Could 'Tailored Access Operations' Be An Alternative To 'Collect It All'?

from the easy-choices dept

One of the most contentious aspects of the NSA's surveillance is the central belief by General Alexander and presumably many others at the agency that it must "collect it all" in order to protect the public. To stand a chance of overturning that policy, those against this dragnet approach need to come up with a realistic alternative. An interesting article by Matt Blaze in the Guardian offers a suggestion in this regard that takes as its starting point the recent leaks in Der Spiegel about the extensive spying capabilities of the NSA's Tailored Access Operations (TAO). As Blaze points out:

if you are being individually targeted, you really don't stand a chance. The NSA's tools are very sharp indeed, even in the presence of communications networks that are well hardened against eavesdropping. How can this be good news? It isn't if you're a target, to be sure. But it means that there is no good reason to give in to demands that we weaken cryptography, put backdoors in communications networks, or otherwise make the infrastructure we depend on be more "wiretap friendly". The NSA will still be able to do its job, and the sun need not set on targeted intelligence gathering.

The key word there is "targeted": instead of building in to the Internet general weaknesses that allow everyone to be spied upon (and that can also be exploited by criminals or hostile nations), the NSA could use its elite TAO squad to gain access to the systems of particular individuals. This has several huge advantages over dragnet collection. First, it avoids the whole problem of searching for possible needles in an enormous haystack -- the favorite metaphor of the NSA. Instead, it puts the emphasis on investigating just the needles. Secondly, it can't be applied indiscriminately:

as well as TAO works (and it appears to work quite well indeed), they can't deploy it against all of us -- or even most of us. They must be installed on each individual target's own equipment, sometimes remotely but sometimes through "supply chain interdiction" or "black bag jobs". By their nature, targeted exploits must be used selectively.

The final advantage is that because of the more limited scale of the surveillance, it is possible to require individual approval from a judge for every single operation before it is carried out. By scaling things back, meaningful oversight can be introduced in a way that is simply not possible when the crude "collect it all" approach is employed. As Blaze concludes:

The intelligence community no doubt regards targeted collection methods like TAO as a method of last resort, to be used only when mass surveillance fails. We urgently need to reverse this. Yes, we can expect resistance from the NSA and its "five eyes" partners at any suggestion that they scale back mass collection in favor of targeted methods. It means doing things differently, not to mention that carefully focused targeting is likely more expensive than drinking from the fire hose to which they've become accustomed.

But if TAO is a bit more expensive, it also demonstrates that we have a real choice here. We can safely curtail mass collection, shore up needlessly "wiretap friendly" infrastructure and generally protect ourselves against mass surveillance, all without shutting down legitimate intelligence gathering. In a free society, this should be an easy choice to make.

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

Filed Under: bulk data collection, collect it all, nsa, surveillance, tailored access operations

Former NSA Insiders Ask President Obama To Let Them Brief Him On Everything Wrong With The NSA

from the that-would-be-interesting dept

As pretty much everyone has been sending over, a bunch of former NSA and intelligence community insiders who later went on to become whistleblowers (many of whom were then attacked or even prosecuted for their whistleblowing) have written quite an astounding open letter to President Obama, requesting that he allow them to brief him on the problems of the NSA. The letter goes a bit overboard on the rhetoric (which actually pulls away from its important underlying message, unfortunately), but the key points are clear. From what they've seen, they know that not only have the NSA's efforts violated the 4th Amendment and been ineffective, they have actually made it more difficult for the NSA to do its job properly.

What we tell you in this Memorandum is merely the tip of the iceberg. We are ready – if you are – for an honest conversation. That NSA’s bulk collection is more hindrance than help in preventing terrorist attacks should be clear by now despite the false claims and dissembling.

