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Paul Merrell

Udall: 'All options' on table with CIA report | TheHill - 0 views

thehill.com/...tions-on-table-with-cia-report

war & peace torture Senate-Intelligence_Committee-Report Udall

shared by Paul Merrell on 14 Nov 14 - No Cached
  • Outgoing Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) said he is keeping "all options on the table" when it comes to publicly releasing the Senate's report on the CIA's now-defunct interrogation program. Following Udall's reelection loss earlier this month, a number of advocates floated the idea of Udall publicly revealing sections of the classified report on the Senate floor before the end of the year. ADVERTISEMENT"I mean I'm going to keep all options on the table," he told The Denver Post on Thursday when asked specifically about the idea. While the plan is unlikely, there is some precedent. The Constitution gives immunity to senators engaging in speech and debate, whether or not they publicly reveal classified information. But Senate rules forbid those types of disclosure.  
  • Udall is a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which drafted the report. Portions of it, including the executive summary, are being redacted for release. But Udall and others have said the administration has been too heavy-handed in the editing process.  <A HREF="http://ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?rt=tf_mfw&ServiceVersion=20070822&MarketPlace=US&ID=V20070822%2FUS%2Fthehill07-20%2F8001%2Fdffbe72d-f425-4b83-b07e-357ae9d405f6&Operation=NoScript">Amazon.com Widgets</A> "Transparency and disclosure are critical to the work of the Senate intelligence committee and our democracy, so I'm going to keep all options on the table to ensure the truth comes out," Udall said.Udall said an agreement on the release is close, which would make the revelation on the floor unnecessary. Chairwoman of the Intelligence Committee Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) told the newspaper the report is expected to be made public in the coming weeks.
Paul Merrell

Senator Who Put Pentagon Papers Into Public Record Urges Udall To Do Same With Torture ... - 0 views

firstlook.org/...ord-urges-udall-torture-report

war & peace torture CIA Senate-Intelligence_Committee-Report Udall

shared by Paul Merrell on 14 Nov 14 - No Cached
  • Article 1, Section 6 of the Constitution establishes an absolute free-speech right for members of Congress on the floor or in committee, even if they are disclosing classified material. It states that “for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place.” Within hours of Colorado Senator Mark Udall losing his reelection bid last week, transparency activists were talking about how he should go out with a bang and put the Senate intelligence committee’s torture report into the congressional record.  The report is said to detail shockingly brutal abuse of detainees by the CIA during the George W. Bush administration, as well as rampant deception about the program by top officials. But the Obama White House is refusing to declassify even a summary of the report without major redactions. And Republicans take over the Senate in January.
  • Udall is one of two senators — along with fellow Intelligence Committee member Ron Wyden — who have consistently demanded greater transparency from the intelligence community. If he made the report public on the Senate floor or during a hearing, he couldn’t be prosecuted. The last time any senator did anything nearly so grand was in 1971, when Mike Gravel, two years into his 12 years representing the state of Alaska, entered 4,000 pages of the Pentagon Papers into the congressional record just before the U.S. Supreme Court lifted an injunction on publishing them in the press.
  • Now, Gravel is urging Udall to join the club. “If Udall wants to call me, I can explain this to him,” Gravel, pictured above, said in a phone interview from his home in Burlingame, Calif. Gravel’s recommendation: “What he’d have to do is call a subcommittee meeting like I did, late at night.”
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  • Back in 1971, Gravel first tried to read the Papers from the Senate floor. He even got himself rigged up with a colostomy bag so he wouldn’t need to take breaks. But he was stymied by an unexpected procedural move. So he moved to Plan B: He called a late-night subcommittee meeting with almost no notice to the other members. Gravel read some of the Pentagon Papers out loud, but challenged by dyslexia and overcome with emotion, he finally opted for another way: “I asked for unanimous consent to put it in the record of the subcommittee. And there was no one there to object.” Here is amazing unedited footage of that night:
Paul Merrell

It's WWIII between CIA and Senate | TheHill - 0 views

thehill.com/...-alarmed-by-alleged-cia-spying

surveillance state CIA targets Senate-Intelligence-Committee torture

shared by Paul Merrell on 07 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • Senators on Wednesday expressed alarm at explosive allegations that the CIA might have spied on their computers to keep tabs on their controversial review of Bush-era “enhanced interrogation” techniques.ADVERTISEMENTLawmakers from both parties said that if the allegations against the CIA prove true, intelligence officials might have violated the law — and certainly violated the separation of powers enshrined in the Constitution.“I’m assuming that’s it’s not true, but if it is true, it should be World War III in terms of Congress standing up for itself against the CIA, ” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told The Hill.Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) confirmed Wednesday that the CIA inspector general was investigating accusations that the covert agency had peered into the panel’s computers. But she didn’t comment on reports that the investigator has referred the matter to the Justice Department.Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.), an ex officio member of the Intelligence panel, said the charge of spying is “extremely serious.”“There are laws against intruding and tampering, hacking into, accessing computers without permission. And that law applies to everybody,” he said.Brennan in a statement said he was "dismayed" by the “spurious allegations,” which he said were "wholly unsupported by the facts."
  • His statement was released Wednesday evening as McClatchy reported that the computer spying was allegedly discovered when the CIA confronted the Senate Intelligence panel about documents removed from the agency’s headquarters."I am very confident that the appropriate authorities reviewing this matter will determine where wrongdoing, if any, occurred in either the Executive Branch or Legislative Branch," Brennan said.“Until then, I would encourage others to refrain from outbursts that do a disservice to the important relationship that needs to be maintained between intelligence officials and congressional overseers."The allegations escalated a long-simmering feud between Democrats on the Intelligence panel and the CIA over the committee’s classified interrogation report, which provides an exhaustive look at the treatment of detainees in the years after Sept. 11.Sen. Mark Udall (Colo.) and two other Democrats on the Intelligence panel have criticized the CIA and its director, John Brennan, for blocking their efforts to declassify the 6,300-page investigation.“The CIA tried to intimidate the Intelligence Committee, plain and simple,” Udall said. “I’m going to keep fighting like hell to make sure the CIA never dodges congressional oversight again.”
  • Senators have said their review, which was completed in December 2012, is harshly critical of interrogation techniques such as waterboarding, concluding that they were ineffective and did not contribute to the capture of Osama bin Laden.Udall and other Democrats say the report needs to be released because it will "set the record straight" about the use of techniques that critics say amount to torture.While Democrats on the panel backed the report’s findings, most of the Intelligence Committee Republicans dissented.The CIA has objected to some of the report’s conclusions as well, though Udall says its internal review contradicts the agency’s public statements.Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), who has joined Udall in pressing for the release of the report, said the allegations about CIA spying show the lengths that the agency will go to protect itself.“I think it’s been pretty clear that the CIA will do just about anything to make sure that this detention and interrogation report doesn’t come out,” Heinrich told The Hill.
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  • Other Republicans on the Intelligence panel said the spying charges should be investigated, but they expressed concerns about the leak of the inspector general investigation.“I have no comment. You should talk to those folks that are giving away classified information and get their opinion,” Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) said when asked about the alleged intrusions.Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) appeared to allude to the CIA snooping at an Intelligence Committee hearing last month when he asked Brennan whether the Computer Crimes and Abuse Act applied to the agency.Wyden said Wednesday that Brennan responded in a letter the law did apply.“The Act, however, expressly ‘does not prohibit any lawfully authorized investigative, protective, or intelligence activity … of an intelligence agency of the United States,’ ” Brennan wrote in the letter that Wyden released.McClatchy news service reported that the Intelligence Committee determined earlier this year the CIA had monitored computers it provided to the panel to review top-secret reports, cables and other documents.It’s still unclear whether the alleged monitoring would have violated the law.
  • Udall sent a letter to President Obama on Tuesday calling for declassification of the committee’s report, where he alleged the CIA’s “unprecedented action against the committee” was tied to agency's internal review of the interrogation policies.Udall first raised issues with the internal review of the interrogation techniques at the confirmation hearing of Caroline Krass's nomination as CIA general counsel, which took place in December.He said that the review, conducted under former CIA Director Leon Panetta, corroborated the findings of the Senate Intelligence report and contradicted the public statements from the agency.Udall has placed a procedural hold on Krass’s nomination and told reporters Wednesday that it would remain in place until the CIA meets his requests for more information about the internal review.White House press secretary Jay Carney declined to comment on the spying allegations Wednesday, referring questions to the CIA and Department of Justice.Carney said that "as a general matter," the White House was in touch with the Intelligence Committee."For some time, the White House has made clear to the chairmen of the Senate Select committee on intelligence that the summary and conclusions of the final RDI report should be declassified with any redactions necessary to protect national security," he said.
  • Heinrich said he hoped the CIA intrusions, if confirmed, would push the White House to get involved in the dispute between the agency and the committee over the report.“It would be easy for me to get very upset about these allegations, but I think we need to keep our eye on that ball, because that is a really important historical issue, and people need to understand who made what decisions and why,” he said.
  • Paul Merrell on 07 Mar 14
     
