August 2, 2013

Germany Suspends Listening Agreements with the US and the UK

(Translation mine)

Germany Suspends Listening Agreements with the US and the UK



Amidst the massive spying scandal Internet by U.S. agencies, Germany has suspended interception and monitoring agreements with U.S. and the UK that allowed them to partially monitor data on its territory.

"The cancellation of the administrative arrangements in which we have insisted in recent weeks is a necessary and appropriate (action) in the context of recent discussions on the protection of privacy," said Foreign Minister of Germany, Guido Westerwelle.

This concerns the administrative agreements signed in 1968 and 1969 as an annex to the German law on the limitation of the confidentiality of correspondence, communication and postal, telephone, telegraph and other telecommunications (the so-called law G10).

...

German authorities claim that these agreements have never been used since the reunification of Germany in 1990. However, after the scandalous revelations of former CIA agent Edward Snowden, some experts have expressed doubts.

....

http://actualidad.rt.com/actualidad/view/101903-alemania-suspender-acuerdos-escuchas-eeuu

August 2, 2013

ACLU: Edward Snowden is a Whistleblower

Edward Snowden is a Whistleblower
July 30, 2013

by Michael German, senior policy counsel at the ACLU’s Washington Legislative Office and a former FBI agent.

My American Civil Liberties Union colleagues and I have been extremely busy since the Guardian and the Washington Post published leaked classified documents exposing the scope of the government's secret interpretations of the Patriot Act and the 2008 amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which allow the FBI and NSA to spy on hundreds of millions of innocent Americans. We haven't written much about the alleged leaker of this information, Edward Snowden, however, mainly because we took his advice to focus on what the NSA and FBI were doing, rather than on what he did or didn't do. (See exceptions here and here).

But I did want to clear up a question that seems to keep coming up: whether Snowden is a whistleblower. It is actually not a hard question to answer. The Whistleblower Protection Act protects "any disclosure" that a covered employee reasonably believes evidences "any violation of any law, rule, or regulation," or "gross mismanagement, a gross waste of funds, and abuse of authority, or a substantial and specific danger to public health or safety."

In the two months since Snowden's alleged disclosures, no fewer than five lawsuits have been filed challenging the legality of the surveillance programs he exposed. The author of the Patriot Act, Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), called the scope of data collection revealed in one of the leaked Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court orders "incredibly troubling," and "an overbroad interpretation of the Act" that "raise[s] questions about whether our constitutional rights are secure."

It doesn't end there. Over a dozen bills have been introduced in Congress to narrow these now public surveillance authorities and increase transparency regarding continuing programs. No one can know what was in Edward Snowden's mind, but clearly he could have had a reasonable belief the documents he leaked to the news media revealed government illegality and abuse of authority.

The disclosures also revealed that U.S. military officers and intelligence community officials have been less than truthful in their public comments and congressional testimony about the government's domestic surveillance practices, both in the scope of the programs and their effectiveness. Such false and misleading testimony threatens more than just Americans' privacy; it threatens democratic control of government.

Americans need and deserve truthful information about what the government is doing, particularly where the activity infringes on individual rights. As the father of the Constitution James Madison said, "A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or perhaps both." Denying Americans this knowledge through excessive and unnecessary secrecy, or worse, official deception, is unjustifiable and illegal. In a democracy, the law should never be secret.

The countless articles on the front pages of dozens of newspapers across the country since the documents leaked reveal the public thirst for this information. It is clear that these disclosures benefited the public, by giving victims of illegal surveillance – essentially all Americans – the knowledge and opportunity to challenge these unconstitutional programs, both in the courts and through their elected representatives in Congress. Even President Obama said he "welcomed this debate" and thought it was "healthy for our democracy." Yet a properly informed public debate on these programs would not have been possible without Snowden's leaks.

But the fact that the leaks served the public interest by exposing government illegality and abuse doesn't mean Snowden is protected by the law, because the intelligence community has always been exempted from the Whistleblower Protection Act. This fact refutes the other common misperception: that there are effective internal avenues for reporting illegal activities within the intelligence community.

