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Paul Merrell

Is there a second NSA leaker after Snowden? | TheHill - 0 views

thehill.com/...5-is-there-a-second-nsa-leaker

surveillance state NSA second-leaker

shared by Paul Merrell on 09 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • Top experts say there could be a new person leaking details about the National Security Agency, in addition to former contractor Edward Snowden.Glenn Greenwald, the journalist most closely associated to Snowden, said he suspects someone else has been involved in leaking out new documents, and other experts have backed up the claim.ADVERTISEMENTThe existence of a second leaker “seems clear at this point,” Greenwald wrote on Twitter over the weekend. “The lack of sourcing to Snowden on this & that last [Der Spiegel] article seems petty telling,” he added, after German broadcasters reported that the NSA was tracking people searching for details about privacy software. 
  • Neither the Der Spiegel article from December nor last week’s story, both of which were partly written by privacy advocate and security researcher Jacob Appelbaum, specifically mentioned that the information emanated from leaks by Snowden.“That's particularly notable given that virtually every other article using Snowden documents - including der Spiegel - specifically identified him as the source,” Greenwald said in an email to The Hill on Monday.Other people who have seen Snowden’s trove of documents have agreed that the documents revealed by German outlets seem to indicate a second source.
  • Bruce Schneier, a cryptologist and cybersecurity expert who has helped the Guardian review Snowden’s disclosures, said he did “not believe that this came from the Snowden documents.”“I think there’s a second leaker out there,” he wrote in a blog post last week. If true, it could add another headache for the NSA, which has struggled for more than a year to contain the fallout from Snowden’s revelations. Defenders of the NSA say that the disclosures have hurt U.S. security and empowered terrorists and other enemies abroad.Among other internal reforms, the spy agency has beefed up its clearance procedures to prevent another employee from passing along secret documents to journalists or governments in Beijing and Moscow.
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  • “If in fact this is a post-Snowden NSA leak, then it’s probably just proof that you can always build a bigger mousetrap; that doesn’t mean you’re going to catch the mice,” said Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at American University who specializes in national security issues.Vladeck added that leaks about controversial national security programs are in many ways inevitable, and may not be tied to Snowden’s leaks in any way.For Greenwald, however, a second leaker would be affirmation of Snowden’s actions.“I've long thought one of the most significant and enduring consequences of Snowden's successful whistleblowing will be that he will inspire other leakers to come forward,” he told The Hill. 
Paul Merrell

New leaker disclosing US secrets, government concludes - CNN.com - 0 views

edition.cnn.com/...index.html

surveillance state no-fly-list terrorist-watch-lists politics of fear new-leaker

shared by Paul Merrell on 06 Aug 14 - No Cached
  • The federal government has concluded there's a new leaker exposing national security documents in the aftermath of surveillance disclosures by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, U.S. officials tell CNN. Proof of the newest leak comes from national security documents that formed the basis of a news story published Tuesday by the Intercept, the news site launched by Glenn Greenwald, who also published Snowden's leaks.
  • The article cites documents prepared by the National Counterterrorism Center dated August 2013, which is after Snowden left the United States to avoid criminal charges. Greenwald has suggested there was another leaker. In July, he said on Twitter "it seems clear at this point" that there was another. Government officials have been investigating to find out that identity.
  • It's not yet clear how many documents the new leaker has shared and how much damage it may cause. So far, the documents shared by the new leaker are labeled "Secret" and "NOFORN," which means it isn't to be shared with foreign government. That's a lower level of classification than most of the documents leaked by Snowden.
Paul Merrell

Feds identify suspected 'second leaker' for Snowden reporters - Yahoo News - 0 views

news.yahoo.com/owden-reporters-165741571.html

surveillance state 2nd-leaker FBI terrorist-watch-lists

shared by Paul Merrell on 28 Oct 14 - No Cached
  • The FBI has identified an employee of a federal contracting firm suspected of being the so-called "second leaker" who turned over sensitive documents about the U.S. government's terrorist watch list to a journalist closely associated with ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden, according to law enforcement and intelligence sources who have been briefed on the case. The FBI recently executed a search of the suspect's home, and federal prosecutors in Northern Virginia have opened up a criminal investigation into the matter, the sources said.
  • vestigative website co-founded by Glenn Greenwald, the reporter who first published sensitive NSA documents obtained from Snowden. Headlined "Barack Obama's Secret Terrorist-Tracking System, by the Numbers," the story cited a classified government document showing that nearly half the people on the U.S. government's master terrorist screening database had "no recognized terrorist affiliation."
  • The story, co-authored by Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Devereaux, was accompanied by a document "obtained from a source in the intelligence community" providing details about the watch-listing system that were dated as late as August 2013, months after Snowden fled to Hong Kong and revealed himself as the leaker of thousands of top secret documents from the NSA. This prompted immediate speculation that there was a "second leaker" inside the U.S. intelligence community providing material to Greenwald and his associates.
Paul Merrell