Much of the letter repeats things that were reported in the past, specifically in Jane Meyer's incredible New Yorker story about Thomas Drake (who signed this letter) from nearly three years ago. It talks about THINTHREAD, the program developed by William Binney (also signed on to the letter) as a system for sorting through information without violating the 4th Amendment, or the NSA's mandate. As was detailed both in Meyer's article, and again in this letter, THINTHREAD, which was developed prior to 9/11 for just a few million dollars, had built in a bunch of privacy and anonymity controls, but would also ease information sharing when necessary and appropriate. However, rather than use it, the NSA director at the time, Michael Hayden, chose to go with a plan from some outside defense contractors, costing billions of dollars, which didn't bother protecting the 4th Amendment or people's privacy. When the folks behind THINTHREAD reported this level of waste to the Inspector General, they were investigated, leading to various bogus charges against Drake (almost all of which were eventually dropped).

In the letter, Drake also discusses how, as the NSA exec in charge of figuring out the beset technology to fight against terrorism, he tried to get THINTHREAD reinstated. He also was asked to prepare a briefing for then head of the House Intelligence Committee, Saxby Chambliss (who's now a staunch NSA defender on the Senate Intelligence Committee) about why 9/11 happened. His initial report noted that the NSA knew all about the hijackers, but failed to share the info. He wasn't allowed to give that report.

At a SIGINT Leadership Team meeting in February 2002, SIGINT chief Maureen Baginski directed me to lead a NSA Statement-for-the-Record effort for a closed-door hearing scheduled by Sen. Chambliss for early March to discuss what NSA knew about the 9/11 hijackers and their plotting before 9/11.

As indicated above, the highly embarrassing answer was that NSA knew a great deal, but had not shared what it knew outside of NSA.

After a couple of weeks Baginski rejected my draft team Statement for the Record report and removed me from the task. When I asked her why, she said there was a ‘data integrity problem’ (not further explained) with my draft Statement for the Record. I had come upon additional damaging revelations. For example, NSA had the content of telephone calls between AA-77 hijacker Khalid al-Mihdhar in San Diego, CA, and the known al-Qaeda safe house switchboard in Yemen well before 9/11, and had not disseminated that information beyond NSA.

The letter goes on in great detail about the misleading claims by NSA defenders -- which we've discussed in the past -- that 9/11 could have been prevented if the bulk metadata collection was in use at the time.

It is unlikely that President Obama will respond to this in any manner. Over the past decade, the government worked hard to try to discredit Binner, Drake and the two other signatories, Edward Loomis and Kirk Wiebe (who both worked on THINTHREAD with Binney). Still, it's a powerful letter highlighting, yet again, how dysfunctional the NSA and the intelligence community are, how much of what they do seems to be driven by the corporate interests of defense contractors, and how little they seem to care about privacy or the Constitution.

Filed Under: barack obama, edward loomis, kirk wiebe, michael hayden, nsa, thinthread, thomas drake, william binney

The GAO's Office In The NSA Is Collecting Dust Because Congress Hasn't Asked For A Report In Years

from the oh,-you-mean-this-'stringent-oversight?' dept

The NSA's defenders go to great lengths to convince everyone (the public and many angered legislators) that it operates under a tremendous amount of oversight -- so much though that even THINKING about abusing its capabilities is out of the question. The leaks have repeatedly proven this assertion false as members of the supposedly stringent oversight continue to state their shock and dismay over what's been uncovered.

Steven Aftergood at Secrecy News points out there's another layer of oversight that's gone unutilized for years as well.

Years ago, the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, conducted routine audits and investigations of the National Security Agency, such that the two agencies were in “nearly continuous contact” with one another. In the post-Snowden era, GAO could perform that oversight function once again.

“NSA advises that the GAO maintains a team permanently in residence at NSA, resulting in nearly continuous contact between the two organizations,” according to a 1994 CIA memorandum for the Director of Central Intelligence.

Why haven't we read any damning reports from the GAO about the NSA's abuses over the past several years? Well, apparently it's because no one wants to know.

At a 2008 Senate hearing, Sen. Daniel Akaka asked the GAO about its relationship with NSA. “I understand that GAO even had an office at the NSA,” Sen. Akaka noted.

