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NSA Whistleblowers Reveal Extent of Eavesdropping
Posted by
timothy
on Thu Oct 09, 2008 04:54 PM
from the revealing-the-obvious dept.
from the revealing-the-obvious dept.
ma11achy was one of several readers to write about claims made by two former military intercept operators who worked for the NSA that "Despite pledges by President George W. Bush and American intelligence officials to the contrary, hundreds of US citizens overseas have been eavesdropped on as they called friends and family back home." Ars Technica has a brief report as well, and reader net_shaman adds a link to Glenn Greenwald's opinion piece on the eavesdropping at Salon.
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Terrible reporting. A little perspective... (Score:2, Informative)
...and reporting that I can't help but wonder has some political motivations, given the timing of its release.
That's not the Terrorist Surveillance Program (TSP), and not related to foreign intelligence collection programs in that were in place in the United States. That's the NSA working in a foreign military operations theater, and is vastly different. These intercepts were happening in realtime and were focused on an area of military operations.
When working in the dynamic environment of an operations the
Re:Terrible reporting. A little perspective... (Score:5, Insightful)
When working in the dynamic environment of an operations theater, it's difficult to make distinctions about what traffic should be monitored and when. That is not to say that US Persons [wikipedia.org] should continue to be collected on after their status is known, even under these circumstances.
One wonders why Bush bothered to pledge that US citizens would never be spied on in the first place. It certainly sounds like something that's impossible to know until afterward. Did he intentionally lie to try to get us to forget about it, did he mean "intentionally," or did he just not realize how it worked?
Parent
Re:Terrible reporting. A little perspective... (Score:4, Interesting)
The latter is the most likely.
To expand on that, it's an oversimplification.
These intercept operators had no more power than they have ever had. The only new and controversial issues relating to NSA monitoring during the Bush administration have related to collection within the United States[1], and this has nothing to do with that.
Since the beginning of SIGINT and the beginning of the NSA, collectors have had effective and routine access to myriad conversations with endpoints in the United States, conversations where at least one end is a US Person, or both.
That happens all the time, and has always happened. Often, you'll hear things you're not looking for. Hell, most of what you hear isn't what you're looking for. But once you determine that a US Person is involved, you're not, however, supposed to record, store, or disseminate such information. Unfortunately, what we have here are people -- many mostly kids -- misbehaving, and sometimes misbehaving badly.
Anyone who is surprised by this or thinks it has anything to do with Bush has a serious lack of understanding about how Title 50 activities and SIGINT collection have worked for decades.
Again, to be clear: the "new" capabilities the President authorized dealt with NSA foreign intelligence collection within the United States. That doesn't mean one end of the conversation might not be a US Person. In fact, under the law, it can be...but then the information must be treated with care; e.g., identifying references to US Person redacted, and so on. What you can't do -- then or now -- is target US Persons without an individualized warrant. If traffic from US Persons is intercepted in the course of foreign SIGINT collection, it is NOT a violation of the law, and never has been, as long as it is handled properly.
So ABC is attempting to conflate Bush administration initiatives -- which don't even exist any longer (TSP) -- with NSA overseas operations, albeit with regard to US Persons. Unfortunately, the latter has nothing to do with Bush or any initiatives of the Bush administration. The intercept operators had no more or less power, save for technological improvements, than they've ever had.
And surprise, surprise: individuals with the power to listen to things sometimes listen to things they're not supposed to, and by virtue of these people having the necessary resources to actually do their jobs, there really isn't any easy way to prevent it.
From day one the handling of US Persons in the context of foreign intelligence is hammered into your head. But I guess sometimes immaturity and a cheap laugh at someone else's expense trumps common sense and the doing the right thing.
[1] NSA facilities for interception may often be physically in the United States, but the interception is still occurring outside the United States
Parent
Re:Terrible reporting. A little perspective... (Score:5, Informative)
Two things:
1)When I was doing this 20 years ago, it was drilled and drilled and drilled that we were NOT to intercept Americans.
2)There was (and I'm sure there still is) a thing called "tip off"; if you came across a conversation not targeted you were supposed to "tip off" to the appropriate group/individual and roll on, staying on your assigned target. You never knew when the trick chief was listening and we did not get caught staying on something we weren't assigned.
Is this generation not so strenuously warned against intercepting Americans?
What happened to targeted topics for intercept and 'tip off'? Is it anything and everything now?
I'm thinking things have changed and not for the better.
Parent
Re:Terrible reporting. A little perspective... (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Terrible reporting. A little perspective... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
One does not confirm truthiness. One feels it in ones belly.