Edward Snowden comes forward as source of NSA leaks - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...2-a73e-826d299ff459_print.html

security state NSA digital surveillance leaks

shared by Paul Merrell on 10 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • A 29-year-old man who says he is a former undercover CIA employee said Sunday that he was the principal source of recent disclosures about ­top-secret National Security Agency programs, exposing himself to possible prosecution in an acknowledgment that had little if any precedent in the long history of U.S. intelligence leaks. Edward Snowden, a tech specialist who has contracted for the NSA and works for the consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton, unmasked himself as a source after a string of stories in The Washington Post and the Guardian that detailed previously unknown U.S. surveillance programs. He said he disclosed secret documents in response to what he described as the systematic surveillance of innocent citizens.In an interview Sunday, Snowden said he is willing to face the consequences of exposure.“I’m not going to hide,” Snowden told The Post from Hong Kong, where he has been staying. “Allowing the U.S. government to intimidate its people with threats of retaliation for revealing wrongdoing is contrary to the public interest.”
  • Asked whether he believes that his disclosures will change anything, he said: “I think they already have. Everyone everywhere now understands how bad things have gotten — and they’re talking about it. They have the power to decide for themselves whether they are willing to sacrifice their privacy to the surveillance state.”Snowden said nobody had been aware of his actions, including those closest to him. He said there was no single event that spurred his decision to leak the information, but he said President Obama has failed to live up to his pledges of transparency.“My sole motive is to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them,” he said in a note that accompanied the first document he leaked to The Post.The Guardian was the first to publicly identify Snowden, at his request.The White House said late Sunday that it would not have any comment on the matter.
  • In a brief statement, a spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said the intelligence community is “reviewing the damage” the leaks have done. “Any person who has a security clearance knows that he or she has an obligation to protect classified information and abide by the law,” said the spokesman, Shawn Turner.Snowden said he is seeking “asylum from any countries that believe in free speech and oppose the victimization of global privacy,” but the law appears to provide for his extradition from Hong Kong, a semiautonomous territory of China, to the United States.
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  • Snowden’s name surfaced as top intelligence officials in the Obama administration and Congress pushed back against the journalists responsible for revealing the existence of sensitive surveillance programs and called for an investigation into the leaks.Clapper, in an interview with NBC that aired Saturday night, condemned the leaker’s actions but also sought to spotlight the journalists who first reported the programs, calling their disclosures irresponsible and full of “hyperbole.” Earlier Saturday, he issued a statement accusing the media of a “rush to publish.”“For me, it is literally — not figuratively — literally gut-wrenching to see this happen because of the huge, grave damage it does to our intelligence capabilities,” Clapper said.
  • A chief critic of the efforts, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), said he is considering filing a lawsuit against the government and called on 10 million Americans to join in.“I’m going to be asking all the Internet providers and all of the phone companies, ask your customers to join me in a class-action lawsuit,” Paul said on “Fox News Sunday.”
  • Paul Merrell on 10 Jun 13
     
    A new national hero springs forth, Edward Snowden. In related news, those who conduct surveillance for the government seem to object for some reason to being surveilled themselves. 
Gary Edwards

Techdirt: "Microsoft Looked Through Reporter's Hotmail And MSN Chat Accounts To Identif... - 1 views

www.techdirt.com/blog

Microsoft

shared by Gary Edwards on 20 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 20 Mar 14
     
    "Microsoft Looked Through Reporter's Hotmail And MSN Chat Accounts To Identify Windows 8 Leaker from the scroogled? dept Apparently, Microsoft's desire to track down someone who leaked screenshots of Windows 8 is so strong that it's willing to violate its own privacy guidelines and promises to the public -- even if it means undermining Microsoft's main promotional campaign for email services. A few weeks ago, Microsoft promoted Mark Penn to chief strategy officer. Penn is most famous as a PR man and political pollster who was the driving force behind Hillary Clinton's failed campaign for President in 2008. He's known for his negative attack ads and his claims to do everything based on data -- though, people who have explored some of his techniques say it's a lot more flimflam than actual statistical analysis. His main contribution to Microsoft over the past few years seems to be its ridiculous "Scroogled" campaign, in which Microsoft -- a company not at all known for its privacy protections -- attempts to portray Google as being bad on privacy. The campaign has been a colossal and expensive flop according to most. "
  • Paul Merrell on 21 Mar 14
Paul Merrell

U.S., European authorities investigate possible new leaker: sources - Yahoo News - 0 views

news.yahoo.com/-leaker-sources-162443936.html

surveillance state NSA new-leaker

shared by Paul Merrell on 26 Jun 15 - No Cached
  • U.S. and European security authorities are investigating whether a previously unknown leaker provided sensitive intelligence documents to WikiLeaks about alleged U.S. spying on French politicians, according to sources familiar with the matter. WikiLeaks, the transparency lobby group, on Tuesday released purportedly classified National Security Agency (NSA) documents alleging that the U.S. eavesdropping agency conducted surveillance on three successive French presidents - Jacques Chirac, Nicolas Sarkozy and incumbent François Hollande. According to French media outlets, the documents show that Sarkozy considered restarting Israeli-Palestinian peace talks without U.S. participation, and that Hollande worried about the possible exit of Greece from the eurozone back in 2012. U.S. and European security sources said the United States and allied governments were actively considering the possibility that someone other than former NSA contractor Edward Snowden provided the latest documents to WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange.
  • The documents, some of which were published by French investigative website Mediapart, appear to include specific intelligence reports summarizing information collected by U.S. spies. Two people familiar with documentation which Snowden acquired when he worked as an NSA contractor and later supplied to media outlets said that they do not recall seeing these kind of reports among those materials. But some sources familiar with the investigations said it was still possible that these documents originated with Snowden.
Paul Merrell

