Ex-NSA Official Indicted For Leaks To Newspaper 115
Hugh Pickens writes "The Baltimore Sun reports that in a rare legal action against a government employee accused of leaking secrets, a grand jury has indicted Thomas A. Drake, a former senior National Security Agency official, on charges of providing classified information to a newspaper reporter in hundreds of e-mail messages in 2006 and 2007. Federal law prohibits government employees from disclosing classified information which could be 'expected to cause damage to national security.' The indictment (PDF) does not name either the reporter or the newspaper that received the information, but the description applies to articles written by Siobhan Gorman, then a reporter for The Baltimore Sun, that examined in detail the failings of several major NSA programs, costing billions of dollars, that were plagued with technical flaws and cost overruns. Gorman's stories did not focus on the substance of the electronic intelligence information the agency gathers and analyzes but exposed management and programmatic troubles within the agency."
Adds reader metrometro: "Of note: the government says the alleged NSA mole uses Hushmail, which is all the endorsement I need for a security system." Perhaps Mr. Drake was unaware of Hushmail's past cooperation with the US government?
Burn him at the stake! (Score:3, Insightful)
Whistleblower (Score:1)
We have a whistle-blower law to protect the American taxpayer, but if it's deemed classified, all bets are off.
Great, just great! So, if I want to be a crooked government official, I just need to be able to classify it as "Secret" and "National Security" and I'm off to the Bahamas!
Re:Whistleblower (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah, that's right.
We have a whistle-blower law to protect the American taxpayer, but if it's deemed classified, all bets are off.
Great, just great! So, if I want to be a crooked government official, I just need to be able to classify it as "Secret" and "National Security" and I'm off to the Bahamas!
Yeah, that pretty much sums it up. One need look no further than United States v. Reynolds to see that classification will be abused.
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Except for the fact that not just any government official can classify something. This is a typical slashdot rant, and one that most people on slashdot don't understand.
Executive Order 12356:
Sec. 1.2 Classification Authority.
(a) Top Secret. The authority to classify information originally as
Top Secret may be exercised only by:
(1) the President; (2) agency heads and officials designated by the
President in the Federal Register; and (3) officials delegated this
authority pursuant to Section 1.2(d). (b) S
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Meh, "job security" clearances are just that... jobs for Americans that legally can't be outsourced. It keeps the middle-class Americans with degrees employed and content so they aren't off organizing revolutions for the lower classes or something. From what I've seen, the shroud of secrecy is more to hide all the advanced technology that we don't have rather than to protect details of the few things that actually work. Let the enemy assume we have bugs and eyes and ears everywhere like it's portrayed in
Look forward, not backward (Score:5, Insightful)
Check out Glenn Greenwald's [salon.com] post on this exact issue. He raises an extremely important point:
- Illegally wiretapping US citizens, and/or ordering illegal wiretapping of US citizens: No problem, we have to look forwards, not backwards.
- Exposing illegal and inefficient workings of the NSA: throw the book at 'em.
Something is very very rotten.
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He broke the letter of the law by passing classified information, and therefore should be sent to trial. In the spirit of the law all the nitty-gritty details of his mitigating situation needs to come out on open record.
An the process continued for any other persons demonstrated as having performing illegal acts. "It's not illegal when the president does it" is not a legal justification for Constitution violations, no matter if you like or dislike the last two president actively caught doing so.
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Yar! That LFNB (it sucks we need that acronym) article he wrote was sad and true. I wasn't expecting the world to transform into ponies and rainbows when I voted for Obama, but I sure as hell didn't expect this.
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Please... those words are so painful to me now.
The real problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The real problem (Score:5, Funny)
By making all kinds of crap classified that shouldn't be they clog the system and reduce the efficiency. It's impossible to run a security system when you flood it with tons of info that is only classified because it's embarrassing to the morons in management.
Au contraire! My friend.
Imagine being a spy trying to find some interesting piece of information. You spend a couple of days seducing the secretary, a week finding a geek to crack the codes, another week to go to Italy to replace the suit you just ruined while chasing, on motorboat, the guy who had the passkeys, etc...
Two months later, the information you just got is random useless crap about a lowly manager fucking up his job in various ways and you just lost your best opportunity of novelizing your adventures.
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The voice prints, known numbers and dictionary settings did the rest.
Cross referenced with commercial databases and commercial indexing software, more connections where made. It worked and your safe.
NSA members can enter the private sector if they like, moonlight like the CIA? or enjoy budgets and toys within the NSA thanks to the funds.