Thanks for the insight. It's terrifying. (Score:5, Insightful)
Hi Dave,
Thanks for the insight.
"And surprise, surprise: individuals with the power to listen to things sometimes listen to things they're not supposed to, ... there really isn't any easy way to prevent it. ... But I guess sometimes immaturity and a cheap laugh at someone else's expense trumps common sense and the doing the right thing."
My response and my honest question would be, what the hell ever happened to discipline and accountability? When I got an order, it was the Voice of God and woe be unto the man who dreamed of disobeying his CO.
There isn't an easy way to prevent people screwing around? Is that a joke? All I ever got was a growl that said "Don't screw around!" and we didn't dare, not if we valued our sorry asses.
You're literally arguing that there's no such thing as a chain of command any more, that the commanders have lost control of their men. In my day, admitting you couldn't keep your men under control was a wonderful way to lose your rank.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You really think that the worst thing we have to worry about from the unfettered power to listen to our communications is a few agents screwing around?
Do they just not teach history in school any more? Does nobody care about what it is that's made America a unique place? How easily frightened people will give up their liberty and privacy. It's really sad how so many of my fellow Americans will cower behind proto-fascism because they are scared.
Re:Thanks for the insight. It's terrifying. (Score:5, Interesting)
When I got an order, it was the Voice of God and woe be unto the man who dreamed of disobeying his CO.
Dave can go on and on (and on and on, geeze dude) about how some dweeb with a tap was doing naughty things, but he can't change the allegations. If the allegations are true, these were by no means "cheap laughs" by bottom-rung "individuals".
Parent
Re:Thanks for the insight. It's terrifying. (Score:4, Insightful)
You're literally arguing that there's no such thing as a chain of command any more, that the commanders have lost control of their men. In my day, admitting you couldn't keep your men under control was a wonderful way to lose your rank.
He's arguing no such thing.
TFA: Faulk told Ross: "when one of my co-workers went to a supervisor and said: 'but sir, there are personal calls,' the supervisor said: 'my orders were to transcribe everything'."
Him and other posters are using the "few bad apples" defense in the face of completely contrary information.
Replace "spying" with "torturing" and we can reuse all the Abu Ghraib press releases.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Yeah, I never really got the "It's just a few bad apples" argument either, since the saying from Poor Richard's Almanac goes "One bad apple spoils the bunch."
I'd have to disagree with that.
There are cases of "a few bad apples" that don't spoil the whole bunch.
But, with those, you don't end up with situations that become front page scandals.
A few government/military individuals rarely have the authority or ability to create that kind of mess
Bare minimum, you are looking at lax oversight [google.com]
In the middle is permissive environment [google.com]
And the worst case scenario is illegal orders [google.com]
Re:Terrible reporting. A little perspective... (Score:5, Insightful)
From day one the handling of US Persons in the context of foreign intelligence is hammered into your head. But I guess sometimes immaturity and a cheap laugh at someone else's expense trumps common sense and the doing the right thing.
It's not the cheap laugh of some little monitoring guy (or gal) that's dangerous: let'em laugh at our expenses, if only as a little compensation for the incredibly boring work they've signed up to and are forced to do day in day out.
The problem isn't the little guy in the system, it's the whole surveillance mind set, as dreamed up by increasingly authoritarian and corrupt governments. In most dictatorships, governments use to monitor the populace, and (and this is where it really gets nasty), they also routinely archive all kinds of misbehavior they gather, that they wouldn't have been looking for in the first place.
E.g.: you talk with your buddy on the phone about how you managed to evade some kind of tax, or you are talking about your extra-marital affairs or whatever. All this is pretty harmless in itself, but it won't be any longer if this conversation gets monitored, recorded and archived. As long as you remain unpolitical, government wouldn't care, but suppose that, a few years down the road, you decide to politically oppose the government in some point. As soon as you gather enough followers, government officials WILL start to dig into the big archives of the surveillance apparatus for material that would shatter your credibility or to start a blackmail. Were you talking about tax-honesty? Good bye credibility. Are you still loving your wife? Good bye marriage, hello divorce.
That's why spying on the whole population as a pro-active measure is evil.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Honestly, never.
Do you work helpdesk? Are you tier 1 tech support for AOL? Have you NEVER looked through a log file before?
Honestly, if you haven't seen any of this stuff, and you work in IT, then you probably aren't doing your job.
Re:Terrible reporting. A little perspective... (Score:5, Informative)
Look at the timing: huge 05:56PM post for the story opened at 05:54PM
The user "daveschroeder" is a Slashdot subscriber... that means he is able to see stories and start writing his posts 20 minutes before the rest of us, and when the story appears on the main page he can post right away. That's how we often end up with walls of text as the first comments.
