Tag Archives: Mass Surveillance

Featured, Foreign Policy, International, Politics, US

Snowden Explains Deep State’s Influence on Presidents Obama, Trump

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Famed whistleblower Edward Snowden was recently interviewed by Italian publication La Repubblic. The publication noted the 5-year mark of Snowden’s historic act of blowing the whistle on the NSA’s expansive surveillance programs and that “many thought he would end up very badly, but when he connects via videolink for this interview with la Repubblica, he seems to be doing very well: the frank smile and peaceful face of someone who is easy in his mind.”

In an excerpt from the exclusive interview, Snowden explained how the presidencies of both Obama and Trump are shaped by the Deep State following an illuminating question by journalist Stefania Maurizi.

Stefania Maurizi: We saw that President Obama, who was an outsider to the US military-intelligence complex, initially wanted to reign in the abuses of agencies like the CIA and the NSA, but in the end he did very little. Now we see a confrontation between president Trump and so-called Deep State, which includes the CIA and the NSA. Can a US president govern in opposition to such powerful entities?

Edward Snowden: Obama is certainly an instructive case. This is a president who campaigned on a platform of ending warrantless wiretapping in the United States, he said “that’s not who we are, that’s not what we do,” and once he became the president, he expanded the program.  He said he was going to close Guantanamo but he kept it open, he said he was going to limit extrajudicial killings and drone strikes that has been so routine in the Bush years. But Obama went on to authorize vastly more drone strikes than Bush. It became an industry.

As for this idea that there is a Deep State, now the Deep State is not just the intelligence agencies, it is really a way of referring to the career bureaucracy of government. These are officials who sit in powerful positions, who don’t leave when presidents do, who watch presidents come and go, they influence policy, they influence presidents and say: this is what we have always done, this is what we must do, and if you don’t do this, people will die.

It is very easy to persuade a new president who comes in, who has never had these powers, but has always wanted this job and wants very, very badly to do that job well. A bureaucrat sitting there for the last twenty years says: I understand what you said, I respect your principles, but if you do what you promised, people will die. It is very easy for a president to go: well, for now, I am going to set this controversy to the side, I’m going to take your advice, let you guys decide how these things should be done, and then I will revisit it, when I have a little more experience, maybe in a few months, maybe in a few years, but then they never do.

This is what we saw quite clearly happen in the case of Barack Obama: when this story [of Snowden exposing the NSA’s mass surveillance] came forward in 2013, when Obama had been president for five years, one of the defences for this from his aides and political allies was: oh, Obama was just about to fix this problem!  And sure enough, he eventually was forced from the wave of criticism to make some limited reforms, but he did not go far enough to end all of the programs that were in violation of the law or the constitution of the United States. That too was an intentional choice: he could have certainly used the scandal to advocate for all of the changes that he had campaigned on, to deliver on all of his promises, but in those five years he had become president, he discovered something else, which is that there are benefits from having very powerful intelligence agencies, there are benefits from having these career bureaucrats on your side, using their spider web over government for your benefit.

[RELATED: Snowden Documents: NSA Worked to Track Bitcoin Users]

Imagine you are Barack Obama, and you realise – yes, when you were campaigning you were saying: spying on people without a warrant is a problem, but then you realise: you can read Angela Merkel’s text messages. Why bother calling her and asking her opinion, when you can just read her mind by breaking the law? It sounds like a joke, but it is a very seductive thing. Secrecy is perhaps the most corrupting of all government powers, because it takes public officials and divorces them from accountability to the public.

When we look at the case of Trump, who is perhaps the worst of politicians, we see the same dynamic occurring. This is a president who said the CIA is the enemy, it’s like Nazi Germany, they’re listening to his phone calls, and all of these other things, some claims which are true, some claims which are absolutely not.  A few months later, he is authorizing major powers for these same agencies that he has called his enemies.

And this gets to the central crux of your question, which is: can any president oppose this?  The answer is certainly. The president has to have some familiarity going in with the fact that this pitch is going to be made, that they are going to try to scare him or her into compliance. The president has to be willing to stand strongly on line and say: ‘I was elected to represent the interests of the American people, and if you’re not willing to respect the constitution and our rights, I will disband your agency, and create a new one’. I think they can definitely be forced into compliance, because these officials fear prison, just like every one of us.

