Who Needs Edward Snowden?

The New Yorker

By Mattathias Schwartz

www.theguardian.com

With Congress now poised to renew, not renew, or revise the N.S.A.’s bulk metadata program, it’s worth thinking about where we would be now if a twenty-nine-year-old contractor for Booz Allen Hamilton hadn’t left Hawaii for Hong Kong, and a new life as an outlaw ombudsman.

Were it not for Edward Snowden or someone like him, the N.S.A. would likely still be collecting the records of almost every phone call made in the United States, and no one outside of government would know it. A handful of civil-liberties-minded representatives and senators might drop hints in hearings and ask more pointed questions in classified settings. Members of the public would continue making phone calls, unaware that they were contributing to a massive government database that was supposedly intended to make their lives safer but had not prevented a single terrorist attack. And, on Monday, the government’s Section 215 powers, used to acquire records from hundred of billions of phone calls, among other “tangible things,” would be quietly renewed.

Snowden shouldn’t have been necessary. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (or FISA Court), which evaluates Section 215 requests, is supposed to be interpreting the law to make sure that government surveillance doesn’t go outside of it. Congressional intelligence committees, which review the activities of the N.S.A., are supposed to be providing some oversight. The N.S.A. itself reports to the Department of Defense, which reports to the White House, all of which have dozens of lawyers, who are all supposed to apply the law. The government, in other words, is supposed to be watching itself, especially in matters of national security, which are, by necessity, shielded from daylight. The fact that it took thirteen years, and one whistle-blower, to expose a program that is conclusively ineffective and, according to one federal appeals court, illegal, points to a problem much larger than any one program. It suggests that claims about what is necessary to prevent the next terrorist attack are too sacrosanct to require evidence. As the debate over Section 215 has played out over the past two years, it has become clear that the punishments for exaggerating the efficacy of surveillance programs and downplaying their privacy implications are just about nonexistent.

The government enshrouds the details of its surveillance programs in a technical vocabulary (“reasonable articulable suspicion,” “seeds,” “queries,” “identifiers”) that renders them too dull and opaque for substantive discussion by civilians. As one Pentagon handbook put it, “one can be led astray by relying on the generic or commonly understood definition of a particular word.” There is a kind of legal subversion at work here. Broad and clearly worded laws, including the Fourth Amendment, are being undermined by a raft of quasi-legal documents, most of them too long, narrow, and boring to read—that is, if anyone were allowed to read them in full. Instead of being named for what they actually do, programs are named for the subsections of the laws that are supposed to authorize them, whether or not that authority is actually present in the language of the law. With all the attention being paid to Section 215, named for a part of the Patriot Act, which does not contain the words “bulk,” “phone,” or “metadata,” it’s easy to forget that the program is just one piece of the intelligence community’s legal armory. Little is known about how other authorities, including Executive Order 12333, which some consider the intelligence community’s most essential charter, are being interpreted to permit spying on Americans. And a redacted report, released last week by the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General, hints at how much we still don’t know about Section 215. Nearly two years into the congressional debate over the use and legality of Section 215, the report provides the first official confirmation that the “tangible things” obtained by the F.B.I. through Section 215 include not just phone metadata but “email transactional records” and two full lines of other uses, all of which the F.B.I. saw fit to redact.

Some have argued that the current surveillance regime isn’t as bad as the activities of Henry Kissinger, who ordered wiretaps on his rivals during the Vietnam era, or of J. Edgar Hoover, who used the F.B.I. to authorize the covert infiltration of left-wing groups and terrorized Martin Luther King, Jr., with anonymous threats. Those abuses led to the lengthy investigations of the Church Committee, and the current system of judicial and congressional oversight. It’s true that the modern surveillance regime is less about the passions of individuals and more about the tendencies of institutions. But those tendencies—especially the belief that national security can trump the plain English of the law—will likely make it hard for this generation to achieve meaningful surveillance reform. This week’s debate over Section 215 should be the beginning of a much larger conversation.

Edward Snowden: I would 'volunteer for prison' to return to US

Eun Kyung Kim TODAY

Edward Snowden may have recently received a three-year extension of his stay in Russia, but the former National Security Agency contractor says in a new interview with WIRED magazine that he still clings to hope of returning home to the United States, even if it means living behind bars.

“I told the government I’d volunteer for prison, as long as it served the right purpose,” Snowden said the article released Wednesday. “I care more about the country than what happens to me. But we can’t allow the law to become a political weapon or agree to scare people away from standing up for their rights, no matter how good the deal. I’m not going to be part of that.”

Described by WIRED as “the most wanted man in the world,” Snowden is being sought for leaking top-secret documents that unveiled widespread surveillance programs overseen by the federal government. He currently is hiding out in an undisclosed community in Russia, where he says he goes mostly unrecognized.

The magazine includes numerous photographs of Snowden, including a previously unseen one of him with his former boss Michael Hayden, a past director of both the NSA and CIA. Other photos show Snowden in silhouette in a hotel room, or on a couch looking fatigued. In another photo, Snowden wears a T-shirt with the word “SECURITY” on the back. The one expected to draw criticism, however, is the magazine cover showing Snowden, whom many Americans consider a traitor, wrapped in an American flag.

Keep reading on TODAY.com >>

Edward Snowden Admits He Was Trying to Reach Cuba

capitolhillcubans

From Secretary of State John Kerry's interview this morning with Savannah Guthrie of NBC's Today Show:

QUESTION: I want to talk to you about the drawdown in Afghanistan that the President announced yesterday, but let’s start with these remarks from Mr. Snowden, and actually, we have a new piece of that interview to play for you this morning. And in it, he basically lays the blame that he is in Russia right now squarely on the United States. Take a look.

