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Interview with National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell
Schneier is reporting that Mike McConnell, U.S. National Intelligence Director, recently gave an interesting interview to the El Paso Times. "I don't think he's ever been so candid before. For example, he admitted that the nation's telcos assisted the NSA in their massive eavesdropping efforts. We already knew this, of course, but the government has steadfastly maintained that either confirming or denying this would compromise national security."
Every post on Slashdot abott national intelligence kills another American!
A transcript of the interview is available here .
Dupe.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
You kinda wonder who thought it'd be a good idea to let him say what he did.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
All this means is they've either found another way to intercept the data, or the people they are trying to track are no longer using phone calls for communication, so it's ok to release the info. Otherwise, it was exceedingly stupid to give out the information, because once it's out you can pretty much count on that the folks you are trying to track will change their methods, same way Bin Laden started using personal envoys instead of Sat phones after it was leaked that we can track the sat phone calls.
American's will die, laughing.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
They run IIS behind akamai's Linux connections. That makes their systems fast. But when updating, the info is passed back to their IIS. As such, it was only a matter of time before it was cracked. Crap, do you expect to hear about every Windows box that gets cracked? /. would be /.ed just on those alone.
I suspect that some officials are beginning to feel the wall against their backs.
I read sections of this article and it's like reading an interview with a government in Bizarro world, we'll it's like reading an interview with just about anyone in this Administration I suppose.
McConnell admitted the Telecos were in on illegal wiretapping (yes it was illegal, the FISA courts have told Bush this several times). He then went on to say that they should get immunity because that revelation would hurt their buisiness. He claims to be affraid it would put them out of business. Way to teach big corporations to not engage in illegal activities, grant them blanket immunity.
McConnell described how many people in and out of the US were currently under surveillance. He gave out more detail than anyone [I've seen] has been asking about. The critics of illegal wiretapping don't ask for methods and proceedures they just want this done within the constraints of the law. McConnell was getting awfully close to giving out dangerous information.
McConnell then states that publication of this information will kill Americans. No Shit, he said that. First off, it's hyperbole.. he didn't give out that much info but he started to get close. Second, why the fuck is National Intelligence Director giving out information to a reporter that will get Americans killed? I suspect he believes that.
There's something wrong with McConnell.
Impeach everyone
I'm not feeling witty so bite me
Not for lack of trying.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
Last week, he also said that, if the US Congress debates spy laws, "some Americans are going to die".
Here's a quote from the interview with El Paso Times:
Q. So you're saying that the reporting and the debate in Congress means that some Americans are going to die?A. That's what I mean. Because we have made it so public. We used to do these things very differently, but for whatever reason, you know, it's a democratic process and sunshine's a good thing.
What's this guy smoking? Or maybe it is a threat to the members of congress à la the film, Enemy of the State.
Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley
[This post is in the public domain (copyright-free) unless otherwise stated]
you might have missed the point. we are not here for the actual news itself. we are here for what people say in comments in regard to that news. this is the /. crowd.
Read radical news here
See Wikipedia: Enemy of the State if you haven't seen it (good film). Although, the NSA murder a senator in that case (not a congressman) who refuses to vote for increased warrantless surveillance.
Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley
[This post is in the public domain (copyright-free) unless otherwise stated]
"U.S. National Intelligence" -- Hmm, isn't that like an oxymoron?
One of the things that is so ridiculous -- almost surreal -- about the government's position on this is that they seem, on the one hand, to attribute almost mystical powers to potential terrorists (they can blow up a plane with 4 ounces of nail polish remover !!!), and on the other hand to assume that they're dumber than rocks. The administration has said they're snooping on phone calls and E-mail; I don't think it takes a terrorist Einstein to figure out that they might be getting assistance from folks like AT&T.
To take another example, the administration claimed, a while back, that national security was threatened by a story that they were monitoring international funds transfers through SWIFT. Of course, various members of the government had given speeches urging that financial links to potential terrorists be blocked. And, the last time I looked, SWIFT (the international body that develops standards and procedures for funds transfers) had 8,000+ member banks. Its existence is hardly a closely-guarded secret, and I don't think it would take too many Nobel Prize winners to figure out that transfers through SWIFT might be monitored.
El Paso? On Slashdot?!
How is the above comment a troll? It's probably the truth.
Gah. I must be new here.
Yeah? Well I think you're overrated too.
Look how much the man speaks, compared to how little the interviewer speaks. There are no slips in this interview, and there are a very large amount of omissions. Of course, all the omissions are of things that would be blatantly illegal, and we do know some of them are occurring. (Surveillance of all American phone calls at the switch level, for example. The taps are in, even if unused.) It only makes me exceptionally curious as to what he's hiding, because I certainly get the impression he's hiding something.
How fucking pathetic are you that you draw your political insights from Will Smith movie?