Congress passed the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act in 1998, but it is no more than a trap. It establishes a procedure for internal reporting within the agencies and through the Inspector General to the congressional intelligence committees, but it provides no remedy for reprisals that occur as a result. Reporting internally through the ICWPA only identifies the whistleblowers, leaving them vulnerable to retaliation. The examples of former NSA official Thomas Drake, former House Intelligence Committee staffer Diane Roark and former CIA officer Sabrina De Sousa show too well.

This lack of protection means that when intelligence community employees and contractors – who take an oath to defend the Constitution – see government illegality they must turn the other way, or risk their careers and possibly even their freedom. The people we trust to protect our nation from foreign enemies deserve legal protection when they blow the whistle on wrongdoing within government.

Michael German is senior policy counsel at the ACLU's Washington Legislative Office and a former FBI agent.

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http://www.aclu.org/blog/free-speech-national-security/edward-snowden-whistleblower

August 2, 2013

Contradicting NSA claims, Sen Leahy hasn't seen "dozens or even several terrorist plots" thwarted by

Contradicting NSA claims, Senator Leahy hasn't seen "dozens or even several terrorist plots" thwarted by mass surveillance

Senate Panel Presses N.S.A. on Phone Logs
By CHARLIE SAVAGE and DAVID E. SANGER

At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, the chairman, Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, accused Obama administration officials of overstating the success of the domestic call log program. He said he had been shown a classified list of “terrorist events” detected through surveillance, and it did not show that “dozens or even several terrorist plots” had been thwarted by the domestic program.

...

“If this program is not effective it has to end. So far, I’m not convinced by what I’ve seen,” Mr. Leahy said, citing the “massive privacy implications” of keeping records of every American’s domestic calls.

...

The Obama administration has been trying to build public support for its surveillance programs, which trace back to the Bush administration, by arguing that they are subject to strict safeguards and court oversight and that they have helped thwart as many as 54 terrorist events. That figure, Mr. Leahy emphasized, relies upon conflating another program that allows surveillance targeted at noncitizens abroad, which has apparently been quite valuable, with the domestic one.



Still, Senator Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who is chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said she supported overhauling the program but keeping it in place because it generates information that might prevent attacks.

John C. Inglis, the deputy director of the N.S.A., said there had been 13 investigations in which the domestic call tracking program made a “contribution.” He cited two discoveries: that several men in San Diego were sending money to a terrorist group in Somalia, and that a suspect who was already under scrutiny in a subway bomb plot was using a different phone.
...

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/01/us/nsa-surveillance.html?ref=politics&_r=0

August 1, 2013

Classified: Senators Hide Their Votes on Arming Syrian Fighters from Public

Classified: Senators Hide Their Votes on Arming Syrian Fighters from Public

Published on Thursday, August 1, 2013 by Common Dreams

Debate and positions on controversial military aid shrouded in secrecy, conjuring memories of Iraq War buildup
- Sarah Lazare, staff writer

After the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence last week passed the Obama administration's controversial plan to funnel arms to Syrian rebels fighting the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, the vote and debate remain hidden from the public under the label of "classified" information.(Image: Skyafar.net)

McClatchy reported on Tuesday:

There was no public debate and no public vote when one of the most contentious topics in American foreign policy was decided – outside of the view of constituents, who oppose the president’s plan to aid the rebels by 54 percent to 37 percent, according to a Gallup Poll last month.

In fact, ask individual members of the committee, who represent 117 million people in 14 states, how they stood on the plan to use the CIA to funnel weapons to the rebels and they are likely to respond with the current equivalent of “none of your business:” It’s classified.

Those were, in fact, the words Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., chair of the committee, used when asked a few days before the approval was granted to clarify her position for her constituents. She declined. It’s a difficult situation, she said. And, “It’s classified.”