QUESTION: What are you doing in Russia?

MR. SNOWDEN: All right. So this is a really fair concern. I personally am surprised that I ended up here. The reality is I never intended to end up in Russia. I had a flight booked to Cuba, onwards to Latin America, and I was stopped because the United States Government decided to revoke my passport and trap me in Moscow Airport. So when people ask, why are you in Russia, I say, please, ask the State Department.

QUESTION: Well, Mr. Secretary, what about it? Does he have a point? He’s basically saying but for the U.S. State Department revoking his passport, he wouldn’t be in Russia at all.

SECRETARY KERRY: Well, for a supposedly smart guy, that’s a pretty dumb answer, frankly. Look, I’m not going to get into the – who he was, what he was. Let me just say this: If Mr. Snowden wants to come back to the United States today, we’ll have him on a flight today. We’d be delighted for him to come back. And he should come back, and that’s what a patriot would do. A patriot would not run away and look for refuge in Russia or Cuba or some other country. A patriot would stand up in the United States and make his case to the American people. But he’s refused to do that to this date, at least.

The fact is that he can come home, but he’s a fugitive from justice, which is why he’s not being permitted to fly around the world. It’s that simple and he knows it.

QUESTION: Have you softened your stance at all with regard to his alleged conduct here? I noticed earlier this year you said that there were disclosures about the NSA made because of Snowden that you yourself were not aware of that constituted NSA overreach. Does that change the calculus at all for you?

SECRETARY KERRY: That’s entirely up to the justice system. Let him come back and make his case. The fact is that he should – if he cares so much about America and he believes in America, he should trust in the American system of justice. But to be hiding in Russia, an authoritarian country, and to have just admitted that he was really trying to get to Cuba, I mean, what does that tell you, really? I think he’s confused. I think it’s very sad.

But this is a man who has done great damage to his country, violated his oath which he took when he became an employee, and yes, in fact, stole an enormous amount of information and released it to the public, to the detriment of his country.

Snowden: 'Yes Absolutely' Would Leak Again

AssociatedPress

Snowden Swiped Password From NSA Coworker

NBC News.com

By Michael Isikoff

A civilian NSA employee recently resigned after being stripped of his security clearance for allowing former agency contractor Edward Snowden to use his personal log-in credentials to access classified information, according to an agency memo obtained by NBC News.

In addition, an active duty member of the U.S. military and a contractor have been barred from accessing National Security Agency facilities after they were “implicated” in actions that may have aided Snowden, the memo states. Their status is now being reviewed by their employers, the memo says.

The Feb. 10 memo, sent to congressional intelligence and judiciary committees this week, provides the first official account of a sweeping NSA internal inquiry aimed at identifying intelligence officials and contractors who may been responsible for one of the biggest security breaches in U.S. history. The memo is unclassified but labeled “for official use only.”

"Unbeknownst to the civilian, Mr. Snowden was able to capture the password, allowing him even greater access to classified information.”

While the memo’s account is sketchy, it suggests that, contrary to Snowden’s statements, he used an element of trickery to retrieve his trove of tens of thousands of classified documents: “At Snowden’s request,” the civilian NSA employee, who is not identified by name, entered his password onto Snowden’s computer terminal, the memo states.

“Unbeknownst to the civilian, Mr. Snowden was able to capture the password, allowing him even greater access to classified information,” the memo states.

The memo states that the civilian employee was unaware that Snowden “intended to unlawfully disclose classified information.” Nevertheless, by sharing with Snowden his personal “public key infrastructure” certificate -- a system of highly secure credentials that provided greater access to NSA’s internal computer system -- the employee “failed to comply with security obligations,” the memo states. As a result, the employee’s security clearance was revoked in November and the NSA has notified the Justice Department that he recently resigned. (A public key infrastructure certificate is a highly secure system of password and log-in exchanges designed to protect against unauthorized access to sensitive computer networks.)

The memo does not explain what actions the U.S. military member and the contractor took that caused them to lose their access to NSA facilities.

"Has anybody been disciplined at NSA for dropping the ball so badly?”

The Feb. 10 memo was signed by Ethan Bauman, the NSA’s director of legislative affairs. It was sent to the congressional committees after repeated questions from senior members about whether the NSA intended to hold any of its employees accountable for the security lapses that enable Snowden to gain access to massive volumes of classified documents that he later leaked to the news media

“Has anybody been disciplined at NSA for dropping the ball so badly?” Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., demanded of NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander at a Dec. 11 hearing. Alexander at the time replied that the agency had three “cases” that “we’re currently reviewing.” (An NSA spokeswoman Vanee Vines declined comment Wednesday night, writing in an email: “I don’t have anything for your story.”)

The question of how Snowden was able to obtain as much classified material as he did while working at a remote NSA station in Hawaii has been the subject of intensive investigation by the U.S. intelligence community for months.

Reuters reporters Mark Hosenball and Warren Strobel reported in November that Snowden used login credential and passwords provided “unwittingly” by colleagues at the Hawaii spy base. The Reuters report said Snowden “may have persuaded between 20 and 25 fellow workers” to give him their passwords. But the NSA never publicly commented on that report and Snowden appeared to deny it during a public Google chat on Jan. 23.

“Was the privacy of your co-workers considered while you were stealing their log-in and password information?” Snowden was asked during the chat.