“We still actually do have space at the NSA,” replied David M. Walker, then-Comptroller General, the head of the GAO. “We just don’t use it. And the reason we don’t use it is we are not getting any requests [from Congress]. So I do not want to have people sitting out there twiddling their thumbs.”

There's that oversight at work again. Idle for "years" by 2008 and no signs that anything has occurred since then. The GAO maintains an office (currently unstaffed) within the NSA but because if no one's asking any questions, it's not providing any answers.

If there's something the GAO does well, it's track down internal issues and problematic behavior. Unfortunately, it's limited to recommending courses of action rather than mandating any serious changes, meaning its follow-up reports are generally filled with descriptions of how these audited entities failed to pursue the recommendations and (often) performed considerably worse during the interim.

On the other hand, the GAO's reports do at least make it clear to the American public exactly what's wrong with nearly everything the government spends its money on. It's very limited accountability that does nothing to change the underlying agency ethos, but at least it prevents them from pretending these problems don't exist.

Being in-house should naturally raise concerns about the GAO's objectivity. Unfortunately, considering the nature of the agency's intelligence work, there's probably no way around that. But the first step in renewing this layer of oversight is to remind Congress of its existence. It has the power to order a GAO investigation, but until it does, the office will continue to gather dust and the NSA's internal problems will worsen -- or at least go unnoticed by Congress.

Aftergood points out that James Clapper has ordered the agency to be responsive to GAO inquiries, apparently in the eventuality that it ever gets back to the business of asking questions.

In Intelligence Community Directive 114, issued in 2011 following years of stagnation in GAO oversight of intelligence, DNI James Clapper instructed U.S. intelligence agencies to be responsive to GAO, at least within certain boundaries.

“It is IC policy to cooperate with the Comptroller General, through the GAO, to the fullest extent possible, and to provide timely responses to requests for information,” the DNI wrote.

Of course, Clapper's definition of "responsive" probably differs greatly from the normally-accepted usage of the word. Having Clapper condone cooperation with an agency that exists to find flaws and misconduct is a bit underwhelming. The NSA's top men have been less than cooperative in the many hearings since the Snowden leaks began, most often recycling old talking points and insisting on discussing it in the context of one program (Section 215) when everyone else is clearly focused on another area.

Still, whatever the GAO finds (that somehow doesn't get blotted out with black ink) will provide more useful information for its Congressional overseers. This certainly shouldn't be used in place of more independent oversight committees, but it should prove to be a valuable addition. The real question Congress needs to answer is why it has ignored this option for so many years.

Filed Under: congress, gao, nsa, oversight, surveillance

The NSA Views Privacy As Damage And Routes Around It

from the solutions-are-needed-and-time-is-of-the-essence dept

Bruce Sterling, sci-fi author and wearer of assorted other hats (public speaker, design theorist, journalist) recently got together (so to speak -- the conversation was a messaging give-and-take facilitated by seminal internet entity The WELL) with Jon Lebkowsky (a "future-focused social polymath") to discuss 2013 and gaze into the upcoming year.

No discussion of the year's events would be complete without including Ed Snowden's NSA document leaks. Sterling's opening salvo addressed the NSA, pointing out how its ethos directly contradicts the utopian internet ideal.

Is it any wonder that the NSA took a page from Google, and started throwing money in the direction of anything that even LOOKED like it might be surveillance? The NSA interpreted privacy as damage and routed around it. Why not give that a try? The NSA has no effective civilian oversight. Whoever does?

Contrast the NSA's goals with the internet in general, which has always perceived censorship as damage and routed around it. The openness that has been fostered is now threatened by an agency that views this ideal as a gift. The internet does most of its work for it, circumventing censors and providing a platform for unlimited and unfettered sharing of information. The people behind the sharing are not interested in giving up their privacy, which may seem at odds with the free flow of information.

