NSA Official Disputes Chief's Claim That Agency Doesn't Collect American Data 214
NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander was playing a "word game" when he said the agency does not collect files on Americans according to William Binney, a former technical director at the NSA. Binney says the NSA does indeed collect e-mails, Twitter writings, internet searches and other data belonging to Americans and indexing it. "Unfortunately, once the software takes in data, it will build profiles on everyone in that data," he said. "You can simply call it up by the attributes of anyone you want and it's in place for people to look at."
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Allegations that defy reality (Score:4, Interesting)
The ridiculousness here is that anyone believes that NSA actually has a "dossier" on all Americans — or even cares about Americans at all, given that its sole purpose for existence is foreign signals intelligence as exponentially increasing amounts of foreign traffic travel through networks, systems, and infrastructure on US soil. All of those foreign linguists must be for illegally spying on Americans!
Basically what you're saying is, you'd prefer to believe, without proof, allegations that the NSA is illegally dragnet-spying on ALL Americans, and has been doing so for more than a decade, which would involve at the very LEAST hundreds, and more likely thousands, of civilian and military NSA employees, all of whom don't mind that they're directly violating the Constitution, but only one guy who hasn't been at NSA in over a decade is telling you "the truth"? That really seems plausible to you?
When the Terrorist Surveillance Program was revealed by the New York Times in 2005, it only touched on numbers of Americans in the hundreds, who had direct communications with individuals tied to terrorism, was authorized by the President under Article II under the AUMF, and was renewed and briefed to Congress every 45 days — and this was four years AFTER Binney claimed NSA was already dragnet-wiretapping ALL Americans.
Never mind that restrictions on US Persons are constantly drilled into civilian and military intelligence professionals every day. Never mind the complex procedures the IC maintains specifically to NOT target or collect on Americans. Never mind that the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 is stricter than previous law.
What we have done is shifted the notion of who is or isn't a US Person from the a place to a person.
Before 9/11, we assumed anyone — or any traffic — inside the US was a US Person, and that anyone outside the US was fair game. After 9/11, and with the increasing levels of foreign traffic traveling over the internet instead of walkie-talkies in foreign countries, the IC, and NSA in particular, was in the difficult position of needing to target traffic within the US. A series of secret orders and stopgap legislation (like the temporary Protect America Act) supported this.
The FISA Amendments Act of 2008 completely changes the pre-9/11 paradigm. Now an individual warrant is required to target a US Person anywhere on the globe, while foreign targets — even within the US — explicitly do NOT require a warrant. Foreign targets outside the US have never required a warrant, and shouldn't just because they or their traffic enter the US.
For anyone who claims to care about this topic at all, I urge you to read "REMARKS BY GENERAL MICHAEL V. HAYDEN" [fas.org], which is former NSA and CIA directory General Michael Hayden's remarks before the National Press Club in 2006. This was still pre-FISA Amendments Act of 2008, but it gives a (very) clear picture of what the landscape and our challenges was, and still are. Also, if you care at all about what NSA does, this excellent and very recent National Geographic documentary [youtube.com] is as close as you're going to get in an unclassified context.
A key excerpt from General Hayden's speech is included below, but again, if you purport to care about this issue at all, I urge you to read the entire speech and the Q&A, and reflect on the fact that it's not possible given the secrecy of intelligence work for NSA to "prove" that it *isn't* doing something. Oversight of the IC comes from the executive (the President), legislative (Intelligence Committees of both houses of Congress and FISA legislation), and judicial (FISC) branches. That's how oversight of the Intelligence Community has always occurred.
The trouble is the mistaken and misguided belief that if there has ever been an example of abuse, or a mistake, then ALL activity MUST be abuse. If you choose to believe that the United S
Trust? No I don't trust the NSA (Score:5, Interesting)
Ask yourself if it really makes sense that hundreds, if not thousands, of professional civilian and military members of our government have so little regard for their fellow citizens that they are systematically violating both the letter and spirit of law and the Constitution
It very much makes sense. We have fairly severe restrictions on our police forces and they regularly try and often succeed in circumventing them. The FBI has a decades long record of abusing the civil rights of US citizens. Every law enforcement and intelligence agency regularly chaffs against the restrictions placed on their power. Those same "professionals" you cite did nothing while our government condoned torture in clear violation of the spirit and letter of our laws. Why should I believe the NSA is any different? Those restrictions are inconvenient, expensive and it's not as if regular citizens can check their work to ensure they aren't breaking the rules. I believe they have power without sufficient accountability and that is almost certain to result in abuse of that power.