“With all due respect to Mark Hosenball, the Reuters report that put this out there was simply wrong,” Snowden replied. “I never stole any passwords, nor did I trick an army of co-workers.”

Ben Wizner, a lawyer for the ACLU who represents Snowden, did not immediately respond to phone and email requests for comment.

SECRET SNOWDEN AID? Source: Hong Kong ally may have helped leaker

Read at foxnews >>

US Spies Talk About Killing Snowden - Business Insider

Business Insider

Paul Szoldra and Michael Kelley

REUTERS

A screenshot of Rossia 24 TV channel shows Edward Snowden on a boat trip in Moscow in September.

Edward Snowden has picked up plenty of friends in journalists, privacy advocates, and citizens since he fled his NSA contracting job with upwards of a million top-secret files detailing the inner workings of the U.S. intelligence community and military.

But the 30-year-old's betrayal of trust in the eyes of U.S. spies has led many to imply that he should be assasinated.

And some spooks aren't hiding their anger anymore, as seen by several candid quotes from a new report by Benny Johnson of Buzzfeed:

"In a world where I would not be restricted from killing an American, I personally would go and kill him myself," a current NSA analyst told BuzzFeed. "A lot of people share this sentiment."

A former U.S. Special Forces officer told Johnson that he "would love to put a bullet in his head," adding the assertion that Snowden "is single handedly the greatest traitor in American history."

Buzzfeed notes that nobody expects the U.S. government to act on such fantasies.

Nevertheless, the hypothetical assassination of the NSA-trained hacker is quite detailed:

“I think if we had the chance, we would end it very quickly,” [an Army intelligence officer] said. “Just casually walking on the streets of Moscow, coming back from buying his groceries. Going back to his flat and he is casually poked by a passerby. He thinks nothing of it at the time starts to feel a little woozy and thinks it’s a parasite from the local water. He goes home very innocently and next thing you know he dies in the shower.”

The story illustrates the massive divide between the average civilian — the latest polling shows a majority regard Snowden as a whistleblower — and the average spy, who has access to much more information and can, arguably, see firsthand the damaging effects of the leaks that have come out.

Disclosures published from Snowden's cache have set off a global privacy conversation and have spurred reform in the U.S. They have also exposed NSA tools and detailed American intelligence operations against its rivals and adversaries.

The slow drip is a nightmare for the U.S. intelligence community and its allies. Meanwhile, there are still open questions regarding when (if ever) the former CIA technician gave up access to the NSA documents and how he ended up in the hands of Russia.

An NSA official even broached the subject of clemency for Snowden if he promised to return home without leaking "the keys to the kingdom," which include 31,000 files detailing U.S. intel on other country's military capabilities as well as information about U.S. capabilities and U.S. gaps.

Clemency is now out of the question, especially given the epic size and scope of the theft as well the Kremlin's unstated interest in holding on to him. Consequently, frustrated American spies imagine what they seen as the simplest way to deal with the Snowden problem.

"His name is cursed every day over here," a U.S. intelligence contractor told BuzzFeed from overseas. "Most everyone I talk to says he needs to be tried and hung, forget the trial and just hang him." 

SEE ALSO:  Edward Snowden's Relationship With WikiLeaks Should Concern Everyone

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/us-spies-talk-about-killing-snowden-2014-1#ixzz2qhEyZbOe

Snowden leaks: NSA gathers 200 million text messages daily

Mary Greeley

NSA Quantum Program Tapped Computers Not Connected To Internet

TIME

Amnesty For NSA Leaker Edward Snowden?

EuroNewsCenter

Read on War News Updates >>

Spies worry over “doomsday” cache stashed by ex-NSA contractor Snowden

Follow The Money

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/25/us-usa-security-doomsday-idUSBRE9AO0Y120131125?feedType=RSS&feedName=everything&virtualBrandChannel=11563

British and U.S. intelligence officials say they are worried about a “doomsday” cache of highly classified, heavily encrypted material they believe former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden has stored on a data cloud.

The cache contains documents generated by the NSA and other agencies and includes names of U.S. and allied intelligence personnel, seven current and former U.S. officials and other sources briefed on the matter said.

The data is protected with sophisticated encryption, and multiple passwords are needed to open it, said two of the sources, who like the others spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters.

The passwords are in the possession of at least three different people and are valid for only a brief time window each day, they said. The identities of persons who might have the passwords are unknown.

Spokespeople for both NSA and the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment.

One source described the cache of still unpublished material as Snowden’s “insurance policy” against arrest or physical harm.

U.S. officials and other sources said only a small proportion of the classified material Snowden downloaded during stints as a contract systems administrator for NSA has been made public. Some Obama Administration officials have said privately that Snowden downloaded enough material to fuel two more years of news stories.

“The worst is yet to come,” said one former U.S. official who follows the investigation closely.

Snowden, who is believed to have downloaded between 50,000 and 200,000 classified NSA and British government documents, is living in Russia under temporary asylum, where he fled after traveling to Hong Kong. He has been charged in the United States under the Espionage Act.

Cryptome, a website which started publishing leaked secret documents years before the group WikiLeaks or Snowden surfaced, estimated that the total number of Snowden documents made public so far is over 500.

Given Snowden’s presence in Moscow, and the low likelihood that he will return to the United States anytime soon, U.S. and British authorities say they are focused more on dealing with the consequences of the material he has released than trying to apprehend him.

