The Domestic Surveillance Boom, From Bush to Obama
Dave Gilson, Alex Park, and AJ Vicens at Mother Jones ask "How did we get here?" They present a timeline of important events in electronic eavesdropping and the erosion of privacy rights since 9/11.
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NSA Prism program taps in to user data of Apple, Google and others
By Glenn Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill, The Guardian
• Top-secret Prism program claims direct access to servers of firms including Google, Apple and Facebook
• Companies deny any knowledge of program in operation since 2007
• Obama orders US to draw up overseas target list for cyber-attacks
The National Security Agency has obtained direct access to the systems of Google, Facebook, Apple and other US internet giants, according to a top secret document obtained by the Guardian.
The NSA access is part of a previously undisclosed program called Prism, which allows officials to collect material including search history, the content of emails, file transfers and live chats, the document says.
The Guardian has verified the authenticity of the document, a 41-slide PowerPoint presentation – classified as top secret with no distribution to foreign allies – which was apparently used to train intelligence operatives on the capabilities of the program. The document claims "collection directly from the servers" of major US service providers.
Although the presentation claims the program is run with the assistance of the companies, all those who responded to a Guardian request for comment on Thursday denied knowledge of any such program…
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Glenn Greenwald: U.S. wants to destroy privacy worldwide
By KATIE GLUECK
Excerpt:
The journalist who broke the news that the government is monitoring vast quantities of American phone records is claiming the U.S. is building a “massive” snooping apparatus committed to destroying privacy worldwide.
“There is a massive apparatus within the United States government that with complete secrecy has been building this enormous structure that has only one goal, and that is to destroy privacy and anonymity, not just in the United States but around the world,” charged Glenn Greenwald, a reporter for the British newspaper “The Guardian,” speaking on CNN. “That is not hyperbole. That is their objective.”
Greenwald, speaking with CNN’s Piers Morgan, appeared during a week in which Americans learned that according to reports, the National Security Agency and other parts of the government have been monitoring the phone records of Verizon users and accessing Internet information as part of intelligence-gathering procedures. Some Republicans and Democrats have defended the phone records strategy, including the highest-ranking members of the Senate Intelligence Committee…
He also bashed the Obama administration for issuing “threats.”
“The Obama administration has been very aggressive about bullying and threatening anybody who thinks about exposing it or writing it or even doing journalism about it, and it’s well past time that come to an end,” he said…
“What the Obama administration is doing in interpreting the PATRIOT Act is so warped and distorted and it vests themselves with such extremist surveillance powers over the United States and American citizens that Americans, in their words, would be stunned to learn what the Obama administration is doing,” he said on CNN’s “The Lead…”
“There is this massive surveillance state that the United States government has built up that has extraordinary implications for how we live as human beings on the earth and as Americans in our country, and we have the right to know what it is that that government and that agency is doing. I intend to continue to shine light on that, and Dianne Feinstein can beat her chest all she wants and call for investigations, and none of that is going to stop and none of it is going to change.”
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Maureen Dowd, at the NY Times brings up a good point: If these invasive procedures are so worthwhile, if the threat of terrorism warrants such a massive attack on privacy, why weren't the Boston Bomber brothers stopped before the marathon? We had, after all, PRISM in place, and warnings from Russia…
Excerpt:
“There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment,” George Orwell wrote in “1984.” “How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to.”
It was quaint to think we had any privacy left, once Google, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram braided themselves into our days and nights…
Still, it was a bit of a shock to find out that No Such Agency, as the N.S.A. is nicknamed, has been collecting information for seven years on every phone call, domestic and international, that Americans make. The Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald, who first reported the collection of data from Verizon, called the N.S.A. “the crown jewel in government secrecy.”
The Washington Post and then Greenwald swiftly revealed another secret program started under Bush, code-named Prism, that lets the N.S.A. and the F.B.I. tap Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube and Apple, lifting audio and video chats, photographs, e-mails and documents in an effort to track foreign targets.
The Post reported that the career intelligence officer who leaked the information was appalled and considered the program a gross intrusion on privacy. “They quite literally can watch your ideas form as you type,” the officer said.
President Obama defended his classified programs even as Greenwald spilled one more bequeathed from W.: identifying targets overseas for potential cyberattacks. So much technological overreach, yet counterterrorism officials still couldn’t do basic police work and catch the Boston bombers before the marathon by following up on warnings from the Russians.
Full article: Peeping President Obama – NYTimes.com.
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The Obama administration may go after whistleblowers and the press for sharing the information, but it is not likely to get a lot of public support.
Government likely to open criminal probe into NSA leaks: officials, Reuters
President Barack Obama's administration is likely to open a criminal investigation into the leaking of highly classified documents that revealed the secret surveillance of Americans' telephone and email traffic, U.S. officials said on Friday.
The law enforcement and security officials, who were not authorized to speak publicly, said the agencies that normally conduct such investigations, including the FBI and Justice Department, were expecting a probe into the leaks to a British and an American newspaper.
Such investigations typically begin after an agency that believes its secrets have been leaked without authorization files a complaint with the Justice Department. Continue here >
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Edward Snowden: the whistleblower behind the NSA surveillance revelations
By Glenn Greenwald, Ewen MacAskill and Laura Poitras in Hong Kong, guardian.co.uk
The 29-year-old source behind the biggest intelligence leak in the NSA's history explains his motives, his uncertain future and why he never intended on hiding in the shadows.
The individual responsible for one of the most significant leaks in US political history is Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old former technical assistant for the CIA and current employee of the defence contractor Booz Allen Hamilton. Snowden has been working at the National Security Agency for the last four years as an employee of various outside contractors, including Booz Allen and Dell.
The Guardian, after several days of interviews, is revealing his identity at his request. From the moment he decided to disclose numerous top-secret documents to the public, he was determined not to opt for the protection of anonymity. "I have no intention of hiding who I am because I know I have done nothing wrong," he said.
Snowden will go down in history as one of America's most consequential whistleblowers, alongside Daniel Ellsberg and Bradley Manning.
Full article here: Edward Snowden: the whistleblower behind the NSA surveillance revelations | World news | guardian.co.uk.
Also read: Q&A with NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden: 'I do not expect to see home again'.
