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Paul Merrell

Justice Department Lawyers Who Engage in Misconduct Sometimes Escape Discipline, Watchd... - 0 views

  • Within a year of being disciplined for violating professional standards, some Justice Department attorneys have been promoted or given financial rewards for good performance, a government watchdog agency reported Thursday. In addition, when the Justice Department determines that its lawyers should be disciplined for misconduct, it has not ensured that the discipline is actually carried out, the Government Accountability (GAO) said. The GAO concluded that the Justice Department could do more to hold federal prosecutors and other employees accountable for misconduct.
  • The GAO study was conducted at the behest of Congress and follows the collapse of major federal prosecutions as a result of prosecutorial violations. In 2009, for example, the conviction of former then-Senator Ted Stevens (R-Ala.) unraveled because prosecutors failed to disclose evidence that would have helped Stevens’ defense. In 2013, based on prosecutorial violations, a federal judge in Louisiana overturned convictions of five New Orleans police officers alleged to have shot unarmed civilians in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the GAO noted. The GAO report adds to the picture. The agency, an investigative arm of Congress, found instances in which prescribed disciplinary actions had not been implemented.  “DOJ does not have a mechanism in place to ensure that component management actually implements discipline once it has been imposed,” the report said. The GAO also found that some attorneys who had been cited for misconduct also received performance-based rewards such as $2,000 in cash or 22 hours of time off from work.
Paul Merrell

News Roundup and Notes: September 11, 2014 | Just Security - 0 views

  • In a highly anticipated address last night, President Barack Obama authorized a significant expansion of the U.S. campaign to “degrade and ultimately destroy” the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, backed by a broad coalition of allies. His four-part strategy against ISIS will involve a “systematic campaign of airstrikes” against the militants “wherever they are,” including Syria; the deployment of an additional 475 advisers to Iraq; and new support for the moderate Syrian opposition. Obama sought to distinguish his campaign from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, likening the mission to U.S. strikes against suspected terrorists in Yemen and Somalia [Reuters’ Steve Holland and Roberta Rampton; Washington Post’s Juliet Eilperin and Ed O’Keefe]. Saudi Arabia has agreed to provide a training base for moderate Syrian opposition fighters—which forms part of the president’s strategy—following an American request [New York Times’ Michael R. Gordon and Eric Schmitt].
  • Lauren French [Politico] discusses the mixed reactions to Obama’s speech on the Hill. The Syrian National Coalition, the main Western-supported opposition group, issued a statement yesterday welcoming President Obama’s announcement that the U.S. would conduct airstrikes targeting the Islamic State in Syria [Associated Press]. Australia and Japan also expressed their support for the president’s strategy this morning [Wall Street Journal’s Rob Taylor and Alexander Martin]. However, there has been a “muted response” to Obama’s address from Arab states in the Gulf region [Wall Street Journal’s Rory Jones].
  • Reuters (David Lawder and Patricia Zengerle) reports that U.S. lawmakers are considering a congressional vote on President Obama’s plan, but several Republicans want further information on the strategy to battle global terrorism, while many would prefer a vote wider than one focused solely on funding for the Syrian opposition. And The Daily Beast (Josh Rogin and Tim Mak) writes that Democrats are ready to approve Obama’s request for $5 billion to counter terrorism, despite the lack of details on how the money would be used. The Wall Street Journal (Julian E. Barnes and Siobhan Gorman) focuses on the president’s plan to rely on U.S.-trained local forces to battle the Islamic State, noting America’s “poor track record” of relying on local forces in Iraq and Libya.
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  • The New York Times’ Charlie Savage discusses the president’s reliance on existing authorization for his campaign against ISIS, although Obama indicated in his speech that he would “welcome congressional support” for this operation. Eli Lake [The Daily Beast] and Spencer Ackerman [The Guardian] also explore the legality of the administration’s expanded mission against ISIS. Politico (Jake Sherman and John Bresnahan) notes that Obama’s urgent request for authorization to equip and train moderate Syrian rebels “is scrambling delicate plans on Capitol Hill less that two months before the midterm elections.”
  • Peter Baker [New York Times] suggests that Obama’s new course is likely to extend “a legacy of war,” and could leave the president’s successor with “a volatile and incomplete war, much as his predecessor left one for him.” The New York Times editorial board weighs the strengths and weaknesses of the president’s strategy, suggesting that the authorization of strikes in Syria was a decision in which he “had little choice militarily or politically.” The Wall Street Journal editorial board suggests that Obama’s “biggest obstacle … will be his own ambivalence about American military force.” And the Washington Post editorial board calls on Congress to take a supportive view, stating that “[c]ongressional and public debate are especially necessary to help strengthen those parts of Mr. Obama’s strategy that remain open to question.” Edward-Isaac Dovere and Josh Gerstein [Politico] provide an analysis of the “speech Obama didn’t want to give.”
  • In other developments, the U.S. military conducted an airstrike on Tuesday in support of Iraqi Security Forces’ efforts to defend Erbil [Central Command]. The Washington Post (Adam Goldman) reports that a senior intelligence official told Congress yesterday that the Department of Homeland Security is “unaware of any specific credible threat to the U.S. homeland” from the Islamic State.     Al Jazeera has learned that the 45 UN peacekeepers from Fiji held by the Nusra Front rebel group in the Golan Heights have been released. An international watchdog has reported that chlorine gas was used as a chemical weapon in northern Syria earlier this year, in an attack that only the Assad regime could have the ability to conduct [Wall Street Journal’s Naftali Bendavid].
  • Murtaza Hussein [The Intercept] reports on the assassination of one of Syria’s top anti-ISIS rebel leaders, suggesting that the group was one of “Obama’s best hope[s]” and that the U.S. must now consider aligning itself with Iran. A young woman from Colorado pleaded guilty yesterday to conspiring to assist ISIS, after she was arrested attempting to travel to Syria [New York Times’ Emma G. Fitzsimons]. Peter Mass [The Intercept] argues why the American government should not have censored the media from hosting the videos of the beheadings of American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff.
Paul Merrell