How the feds snoop: What happens when you hit send on your email

usnews

www.zerohedge.com

By Stephanie Gosk and Jeff Black, NBC News

The Internet makes it easy to send information to far flung places in an instant – hit “send” and poof there it goes. But where does that information go, how does it get there and who gets access to the data?

Every second of every day billions of bits of data speed through an elaborate network, many created and controlled by companies such as Yahoo and Google.

Indeed, the latest leaks from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, first reported by the Washington Post and confirmed by NBC News, say that NSA has tapped into Google and Yahoo's data cables and vacuumed up emails and phone records, although security official say Americans are filtered out.

Big tech companies — among them Facebook, Microsoft, AOL and Apple, in addition to Google and Yahoo — say the worry they’re losing an arms race to secure their users’ information and have called on new laws to stop U.S. intelligence agencies from breaking into data centers.

Those data centers, often misleadingly called the “cloud,” in reality have nothing ethereal about them. They’re thousands of miles of cables and high-tech switchers and computers. They’re warehouse-sized buildings that hum with servers to collect and store huge reams of data.

“For your email account you know you can have years worth of data stored in your account,” Kim Zetter of Wired magazine told NBC News.

Google alone has six such large datacenters in the United States, and another seven are overseas.

“A lot of people think if I'm in the U.S., my data is stored in the U.S., and that's really not the case,” Zetter said.

Jim Stickley, a cyber security expert, said it's those cables where the vulnerability lies.

“You have thousands and thousands of miles of cable out there of this fiber optic cable,” Stickley said. “And so presumably the NSA has founds somewhere to gain access to this cable and physically attach some sort of device to capture date on this network.”

On Thursday, Google issued a statement, which said, in part: "We are outraged at the lengths to which the government seems to have gone to intercept data from our private fiber networks" 

Google said it is now working to encrypt its high-speed fiber optic lines in order to counter NSA snooping.

But even if that company’s system is secure, it’s clear that these internet giants have become the gatekeepers of our digital lives.

“We have put all of our digital eggs into their baskets, they're not in ours anymore,” Lee Tien of the Electronic Frontier Foundation told NBC News. “and whether that's wise in terms of privacy and security is, I think, a very open question.”

Bruce Schneier, a Harvard Law School fellow who writes frequently on cybersecurity, said there's only one sure fire way to protect yourself from snooping, and it’s an idea most people won’t like: Give up your email.

“You cannot be on the systems. That’s what you can do,” he said in a telephone interview. “Whenever you go into a cloud, you have to trust the cloud provider. There’s nothing you can do. It’s not your data. It’s their data.”

One reason there is so much data collection, Schneier said, is that “Surveillance is very, very cheap, that’s the problem."

He added, "Adding encryption makes surveillance more expensive, Which means they can’t do it as much.”

So, for anyone feeling a little digitally vulnerable, there appears to be only one way around it:  Write a letter and get a stamp.

Andrea Mitchell and Erin McClam of NBC News contributed to this report.

Related:
NSA, British intelligence secretly tapped into Google, Yahoo cable links, officials say

Also: PRISM (surveillance program) - Wikipedia

WikiLeaks publica primer vídeo de Snowden desde que está refugiado en Rusia

TheWikiLeaksChannel

Snowden honored by U.S. whistleblowers in Moscow as his father arrives - The Washington Post

The Washington Post

By Kathy Lally

MOSCOW — Four whistleblowing advocates from the United States met with Edward Snowden in Moscow Wednesday and gave him an award for truth-telling — a provocative gesture, given that the U.S. government has accused Snowden of causing grave harm to national security.
The activists from the Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence, an organization of former national security officials, praised Snowden for shining light on a secret government surveillance program.

Although the group honored Snowden as a whistleblower, the U.S. government has argued that the former contractor for the National Security Agency — who leaked details of U.S. spying around the world — does not deserve the title.

Whistleblowers, officials have argued, go through official channels first and only blow a whistle if their assertions are ignored. Snowden revealed secret U.S. surveillance without making any attempt to register official complaints, they say.

The award was announced in July, but the activists who visited Snowden Wednesday said the organization wanted to present it in person. They were the first activists to report seeing the American fugitive since he was granted temporary asylum and left the airport transit zone on Aug. 1.

“I thought he looked great,” said Jesselyn Radack, who once accused the FBI of ethics violations.

“He’s remarkably centered,” said Coleen Rowley, a former FBI agent who has testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee about problems facing the agency and the broader intelligence community.

In a separate development, Snowden’s father arrived here Thursday morning and said he hoped to arrange a visit with his son. Lon Snowden told reporters that he has had no direct contact with his son since Edward Snowden revealed secrets about U.S. surveillance programs.

Edward Snowden was granted temporary asylum in Russia in August. He has not been seen in public since he left Sheremetyevo Airport, where his father arrived Thursday .

Lon Snowden was met at the Moscow airport by Anatoly Kucherena, the Russian lawyer who has been representing his son. He had no idea, he said, if he would even meet Edward.

“I’ve had no direct contact with my son despite previous reports,” he told reporters gathered outside the airport. “If the opportunity presents itself I certainly hope I’ll be able to meet my son.”

Snowden spent five weeks holed up in the transit zone of the airport before winning temporary asylum and disappearing from sight. Earlier in the week, Kucherena said he had recently taken more books to Snowden, including “Dr. Zhivago” and works by Solzhenitsyn. When asked about Snowden’s whereabouts, he replied: “On the territory of the Russian Federation.”

Snowden turned up in Hong Kong in May. He arrived in Russia on June 23, apparently en route to Havana and on to South America.