You know, I'm really glad we have these government agencies so eager to set up this net and catch information exclusively about terrorist activities overseas that threaten our interests. The problem is they do not seem to understand (or want to) the implications of their actions.
Setting up a tap into the wires that carry ANY American's communication without some sort of check on their power to thwart abuse is unacceptable. As in, 'in direct violation of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America.' They have to put some kind of oversight in place and it can't be Albert Gonzales. It has to be judicial branch.
They could have amended the FISA law to remain legal (ie, concordant with the Constitution), but instead they passed a law that does indeed violate the Constitution. And that's pretty scary, that these agencies and our President and our Congress are not sensitive to protecting the law.
There's some strong arguments against the whole program. Slashdot covered the issue of 'well what if someone hacks the tap?' and that's a big problem. There's huge potential for abuse of power, as well. And there's always the prospect of the erosion of trust within a society which leads to totalitarian-style culture. There's enough doubt about the value of this thing that it should be forced through the courts.
There's still no evidence having the exact specifications of a pending attack on the USA would enable our government to do anything to prevent it. On September 11, 2001 attacks happened despite sufficient warning. They lacked the will to properly defend the country then. Now is no different.
-HobophobE
Nothing laughs forever.
[....]
What's this guy smoking? He is smoking his job.
Imagine that you have his job. And imagine that you take it seriously.
Working against you, from your point of view, is a very leaky organization - Congress.
As part of your job, you must talk to people like Reyes (D-Texas) and Leahy (D-Vermont) and Specter (D-Rino).
People who would disclose secrets regarding sources and methods, just to get a vote.
Greenwald comments: "McConnell's ties to these companies are so deep and numerous that it really rises to the level of conflict of interest for him to demand -- on national security grounds, no less -- that they be granted full immunity from liability for past illegal acts. He is, in essence, demanding immunity for vast numbers of his former partners, clients, associates and scores of business interests in which he had, if not still has, a substantial stake. This conflict is glaring and extreme, but Democrats said nothing about it when granting prospective immunity to this industry at his insistence. Thus far, they have also said nothing in the face of McConnell's demands that this immunity now be made retroactive as well."
Pedantic, I know, but senators are Congressmen. Representatives are also Congressmen. The United States has a bicameral legislature.
Uh, "if it looks roughly mouse-shaped according to my infra-red sensitive pit, eat it"? --Chris Burke 09-08-10
I liked your Spector bit.
The crap about bin Laden is a lie, pure and simple. He had stopped using the satellite phone BEFORE it was ever publicly revealed.
We do not know if the LA Times leaked, intentionally or not, the information to bin Laden before publishing the story.
In any case, it seems bin Laden quit using his phone within two weeks of the LA Times article.
And it seems that the Clinton Administration's prosecutors mentioned the monitoring during the trial of the 1993 WTC bombers.
But it wasn't until the time frame of the LA Times article that bin Laden quit using his sat phone.
Of course, I can envisage a situation where an information leak indirectly related to a congressional debate might indirectly harm US agents. The reason I suggested he might be smoking something is that he sees it as so black and white, and he assumed that it was obvious, without any intervening explanation, that Congress debating changing spying laws would cause people to die. Surely, if anything, it is Congress looking into the operations of the security service to possibly help them in redrafting the laws, which might cause a leak, rather than Congress thinking about changing the law per se (hello...that is what they are elected to do).
Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley
[This post is in the public domain (copyright-free) unless otherwise stated]
Yeah, just another day in /; dupemand.
Still, as a fellow fan of Crowe and Sting, glad you got a 5
I'm not in the US, but I assumed that the situation there was the same as it is here in the UK where we have an upper and a lower house of parliament but we only call members of the lower house "MPs" or "members of parliament" (even though lords are also technically members of parliament).
Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley
[This post is in the public domain (copyright-free) unless otherwise stated]
Yeah, like totally, how the hell did we ever find anybody when cell and sat phones didn't exist? Seriously, security through obscurity is not security at all.
The illegal, unconstitutional NSA (and the scumbags who work for them) are yet another infringement on our rights by the gov't. Add it to the ever-growing list of violations:
They violate the 1st Amendment by opening mail, caging demonstrators and banning books like "America Deceived" from Amazon.
They violate the 2nd Amendment by confiscating guns during Katrina.
They violate the 4th Amendment by conducting warrant-less wiretaps.
They violate the 5th and 6th Amendment by suspending habeas corpus.
They violate the 8th Amendment by torturing.
They violate the entire Constitution by starting 2 illegal wars based on lies and on behalf of a foriegn gov't.
Support Dr. Ron Paul and save this country.
Last link (unless Google Books caves to the gov't and drops the title):
America Deceived (book)
And the problem with a few of us getting killed (where the alternative is violating the law as well as sacrificing some very basic values about freedom and the role of government) is..?
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
There doesn't seem to be a consistent usage, but slightly more often than half the time in the US congressmen are referred to as either senators or representatives. You actually don't hear the term congressman very often in reference to an individual.