Israeli Government Watchdog Investigates Military's Conduct in Gaza War - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • Israel’s government watchdog, the state comptroller, said on Tuesday that he had opened an investigation into decisions made by military and political leaders during last summer’s 50-day war with the Hamas militant group in Gaza.The announcement was Israel’s latest effort to head off an International Criminal Court inquiry into its conduct during the war, and came days after prosecutors at the court opened a preliminary examination of possible war crimes committed in the Palestinian territories, the first formal step that could lead to charges against Israelis.
  • A United Nations Human Rights Council commission of inquiry into Israel’s military operations in the Gaza Strip is underway. The state comptroller’s announcement also came as Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, which opposes Israeli occupation of the territories captured in 1967, published a report criticizing what it said were failures of the Israeli military’s system for warning Gaza’s citizens of impending strikes during the fighting last summer. It also faulted the military for a lack of safe evacuation routes and for strikes against rescue teams.
  • The International Criminal Court generally takes on only cases concerning countries that are unwilling or unable to investigate their own actions. In a statement, the Israeli state comptroller, Joseph Haim Shapira, highlighted this point as what was apparently a motivating factor in beginning his inquiry.
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  • “According to principles of international law,” the statement said, “when a state exercises its authority to objectively investigate accusations regarding violations of the laws of armed conflict, this will preclude examination of said accusations by external international tribunals (such as the International Criminal Court in The Hague).”
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    The claim that self-investigation serves as an absolute bar to investigation and prosecution by the ICC drastically overstates the actual principle, which makes exceptions for situations in which the investigating state is unable or unwilling to conduct a thorough investigation and actually prosecute those most responsible for the crime, and for situations in which the state investigation is intended to shield those most responsible from criminal prosecution. An investigation by the Israeli Comptroller won't cut it. The Comptroller has no power to initiate prosecutions; he can only make recommendations to the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, He has no power to initiate criminal prosectuions. This announcement is pure and false propaganda, 
Paul Merrell

DOJ Sued For Records About Lynch's Meeting With Clinton | The Daily Caller - 0 views

  • Judicial Watch filed a lawsuit Wednesday against the Department of Justice for records related to the meeting between then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch and former President Bill Clinton while his wife was under an FBI investigation in the 2016 presidential campaign. The conservative nonprofit watchdog group filed the suit after the Justice Department failed to respond to a June 29, 2016, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking transcripts of the June 2016 meeting, communications regarding the encounter, and any references to the meeting in Lynch’s calendar.
  • “The infamous tarmac meeting between President Clinton and AG Lynch is a vivid example of why many Americans believe the Obama administration’s criminal investigation into Hillary Clinton was rigged,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said. “Now it will be up to Attorney General Sessions at the Trump Justice Department to finally shed some light on this subversion of justice,” Fitton said. (VIDEO: Why Did Bill Clinton And Loretta Lynch Meet On Her Airplane In Phoenix This Week?) Clinton and Lynch met privately on a plane parked at the Phoenix Sky Harbor International airport on June 27, 2016. The FBI was investigating a private email server Clinton’s wife and then-Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton used during her time as secretary of state. The FBI interviewed her just days after her husband met with Lynch. Lynch admitted that the meeting “cast a cloud” over the investigation. Clinton was not punished for what FBI Director James Comey called “extremely careless” actions surrounding her server. Judicial Watch also requested the Justice Department’s inspector general investigate the meeting. The watchdog group also filed a lawsuit in October seeking FBI interviews into Clinton’s email practices, related communications, and records regarding the tarmac meeting.
Paul Merrell

Report: Post 9/11 Wars Have Cost Taxpayers Nearly $5 Trillion And Counting - 0 views