Election, Featured, Politics, Privacy, Technology

Rand Paul Explains Why He Would Not Pardon Edward Snowden

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GOP presidential candidate Sen. Rand Paul said on Friday that he would not pardon NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, and would instead seek a compromise that involved Snowden serving some jail time.

During a convention of the Republican Liberty Caucus in Nashua, New Hampshire, Paul was asked if he would pardon Edward Snowden, who is currently in Russia and reportedly contemplating a return to the U.S.

Snowden is facing felony charges for leaking documents that revealed the U.S. government is spying on innocent Americans and collecting their phone records using the NSA’s mass surveillance program.

Paul, who has rallied against the NSA’s program on several occasions, said that while he partially wants to pardon Snowden, he also believes that the country has to have a set of rules that cannot be broken.

[pull_quote_center]I know most people would want me to say yes, and part of me says yes, and part of me says that we cannot have no rules. So for example, we do have secrets, maybe too many, but we do have secrets that need to be protected. We have operatives who try to risk their lives to defend our country and you know, he didn’t reveal that, but you don’t want people to reveal things like that.[/pull_quote_center]

Paul noted that Snowden did reveal a program that was not known to the American people before, and that might have stayed under the radar, due to the Obama administration’s treatment of whistleblowers.

“He revealed a program that we probably would have never known about, had he not revealed it because the government was lying,” Paul said. “So in many ways you could call him a whistleblower.”

[RELATED: Obama Has Sentenced Whistleblowers to 10x the Jail Time of All Prior U.S. Presidents Combined]

Paul said he believes the U.S. should come to a compromise with Snowden, in which he serves some sort of a sentence that is “reasonable and negotiated.”

[pull_quote_center]I think the best compromise on it is that there would be some penalty. But the people who are going nuts, which includes half of the people in our party, wanting to execute him, shoot him, chop his head off, all of these crazy stuff, they are completely wrong, and I think there could be some accommodation. And I think he would actually serve some sentence, if it were reasonable and negotiated.[/pull_quote_center]

In an interview with BBC that aired Monday, Snowden said that he is willing to serve jail time in order to return to the U.S.

“I’ve volunteered to go to prison with the government many times,” Snowden said. “What I won’t do is I won’t serve as a deterrent to people trying to do the right thing in difficult situations.”

There has yet to be a presidential candidate who has said that he or she would pardon Snowden, pending his return to the U.S.

Carly Fiorina described Snowden as “terribly destructive,” Ben Carson said that Snowden “did our nation a tremendous amount of damage” and should be punished, and Donald Trump said that Snowden is a “traitor” and should be killed.

For more election coverage, click here.

Election, Privacy

Did Carly Fiorina Disclose Classified Information When Revealing Her Ties to the NSA?

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In a recent interview, GOP presidential candidate and former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina revealed her connection to the NSA and in doing so, she may have disclosed classified information about the launch of the agency’s warrantless wiretapping program.

Fiorina recently said that she redirected trucks of HP servers from retail stores to the NSA’s headquarters after receiving a call from former NSA director Michael Hayden shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, asking her to “quickly provide his agency with HP computer servers for expanded surveillance.”

[RELATED: Carly Fiorina Defends CIA Torture, Handed HP Servers to NSA]

Hayden confirmed the request, and said that the HP servers were used to implement STELLARWIND, the controversial warrantless wiretapping program that is used to collect Americans’ bulk phone records.

Fiorina’s involvement with the NSA was not widely known prior to her interview with Yahoo News in September, and VICE’s Motherboard suggested that this may be due to the fact that the information Fiorina shared was classified.

Paul Dietrich, an activist and independent researcher, noted on Twitter that Fiorina’s claim is backed up in an NSA Inspector General report on STELLARWIND that was leaked by Edward Snowden in 2013.

The report refers to an order of 50 “computer servers to store and process data acquired under the new authority,” and in a footnote it says that “because of the heightened terrorist threat,” a vendor “diverted a shipment of servers intended for other recipients” to the NSA on Oct. 13, 2001.

Although the report was partially classified by the NSA in April, the page that referenced the transfer of the computer servers remained blacked out, suggesting that the information it contains is still considered classified.

While the report does not exclusively name HP as the company that sent the servers, Dietrich told Motherboard that this was because the NSA “REALLY HATES talking about corporate relationships.”