    Jack Kennedy had the right idea: abolish the CIA.
Paul Merrell

Udall Urged to Disclose Full Torture Report | Consortiumnews - 0 views

consortiumnews.com/...o-disclose-full-torture-report

war & peace CIA torture Senate-Intelligence_Committee-Report VIPS Udall must-read

shared by Paul Merrell on 29 Dec 14 - No Cached
  • Sen. Mark Udall has called for the full release of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on torture. However, as a still-sitting member of Congress, he has a constitutional protection to read most of the still-secret report on the Senate floor — and a group of intelligence veterans urges him to do just that.MEMORANDUM FOR: Senator Mark UdallFROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)SUBJECT: Stopping TortureWe, the undersigned are veteran intelligence officers with a combined total of over 300 years of experience in intelligence work. We send you this open letter at what seems to be the last minute simply because we had been hoping we would not have to.
  • Paul Merrell on 29 Dec 14
     
    This is a must-read. Extremely plain talk from VIPS directed to Sen. Mark Udall. 
Paul Merrell

John Brennan Dodges a Question About CIA Spying on Americans - Conor Friedersdorf - The... - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...283459

surveillance state CIA Brennan domestic-surveillance prevarication

shared by Paul Merrell on 03 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • Senator Mark Udall, a Colorado Democrat, has often used his perch on the Senate Intelligence Committee to ask national-security officials if they're misbehaving. He typically focuses on abuses that are actually happening, so his latest exchange with CIA Director John Brennan demands wider attention. Udall asked if the CIA is engaged in domestic spying or searches on American citizens. An idle question? One wouldn't think so. And the CIA director appeared to evade the question. For that reason, I suspect, but certainly cannot prove, that the intelligence agency is, in fact, engaged in this behavior. But don't take my word for it. Look at the transcript and judge for yourself:  UDALL: This committee was created to address a severe breach of trust that developed when it was revealed that the CIA was conducting unlawful domestic searches. The Church Committee went to work, found that to be true.
  • I want to be able to reassure the American people ... that the CIA and the director understand the limits of their mission and authorities. We're all aware of executive order 12333. That order prohibits the CIA from engaging in domestic spying and searches of US citizens within our borders. Can you assure the committee that the CIA does not conduct such domestic spying and searches?  BRENNAN: I can assure the committee that the CIA follows the letter and the spirit of the law in terms of what the CIA's authorities are, in terms of its responsibilities to collect intelligence that will keep this country safe. Yes, Senator, I do.  Hmm. Reframing the question. Answering indirectly. Concluding with syntax that doesn't fit. It all seems suspicious. When Udall asked, "Can you assure the committee that the CIA does not conduct such domestic spying and searches?" Brennan could've replied, "Yes." But that isn't what he said at all. Why, do you think? There could be an explanation I'm missing, but Udall doesn't typically mislead with questions. This is a subject to watch.
Paul Merrell

White House refuses to hand over top-secret documents to Senate committee | World news ... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...re-top-secret-documents-senate

war & peace torture Senate-Intelligence-Committee Obama withholding

shared by Paul Merrell on 16 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • The White House is refusing to hand over top-secret documents to a Senate investigation into CIA torture and rendition of terrorism suspects, claiming it needs to ensure that “executive branch confidentiality” is respected.In the latest development in the spiralling clash between Congress and the administration over oversight of the intelligence agencies, Barack Obama’s spokesman Jay Carney confirmed that certain material from the George W Bush presidency was being withheld for fear of weakening Oval Office privacy.“This is about precedent, and the need, institutionally, to protect some of the prerogatives of the executive branch – and the office of the presidency,” said Carney.“All of these documents pertain to and come from a previous administration, but these are matters that need to be reviewed in light of long-recognised executive prerogatives and confidentiality interests.”
  • A report published by McClatchy newspapers on Wednesday night said that Senate investigators were trying to obtain an estimated 9,400 such documents relating to CIA detention and interrogation after 9/11.
  • In public, the White House has tried to stay out of a growing constitutional clash between Congress and the CIA over alleged interference in the investigation. Reuters reported that the White House chief lawyer, Kathryn Ruemmler, had tried to mediate in private between both sides in an attempt to “de-escalate” the tension.But the admission that the White House is withholding key documents is likely to renew criticism that the Obama administration is failing to live up to promises to fully investigate a dark chapter in CIA history.
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  • Udall said he had lifted a procedural obstacle he had placed on the CIA’s nominee for its next general counsel, Caroline Krass. That sets up the departure of its acting senior attorney, Robert Eatinger, who is at the centre of this week’s extraordinary battle between the Senate intelligence committee and the CIA.Krass had already cleared the Senate committee, but Udall put her on hold to gain leverage for the committee in its struggle for access to CIA documents relevant to its extensive study of the agency’s post-9/11 interrogation, rendition and detention program, which involved torture.The Senate voted Thursday to confirm Krass, sending her to Langley at a time when relations between the CIA and the Senate have reached a nadir. While Eatinger was never going to be the agency’s permanent general counsel, he is now the first explicit casualty in the row between the CIA and its Senate overseers.Eatinger, a longtime agency lawyer with counterterrorism experience, was cited on Monday by the panel’s chairwoman, Dianne Feinstein of California, in her seminal speech lashing out at the CIA. Without naming him, Feinstein indicated he was instrumental in the agency’s now-abandoned torture practices, and had been cited over 1,600 times in the classified Senate torture investigation.
  • Feinstein said Eatinger, whom senators have taken care not to name, had alerted the Justice Department to her staff’s removal of a CIA document from a classified facility – which both Feinstein and Udall cite as a conflict of interest.Ahead of Krass’s arrival at the CIA, Udall called on Eatinger to immediately recuse himself from any internal matters related to either the torture inquiry or the Senate panel generally. “We need to correct the record on the CIA’s coercive detention and interrogation program and declassify the Senate intelligence committee’s exhaustive study of it. I released my hold on Caroline Krass’s nomination today and voted for her to help change the direction of the agency,” Udall said in a statement on Thursday.
  • Paul Merrell on 16 Mar 14
     