NEW TIME POLL: Support for the Leaker-and His Prosecution | TIME.com - 0 views

swampland.time.com/...the-leaker-and-his-prosecution

surveillance state NSA polls

shared by Paul Merrell on 15 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • More than half of Americans approve of a former intelligence contractor’s decision to leak classified details of sprawling government surveillance programs, according to the results of a new TIME poll. Fifty-four percent of respondents said the leaker, Edward Snowden, 29, did a “good thing” in releasing information about the government programs, which collect phone, email, and Internet search records in an effort, officials say, to prevent terrorist attacks. Just 30 percent disagreed. But an almost identical number of Americans —  53 percent —  still said he should be prosecuted for the leak, compared to 28% who said he should not. Americans aged 18 to 34 break from older generations in showing far more support for Snowden’s actions. Just 41 percent of that cohort say he should face charges, while 43 percent say he should not. Just 19 percent of that age group say the leak was a “bad thing.”
  • Overall, Americans are sharply divided over the government’s use of surveillance programs to prevent terrorist attacks, according to the results of the poll. Forty-eight percent of Americans approve of the surveillance programs, while 44 percent disapprove, a statistical tie given the poll’s four-point margin of error.
  • A majority of the poll’s respondents say that the surveillance programs have helped protect national security, with 63 percent saying they’ve had “some” or a “great deal” of impact in protecting the country. Just 31 percent says they’ve done “not much” or “nothing at all.” A narrow plurality of those polled, 48 percent to 43 percent, believe that the federal government is striking the right balance between protecting Americans’ privacy and protecting their physical well-being or that the government should be doing more to prevent terrorism.
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  • Nearly 60 percent believe the revelations will not force the government to curtail the surveillance program. But 76 percent of Americans believe there will soon be additional disclosures that the spying programs are bigger and more widespread than currently known. Americans are largely split on partisan grounds as to whether Obama is more careful about respecting privacy than President George W. Bush. Twenty-eight percent said Bush was more careful, one-quarter sided with Obama, and 42 percent say there has been little difference between the two.
Paul Merrell

Wikileaks' Assange Hints Murdered DNC Staffer Was Email-Leaker, Offers $20k Reward For ... - 0 views

www.zerohedge.com/...-leaker-offers-20k-reward-info

Auction 2016 Hillary DNC homicides

shared by Paul Merrell on 12 Aug 16 - No Cached
  • The mysterious circumstances surrounding the death of 27-year-old Democratic-staffer Seth Rich (shot multiple times, and not robbed, at 420am near his home in Washington D.C., where no homicides have been reported within 1500 feet) have stirred Wikileaks founder Julian Assange to offer a $20,000 reward for information leading to a conviction. But it is Assange's comments during a Dutch TV interview that are most disturbing as he hinted that Rich - who was in charge of DNC voter expansion data - was the email-leaker and his death was a politically-motivated assassination.
  • As we detailed previously, the Clinton related body count so far this election cycle:  Five in just under six weeks - four convenient deaths plus one suicide... 1) Shawn Lucas, Sanders supporter who served papers to DNC on the Fraud Case (DOD August 2, 2016)   2) Victor Thorn, Clinton author (and Holocaust denier, probably the least credible on this list) shot himself in an apparent suicide. Conspiracy theorists at Mystery Writers of America said some guys will do anything to sell books. (DOD August, 2016)   3) Seth Conrad Rich, Democratic staffer, aged 27, apparently on his way to speak to the FBI about a case possibly involving the Clintons. The D.C. murder was not a robbery. (DOD July 8, 2016)   4) John Ashe, UN official who allegedly crushed his own throat while lifting weights, because he watched too many James Bond films and wanted to try the move where the bad guy tries to…oh, never mind. “He was scheduled to testify against the Clintons and the Democrat Party.” (DOD June 22, 2016)   5) Mike Flynn, the Big Government Editor for Breitbart News. Mike Flynn’s final article was published the day he died, “Clinton Cash: Bill, Hillary Created Their Own Chinese Foundation in 2014.” (DOD June 23, 2016) It must be coincidence, right?
Gary Edwards

The Empire Takes a Hit: NSA Update - 2 views

........................................................................................ NSA Conversation with retired lawyer and Open Source legal expert, "Marbux". ...........................

Federal-Reserve-Bankster-Cartel NSA

started by Gary Edwards on 15 Jun 13 no follow-up yet
Gary Edwards

New Snowden Statement: 'The Obama Administration Is Afraid of You' - 0 views

pjmedia.com/...dministration-is-afraid-of-you

Edward-Snowden NSA-Patriot-Act-NDAA freedom-liberty American-Revolution

shared by Gary Edwards on 03 Jul 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 03 Jul 13
     
    "This just released by WikiLeaks: July 1st Statement from Super Patriot & NSA Whistleblower extraordinaire, Edward Snowden .......... One week ago I left Hong Kong after it became clear that my freedom and safety were under threat from my government for revealing the truth. My continued liberty has been owed to the efforts of friends new and old, family, and others who I have never met and probably never will. I trusted them with my life and they returned that trust with a faith in me for which I will always be thankful. On Thursday, President Obama declared before the world that he would not permit any diplomatic "wheeling and dealing" over my case. Yet now it is being reported that after promising not to do so, the President ordered his Vice President to pressure the leaders of nations from which I have requested protection to deny my asylum petitions. This kind of deception from a world leader is not justice, and neither is the extralegal penalty of exile. These are the old, bad tools of political aggression. Their purpose is to frighten, not me, but those who would come after me. For decades the United States of America have been one of the strongest defenders of the human right to seek asylum. Sadly, this right, laid out and voted for by the U.S. in Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is now being rejected by the current government of my country. The Obama administration has now adopted the strategy of using citizenship as a weapon. Although I am convicted of nothing, it has unilaterally revoked my passport, leaving me a stateless person. Without any judicial order, the administration now seeks to stop me exercising a basic right. A right that belongs to everybody. The right to seek asylum. In the end the Obama administration is not afraid of whistleblowers like me, Bradley Manning or Thomas Drake. We are stateless, imprisoned, or powerless. No, the Obama administration is afraid of you. It is afraid of an informed, angry public de
Paul Merrell