  • The U.S. military interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost taxpayers nearly $5 trillion and counting, according to a new report released to coincide with the 15th anniversary of the attacks. Dr. Neta Crawford, professor of political science at Brown University, released the figures in an independent analysis (pdf) of U.S. Departments of Defense, State, Homeland Security, and Veteran Affairs spending, as well as their base and projected future spending. Crawford is also a director at Brown’s Costs of War Project, which works to draw attention to the human, economic, and political toll of the military response to 9/11. In total, the wars already boast a price tag of $4.79 trillion, she found. And the cost is still climbing. Crawford’s estimate includes budget requests for the 2017 operations in Afghanistan—which are poised to continue despite President Barack Obama’s vow to withdraw troops from the country by then—as well as in Iraq and Syria. The Pentagon requested $66 billion for those fights just for that year. However, even if the U.S. stopped spending on war at the end of this fiscal year, the interest costs, such as debt for borrowed funds, would continue to rise. Post-9/11 military spending was financed almost entirely by borrowing, which in turn has driven debt and interest rates, the project has previously noted.
  • Separate reporting late last month by the U.K.-based watchdog Action on Armed Violence (AOAV) found that the Pentagon could only account for 48 percent of small arms shipped to Iraq and Afghanistan since 9/11—meaning more than half of the approximately 700,000 guns it sent overseas in the past 15 years are missing. What’s more, a recent Inspector General audit report found a “jaw-dropping” $6.5 trillion could not be accounted for in Defense spending. The results of Crawford’s report, released last week, follow previous estimates by prominent economists like Nobel Prize-winning Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard professor Linda Bilmes, whose 2008 book The Three Trillion Dollar War made similar claims. Crawford’s report continues: “Interest costs for overseas contingency operations spending alone are projected to add more than $1 trillion dollars to the national debt by 2023. By 2053, interest costs will be at least $7.9 trillion unless the U.S. changes the way it pays for the war.” And, Crawford notes, that’s a conservative estimate. “No set of numbers can convey the human toll of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, or how they have spilled into the neighboring states of Syria and Pakistan, and come home to the U.S. and its allies in the form of wounded veterans and contractors,” the report states. “Yet, the expenditures noted on government ledgers are necessary to apprehend, even as they are so large as to be almost incomprehensible.”
Paul Merrell

FBI Chief Under Fire Again With Justice Department Probe - Bloomberg - 0 views

  • New questions were raised Thursday about whether FBI Director James Comey will be able to keep his job after the Justice Department’s internal watchdog opened an investigation into his handling of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private e-mail server.The investigation by the department’s inspector general will examine whether the Federal Bureau of Investigation failed to follow appropriate procedures and improperly released information about the Clinton probe -- renewing scrutiny of one of the most contested developments of the 2016 election campaign.
Paul Merrell

NSA 'not interested in' Americans, privacy officer claims | TheHill - 0 views

  • The National Security Agency’s internal civil liberties watchdog insisted on Thursday that the agency has no interest in spying on Americans under its controversial spying tools. “Our employees are trained to not look for U.S. persons,” NSA privacy and civil liberties officer Rebecca Richards said on Thursday.
  • “We’re not interested in those U.S. persons. We’re trying to look away from those,” she added. “Instead, we’re looking for where are our targets?”Richards’s comments came up during a Capitol Hill panel discussion about a new report on U.S. spying from the Brennan Center for Justice.The analysis looks at aspects of a presidential order that dates back to Ronald Reagan and was updated by then-President George W. Bush, called Executive Order 12333.
  • Programs under the order, which is meant to guide foreign surveillance, “have implications for Americans’ privacy that could well be greater than those of their domestic counterparts,” the organization wrote in its analysis. “The vast majority of Americans — whether wittingly or not — engage in communication that is transmitted or stored overseas.”“This reality of the digital age renders Americans’ communications and data highly vulnerable to NSA surveillance abroad.”
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  • NSA surveillance under Executive Order 12333 is separate from the agency’s higher profile bulk collection of Americans’ phone records, which ended last year. It also occurs under separate legal powers than a controversial provision of the 2008 update to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which comes up for renewal at the end of 2017.The executive order targets foreigners, but can “incidentally” pick up data about Americans if their activity on the Internet crosses international borders, Richards acknowledged.“Our procedures are designed to say: There are occasions when you are going to get U.S. persons,” she said, “and when you get those U.S. persons, here’s the rules.”
  • Richards is the agency’s first ever civil liberties officer. She was hired in early 2014, on the heels of fallout from Edward Snowden’s leaks about the spy agency. 
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    Not interested. Apparently that's why NSA was turning over raw search results to Israel without filtering out "U.S. persons" data. And why they just decided to give other agencies including law enforcement access to raw search results. And why Gen. Keith Alexander personally put together a program to ruin people's reputations including a "U.S. person." And why Russell Tice said that he personally had Obama's NSA dossier in his hands when Obama was running for the U.S. Senate. And why Tice says NSA had similar dossiers on members of Congress and the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court and targeted "lots of lawyers." On and on.  Ms. Richards appears to have become a quick study in NSA's hallmark skill of lying to the public. 
Paul Merrell

Afghan government 'has lost territory to the insurgency' | FDD's Long War Journal - 0 views