A "fuck up" to the NSA would be something simple:
A
Not inefficient (Score:2, Informative)
I agree that over-classification is a problem from a transparency point of view. However, I disagree that it decreases efficiency - in fact efficiency and convenience is one of the big reasons that documents are unnecessarily classified to begin with. When you work on a classified system (like a computer) any documents you generate are automatically treated as classified at the highest level that the system is approved to process. Decreasing or declassifying a document requires you to go through a formal pr
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The NPR story doesn't seem to mention the idea that this person might be considered a whistle-blower (admittedly I didn't catch all of the story.)
Whistleblower or not, he's being charged with obstruction of justice.
Instead of making an affirmative defense, he destroyed evidence and now he's fucked.
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Can You Say "Paper Trail"? (Score:5, Insightful)
charges of providing classified information to a newspaper reporter in hundreds of e-mail messages in 2006 and 2007
How is it that a guy dumb enough to use e-mail for this was a senior NSA official?
Re:Can You Say "Paper Trail"? (Score:4, Insightful)
> > > charges of providing classified information to a newspaper reporter in hundreds of e-mail messages in 2006 and 2007
> > How is it that a guy dumb enough to use e-mail for this was a senior NSA official?
I think you meant it the other way around (the diff is not just cosmetic):
How is it that a senior NSA official was dumb enough to use e-mail for this?
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He could have, at the very least, used a handful of reputable cypherpunk anonymous remailers, preferably ones run by people either outside of the country, or unlikely to cooperate with the government.
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I heard on NPR yesterday they both used Hushmail to email the classified documents.
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I'm aware he used hushmail. Besides, hushmail is not a Type I remailer (aka, a cypherpunk remailer) [wikipedia.org].
Re:Can You Say "Paper Trail"? (Score:5, Interesting)
I fail to see what would be wrong with sending encrypted emails backed by chained proxies, Tor, etc. It's not like the information is even secret--the whole point was to have it disclosed in a newspaper. Given that he might come under occasional (or constant) investigation by the authorities simply because of the nature of his job, avoiding a physical presence as well as any unusual behavior is a must. What would you recommend as an alternative?
I think the real problem was simply that he sent "hundreds of messages" to the same guy. As soon as the NSA points their attention at that guy, they have access to everything, no matter the medium of communication. Before that they already probably have their list of culprits narrowed down significantly based on the info that was being disclosed. Once they know where to get the unencrypted messages they can analyze them for writing characteristics (such as word frequencies) which correspond to one of their employees, assuming their aren't much more blatant clues slipped in. It may even be at some point he simply had no choice but to reveal details about his identity/job to convince the reporter he was a legitimate leak--I mean, if you perfectly anonymize yourself how do you convince anyone you aren't just a hoaxer? Even if the reporter can successfully destroy any evidence of the content of such communications, that doesn't mean he won't squeal when some scary guys from the government pick him up off the street and tell him horror stories about what might happen to him if it doesn't. (the fact they wouldn't mention who the reporter was could be evidence of his cutting a deal)
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Or he thought the NSA does not like to listen for any mention of its projects in US emails
wikileaks (Score:2)
Then you'd probably be indicted for treason if you got caught but hey.
Perhaps this guy will soon have an "accident" ... (Score:2, Insightful)
It's what they'd do in Russia.
Of course, in Soviet Russia, accident would have YOU.
the guy was a whistle blower (Score:5, Insightful)
he was exposing government waste
if he were exposing state secrets, let him rot in jail
but that's all sound and fury surrounding the real issue of what was actually disclosed, and why
the substance of his disclosures and what motivated him: wasted tax payer dollars on lame NSA projects
as far as i am concerned, for his actions, this guy is a hero. we need MORE government employees like this. and his timing is impeccable, government waste is pissing off the country like never before right now: perhaps the tax party can make him some sort of patron saint?
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if he were exposing state secrets, let him rot in jail
Sweet. Chairman Mao got a slashdot account.
i don't understand your implication (Score:2)
exposing state secrets is a crime in china, russia, the usa, india, etc... as well it should be
do you have some sort of belief that exposing state secrets is a beneficial exercise?
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Bush (and Obama seems headed down the same path) wanted to make everything a state secret.