Chelsea Manning On Obama's "Short List" For Commutation - 0 views

www.mintpressnews.com/...224004

surveillance state whistleblowers Manning Obama pardon commutation

shared by Paul Merrell on 11 Jan 17 - No Cached
  • Whistleblower Chelsea Manning is on President Barack Obama’s “short list” for a potential commutation, a Department of Justice source told NBC News, which adds that the president’s decision could be announced as early as Wednesday. Manning, who is serving a 35-year sentence for leaking evidence of military crimes, has faced solitary confinement for attempting twice to take her own life in the past year.
Paul Merrell

Venezuela, Bolivia offer asylum to U.S. intel leaker Snowden - CNN.com - 1 views

www.cnn.com/...venezuela-snowden

surveillance state NSA Snowden asylum

shared by Paul Merrell on 06 Jul 13 - No Cached
  • Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has offered asylum to Edward Snowden, the state-run AVN news agency reported Friday, without offering details. And Bolivia "is willing to give asylum" to the U.S. intelligence leaker, President Evo Morales said Saturday, according to a government statement. The reports came shortly after Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega said he would grant Snowden asylum in his country "if the circumstances permit." Ortega didn't elaborate on his announcement, made during a speech in Managua, except to say his country is "open and respectful to the right of asylum." "It's clear that that if the circumstances permit it we will gladly receive Snowden and will grant him asylum here in Nicaragua," Ortega said.
  • Meanwhile, an Icelandic lawmaker said Snowden would not get citizenship there, as he had requested, because Iceland's parliament refused to vote on an asylum proposal before ending its current session.
  • Another country that has seemed supportive of Snowden's quest for a new home is Bolivia, whose president has expressed anger at the United States over an incident involving the presidential plane and a rumor about Snowden. Several European countries refused to allow President Evo Morales' plane through their airspace Tuesday because of suspicions Snowden was aboard. With no clear path home available, the flight crew made an emergency landing in Vienna, Austria, where authorities confirmed Snowden was not a passenger. Bolivia's asylum offer is a "fair protest" to the incident, which involved Portugal, Italy, France and Spain, Morales said. Spain has said it did not restrict its airspace during that flight.
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  • He put the blame squarely on the United States for the incident. "Message to the Americans: The empire and its servants will never be able to intimidate or scare us," Morales told supporters at El Alto International Airport outside La Paz, where he arrived late Wednesday. "European countries need to liberate themselves from the imperialism of the Americans." Morales said officials should analyze whether to shut the U.S. Embassy in his country. "Without the United States," he said, "we are better politically and democratically." Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa joined Morales in criticizing the United States' role in the situation, and Venezuela's Maduro blamed the CIA for pressuring the European governments to refuse to grant the plane passage.
  • Paul Merrell on 06 Jul 13
     
    So three potential new homes for Edward Snowden, if he can find a route to one of them between hostile airspaces.
Paul Merrell

Why Leaker Chelsea Manning Should Receive Appropriate Medical Care in Prison | David S.... - 0 views

verdict.justia.com/...opriate-medical-care-in-prison

surveillance state bradley manning crime-and-punishment prison-conditons 8th-Amendment constitutional law

shared by Paul Merrell on 26 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • The day after after being sentenced to 35 years in prison for leaking classified government materials, Bradley Manning declared that she identified as female and preferred to be known as Chelsea Manning. Having struggled with her gender identity for years while serving in the Army, Manning’s gender identity disorder (GID) played a key role in her trial and sentencing. The question remains whether she will receive the hormone replacement therapy she has requested to receive while in prison at Fort Leavenworth. Although the prison has reportedly issued a statement that it does not provide hormone therapy or gender reassignment surgery, recent case law suggests that it may be constitutionally required to do so.In this column I will consider whether Fort Leavenworth must provide Manning with the requested hormone therapy. I will discuss several federal courts’ decisions on the issue, all of which suggest an affirmative answer to this question. Although Fort Leavenworth is not bound by these courts’ rulings, I argue that both as a matter of policy and as a matter of constitutional law, the prison must provide Manning’s requested treatment.
Paul Merrell

