NSA Targets Pirate Bay And Wikileaks Despite 'Inadvertent' Collection Of US Data According To Latest Leak
from the speech-keeps-getting-chillier dept
The Intercept (Glenn Greenwald's new home) has just published a new leaked document that shows, among other things, the NSA's interest in both Wikileaks and The Pirate Bay. An included NSA internal-wiki page mentions both sites by name, along with analyst's concerns about Anonymous. The Intercept has also added two additional slides to the deck previously published by NBC News on SQUEAKY DOLPHIN, the NSA's cross-platform, real-time data harvesting tool that attempts to quantify the "human networks" surrounding its targets utilizing information gleaned from YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, etc.
The additional slides give some insight as to who the NSA believes is a worthy target.
The efforts – detailed in documents provided previously by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden – included a broad campaign of international pressure aimed not only at WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, but at what the U.S. government calls “the human network that supports WikiLeaks.” The documents also contain internal discussions about targeting the file-sharing site Pirate Bay and hacktivist collectives such as Anonymous...While some concern is expressed by NSA guidance that US citizens' data will be caught in this program's nets, the general response seems to be, "report it," but otherwise "it's nothing to worry about." What's worse, however, is how simple it is for the NSA to flip the switch on total surveillance (including US persons) while still remaining in the clear, legally-speaking.
Illustrating how far afield the NSA deviates from its self-proclaimed focus on terrorism and national security, the documents reveal that the agency considered using its sweeping surveillance system against Pirate Bay, which has been accused of facilitating copyright violations. The agency also approved surveillance of the foreign “branches” of hacktivist groups, mentioning Anonymous by name.
A third document, from July 2011, contains a summary of an internal discussion in which officials from two NSA offices – including the agency’s general counsel and an arm of its Threat Operations Center – considered designating WikiLeaks as “a ‘malicious foreign actor’ for the purpose of targeting.” Such a designation would have allowed the group to be targeted with extensive electronic surveillance – without the need to exclude U.S. persons from the surveillance searches.This designation itself is relatively meaningless, needing only a 51% "confidence" (whatever that means) to be able to search "without defeats" (minimization). This low bar puts the designation on par with other tools deployed frequently by intelligence and investigative agencies, like NSLs (national security letters) and administrative subpoenas.
So, simply visiting any of the sites listed could result in your data being swept up "inadvertently." This will probably be noted on the OGC's report, but otherwise it just seems to be considered unavoidable collateral damage. Anything on those reports isn't considered to be abuse because of the lack of intent. The document seems very clear that intentionally targeting US persons or US-to-US communications is forbidden (and indeed the latter will return "no results"), but the inadvertent collection is still a concern, especially when the only obstacle can easily be removed by calling TPB, Wikileaks and others "malicious foreign actors."
How targeting these sites (and their users) fights terrorism is completely unclear. The TPB may post a link to "stolen documents" but it's not the host (unless the NSA has also been tasked with playing copyright cop). As for Wikileaks, the "stolen documents" discussed in the internal wiki have been public for years without creating anything more serious than diplomatic embarrassment.
This does, however, seem to fall in line with the law enforcement and intelligence agencies' increasing tendency to portray "dissent" as "terrorism" when the only similarity between the two is an antipathy towards those in power.
Filed Under: data collection, glenn greenwald, nsa, privacy, the pirate bay, wikileaks
