dialing information on a single person from the phone company) that it wasn't an applicable precedent in the case in front of him, brought by Larry Klayman. That case is now being appealed.

In a new case, Smith v. Obama (assuming no relation to the "Smith" in the Maryland case), Judge Lynn Winmill, in the Idaho district court, has said that Judge Leon's ruling should be the model for a Supreme Court ruling overturning Smith v. Maryland. However, since no such ruling has taken place, he has to reject the claim in this case:

Judge Leon's decision should serve as a template for a Supreme Court opinion. And it might yet. Justice Sotomayor is inclined to reconsider Smith, finding it “ill-suited to the digital age, in which people reveal a great deal of information about themselves to third parties in the course of carrying out mundane tasks.” See U.S. v. Jones, 132 U.S. 945, 957 (2012) (Sotomayor, J., concurring). The Fourth Amendment, in her view, should not “treat secrecy as a prerequisite for privacy.”

But Smith was not overruled, and it continues – along with the Circuit decisions discussed above – to bind this Court. This authority constrains the Court from joining Klayman. Accordingly, the Court will grant the defendants’ motion to dismiss and deny Smith's motion for injunctive relief.

There's a bit more to the case overall, as it focuses on "location" data, and it's not entirely clear if the NSA is really collecting location data. However, as Judge Winmill notes, the Supreme Court's rulings in Jones suggest that the Supreme Court may be finally recognizing how outdated Smith v. Maryland is -- and it's good to see other judges recognizing this as well, even if they're constrained by existing precedent elsewhere.

Filed Under: layman, lynn winmill, nsa, richard leon, smith v. maryland, supreme court, surveillance, third party doctrine

UK Gov't Tries And Fails To Hide Details Of GHCQ/Telecoms Tapping Fiber Lines

from the it-all-comes-out-eventually dept

Apparently, the UK government worked very hard to get the Guardian and others not to publish certain details about how GCHQ (and NSA) tap certain underwater cables that connect the internet around the globe, as it turns out that they get lots of help from BT and Vodafone Cable (via its purchase of Cable & Wireless). Those two companies apparently get paid handsomely for helping the government tap into these undersea cables. The Register decided it doesn't quite care how much the UK government doesn't want this stuff published, and went ahead and did so anyway:

British national telco BT, referred to within GCHQ and the American NSA under the ultra-classified codename “REMEDY”, and Vodafone Cable (which owns the former Cable & Wireless company, aka “GERONTIC”) are the two top earners of secret GCHQ payments running into tens of millions of pounds annually.

The actual locations of such codenamed “access points” into the worldwide cable backbone are classified 3 levels above Top Secret and labelled “Strap 3”. The true identities of the companies hidden behind codenames such as “REMEDY”, “GERONTIC”, “STREETCAR” or “PINNAGE” are classified one level below this, at “Strap 2”.

After these details were withheld, the government opted not to move against the Guardian newspaper last year for publishing above-top-secret information at the lower level designated “Strap 1”. This included details of the billion-pound interception storage system, Project TEMPORA, which were revealed in 2013 and which have triggered Parliamentary enquiries in Britain and Europe, and cases at the European Court of Human Rights. The Guardian was forced to destroy hard drives of leaked information to prevent political embarrassment over extensive commercial arrangements with these and other telecommunications companies who have secretly agreed to tap their own and their customers’ or partners’ overseas cables for the intelligence agency GCHQ. Intelligence chiefs also wished to conceal the identities of countries helping GCHQ and its US partner the NSA by sharing information or providing facilities.

There are also some details about how the UK government authorized the tapping in secret (of course), and suggests that the powers are exceptionally broad (because, of course they are):

Although GCHQ interception of overseas communications can be authorised by a general “external” tapping warrant, the wording of the law does not permit storage of every communication for examination, as GCHQ wished to do. In 2009, the spooks persuaded then Foreign Secretary David Miliband to sign a new warrant legalising what they wished to do. The terms of such warrants have never been published.

The special “external” warrants, issued under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA), authorise the interception of all communications on specified international links. Miliband’s first 2009 warrant for TEMPORA authorised GCHQ to collect information about the “political intentions of foreign powers”, terrorism, proliferation, mercenaries and private military companies, and serious financial fraud.