The NSA has yet to confirm whether Fiorina leaked classified information when revealing her company’s ties to the implementation of STELLARWIND.

In May, Fiorina told CNN that she has little sympathy for Edward Snowden, who is known for leaking documents that revealed the U.S. government is spying on innocent Americans and collecting their phone records.

“I think Edward Snowden has been terribly destructive,” Fiorina said. “He has been less than forthcoming. It was a very slanted portrayal about what the NSA does, and he knows it.”

For more election coverage, click here.

Civil Liberties, Editor’s Pick, Featured, Government Accountability, Government Corruption, Politics, Privacy, Technology, US

DoJ Asks Surveillance Court To Ignore Federal Court’s Ruling On Illegal NSA Spying

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Hours after President Obama signed the USA Freedom Act, which would continue the National Security Agency’s mass surveillance program, while transferring its bulk data collection to private phone companies, the Department of Justice filed a request asking a FISA court to continue the NSA’s collection for six months.

The request, which was filed with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on June 2, asked the Court to “approve the Government’s application for the bulk production of call detail records for a 180 day transition period,” claiming that this request is appropriate, despite the fact that on May 7, a federal appeals court ruled that NSA spying is illegal.

In the request, which was written by Justice Department national security chief John Carlin, the USA Freedom Act’s six-month “orderly transition” clause is referenced, but Carlin does not address whether the clause still applies now that the program was supposed to have shut down completely at midnight on May 31.

The NSA’s mass surveillance program, which was allowed under Section 215 of the Patriot Act, became illegal at 12:01 a.m. on June 1, when the section expired. GOP Presidential candidate and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) led the campaign to block a direct extension of Section 215, and took to the floor of the Senate for 10 hours and 30 minutes to speak out against NSA spying.

The Guardian noted that Carlin also suggests that the Obama Administration “may not necessarily comply with any potential court order demanding that the collection stop,” and might “seek to challenge the injunction.”

“In the event an injunction of some sort were to issue by the district court,the Government would need to assess, in light of the nature and scope of whatever injunction the district court issued, its ability to carry out authority granted under an order issued by this Court,” Carlin wrote.

A report from the Washington Post in Jan. 2014  found that after analyzing 225 terrorism cases inside the United States, the NSA’s bulk collection of phone records “has had no discernible impact on preventing acts of terrorism.” 

In the request, Carlin claimed that although the DoJ has considered the Federal court’s ruling on NSA spying in its evaluation of the government’s application, “Second Circuit rulings do not constitute controlling precedent for this Court,” and they are requesting that the NSA’s bulk data collection program continue, even though the majority of the data collected “ultimately will not be terrorist-related.”

Civil Liberties, Edward Snowden, Government Accountability, Government Corruption, Politics, Privacy, Technology, US

Mitch McConnell: Freedom Act Is A Victory For Snowden And For Those Who Plot Against The U.S.

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After the USA Freedom Act passed in the Senate on Tuesday, 67-32, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) addressed the bill’s passage, and shared his thoughts on its impact.

While McConnell opposed the USA Freedom Act, which was created to maintain the NSA surveillance powers that expired with Section 215 of the Patriot Act at 12:01 a.m. on June 1, he was on the opposite end of the debate from his fellow Senator from Kentucky, Republican Rand Paul.

Although both Senators were against the USA Freedom Act, Paul led the campaign to abolish NSA surveillance altogether, and McConnell pushed for a “clean” extension of the Patriot Act.

The National Security Agency’s massive surveillance program was exposed by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden in June 2013. While advocates of the USA Freedom Act presented it as a bill that vindicated Snowden by reforming NSA surveillance, those in opposition noted that the act wouldn’t end the government’s collection; it would only change the channels the government went through to collect Americans’ records.

On the Senate floor, McConnell quoted an article from the Associated Press, which called the passage of the USA Freedom Act a “resounding victory for Edward Snowden.”

“Those who reveal the tactics, sources and methods of our military and intelligence community give playbook to ISIL and al-Qaeda,” said McConnell, who went on to say that not only was the USA Freedom Act a “resounding victory for Edward Snowden,” it was also a “resounding victory for those who plotted against our homeland.”

Although the Washington Post reported in Jan. that the NSA’s bulk collection of phone records “has had no discernible impact on preventing acts of terrorism,” and the NSA’s mass surveillance was recently ruled illegal by a federal appeals court, McConnell defended the program.

