The NSA Leaks

[Park Life 70]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/10/edward-snowden-china-hong-kong

[trophyshy 6434]

He's not a completely selfish cunt, which is what TPTB are mostly relying on tbh.

[Happy Face 29]

I don't think he expects to stop monitoring going on, or to stop governments having secrets.

 

In my view...from what he says in the interview, he wants to protect the fourth amendment.

 

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue,

but upon probable cause,

supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

 

Like "the right to bear arms", times have changed since this was written. There is a question of scalability. The constitution protected an American's right to own a musket back in those days ...does it then apply to better weapons for killing? A revolver, a semi automatic, a fully automatic, a rocket launcher, cluster bombs...nukes? Lawmakers make that decision in the open, and the public continue to have a vibrant debate.

 

The right to privacy has no such clear definitions of what remains legal or not. We have scaled up from personal papers in our office, to electronic data held on the servers of companies around the globe without any discussion. The government have seized carte blanche and will not allow debate to happen on the grounds of national security, which is preposterous. It may well be, that when all is said and done, people prefer security over liberty...

 

In April..

 

Only 20 percent of people said they believed the government had gone too far in restricting civil liberties in the fight against terrorism, while 26 percent said it had not gone far enough and 49 percent said the balance was about right. In 2011, the share of those worried about losing civil liberties (25 percent) was larger than that favoring more intrusive government approach (17 percent).

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/01/us/poll-finds-strong-acceptance-for-public-surveillance.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

 

So, the views of Holden are some way from the outrage of the majority. The people being polled didn't know how far surveillance had gone though. Holden does. Those numbers might change if people are properly informed....and they are better informed today than they were last week.

[Happy Face 29]

Yves-Alexandre de Montjoye from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Vincent Blondel from the Université Catholique de Louvain (UCL) in Belgium and colleagues analysed 1.5 million anonymised call records from a Western cell carrier. They showed that it takes just four calls or text messages, each made at a different time and place, to distinguish one person's movements from everyone else's

 

in a dataset where the location of an individual is specified hourly, and with a spatial resolution equal to that given by the carrier's antennas, four spatio-temporal points are enough to uniquely identify 95% of the individuals. We coarsen the data spatially and temporally to find a formula for the uniqueness of human mobility traces given their resolution and the available outside information. This formula shows that the uniqueness of mobility traces decays approximately as the 1/10 power of their resolution. Hence, even coarse datasets provide little anonymity. These findings represent fundamental constraints to an individual's privacy and have important implications for the design of frameworks and institutions dedicated to protect the privacy of individuals.

 

A paper due to be presented at the International Symposium on Technology and Society in Toronto at the end of June shows that 99 per cent of internet traffic passing through the US goes through one of just 18 US cities. The paper notes that this shows it is completely feasible for the NSA to be monitoring the majority of US internet traffic with just a handful of warrantless listening posts. These would use ‘splitters' that split the beam of light in fibre-optic cables to siphon off information. "It is powerful confirmation that it is technically feasible for the NSA to install splitters in relatively few strategic internet choke points from where it could intercept a very large proportion of internet traffic," it says.

 

Very interesting read in New Scientist.

 

http://www.newscient...ple.html?page=1

[Happy Face 29]

It's a bit ironic with his views/what he's revealed that he's now holed up in China.

 

He answers that contradiction himself...

 

"I think it is really tragic that an American has to move to a place that has a reputation for less freedom. Still, Hong Kong has a reputation for freedom in spite of the People's Republic of China. It has a strong tradition of free speech."

[Dr Gloom 19822]

this is such an amazing coup by the guardian. the whistleblower speaks:

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/09/edward-snowden-nsa-whistleblower-surveillance

[Happy Face 29]

 

 

http://obamaischeckingyouremail.tumblr.com/

 

[trophyshy 6434]

[Happy Face 29]

Simon Waldman ‏@simonmwaldman 2m

@David_Cameron insists that UK's intelligence services operate "within the law".