The people propelling this free flow aren't important -- or rather, they're not where the focus should be. The NSA changes this. Where it flows from -- and whom it reaches -- is of chief interest to it. The agency's ability to pull communications right from the "trunk" of the internet undercuts the anonymity of the "transactions" and chills future sharing.

Sterling also calls out the agency for its lack of oversight, something it continues to claim is protecting the American public from its powerful capabilities. The talking points always route back to the Congressional oversight, but as Sterling points out, not only is the oversight ineffective, but being composed of politicians, it's extremely susceptible to being humored, rather than respected.

Suppose the entire US Congress came to your house in a body, to you, as a citizen, and they told you, well, anything at all -- in their collective wisdom -- something minor maybe, say they recommended a roach insecticide, for instance. Would you take that act at face value?   Would you listen to the Congress with the respect due legally elected officials, and do what they said?

"Hey," you might say, "the US Congress is the legitimate, elective legislative body of a superpower; so they can't be that bad! I'd better buy that aerosol can and spritz it around some!" Would you do that? Really? Wouldn't you pull an NSA, and pretend to do it, and then lie to them, lying as minimally as you could?

The oversight can't be trusted as its internal workings are particularly fallible. Legislators mainly exist to be reelected. Tough decisions and meaningful legislative change aren't effective ways to remain employed. And so the agency lies to the oversight. And the oversight (for the most part… until very recently) accepts the lies, because doing so allows it to appear "effective." In fact, those involved may have had no idea until recently that they were being lied to. They just accepted the NSA's statements because to do otherwise would mean questioning a large variety of surveillance programs that have been extended and expanded over the last dozen years with little to no discussion.

So, the agency lies to Congress. And Congress lies to itself. The problem now is that the American public is engaged in the debate, and some of those people vote. It's no longer acceptable to simply accept the agency's inaccuracies, misdirection and flat out lies. But to those truly paying attention, the truth is clear. Congress allowed the agency to run rampant for multiple years, and now it's finding it's a lot harder to roll things back than it is to let them spiral out of control.

The fixes needed, unfortunately, will be routed through the same people that took a hands-off approach to national security for so many years. Some adjustments will be made. There are a handful of legislators who have been attempting to hold the NSA accountable for years, but for the most part, the assumption that it was "fighting the good fight" was reason enough to not ask too many questions.

At the moment, it's politically expedient to pressure the agency to change. In a few years, this uproar may be all but forgotten. If changes are going to be made, they need to be made now, before leak fatigue sets in or the business-as-usual-brigade steers everyone back onto the path of least resistance. If the NSA manages to weather this unprecedented situation without sustaining any serious "damage," it will emerge stronger -- and more willing to overstep its bounds -- than ever.

Filed Under: bruce sterling, nsa, privacy, surveillance

Dianne Feinstein Admits That Her 'NSA Reform' Bill Is About Protecting Existing Surveillance Programs

from the oops dept

See, there's a problem when you lie: you always forget how to keep your story straight. You may remember, for example, that Senator Dianne Feinstein, at the end of October, released a bill that pretended to be about reforming the NSA and its surveillance programs. The bill was spun in a way that was designed to make people think it was creating real reforms, with a fact sheet claiming that it "prohibited" certain actions around bulk data collection, but which actually codified them in the law, by including massive loopholes. It was an incredibly cynical move by Feinstein and her staff, pretending that their bill to actually give the NSA even greater power and to legalize its abuses, was about scaling back the NSA. But that's the spin they put on it -- which almost no one bought.

But, it seems that even Feinstein has forgotten that her bill is supposed to pretend that it's about reining in the NSA. On Tuesday, the Senate Intelligence Committee met with the White House's task force, to discuss its recommendations for surveillance reform (which don't go far enough, but go way beyond what Feinstein wants). In discussing what happened in the meeting, Feinstein basically lets slip that she disagrees with the reforms suggested, and that support for her bill means that others are against reform as well:

Those recommendations were criticized by supporters of the NSA’s programs, including Intelligence Committee chair Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., who has said that taking the information out of the government’s hands could put the country at risk. Feinstein has spoken out against proposed reforms that would require as much, and has sponsored her own committee bill that would preserve the agency’s methods.

