Nobody is listening to our phone calls?

Posted on by
Reply

 

When President Obama was confronted with the revelations of NSA telephone and Internet spying exposed by Edward Snowden, he resorted to the sort of predictable statements we have heard from other officials: that secret government surveillance is keeping us safe by thwarting terrorist plots; that exposing it to the US public helps our enemies; that it is only a very modest encroachment on our privacy; that we need to have a “balance” between liberty and security; and besides, the surveillance is only done with court-issued warrants, and thoroughly overseen by Congress.

In other words, all this concern and outrage around the Snowden leaks is a lot of “hype” that is blown out of proportion and nothing we need to worry ourselves about. Go back about your lives. There’s nothing to see here.

Those who want to be reassured may have felt some comfort, but most of what Obama said is demonstrably false. One of his biggest misstatements (shall we use the word lie?) is that “nobody is listening to your telephone calls.”

We know from our investigating, and from firsthand accounts by NSA insiders, that the government has been recording and storing the phone calls of more than 500,000 people, many of whom are American citizens with little, if any, probable cause to suspect they are connected with terrorism. By hiding the fact that mass recording of our phone calls is taking place, Obama can still publicly say that “nobody is listening.” But even that claim is false.

William Binney was a top official at the NSA who developed much of their foreign surveillance network until he resigned in protest over the Bush administration’s illegal domestic surveillance in 2001. He is one of the whistleblowers who appears in Seizing Power.

http://youtu.be/vBgLQeBaTHA

In a recent interview with The Daily Caller, Binney said “There are about three billion phone calls made within the USA every day, and then around the world there are something like ten billion a day. But while they may not record anywhere near all of that, what they do is take their target list, which is somewhere on the order of 500,000 to a million people. They look through these phone numbers and they target those and that’s what they record.” NSA typically uses the two degrees of separation or “two hops” method, where whomever a targeted person corresponds with is also recorded, and every person corresponding with those people is recorded as well. From there, they analyze the “metadata” to decide which of the recorded calls to listen to and transcribe.

The main obstacle preventing the NSA from recording and storing every single phone call in the US is the shortage of digital storage capacity. To deal with this “problem” the NSA has a major effort underway to vastly expand their storage capability at a number of data centers, including a huge new facility under construction in Bluffdale, Utah that will be able to store unheard-of amounts of captured data. This is designed to serve as the “cloud” for intelligence and law enforcement personnel to instantly access the phone and Internet activity of every American.

It is probably not an exaggeration to say they will not stop until there is no longer any form of human privacy anywhere in the world.

-David Kasper

The Fallacy of ‘Balance’ between Liberty and Security

Posted on by
Reply

 

When government officials and media pundits attempt to justify warrantless spying and other abuses, they resort to common arguments that we hear repeatedly, such as claiming that numerous terrorist plots are being disrupted as a result. Proof of these assertions is seldom provided because, they say, it is too secret for us to know. We’re supposed to just believe them because they say so.

Another method is to play down the abuses, portraying them as just minor intrusions, and nothing we need to worry about. When confronted with the Edward Snowden leaks showing the NSA’s massive surveillance of innocent Americans’ phone records and emails, President Obama resorted to this canard, saying that the enormous NSA seizures amount to only “modest encroachments.”

Then Obama went to a theme that we are hearing more frequently in the public discourse: that there is some kind of trade-off between liberty and security, and that we need to find the right “balance” between the two. In Obama’s opinion, NSA’s warrantless surveillance of every American “strikes the right balance.”

This is a convenient construct that requires you to accept the idea that our Constitutional rights have to be curtailed because we live in such a dangerous world, and that we need to give up some of them so the government can Keep us Safe.

If you can be fooled into acknowledging this fallacious premise, you are on a slippery slope, which is exactly where they want you. The first step to losing your rights is to accept that they are not absolute. From there, it is just a matter of how much and how fast you can lose them.

The whole reason the Bill of Rights was enacted was to enshrine certain rights into the Constitution, in keeping with the principle that they are “unalienable,” meaning that they are not subject to negotiation or compromise; that they are inherent in each individual and cannot be taken away by any ruler, king or government, for any reason.