Certificates attached to external interception warrants are re-issued every six months, and can be changed by ministers at will. GCHQ officials are then free to target anyone who is overseas or communicating from overseas without further checks or controls, if they think they fall within the terms of a current certificate.

The article also details how a special team at BT will help GCHQ figure out how to tap cables without others knowing about them:

The GCHQ-contracted companies also install optical fibre taps or “probes” into equipment belonging to other companies without their knowledge or consent.... Snowden’s leaks reveal that every time GCHQ wanted to tap a new international optical fibre cable, engineers from “REMEDY” (BT) would usually be called in to plan where the taps or “probe” would physically be connected to incoming optical fibre cables, and to agree how much BT should be paid.

Considering that The Register claims that not publishing this information is what kept the UK government from taking The Guardian to court, it will be interesting to see how they react to The Reg's decision to publish. The article also has a lot more details about the GCHQ using a top secret base in Oman to capture all of this undersea cable traffic as well, which I would imagine is a big part of what the government had hoped to keep secret. The stuff about the big telco and cable companies helping tap undersea fiber cables (and getting paid for it) doesn't seem particularly surprising at all. It's been known for years that AT&T has done that for the US government, so it's not clear why anyone felt the need to keep the equivalent so secret in the UK.

Either way, it seems like all of these efforts to keep certain aspects of these stories secret eventually fail. And the "top secret" stuff gets revealed one way or another eventually anyway. That doesn't mean that indiscriminate disclosure necessarily makes sense (though some of you will likely disagree), but it should make people realize that there needs to be very good reasons for keeping certain information secret, or it will almost certainly be disclosed eventually.

Filed Under: fiber, gchq, journalism, nsa, oman, surveillance, tapping, uk, uk government, undersea cables
Companies: bt, the register, vodafone cable

EFF Tells Court That The NSA Knowingly And Illegally Destroyed Evidence In Key Case Over Bulk Surveillance

from the because-of-course-they-did dept

We followed the back and forth situation earlier this year, in which there were some legal questions over whether or not the NSA needed to hang onto surveillance data at issue in various lawsuits, or destroy it as per the laws concerning retention of data. Unfortunately, in the process, it became clear that the DOJ misled FISA court Judge Reggie Walton, withholding key information. In response, the DOJ apologized, insisting that it didn't think the data was relevant -- but also very strongly hinting that it used that opportunity to destroy a ton of evidence. However, this appeared to be just the latest in a long history of the NSA/DOJ willfully destroying evidence that was under a preservation order.

The key case where this evidence was destroyed was the EFF's long running Jewel v. NSA case, and the EFF has now told the court about the destruction of evidence, and asked the court to thus assume that the evidence proves, in fact, that EFF's clients were victims of unlawful surveillance. The DOJ/NSA have insisted that they thought that the EFF's lawsuit only covered programs issued under executive authority, rather than programs approved by the FISA Court, but the record in the case shows that the DOJ seems to be making this claim up.

EFF filed its first lawsuit challenging illegal government spying in 2006. The current dispute arises from Jewel v. NSA, EFF's 2008 case that challenges the government's mass seizure of three kinds of information: Internet and telephone content, telephone records, and Internet records, all going back to 2001. EFF's brief notes that the government's own declarations make clear that the government has destroyed five years of the content it collected between 2007 and 2012, three years worth of the telephone records it seized between 2006 and 2009, and seven years of the Internet records it seized between 2004 and 2011, when it claims to have ended the Internet records seizures.

"The court has issued a number of preservation orders over the years, but the government decided – without consent from the judge or even informing EFF – that those orders simply don't apply," said EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn. "Regular civil litigants would face severe sanctions if they so obviously destroyed relevant evidence. But we are asking for a modest remedy: a ruling that we can assume the destroyed records would show that our plaintiffs were in fact surveilled by the government."

The full filing is worth reading as it highlights how ridiculous the DOJ's "oh we didn't think that stuff mattered to this case" argument really is. As EFF notes, all the way back in 2010, it had filed a brief that explicitly noted that they were challenging the use of exactly this kind of data.