Global terror alert inconsistent with U.S. portrayal of weakened al Qaida | McClatchy - 0 views

www.mcclatchydc.com/...terror-alert-inconsistent.html

war & peace war on terror™ al-Qaeda embassy-closures lies

shared by Paul Merrell on 16 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • The Obama administration’s sweeping response to an alleged al Qaida plot – closing diplomatic posts in parts of Africa, the Middle East and Asia – suggests a terrorist organization that’s capable of striking virtually anywhere, not the one U.S. officials have depicted as a group that’s near defeat. Counterterrorism analysts said Monday that the U.S. government’s global response to a threat emanating from Yemen, home to al Qaida’s most active affiliate, was at odds with how dismissive President Barack Obama was in a speech in May, when he said that “not every collection of thugs that labels themselves as al Qaida will pose a credible threat to the United States.”That was only one of a series of public statements by Obama and his Cabinet members that played down the capabilities of al Qaida-linked groups. For at least the past two years, the administration has sought to reassure Americans that al Qaida is “on the run,” while counterterrorism experts were warning about the semiautonomous affiliates that have wreaked havoc in North Africa, Yemen, Iraq and Syria.
  • “The actions the administration is taking now are deeply inconsistent with the portrait of al Qaida strength the administration has been painting,” said Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a counterterrorism specialist at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington research institute.U.S. officials have been secretive about what precise information led to the worldwide travel advisory and embassy closings, but a Yemeni official told McClatchy on Sunday that authorities had intercepted “clear orders” from al Qaida leader Ayman Zawahiri to Nasir al Wuhayshi, the head of the affiliate in Yemen, to carry out an attack.
  • “It’s called politics. They know it’s not true,” said Aaron Zelin, who researches militants for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and blogs about them at Jihadology.net. “The movement has grown over the past two years. The ideology is thriving.” Since the attacks last Sept. 11 on U.S. posts in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi, the administration has dialed back some of that rhetoric and is now more careful to distinguish between “core al Qaida” – Zawahiri and his inner circle – and the resurgent affiliates in the Arabian Peninsula, North Africa, Iraq and Syria. At the White House on Monday, spokesman Jay Carney repeated that distinction, distancing the administration from some of the rosier language of the recent past. He insisted that the administration had made clear that al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula was “of particular concern and has demonstrated both an interest in and a willingness to attempt serious attacks.”
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  • The State Department list of extended closings comprised embassies and consulates in Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, Yemen, Libya, Djibouti, Sudan, Madagascar, Burundi, Rwanda and Mauritius, the last four of which hadn’t been among the first wave announced Friday. Embassies and consulates in Afghanistan, Algeria, Bangladesh, Iraq and Mauritania reopened Monday.
  • Paul Merrell on 16 Aug 13
     
    Was the "intelligence" real that sparked the closing of embassies across the Mideast and Northern Africa or was it fabricated to beef up Obama Administration claims of necessity to conduct dragnet NSA surveillance of electronic communications? Although not mentioned in this McClatchy report, other media outlets have disclosed that the claimed intercept was of a 20-person al-Qaeda leadership telephone conference call, which would suggest -- if one were to accept that version as fact -- that al-Qaeda leadership is oblivious to the facts spilling out around the NSA scandal. Certainly, there has been no effort made by the Administration to brand such disclosures about the "intelligence" as fabricated, nor has there been a call for prosecution of the leaker(s). But the Administration can't have it both ways; either they have no real concern about alerting al-Qaeda to specific instances of surveillance that would allow discernment of surveillance methods, which conflicts with the claimed need for secrecy on the scope of surveillance; or [ii] the "intelligence" was fabricated, embassies were closed, and the  "intelligence" leaked  purely to defend the NSA surveillance program politically in the U.S. 
Paul Merrell

How Ron Wyden nearly became an NSA leaker - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...en-nearly-became-an-nsa-leaker

surveillance state NSA Wyden constitution Speech-&-Debate-Clause

shared by Paul Merrell on 17 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • One of the intelligence community’s most outspoken critics says he considered talking about the National Security Agency’s bulk surveillance program on the Senate floor. In an interview with Rolling Stone, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said he felt pressure from others to disclose the classified information in a way that would have protected him from prosecution. Under the Speech or Debate Clause of the U.S. Constitution, lawmakers receive immunity from lawsuits or trials for acts committed during the process of legislating. If Wyden had spoken out about the NSA, his comments would have become part of the Congressional Record:
  • There are very significant limits [on what you can and cannot say], and they are very cumbersome and unwieldy. If you want to play a watchdog role, you try to work within the rules. This is a sensitive subject. A lot of people have just said to me, “Well, you feel so strongly about [these issues] – when you knew this, why didn’t you just go to the floor of the United States Senate and just, you know, read it all [into the record]?” And, of course, anybody who does this kind of work thinks a lot about that. You think about it all the time. I can see why plenty of people would criticize me – progressives and others. I can understand why plenty of people who have views similar to mine would say they would have done it differently. Wyden has spent years dropping hints that Americans were being spied upon. But despite his outrage, he appears to have chosen to color within the lines.
Gary Edwards

You Won't BELIEVE What's Going On with Government Spying on Americans - BlackListedNews... - 1 views

www.blacklistednews.com/...M.html

NSA-Patriot-Act-NDAA NSA-Whistleblower Edward-Snowden Tyranny-by-Executive-Order spying

shared by Gary Edwards on 20 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 20 Aug 13
     