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Sure http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_Papers [wikipedia.org]
well there's state secrets, and then state secrets (Score:3, Informative)
for example: the security apparatus around nuclear power plants, that should not be exposed and anyone who does should be punished. that's what i was talking about
but something like bush and cheney's end runs around the constitution: yeah, that should be exposed
so i apologize, you are correct:
i should have qualified my comments better, as i was only really talking about the kind of state secrets like missile launch sequences, that should never be divulged publicly. but you are correct to take issue with my
Re:well there's state secrets, and then state secr (Score:2)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Bank#Later_years [wikipedia.org]
wow, good link (Score:5, Insightful)
yeah, again, i utterly fail in the comment qualification department
anyone who divulges a LACK OF security like this guy should get the congressional medal of honor
anyone who divulges the OPERATING DETAILS of a genuine security apparatus should get a cold cell
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state secrets (Score:2)
you can't fix the system (Score:2)
from within the system
going public means they can't sweep the issue under the rug. public anger compels the system to actually fix the problem. this is the function of the press in a healthy society. i don't know why you think problems could be solved without public knowledge and outrage breathing down bureaucrats necks. without the public knowledge and outrage, no solution would be forthcoming, ever
Hold on (Score:1)
Ok, let's say that Program X was a disaster. What you also expose by leaking this is that we don't have the capabilities of Program X. In other words, other intelligence agencies understand what we can and cannot do.
I would be entirely sure that the Congressional committees know perfectly well that a program is messing up. And while we should be concerned about technical projects being mismanaged or being messed up (not that that doesn't occur in private industry, right?), let's not kid ourselves.
Leaking th
true, perception is everything (Score:2)
it could be said that reagan's completely bullshit star wars program spooked the russians, and if it was publicly revealed how much money was being wasted on complete crap, the russians wouldn't have been so spooked
however, if you are playing this game of managing perception and deceit, you've entered the rarified, high paranoia stratosophere of smoke and mirrors where the other side might also equally conclude that a "public disclosure" that a program is a failure is a lie in order to hide real deadly capa
Guilty Of Embarrassing Them (Score:1)
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This is about the fact that someone exposed the fact that they are wasting money in a highly incompetent manner.
Actually the government is quite competent at wasting money!
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That money got wasted in a highly incompetent way is not news.
That someone is getting in trouble for whistleblowing is not especially news.
But this kind of whistleblowing is always going to end badly for the whistleblower, because even if a legitimate transparency function is served (calling attention to wasteful and inefficient program administration), the programs themselves are classified. In the public eyes, they're not supposed to even exist. To praise them in public would also be a breach of classific
Forget Hushmail (Score:5, Informative)
If you need any expectation at all of ACTUAL privacy (the kind that'll keep you out of prison), don't use Hushmail. Someone people actually trust, like maybe the people behind Wikileaks, should start a real anonymous mail network.
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Well there's your problem right there...if you let any email provider have your private key, you might as well have just stapled it to your forehead and wandered around New York asking to be mugged.
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If you can't be bothered to put forward the minimal effort it takes to make and distribute your own PGP keys, privacy really isn't that important to you. Using a provider like Hushmail is worse than no encryption at all, as it gives you a false sense of security.
Re:Forget Hushmail (Score:5, Informative)
If you need any expectation at all of ACTUAL privacy (the kind that'll keep you out of prison), don't use Hushmail.
As noted in the prior /. thread on this, Hushmail uses two mode: stupid and secure. They explain as much when you sign on.
In stupid, they do all the work for you, webmail style, which means they have a copy of your key. You are now screwed.
In secure, encryption is done in a Java applet, which is open source. That means (barring any man in the middle weirdness with the Java download) they do not have access to your keys, because they are never sent. While they would certainly "rat you out" if they don't have the goods, they can cheerfully comply with the law (or the NSA pseudo legal equivalent) without providing much of value: just encrypted emails. This appears the be the basis of the government's evidence: the alleged leaker sent a lot of encrypted email. Their indictment, however, did not mention the specific contents of that email, probably because they can't read it.
Alternatively, FireGPG seems like a good option for webmail. More secure systems exist, but as always, in the real world security balances against user experience and people sure seem to like this webmail thing.
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The NSA is one of the few organizations that I would expect to be able to break the encryption on a mass of encrypted e-mails -- not by brute forcing it, but by awesome cryptanalysis. I'd be
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The NSA is one of the few organizations that I would expect to be able to break the encryption on a mass of encrypted e-mails -- not by brute forcing it, but by awesome cryptanalysis. I'd be surprised if the Java applet didn't have some implementation errors, or the data being encrypted had enough recognizable patterns in it to allow some work with known plaintexts.