Speculation has been rife about why he remained in Russia. Authorities here say he could not travel onward because the United States revoked his passport, although Russia could have provided him with travel documents if it had so desired.

Lon Snowden said that as far as he knew, his son has not disclosed further information since his arrival in Russia.

“I’m here to learn more about my son’s situation,” he said, “and I’m thankful, extremely thankful, to the Russian people, President Vladimir Putin and Mr. Kucherena and his staff for their help in keeping my son safe and secure.”

He said he had no idea what the future held. “I’m not sure my son will be return to the U.S. That’s his decision,” he said. “I’m his father. I love my son.”

Anna Chapman refuses to discuss Snowden proposal

Read on worldnews >>

The Snowden Affair/ National Security Archive

National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 436: The Snowden Affair

Edited by Jeffrey T. Richelson/
Posted – September 4, 2013

On August 12, 2013, President Barack Obama announced (Document 118) the impending creation of a group to review U.S. signals intelligence capabilities and communications technologies. Its mandate would be to "assess whether, in light of advancements in communications technologies, the United States employs its technical collection capabilities in a manner that optimally protects our national security and advances our foreign policy while appropriately accounting for other policy considerations, such as the risk of unauthorized disclosure and our need to maintain the public trust." That same day, Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper, Jr. announced (Document 119) that he would be establishing the review group and its final report would be due no later than December 15, 2013.

The catalyst for the president's announcement was an unexpected event that occurred just a little over two months previously. On June 5, a British newspaper, The Guardian, began publishing a series of articles disclosing highly classified aspects of, and documents about, certain National Security Agency (NSA) electronic surveillance operations involving not only extensive collection of foreign communications, including Internet traffic, but the collection of the metadata associated with phone calls (foreign and domestic) made by United States citizens. A few days later, The Guardian revealed its source to be Edward J. Snowden, a former CIA employee who had been working at a NSA facility in Hawaii as an employee of Booz Allen Hamilton.

On June 14, the United States filed a sealed criminal complaint against Snowden, releasing only one page (Document 74) to the public. Subsequently, Snowden departed Hong Kong, where he had been staying for the previous month (reportedly spending his final two days at the Russian consulate^[1]), using a SAFEPASS (Document 83) issued by the Ecuadoran embassy in London. He arrived at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport while seeking asylum elsewhere. While in Russia, he issued several statements (Document 97). During that time, the United States sought to discourage nations offering Snowden asylum and pre-emptively requested his extradition (Document 81) from at least one nation.

Snowden's potential movements also became the subject of a letter (Document 91) from his father's lawyer to Attorney General Eric Holder asking for three guarantees to encourage his son to return home, including that he would not be detained or imprisoned prior to trial. Subsequently, in response to reported claims that Snowden feared being tortured if he returned, Holder wrote (Document 105) to the Russian Minister of Justice, assuring him that Snowden would not be tortured or face the death penalty if he returned (or was returned) to the United States.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper (Photo: ODNI)

The controversy that has erupted over Snowden and his disclosures is not the first time NSA has been at the center of controversy. In the 1970s, through leaks, investigative reporting, and congressional inquiries, the public learned of projects SHAMROCK and MINARET. The SHAMROCK program (1945-1975) involved several U.S. companies turning over the telegraphic communications that passed over their networks. Project MINARET "was essentially the NSA's watch list" and "used existing SIGINT accesses" to search for "terms, names, and references associated with certain American citizens." While MINARET officially began in 1969, the watch list activity had started at least as early as 1960, and did not originally involve American citizens. In 1975, The Washington Post reported that the watch list had included prominent anti-Vietnam war activists such as Jane Fonda and Benjamin Spock.^[2]

In the 1990s, major concern arose — more overseas than in the United States — about a program designated ECHELON. That program involved the installation of software at a select number of "COMSAT Intercept" sites operated by what are today designated the "FIVE EYES" nations — the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. The sites intercepted the traffic flowing through communications satellites and the ECHELON software sorted through it (particularly printed fax transmissions), routing those containing pre-selected key words to analysts in whatever FIVE EYES nation had expressed interest. However, claims that ECHELON was a far more extensive global surveillance operation produced an international controversy and a European Parliament investigation.^[3]

Perhaps the controversy around ECHELON would have had a significantly longer life had it not been for the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. But those events presaged the more recent controversies. In May 2006, USA Today published an article titled "NSA Has Massive Database on Americans' Phone Calls: 3 Telecoms Help Government Collect Billions of Domestic Records."^[4] One lawsuit that followed was based on the claims of an AT&T employee (Document 11) concerning a special room containing surveillance equipment at an AT&T San Francisco facility.

However, there was a lack of official acknowledgment or leaked documents to support the claims. Thus, an August 2007 Congressional Research Service examination of the issue (Document 15) noted that "the factual information available in the public domain with respect to any such alleged program is limited and in some instances inconsistent, and the application, if at all, of any possible relevant statutory provisions to any such program is likely a very fact specific inquiry." The CRS study also stated that "It is possible that any information provided to the NSA from the telephone service providers was provided in response to a request for information, not founded on a statutory basis."^[5]

National Security Agency headquarters (Photo: National Security Agency)

In contrast, the pre-August 12 disclosures in The Guardian, as well in The Washington Post and the Brazilian media, were based on a variety of document sources. Further, the online stories provided links to many of the key leaked documents, including an inspector general's report on the STELLARWIND Program (Document 23) — also known as the President's Surveillance Program (Document 24) — as well as Top Secret documents specifying procedures concerned with targeting (Document 25) and the 'minimization of data' about U.S. persons (Document 26). Also appearing on the web were selected slides from a 41-slide presentation (Document 55) on a program referred to as PRISM — involving the collection of Internet traffic from a variety of service providers — as well as a presentation on XKEYSCORE (Document 18), which sorts through intercepted traffic.