    "New Revelations Are Breaking Every Day" This web page is very well sourced and filled with links where you will get lost for hours. Excellent reference document ............................ Revelations about the breathtaking scope of government spying are coming so fast that it's time for an updated roundup: - Just weeks after NSA boss Alexander said that a review of NSA spying found not even one violation, the Washington Post published an internal NSA audit showing that the agency has broken its own rules thousands of times each year - 2 Senators on the intelligence committee said the violations revealed in the Post article were just the "tip of the iceberg" - Glenn Greenwald notes:  "One key to the WashPost story: the reports are internal, NSA audits, which means high likelihood of both under-counting & white-washing".(Even so, the White House tried to do damage control by retroactively changing on-the-record quotes) - The government is spying on essentially everything we do. It is not just "metadata" … although that is enough to destroy your privacy - The government has adopted a secret interpretation of the Patriot Act which allows it to pretend that "everything" is relevant … so it spies on everyone - NSA whistleblowers say that the NSA collects all of our conversations word-for-word - It's not just the NSA … Many other agencies, like the FBI and IRS - concerned only with domesticissues - spy on Americans as well - The information gained through spying is shared with federal, state and local agencies, and they are using that information to prosecute petty crimes such as drugs and taxes.  The agencies are instructed to intentionally "launder" the information gained through spying, i.e. to pretend that they got the information in a more legitimate way … and to hide that from defense attorneys and judges - Top counter-terror experts say that the government's mass spying doesn't keep us
Paul Merrell

NSA collects millions of e-mail address books globally - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...3-80c6-7e6dd8d22d8f_story.html

surveillance state NSA email-address-books

shared by Paul Merrell on 16 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • The National Security Agency is harvesting hundreds of millions of contact lists from personal e-mail and instant messaging accounts around the world, many of them belonging to Americans, according to senior intelligence officials and top-secret documents provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. The collection program, which has not been disclosed before, intercepts e-mail address books and “buddy lists” from instant messaging services as they move across global data links. Online services often transmit those contacts when a user logs on, composes a message, or synchronizes a computer or mobile device with information stored on remote servers.
  • The National Security Agency is harvesting hundreds of millions of contact lists from personal e-mail and instant messaging accounts around the world, many of them belonging to Americans, according to senior intelligence officials and top-secret documents provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. The collection program, which has not been disclosed before, intercepts e-mail address books and “buddy lists” from instant messaging services as they move across global data links. Online services often transmit those contacts when a user logs on, composes a message, or synchronizes a computer or mobile device with information stored on remote servers.
  • Rather than targeting individual users, the NSA is gathering contact lists in large numbers that amount to a sizable fraction of the world’s e-mail and instant messaging accounts. Analysis of that data enables the agency to search for hidden connections and to map relationships within a much smaller universe of foreign intelligence targets.During a single day last year, the NSA’s Special Source Operations branch collected 444,743 e-mail address books from Yahoo, 105,068 from Hotmail, 82,857 from Facebook, 33,697 from Gmail and 22,881 from unspecified other providers, according to an internal NSA PowerPoint presentation. Those figures, described as a typical daily intake in the document, correspond to a rate of more than 250 million a year.Each day, the presentation said, the NSA collects contacts from an estimated 500,000 buddy lists on live-chat services as well as from the inbox displays of Web-based e-mail accounts.
Paul Merrell

U.S. to defend Syrian rebels with airpower, including from Assad | Reuters - 0 views

www.reuters.com/...yria-usa-idUSKCN0Q803Y20150803

war & peace Syria U.S.-foreign-policy targeting-Assad Obama cover-up

shared by Paul Merrell on 03 Aug 15 - No Cached
  • The United States has decided to allow airstrikes to defend Syrian rebels trained by the U.S. military from any attackers, even if the enemies hail from forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, U.S. officials said on Sunday.The decision by President Barack Obama, which could deepen the U.S. role in Syria's conflict, aims to shield a still-fledging group of Syrian fighters armed and trained by the United States to battle Islamic State militants -- not forces loyal to Assad.But in Syria's messy civil war, Islamic State is only one of the threats to the U.S. recruits. The first batch of U.S.-trained forces deployed to northern Syria came under fire on Friday from other militants, triggering the first known U.S. airstrikes to support them.U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity to confirm details of the decision, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, said the United States would provide offensive strikes to support advances against Islamic State targets. The United States would also provide defensive support to repel any attackers.
  • The Pentagon and the White House declined to discuss the decision on rules of engagement or confirm comments by the unnamed U.S. officials.
  • The U.S. military launched its program in May to train up to 5,400 fighters a year in what was seen as a test of Obama's strategy of getting local partners to combat extremists and keep U.S. troops off the front lines.The training program has been challenged from the start, with many candidates being declared ineligible and some even dropping out.
  • Paul Merrell on 03 Aug 15
     
    Typical. Authorized leakers announce that Obama has declared war against the democratically-elected government of Syria, then White House officials refuse to confirm it on grounds that a declaration of war is somehow a mere "rule of engagement."  Yet the Constitution holds that only Congress can declare war. 
Paul Merrell