Trust the NSA? No I don't trust the NSA, it's employees or any other branch of our government and that is the way it should bet. We have checks and balances because we KNOW we cannot trust them. Unchecked power absolutely will be abused. The real question is do we have sufficient oversight from congress or the judiciary? It's not clear that we do.
Re:Trust? No I don't trust the NSA (Score:5, Interesting)
This is a good comment. No, I don't think anyone is asking you to blindly trust NSA or any other element of government. But as government is ultimately here to serve the people, you can't exclusively have distrust of every single action government takes. Be cautious, be vigilant. But as I have said before, the mistake is believing that because there are some examples of abuse or mistakes — and there are plenty — that EVERY activity is intentional, systematic government abuse.
This is an excellent question, and one that has always been relevant to the Intelligence Community. Oversight of the IC has always been institutional oversight, not direct oversight by the public. But intelligence operations require secrecy to be effective — and that secrecy, especially in an open society, invites confusion, suspicion, misunderstanding, and distrust. So don't blindly "trust" NSA, but have the fortitude to thoroughly examine its purpose, missions, and history, and the challenges associated with executing its missions.
Re:Indeed it is a crime. (Score:2, Interesting)
Does it make sense that hundreds or thousands of professionals would have so little respect for their fellow citizens that they would systematically violate the letter and spirit of the Constitution? Does it matter that the purpose of the agency is specifically foreign signals intelligence?
Perhaps. The people who believe that such a program is going on are the people who have seen what atrocities were wrought in our name - by equally professional members of the military and of the US civil government - in places like Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and a number of "black sites." These atrocities stained the reputation of our once-professional military, Worse still has been the rationalization that they were lawful. The are claimed to be lawful because they were perpetrated on people who were not US citizens: where does our constitution limit its guarantees to citizens, other than in the public sphere such as voting and jury service?) They ar claimed to be lawful because they were perpetrated on "unlawful" combatants: often times, the combatants who did not enjoy the aegis of some givernment were operating in a nation without a functioning civil government. They are claimed to be lawful because of urgent necessity: without perceived urgent necessity, there would never be a temptation to violate rights; if the Constitution fails to guarantee rights against urgent necessity, the rights are meaningless.
The critics see a danger of the same rationalizations infecting the signals intelligence community. The requirement of a warrant is easily satisfied: we already have a secret court that grants warrants ex parte, keeps no public record of its actions, and will not notify subjects, even after the fact, that they were targets of its warrants. For all we know, it has already granted blanket writs of assistance to seize data on all customers of a given carrier. The critics see themselves as being asked to trust an organization that cannot operate under the light of day and has little meaningful oversight even at the highest levels of governmnet: even ordinary Representatives and Senators, not members of select committees, cannot investigate it - even though they supposedly hold the power of the purse over it. The critics see what else has been done in secret in the name of the United States, and wonder.
Moreover, rationalizations for emasculating the Constitution are heard daily in the public arena. We mutely accept warrantless and suspicionless searches as a condition of access to government buildings - surrendering the Fourth Amendment's protections as a condition of exercising our First Amendement freedom of petition. We accept gag orders on civilians who have no part in an investigation, merely because the Government wants to have their records in secret. We hear members of the press and otherwise respected politicians making remarks like, "if people want Constitutional rights, they shouldn't support terrorism!" regarding people who have been convicted of no crime. It would not surprise me if a large fraction of our secret workers are already conditioned to believe that the targets of their surveillance are not "real" citizens because of their [suspected] sympathies and therefore enjoy no Constitutional protections, or at the very least that their agencies operate under some sort of legal exemption from Constitutional prohibitions.
We accept all this because our society labors under existential threats. We are surrounded at every turn by mortal enemies, and can defend ourselves against them only by surrendering what we are. We are at war, and must accept the necessities of that war. Moreover, the war is perpetual. It will never be won - because a nameless, faceless enemy can never be vanquished. We must continue forever our descent into an armed camp. Our only choices are to trust our warlords, or to await their defeat and hope that our enemies will be more benevolent than our friends. And that is the strident debate we hear in the political realm: the party of oppression debating the party of surrender.
Where is the party of victory?
[CAPTCHA: 'guards.' Et quis cvstodiet ipsos custodes?]
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