 

"The law is actually quite clear. If the British intelligence agencies are seeking to know the content of emails about people living in the UK then they actually have to get lawful authority. Normally that means ministerial authority. That applies equally whether they are going to do the intercept themselves or whether they are going to ask somebody else to do it on their behalf."

Malcolm Rifkind in The Guardian

 

The Leaked documents suggested that GCHQ had generated 197 intelligence reports from the NSA-run Prism last year. The system would appear to allow GCHQ to bypass formal legal processes to access personal material, such as emails and photographs, from the world's biggest internet companies.

The Guardian

 

These 3 seperate statements leave 3 options...

 

1. Ministers approved the use of PRISM, to keep intelligence service within the law...but didn't inform the public as to the level of privacy erosion.

2. The detailed leaks that have not been denied by anyone in power at any point, got that bit about the UK wrong.

3. Cameron is lying

[trophyshy 6434]

Simon Waldman ‏@simonmwaldman 2m

@David_Cameron insists that UK's intelligence services operate "within the law".

 

"The law is actually quite clear. If the British intelligence agencies are seeking to know the content of emails about people living in the UK then they actually have to get lawful authority. Normally that means ministerial authority. That applies equally whether they are going to do the intercept themselves or whether they are going to ask somebody else to do it on their behalf."

Malcolm Rifkind in The Guardian

 

The Leaked documents suggested that GCHQ had generated 197 intelligence reports from the NSA-run Prism last year. The system would appear to allow GCHQ to bypass formal legal processes to access personal material, such as emails and photographs, from the world's biggest internet companies.

The Guardian

 

These 3 seperate statements leave 3 options...

 

1. Ministers approved the use of PRISM, to keep intelligence service within the law...but didn't inform the public as to the level of privacy erosion.

2. The detailed leaks that have not been denied by anyone in power at any point, got that bit about the UK wrong.

3. Cameron is lying

[The Fish 8989]

[Kid Dynamite 5906]

this is such an amazing coup by the guardian. the whistleblower speaks:

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/09/edward-snowden-nsa-whistleblower-surveillance

 

The last 20 posts have been discussing that article

[Dr Gloom 19822]

The last 20 posts have been discussing that article

 

i was posting the link to the video. didn't see it was already up till too late.

[Happy Face 29]

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/3036789/ns/msnbc-morning_joe/vp/52154665#52154665

 

Greenwald gets angry at a dumb blonde

 

[Happy Face 29]

Not one word from Hague on the US accessing the private data of UK citizens.

[Park Life 70]

http://www.nbcnews.c...154665#52154665

 

Greenwald gets angry at a dumb blonde

 

 

You're wrong there...

 

"A native of New York City, Brzezinski is the daughter of Foreign Policy Expert and Former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski."

 

He is Obama's handler.

Edited June 10, 2013 by Park Life

[trophyshy 6434]

Not one word from Hague on the US accessing the private data of UK citizens.

 

What an odious, beer swilling turd he is. Do you think he talks like that to his missus?

[SloopJohn 0]

You're wrong there...

 

"A native of New York City, Brzezinski is the daughter of Foreign Policy Expert and Former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski."

 

He is Obama's handler.

 

classic

[Meenzer 14042]

[Happy Face 29]

 

Whoever pointed me at Dan Carlin (think it was on here), many thanks.

 

This weeks 90 minute show on how historic this is giving me shivers again...

 

http://ec.libsyn.com/p/f/9/0/f9005b1565c00713/cswdcc55.mp3?d13a76d516d9dec20c3d276ce028ed5089ab1ce3dae902ea1d01cf873ed5cb5ad09c&c_id=5761094

[Happy Face 29]

Shortly after Salon’s biographical sketch on Laura Poitras went live, the award-winning documentary filmmaker agreed to a phone interview, her first since she helped reveal the scope of the National Security Agency’s digital surveillance. “I feel a certain need to be cautious about not wanting to do the work for the government,” she told Salon, but agreed to clarify some parts of her role in the story.