For people using the java applets, at law enforcement's request, Hushmail pushes out a backdoored applet to grab the encryption keys.
"Hushmail recommends using non web-based services such as GnuPG and PGP Desktop for those who need stronger security."
You can have secure e-mail communication, it's just not point-and-click convienent.
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In secure, encryption is done in a Java applet, which is open source. That means (barring any man in the middle weirdness with the Java download) they do not have access to your keys, because they are never sent.
They solved this issue by sending a trojaned Java applet to the victim. There's no convenient way of verifying it.
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Also, I don't recall hushmail ever advertising that they would NOT cooperate with law enforcement agencies.
No
real anonymous network (Score:2)
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I don't trust Wikileaks--they have an agenda, and it isn't simply informing people about things which are unlawfully/immorally kept hidden. I will grant that they are serving an important function right now, and I am grateful for this... but trust? No way.
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Just use the gold standard [wikipedia.org].
It doesn't get too much more secure than Mixmaster. Granted, I'm not sure if anybody is still running it these days. This was a big thing about the time that pgp was being written in the first place.
I2P has an email service (Score:2)
Think of I2P as an onion-routed (Tor-like) anonymous network [i2p2.de] with web, email and bittorrent services built in.
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Bahahah (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh my god. This is the funniest post I've read in years.
Tell me, which article of the Constitution permits
1) unreasonable searches and seizures by
2) agencies under no or very little congressional oversight
3) which have secret budgets?
I think you and the tea partiers will be slightly disappointed once you get around to understanding the constitution instead of reading it for selective applications of your own biases.
Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.
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Re:Bahahah (Score:5, Interesting)
Your point 1 requires evidence. What unreasonable searches and seizures do you refer to?
Have you read a single newspaper in the last eight years?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_warrantless_surveillance_controversy [wikipedia.org]
What exactly do you think the NSA does? Are you really that credulous?
If you want to make a case that all budgets must be entirely disclosed at some given level of detail, I'd love to hear it.
Article 1, Section 9: No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time.
Are you disputing the government's authority to operate clandestine intelligence agencies? If so, I'd love to hear the argument for that, too.
They have shown repeatedly [wikipedia.org] that they are incapable of controlling themselves when there is no oversight. The NSA and CIA and FBI have repeatedly operated outside the law. We are supposed to be a nation of laws.
But the solution for that is not turning a blind eye while people spill our secrets in wartime.
Do you think you're channelling Thomas Jefferson or Stalin with that kind of outlook?
Why suspend the habeas corpus in insurrections and rebellions? Examine the history of England. See how few of the cases of the suspension of the habeas corpus law have been worthy of that suspension. They have been either real treasons, wherein the parties might as well have been charged at once, or sham plots, where it was shameful they should ever have been suspected. Yet for the few cases wherein the suspension of the habeas corpus has done real good, that operation is now become habitual and the minds of the nation almost prepared to live under its constant suspension. -Thomas Jefferson
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By pointing to Wikipedia, you undermine your own argument. Wikipedia is not a reliable source of information.
A "regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time." It is. The budget is published, with certain details redacted for national security purposes. This is completely legal and constitutional.
Your Jefferson quote does not support your position. Drake is not being held without benefit of habeas corpus. He has been charged with a c
Re:Bahahah (Score:4, Informative)
By pointing to Wikipedia, you undermine your own argument.
By pointing to nothing, you fail to make an argument. I check the sources.
The budget is published, with certain details redacted for national security purposes.
Here's sworn testimony from the Director of the CIA that contradicts your claims:
Finally, in evaluating whether to release the total intelligence appropriation, I have to consider whether a release could add to information that is already available to hostile individuals in a way that could reasonably be expected to reveal or lead to identification of other information that could damage the national security. Information that is in the public domain is not, in fact, entirely accurate. Where official release of the budget total, even if it does not itself reveal all the sensitivities of the intelligence Community, would provide valuable analytic benchmarks or clues to make our sensitive intelligence activities, sources, or methods more readily and precisely identifiable by hostile services and groups, then official release reasonably could be expected to damage the national security.
http://www.fas.org/sgp/foia/2002/tenet.html [fas.org]
No budget is published. There is nothing to redact, and any redaction would be a violation of providing a regular statement of account, notwithstanding the direct violation of taking money out of the treasury for unlawful purposes. Not being aware of the facts undermines your argument pretty seriously, don't you think?