    6 million documents. Which means that the Administration chose the time-proven tactic of emptying wastebaskets to have *something* to talk about in defense of withholding the truly damning documents. The Senate committee asked for Swiss Cheese; the administration provided only the cheese's holes. 6,400 documents is far more than the Administration will hold back if this issue winds up in court because of the truly staggering paperwork burden placed on the Administration by procedures for subpoena cases. The White House will have the burdens of proof and persuasion, with a strong presumption favoring production of the records.  For a good quick overview of the governing law and its constitutional history, see the D.C. Circuit's opinion In re sealed Case, 121 F. 3d 729 (1997),  http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=7608826439463067791
Paul Merrell

Wyden, Udall Statement on the Disclosure of Bulk Email Records Collection Program | Pre... - 0 views

www.wyden.senate.gov/...ail-records-collection-program

surveillance state NSA NSA-blowback efficacy email Udall Wyden

shared by Paul Merrell on 04 Jul 13 - No Cached
  • U. S. Senators Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Mark Udall (D-Colo.), both members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, released the following statement regarding the recent disclosure by intelligence officials that the NSA operated a bulk email records collection program under the authority of the Patriot Act until 2011.  This program is distinct from the internet-related collection carried out under section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act (which involves the PRISM computer system).   “We are quite familiar with the bulk email records collection program that operated under the USA Patriot Act and has now been confirmed by senior intelligence officials.  We were very concerned about this program’s impact on Americans’ civil liberties and privacy rights, and we spent a significant portion of 2011 pressing intelligence officials to provide evidence of its effectiveness.  They were unable to do so, and the program was shut down that year.  
  • “As we have noted, the Patriot Act’s surveillance authorities are not limited to phone records.  In fact, section 215 of the Patriot Act can be used to collect any type of records whatsoever.  The fact that Patriot Act authorities were used for the bulk collection of email records as well as phone records underscores our concern that this authority could be used to collect other types of records in bulk as well, including information on credit card purchases, medical records, library records, firearm sales records, financial information and a range of other sensitive subjects.  These other types of collection could clearly have a significant impact on Americans’ constitutional rights.   “Intelligence officials have noted that the bulk email records program was discussed with both Congress and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.  In our judgment it is also important to note that intelligence agencies made statements to both Congress and the Court that significantly exaggerated this program’s effectiveness.  This experience demonstrates to us that intelligence agencies’ assessments of the usefulness of particular collection programs – even significant ones – are not always accurate.  This experience has also led us to be skeptical of claims about the value of the bulk phone records collection program in particular.  
  • “We believe that the broader lesson here is that even though intelligence officials may be well-intentioned, assertions from intelligence agencies about the value and effectiveness of particular programs should not simply be accepted at face value by policymakers or oversight bodies any more than statements about the usefulness of other government programs should be taken at face value when they are made by other government officials.  It is up to Congress, the courts and the public to ask the tough questions and press even experienced intelligence officials to back their assertions up with actual evidence, rather than simply deferring to these officials’ conclusions without challenging them.   “We look forward to continuing the debate about the effectiveness of the ongoing Patriot Act phone records collection program in the days and weeks ahead.”
Paul Merrell

Lawmakers, privacy advocates call for reforms at NSA - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...3-a07f-49ddc7417125_story.html

surveillance state NSA privacy-violations Wyden Udall

shared by Paul Merrell on 17 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • Some lawmakers called Friday for reforms and greater transparency in the surveillance operations of the National Security Agency following a report that the agency repeatedly violated privacy rules, while U.S. officials stressed that any mistakes are not intentional. The contrasting reactions came after The Washington Post reported that the NSA broke rules or overstepped its legal authority thousands of times in recent years, and the chief judge of the special federal surveillance court that oversees NSA spy programs said the court’s ability to provide oversight is limited.
  • Two leading critics of the surveillance programs said Friday that the administration has long underplayed the programs’ impact on privacy. “We believe Americans should know” that the report of violations “is just the tip of a larger iceberg,” Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Mark Udall (D-Colo.) said in a statement.
  • Paul Merrell on 17 Aug 13
     
    "We believe Americans should know" that the report of violations "is just the tip of a larger iceberg," Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Mark Udall (D-Colo.) said in a statement. Along the same lines, The Guardian's Glenn Greenwald said a few days ago that the most important articles about the NSA scandal have yet to be published, which suggests that The Guardian and The Washington Post articles so far are building credibility for even more important revelations.  
Paul Merrell