“Our bill passed by 11-4, so you know there’s substantial support for the programs,” she said.

In other words, "my bill is for people who already support these programs." Exactly the opposite of what her marketing and public statements about the bill have been. Oops. Next time, she should try to not misrepresent her own bill, and maybe she can keep her story straight.

Filed Under: dianne feinstein, nsa, reform, surveillance

7 Things You Missed If You Didn't Read Wired's Big Story On How The NSA Is Killing The Internet

from the it's-not-almost dept

Steven Levy, who specializes in massive articles looking into aspects of the tech industry, has a new one for Wired, called How the NSA Almost Killed the Internet. It basically looks at how the NSA legally coerced the tech companies into having to comply with certain court orders to hand over information, and how the tech companies have been gagged from explaining what's going on. And then... he gets the NSA's side of the story. Much of what's in there is stuff that you probably already know (especially if you read Techdirt regularly), but I wanted to call out a few tidbits that I hadn't seen or heard anywhere else before:

1. Google doesn't charge the government for requests for information:

   FISA requires the government to reimburse companies for the cost of retrieving information. Google says it doesn’t bother to charge the government. But one company says it uses that clause, hoping to limit the extent of the requests. “At first, we thought we shouldn’t charge for it,” says an executive of that company. “Then we realized, it’s good—it forces them to stop and think.”

   This is kind of a "damned if you do/damned if you don't" situation. I know plenty of folks in the civil liberties community go back and forth on it. When companies do charge, then you see articles about how companies are "making a profit" off of violating our privacy. If they don't charge, then you see arguments about how they're making it too easy for the government to get info. Either way, the standard has been to charge basic costs, so it's interesting to see that Google doesn't charge at all, probably betting on the fact that if they did, it would be misrepresented. Of course, the fact that they don't might be misrepresented as well.
2. The NSA has no response to fear of future abuse of programs beyond "we'd never do that." Seriously.

   Critics charge that while there is not yet any evidence of massive abuse of the NSA’s collected data, there is also no guarantee that a future regime won’t ignore these touted protections. These officials discounted that possibility, saying that the majority of NSA employees wouldn’t stand for such a policy. “If that happened, there would be lines at the Inspector General’s office here, and at Congress as well—longer than a Disneyland line,” Ledgett says. (The fates of several NSA employees-turned-whistleblowers indicate that anyone in that hypothetical queue would be in for a ride far wilder than anything in Anaheim.)

   Sure, except there's a very long history of the NSA and the FBI doing exactly the opposite (the claim of no evidence of massive abuse is not actually true). And, as Levy notes in that final parenthetical, the way whistleblowers are treated these days would probably shorten that line quite a bit.
3. Keith Alexander admits that companies were compelled to comply and admits that we should stand up for the companies not to be harmed by all of this:

   “This isn’t the companies’ fault. They were compelled to do it. As a nation, we have a responsibility to stand up for the companies, both domestically and internationally. That is our nation’s best interest. We don’t want our companies to lose their economic capability and advantage. It’s for the future of our country.”
   
   Those words could have come from a policy spokesperson for Google, Facebook, Microsoft, or Yahoo. Or one of the legislators criticizing the NSA’s tactics. Or even a civil liberties group opposing the NSA. But the source is US Army general Keith Alexander, director of the NSA. Still, even as he acknowledges that tech companies have been forced into a tough position, he insists that his programs are legal, necessary, and respectful of privacy.

   This is just bizarre. If he doesn't want the companies to lose their economic capability and advantage, maybe he shouldn't have undermined a large portion of it.
4. Companies were given about 90 minutes to respond to the (misleading) claims in the original PRISM article that they had given the NSA direct access to their servers.