Your Jefferson quote does not support your position.
The word you're missing is context. Medcalf tried to make the assertion that wartime is an excuse for breaking the laws of our country. I demonstrated that this belief was not shared by at least one of our founding fathers.
This ignores the fact that the war on terrorism is just like the war on jealousy - it's never going to end, and it will be an eternal excuse for abuses of power.
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By Wikipedia's own admission, anyone can edit an article at any time, therefore the information in the article can not be trusted at any point in time.
At the time Tennet was Director of the CIA, the intelligence budge was considered classified information. The release of classified information is at the discretion of the federal government. There is a federal budget, the analysis of which is published by no fewer than four different agencies. Maybe you should try researching the federal budget and the budge
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By Wikipedia's own admission, anyone can edit an article at any time, therefore the information in the article can not be trusted at any point in time.
Unless you check the sources. Are you aware of how research works? How would you treat Wikipedia differently from Encyclopedia Brittanica? I mean, besides prancing around red herrings.
Maybe you should try researching the federal budget and the budget process.
At no point is there a clear accounting of money spent on intelligence agencies. This violates the constitution. You're free to pretend otherwise; I imagine it's necessary to fill in the holes that your alternate reality requires.
Is there any other power center you'd like to shill for? No, I'm serious. I'd love to see how badl
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Please explain how a law stating one may not release classified information is unjust.
This is a false statement, as the intelligence budget is no longer considered classified.
As anyone can change Wikipedia at any time, the information contained in Wikipedia is not fact checked, nor is the veracity of the sources verified.
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Please explain how a law stating one may not release classified information is unjust.
If the information is classified to cover up injustice. Which is the purpose of classifying most information.
This is a false statement, as the intelligence budget is no longer considered classified.
Provide a link to the latest detailed account of CIA and NSA spending.
As anyone can change Wikipedia at any time, the information contained in Wikipedia is not fact checked, nor is the veracity of the sources verified.
You know you can click on the links, right? Then look at the domain, and see if it's legit, or look up the ISBN number and do a Google Books search. I'm almost certain you do not understand what the verb "verify" means.
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The information he provided was not to cover up injustice, therefore your argument fails.
In other words, Wikipedia is an untrusted source. Why should I do that when I can find a trusted and trustable source?
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The information he provided was not to cover up injustice, therefore your argument fails.
In addition to describing the technical programs, the Sun articles disclosed a crisis in meeting N.S.A.’s demands for electrical power and described how the agency had rejected a program that had the promise of collecting communications while protecting Americans’ privacy.
Boosh.
In other words, Wikipedia is an untrusted source. Why should I do that when I can find a trusted and trustable source?
So, if I hand you a copy of the NYT that states that martians have landed in SoHo to buy some leather pants, that immediately becomes a fact to you?
I sincerely hope you're feigning stupidity in order to try and salvage
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I am afraid you need a refresher in reading comprehension and a course in logic. The program you mention "had the promise of collecting communications while protecting Americans' privacy" but it does not say that any information he provided showed a violation of anyone's privacy nor does it say that the information he provided showed any injustice. Evidence for (or against) one thing is not evidence against (or for) something else.
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Article 1, Section 9: No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time.
If you're using this for justifying a detailed accounting of expenditures, I'd rather see it applied to how public money given to banks for "troubled asset relief" was spent. Banks are apparently threatening to appeal to the Supreme Court to keep this info under wraps. The amount wasted on whatever system the NSA was upgrading is complete round-off compared to TARP money.
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The Church Commission only happened because it had become obvious to the public - thanks to some careful media investigation - that the various intelligence agencies had been doing some horribly unethical things, including spying on the American public and trying to undermine the anti-war movement and other political dissident groups. If Congress failed to act, their own reputation was at risk. Even then, they were hampered by the fact that most of the evidence had been systematically destroyed or withheld.
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What happens when the intelligence agencies lie to their oversight committees? The CIA in particular has been known to lie to its own director, and presumably by extension the president.
As far as your specific arguments:
- Moving prisoners to known locations rather than unknown locations really doesn't do much if they're legitimate prisoners. Do you seriously think that, say, Al Qaeda, could launch anything approaching a successful assault on a well-defended military base?
- The capability of
you are wrong (Score:2)
You're discussing operations that clearly fall into the domain of the CIA, military intelligence, etc., clearly NSA wouldn't even know about moving captured enemies. We're fairly sure that Drake disclosed the data for Siobhan Gorman's article simply because Drake should never have had need-to-know for anything outside the NSA.