The Only Thing We Have to Fear Is -- The CIA | War Is A Crime .org - 0 views

warisacrime.org/...only-thing-we-have-fear-cia

conspiracies JFK Obama CIA Senate-Intelligence_Committee-Report CIA-stonewalling

shared by Paul Merrell on 24 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • Fifty years ago, exactly one month after John Kennedy was killed, the Washington Post published an op-ed titled “Limit CIA Role to Intelligence.” The first sentence of that op-ed on Dec. 22, 1963, read, “I think it has become necessary to take another look at the purpose and operations of our Central Intelligence Agency.” It sounded like the intro to a bleat from some liberal professor or journalist. Not so. The writer was former President Harry S. Truman, who spearheaded the establishment of the CIA 66 years ago, right after World War II, to better coordinate U.S. intelligence gathering. But the spy agency had lurched off in what Truman thought were troubling directions.
  • Is this why the President feels he cannot fire his clumsily devious Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who had to apologize to Congress for giving “clearly erroneous” testimony in March? Is this why he allows National Security Agency Director Keith Alexander and counterparts in the FBI to continue to mislead the American people, even though the intermittent snow showers from Snowden show our senior national security officials to have lied — and to have been out of control? This may be small solace to President Obama, but there is no sign that the NSA documents that Snowden’s has released include the Senate Intelligence Committee’s 6,300-page report on CIA torture. Rather, that report, at least, seems sure to be under Obama’s and Senate Intelligence Committee chair Dianne Feinstein’s tight control.
  • But Kennedy stuck to his guns, so to speak. He fired Dulles and his co-conspirators a few months after the abortive invasion, and told a friend that he wanted to “splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it into the winds.” The outrage was very obviously mutual.
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  • Truman concluded the op-ed with an admonition that was as clear as the syntax was clumsy: “I would like to see the CIA restored to its original assignment as the intelligence arm of the President, and that whatever else it can properly perform in that special field – and that its operational duties be terminated or properly used elsewhere.” The importance and prescient nature of that admonition are even clearer today, a half-century later.
  • After Kennedy was murdered in Dallas, the patrician, well-connected Dulles got himself appointed to the Warren Commission and took the lead in shaping the investigation of JFK’s assassination. Documents in the Truman Library show that Dulles also mounted a small domestic covert action of his own to neutralize any future airing of Truman’s and Souers’s warnings about covert action.
  • As the de facto head of the Warren Commission, Dulles was perfectly positioned to protect himself and his associates, were any commissioners or investigators — or journalists — tempted to question whether Dulles and the CIA played a role in killing Kennedy. And so, the question: Did Allen Dulles and other “cloak-and-dagger” CIA operatives have a hand in John Kennedy’s assassination and in then covering it up? In my view, the best dissection of the evidence pertaining to the murder appeared in James Douglass’s 2008 book, JFK and the Unspeakable. After updating and arraying the abundant evidence, and conducting still more interviews, Douglass concludes that the answer is Yes.
  • The mainstream media had an allergic reaction to Douglass’s book and gave it almost no reviews. It is, nevertheless, still selling well. And, more important, it seems a safe bet that President Barack Obama knows what it says and maybe has even read it. This may go some way toward explaining why Obama has been so deferential to the CIA, NSA, FBI and the Pentagon. Could this be at least part of the reason he felt he had to leave the Cheney/Bush-anointed torturers, kidnappers and black-prison wardens in place, instructing his first CIA chief Leon Panetta to become, in effect, the agency’s lawyer rather than leader.
  • Sadly, those concerns that Truman expressed in that op-ed — that he had inadvertently helped create a Frankenstein monster — are as valid today as they were 50 years ago, if not more so.
  • But the timorous President has a big problem. He is acutely aware that, if released, the Senate committee report would create a firestorm – almost certainly implicating Obama’s CIA Director John Brennan and many other heavy-hitters of whom he appears to be afraid. And so Obama has allowed Brennan to play bureaucratic games, delaying release of the report for more than a year, even though its conclusions are said to closely resemble earlier findings of the CIA’s own Inspector General and the Constitution Project (see below).
  • Hat tip to the New Yorker’s Jane Mayer, who took the trouble to read the play-by-play of testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee by former CIA General Counsel (2009-2013) Stephen W. Preston, nominated (and now confirmed) to be general counsel at the Department of Defense. Under questioning by Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colorado, Preston admitted outright that, contrary to the CIA’s insistence that it did not actively impede congressional oversight of its detention and interrogation program, “briefings to the committee included inaccurate information related to aspects of the program of express interest to Members.”
  • That “inaccurate information” apparently is thoroughly documented in the Senate Intelligence Committee report which, largely because of the CIA’s imaginative foot-dragging, cost taxpayers $40 million. Udall has revealed that the report (which includes 35,000 footnotes) contains a very long section titled “C.I.A. Representations on the C.I.A. Interrogation Program and the Effectiveness of the C.I.A.’s Enhanced Interrogation Techniques to Congress.” Preston also acknowledged that the CIA inadequately informed the Justice Department on interrogation and detention. He said, “CIA’s efforts fell well short of our current practices when it comes to providing information relevant to [the Office of Legal Counsel]’s legal analysis.”
  • As Katherine Hawkins, the senior investigator for last April’s bipartisan, independent report by the Constitution Project’s Task Force on Detainee Treatment, noted in an Oct. 18, 2013 posting, the memos from acting OLC chief, Steven Bradbury, relied very heavily on now-discredited CIA claims that “enhanced interrogation” saved lives, and that the sessions were carefully monitored by medical and psychological personnel to ensure that detainees’ suffering would not rise to the level of torture. According to Hawkins, Udall complained – and Preston admitted – that, in providing the materials requested by the committee, “the CIA removed several thousand CIA documents that the agency thought could be subjected to executive privilege claims by the President, without any decision by Obama to invoke the privilege.”
  • Worse still for the CIA, the Senate Intelligence Committee report apparently destroys the agency’s argument justifying torture on the grounds that there was no other way to acquire the needed information save through brutalization. In his answers to Udall, Preston concedes that, contrary to what the agency has argued, it can and has been established that legal methods of interrogation would have yielded the same intelligence. Is anyone still wondering why our timid President is likely to sit on the Senate Intelligence Committee report for as long as he can? Or why he will let John Brennan redact it to a fare-thee-well, if he is eventually forced to release some of it by pressure from folks who care about things like torture?
  • It does appear that the newly taciturn CIA Director Brennan has inordinate influence over the President in such matters – not unlike the influence that both DNI Clapper and NSA Director Alexander seem able to exert. In this respect, Brennan joins the dubious company of the majority of his predecessor CIA directors, as they made abundantly clear when they went to inordinate lengths to prevent their torturer colleagues from being held accountable. (Also, see “CIA Torturers Running Scared,” Sept. 20, 2009; or “Are Presidents Afraid of the CIA?” Dec. 29, 2009)
Paul Merrell

James Clapper Confirms VADM Mike Rogers Needlessly Obfuscated in Confirmation Hearing |... - 0 views

