NSA Response to XKEYSCORE allegations
nsa.gov
nsa.gov
Bruce Schneier: "The agency has been playing all sorts of games with names, dividing their efforts up and using many different code names in an attempt to disguise what they’re doing. It allows them to deny that a specific program is doing something, while conveniently omitting the fact that another program is doing the thing and the two programs are talking to each other."
http://blog.ted.com/2013/07/17/security-experts-on-the-nsas-...
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/07/more_nsa_coden...
"One feature is the system's ability to limit what an analyst can do with a tool, based on the source of the collection and each analyst's defined responsibilities. Not every analyst can perform every function, and no analyst can operate freely."
I seem to remember almost those exact words coming from the first Snowden interview:
"Any analyst at any time can target anyone, any selector, anywhere. Where those communications will be picked up depends on the range of the sensor networks and the authorities that analyst is empowered with. Not all analysts have the ability to target everything. But I sitting at my desk certainly had the authorities to wiretap anyone from you or your accountant to a Federal judge to even the President if I had a personal e-mail."
Access to that data is severely restricted and audited according to this document.
How many times are you willing to allow someone, or some agency, to repeatedly lie to you, before you decide to become skeptical?
I guess some of us can never get past that point. Remember the WMD's? No, I guess not.
So it turns out there weren't, and going in was a big mistake. Great, lets all viciously attack (I'm not saying you did this, but definitely many others with your same opinion have) the government for making a mistake.
And now we wonder why they try to lie and completely cover-up/distort reality. Because we as voting citizens are totally unwilling to forgive our elected officials for making mistakes.
Obviously that mistake was massive, tragic, and deadly. But it still was, I believe a, mistake. Maybe there's something to this issue that I don't know yet, but to me "according to the government" does not immediately correspond to "the government's blatant double-speaking lie".
Information about this came out not only through organizations like the FAS (you may not have read about this in the NYTimes, but don't blame the opponents of the war for this), public statements by diplomats and civil servants (i.e. David Miller), the pressure to recall UN investigators (who were skeptical of the existence of such weapons), and evidence of deliberate fraud in pushing for war as in the yellowcake uranium setup, Colin Powell's presentation to the United Nations on "mobile weapons factories", or Dick Cheney's efforts to take control of intelligence work when the results were skeptical of his claims that WMD existed.
The only actual evidence in favor of the hypothesis that Iraq might have WMD was that the country had not accounted to the UN investigators for the disposal of some dual-use chemicals the United States had sold them during the Iran-Iraq war. They claimed these materials were already destroyed and so could not document their destruction, which seems - in retrospect - to have been the case. Either way, if I remember correctly, these materials would have been almost if not totally unusable given their age.
They did not just say they had reason to think there were, they said they were there:
Dick Cheney, Speech to VFW National Convention (August 26, 2002): "Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction."
Ari Fleischer, Press Briefing (January 9, 2003): "We know for a fact that there are weapons there."
Gen. Tommy Franks, Press Conference (March 22, 2003): "There is no doubt that the regime of Saddam Hussein possesses weapons of mass destruction. And . . . as this operation continues, those weapons will be identified, found, along with the people who have produced them and who guard them."
Donald Rumsfeld, ABC Interview (March 30, 2003): "We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat."
Perhaps some parts of the NSA's programs will eventually be forbidden by the courts, but even then the vast majority of Americans won't care one way or the other. They want cat videos. They don't care if the NSA is monitoring their facebook chats. They think they're innocent of anything and everything. They don't understand the potential consequences, under this government or under some future government that gets to enforce even more laws even more aggressively.
I never considered Snowden to be a "traitor," I consider him to have made a great sacrifice in order to bring this situation to light, especially since the past revelations flew right under the radar, so to speak, regarding the AT&T revelations years ago.
Sure I like cat videos, and other inane content, but I also am abhorred by dragnet surveillance.
I completely understand the possible consequences of such surveillance, and am dismayed when people cite "Godwin's Law" whenever I draw parallels between the current spy atrocities and those of the Stasi.
I fully realize that our next president could have even fewer reservations than Obama about furthering this draconian system as well as ramping up the encroaching police state we see here today.
Thus I refuse to cease talking about this issue, as I want people to be aware of just how slippery this slope actually is.
Reading this about all the protections, now that we know at least some of what Snowden did, we're talking high comedy.
While all those internal checks, balances, controls, ethics, assurances, etc. sound good, they are all too easily just self serving BS.
We need to keep our eyes on the point, the main point, the crucial point which is: If they grab data on US citizens without a proper warrant, then lots of US citizens will conclude that the NSA is in violation of the Fourth Amendment, with all the NSA assurances irrelevant. Stop. Period. Guilty. Done.