Drone strikes counterproductive, says secret CIA report - 0 views

www.smh.com.au/...ia-report-20141218-129ynq.html

war & peace drone attacks efficacy CIA-report leaked-docs

shared by Paul Merrell on 19 Dec 14 - No Cached
  • Drone strikes and other "targeted killings" of terrorist and insurgent leaders favoured by the US and supported by Australia can strengthen extremist groups and be counterproductive, according to a secret CIA report published by WikiLeaks.According to a leaked document by the CIA's Directorate of Intelligence, "high value targeting" (HVT) involving air strikes and special forces operations against insurgent leaders can be effective, but can also havenegative effects including increasing violence and greater popular support for extremist groups.The leaked document is classified secret and "NoForn" (meaning not to be distributed to non-US nationals) and reviews attacks by the United States and other countries engaged in counter-insurgency operations over the past 50 years.The CIA assessment is the first leaked secret intelligence document published by WikiLeaks since 2011. Led by Australian publisher Julian Assange, the anti-secrecy group says the CIA assessment is the first in what will be a new series of leaked documents relating to the US agency.
  • The 2009 CIA study lends support to critics of US drone strikes in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen by warning that such operations "may increase support for the insurgents, particularly if these strikes enhance insurgent leaders' lore, if non-combatants are killed in the attacks, if legitimate or semi-legitimate politicians aligned with the insurgents are targeted, or if the government is already seen as overly repressive or violent".
  • The CIA study observes that the US-led coalition in Afghanistan made "a sustained effort since 2001 to target Taliban leaders", but "Afghan government corruption and lack of unity, insufficient strength of Afghan and NATO security forces, and the country's endemic lawlessness have constrained the effectiveness of these counter-insurgency elements"."Senior Taliban leaders' use of sanctuary in Pakistan has also complicated the HVT effort," the CIA says. "Moreover, the Taliban has a high overall ability to replace lost leaders, a centralised but flexible command and control overlaid with egalitarian Pashtun structures, and good succession planning and bench strength, especially at the middle levels."The CIA study also reports mixed results for such tactics in Iraq, noting that al-Qaeda in Iraq "initially lost several iterations of its senior leadership and numerous local emirs, but these losses initially did little to slow AQI's momentum".
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  • Similarly, the CIA observes that Israel's "targeted-killings campaign" against Hamas and Hezbollah was of limited effectiveness owing to "decentralised command structures, compartmented leadership, strong succession planning, and deep ties to their communities, making the[se] groups highly resilient to leadership losses".The CIA review does suggest that targeted killings can be useful when they are part of a broader counter-insurgency strategy that employs other military and non-military counter-insurgency instruments. 
  • Drone strikes and other "targeted killings" of terrorist and insurgent leaders favoured by the US and supported by Australia can strengthen extremist groups and be counterproductive, according to a secret CIA report published by WikiLeaks.According to a leaked document by the CIA's Directorate of Intelligence, "high value targeting" (HVT) involving air strikes and special forces operations against insurgent leaders can be effective, but can also havenegative effects including increasing violence and greater popular support for extremist groups.
  • Paul Merrell on 19 Dec 14
     
    The report is at http://www.wikileaks.org/cia-hvt-counterinsurgency/ Apparently we have a new leaker with access to top secret/no foreign documents.  
Paul Merrell

Loopholes, Filing Failures, and Lax Enforcement: How the Foreign Agents Registration Ac... - 0 views