www.emptywheel.net/...scated-in-confirmation-hearing

surveillance state NSA lies Clapper Mike-Rogers

shared by Paul Merrell on 02 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • On Friday, James Clapper finally provided Ron Wyden an unclassified response to a question he posed on January 29, admitting that the NSA conducts back door searches. (via Charlie Savage) As reflected in the August 2013 Semiannual Assessment of Compliance with Procedures and Guidelines Issued Pursuant to Section 702, which we declassified and released on August 21, 2013, there have been queries, using U.S. person identifiers, of communications lawfully acquired to obtain foreign intelligence by targeting non U.S. persons reasonably believed to be located outside the U.S. pursuant to Section 702 of FISA. It has taken just 9 months for Clapper to admit that, contrary to months of denials, the NSA (and FBI, which he doesn’t confirm but which the Report makes clear, as well as the CIA) can get the content of Americans’ communications without a warrant. But Clapper’s admission that this fact was declassified in August should disqualify Vice Admiral Mike Rogers from confirmation as CyberComm head (I believe he started serving as DIRNSA head, which doesn’t require confirmation, yesterday). Because it means Rogers refused to answer a question the response to which was already declassified.
  • Udall: If I might, in looking ahead, I want to turn to the 702 program and ask a policy question about the authorities under Section 702 that’s written into the FISA Amendments Act. The Committee asked your understanding of the legal rationale for NASA [sic] to search through data acquired under Section 702 using US person identifiers without probable cause. You replied the NASA–the NSA’s court approved procedures only permit searches of this lawfully acquired data using US person identifiers for valid foreign intelligence purposes and under the oversight of the Justice Department and the DNI. The statute’s written to anticipate the incidental collection of Americans’ communications in the course of collecting the communications of foreigners reasonably believed to be located overseas. But the focus of that collection is clearly intended to be foreigners’ communications, not Americans. But declassified court documents show that in 2011 the NSA sought and obtained the authority to go through communications collected under Section 702 and conduct warrantless searches for the communications of specific Americans. Now, my question is simple. Have any of those searches been conducted?
  • Rogers: I apologize Sir, I’m not in a position to answer that as the nominee. Udall: You–yes. Rogers: But if you would like me to come back to you in the future if confirmed to be able to specifically address that question I will be glad to do so, Sir. Udall: Let me follow up on that. You may recall that Director Clapper was asked this question in a hearing earlier this year and he didn’t believe that an open forum was the appropriate setting in which to discuss these issues. The problem that I have, Senator Wyden’s had, and others is that we’ve tried in various ways to get an unclassified answer — simple answer, yes or no — to the question. We want to have an answer because it relates — the answer does — to Americans’ privacy. Can you commit to answering the question before the Committee votes on your nomination?
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  • Rogers: Sir, I believe that one of my challenges as the Director, if confirmed, is how do we engage the American people — and by extension their representatives — in a dialogue in which they have a level of comfort as to what we are doing and why. That is no insignificant challenge for those of us with an intelligence background, to be honest. But I believe that one of the takeaways from the situation over the last few months has been as an intelligence professional, as a senior intelligence leader, I have to be capable of communicating in a way that we are doing and why to the greatest extent possible. That perhaps the compromise is, if it comes to the how we do things, and the specifics, those are perhaps best addressed in classified sessions, but that one of my challenges is I have to be able to speak in broad terms in a way that most people can understand. And I look forward to that challenge. Udall: I’m going to continue asking that question and I look forward to working with you to rebuild the confidence. [my emphasis]
  • I assume that now that Clapper has given him the okay to discuss unclassified topics with Congress, Rogers will now provide a forthright answer, all the while claiming he was ignorant about the answer at the time (fine! then make me DIRNSA because I know more about it!). But Rogers’ response went far beyond such an answer. He refused — not just in the hearing but even after it — to commit to answering a question with a completely unclassified answer. And as I pointed out in this post, his written answers were even more obfuscatory. I don’t get a vote. But I think this should disqualify him as a nominee.
  • Update: Here’s the exchange in Rogers’ questions for the record on back door searches. What is your understanding of the legal rationale for NSA to search through data acquired under section 702 using U.S. Persons identifiers without probable cause? Information acquired by NSA under Section 702 of FI SA must be handled in strict accordance with minimization procedures adopted by the Attorney General and approved by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. As required by the statute and certifications approving Section 702 acquisitions, such activities must be limite d to targeting non-U.S. persons reasonably believed to be located outside the United States . NSA’s Court-approved procedures only permit searches of this lawfully acquired data using U.S. person identifiers for valid foreign intelligence purposes and under the oversight of the Department of Justice and Office of Director of National Intelligence.
Paul Merrell

"Campaign Finance Reform" - That'll Shut 'Em Up | Move to Amend - 0 views

movetoamend.org/-finance-reform-thatll-shut-em

U.S. Constitution amendments legislation Move-to-Amend

shared by Paul Merrell on 14 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • Remember in 2009, when the way our elections were financed was perfect, corporate power was reined in by Congress, and everything was A-OK and hunky-dory? Me neither. Liberals have been rejoicing over the introduction and recent committee passage of SJR-19, a proposed constitutional amendment to reverse the Supreme Court’s Citizens United vs. FEC and McCutcheon vs. FEC decisions. In essence, the amendment says states have the power to regulate campaign spending, and Congress has the power to regulate outside spending in elections. Sounds good, right? Wrong. Senator Mark Udall’s (D-NM) proposed constitutional amendment is an election-year bone thrown at the masses, who are in a populist rage over the corruption of our government by corporate power and big moneyed interests. In introducing this amendment and passing it in committee, DC politicians are saying that they hear us, understand we’re upset, and are hoping that we’ll be satisfied with a half-measure that any corporate lawyer worth his salt can find his way around.
  • Udall and the 40-plus Democrats who have co-sponsored the legislation are aiming to placate us with an amendment that takes us back to 2009. Even before Citizens United emerged and significantly changed the financing of campaigns, McCain-Feingold, the last significant campaign finance reform bill, which was already riddled with loopholes, had been mostly gutted by the Bush administration’s chief justice of the Supreme Court in 2007. Celebrating SJR-19 as the be-all, end-all constitutional amendment that will make our government accountable to the people again is laughable. It’s akin to the captain of the Titanic applying chewed-up bubble gum on the hole in the ship and calling it good. So how do we fix the gushing head-wound that is our democracy? Udall has it half-right with a constitutional amendment, but his doesn’t go nearly far enough. Instead, we need a constitutional amendment that explicitly defines human beings as people, and corporations as artificial entities not deserving of constitutional rights. And it needs to state that money is not political speech. Any amendment that doesn’t make these two points is a waste of an amendment. You only get one shot with a constitutional amendment, so if you’re going to do it, go all the way or don’t do it at all.
  • A constitutional amendment abolishing constitutional rights for corporations would overturn not only Citizens United vs. FEC, but also Buckley vs. Valeo and Union Pacific Railroad vs. Santa Clara County, which originally established the concept of corporate personhood. It would also, by default, abolish all subsequent Supreme Court cases based on the constitutional rights of corporations, likeBurwell vs. Hobby Lobby, for instance. And abolishing the concept of money as political speech would strip outside interests of the ability to spend unlimited amounts of money on despicable TV ads that perpetuate falsehoods about candidates. Not only would we have clean elections, but we would finally be able to say that fictitious entities like corporations no longer have the right to walk all over people in the name of profit. Luckily, there’s already wide grassroots support for such an amendment. Through Move to Amend’s efforts, 478 local, county, and state government entities have passed resolutions calling for a constitutional amendment to end corporate personhood and money as speech. State legislatures in Delaware, Illinois, and Vermont have all called for such an amendment. Voters in Montana approved a statewide ballot initiative to do the same. The Minnesota and West Virginia Senates both passed resolutions. Resolutions are currently in progress at the Minnesota and Arizona House, the California Senate, and in both the House and Senate in Texas. The people aren’t waiting on Cong! ress to do what needs to be done.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Congress should take its lead from the people, who have already made it very clear in both red and blue states that a constitutional amendment is needed, and that campaign finance reform is only scratching the surface. Such an amendment has already been introduced in Congress by Representative Rick Nolan (DFL-Minn.) in February of 2013. Udall and his co-sponsors should take their cues from HJR-29, or the “We the People Amendment,” if they’re serious about representing the people’s interests. Anything else is an election-year bone not to be taken seriously.
Paul Merrell