  • The Afghan government “has lost territory to the insurgency” and “district control continues to decline,” the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) said in its most recent quarterly report to United States Congress. An estimated 15 percent of Afghanistan’s districts have slipped from the government’s control over that time period. The picture is more bleak than what the Obama administration and top military commanders have let on when looked at from a longer distance. According to SIGAR, the Afghan government controls or influences just 52 percent of the nation’s districts today compared to 72 percent in Nov. 2015. “SIGAR’s analysis of the most recent data provided by US Forces in Afghanistan (USFOR-A) suggests that the security situation in Afghanistan has not improved this quarter,” the watchdog group noted in its most recent assessment of the country. “The numbers of the Afghan security forces are decreasing, while both casualties and the number of districts under insurgent control or influence are increasing.”
  • “[T]he ANDSF [Afghan National Defense and Security Forces] has not yet been capable of securing all of Afghanistan and has lost territory to the insurgency,” since the last reporting period. The Afghan government has lost control of more than six percent of Afghanistan’s 407 districts since SIGAR issued its last report, on Oct. 30. According to SIGAR, the insurgency, which is overwhelmingly made up of the Taliban, now controls nine districts and influences another 32, while 133 districts are “contested.” USFOR-A defines contested districts as “having ‘negligible meaningful impact from insurgents,’ contending that neither the insurgency nor the Afghan government maintains significant control over these areas.” The names of the Taliban controlled and influenced districts, as well as those that are contested, were not disclosed by USFOR-A or SIGAR.
  • The US military justified the loss of territory by claiming the Afghan government’s “new Sustainable Security Strategy” calls for abandoning districts that are “not important.” “USFOR-A attributes the loss of government control or influence over territory to the ANDSF’s strategic approach to security prioritization, identifying the most important areas that the ANDSF must hold to prevent defeat, and focusing less on areas with less strategic importance,” SIGAR reported. “Under its new Sustainable Security Strategy, the ANDSF targets ‘disrupt’ districts for clearance operations when the opportunity arises, but will give first priority to protecting ‘hold’ and ‘fight’ districts under its control.” This strategy neglects the fact that the Taliban views rural districts or those “with less strategic importance” as critical to its insurgency. The Taliban uses theses districts to raise funds, recruit and train fighters, and launch attacks on population centers. Additionally, Taliban allies such as al Qaeda run training camps and operate bases in areas under Taliban control. This strategy was explained by Mullah Aminullah Yousuf, the Taliban’s shadow governor for Uruzgan, in April 2016. The Taliban has utilized its control of the rural districts to directly threaten major population centers. Last year, the Taliban was able to threaten five of Afghanistan’s 34 provincial capitals. The government lost control of Kunduz for more than a week last fall.
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  • FDD’s Long War Journal has maintained that the US military’s assessment of the state of play in Afghanistan’s districts is flawed. Our study estimates the Taliban controls 42 Afghan districts and contests (or influences) another 55. [Note: USFOR-A’s definition of “influence” matches our definition of “contested.” The term “influenced/contested” will be used for clarity to describe these districts. LWJ does not assess districts that are defined by USFOR-A as “contested,” which means neither the Taliban or Afghan government hold sway.] The number of Taliban controlled and influenced/contested districts has risen from 70 in October 2015 to 97 this month. Districts under Taliban command are typically being administered by the group, or the group controls the district center. Additionally, districts where the district center frequently changes hands are considered Taliban-controlled. In influenced/contested districts, the Taliban dominates all of the areas of a district except the administrative center.
Paul Merrell

The U.S. military's stats on deadly airstrikes are wrong. Thousands have gone unreported - 0 views

  • The American military has failed to publicly disclose potentially thousands of lethal airstrikes conducted over several years in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, a Military Times investigation has revealed. The enormous data gap raises serious doubts about transparency in reported progress against the Islamic State, al-Qaida and the Taliban, and calls into question the accuracy of other Defense Department disclosures documenting everything from costs to casualty counts.In 2016 alone, U.S. combat aircraft conducted at least 456 airstrikes in Afghanistan that were not recorded as part of an open-source database maintained by the U.S. Air Force, information relied on by Congress, American allies, military analysts, academic researchers, the media and independent watchdog groups to assess each war's expense, manpower requirements and human toll. Those airstrikes were carried out by attack helicopters and armed drones operated by the U.S. Army, metrics quietly excluded from otherwise comprehensive monthly summaries, published online for years, detailing American military activity in all three theaters. Most alarming is the prospect this data has been incomplete since the war on terrorism began in October 2001. If that is the case, it would fundamentally undermine confidence in much of what the Pentagon has disclosed about its prosecution of these wars, prompt critics to call into question whether the military sought to mislead the American public, and cast doubt on the competency with which other vital data collection is being performed and publicized. Those other key metrics include American combat casualties, taxpayer expense and the military’s overall progress in degrading enemy capabilities.
Paul Merrell

Watchdog Groups Identify Nearly $700 Billion in Wasteful Spending on National Security - 0 views

  • The federal government could reduce the deficit by $688 billion over the next 10 years by cutting unneeded weapons—such as variants of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and the Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship—reining in out-of-control service contracts and slowing its investments in excess nuclear weapons, according to a report released today by the Project On Government Oversight (POGO) and Taxpayers for Common Sense.
  • With U.S. national security spending higher than at any point during the Cold War, and with the U.S. drawing down its presence in Iraq and Afghanistan, it’s time for Congress and the administration to bring its national security spending in line with its actual needs, the groups said.
  • The savings and revenue identified by POGO and Taxpayers for Common Sense, include:
Paul Merrell

NSA snooping fails to prevent terrorist attacks, watchdog group says - RT USA - 0 views

  • Out of 225 terrorism cases on the territory of the United States since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the NSA’s PRISM program did little to protect the nation from terrorism, according to a new study. The bulk collection of metadata phone records by the National Security Agency “has had no discernible impact on preventing acts of terrorism,” according to a study by the New America Foundation, a Washington-based nonprofit group. Analysis revealed that much of the evidence it did find “could readily have been obtained in a timely manner using conventional [court] orders.” The study, to be released on Monday, echoes that of a White House-appointed study concluded last month that the NSA program “was not essential to preventing attacks.” President Obama on Friday will deliver his recommendations on the program, which has turned into a political lightning rod. John McCain, the Republican senator, has called for a congressional inquiry into America’s “broken” National Security Agency
Paul Merrell

