James Bamford Releases DOJ Report On NSA Warrantless Wiretapping From 1976 54
For the last several years public focus on the NSA has been on Bush and Obama era reports of illicit domestic spying. From allegations of warrantless wiretapping reported by James Risen in 2005 to secret documents released to journalists at The Guardian by Edward Snowden a year ago. And smack in the middle, Bamford's 2012 revelation of the existence of a huge, exabyte-capable data storage facility then under construction in Bluffdale, Utah.
Given all this attention on recent events, it might come as a surprise to some that almost forty years ago Senator Frank Church convened a congressional committee to investigate reports of unlawful activities by U.S. intelligence agencies, including illegal domestic wiretapping by the NSA. At the time, Church brought an oversight magnifying glass over what was then half-jokingly referred to as "No Such Agency." And then, like today, James Bamford was in the thick of it, with a Snowden-like cloak-and-dagger game of spy-vs-journalist. It all began by giving testimony before the Church Committee. Writing yesterday in The Intercept, Bamford tells his firsthand historical account of what led him to testify as a direct witness to NSA's wiretapping of domestic communications decades ago and then details the events that led to the publication of his first book The Puzzle Palace back in 1982. Read on for more.
...during the summer of 1975, as reports began leaking out from the Church Committee, I was surprised to learn that the NSA was claiming that it had shut down all of its questionable operations a year and a half earlier. Surprised because I knew the eavesdropping on Americans had continued at least into the prior fall, and may have still been going on. After thinking for a day or so about the potential consequences of blowing the whistle on the NSA—I was still in the Naval Reserve, still attending drills one weekend a month, and still sworn to secrecy with an active NSA clearance—I nevertheless decided to call the Church Committee.
But he didn't stop at the witness stand. Afterward, he continued researching the matter for a book. And the further he dug, the more waves he made. Until someone slipped him a then recently declassified copy of a 1976 Justice Department memo [PDF] detailing a criminal investigation into illicit domestic spying by the NSA. But when agency officials discovered he had that document they took extraordinary measures attempting to get it back. They threatened to prosecute under the 1917 Espionage Act and retroactively reclassified the memo to squelch its contents.
Fearing someone might break into his home and steal the manuscript, Bamford arranged to transport and secure a copy outside of U.S. jurisdiction with a colleague at the Sunday Times of London. It was only upon the 1982 publication of Puzzle Palace that the agency dropped their pursuit of Bamford and his document as a lost cause. That's at least one stark difference between then and today when it comes to whistleblowers — back then, they merely threatened espionage charges.
Yogi Berra famously once said, "It's like Deja Vu all over again." And though the Yankees' star wasn't speaking of illicit domestic wiretaps by the national security state, given a comparison of recent revelations to those detailed by Bamford decades earlier the quote certainly fits. In telling his story of how he published details about the last NSA Merry-Go-Round with warrantless wiretapping, Bamford shows us that our recent troubles of lawless surveillance aren't so unique. It's deja-vu all over again. But if deja vu is like a waking dream, this seems more a recurring nightmare for a body-politic lured to snoring slumber by a siren-song of political passivity.
That old Justice Department memo isn't likely to wake the public from their slumber. But within its pages is a stark warning we all should have heeded. As Bamford notes in that Intercept story, the report's conclusion that NSA lawlessness stems straight from the birth of the agency suggests a constitutional conflict systemic and intentional.
...the NSA's top-secret "charter" issued by the Executive Branch, exempts the agency from legal restraints placed on the rest of the government. "Orders, directives, policies, or recommendations of any authority of the Executive branch relating to the collection ... of intelligence," the charter reads, "shall not be applicable to Communications Intelligence activities, unless specifically so stated." This so-called "birth certificate," the Justice Department report concluded, meant the NSA did not have to follow any restrictions placed on electronic surveillance "unless it was expressly directed to do so." In short, the report asked, how can you prosecute an agency that is above the law?
Here's the "Prosecutive Summary" (PDF).
Last straw (Score:5, Funny)
That does it! I'm not voting for Gerald Ford again!
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It's not "deja vu", because that implies that at some point, NSA's illegal surveillance of us stopped at some point in time.
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It's not "deja vu", because that implies that at some point, NSA's illegal surveillance of us stopped at some point in time.
Originally we only tapped all your phone calls and telegrams.
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No, no, no. You're phrasing it wrong. It's:
"We have stopped (only) tapping your phone calls and telegrams"
See how much more positive that sounds?
England (Score:4, Informative)
Footage released of Guardian editors destroying Snowden hard drives [theguardian.com]
In two tense meetings last June and July [2013] the cabinet secretary, Jeremy Heywood, explicitly warned the Guardian's editor, Alan Rusbridger, to return the Snowden documents.