I can't believe you're serious, and somebody ended up modding you up somehow. Weird and bad things happen in the world, but it's not quite as tin-foily as you seem to think it is.
Parent
Re:Terrible reporting. A little perspective... (Score:4, Insightful)
I wouldn't call it terrible reporting. It says right on the first page of the ABC article who was being eavesdropped on, specifically American soldiers, reporters and diplomatic personnel in Baghdad's "Green Zone."
However, I think more should be made of the fact that reporters were on the eavesdrop list. Journalists had to give up a lot of freedom of the press to be "embedded" in Iraq, the fact they were also eavesdropped on shows how tightly the government was trying to control the media message.
It's no wonder there's been less critical, fact-based reporting (not just opinions) of the war in Iraq than Gulf War I.
Parent
Re:Terrible reporting. A little perspective... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think most would agree that surveillance probably began under the conditions you describe.
1. The crux of the problem is the relentless acquisition of power and influence that creeps into what could, in principal, be a good program. Maybe the power-mongering doesn't happen at first, but history has repeatedly shown stuff like this is turned against citizens. There is no reason to believe there would be an exception here.
2. The Office of the President currently operates under the notion that their powers shall be unconstrained by any other branch of government, tradition and legal history be damned.
Mix #1 and #2 together and publish it on Slashdot and the conspiracy minded come flying out to condemn it all.
The rest of the political/legal world generally agree that the Cheney administration views executive powers as unlimited. Therefore, they would probably agree that it's likely the office of the President would willfully sodomize any survielance(sp?)law with signing statements and executive orders.
Finally, I think it's the case that most Americans know there is "something wrong" with the way the Executive branch has been operating. Media coverage like this is a kind of indirect measurement.
Parent
What happened to my country? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it's high time we did something. But by something, I don't mean voting for somebody else, that doesn't amount to much. I mean bringing officials, elected and appointed, up in front of tribunals, and making them explain why they have consistently voted to turn this country into a surveillance state to a degree comparable to Communist Russia, or the very same current China that these very same elected officials reprimanded Google and Yahoo for complying with. This is ridiculous. We don't have elected representation any more, we have elected oppression, and it's time we fought back. Really fought back, not just with votes but with riots, and criminal charges. We still, in theory, hang traitors in this country, so why the hell can't we hang the worst enemies our constitution has ever had? Our President, George W. Bush, has been making war on this country, on our constitution, and on our way of life for eight years. His appointed lackeys have been even worse. It's time it stopped.
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Re:What happened to my country? (Score:5, Insightful)
So are you a Second Amendment proponent? Remember, they didn't put that in there about hunting. It was about killing politicians. If everybody's armed, nobody can oppress.
Parent
Re:What happened to my country? (Score:5, Interesting)
Why is it whenever I see the terms for liberal used in a derogatory way the comments are always wrong? Just an observation...
Anyway, my point. 2nd amendment is:
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
That really doesn't sound like maintaining slavery to me.
Maybe I'm wrong, lets ask someone who knows a bit more on the subject then us shall we?
"A free people ought not only to be armed and disciplined but they should have sufficient arms and ammunition to maintain a status of independence from any who might attempt to abuse them, which would include their own government."
-- George Washington (who is a Grade A Badass) January 8, 1790, First State of the Union Address
I don't like guns at all, and would love to see them gone... however I dislike people who bend history to their own ends more.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
...Maybe I'm wrong, lets ask someone who knows a bit more on the subject then us shall we?
"A free people ought not only to be armed and disciplined but they should have sufficient arms and ammunition to maintain a status of independence from any who might attempt to abuse them, which would include their own government."
-- George Washington (who is a Grade A Badass) January 8, 1790, First State of the Union Address
------- While I agree that the 2nd Amendment is there to protect the people f
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I can understand your dislike of firearms, but whomever said "the pen is mightier than the sword" didn't have two in the chest and one in the head.
Two pens in the chest and a third in the head? Sounds fatal enough to me.
Re:Terrible reporting. A little perspective... (Score:5, Insightful)
Fundamentally the problem with your post(s), is that you are explaining that "It would never happen that way" in the face of two former NSA employees that are stating on the record that yeah, they were explicitly told to keep listening to Americans on phone calls completely outside purview that was explicitly promised by the administration.
So, maybe you're honest, maybe your not, maybe you do this for a living and you and your boss were doing it right.
But I am currently faced with believing two people I don't know who have only been vetted by ABC, or . . . believing an administration that has lied, threatened, and tried to be above the law on everything from weapons of mass destruction to failing to properly report a hunting accident.