The filing lists out the history of the government repeatedly destroying relevant information, despite the preservation orders from the court, and despite clear language noting that the government had to preserve exactly this kind of data. The DOJ's argument that it thought the data under FISA-approved programs didn't count seems especially weak, given that the DOJ itself was part of trying to hide that those programs even existed. As the EFF filing notes, the argument seems preposterous in context. For example, at one point, the DOJ claims that it thought EFF didn't mean FISC-approved programs because it talked about "warrantless" surveillance. However, as EFF notes, even FISC-approved programs are still warrantless, because a FISC order is not a warrant.

Even more damning for the DOJ, the EFF filing points out that in the DOJ's own attempts to kill this case under state secrets claims, it said that the activity had been approved by FISC. So, for all the talk about how it had no idea that EFF was interested in FISC-approved surveillance, that's clearly untrue or it wouldn't have invoked FISC as having approved the collection! After listing out numerous examples of government officials making official statements in the case talking about FISC approval and how revealing this would reveal FISC-related state secrets, EFF points out:

The Government cannot have it both ways, as it seeks to do here. It cannot present one understanding of the scope of plaintiffs' claims -- a very broad one -- when asserting state secret privilege, but claim a much narrower understanding when it is destroying evidence.

As EFF points out, when evidence like this is destroyed:

the law presumes that the destroyed evidence goes to the merits of the case, and the burden is on the spoliating party to show that no prejudice resulted." .... After having repeatedly and vociferously claimed that the plaintiffs must produce evidence from the government of individual seizure of their communications and records (as opposed to the boxes of their evidence plaintiffs have long presented), the government cannot meet its burden to show no prejudice has occurred here. Unsurprisingly, it has made no attempt to do so.

And now we wait to see how the DOJ tries to tap dance out of this one.

Filed Under: destruction, evidence, jewel v. nsa, nsa, spoliation, surveillance
Companies: eff

NSA Intercepting 'Millions Of Images' Per Day In Order To Fill Facial Recognition Database

from the all-your-face-are-belong-to-us dept

Laura Poitras and James Risen have released another NSA document at the New York Times -- this one detailing the agency's addition of faces to its haystacks.

The National Security Agency is harvesting huge numbers of images of people from communications that it intercepts through its global surveillance operations for use in sophisticated facial recognition programs, according to top-secret documents…

The agency intercepts “millions of images per day” — including about 55,000 “facial recognition quality images” — which translate into “tremendous untapped potential,” according to 2011 documents obtained from the former agency contractor Edward J. Snowden.

The "55,000" quoted here has undoubtedly grown over the past few years, and the agency's addition of facial recognition technology aligns it with the FBI's capabilities and similar efforts being pursued by local law enforcement agencies (with funding by the DHS). (The State Dept. also houses millions of photographs, thanks to its connection with the issuance of passports). What does put the NSA ahead of other efforts is the breadth of its existing collection programs, which give it much more connective data and communications to work with.

This also raises questions about other intelligence agencies' capabilities, specifically the UK's GCHQ, which was revealed to have harvested webcam images from more than 1.8 million Yahoo users between 2008-2010. This was termed a joint collection project with the NSA, so both agencies benefitted from the GCHQ's webcam spying.

Why is the NSA constructing a biometric database? According to the documents, it's just another counterterrorism tool, part of a "full arsenal approach" that "digitally exploits" data scattered across the web by its users. But an equally large part of the "why" is likely the lack of anything or anyone telling it "no."

Neither federal privacy laws nor the nation’s surveillance laws provide specific protections for facial images.

Sure, the NSA might be forced to seek approval to dig through strictly American communications (photographs fall under this designation), but that doesn't stop the agency from collecting and storing these images on a "just in case" basis.

There are also indications the NSA desires much more than photos. The article mentions the agency is looking into obtaining iris scans through existing "phone and email surveillance programs," and has already been collecting some via unnamed "other means."

A NSA spokesperson has issued a non-denial that basically stated the agency was a self-starter before trailing off into a faint, unintelligible mumble.

“We would not be doing our job if we didn’t seek ways to continuously improve the precision of signals intelligence activities — aiming to counteract the efforts of valid foreign intelligence targets to disguise themselves or conceal plans to harm the United States and its allies,” said Vanee M. Vines, the agency spokeswoman.