Critics are furious at the secrecy, recalling the "classified" government meetings that drove forward the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq.

"It is really undemocratic, frankly, that important policy decisions are debated in secret and that the information on which these decisions are made are kept secret," Stephen Zunes—leading US Middle East Policy scholar—told Common Dreams.

"That is how the Iraq War was," he continued. "All these members of congress insisted there was evidence of weapons of mass destruction, and when they were questioned they said their evidence was 'classified.' We trusted the government not to lie to us, but they did."

Zunes declared that the secrecy of the proceedings is especially egregious in a case where a majority of people in the US are opposed to sending direct military aid to Syria, as a recent Gallup poll reveals.

"'Classified' has become less a safeguard for information and more a shield from accountability on tough subjects," Steven Aftergood, the director of the Federation of American Scientists’ Project on Government Secrecy, told McClatchy.

“Classification can be a convenient pretext for avoiding difficult questions,” he continued. “There’s a lot that can be said about Syria without touching on classified, including a statement of general principles, a delineation of possible military and diplomatic options, and a preference for one or the other of them. So to jump to ‘national security secrecy’ right off the bat looks like an evasion.”

The move to arm Syrian rebels comes amid Obama administration deliberation over potential direct military strikes.

Members of the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence who refuse to reveal their position on Syrian arms include: Dianne Feinstein (D), John D. Rockefeller IV (D), Ron Wyden (D), Barbara A. Mikulski (D), Mark Udall (D), Mark Warner (D), Martin Heinrich (D), Angus King (D), Saxby Chambliss (R), Richard Burr (R), James E. Risch (R), Daniel Coats (R), Marco Rubio (R), Susan Collins (R), Tom Coburn (R), Harry Reid (D), Mitch McConnell (R), Carl Levin (D), and James Inhofe (R).

_____________________
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/08/01-8

August 1, 2013

White House 'extremely disappointed' with Snowden asylum

White House 'extremely disappointed' with Snowden asylum
Published time: August 01, 2013 16:51

The White House is “extremely disappointed that the Russian government would take this step” despite US’s official and private requests to expel him, White House spokesperson Jay Carney said.

Carney stressed the US did not view Edward Snowden, who was granted temporary asylum in Russia on Thursday, as a whistleblower or dissident saying the NSA former contractor is accused of leaking classified information in his home country.

"We see this as an unfortunate development and we are extremely disappointed by it," Carney said adding the White House was set to contact the Russian authorities.

Carney stated that while no scheduling announcements were being made, the US is inspecting the worth of a summit with Russia. "We are evaluating the utility of the summit in light of this," he said.

...

http://rt.com/usa/white-house-snowden-asylum-918/

Details to follow

August 1, 2013

NSA pays £100m in secret funding for GCHQ. "It's not just a US problem. They are worse than the US."

Exclusive: NSA pays £100m in secret funding for GCHQ

•?Secret payments revealed in leaks by Edward Snowden
•?GCHQ expected to 'pull its weight' for Americans
•?Weaker regulation of British spies 'a selling point' for NSA

Nick Hopkins and Julian Borger
The Guardian, Thursday 1 August 2013 11.04 EDT


The NSA paid £15.5m towards redevelopments at GCHQ’s site in Bude, north Cornwall, which intercepts communications from the transatlantic cables that carry internet traffic. Photograph: Kieran Doherty/Reuters

The US government has paid at least £100m to the UK spy agency GCHQ over the last three years to secure access to and influence over Britain's intelligence gathering programmes.

The top secret payments are set out in documents which make clear that the Americans expect a return on the investment, and that GCHQ has to work hard to meet their demands.

...

...

In one revealing document from 2010, GCHQ acknowledged that the US had "raised a number of issues with regards to meeting NSA's minimum expectations". It said GCHQ "still remains short of the full NSA ask".

Ministers have denied that GCHQ does the NSA's "dirty work", but in the documents GCHQ describes Britain's surveillance laws and regulatory regime as a "selling point" for the Americans.