   “We had 90 minutes to respond,” says Facebook’s head of security, Joe Sullivan. No one at the company had ever heard of a program called Prism. And the most damning implication—that Facebook and the other companies granted the NSA direct access to their servers in order to suck up vast quantities of information—seemed outright wrong. CEO Mark Zuckerberg was taken aback by the charge and asked his executives whether it was true. Their answer: no.
   
   Similar panicked conversations were taking place at Google, Apple, and Microsoft. “We asked around: Are there any surreptitious ways of getting information?” says Kent Walker, Google’s general counsel. “No.”

   This remains one of the most unfortunate bits about the Snowden leaks. While I think that Barton Gellman, Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras have done an incredible job with most of their reporting, the original PRISM stories that appeared in the Washington Post and Guardian both came out rushed and were misleading, which is still impacting how people are reporting on these things today. The PRISM program and Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act have serious issues that need exploring, but it's all been distorted by the misleading initial claims, which implied things that just weren't true.
5. The NSA claims it uses the very same encryption that it tries to push everyone else to use. Yes, the same encryption that Snowden docs have revealed was compromised by the NSA.

   And the NSA insists that, despite the implications of those Snowden-leaked documents, it does not engage in weakening encryption standards. “The same standards we recommend are the standards we use,” Ledgett says. “We would not use standards we thought were vulnerable. That would be insane.”

   Sorry, but no one believes that one at all. The clear takeover by the NSA of NIST standards shows that's clearly not true.
6. The NSA still doesn't realize how serious all of this is. They still think it's just been blown out of proportion.

   They understand that journalism conferences routinely host sessions on protecting information from government snoops, as if we were living in some Soviet society. And they are aware that multiple security specialists in the nation’s top tech corporations now consider the US government their prime adversary.
   
   But they do not see any of those points as a reason to stop gathering data. They chalk all of that negativity up to monumental misunderstandings triggered by a lone leaker and a hostile press.

7. Patent troll Nathan Myhrvold is also completely clueless about national security:

   Former Microsoft research head Nathan Myhrvold recently wrote a hair-raising treatise arguing that, considering the threat of terrorists with biology degrees who could wipe out a good portion of humanity, tough surveillance measures might not be so bad. Myhrvold calls out the tech companies for hypocrisy. They argue that the NSA should stop exploiting information in the name of national security, he says, but they are more than happy to do the same thing in pursuit of their bottom lines. “The cost is going to be lower efficiency in finding terrorist plots—and that cost means blood,” he says.

   This is stupid on so many levels. First, the old argument that it's somehow equivalent of tech companies and the NSA to make use of information -- a claim that Levy ridiculously repeats multiple times in his article -- is a line that has been debunked so many times it's really beneath Levy to give it any life at all, let alone refuse to point out how stupid it is. Companies provide a direct service to users, and they make a decision: If I give this information, I get this service in return. It's a decision made by the consumer, and a trade-off where they decide if it's worth it. We can argue that people should have more information about the costs and benefits, but it's still a trade-off where the final decision is their own. The NSA, on the other hand, is not providing a choice or a trade-off. They're just taking everything in exchange for nothing. And, oh yeah, they have guns and can put you in jail -- something no company can do.
   
   Second, Myhrvold incorrectly buys completely the line that all this data collection has been helpful in stopping terrorists. There's just one problem: there is no evidence to support that. Besides, based on his idiotic reasoning, we might as well just do away with pretty much all our rights. For example, I'm pretty sure that we could all have protected Myhrvold more completely if there were video cameras streaming video of everything he did within the privacy of his own home, cars, office or just walking around, right? We could certainly make sure that no one was attacking him or, better yet, that he wasn't about to attack anyone. The cost of not spying on every moment of Nathan Myhrvold might mean "blood." So, based on his own logic, we should violate his privacy, right?

All in all there's a lot in the article that's worth reading, but those were a few key points that really stood out.