She added that the N.S.A. did not have access to photographs in state databases of driver’s licenses or to passport photos of Americans, while declining to say whether the agency had access to the State Department database of photos of foreign visa applicants. She also declined to say whether the N.S.A. collected facial imagery of Americans from Facebook and other social media through means other than communications intercepts.

Most likely the agency does have access to the State Department database. Declining to comment generally indicates a confirmation of the accusations. Vines' assertion about the "safety" of Americans' drivers license/passport data is relatively meaningless as the agency is clearly interested in collecting everything it can possibly get ahold of. One look at the leaked fourth slide shows a vast array of potential data targets, any one of which is bound to sweep up US citizens, even if only incidentally. Just because the agency isn't tapping into motor vehicle databases doesn't mean it won't be able to collect information from other intercepts.

One of the largest concerns about this collection effort is the relative inaccuracy of facial recognition technology. Current systems have a fairly large margin of error, something that is greatly compounded by vast, untargeted collections. Without a doubt, the technology will improve, but rather than waiting for something better, the NSA (along with several other government agencies) has already deployed its dragnet. False hits will happen. Theoretically, the NSA's vast collections should help separate bogus matches from legitimate hits, but our nation's safekeepers haven't really shown a tendency to connect dots and/or verify before making moves.

Filed Under: face recognition, facial recognition, nsa, privacy, surveillance

Former NSA Lawyer Thinks American Bar Association Should Be Equally Outraged By Chinese Hacking Of Attorney-Client Communications

from the because-all-hacking-is-equal,-whether-it's-your-own-govt-or-not dept

Stewart Baker is still defending the NSA, but his latest piece advancing the agency's cause deploys a particularly disingenuous argument. He feels the American Bar Association acted hypocritically when it sent a letter to the NSA asking it to respect attorney-client privilege.

Baker begins his questionable attack by presenting actual hypocrisy in defense of his forthcoming argument.

When the Justice Department’s indicted six People’s Liberation Army hackers, it directly accused the PLA of stealing “privileged attorney-client communications related to Solar World’s ongoing trade litigation with China.”

This is not a surprise to knowledgeable observers. Chinese attacks on large U.S. law firms have been widely acknowledged, and last summer the American Bar Association condemned “unauthorized, illegal intrusions into the computer systems and networks utilized by lawyers and law firms.” But the ABA flinched from actually mentioning China or the PLA in the resolution…

When the DOJ made a lot of ridiculous noise with its indictment, it only managed to further highlight the double standard the US deploys in its foreign relations. The NSA's hacking of Huawei's servers went unmentioned, as well as its numerous interception programs (both for hardware and communications) currently in place worldwide.

Baker believes the ABA's silence on China's hacking efforts is hypocritical in light of its letter to the NSA on the subject of attorney-client privilege. This letter was the result of another leak that showed the agency had offered a solid "whatever" when an Australian intelligence agency informed the NSA that it was listening in on privileged communications between Indonesian clients and American lawyers. Baker pretends to cede some ground on the ABA's complaint before arriving at his supposedly damning "point."

Fair enough. But it’s now been three days since we saw a much more direct accusation that the PLA was spying on privileged attorney-client communications in the US.

Who’s taking bets on whether the American Bar Association will be as quick to call out the Chinese government as it was to call out its own?

This is Baker's knockout punch, apparently, one that only manages to come within several inches of its target.

Of what possible use would it be for the ABA to call out the Chinese army? Even if US attorney communications were being intercepted, there's very little the Association could hope to accomplish with a strongly-worded letter. As the NSA's defenders often point out, foreigners are not provided with the same protections as natural citizens. The same undoubtedly goes double for China, which isn't exactly extending a great deal of rights to its own citizens.

Sure, the ABA could make a lot of noise about Chinese spying, but limiting its complaints to an agency of its own government makes more sense. Baker seems to want Americans to be more offended by something everyone expects the Chinese government to be doing, rather than by their own government doing things they never would have expected.