...

No other detail is provided – but it raises the possibility that GCHQ might have been spying on an American living in the US. The NSA is prohibited from doing this by US law.

...

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/aug/01/nsa-paid-gchq-spying-edward-snowden

"It's not just a US problem. They are worse than the US." - Edward Snowden

August 1, 2013

"Searching the web for suspicious stuff" Meet Ms Catalano. pressure cookers, backpacks &quinoa oh my

(edit: reverting back to original title, not that it makes anything better, in fact it makes things worse. So a Joint Terrorism Task Force pulls up to people's homes about 100 times a week based on google searches and that's all good? LMAO!)

by Michele Catalano

Former music contributor at Forbes, freelance writer published in The Magazine, Maura Magazine and at Boing Boing
Published August 1, 2013

pressure cookers, backpacks and quinoa, oh my!

It was a confluence of magnificent proportions that led to six agents from the joint terrorism task force to knock on my door Wednesday morning. Little did we know our seemingly innocent, if curious to a fault, Googling of certain things were creating a perfect storm of terrorism profiling. Because somewhere out there, someone was watching. Someone whose job it is to piece together the things people do on the internet raised the red flag when they saw our search history.



...

Which might not raise any red flags. Because who wasn’t reading those stories? Who wasn’t clicking those links? But my son’s reading habits combined with my search for a pressure cooker and my husband’s search for a backpack set off an alarm of sorts at the joint terrorism task force headquarters.

...

I was at work when it happened. My husband called me as soon as it was over, almost laughing about it but I wasn’t joining in the laughter. His call left me shaken and anxious.

...

Meanwhile, they were peppering my husband with questions. Where is he from? Where are his parents from? They asked about me, where was I, where do I work, where do my parents live. Do you have any bombs, they asked. Do you own a pressure cooker? My husband said no, but we have a rice cooker. Can you make a bomb with that? My husband said no, my wife uses it to make quinoa. What the hell is quinoa, they asked.



They mentioned that they do this about 100 times a week. And that 99 of those visits turn out to be nothing. I don’t know what happens on the other 1% of visits and I’m not sure I want to know what my neighbors are up to.

...

https://medium.com/something-like-falling/2e7d13e54724

August 1, 2013

TX DPS subpoenas two Twitter accounts for criticizing Texas Republican leaders

DPS subpoenas two Twitter accounts over alleged threats
Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Two Twitter users who posted messages criticizing Texas Republican leaders for recently passed abortion restrictions have been subpoenaed by the Department of Public Safety in the investigation of a “terroristic threat.”

The subpoena (below), acquired by the San Antonio Express-News, was sent to Twitter from DPS Agent Jason McMurray of Tyler on July 25. The subpoena directs Twitter to disclose names, emails and addresses, activation date, payment information, email and IP addresses used by the accounts @deniseromano and https://twitter.com/prisonforbush on July 17-19. A call to McMurray was not immediately returned.

A July 26 email from Twitter’s legal team to @prisonforbush (below) acquired by the Express-News indicates the subpoena has been received by Twitter and will be filled by August 2 unless the users appeal.

...

The account @prisonforbush sent it’s first tweet in more than a year on July 18, which is the day Gov. Rick Perry signed into law some of the countries tightest abortion restrictions. The account sent about 40 tweets that day and none July 17 or July 19. Of the 40 tweets, many of which were vulgar, five mentioned Texas Republican leaders including Perry, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and former President George W. Bush. The account @deniseromano had a large volume of tweets on all three days. Below is screenshot of tweets sent July 18.







http://blog.chron.com/texaspolitics/2013/07/dps-subpoenas-abortion-rights-activists-twitter-accounts/

August 1, 2013

Funny how he didn't repeat last year's farcical attempt to dress like a hacker

This year he wore his patriotic clothes.

And this year lol, only select members of the Black Hat review board and other select attendees were allowed to submit questions for Keith Alexander.

And they confiscated the eggs



I hate it when that happens!