This is a principle that some would like us to forget or ignore, and the phony “balance” debate is helping to serve that purpose.

-David Kasper

 

Meet the Press Threatens Glenn Greenwald

Posted on by
1

 

The TV networks’ Sunday talk shows are normally a predictable inside-the-beltway forum for establishment figures to espouse their views, with only token participation by alternative voices. We do occasionally see people like David Corn, Katrina vanden Huevel, or even Rachel Maddow on these shows, but it is with surprise that someone as openly critical of state power as Glenn Greenwald would be invited into this exclusive inner circle.

Last Sunday, as the major media were struggling to stay on top of the whereabouts of Edward Snowden following his “escape” from Hong Kong, Greenwald was invited to appear on Meet the Press. Host David Gregory questioned whether Snowden is actually a whistleblower, and then openly accused Greenwald of “aiding and abetting” Snowden in illegal activity. “Why shouldn’t you, Mr. Greenwald, be charged with a crime?” he asked. Watch this video clip for Greenwald’s response (sorry for the commercial).

Greenwald later tweeted, “Who needs the government to try to criminalize journalism when you have David Gregory to do it?”

The Obama administration’s campaign against anyone who dares to expose secret government wrongdoing appears to be entering a new, and even more aggressive phase. It’s no longer just the whistleblowers who are targeted, but the journalists who rely on them as sources, and publish their leaks. Following revelations that phone records of the Associated Press were seized, it is now widely assumed that the NSA is capturing journalists’ phone records and other communications. As a result, reporters are complaining that their sources are drying up, fearful that the government will find out who they are talking to. The First Amendment guarantee of a free press apparently does not fit in with the security state’s plans to further consolidate its power.

Another disturbing discovery is that the Obama administration has instituted what it calls an “Insider Threat Program” that creates a culture of snitching by threatening to punish federal employees who fail to report suspicious behavior of their co-workers.

-David Kasper

Former NSA Officials Support Snowden’s Actions

Posted on by
Reply

 

3 NSATwo of the National Security Agency whistleblowers who appear in Seizing Power, William Binney and Kirk Wiebe, along with Thomas Drake and attorney Jesselyn Radack, did a video interview for USA Today, in which they dispel claims by Edward Snowden’s critics that he should have gone through official government channels to bring attention to NSA’s massive secret surveillance programs.

These high-ranking former NSA officials spent years inside the government trying to expose illegal and unconstitutional spying on American citizens, as well as insider deals to steer millions of dollars to intelligence contractors, only to be ignored by Congress, the courts and the Inspector General. They were instead targeted for harassment, threats and even prosecution by Obama’s Justice Department. Is it any surprise that Snowden chose to leave the country and go public, rather than follow in their footsteps?

-David Kasper

 

Ed Snowden says Harassment of Whistleblowers will Backfire

Posted on by
Reply

Snowden

Shortly after Ed Snowden publicly revealed himself as the source of leaked secret NSA documents nine days ago, he did a surreptitious on-camera interview with The Guardian, which was seen around the world. As he remains in hiding in Hong Kong, US media figures have been anxious to get another interview with him. Instead, he decided to hold a live 90-minute online chat session yesterday on The Guardian website where he responded to questions from readers. During the chat, he had this to say about whether the government’s persecution of whistleblowers will succeed in intimidating other insiders from revealing what they know:

“. . . overly harsh responses to public interest whistleblowing only escalate the scale, scope, and skill involved in future disclosures. Citizens with a conscience are not going to ignore wrongdoing simply because they’ll be destroyed for it: the conscience forbids it. Instead, these draconian responses simply build better whistleblowers. If the Obama administration responds with an even harsher hand against me, they can be assured that they’ll soon find themselves facing an equally harsh public response.”

As the surveillance state continues to conceal what it does with an ever-expanding blanket of secrecy, enforced by threats of imprisonment for violators, and complicity from the major media, whistleblowers are becoming the only avenue left to expose government and corporate wrongdoing. Seizing Power provides a platform for them, and we believe that Snowden is correct that they will only become more numerous and effective as the government tries to increase its intimidation.

-David Kasper