Intelligence services often don't prosecute leaks because they fear the trial might cause further real damage, but they'll probably prosecute when the trial merely prolongs their emba
Unfriggin believable (Score:2, Insightful)
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Please explain in detail what Plame has to do with Drake being indited on charges of violating federal law and his oath of service?
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From what I know, the exposure of Plame's identity did not "decimate" anything. It ended her effectiveness as an agent.
Basically, you are arguing that two wrongs make a right, specifically that because the bozo who got away with exposing Plame's identity this bozo should not be prosecuted for violating his oath of service and federal law. That is a fallacy. Using that reasoning, no murderer should ever be prosecuted because other murderers have gotten away with their crimes.
The Plame incident is not related
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It is directly related. The Plame incident was a deliberate "leak" to expose a CIA operative who had been supposedly effective in her mission. We will never know how many of her operatives were killed because of the Bush administrations treasonous activity. Yes treasonous. Bush the first signed a law which made it treason to out an operative of the CIA.
I'm not saying that the NSA employee should not be prosecuted. He should be. This administration, instead of "looking forward", should be investigating
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Then, what exactly did you mean by "Can anyone say Valerie Plame?"
So, your idea of a direct relationship is "They both involve leaked information"? That is all it takes? Well, hell, we can just give everyone ever convicted of passing on classified information a pardon. /sarcasm
Again, you are arguing using a fallacy, specifically, two wrongs make a right.
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That is not what you said, nor is it what your original post implies.
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The 5 words which I used in my first post pointed to the hypocrisy present in the prosecutions. I'm sorry that I did not elucidate clearly to prevent any possible misunderstanding. I'm really surprised that you were able to take any other implication from that. What exactly, did you think the implication was?
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It is not hypocrisy. If the two cases were similar, which they are not, then you might have an argument. As it is, it appears Libby was authorized by the President to release the information. Libby did not break the law in that regard. He was tried for obstruction of justice and perjury.
As Drake was not authorized release the information and Libby apparently was authorized, the cases are not similar, let alone the same.
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Whatever you think. Sure doesn't matter to me.
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How is a recitation of the facts a troll?
What is a good email provider (Score:2)
This raises the question about email providers. Who provides good, private, secure email service? If Hushmail has handed over keys & data on request, I'd rather not pay them €50-100 per year. In truth I'm not an international criminal or James Bond or anything... so I can't really justify too much cost. But surely there is a service which does not retain data for too long and would at least ask for a court order before handing anything over... and does not assume you have the financial backing
Lock Him Up and Throw Away The Key (Score:4, Informative)
One of the very first things you have to do before getting a security clearance is sign a document acknowledging that revealing classified information is punishable by a fine of $10,000 or 10 years in prison or both. If you can't handle that from the outset, you have no business having a security clearance.
Make no mistake: this was a very serious crime. While I applaud this guy's intent, the proper place for his complaint was either the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, or the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. From that point on, it is the responsibility of those Congressional committees to follow up on the information. No person other than the Director of Central Intelligence or the President has the authority to release classified information.
If you think that sucks, then imagine the situation where everyone with a clearance got to decide on their own whether that information should be kept secret or not. There wouldn't be any point to having classified information, and you might as well give it all away to the Chinese/Russians, etc. Do you think they'll reciprocate?
Necron69
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Would you say then that Thomas Tamm [wikipedia.org] should be fined or imprisoned for illegally blowing the whistle on the NSA's warrantless wiretapping program? From a position of blindly following the law, he should be, because he revealed classified information to the media. But he exposed illegal government activities that had been classified to hide them from the public, and I would say that he was simply following his civic duty to reveal corruption.
It's hard to interpret this Drake case, because we have little inf
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Finally somebody gets it. For high levels of clearance the non-disclosure is good for 99 years and is punishable by...wait for it....DEATH.
So whistle-blow all you want, morons, but you should have thought about that before signing the paper that says, "I will not whistle blow for the next 99 years by penalty of death" (my paraphrase).
Its about time... (Score:1)
>that examined in detail the failings of several major NSA programs, costing billions of dollars,
>that were plagued with technical flaws and cost overruns
I have to thank this guy profusively, now that we know all the problems with mismanagement
there should be an investigation, and they should be held fully accountable, but it will be tough to
prove anything, everything might be encrypted.
Also, they learn from their mistakes, now try getting any sort of info from there, it will be almost
impossible. I th