Pentagon 'big winner' in $1T omnibus bill | TheHill - 0 views

  • The Pentagon and the defense industry came out of the $1 trillion omnibus spending bill as a big winner, experts and lawmakers said Tuesday, a day after the bill was released. “The big winner is the Defense Department. They should be breaking out champagne in the Pentagon,” said Gordon Adams, a defense budget expert and former Clinton official.The omnibus spending bill provides about $497 billion for the Defense Department in 2014 — about the same as in 2013. But the Pentagon also received $85.2 billion in overseas contingency operations (OCO) for the war in Afghanistan, roughly $5 billion more than it requested for 2014.Before last month’s budget deal that relieved $22.4 billion in sequestration cuts, the 2014 defense budget would have been around $475 billion. The OCO funding, which Adams said is the “cherry on top of the dessert,” can be used to pay for operations and maintenance in the base budget and help restore military readiness lost in previous years. Fiscal watchdog and anti-war groups criticized the $5 billion increase from the Pentagon's request in OCO funding as a “slush fund to pad the department’s budget and avoid spending reductions,” especially with the winding down of the Afghan War. 
  • The defense industry was also a winner in the omnibus spending bill, Adams said. All major weapons systems procurement requests were fully-funded, including the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter — the Pentagon’s most expensive weapons system in history. Also fully funded were the Army’s M1 Abrams tank program, and the Navy’s shipbuilding plans for eight new ships. Israel is also a winner in the omnibus spending bill, with money fully provided for the Arrow, David’s Sling, and the Iron Dome rocket defense systems. 
  • While lawmakers touted the completed spending bill as a win for nearly everyone, there were a few losers. One of the most notable losers included the Pentagon’s research and development projects, which received $7 billion less than last year.In addition, the defense space program and the procurement for the E-2D Advanced Hawkeye program were delayed. Also, funds for the Afghan National Security Forces is about half as much as the White House requested, Adams said.
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  • Overall, lawmakers said the omnibus spending bill, which is expected to pass this week, was 'a good start'. 
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    The War Party wins again. Spending cuts will come out of non-defense branches of government. Meanwhile, the Judicial Branch is nearly flat on its back because of sequestration. Judicial spending before sequestration was only 0.19 per cent of federal spending (19 cents of each $100) but  $350 million got chopped by sequestration.  The result: things like massive delays in court proceedings and a 35 per cent cut in personnel in the Federal Defenders office, a loss of institutional knowledge that will never be recovered.
Paul Merrell

Clapper Reads From the Bush/Cheney/Nixon Playbook to Fear-Monger Over Transparency - Th... - 0 views

  • James Clapper, President Obama’s top national security official, is probably best known for having been caught lying outright to Congress about NSA activities, behavior which (as some baseball players found out) happens to be a felony under federal law. But – like torturers and Wall Street tycoons before him – Clapper has been not only shielded from prosecution, and not only allowed to keep his job; he has has now been anointed the arbiter of others’ criminality, as he parades around the country calling American journalists “accomplices”. Yesterday, as Wired’s Dave Kravets reports, the “clearly frustrated” Clapper went before a Senate committee (different than the one he got caught lying to) to announce that the Snowden disclosures are helping the terrorists: We’re beginning to see changes in the communications behavior of adversaries: particularly terrorists. A disturbing trend, which I anticipate will continue . . . Terrorists and other adversaries of this country are going to school on U.S. intelligence sources, methods, and tradecraft. And the insights they’re gaining are making our job in the intelligence community much, much harder. And this includes putting the lives of members or assets of the intelligence community at risk, as well as those of our armed forces, diplomats, and our citizens. As Kravets notes, “Clapper is not the most credible source on Snowden and the NSA leaks.” Moreover, it’s hardly surprising that Clapper is furious at these disclosures given that “Snowden’s very first leak last June” – revelation of the domestic surveillance program – “had the side-effect of revealing that Clapper had misled the public and Congress about NSA spying.” And, needless to say, Clapper offered no evidence at all to support his assertions yesterday; he knows that, unlike Kravets, most establishment media outlets will uncritically trumpet his claims without demanding evidence or even noting that he has none.
  • But in general, it’s hardly surprising that national security officials claim that unwanted disclosures help terrorists. Fear-mongering comes naturally to those who wield political power. Particularly in post-9/11 America, shouting “terrorists!” has been the favorite tactic of the leadership of both parties to spread fear and thus induce submission. In a recent New York Times op-ed detailing how exploitation of terrorism fears is the key to sustaining the modern surveillance state, Northwestern University Philosophy Professor Peter Ludlow wrote that “since 9/11 leaders of both political parties in the United States have sought to consolidate power by leaning … on the danger of a terrorist attack”. He recounted that ”Machiavelli notoriously argued that a good leader should induce fear in the populace in order to control the rabble” and that “Hobbes in ‘The Leviathan’ argued that fear effectively motivates the creation of a social contract in which citizens cede their freedoms to the sovereign.” It would be surprising if people like Clapper didn’t do this. But what has struck me is how seriously many media figures take this claim. In the vast majority of interviews I’ve done about NSA reporting, interviewers adopt a grave tone in their voice and trumpet the claims from U.S. officials that our reporting is helping the terrorists. They treat these claims as though they’re the by-product of some sort of careful, deliberative, unique assessment rather than what it is: the evidence-free tactics national security state officials reflexively invoke to discredit all national security journalism they dislike. Let’s review a bit of history to see how true that is.
  • Political officials hate transparency.They would rather be able to hide what they’re doing. They therefore try to demonize those who impose transparency with the most extreme and discrediting accusations they can concoct (you’re helping terrorists kill Americans!). The more transparency one imposes on them, the more extreme and desperate this accusatory rhetoric becomes. This is not complicated. It’s all very basic. James Clapper is saying exactly what Dick Cheney and George Bush before him said, and those three said what John Ehrlichman and Henry Kissinger said before them about Ellsberg. It’s all spouted with no evidence. It’s rote and reflexive. It’s designed to smear and fear-monger. As Professor Ludlow notes, “Fear is even used to prevent us from questioning the decisions supposedly being made for our safety.” Maybe it’s time for journalists to cease being the leading advocates for state secrecy and instead take seriously their claimed role as watchdogs. At the very least, demand evidence before these sorts of highly predictable, cliched attacks are heralded as something to be taken seriously. As it is, they’re just cartoons: ones that are played over and over and over.
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    Glenn Greenwald pokes his stick in the presstitutes' eyes, again.
Paul Merrell