Along with the PRISM revelations, charges that the U.S. had bugged the facilities of European governments produced the greatest reaction in Europe — and the announcement (Document 95) of an investigation. However, the focus in the United States revolved around two programs, the Section 215 Bulk Collection Program and the 'PRISM' program, the latter based on Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 Amendments Act (Document 20).

Among the first documents The Guardian disclosed was a 4-page Top Secret 'Secondary Order' (Document 59) from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) that commanded Verizon Business Network Services to provide an electronic copy of two 'tangible' things: "all call detail records or 'telephony metadata' created by Verizon for (i) communications between the United States and abroad; or (ii) wholly within the United States." The government subsequently released a heavily redacted version of the Primary Order (Document 58) from the surveillance court.

The leak of documents concerning the Bulk Collection program had a number of consequences leading up to the review ordered by President Obama. The leaks provided new data on the evolution of the program (Document 12, Document 17), reporting to Congress (Document 28, Document 32), challenges by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and others to the legal interpretations employed to justify the program (Document 10, Document 34, Document 63, Document 90a), as well as official reaction to those challenges (Document 37, Document 90b). The leaks also resulted in attempts by the government (Document 79, Document 92) to provide public reassurance — both with regard to the legality and utility of the program — including a single-spaced 22-page white paper (Document 115). Labeled "Administration White Paper" and lacking any specific agency source, the document seems to include the kind of legal language and justifications that would likely appear in the still-Secret Office of Legal Counsel opinions describing the government's legal bases for the programs. Such attempts also met with rebuttals ( Document 68) by those less convinced of the utility of the Bulk Collection effort.

Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) (Photo: www.wyden.senate.gov)

Because of the leaks, DNI James Clapper had to provide various explanations (Document 71, Document 82) for his "no" response to a question Wyden had posed to him at a public hearing in March. Wyden had inquired whether the NSA collected "any kind of data at all" on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans.

In addition, there were amendments introduced in Congress that would have terminated the program — including Sen. Rand Paul's (R-KY) "Fourth Amendment Restoration Act" (Document 67) and an amendment (Document 101) by Representatives Justin Amash (R-MI) and John Conyers (D-MI) that would have prohibited funding for execution of any FISA order that did not limit collection to data that pertained to an individual who was the subject of an investigation. Objections to the amendment, which was ultimately defeated by the unexpectedly close margin of 217-205, came from Senate Select Committee on Intelligence chairman Dianne Feinstein (Document 106), the White House (Document 107), and DNI Clapper (Document 108).

The contrast between the Bulk Collection program and the Section 702 'PRISM' program was that there was little dispute that the latter had produced significant intelligence that could be employed in operations against terrorist activities. Still, disclosure of the program was accompanied by the publication of relevant, sometimes Top Secret, documents (Document 18, Document 25, Document 26, Document 55) that produced significant controversy. One element of controversy concerned the specifics of the involvement of key communications providers (e.g. Yahoo, Google, Facebook) in the program — particularly if NSA had direct access to their servers.

National Security Agency director Gen. Keith B. Alexander (Photo: National Security Agency)

A second source of controversy concerned a number of NSA claims made in a fact sheet it had posted on the Web about the 702 program (Document 78). The fact sheet sparked a letter from Senators Wyden and Udall (D-CO) (Document 85) to NSA director Keith Alexander with two objections. The senators wrote to dispute what they considered "an inaccurate statement about how section 702 authority has been interpreted by the U.S. government." In addition, they objected to the statement in the fact sheet that any inadvertently acquired communication concerning a U.S. person that was not relevant to the purpose of the intercept, or evidence of a crime, had to be promptly destroyed. They characterized the statement as "somewhat misleading in that it implies that the NSA had the ability to determine how many American communications it has collected under section 702, or that the law does not allow NSA to deliberately search for the records of particular Americans." In his response (Document 87), Alexander noted that "the fact sheet ... could have more precisely described the requirements for collection under Section 702." Shortly thereafter, the NSA removed both the Section 215 and Section 702 fact sheets from its website.

A number of disclosures and declassifications occurred subsequent to the president's August 12 announcement — primarily from The Washington Post and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Among the documents provided by Snowden to the Post was a Top Secret report (Document 44) on the Washington-based activities of the NSA's Signals Intelligence Directorate, with collection limitations imposed by Executive Order 12333, the FISA, and other regulations. Over the course of a year starting April 2011, it noted 2,776 incidents (2,057 related to the executive order and 719 with regard to FISA). The report attributed the incidents mostly to "roamers" (foreign targets that entered the United States), but they also involved cases of a lack of proper FISC authority, database queries, errors in tasking or detasking, and collection at international transit switches. The Post also first disclosed a 4-page document (Document 125) titled "Targeting Rationale," which focused on what information should, and should not, be provided to FISA Amendments Act "overseers."