CIA Accused Of Spying On Senate Intelligence Committee Staffers | Techdirt - 0 views

www.techdirt.com/...gence-committee-staffers.shtml

surveillance state CIA Senate-Intelligence-Committee torture lies

shared by Paul Merrell on 07 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • The details are still a little cloudy, but in December, Senator Mark Udall revealed that the Senate Intelligence Committee had come across an internal CIA study that apparently corroborated the information that is in the big Senate report -- and which directly contradicted claims by the CIA to the Committee about how the report was inaccurate -- suggesting that, on top of everything else, the CIA lied to the Intelligence Committee. Udall quizzed CIA boss John Brennan about that internal report. And according to the NY Times, it appears that CIA folks freaked out that the Intelligence Committee somehow got access to that internal study, and responded the way the CIA knows best: by starting to spy on Intelligence Committee staffers: The agency’s inspector general began the inquiry partly as a response to complaints from members of Congress that C.I.A. employees were improperly monitoring the work of staff members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, according to government officials with knowledge of the investigation. The committee has spent several years working on a voluminous report about the detention and interrogation program, and according to one official interviewed in recent days, C.I.A. officers went as far as gaining access to computer networks used by the committee to carry out its investigation.
  • On Tuesday, Udall sent a strongly worded letter to President Obama, pushing for the declassification and release of the big 6,300 page report, but also that internal CIA study, which would highlight how the CIA lied. On top of that, he made an oblique reference to this spying activity by the CIA: As you are aware, the CIA has recently taken unprecedented action against the Committee in relation to the internal CIA review, and I find these actions to be incredibly troubling for the Committee's oversight responsibilities and for our democracy. It is essential that the Committee be able to do its oversight work -- consistent with our constitutional principle of the separation of powers -- without the CIA posing impediments or obstacles as it is today. In many ways, the idea that the CIA is directly spying on the Senate Committee charged with its own oversight is a bigger potential scandal than many of the Snowden NSA revelations so far. Even more importantly, it may finally lead to Congress taking action against an out-of-control intelligence community.
Paul Merrell

Senators clash with Justice Department lawyer over CIA intelligence memos | World news ... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...er-over-cia-intelligence-memos

surveillance state CIA NSA oversight secret-law

shared by Paul Merrell on 22 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • An argument about a secret congressional committee's ability to review the US intelligence agencies exploded into rare public view on Tuesday as angry senators demanded legal memos from a nominee to run the CIA's legal office. Caroline Krass, a top justice department lawyer, sparked the ire of several Senate intelligence committee members by claiming that crucial legal opinions about intelligence matters were beyond the scope of the committee. Asked directly and repeatedly if the Senate panel was entitled to the memos, which several senators claimed were crucial for performing their oversight functions, Krass replied: "I do not think so, as a general matter." Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who chairs the committee, suggested that Krass placed her nomination as CIA general counsel in jeopardy. "You are going to encounter some heat in that regard," Feinstein said.
  • The Senate intelligence committee, whose public hearings are increasingly rare, is usually a bastion of support for the CIA and its sister intelligence agencies. The exception is the committee's prolonged fight with the CIA over a 6,300-page report on the agency's torture of terrorism detainees in its custody since 9/11. The committee has prepared its report for years; the former chairman, Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, said the classified version contains 50,000 footnotes. For a year, the panel has sought to release a public version that multiple members of the panel say documents both the brutality of CIA torture and what they have called "lies" told by the CIA to the oversight committees in Congress and the rest of the executive branch concerning its torture practices. CIA director John Brennan, who was a senior CIA official during the years scrutinised by the committee, is resisting release of the report. The CIA has told reporters that the report contains numerous factual errors, which Senator Mark Udall, a Colorado Democrat on the panel, said on Tuesday was a "misleading" and self-serving description of differences of "interpretation" between the agency and the committee. "I'm more confident than ever in the factual accuracy" of the torture report, Udall said.
  • The panel said at the hearing that the CIA is stalling on the provision of documents to the committee that will help it complete its work. Krass, a former White House official who worked alongside Brennan there, did not assure the committee she would help provide them. Krass said the general counsel of the CIA had a "duty and obligation to make sure the committee understands the legal basis" for CIA activities. She worried that disclosure of the legal memos themselves would inhibit the executive branch from candidly discussing policy proposals for fear of embarrassing public disclosure. Several senators found Krass's statement insufficient. Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat who has investigated torture while serving on the Armed Services Committee as well, asked if the committee was "entitled" to the opinions as a matter of oversight. Krass said her "caveated answer" was, "I do not think so, as a general matter." It is unclear if the committee will reject Krass's nomination. But the two-hour exchange highlighted the difficulties the intelligence committees can face in getting basic factual information from the intelligence agencies they are tasked with overseeing.
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  • Those difficulties carry over to the ongoing controversy about the NSA's bulk surveillance activities, Udall and his colleague Ron Wyden of Oregon have charged. But they are the only dissenters on a committee that has been stalwart in favour of the NSA, even as the committee is feuding with the CIA. Feinstein got Krass to say she disagreed with a federal judge's opinion on Monday that the NSA's bulk surveillance of US phone data was likely unconstitutional. Krass, who would have a limited ability to oversee that program at CIA but likely has insight into it through her Justice Department role, disputed Judge Richard Leon's assessment that such constitutional protections surround that data. "I have a different view about the Fourth Amendment," Krass said. Feinstein said she agreed with Krass, but said no one on the committee wished to contravene the constitution, urging the Supreme Court to settle the issue.
  • Paul Merrell on 22 Dec 13
     
    John Kennedy had the right idea: abolish the CIA. 
Paul Merrell

Lawmakers vow to constrain NSA from collecting U.S. phone records - latimes.com - 0 views

www.latimes.com/...cords-20131222,0,6798521.story

surveillance state NSA NSA-blowback NSA-reform legislation

shared by Paul Merrell on 24 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • The drive to end the bulk collection of phone records by the National Security Agency is gaining strength, as Senate Democrats said Sunday that Congress will change the law to ban the practice if President Obama does not do it first. “It’s time to have real reform, not a veneer of reform,” said Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.), a longtime critic of the NSA. “We have got to rebuild the American people’s trust in our intelligence community so we can be safe,” he said on ABC’s "This Week." “But we don’t do that by bulk data collection that violates the privacy of Americans. That’s unconstitutional, and has shown to not be effective.” Last week, a federal judge said the routine collection of the dialing records is probably unconstitutional, and a panel appointed by President Obama recommended a major change. “We believe the government shouldn’t hold this data any longer,” Michael Morrell, a former acting director of the CIA and a panel member, said on CBS’ "Face the Nation." He said the phone records could be held by the phone companies or by another private group. Then, the government would “need a court order every time they wanted to query that data,” he said. Despite the need for reforms, Morrell said the original purpose of the program still makes sense. He said it is crucial the NSA and the FBI can move quickly if there is reason to believe that a “terrorist overseas is talking to someone in the United States.”
  • But the government does not need to collect and store all of these dialing records, he said, so long as they are held in private hands. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) said he will press ahead in January to pass a bill that forbids the NSA from collecting phone records. He is sponsoring the USA Freedom Act with former House Judiciary Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) to close what they now see as a loophole in the law.
  • Paul Merrell on 24 Dec 13
     
    Wrong approach, in my opinion. None of the NSA reform measures so far take aim at the problem's roots. Those are unwarranted government secrecy, lack of reviewability by the courts at the request of the affected public, and no clear definition of digital privacy rights. Make something illegal for the NSA to do and DoD will just transfer those responsibilities to another of its agencies or farm it out to one of the other 5 Eyes nations to perform for them.   
Paul Merrell