“Nobody’s civil liberties are being violated here,” McConnell said, regarding NSA surveillance. “The president’s campaign to destroy the tools used to prevent another terrorist attack have been aided by those seeking to prosecute officers in the intelligence community, diminish our intelligence capabilities, and despicably to leak and reveal classified information, putting our nation further at risk.”

When the Senate passed the USA Freedom Act on Tuesday afternoon, it approved the same version that was previously passed in the House of Representatives, despite the fact that both McConnell and Paul requested amendments to the bill.

A debate was held over possible amendments on Tuesday, and while McConnell struck down the nine amendments presented by Senator Paul and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), he did bring up four amendments of his own, which were all rejected.

Editor’s Pick, Featured, Government Accountability, Government Corruption, Politics, US

Dennis Hastert Pushed For The Patriot Act That Led To His Indictment

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On Thursday, the Department of Justice announced that former U.S. House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) has been indicted for paying  $3.5 million in “hush money” to ensure silence about his “prior misconduct” in a town where he was a high school teacher.

The grand jury indictment states that Hastert, 73, has been charged with one count of evading bank regulations and withdrawing $952,000 in increments of less than $10,000 in separate transactions on at least 106 occasions, and one count of lying to the FBI about the reason behind the transactions.

According to the Associated Press, each count against Hastert “carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.”

The Huffington Post noted that Hastert, who has taken credit for the Patriot Act’s passage in the House of Representatives in 2001, found out the hard way that the law he helped pass has given federal law enforcement the tools to indict him.

The indictment describes the person who received the “hush money” as “Individual A,” and noted that while Hastert was a high school teacher and a coach in Yorkville, Illinois, from 1965 to 1981, Individual A has been a resident of Yorkville, and has known Hastert most of Individual A’s life.

The AP noted that the indictment is very vague, and in addition to not telling what Hastert’s “prior misconduct” was, it also does not tell Hastert’s relationship with “Individual A.”

Jeff Cramer, a former federal prosecutor and head of the Chicago office of the investigation firm Kroll, told the AP that the language of the indictment suggests that the misconduct was related to Hastert’s position as a coach and teacher.

“Notice the teacher and coach language,” Cramer said. “Feds don’t put in language like that unless it’s relevant.”

In the aftermath of 9/11, Hastert was largely in favor of implementing the Patriot Act, which passed in the House of Representatives on Oct. 24, 2001, with a vote of 357 to 66.

In 2011, Haster took credit for passing the Act in the House, and told Real Clear Politics that passing the Act was not an easy task, because it “wasn’t popular, and there was a lot of fight in the Congress” over it.

The Huffington Post noted that the indictment “suggests that law enforcement officials relied on the Patriot Act’s expansion of bank reporting requirements to snare Hastert,” because it “increased the scope of cash reporting laws to help trace funds used for terrorism.”

Civil Liberties, Government Accountability, Politics, Privacy, Technology, US

White House: Congress Is Playing ‘Russian Roulette’ With The Patriot Act

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In preparation for the possible expiration of certain provisions of the Patriot Act, the Obama administration is urging the Senate to act, and warning of repercussions that might occur if the Act expires altogether.

The Washington Post reported that at a press briefing on Wednesday, a senior administration official likened the fact that the Senate has not passed either an outright extension of the Patriot Act, or the USA Freedom Act, to it playing a game of “national security Russian roulette.”

“What you’re doing essentially is you’re just playing national security Russian roulette,” the official said. “That’s a game that you can play. But we urge Congress not to play that game with these uncontroversial authorities.”

The USA Freedom Act was presented by lawmakers as a way to curb Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which is used by the NSA to justify its bulk collection of Americans’ data. While advocates for the USA Freedom Act claim that it will end the NSA’s bulk data collection, those in opposition to the bill, such as Rep. Justin Amash  (R-Mich.) say that it wouldn’t end the collection; it would only change the channels the government went through to collect Americans’ records.

While the USA Freedom Act was passed in the House of Representatives by an overwhelming vote of 338-88, it failed to reach the 60-vote threshold needed in the Senate, with a 57-42 vote on Friday.

Congress adjourned for a week-long recess early Saturday, leaving the final decision on the future of Section 215 up to a last minute vote when they return on May 31, one day before the section is set to expire.