Baker also seems to be childish enough to believe that pointing out the wrongdoing of others somehow excuses the wrongdoing of the agency he's defending. This is particularly galling considering how often the NSA reminds world citizens that they simply aren't protected by US law and that their communications and data are fair game. The ABA addressed the real issue -- spying on communications historically awarded confidentiality by US statutes -- and the real problem in its letter. Its silence on the issue of Chinese spying isn't hypocrisy. It's reality. By petitioning its own government, it was able to have its complaint addressed. Complaining about China would be nothing more than angrily yelling into the void. The DOJ doesn't mind being greeted with little more than faint echoes, but those on the outside of government agencies aren't going to be nearly as reassured by the sound of their own reflected voices.

Filed Under: attorney-client, china, hacking, lawyers, nsa, stewart baker, surveillance
Companies: aba, american bar association

Snowden: NSA Revealed Only One Email, Shows NSA Lied Before... Also: None Of This Matters

from the battle-continues dept

After NBC confirmed Ed Snowden's earlier claims that he had tried to make use of internal channels to question NSA surveillance programs, James Clapper released a single email from Snowden to the legal department at the NSA, which they claim shows he never actually raised these issues. Snowden quickly responded, noting that this is not the only email, that he raised the issue more directly with his supervisors... and, most importantly, that none of this really matters.

Oh yeah, also that the NSA lied before when it claimed no such thing existed.

The NSA’s new discovery of written contact between me and its lawyers - after more than a year of denying any such contact existed - raises serious concerns. It reveals as false the NSA’s claim to Barton Gellman of the Washington Post in December of last year, that “after extensive investigation, including interviews with his former NSA supervisors and co-workers, we have not found any evidence to support Mr. Snowden’s contention that he brought these matters to anyone’s attention.”

Today’s release is incomplete, and does not include my correspondence with the Signals Intelligence Directorate’s Office of Compliance, which believed that a classified executive order could take precedence over an act of Congress, contradicting what was just published. It also did not include concerns about how indefensible collection activities - such as breaking into the back-haul communications of major US internet companies - are sometimes concealed under E.O. 12333 to avoid Congressional reporting requirements and regulations.

More importantly, though, Snowden points out that none of this really matters:

Ultimately, whether my disclosures were justified does not depend on whether I raised these concerns previously. That’s because the system is designed to ensure that even the most valid concerns are suppressed and ignored, not acted upon. The fact that two powerful Democratic Senators - Ron Wyden and Mark Udall - knew of mass surveillance that they believed was abusive and felt constrained to do anything about it underscores how futile such internal action is -- and will remain -- until these processes are reformed.

Still, the fact is that I did raise such concerns both verbally and in writing, and on multiple, continuing occasions - as I have always said, and as NSA has always denied. Just as when the NSA claimed it followed German laws in Germany just weeks before it was revealed that they did not, or when NSA said they did not engage in economic espionage a few short months before it was revealed they actually did so on a regular and recurring basis, or even when they claimed they had “no domestic spying program” before we learned they collected the phone records of every American they could, so too are today’s claims that “this is only evidence we have of him reporting concerns” false.

Separately, after ODNI published the email, Tim Lee wrote a great piece over at Vox.com highlighting why it really doesn't matter at all if he did, or did not, raise the matter internally:

But the NSA's response to Snowden also has a deeper problem: it wouldn't have made a difference if Snowden had raised his concerns more forcefully through internal channels.

Remember, the NSA's position is that it hasn't done anything wrong. The agency claims that its domestic surveillance programs comply with the law, and that it gets plenty of oversight from both the courts and Congress. The NSA has stuck to this position despite a year of pressure from Congress and the public. Why would it have been any more receptive to the concerns of a lowly contractor?

Maybe Snowden should have brought his concerns to sympathetic members of Congress? That wouldn't have done any good either, because key members of Congress already knew about the program. And some of them were outraged about it!

And, of course, other whistleblowers had their lives completely destroyed. Still, this story is one worth paying attention to, because it demonstrates a serious problem with how the intelligence community handles anyone concerned about its programs. The idea that there are internal controls to handle such a thing is pretty clearly misleading, whether or not Snowden made full use of those channels.

Filed Under: ed snowden, nsa, proper channels, whistleblowing