Senate Intelligence Committee Passes Bill That Codifies, Expands NSA Powers - 0 views

www.huffingtonpost.com/...senate-bill-nsa_n_4183183.html

surveillance state NSA legislation Feinstein

shared by Paul Merrell on 02 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • Just days after expressing outrage over reports of widespread surveillance of foreign leaders by the National Security Agency, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) pushed through the Senate Intelligence Committee on an 11-4 vote a bill that enshrines the bulk collection of Americans' phone call records into law, and expands the agency's authority to track foreign nationals who enter the United States. The bill, passed on Thursday, is meant to respond to the revelations of leaker Edward Snowden. But critics immediately charged that it does little more than offer a fig leaf for the NSA's controversial surveillance operations.
  • In his statement, Udall disagreed. "The NSA's ongoing, invasive surveillance of Americans' private information does not respect our constitutional values and needs fundamental reform -- not incidental changes," Udall said. "Unfortunately, the bill passed by the Senate Intelligence Committee does not go far enough to address the NSA's overreaching domestic surveillance programs." Udall is a co-sponsor of a bill introduced earlier this week by Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wisc.) and Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) that would end the NSA's bulk collection of phone call records. The passage of Feinstein's bill sets up a confrontation with Leahy's Judiciary Committee over what version of NSA reform Congress will produce. "The Feinstein bill is terrible and would make things worse. I think the Leahy-Sensenbrenner bill begins to address some of the problems" with the NSA, said Jennifer Granick, director of civil liberties at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society. Neither bill, Granick said, addresses the NSA's infiltration of Yahoo and Google data centers worldwide, which could provide the agency a pathway to collecting Americans' communications.
  • Paul Merrell on 02 Nov 13
     
    Wow! That was quick. The text of the bill wasn't even publicly available yesterday. Diane Feinstein is trying to railroad the NSA's wet dream through the Senate. Earlier in the week, she was calling for a lengthy investigation but suddenly flips sides again. NSA blackmail?
Paul Merrell

Justice Dept. Criticized on Spying Statements - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ized-on-spying-statements.html

surveillance state NSA litigation lies Udall Wyden

shared by Paul Merrell on 22 May 14 - No Cached
  • Two Democratic senators accused the Obama administration on Tuesday of seeking to “ignore or justify” statements it made to the Supreme Court about warrantless surveillance by the National Security Agency, contributing to what they called a “culture of misinformation” by the executive branch.In a letter to Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr., the senators, Mark Udall of Colorado and Ron Wyden of Oregon, maintained that the Justice Department was not being forthright about what they portrayed as factual misrepresentations to the Supreme Court in 2012. The case involved a challenge to the constitutionality of a law permitting warrantless N.S.A. surveillance.
Paul Merrell

WASHINGTON: Citing redactions, Feinstein delays release of report on CIA interrogations... - 0 views

www.newsobserver.com/...s-fuel-to-cia-controversy.html

war & peace torture CIA Senate-Intelligence_Committee-Report declassification

shared by Paul Merrell on 02 Aug 14 - No Cached
  • The Obama administration censored significant portions of the findings of an investigation into the CIA’s use of harsh interrogation methods on suspected terrorists, forcing the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee to delay their release “until further notice.”The postponement late Friday added to serious frictions over the investigation between the administration and lawmakers, who have been pressing for the swiftest, most extensive publication of the findings on one of darkest chapters in the CIA’s 65-year history.Feinstein announced the delay only hours after the White House returned the document to her after it completed its declassification review
  • “A preliminary review of the report indicates that there have been significant redactions. We need additional time to understand the basis for these redactions and determine their justification,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said in a statement.Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colo., a member of the committee who’s been fiercely critical of the CIA interrogation program, also decried the blackouts, saying President Barack Obama had pledged to ensure a release of the findings.“I am concerned about the excessive redactions Chairman Feinstein referenced in her statement, especially given the president’s unequivocal commitment to declassifying the Senate Intelligence Committee’s study,” Udall said. “I promised earlier this year to hold the president to his word and I intend to do so.”Udall vowed to work with Feinstein to declassify the findings “to the fullest extent possible, correct the record on the CIA’s brutal and ineffective detention and interrogation program, and ensure the CIA learns from its past mistakes.”
  • Reacting to Feinstein’s announcement, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said that more than 85 percent of the report had been declassified and half of the redactions were in footnotes. “The redactions were the result of an extensive and unprecedented inter-agency process, headed up by my office, to protect sensitive classified information,” Clapper said in a statement. “We are confident that the declassified document delivered to the committee will provide the public with a full view of the committee’s report on the detention and interrogation program, and we look forward to a constructive dialogue with the committee.”
  • Paul Merrell on 02 Aug 14
     
    The Great CIA Torture Cover-up Continues, now in its 12th year. And even the summary of the Senate report, sanitized by the Senate Intelligence Committee for complete public release, now gets axed by CIA. Our great-great-grandchildren might even get to read the full report, long after everyone involved in these war crimes has died.  
Gary Edwards

We Call a Top NSA Whistleblower … And Get the REAL SCOOP on Spying | Washingt... - 0 views

www.washingtonsblog.com/...ope-of-the-spying-program.html

William-Binney NSA-Whistleblower NSA-Patriot-Act NARUS Verint

shared by Gary Edwards on 10 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 10 Jun 13
     
    "NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake corroborated Klein's assertions, testifying that while the NSA is using Israeli-made NARUS hardware to "seize and save all personal electronic communications." ..................... I then asked the NSA veteran Binney if the government's claim that it is only spying on metadata - and not content - was correct. We have extensively documented that the government is likely recording content as well. (And the government has previously admitted to "accidentally" collecting more information on Americans than was legal, and then gagged the judges so they couldn't disclose the nature or extent of the violations.) Binney said that was not true; the government is gathering everything, including content. Binney explained - as he has many times before - that the government is storing everything, and creating a searchable database … to be used whenever it wants, for any purpose it wants (even just going after someone it doesn't like). ..................... Binney said that former FBI counter-terrorism agent Tim Clemente is correct when he says that no digital data is safe (Clemente says that all digital communications are being recorded). Both Verint and Narus were founded in Israel in the 1990s. *** Binney next confirmed the statement of the author of the Patriot Act - Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner - that the NSA spying programs violate the Patriot Act. After all, the Patriot Act is focused on spying on external threats … not on Americans. Binney asked rhetorically: "How can an American court [FISA or otherwise] tell telecoms to cough up all domestic data?!" Update: Binney sent the following clarifying email about content collection: It's clear to me that they are collecting most e-mail in full plus other text type data on the web. As for phone calls, I don't think they would record/transcribe the approximately 3 billion US-to-US calls every day. It's more likely that they are reco
Paul Merrell