On August 21, 2013, the Office of the DNI declassified a collection of relevant documents with Clapper providing an overview in a release letter (Document 123). Included in the documents were a directive on minimization (Document 38) — which was a more recent version of one of the documents that first appeared in The Guardian (Document 26) — as well as testimony before closed Congressional hearings (Document 41) and a semiannual compliance report (Document 113). In addition, there were three 2011-2012 opinions (Document 35, Document 40, Document 48) from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. The first of the opinions had been the subject of a lawsuit by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. It noted that "one aspect of the proposed collection — the 'upstream collection' of Internet transactions — is in some respects, deficient on statutory and constitutional grounds." The subsequent opinions (Document 40, Document 48) discussed the adequacy of the government's response to the court's criticism.

Compliance violations had been noted several days before the release in a press briefing (Document 120) by John DeLong, NSA's director of compliance. His disclosures produced reactions from Senate intelligence chairman Feinstein and committee members Wyden and Udall. Feinstein stated (Document 122) that her committee had "never identified an instance in which the NSA has intentionally abused its authority to conduct surveillance for inappropriate purposes," while Wyden and Udall wrote (Document 121) that "we believe Americans should know that this confirmation is just the tip of a larger iceberg."

More:  http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB436/

"Black-Budget": Cuba Remains Priority for U.S. Counter-Intelligence

capitolhillcubans

Anyone who still believes NSA leaker Edward Snowden is some sort of crusader for civil liberties is delusional.

Snowden has just leaked to The Washington Post a classified 178-page budget summary (known as the "black budget") for the National Intelligence Program, which details the successes, failures and objectives of the U.S. intelligence community.

As such, he has alerted the enemies of the U.S. as to technologies, moles, counter-intelligence and counter-terrorism operations, and the "critical blind spots" of U.S. intelligence throughout the world.

None of this has anything to do with civil liberties.

Moreover, it's clear that China, Russia Iran and Cuba and other U.S. foes now have access to this information -- and probably much more.

(This is why tyrants like Fidel Castro praise Snowden).

One of the things revealed in the "black budget" is the following:

U.S. intelligence officials take an active interest in foes as well as friends. Pakistan is described in detail as an “intractable target,” and counterintelligence operations “are strategically focused against [the] priority targets of China, Russia, Iran, Cuba and Israel.” The latter is a U.S. ally but has a history of espionage attempts against the United States.

This should be a wake up call to those who believe that Cuba does not pose a threat to the U.S.

The fact remains Cuba's gathering and sharing of intelligence with fellow state-sponsors of terrorism and other U.S. foes is a threat and, henceforth, remains a priority target for U.S. counter-intelligence operations.

Snowden impersonated NSA officials, sources say

By Richard Esposito, Matthew Cole and Robert Windrem
NBC News

Edward Snowden accessed some secret national security documents by assuming the electronic identities of top NSA officials, said intelligence sources.

“Every day, they are learning how brilliant [Snowden] was,” said a former U.S. official with knowledge of the case. “This is why you don’t hire brilliant people for jobs like this. You hire smart people. Brilliant people get you in trouble.”

Snowden was a Honolulu-based employee of Booz Allen Hamilton, an NSA contractor. His job gave him system administrator privileges on the NSA’s intranet, NSAnet. He reportedly used his privileges to download 20,000 documents.

The NSA still doesn’t know exactly what Snowden took. But its forensic investigation has included trying to figure out which higher level officials Snowden impersonated online to access the most sensitive documents.

The NSA has as many as 40,000 employees. According to one intelligence official, the NSA is restricting its research to a much smaller group of individuals with access to sensitive documents. Investigators are looking for discrepancies between the real world actions of an NSA employee and the online activities linked to that person’s computer user profile. For example, if an employee was on vacation while the on-line version of the employee was downloading a classified document, it might indicate that someone assumed the employee’s identity.

The NSA has already identified several instances where Snowden borrowed someone else’s user profile to access documents, said the official.

Keep reading on investigations >>

Fidel se hace el chivo con tontera en el caso Snowden

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en una  'reflexion'  que publica el granma hoy, el coma-andante se hace el chivo con tontera incriminando a un "alguien" que no es su "obligacion" revelar -como si fuera tan considerado con los subditos-, que supuestamente hablo sobre el caso snowden a nombre de cuba, cuando queda claro que cuba-revolucion-patria solo puede ser representada por el:

"Ignoro si alguien en algún lugar le dijo algo o no a Snowden, porque esa no es mi tarea. Leo lo que puedo sobre noticias, opiniones y libros que se publican en el mundo. Admiro lo valiente y justo de las declaraciones de Snowden, con lo que a mi juicio prestó un servicio al mundo al revelar la política repugnantemente deshonesta del poderoso imperio que miente y engaña al mundo. Con lo que no estaría de acuerdo es que alguien, cualesquiera que fuesen sus méritos, pueda hablar en nombre de Cuba." [negritas y cursivas-lg]

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es que ese es un tema de fidel y nadie ni siguiera raul puede tomar una decision sin consultarselo. no importa el mensajero que pudo ser cualquiera del minrex, de la dgi, de la embajada en moscu, del fbi o hasta un ruso. el asunto es quien toma en cuba decisiones del tipo de "destino manifiesto".

gente en la'bana se explican los recientes desaciertos del castrado 2.0 por el hecho que la bestia esta conspirando contra el.

yo me inclino a creer que es una pala del fifo para poner a salvo su imagen. porque informado tiene que haber estado solo con que alguien le leyera los titulares y no reacciono, como era comun con ese tipo de acontecimientos en tiempos del guapo en jefe, pues era una "medalla" antimperialista que se ponia frente a todos los verracos de este mundo sin mas costos que el pasaje del il96; porque los yumas iba a hacer lo mismo que con los hongkoneses y luego los rusos, tragarse el asunto.