I don't care if you believe the administration is honest, competent, or the exact opposite, but the fact is that I can't come up with a verifiably true statement in the history of the Bush Administration.
Only statements I have yet to see proven incorrect.
If the dice keep rolling snake eyes, perhaps it's *not* random chance.
Pug
Parent
Re:Terrible reporting. A little perspective... (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree with the core of your argument, that intelligence gathering in a theater of war is a totally different thing than on domestic soil. I have to disagree with a few other things, though.
Some fairly educated gentlemen seem to think it was illegal [nybooks.com]. So do I, for what it's worth. In addition, I can say that I think it's wrong. Using the "extraordinary" threat of terrorism as a justification is absurd, when you rationally appraise the magnitude of that threat, and the administration did everything possible to avoid going about getting those powers the right way (they decided not to go to congress specifically because they didn't think they'd get approval). When even Ashcroft, the guy who helped push through the USA PATRIOT Act, says you've gone too far, it raises alarm bells.
I'm not sure how much evidence there is for that statement. I guess, for one thing, it depends on what you mean by "that kind of activity". It also depends on who "we" is (the CIA, the military?) or what you consider condoning it. We do carry out extraordinary renditions to countries that practice various kinds of torture (I'm not sure how one can compare them to Abu Ghraib). Not to mention things like the incident in Afghanistan where, "[a] CIA case officer in charge of a secret prison just north of Kabul allegedly ordered guards to strip naked an uncooperative young Afghan detainee, chain him to the concrete floor and leave him there overnight without blankets" (after which he died of exposure).
Now, realistically, we the public have little way to get an accurate idea of how bad things are. It's reasonable to presume we hear about some of the cases where they screw up and go further than was intended, but we probably don't hear about all of those, and we probably hear about very few of the rest, where they go just as far as intended. Rendition makes it even harder to determine what sorts of things we may, ultimately, be responsible for. So I won't claim to know that Abu Ghraib was run of the mill, but I think it's foolish to assume without evidence that it was so exceptional or "just a few bad apples".
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
FTFA:
NSA awarded Adrienne Kinne a NSA Joint Service Achievement Medal in 2003 at the same time she says she was listening to hundreds of private conversations between Americans, including many from the International Red Cross and Doctors without Borders.
"We knew they were working for these aid organizations," Kinne told ABC News. "They were identified in our systems as 'belongs to the International Red Cross' and all these other organizations. And yet, instead of blocking these phone numbers we continued to collect on them," she told ABC News.
That wouldn't have helped. The NSA continued to listen in even after they realized it was the case. Common sense would dictate that while it might be impossible to never listen in on a US person's phone calls, you would not continually do it. Yet the NSA did.
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Common sense would dictate that while it might be impossible to never listen in on a US person's phone calls, you would not continually do it.
So what you're saying is that it's impossible for US Persons to break COMSEC protocols during pillow talk?
One word: Honeytrap.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeypot_(espionage)#Sex.2C_honeypots_and_recruitment [wikipedia.org]
Yet the NSA did.
Good for them.
Re:foreign military operations theater (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you serious? That's the new threshold for civil liberties? "Whether you can provide a damn good reason why eavesdropping prevents you from doing your work"??
Has the whole country gone fucking nuts?
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Re:foreign military operations theater (Score:4, Insightful)
I call bullshit, unless you provide a damn good reason why clandestine electronic eavesdropping on DWB prevents them from doing their work.
I'll give you three
1. Anyone paying attention knows that the US is not always the good guy overseas these days. Say for example they are trying to save some innocent civilians which the US is trying to kill, the NSA tapping their phone lines would compromise that.
2. What they do is stressful work, if they can't relax with some phone sex because they know they're being listened in on, they might be too stressed to do their good work.
3. Provide me with a damn good reason why the NSA needs to be eavesdropping on DWB or else fuck off, Nutria. ... I guess that last one wasn't really what you were asking for, in a literal sense anyway.
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Re: (Score:2)
Re:foreign military operations theater (Score:5, Insightful)
You should also be doing that if you're a Quaker, a member of any anti-war group, a civil rights worker, a Democratic candidate for public office, a journalist, a member of the Red Cross, Doctors without Borders, or the ACLU, and, of course, the Electronic Freedom Foundation.
You have to understand that you're just a threat to the American Way of Life (TM) and be willing to give up your privacy (unless of course you have Something to Hide(TM)).
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
wait, did I click AC
Re:Terrible reporting. A little perspective... (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, Senator Obama co-sponsored legislation to strengthen whistleblower protection. McCain? Wasn't there for the vote.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You're completely wrong.