NSA chief criticises media and suggests UK was right to detain David Miranda | World ne... - 0 views

  • The outgoing director of the National Security Agency lashed out at media organizations reporting on Edward Snowden’s surveillance revelations, suggesting that British authorities were right to detain David Miranda on terrorism charges and that reporters lack the ability to properly analyze the NSA’s broad surveillance powers.General Keith Alexander, who has furiously denounced the Snowden revelations, said at a Tuesday cybersecurity panel that unspecified “headway” on what he termed “media leaks” was forthcoming in the next several weeks, possibly to include “media leaks legislation.”
  • The general, who is due to retire in the next several weeks, said that the furore over Snowden’s surveillance revelations – which he referred to only as “media leaks” – was complicating his ability to get congressional support for a bill that would permit the NSA and the military Cyber Command he also helms to secretly communicate with private entities like banks about online data intrusions and attacks.“We’ve got to handle media leaks first,” Alexander said.“I think we are going to make headway over the next few weeks on media leaks. I am an optimist. I think if we make the right steps on the media leaks legislation, then cyber legislation will be a lot easier,” Alexander said.The specific legislation to which Alexander referred was unclear. Angela Canterbury, the policy director for the Project on Government Oversight, a watchdog group, said she was unaware of any such bill. Neither was Steve Aftergood, an intelligence policy analyst at the Federation of American Scientists.The NSA’s public affairs office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Alexander has previously mused about “stopping” journalism related to the Snowden revelations.“We ought to come up with a way of stopping it. I don’t know how to do that. That’s more of the courts and the policymakers but, from my perspective, it’s wrong to allow this to go on,” he told an official Defense Department blog in October.
  • While Attorney General Eric Holder said last year that he had no plans to pursue charges against Greenwald, pro-NSA officials have recently taken to using loaded legal language when referring to the journalists reporting on the Snowden documents.James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, called on Snowden and unnamed “accomplices” to return the surveillance documents cache during congressional testimony in January. The chairman of the House intelligence committee, Mike Rogers of Michigan, called Greenwald a “thief” last month.Like other NSA officials and their allies over the past several months, Alexander has become more visible to the public, part of the NSA’s push to regain control of the public narrative as the Obama administration and members of Congress debate the future scope of the NSA’s powers.In an October interview with the New York Times, Alexander said: “I do feel it’s important to have a public, transparent discussion on cyber so that the American people know what’s going on.”
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  • But staff at Georgetown University, which sponsored the Tuesday cybersecurity forum, took the microphone away from a Guardian reporter who attempted to ask Alexander if the NSA had missed the signs of Russia’s invasion and occupation of Ukraine, which appeared to take Obama administration policymakers by surprise.Although the event was open to reporters, journalists were abruptly told following the NSA director’s remarks that they were not permitted to ask questions of Alexander, who did not field the Ukraine question. Following the event, security staff closed a stairwell gate on journalists who attempted to ask Alexander questions on his way out.
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    The scary part is that Alexander apparently believes Congress will pass such legislation and the Supreme Court will uphold it. That's despite even mainstream media having declared open season on the NSA because of government prosecutions of members of the media for publishing leaks and prosecutions of members of the media for refusing to reveal sources.  
Paul Merrell

Sarin used in two Syria chemical attacks point to military stockpiles - UN - RT News - 0 views

  • Two incidents where chemical weapons were used in Syria last year appear to have come from Syrian army stockpiles, United Nations investigators said on Wednesday in a new report that goes beyond previous conclusions. The team of experts led by Paulo Pinheiro concluded that sarin – a deadly nerve agent – was used in total in three incidents: in the Damascus suburb of Al-Ghouta on August 21, in Khan al-Assal near Aleppo on March 19, and in Saraqeb near the northern town of Idlib in April 2013, Reuters reported. "The evidence available concerning the nature, quality and quantity of the agents used on 21 August indicated that the perpetrators likely had access to the chemical weapons stockpile of the Syrian military, as well as the expertise and equipment necessary to manipulate safely large amount of chemical agents," the UN investigators said in the report. They also concluded that the attack in Khan al-Assal in March used the same chemical agents and bore exactly the same hallmarks as the Al-Ghouta attack in August.
  • But Pinheiro’s report did not give any reliable casualty figures from the attacks and was only able to determine “that at least several hundred people were affected.” Ake Sellstrom, who was in charge of the inspection team that was on the ground in Syria, concluded in an earlier report in December that while chemical weapons had most likely been used in five out of seven alleged attacks, the team did not assign any blame. Both the Syrian government and the opposition have blamed each other for the attacks, which they have also both denied. The Al-Ghouta attack was the world’s deadliest in 25 years and provoked threats of retaliatory military attacks by the US. Under a diplomatic initiative suggested and largely brokered by the Russians, Syrian President Bashar Assad agreed to help the international community to destroy his chemical weapons arsenal. On Tuesday, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) – the global chemical weapons watchdog – said that Syria has so far managed to ship out about one-third of its stockpile, including mustard gas, for destruction abroad or on vessels in international waters.
  • The Pinheiro team has been investigating up to 20 incidents where chemical weapons have allegedly been used. He said they were building on Sellstrom’s findings while also trying to dig deeper. Pinheiro told a news conference on Thursday that his team had interviewed a wide group of people, including doctors, victims, defectors, and journalists. “We made other investigations [to Sellstrom] in terms of interviews of experts, interviews with functionaries involved. We conducted our own investigation including specialized expertise and of course we have been in close contact with the members of this Sellstrom mission,” he said. Selltsrom’s December report visited only seven sites and cited poor security conditions as the primary reason.
Paul Merrell