GOP Presidential candidate Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has been the face of the campaign to abolish the NSA’s surveillance program altogether. Paul took to the floor of the Senate for 10 hours and 30 minutes on Wednesday to filibuster the renewal of Section 215, and he was a prominent voice against the act’s extension, when it came to a vote on Friday, fighting back against Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), the Senate majority leader, who pushed for an “clean” extension of the bill.

On Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said that if the Patriot Act expires altogether, the White House has no “Plan B.”

“The fact is I’m not aware of any ‘Plan B’ that exists or that is currently being contemplated,” Earnest said. “There are significant consequences for the Senate’s failure to act. It would certainly put at great risk these programs and could risk a lapse in some of these important national security capabilities.”

During the recess, the New York Times reported that senior lawmakers are “scrambling this week in rare recess negotiations to agree on a face-saving change to legislation” that would save a form of the NSA’s massive surveillance program.

The Obama administration joined in the campaign to support the USA Freedom Act, with President Obama urging the Senate to pass the Act, just as the House did.

“The House of Representatives did its work and came up with what they called the USA Freedom Act, which strikes an appropriate balance,” Obama said. “Our intelligence communities are confident that they can work with the authorities that are provided in that act passed on a bipartisan basis.”

In addition to the USA Freedom Act being passed on a bipartisan basis, Paul’s stance against it has also been a bipartisan effort. During his time on the Senate Floor speaking out against the Patriot Act, Paul was joined by seven Democrats and three Republicans.

Obama called out the Senate for not passing the USA Freedom Act, and said that the powers that are lost if the Patriot Act expires are ones that could hurt the security of the American people.

“The Senate did not act, and the problem we have now is that those authorities run out at midnight on Sunday,” Obama said. “So, I strongly urge the Senate to work through this recess and make sure that they identify a way to get this done.”

While Obama put emphasis on urging the Senate to act, Paul noted that the NSA’s bulk data collection was recently ruled illegal, and called the President disingenuous, because even though he said wanted to protect civil liberties, he has yet to stop the program.

Investigative journalist Ben Swann explained how section 215 of the Patriot Act is collecting the data of innocent Americans in an episode of Truth in Media:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrY_bmdi-N4

Government Accountability, Privacy, Technology

Report Exposes CIA’s Attempts to Hack Apple Devices

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A report released on Tuesday by The Intercept asserted that researchers within the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) have been engaged in a “multi-year, sustained effort” to sabotage the security of Apple’s iPhones and iPads, using a variety of methods including creating dummy software targeted towards developers and attempting to crack Apple’s encryption keys. The Intercept based its report on documents provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

According to The Intercept, the researchers discussed ways to exploit security flaws of the devices at a secret annual meeting called the Trusted Computing Base Jamboree. It is claimed that the researchers created a modified version of Xcode, Apple’s development software that is used to create apps. The modified version of Xcode would let the CIA, NSA and other agencies to access apps created by developers using the modified software:

“The researchers boasted that they had discovered a way to manipulate Xcode so that it could serve as a conduit for infecting and extracting private data from devices on which users had installed apps that were built with the poisoned Xcode. In other words, by manipulating Xcode, the spies could compromise the devices and private data of anyone with apps made by a poisoned developer — potentially millions of people.”

The Intercept reported that the researchers had also made efforts to utilize keylogging software, which would record every stroke typed by a user affected by the software.

The documents provided by Snowden do not specify that the CIA’s efforts to break into Apple devices have been successful. The CIA and NSA have not yet responded to The Intercept’s report.

“Spies gonna spy,” Steven Bellovin, a former U.S. Federal Trade Commission chief technologist who is now a professor at Columbia University, told The Intercept. “I’m never surprised by what intelligence agencies do to get information. They’re going to go where the info is, and as it moves, they’ll adjust their tactics. Their attitude is basically amoral: whatever works is OK.”

According to The Intercept, government agencies have desired the continuous ability to “bypass security tools built into wireless devices.” Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook, made a pledge last year to protect the privacy of Apple users, especially from all government agencies. On Apple’s website, Cook wrote that “I want to be absolutely clear that we have never worked with any government agency from any country to create a backdoor in any of our products or services. We have also never allowed access to our servers. And we never will.”

Apple declined to respond to the report from The Intercept, and instead referred the publication to the company’s previous privacy statements.