A warrant is not required, and never has been required, for foreign intelligence collection. The same is true for Canada's Communications Security Establishment [cse-cst.gc.ca]. Sorry.
What's different is that when traffic from protected parties are intercepted (in the US, that would be a US Person [wikipedia.org]), special action must be taken depending on the circumstances. But a warrant is NOT required for foreign SIGINT, even if some of the parties to the communication may sometimes be US (or Canadian) citizens.
Well... (Score:5, Funny)
I'd comment, but the NSA is listening...
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
There's a reason we have a "Declaration of War." To make things like this legal in a time of War.
Ironically, ole Bushie would have had his way a lot more if he'd gone through the correct channels initially.
Re:Well... (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Wow (Score:4, Insightful)
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We learn from history that we learn nothing from history.
- George Bernard Shaw
SatPhones? (Score:5, Interesting)
I've only read the first page of the article but it mentions that the people being eavesdropped were talking on satelite phones from the Middle East. I was under the impression that as soon as you broadcaste something you could no longer claim it was private. Isn't this why it's legal to sell police and cell phone scanners? Is this different for satelite phones or am I completely off base here?
Re:SatPhones? (Score:4, Informative)
Isn't this why it's legal to sell police and cell phone scanners?
You'd better check those assumptions against your local, state, and federal laws before you post again.
Parent
cell phone scanners are not sold in the US (Score:3, Informative)
They used to be, but now scanners sold in the US have the analog cellular freqs blocked, even though there is no more analog cell coverage anyway.
It's really lame, actually.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
This is true, although in most cases the restriction put in place is superficial. You can unlock the frequencies by cutting a resistor that is well documented.
The More You Know(TM)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Police scanners are legal.* But it has been illegal for years to sell (or presumably build) a radio which can intercept cell phone signals.
Companies that sell scanners the US even had to modify their firmware to make it harder to unlock forbidden frequency bands. Originally, they'd make a simple firmware change, or a jumper change inside, but people who buy scanners are kind of nerdy and they figured out how to open up the receive range. The gov't forced them to make that harder to accomplish.
With phones be
Should be tagged with.... (Score:2)
...areyoureallysurprised or ...nosurprise or ...shocker (which is often used sarcasticly where I'm from) or something like that.
Well no shit (Score:4, Interesting)
That's why everytime we were talking on the damn AT&T phones and some dumbass gave a hint as to where he was or what he was doing, a huge fuckin red light went off and all the phones died.
They flat out told us we were being listened to. Just like they tell us everyday with little stickers on our phones on every military installation in the world that say that we're being watched, listened to, recorded, etc etc.
I'm not saying that it's not bullshit. Just saying this article's spun worse than a gyroscope.
Sounds bad but its probably worse (Score:3, Interesting)
What should he have said? (Score:3, Insightful)
As many have brought up, it is nearly impossible to say exactly what is going on minutely in a huge operation. So what should Bush have said? "We have no way of knowing whether or not we are spying on individuals."
Isn't this sort of statement more or less a statement of non-condoning of an activity? The same as if Bill Gates or Steve Jobs said "We will not pirate software" but then some of their employees DO pirate software, and they don't know about it. So when we find out, are Gates or Jobs the ones in trouble for saying it? Because obviously, they should know about every single thing their employees are doing.
Oh, wait, sorry, I shouldn't compare governments to people's organizations, because governments can be made perfect, as long as we give them more control...
I'm conservative, Bush wasn't very conservative, and I disagree with a lot of what he has done, but it is interesting that it seems the upcoming election features an "agent of change" that is really no different or even worse with the whole deception thing than people easily think about the ENTIRE Bush administration... and yet Obama and possibly McCain both support larger and more controlling government than Bush did or at least said he did, so I don't understand. Many are so upset at Bush that they are doing a pendulum vote for someone that wants government to be involved in pretty much everything, including your commute to work and what car (or at least, what that car's technology can be) you drive. But of course, he won't spy on anyone. He won't HAVE to. [[[ -5 Troll for "Conservative Viewpoints" :) hehe ]]]
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not a lie if all the best intelligence from around the world said it was true. A lie means intentional deception. If Pres. Bush was lying then so were the leaders of Britain, F
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The meat of the story, however is that (a) they're continuing to be monitored and recorded even after being found to be personal conversations between US citizens who aren't military, and (b) this isn't misbehaving field personnel but "my orders were to transcribe everything".
I was under the impression that (a) was where the whole illegal thing started rolling and (b) was where people should be noticing they're in a handbasket and asking where they're going.