Boundless Informant: the NSA's secret tool to track global surveillance data | World ne... - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...ss-informant-global-datamining

security state NSA digital surveillance perjury

shared by Paul Merrell on 11 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • The National Security Agency has developed a powerful tool for recording and analysing where its intelligence comes from, raising questions about its repeated assurances to Congress that it cannot keep track of all the surveillance it performs on American communications. The Guardian has acquired top-secret documents about the NSA datamining tool, called Boundless Informant, that details and even maps by country the voluminous amount of information it collects from computer and telephone networks.
  • The heatmap gives each nation a color code based on how extensively it is subjected to NSA surveillance. The color scheme ranges from green (least subjected to surveillance) through yellow and orange to red (most surveillance).The disclosure of the internal Boundless Informant system comes amid a struggle between the NSA and its overseers in the Senate over whether it can track the intelligence it collects on American communications. The NSA's position is that it is not technologically feasible to do so.
  • A snapshot of the Boundless Informant data, contained in a top secret NSA "global heat map" seen by the Guardian, shows that in March 2013 the agency collected 97bn pieces of intelligence from computer networks worldwide.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • The focus of the internal NSA tool is on counting and categorizing the records of communications, known as metadata, rather than the content of an email or instant message. The Boundless Informant documents show the agency collecting almost 3 billion pieces of intelligence from US computer networks over a 30-day period ending in March 2013. One document says it is designed to give NSA officials answers to questions like, "What type of coverage do we have on country X" in "near real-time by asking the SIGINT [signals intelligence] infrastructure."An NSA factsheet about the program, acquired by the Guardian, says: "The tool allows users to select a country on a map and view the metadata volume and select details about the collections against that country."
  • At a hearing of the Senate intelligence committee In March this year, Democratic senator Ron Wyden asked James Clapper, the director of national intelligence: "Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?" "No sir," replied Clapper.
  • Other documents seen by the Guardian further demonstrate that the NSA does in fact break down its surveillance intercepts which could allow the agency to determine how many of them are from the US. The level of detail includes individual IP addresses.
  • Senators have expressed their frustration at the NSA's refusal to supply statistics. In a letter to NSA director General Keith Alexander in October last year, senator Wyden and his Democratic colleague on the Senate intelligence committee, Mark Udall, noted that "the intelligence community has stated repeatedly that it is not possible to provide even a rough estimate of how many American communications have been collected under the Fisa Amendments Act, and has even declined to estimate the scale of this collection."At a congressional hearing in March last year, Alexander denied point-blank that the agency had the figures on how many Americans had their electronic communications collected or reviewed. Asked if he had the capability to get them, Alexander said: "No. No. We do not have the technical insights in the United States." He added that "nor do we do have the equipment in the United States to actually collect that kind of information".
  • Paul Merrell on 11 Jun 13
     
    Have NSA and other Administration officials perjured themselves in testimony to Congress? It look that way. Next question: will they be prosecuted?  See also related article at and the leaked FAQ on BoundlessInformant itself at . 
Paul Merrell

In Hearing on Internet Surveillance, Nobody Knows How Many Americans Impacted in Data C... - 0 views

www.eff.org/...w-many-americans-impacted-data

surveillance state NSA 702 FISA legislation backdoor-serches stats

shared by Paul Merrell on 29 May 16 - No Cached
  • The Senate Judiciary Committee held an open hearing today on the FISA Amendments Act, the law that ostensibly authorizes the digital surveillance of hundreds of millions of people both in the United States and around the world. Section 702 of the law, scheduled to expire next year, is designed to allow U.S. intelligence services to collect signals intelligence on foreign targets related to our national security interests. However—thanks to the leaks of many whistleblowers including Edward Snowden, the work of investigative journalists, and statements by public officials—we now know that the FISA Amendments Act has been used to sweep up data on hundreds of millions of people who have no connection to a terrorist investigation, including countless Americans. What do we mean by “countless”? As became increasingly clear in the hearing today, the exact number of Americans impacted by this surveillance is unknown. Senator Franken asked the panel of witnesses, “Is it possible for the government to provide an exact count of how many United States persons have been swept up in Section 702 surveillance? And if not the exact count, then what about an estimate?”
  • Elizabeth Goitein, the Brennan Center director whose articulate and thought-provoking testimony was the highlight of the hearing, noted that at this time an exact number would be difficult to provide. However, she asserted that an estimate should be possible for most if not all of the government’s surveillance programs. None of the other panel participants—which included David Medine and Rachel Brand of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board as well as Matthew Olsen of IronNet Cybersecurity and attorney Kenneth Wainstein—offered an estimate. Today’s hearing reaffirmed that it is not only the American people who are left in the dark about how many people or accounts are impacted by the NSA’s dragnet surveillance of the Internet. Even vital oversight committees in Congress like the Senate Judiciary Committee are left to speculate about just how far-reaching this surveillance is. It's part of the reason why we urged the House Judiciary Committee to demand that the Intelligence Community provide the public with a number. 
  • The lack of information makes rigorous oversight of the programs all but impossible. As Senator Franken put it in the hearing today, “When the public lacks even a rough sense of the scope of the government’s surveillance program, they have no way of knowing if the government is striking the right balance, whether we are safeguarding our national security without trampling on our citizens’ fundamental privacy rights. But the public can’t know if we succeed in striking that balance if they don’t even have the most basic information about our major surveillance programs."  Senator Patrick Leahy also questioned the panel about the “minimization procedures” associated with this type of surveillance, the privacy safeguard that is intended to ensure that irrelevant data and data on American citizens is swiftly deleted. Senator Leahy asked the panel: “Do you believe the current minimization procedures ensure that data about innocent Americans is deleted? Is that enough?”  David Medine, who recently announced his pending retirement from the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, answered unequivocally:
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Senator Leahy, they don’t. The minimization procedures call for the deletion of innocent Americans’ information upon discovery to determine whether it has any foreign intelligence value. But what the board’s report found is that in fact information is never deleted. It sits in the databases for 5 years, or sometimes longer. And so the minimization doesn’t really address the privacy concerns of incidentally collected communications—again, where there’s been no warrant at all in the process… In the United States, we simply can’t read people’s emails and listen to their phone calls without court approval, and the same should be true when the government shifts its attention to Americans under this program. One of the most startling exchanges from the hearing today came toward the end of the session, when Senator Dianne Feinstein—who also sits on the Intelligence Committee—seemed taken aback by Ms. Goitein’s mention of “backdoor searches.” 
  • Feinstein: Wow, wow. What do you call it? What’s a backdoor search? Goitein: Backdoor search is when the FBI or any other agency targets a U.S. person for a search of data that was collected under Section 702, which is supposed to be targeted against foreigners overseas. Feinstein: Regardless of the minimization that was properly carried out. Goitein: Well the data is searched in its unminimized form. So the FBI gets raw data, the NSA, the CIA get raw data. And they search that raw data using U.S. person identifiers. That’s what I’m referring to as backdoor searches. It’s deeply concerning that any member of Congress, much less a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Senate Intelligence Committee, might not be aware of the problem surrounding backdoor searches. In April 2014, the Director of National Intelligence acknowledged the searches of this data, which Senators Ron Wyden and Mark Udall termed “the ‘back-door search’ loophole in section 702.” The public was so incensed that the House of Representatives passed an amendment to that year's defense appropriations bill effectively banning the warrantless backdoor searches. Nonetheless, in the hearing today it seemed like Senator Feinstein might not recognize or appreciate the serious implications of allowing U.S. law enforcement agencies to query the raw data collected through these Internet surveillance programs. Hopefully today’s testimony helped convince the Senator that there is more to this topic than what she’s hearing in jargon-filled classified security briefings.
  • Paul Merrell on 29 May 16
     
    The 4th Amendment: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and *particularly describing the place to be searched, and the* persons or *things to be seized."* So much for the particularized description of the place to be searched and the thngs to be seized.  Fah! Who needs a Constitution, anyway .... 
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