Heywood, sent personally by David Cameron, told the editor to stop publishing articles based on leaked material from American's National Security Agency and GCHQ. At one point Heywood said: "We can do this nicely or we can go to law". He added: "A lot of people in government think you should be closed down."
I would no longer consider England a safe country to use as a backup for documents that the American government wants back.
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Is there any place where storing documents would be considered safe at least from spying eyes?
Re: England (Score:2)
The moon.
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http://www.gzip.org/zlib/rfc-gzip.html#header-trailer
Yup, so hard to figure out that you're dealing with data in the gzip format. /s
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Is there any place where storing documents would be considered safe at least from spying eyes?
Don't store them anywhere.
Just publish them. Never wait. Never hold them back.
There is no longer any benefit or protection afforded by not publishing. If you are accused of having anything, you are already guilty in the eyes of the security police.
Just publish and hope someone, somewhere cares about it.
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In fact, England is the worst. It (i.e. those that succeeded in the most recent power grab) -- it tries to be the best boy in the US' class Hegemony 6.0, in the process of the attempt surpassing any other anglo-saxon nation in crude disregard for constitutional and international law, and shamelessly whistling the tune of mega-millionaires.
On a slightly related note: is there still a bounty for Tony Blair's neck?
Similarities between now and then (Score:3, Insightful)
In both cases the government moved from the concern of external threats to a belief that the threats were internal.
It's a symptom of disunity and of a paranoid government.
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In both cases the government moved from the concern of external threats to a belief that the threats were internal.
It's a symptom of disunity and of a paranoid government.
When you're helping to maintain a corrupt status quo, your enemies are internal.
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If you think this is R vs D and not The people vs The government, i got a bridge to sell you.
Even if nixon started it, you have had how many democratic presidents since him? I mean, if the democrats REALLY wanted to end it, they could have. be it carter, or clinton, or now obama. But no. they dont only not stop it but they expand it.
When will people wake up and realize that voting for
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its always funny to see these posts from AC, no one has the balls to make such idiotic claims with their real names If you think this is R vs D and not The people vs The government, i got a bridge to sell you. Even if nixon started it, you have had how many democratic presidents since him? I mean, if the democrats REALLY wanted to end it, they could have. be it carter, or clinton, or now obama. But no. they dont only not stop it but they expand it. When will people wake up and realize that voting for an R is the same as voting for a D, maybe not in the short term, but the long term as shown this to be the case
Well said. These days it's also about inside vs. outside; those with access to government and those without it. Or maybe ultra-wealthy vs. everyone else.
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its always funny to see these posts from AC, no one has the balls to make such idiotic claims with their real names
If you think this is R vs D and not The people vs The government, i got a bridge to sell you.
Even if nixon started it, you have had how many democratic presidents since him? I mean, if the democrats REALLY wanted to end it, they could have. be it carter, or clinton, or now obama. But no. they dont only not stop it but they expand it.
When will people wake up and realize that voting for an R is the same as voting for a D, maybe not in the short term, but the long term as shown this to be the case
Well said. These days it's also about inside vs. outside; those with access to government and those without it. Or maybe ultra-wealthy vs. everyone else.
Your owners don't want it to change, the need more surveillance lest the slaves get restless and think of uprising.
The American Dream [youtube.com]
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That is the basis of my political disillusionment. The target is right there. Obama can wipe it out with the stroke of a pen. It's his chance to strike back at the Tea party's whining that we can't afford to provide healthcare. He could just wipe out the domestic spying and it's costs. He could stop the foreign wars that cost trillions. With a stroke of his pen.
But he hasn't. He hasn't even threatened to.
I can only conclude that illegal domestic spying and spending all our money on killing people has bipart
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It just goes to show a vote for an R or a vote for a D is a vote fore more of the same
the more things change the more they stay the sam (Score:3)
But during the summer of 1975, as reports began leaking out from the Church Committee, I was surprised to learn that the NSA was claiming that it had shut down all of its questionable operations a year and a half earlier. Surprised because I knew the eavesdropping on Americans had continued at least into the prior fall, and may have still been going on. After thinking for a day or so about the potential consequences of blowing the whistle on the NSA—I was still in the Naval Reserve, still attending drills one weekend a month, and still sworn to secrecy with an active NSA clearance—I nevertheless decided to call the Church Committee.
So over 30 years ago, the NSA was doing the same thing its doing now. When it gets caught it says it stops doing it, yet it continues to do it (yet we didnt shut them down 30 years ago??!?!)
and this one is a doozy. At the same time the feds are complaining about google and apple using system wide encryption as in their eyes it "puts people above the law" yet at the SAME time the NSA charter puts the NSA above the law
The report’s prosecutive summary also pointed to the NSA’s top-secret “charter” issued by the Executive Branch, which exempts the agency from legal restraints placed on the rest of the government. “Orders, directives, policies, or recommendations of any authority of the Executive branch relating to the collection . . . of intelligence,” the charter reads, “shall not be applicable to Communications Intelligence activities, unless specifically so stated.” This so-called “birth certificate,” the Justice Department report concluded, meant the NSA did not have to follow any restrictions placed on electronic surveillance “unless it was expressly directed to do so.” In short, the report asked, how can you prosecute an agency that is above the law?