Filed Under: keith alexander, nathan myhrvold, nsa, rick ledgett, steven levy, surveillance, tech industry
Companies: google, yahoo

A Bunch Of Security Researchers Cancel Appearance At RSA's Conference To Protest Selling Out To NSA

from the good-for-them dept

A few weeks ago, there was quite a big story concerning how the NSA paid $10 million to RSA to make its compromised random number generator the "default" in a key RSA product. The RSA issued a ridiculously stupid "categorical denial" of the report, which actually denied something entirely different, more or less confirming the original report. Following this, one of the most well-known security researchers around, Mikko Hypponen, announced that he was cancelling his planned talk at RSA's big conference in February. Since then, additional security experts, including Chris Soghoian, Jeffrey Carr and Josh Thomas have each announced that they're cancelling their own talks as well.

Carr also has a good post debunking some of the key claims in RSA's non-denial denial. For example, RSA tried to suggest that Dual EC DRBG was fairly standard when it decided to make it the default, but that wasn't the case. In fact, as a few others have pointed out as well, the NSA actually used the fact that RSA had made it the default in its BSAFE toolkit to push Dual EC DRBG forward as a key standard via NIST, leaving out the tidbit where they had paid RSA $10 million to sell its soul. Carr further notes that, not too long before that, RSA's former President and CEO, Jim Bidzos, had clearly stated that RSA needed to recognize that the NSA believed that RSA was the enemy:

"For almost 10 years, I've been going toe to toe with these people at Fort Meade. The success of this company (RSA) is the worst thing that can happen to them. To them, we're the real enemy, we're the real target."

While Bidzos was long gone from RSA when this deal was concluded, anyone working at RSA had to know that the NSA's interests and RSA's interests were not aligned. The fact that RSA appears to have, at least, looked the other way concerning the security of Dual EC DRBG, while quietly pocketing the money, is really damning. It's good to see security experts speaking up and taking a stand against the company, not just for the deal, but for its totally bogus fake denial.

Filed Under: chris soghoian, jeffrey carr, josh thomas, mikko hypponen, nsa, researchers, rsa conference, security
Companies: rsa

Fearmonger Extraordinaire Rep. Peter King Accuses Sen. Rand Paul Of 'Fearmongering,' Says He Doesn't Deserve To Be A Senator

from the crazy-is-as-crazy-does dept

Today's daily dose of insanity from Rep. Peter King continues where he's left off before. Having already called Senator Rand Paul "a disgrace" for suggesting that Director of National Intelligence James Clapper ought to be prosecuted for lying to Congress, King decided to double down against Paul on Monday saying both that Paul doesn't deserve to be a Senator and accusing Paul of "fearmongering."

On being a Senator, King flat out said:

He doesn’t deserve to be in the United States Senate for spreading that type of misperception and absolute lies, to be honest with you.”

We'll remember that line, because we'll bring it up again in a bit.

In the meantime, sometimes I wonder if King has absolutely no self-awareness at all. Because immediately after he accuses Paul of fearmongering -- saying of Paul, "he's playing on some sort of... fearmongering" -- King immediately insists that if we did what Paul wanted (reining in the NSA), that it would allow terrorists to kill thousands of people. I'm not kidding. I'm sorry, but arguing for greater protections of privacy isn't fearmongering. Claiming that violating all our privacy to stop thousands of people from getting killed? That is fearmongering. King also accused Paul of being "a part of that hate America crowd." Nice of King to stoop so low that he's bordering on idiot McCarthyism. He also lies (remember that statement above?) in claiming that there is no evidence that the NSA abused its powers:

[Rand Paul is] trying to create this paranoia among Americans that the NSA is spying on everyone, the fact is he has not been able to cite one abuse by the NSA.

Except, of course, there have been plenty of abuses. Even the NSA admits it. King is either lying or completely uninformed. Oh, and it's not like he hasn't lied in the past. Remember, he was the Rep. who flat out lied about Glenn Greenwald to say that he should be prosecuted for threatening to reveal names of CIA agents (something Greenwald has never done).

So, uh, if fearmongering and lying mean you don't deserve to be in Congress, shouldn't fearmongering, lying Peter King step down? And, we didn't even need to bring up the fact that King used to support terrorists himself -- the white Irish kind, which he's apparently supportive of, rather than the brown Muslim kind that he dislikes. Oops.