I as one US citizen greatly prefer the Fourth Amendment to any contributions to my safety that might be provided by the NSA and however proper the NSA makes their activities sound. Did I mention I like the Fourth Amendment?
If you can lie to congress, and suffer no meaningful consequences, how can any reasonable person have any meaningful level of confidence in the accuracy of any statement that you have ever made or will ever make?
The use of the word "lawful" is slick and misleading. They "own" a rubber stamp court that never says no and re-interprets laws to their liking.
So, virtually whatever they want to do is "lawful" by definition.
Which means, of course, that analysts can operate outside of their ethical and legal obligations. And to me, that is the foundation of the issue. Who pays what analyst in DC to dig up dirt?
And to the statement that access is audited... how many analysts were fired for overstepping their ethical obligations? Is that information collected or released?
i somehow think that its answerability to the President is overrated. Presidents come and go, the machine continues humming :)
(Some of the screenshots suggest that the legitimation for every search is entered into a free text field, making any kind of automated analysis extremely difficult. This already suggests that no such statistics are collected.)
Assuming that agencies will at least try to follow the law is rule of law 101. Passing new legislation concerning the audit procedure, for example, could solve a problem you mention.
I wish it were public. Apparently analysts do get caught and fired for mundane things like looking up ex-wives so apparently someone is checking. But that doesn't mean everything is being audited either.
This goes on word after word. The NSA statements are blatantly false. They can only even pretend it is true by twisting words so far they no longer resemble their actual meaning.
Allegations of widespread, unchecked analyst access to NSA collection data are simply not true. Access to XKEYSCORE, as well as all of NSA's analytic tools, is limited to only those personnel who require access for their assigned tasks. Those personnel must complete appropriate training prior to being granted such access -training which must be repeated on a regular basis.
If what the professional liar's agency says is true, how do they explain an admitted low level analyst, working for a non governmental 3rd party corporation, gaining access to the alleged trove of NSA secrets claimed by Snowden?
http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_images/slogan.jpg
"Four stars! Would trust again!"
It's a one line field. With an addition one line field for "Additional Justification".
This press release is actually expansive by comparison to their typical justifications.
[1] - https://s3.amazonaws.com/uploads.hipchat.com/17859/77014/djo...
Didn't Snowden specifically deny that this is true?
But the NSA is saying that all analysts don't have full powers; that doesn't mean that the permissions they do have are not still overly broad, or that programs like these don't need much more transparency.
You can't so much as send a nuclear ship to sea without their engineering department being audited (almost literally) up the ass to verify they won't break the reactor, so there's surely more that Congress and DoD can do to ensure proper oversight of the NSA.
On one hand, they tell us that they need to monitor everything to catch terrorists, and on the other hand, they don't seem to care that they can walk away once they're caught.
I find that really strange.
Anyone have an idea why they'd give a 5-year-old figure? One would hope that the figure as of 2013 should be more impressive?
It doesn't clearly imply that without the program they wouldn't have captured those terrorists.
It doesn't clearly imply that any reduction in scope of xkeyscore would have let some of those 300 terrorists escape capture.
All it means for sure is that data from xkeyscore is part of the picture they looked at of those 300 terrorists leading up to their captures.
I wonder how many bona fide terrorists the government captured from 2001-2008.
Those are excellent points, and I wish they were raised more often. I'd like to add one more: How many of those captured were terrorists only thanks to your own government setting them up for the task first? In other words, how much of this was the result of "manufactured terrorism", ála FBI? (ref: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/01/terror-factory-f... and the earlier article linked from the story.)
After all, the actors in those programs still needed to communicate. Judging by the two articles the subjects weren't particularly bright either, so they probably would not have known how to protect their communications. Thus they were bound to generate material that would be scooped up the NSA programs. The fact that the plots were not only known in advance, but planned by your own government officials simply ensured that they would know with perfect accuracy where to look and what to look for.
A naked figure of "300 terrorists captured" is therefore meaningless, just like you said. Without a futher breakdown, the figure just feels like marketing.
As an odd side note - this makes manufactured terrorism look a bit like astroturfing. A scary thought.
Reference 1st and 28th pages of: http://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2013/jul/31/nsa...
This is so completely meaningless of a statement it should be a crime to have it on a government server. They give a number without any background to support it. I want the fucking names of these terrorists. Every single one. And I want to know what happened, how they were pursued/captured/convicted/terminated.
If I wrote shit like this in my career, it would be my ass. But when the government does it, I'm just supposed to accept it?!
This is Orwellian.
eyeroll
Nope, not Saying Anything.
Gen Alexander says that we shouldn't worry about NSA collection because analysts have taken a pledge. Also, they took a class."