 

Poitras is still in Hong Kong, where she is filming the story behind the story — including her co-author on the Guardian story and former Salon columnist Glenn Greenwald — for her forthcoming documentary on whistle-blowers and leaks. In a wide-ranging interview, she explained how she first made contact with Snowden, her reaction to the possible future investigation into his leaks, and why Snowden didn’t go to the New York Times. What follows is a lightly edited transcript.

 

So how did this all begin?

I was originally contacted in January, anonymously.

 

By Edward Snowden?

Well, I didn’t know who it was.

 

What was the format?

Via email. It said, I want to get your encryption key and let’s get on a secure channel.

 

And he didn’t say what it was about?

He just said — that was the first, and the second was, I have some information in the intelligence community, and it won’t be a waste of your time.

 

Do you get a lot of those kinds of requests?

No, I don’t.

 

Did you immediately know what was the best, most secure protocol to go about it?

I actually did. I have a lot of experience because I’ve been working with — as you note in your thing, I’ve done filming with WikiLeaks, I know Jacob Appelbaum. I already had encryption keys but what he was asking for was beyond what I was using in terms of security and anonymity.

 

How did it proceed from there?

So that’s where I’m not going into a lot of details, but sort of ongoing correspondence. I didn’t know, I didn’t have any biographical details or where he worked, had no idea. He made claims and said he had documentation. At that point it was all completely theoretical, but I had a feeling it was legit.

 

Why do you think he contacted you? Were you the first person he contacted?

I can’t speak for him. Glenn and I just touched base about, what was your story, because we connected later in the spring. He, I think, got an email in February. But I didn’t know he’d gotten an email.

 

He told me he’d contacted me because my border harassment meant that I’d been a person who had been selected. To be selected –and he went through a whole litany of things — means that everything you do, every friend you have, every purchase you make, every street you cross means you’re being watched. “You probably don’t like how this system works, I think you can tell the story.” … Of course I was suspicious, I worried that it was entrapment, it’s crazy, all the normal responses you have to someone reaching out making, claims. He said he’d seen a piece that I’d done on Bill Binney in the Times.

 

I can say from conversations I had with him after that, I think he had a suspicion of mainstream media. And particularly what happened with the New York Times and the warrantless wiretapping story, which as we know was shelved for a year. So he expressed that to me but I think also in his choices of who he contacted. I didn’t know he was reaching out to Glenn at that point.

 

And you and Glenn were already colleagues, right, you sit on a board together?

At that point the foundation had just opened. So we knew each other and we were colleagues and friends.

 

How did it get to the point where you knew it was going to be a story, and how did you decide where it was going to be published?

Those are the details I’m not going to go into. What I can say is that once I had a few pieces of correspondence, I said, let me ask a couple of people about this, people who have experience, and I sat down with a couple of people, one of whom was Bart Gellman … and he said, it looks like this person could be legit. And that was probably February.

 

These disputes that have been played out on the internet about who got in touch with whom and who needed assurances –

 

In a situation like this, this is a confidential source and has been until very, very recently, actually has been a person whose identity I did not know. To actually go on the record and talk about — it seems to be a violation of a lot of relationships with someone who’s trusted you. There’s partly that, so I’ve been hesitant. I’ve asked, you know, like, Bart, don’t go try and tell my story. I’ll tell my story, you know, about my reporting. I don’t need reporters reporting on my reporting. So maybe that stuff contributed to different timelines. But that seems now — I’m not quite sure, what makes the most sense. Because I don’t want to tell the whole story now, I don’t think it’s the right time. And I want to tell it in my own words. I’m a storyteller. I’ll tell it when I’m ready to tell it, in detail.

 

But it makes sense to go on the record to explain why I was attached to both of those stories.

 

So you ended up getting in touch with Bart and Glenn because you wanted their help to vet the claims in documents?

There weren’t documents yet … I wanted to know if this correspondent — it was possible something else would be entrapment or just crazy, that’s always an option. I had an instinct that it was legit. I wanted to talk to people who knew.

 

So then they said, my paper would be happy to publish it?

No, it was just colleagues saying, this was happening, what do you think. There was nothing to — it was just somebody wanting to start a conversation and claiming to have information … There was no material at that point.

 

So how did it then become two separate stories in the Washington Post and the Guardian?