www.pogo.org/...istration-act-falls-short.html

Congress corruption foreign-agents-registration

shared by Paul Merrell on 20 Dec 14 - No Cached
  • Why This Matters The Foreign Agents Registration Act requires American lobbyists working on behalf of foreign clients to disclose significantly more information about their activities than what is required of domestic lobbyists. This includes the actual documents used to influence policy makers, called informational materials. These materials include draft legislation, speeches, press releases and more, all created to influence U.S. policy. But the lobbyists do not always follow the letter of the law and enforcement by the Justice Department has been lax in recent years. Furthermore, the law itself seems to have loopholes that make enforcement difficult if not impossible. The Foreign Agents Registration Act is intended to bring transparency into the world of foreign lobbying. But when American lobbyists working on behalf of foreign interests fail to follow the law, or the Justice Department fails to enforce it, the American people are left in the dark.
  • Why This Matters The Foreign Agents Registration Act requires American lobbyists working on behalf of foreign clients to disclose significantly more information about their activities than what is required of domestic lobbyists. This includes the actual documents used to influence policy makers, called informational materials. These materials include draft legislation, speeches, press releases and more, all created to influence U.S. policy. But the lobbyists do not always follow the letter of the law and enforcement by the Justice Department has been lax in recent years. Furthermore, the law itself seems to have loopholes that make enforcement difficult if not impossible. The Foreign Agents Registration Act is intended to bring transparency into the world of foreign lobbying. But when American lobbyists working on behalf of foreign interests fail to follow the law, or the Justice Department fails to enforce it, the American people are left in the dark.
  • Executive Summary The Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) requires that all American citizens working to influence U.S. policy on behalf of foreign governments register with the Department of Justice and to disclose information on any and all political activity in which they engaged for foreign clients. This includes filing, within 48 hours, any informational materials disseminated to two or more people.
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  • Table of Contents Executive SummaryIntroductionBackgroundWhat the Foreign Influence Database ShowsEgypt: A Case Study Of Foreign InfluenceSame-Day ContributionsSystemic Foreign InfluenceQuid Pro Quo or Coincidence?Foreign Money and the LawLax Compliance with and Enforcement of FARAEnforcementConclusionRecommendationsEndnotes
  • The law requires lobbyists for foreign interests to plainly and conspicuously identify themselves as such in any materials distributed in the course of their lobbying—for example, emails, other correspondence, or publications. We found that many documents filed with the Justice Department lack this identification statement; furthermore, many lobbyists admitted that they did not comply with this requirement. More than half (51 percent) of the registrants we examined in a sample from 2010 checked a box on a the semi-annual Justice Department questionnaire saying they had filed informational materials, and checked another box saying they had not met the legal requirement that they identify themselves in those materials as working on behalf of foreign interests. Toby Moffett, a former Member of Congress from Connecticut who is now Chairman of the Moffett Group and one of its registered lobbyists, told POGO that “Around the edges there’s a lot of loosey-goosey stuff going on. People representing foreign interests and not reporting.”[4] But even when lobbyists do report to the Justice Department, the information they provide is not easily accessible to the public. Astonishingly, informational materials are not available online, despite the fact that the Justice Department has an electronic filing system. Instead, these documents are kept in an office at the Justice Department that is only open for four hours each weekday. Hard copies of the documents are kept in folders that are often disorganized and susceptible to misfiling. This archaic system undermines the intended transparency of the law.
  • The Project On Government Oversight examined thousands of these materials spanning four years, as well as additional public records related to the Justice Department’s oversight of lobbyists for foreign interests. We found that lobbyists for foreign interests have routinely failed to comply with the law—a failure that prevents journalists and watchdogs from scrutinizing the lobbying activities while foreign interests are trying to influence U.S. policy. We found a pattern of lax enforcement of FARA requirements by the Justice Department. We found that the Justice Department office responsible for administering the law is a record-keeping mess. And we found loopholes in the law that often makes it difficult if not impossible for the government to police compliance or to discipline lobbyists who fail to comply. Here are some highlights of our investigation:
  • Though federal law bars foreign money from U.S. political campaigns, there appears to be a gray area in the law that can let in such money indirectly. POGO found many instances in which members of lobbying firms made political contributions to Members of Congress on the same day that those firms were lobbying the Members of Congress or their legislative staffs on behalf of foreign clients.[1] Lobbyists who fail to comply with certain FARA requirements may have little to fear from the Justice Department. “The cornerstone of the Registration Unit’s enforcement efforts is encouraging voluntary compliance,” a Justice Department website says.[2] When lobbyists do not voluntarily comply, the Justice Department rarely uses one of the key tools at its disposal to enforce the law—seeking a court injunction. A representative of the Department’s FARA unit told POGO: “While the FARA statute and regulations authorize the pursuit of formal legal proceedings, such as injunctive remedy options, the FARA Unit [has] not pursued injunctive remedy options recently and has instead utilized other mechanisms to achieve compliance.”[3] It appears that some registered foreign agents have been distributing materials but not filing them with the Justice Department. It’s unclear the extent to which that illustrates a lack of compliance with the law or loopholes in the law. In the process of researching this report, POGO noticed that many more lobbyists were registering as foreign agents than had filed informational materials that we could locate at the FARA office. To determine what was happening, we looked at a sampling of questionnaires that the Justice Department requires registered agents to complete every six months. Some checked one box indicating they had distributed materials and another box stating they did not file them with the FARA office.
  • We set out to determine the extent to which lobbyists for foreign interests were filing lobbying materials at the Justice Department within the required time frame. Based on a review of filings made in 2012, in those instances where it was possible to answer the question, POGO estimates that almost half—46 percent—were filed late. Fifteen percent were filed more than 30 business days after they were distributed, and 12 percent were filed more than 100 business days after they were distributed. In many instances, the Justice Department would be hard pressed to enforce the filing deadline. Based on the records the Department maintains to enforce the law, we found that in more than a quarter (26 percent) of the 2012 filings, it was impossible to determine whether the lobbyists complied. For example, in many cases, the records did not show when the lobbyists disseminated the materials to the targets of their lobbying. In a glaring omission, the law does not require lobbyists to provide that information. Without it, there may be no way for the government or the public to know whether lobbying materials were filed on time.
  • When lobbyists for foreign interests do not follow the law, when the U.S. government fails to enforce it, and when the Justice Department makes it difficult for the American people to access records to which they are legally entitled, the public is left in the dark. To bring more transparency to this opaque realm, POGO has made four years of informational materials available for the first time online with our Foreign Influence Database, allowing the public to see how lobbyists attempt to influence American policies on behalf of their foreign clients.
  • With the release of the Foreign Influence Database, the Project On Government Oversight (POGO) is making years of documents from this key set of FARA filings electronically available for the first time. The materials were previously only available in hard copy at the FARA Registration Unit in Washington, DC, which is only open to the public from 11am to 3pm on weekdays.[12] In this digital age it is surprising that these materials could not be read online and are instead stored in file folders, where they are disorganized and susceptible to misfiling. Even those that were electronically filed by the registrants are not available to the public in an electronic format. POGO’s database includes informational materials filed in 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012.[13]
  • Paul Merrell on 20 Dec 14
     
    POGO does thorough work and doesn't let up until it gets results. Forcing DoJ to puts its foreign agents registration materials online should be a fairly trivial battle. The real war, though, will be forcing better enforcement. The new database is at http://www.pogo.org/tools-and-data/foreign-influence-database/ I punched up the word "Israel" and came up with 113 documents in the search results. Each search hit lists the name of the nation involved that the lobbying was done for. Of those 113 document hits, only two were for the nation of Israel, both for its Ministry of Tourism. The rest were by other nations who had mentioned Israel in their lobbying materials.  Now that is fairly incredible, given that Israel outright controls Congress when it comes to Middle East policy.  The last administration to attempt to do something about Israeli lobbyists not registering was the the Kennedy Administration. The result was that the major Israeli lobbying group disbanded and was promptly reformed under a new corporate charter and name. That was the very last attempt at enforcing the Foreign Agents Registration Act against Israel's lobbyists in the U.S., despite the fact that the reformed group, AIPAC, has even been caught more than once being passed highly classified U.S. documents by double agents working inside the U.S. military establishment. The leakers went to prison but the AIPACers were never prosecuted. AIPAC rules.  
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