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The Church Committee also discovered that CIA had people stationed inside every major broadcasting network, in order to monitor and manipulate the information we get. They are supposed to have stopped that kind of activity. Yeah...
I just assume that the intelligence agencies do what they please and try not to get caught. They will lie, deny and withhold to maintain their programs. And with all the classification, black ops and special access programs, it's nigh impossible to find out what they're doing.
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I really hated Men In Black---
that movie stuck in my craw
So arrogant and smug
as they tampered with minds
in parody of due process of law.
There is a special brand of stupid
that only affects those who are smart.
By their own hands they have brought this great evil
in which they knowingly play a part.
NSA is to gather blackmail, is all---
for when and why--- they haven't a clue.
Just following orders for the almighty buck
---they fuck
their own children, fuck me and fuck you.
And so to St. Peter I must say
They learned
Secret Agencies (Score:2)
It occurs to me (aas it should have LONG ago) that when something secret becomes more and more "known" that it is being used as a distraction to help hide the newer "really secret" secret.
What I am saying is that the NSA is a decoy. Who and what is the new intelligence organization?
A damn good story (Score:2)
For those who think the two major political parties have been the same on the NSA, it's also interesting to note that the Carter Administration's DOJ declassified the key memo whereas the Reagan Administration's DOJ reclassif
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This is nothing new. many of us have known about warrantless wiretapping going on since the 60's, but everybody just calls us nutz and hands us tin foil for our hats.
So you're bragging about knowing public knowledge? Anyone who wasn't living in a cave would have seen the info about the Church Commission on the news in the 70s where they mentioned all of what had been happening with the intelligence agencies. It's not like you were privy to secret information.
Anyone denying that that had happened in face of congressional testimony would obviously be an idiot. But methinks you're constructing a straw man. If these people exist that deny what the Church Commission revealed publicly then please provide citations.
Part of the problem is that the agencies exposed by the Church Committee said they would stop their illegal practices, and people believed them. My own uncle, in his 70's, has told me the CIA is forbidden to operate inside the US, so they don't. I think such credulity comes from one not wanting to know how criminal their government is. In my experience a lot of people feel that way. Their lives are going okay, their worldview is stable, and they just don't want to know. People often prefer comfort to a
You never know the quality of such sources (Score:2)
A book isn't right merely by being published. It is always wise to be prudent about what you believe.
However, in this case, the Church Committee is known to have had strong views. It is also a matter of record that Echelon involved all of the Five Eyes members spying on electronic communications. Further, allegations at that time of other spying operations at that time (including telephonic and domestic wireless intercepts) are certainly mirrored by the Snowden Files.
These matters, and some horribly rudimen
I heard similar stories about web traffic in 1998 (Score:3)
He said the buildings that house the trans-oceanic data cables were designed from the ground up with small rooms, broom closet sized, that the primary data cables run through. Nobody other than federal agents with code word level clearance were allowed in via a heavy security door that had a guard 24/7. He said that all data traffic entering those rooms left them with a noticable amount of latency (at the time, late 80s he said it was about 10ms), but no hops. He claimed that the federal government had been monitoring internet activity in these data hubs since the dawn of the web.
I still believe him to this day, and have not been surprised by Snowden's revelations or really any news I see about the government snooping on traffic. The internet started as a DARPA project. It would be stupid to assume that data traversing what is essentially a military network can't be monitored by government entities.
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sdguero wrote:
Mark Klein, former tech from AT
bad link (Score:1)
in 2013 Edward Snowden's revelations proved what he'd said was true. [wired.com]
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[...] from space capability, like tracking breathe and heart rate, and license plates [...] read emanations of electromagnetic frequencies from space or radar, but they're capable of that as well. Which enables tapping of what is being processed by a computer, what is on your screen, USB, Ethernet, telephone, and other cables, without a physical connection to the devices or network in question, again all done from space and long range. Turns out the brain emanations aren't any different, and once intercepted can be passed to neural decoders to extract passcodes, memories, thoughts, and other gogglygook.
Aside from some well developed purely terrestrial distance TEMPEST [wikipedia.org] capability for use against computers and networking devices, I call bullshit on the rest, including the license plates. Tice may have seen things that unnerved him, but (sadly) it is likely that he either embellished the state of the art or (more likely) was made an asset, fed bits and pieces of stories about this kooky dreamland tech in order to excite and incite him into dwelling on these incredible things, to divert his attention away fro
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If you are a machine that turns itself off [youtube.com] , please do so.