The source also has a relationship with Glenn. Which I can’t speak to.

 

I know that Glenn said he had more stories to come. Do you have more footage you’re planning on using in your documentary?

Of course. I’m here working.

 

Are you still in touch with him?

I’m not going to comment on that.

 

Do you know where he is?

Not going to comment.

 

Are you going to be working on more stories in print before your documentary comes out?

I really can’t predict.

 

Are you going to be sticking around Hong Kong for awhile or do you think you’ll come to the U.S.?

I haven’t decided. I’m trying to figure that out right now. But I’m actually based right now outside the U.S.

 

Are you worried about retaliation in any investigation that goes forward?

You know what? I’m not. I’ve been harassed for a long time, I wouldn’t be surprised if that continues. Being here and seeing the kind of — actually, Glenn was really inspiring. Really incredible courage in journalism and just saying, we need to talk to him about these things. It’s not OK that we have a secret court that has secret interpretations of secret laws; what kind of democracy is that? I felt like, this is a fight worth having. If there’s fallout, if there’s blowback, I would absolutely do it again, because I think this information should be public. Whatever part I had in helping to do that I think is a service.

People take risks. And I’m not the one who’s taking the most in this case.

 

And you feel like the person who is taking the most risk — meaning Snowden — is aware of all the possible ramifications of it?

You can see it in the video, right? I think he is. I think he wanted to reveal his identity because he didn’t want to create a situation where he was anonymous and everyone would have been investigated. In these investigation cases, there are repercussions for many, many people. I think he wanted to take responsibility.

 

Did he always plan to reveal his identity?

I don’t know. At some point I became aware of that but I don’t know what his intention was.

 

It’s this complicated situation because we have a source who decided to reveal himself. I still feel like I have journalistic obligations to the source even though they’ve made that choice … There’s something that Glenn said that I actually want to contradict. He said we began “working with” him. There was no working with. We were contacted. It was totally cold contact.

 

Since he contacted you before he started working at Booz Allen, the implication people were drawing was that he went to Booz Allen with the express intention of leaking this.

That’s completely absurd. I had no dialogue about what the information was — there were claims, that’s all I received.

 

So the implication that you sent him into Booz Allen to spy was incorrect.

Are you kidding? I didn’t know where he worked, I didn’t know he was NSA, I didn’t know how — nothing. There was no like, Oh do you think you …, no nudging. It’s like the crazy correlations that the NSA does. There’s no connection here. We were contacted, we didn’t know what he was up to, and at some point he came forward with documents.

 

http://www.salon.com/2013/06/10/qa_with_laura_poitras_the_woman_behind_the_nsa_scoops/

[Happy Face 29]

 

They're onto us!!!

 

[Happy Face 29]

 

 

His old xbox and his little socks

[Happy Face 29]

Jeff Merkley, supported by 8 senators (Dem & Rep), is proposing a bill to declassify govt interpretations of surveillance law.

-Spencer Ackerman

 

Co-author of the leaked stories this week.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/11/us-senators-government-secret-court-surveillance

[Happy Face 29]

Clapper can't even claim he was caught unaware, he was given a days notice of the question and a chance to change his answer later...

 

Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) issued the following statement regarding statements made by the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper about collection on Americans. Wyden is a senior member of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

 

“One of the most important responsibilities a Senator has is oversight of the intelligence community. This job cannot be done responsibly if Senators aren’t getting straight answers to direct questions. When NSA Director Alexander failed to clarify previous public statements about domestic surveillance, it was necessary to put the question to the Director of National Intelligence. So that he would be prepared to answer, I sent the question to Director Clapper’s office a day in advance. After the hearing was over my staff and I gave his office a chance to amend his answer. Now public hearings are needed to address the recent disclosures and the American people have the right to expect straight answers from the intelligence leadership to the questions asked by their representatives.”

 

http://www.wyden.senate.gov/news/press-releases/wyden-statement-responding-to-director-clappers-statements-about-collection-on-americans

 

They're above the law of course so his criminal act won't see him charged, but I wonder if we'll see a resignation.