9 Calif. law enforcement agencies connected to cellphone spying technology - 0 views

  • News10 submitted numerous public records requests to every major law enforcement agency in Northern California to find out which departments are using StingRay technology. A StingRay is a device law enforcement uses to track people and collect real time data from every cellphone within a certain radius.
  • Some agencies provided documentation, but none would discuss how StingRays work, or even admit they have them. However, records show at least seven Northern California agencies have the technology and two more just received grants to buy it in 2014.
  • San Jose Police Department provided News10 with documentation that provided insight into what agencies have the technology and why they want it.A 2012 grant application submitted to the Bay Area Urban Area Shield Initiative (UASI), which was approved, said San Jose police requested feedback from numerous other agencies that already use StingRays."Research of the product included testing by San Jose Police and technology and equipment feedback from the U.S. Marshals Service, (REDACTED), the Oakland Police Department, the Sacramento Sheriff's Department, the San Diego Sheriff's Department, the Los Angeles Police Department, and the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department. This technology is in use at the law enforcement agencies listed [above]," the application states.They explain how the surveillance system would be used in conjunction with Oakland and San Francisco police in another section of the grant application."We will work with the Fusion Center to partner with San Francisco and Oakland to ensure we have the ability to cover all of the Bay Area in deploying cellphone tracking technology in any region of the Bay Area at a moment's notice."
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  • This graphic illustrates how a StingRay works. Signals from cellphones within the device's radius are bounced to law enforcement. The information relayed may include names, phone numbers, locations, call records and even text messages.
  • Terrorism is used as the primary justification for purchasing StingRay technology in every grant application obtained by News10. San Jose police, Fremont police, the Alameda County District Attorney's Office and Oakland police say a StingRay could be used to track and disrupt terrorist networks and protect critical infrastructure.However, arrest records from Oakland and Los Angeles show that StingRays are being used for routine police work. Lye says the potential for "mission creep" is concerning."Mission creep is an unfortunate but extremely common phenomenon with surveillance technology," she said. "By 'mission creep,' I mean the phenomenon in which one purpose is offered to justify the collection of the data, but the data is ultimately used for many other entirely separate purposes."
Paul Merrell

Obama Promises Disappear from Web - Sunlight Foundation Blog - 1 views

  • Change.gov, the website created by the Obama transition team in 2008, has effectively disappeared sometime over the last month. While the front splash page for Change.gov has linked to the main White House website for years, until recently, you could still continue on to see the materials and agenda laid out by the administration. This was a particularly helpful resource for those looking to compare Obama's performance in office against his vision for reform, laid out in detail on Change.gov. According to the Internet Archive, the last time that content (beyond the splash page) was available was June 8th -- last month.
  • Here's one possibility, from the administration's ethics agenda: Protect Whistleblowers: Often the best source of information about waste, fraud, and abuse in government is an existing government employee committed to public integrity and willing to speak out. Such acts of courage and patriotism, which can sometimes save lives and often save taxpayer dollars, should be encouraged rather than stifled. We need to empower federal employees as watchdogs of wrongdoing and partners in performance. Barack Obama will strengthen whistleblower laws to protect federal workers who expose waste, fraud, and abuse of authority in government. Obama will ensure that federal agencies expedite the process for reviewing whistleblower claims and whistleblowers have full access to courts and due process.
Paul Merrell

How Ron Wyden nearly became an NSA leaker - 0 views

  • 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.
Paul Merrell

Private firms selling mass surveillance systems around world, documents show | World ne... - 0 views