por ello donde veo el 'point' es por que no se lo llevaron inmediatamente para cuba? es que snowden no tiene ni valor de uso ni de cambio para la actual etapa de la geopolitica cubana. snowden [mas que manning que se choteo] es un simbolo para los leftists, snobistas, agitadores callejeros, conspiradores trasnochados, anarquistas y cuanto verraco anda por ahi sin ocupacion conocida o dirigiendo fundaciones; luego no es un asset en cualquier negociacion con los unicos que verdaderamente les interesan negociarlo todo [ya probaron con todo el mundo y aunque brasil va quedando como el verraco seguidor de venezuela ya logro que los medicos los pague la ops y no  el banquito de lula y dilma], como si lo son gross y mariel. entonces es mejor hacerse el desinformado que manana tener que enviar de regreso al snowden a cambio de algun favorcillo a algun legislador o mando del fbi que generaria la repulsa unanime de los idiotas de este mundo y el deterioro de la imagen del inclaudicable en jefe.

How Snowden did it

investigations.nbcnews

www.newyorker.com

By Richard Esposito and Matthew Cole
NBC News

When Edward Snowden stole the crown jewels of the National Security Agency, he didn’t need to use any sophisticated devices or software or go around any computer firewall.

All he needed, said multiple intelligence community sources, was a few thumb drives and the willingness to exploit a gaping hole in an antiquated security system to rummage at will through the NSA’s servers and take 20,000 documents without leaving a trace.

“It’s 2013 and the NSA is stuck in 2003 technology,” said an intelligence official.

Jason Healey, a former cyber-security official in the Bush Administration, said the Defense Department and the NSA have “frittered away years” trying to catch up to the security technology and practices used in private industry.  “The DoD and especially NSA are known for awesome cyber security, but this seems somewhat misplaced,” said Healey, now a cyber expert at the Atlantic Council. “They are great at some sophisticated tasks but oddly bad at many of the simplest.”

As a Honolulu-based employee of Booz Allen Hamilton doing contract work for the NSA, Snowden had access to the NSA servers via "thin client" computer. The outdated set-up meant that he had direct access to the NSA servers at headquarters in Ft. Meade, Md., 5,000 miles away.

In a “thin client” system, each remote computer is essentially a glorified monitor, with most of the computing power in the central server. The individual computers tend to be assigned to specific individuals, and access for most users can be limited to specific types of files based on a user profile.

But Snowden was not most users. A typical NSA worker has a “top secret” security clearance, which gives access to most, but not all, classified information. Snowden also had the enhanced privileges of a “system administrator.” The NSA, which has as many as 40,000 employees, has 1,000 system administrators, most of them contractors.

As a system administrator, Snowden was allowed to look at any file he wanted, and his actions were largely unaudited. “At certain levels, you are the audit,” said an intelligence official.

He was also able to access NSAnet, the agency’s intranet, without leaving any signature, said a person briefed on the postmortem of Snowden’s theft. He was essentially a “ghost user,” said the source, making it difficult to trace when he signed on or what files he accessed.

If he wanted, he would even have been able to pose as any other user with access to NSAnet, said the source.

The “thin client” system and system administrator job description also provided Snowden with a possible cover for using thumb drives.

The system is intentionally closed off from the outside world, and most users are not allowed to remove information from the server and copy it onto any kind of storage device. This physical isolation – which creates a so-called “air gap" between the NSA intranet and the public internet -- is supposed to ensure that classified information is not taken off premises.

But a system administrator has the right to copy, to take information from one computer and move it to another. If his supervisor had caught him downloading files, Snowden could, for example, have claimed he was using a thumb drive to move information to correct a corrupted user profile.

“He was an authorized air gap,” said an intelligence official.

Finally, Snowden’s physical location worked to his advantage. In a contractor’s office 5,000 miles and six time zones from headquarters, he was free from prying eyes. Much of his workday occurred after the masses at Ft. Meade had already gone home for dinner. Had he been in Maryland, someone who couldn’t audit his activities electronically still might have noticed his use of thumb drives.

It’s not yet certain when Snowden began exploiting the gaps in NSA security. Snowden worked for Booz Allen Hamilton for less than three months, and says he took the job in order to have access to documents. But he may have begun taking documents many months before that, while working with the NSA via a different firm. According to Reuters, U.S. officials said he downloaded documents in April 2012, while working for Dell.

Snowden is thought to have made his initial attempt to offer documents to the media in late 2012, while at Dell.  According to published accounts, he tried to contact Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald in December and started talking to filmmaker Laura Poitras in January.

He began working for Booz Allen in March. In May, he told his supervisor he needed to take time off to deal with a health issue, and then flew to Hong Kong, where he met with Poitras and Greenwald, on May 20. He later told the Guardian that he was downloading documents on his last day at work. The revelations based on his documents started appearing in the Guardian and the Washington Post within weeks.

Snowden is currently living in Russia, where he’s been granted temporary asylum. The U.S. government has charged him with theft and violations of the Espionage Act.

U.S. intelligence officials said recently that they plan to significantly reduce the number of individuals with system administrator privileges.

“U.S. intelligence has invited so many people into the secret realm,” said an intelligence official. “There are potentially tons of Edward Snowdens. But most people aren’t willing to vacuum everything up and break the law.”

The NSA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Richard Esposito is the Senior Executive Producer for Investigations at NBC News. Matthew Cole is an investigative reporter at NBC News. He can be reached at matthew.cole@nbcuni.com.