King is apparently preparing to run for President in 2016 on what must be the "fuck the Constitution" platform. In just the past few months, he's openly mocked both the 1st and 4th Amendments. Beyond fearmongering and lying to the public, I'd argue that both of those are pretty good reasons why someone doesn't deserve to be in Congress, let alone be elected President.

Filed Under: nsa, peter king, rand paul, surveillance

Liberals And Conservatives Switch Positions On NSA Surveillance Depending On If 'Their Guy' Is In Power

from the terrible dept

Orin Kerr has pointed out that people who self-identify themselves as "liberals" or "conservatives" seem to shift their opinion on NSA surveillance depending on whether or not it's "their guy" in the White House. That is, back when George W. Bush was President, "Democrats" disapproved of the NSA's surveillance activities, with only 27% approving it. "Republicans" on the other hand, had a 75% approval of the NSA's activities, which were known to include warrantless wiretapping. Fast forward to today, and we have "liberals" being split down the middle between being concerned and not concerned, but conservatives having 77% either "very concerned" or "somewhat concerned" about the surveillance (48% falling into the "very concerned") category. Kerr notes that the two surveys may not be completely comparable -- the questions were not identical, and one study was based on political party, while the other was based on ideology (which might not match up). But, at the very least, it does suggest a general sense that people are much more comfortable with surveillance when "their guy" is in power, and against it when they dislike the President.

That's troubling on any number of levels, but hopefully it serves as a point to a useful tool in convincing those who trust "their guy" not to abuse the system: just ask them how comfortable they'll be when "the other guy" is in power after the next election?

Filed Under: conservatives, liberals, nsa, surveillance

Obama Plans Cosmetic Surveillance Changes After All, Will Set Up Pretend Fight Over NSLs

from the theatrical-reforms dept

Leaks coming out of the Obama administration suggest that the President is preparing mostly cosmetic changes to the intelligence community, following the recommendations from the intelligence task force -- which were much stronger than many expected. The reports suggest things like putting a public advocate to represent the public's views in certain cases before the FISC. This has been talked about for a while, and was the main concession plenty of people had been expecting anyway. That's hardly anything big.

The article talks about two other potential reforms. The first is shifting the holding of phone call metadata from the NSA to the phone companies, allowing the NSA to still search through it after getting a court order. While this may be a marginal improvement, it still has tremendous problems. It will almost certainly come with some sort of data retention law -- something that the feds have wanted for ages, and which civil liberties activists have been fighting against for years. Companies shouldn't be required to hang on to data they don't need, especially if getting rid of it can better protect their users' privacy. Furthermore, while not letting the NSA hang onto the data is a good thing, there is a reasonable concern that if the telcos are hanging onto the data themselves, that they, too, might do bad things with it, with little to no oversight.

However, most of the article from the LA Times focuses on National Security Letter (NSL) reform. We've written about those for years. NSLs are the way that the FBI can demand information from companies without any judicial review at all and, even more insane, with a complete gag order that prevents the recipient from telling anyone (including, at times, your lawyer). The FBI has an incredibly long history of "serious misuse" of NSLs, and has shown little to no interest in fixing the process. Nearly a year ago, a court actually ruled them unconstitutional, but there's an ongoing appeals process that will take quite a bit of time.

However, as the article notes, the DOJ/FBI and other surveillance maximalists are all horrified by the idea that Obama might actually require judicial approval of NSLs, for all but "emergency" situations. What this sounds like is that the President may suggest something along those lines, there will be a well coordinated press attack from surveillance hawks freaking out about the danger this puts us all in... and then he'll back down on that one point. And we'll be left with... basically nothing, but the President will go around insisting that he reformed the intelligence community, while everything more or less stays the same.

Filed Under: barack obama, fisa court, fisc, national security letters, nsa, nsl, public advocate, reform, surveillance