  • Private firms are selling spying tools and mass surveillance technologies to developing countries with promises that "off the shelf" equipment will allow them to snoop on millions of emails, text messages and phone calls, according to a cache of documents published on Monday.The papers show how firms, including dozens from Britain, tout the capabilities at private trade fairs aimed at offering nations in Africa, Asia and the Middle East the kind of powerful capabilities that are usually associated with government agencies such as GCHQ and its US counterpart, the National Security Agency.The market has raised concerns among human rights groups and ministers, who are poised to announce new rules about the sale of such equipment from Britain.
  • The documents are included in an online database compiled by the research watchdog Privacy International, which has spent four years gathering 1,203 brochures and sales pitches used at conventions in Dubai, Prague, Brasilia, Washington, Kuala Lumpur, Paris and London. Analysts posed as potential buyers to gain access to the private fairs.The database, called the Surveillance Industry Index, shows how firms from the UK, Israel, Germany, France and the US offer governments a range of systems that allow them to secretly hack into internet cables carrying email and phone traffic.The index has details from 338 companies, including 77 from the UK, offering a total of 97 different technologies.
  • The documents include a brochure from a company called Advanced Middle East Systems (AMES), based in Dubai. It has been offering a device called Cerebro – a DIY system similar to the Tempora programme run by GCHQ – that taps information from fibre-optic cables carrying internet traffic.AMES describes Cerebro as a "core technology designed to monitor and analyse in real time communications … including SMS (texting), GSM (mobile calls), billing data, emails, conversations, webmail, chat sessions and social networks."The company brochure makes clear this is done by attaching probes to internet cables. "No co-operation with the providers is required," it adds."Cerebro is designed to store several billions of records – metadata and/or communication contents. At any time the investigators can follow the live activity of their target with advanced targeting criteria (email addresses, phone numbers, key words)," says the brochure.
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  • Another firm selling similar equipment is VASTech, based in South Africa, which has a system called Zebra. Potential buyers are told it has been designed to help "government security agencies face huge challenges in their combat against crime and terrorism".VASTech says Zebra offers "access to high volumes of information generated via telecommunication services for the purposes of analysis and investigation".It has been designed to "intercept all content and metadata of voice, SMS, email and fax communications on the connected network, creating a rich repository of information".
  • It is now possible, from a single laptop computer, to locate where a mobile phone is calling from anywhere in the world, with an accuracy of between 200 metres and a mile. This is not done by attaching probes, and it is not limited to the area where the laptop is working from. The "cross border" system means it is now theoretically possible to locate a mobile phone call from a town abroad from a laptop in London.
Paul Merrell

NSA grapples with huge increase in records requests - 0 views

  • Fueled by the Edward Snowden scandal, more Americans than ever are asking the National Security Agency if their personal life is being spied on.And the NSA has a very direct answer for them: Tough luck, we're not telling you.Americans are inundating the NSA with open-records requests, leading to an 888% increase in such inquiries in the past fiscal year. Anyone asking is getting a standard pre-written letter saying the NSA can neither confirm nor deny that any information has been gathered."This was the largest spike we've ever had," said Pamela Phillips, the chief of the NSA Freedom of Information Act and Privacy Act Office, which handles all records requests to the agency. "We've had requests from individuals who want any records we have on their phone calls, their phone numbers, their e-mail addresses, their IP addresses, anything like that."
  • News reports of the NSA's surveillance program motivates most inquirers, she said.During the first quarter of the NSA's last fiscal year, which went from October to December 2012, it received 257 open-records requests. The next quarter, it received 241. However, on June 6, at the end of NSA's third fiscal quarter, news of Snowden's leaks hit the press, and the agency got 1,302 requests.In the next three months, the NSA received 2,538 requests. The spike has continued into the fall months and has overwhelmed her staff, Phillips said
  • The first court challenge to the federal government's mass surveillance of Americans' phone and Internet records opened Monday with two potential strikes against it, but the judge predicted it could go all the way to the Supreme Court.Federal District Court Judge Richard Leon expressed concern that conservative activist Larry Klayman and others lacked standing to bring the case and that his court lacked jurisdiction -- factors that could further insulate the spy programs from public oversight."To me, this is the overarching question," Leon said, referring to "this court's authority or lack thereof to inject itself into this situation."
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  • The two programs, made public earlier this year by Edward Snowden, a former National Security Agency contractor now living in Russia, are reviewed by a top-secret court under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. But challengers from the political right and left are trying to have that court's periodic approvals circumvented.From the right on Monday came Klayman, a former Reagan administration lawyer who leads the advocacy group Freedom Watch. In an hour-long hearing, he called Leon "the last guard ... the last sentry to the tyranny in this country."But Justice Department lawyer James Gilligan said Klayman lacked standing to bring the case because he cannot prove the NSA examined his phone or Internet records. Gilligan also said Leon cannot review the statutory authority granted by Congress under FISA -- only the secret courts and the Supreme Court have that power.
  • Coincidentally, the Supreme Court on Monday turned down a chance to review the NSA's harvesting of Verizon phone records in a case brought by the watchdog group Electronic Privacy Information Center. The justices offered no reason for their decision.The law "makes it very difficult to challenge these determinations,' said Marc Rotenberg, president of the privacy group.Another challenge, brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, will be heard by U.S. District Court Judge William Pauley in Manhattan on Friday. Those two cases are likely to be appealed "upstairs," Leon said -- to appeals courts and possibly the Supreme Court.Both Klayman and the ACLU are seeking preliminary injunctions that would put a halt to the NSA surveillance. Both have targeted a program that sweeps up domestic telephone records, even though the targets are foreign terrorists. Klayman also is challenging a separate program that goes after cellphone and computer data from major wireless companies and Internet service providers.
  • Amnesty International and a coalition of lawyers, journalists and others brought the last Supreme Court challenge to government surveillance programs in 2012. But in February, the justices ruled 5-4 that the challengers lacked standing because they could not prove they had been wiretapped.Even if judges rule against Klayman and the ACLU, the controversial programs may get a full court test because the Justice Department has begun notifying criminal defendants whose arrests were based on warrantless surveillance. That makes the prospect of a future Supreme Court case more likely.
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