Uh, "if it looks roughly mouse-shaped according to my infra-red sensitive pit, eat it"? --Chris Burke 09-08-10
Ah yes, debating policies is killing Americans. My neighbor is really annoying and plays loud classical music at 7AM, I wonder when his number will come up--but before I go any further on that topic, what do people think about national security? Has it gone to far (1 American killed)? Why is domestic spying happening (2)? Is it more important (3) to be safe (4) or free (5,6,7)?
This kind of logic really gets me going. What is the point really of having an NSA at all, I mean if they think they are so fantas
True, but typical convention is to refer to Senators as such, while members of the house are either Representatives or Congresspersons.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
>Last week, he also said that, if the US Congress debates spy laws, "some Americans are going to die".
:(
>What's this guy smoking?
compare that to Polish Defence minister words from two days (from memory, not exact words) : "merely discussing our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan is equal to not supporting our troops, and any public debate will make more polish soldiers die"
I think they all get the same script for the press events
Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
That isn't the official story. Unless you know bin laden himself and he told you differently or something.
If BushCo is consistent in their M.O. ( their statements and actions as polar opposites) and motivation ( capital ) , then the ONLY
reason for the intercepts is to trade the financial markets from their intercepts of CONFIDENTIAL corporate news announcements prior to public disclosure.
Well, the real reason is that OBL went way over his satphone minutes. Too many text messages. He was real pissed at Cingular (and his son). The whole monitoring thing was just an elaborate way for him to get out of his bill.
Yeah? Well I think you're overrated too.
I read as much of that as I could bear, which wasn't even to the end of the amount available to sample. I think that may in fact be the worst book I have ever read in my life. Are you sure Amazon didn't just drop it because it was crap and nobody wanted to buy it?
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
God I love partisans. Using the words "Rino" or "Dino" is the ultimate sign of self delusion. The final desperate act of cognitive dissonance for those whose self identity is defined by people who won't take their phone calls.
GO BRONCOS!!!
John Elway (BINO)
Posting as anonymous because I can't register here at work...
I have a close relative who is employed by the govt, and by saying more than that, I could probably get him and myself in trouble. On several occasions I've been told about how this relative will go weeks without finding anything because of sifting through junk. I don't think people really realize just how much information the NSA has to collect and sift through to find the one or two needles in the giant haystack. If any of you are sysadmins or IT managers for a financial institution, you are well acquainted with a little bill we like to call Sarbanes-Oxley. Take SarbOx and multiply it by about 5 million. That's a rediculous amount of data and I can safely say that the Joe Schmoe analyst who works at NSA surveillance doesn't give a crack about your personal phone call to your girlfriend. He's got to fill out official reports on what he's discovered, if anything... not to mention go through the triple layer of access auditing.
Gotta take all things in perspective. Not everyone is concocting a conspiracy under our noses. You take too many movies and tv shows seriously. (although yes they are VERY entertaining, they are still FICTION)
There's a good reason why this is all kept under wraps, and no it isn't because NSA analysts are keeping score on how many phone sex calls you are making. And I can definitely see why if some information leaked to the public, people could die from it.
It is Director of National Intelligence. The organization and title go by the initials D - N - I. DNI. Get it? THERE IS NO SUCH ENITITY AS "NID".
Wise up, and get with the program.
I think you may be right. The accusations are nonsense.
I've added numbers and letters to more specifically enumerate the nonsense.
1) They violate the 1st Amendment by a) opening mail, b) caging demonstrators and c) banning books like "America Deceived" from Amazon.
2) They violate the 2nd Amendment by confiscating guns during Katrina.
3) They violate the 4th Amendment by conducting warrant-less wiretaps.
4) They violate the 5th and 6th Amendment by suspending habeas corpus.
5) They violate the 8th Amendment by torturing.
6) They violate the entire Constitution by starting 2 illegal wars based on lies and on behalf of a foriegn gov't.
Confiscation of guns (2) would fall to the BATF.
Habeas corpus (4) issues would arise from the (mis)behavior of the FBI, CIA, DIA, or military law enforcement (MPs). Also torture (5). Also maybe crowd/riot control (1b).
Opening mail (1a) would be an FBI thing, or a CIA thing at times when they've decided they want to spy on us, too. Also done at times by the DoD when dealing with mail coming back from combat zones or staging areas to combat zones.
Wars (6), illegal are not, are started by the Executive Branch as a whole, and supported (in whatever fashion) by the
Legislative Branch as a whole.
I'm not aware of a government agency whose job it is to take books off store shelves (1c).
This leaves accusation 3, wiretapping, which would actually be part of what the NSA does.
The NSA does SIGINT and ELINT - Signals and Electronic Intelligence - and probably a metric grepload of data analysis. All of the other things would be somebody else's job, an abuse of somebody else's job, or nobody's job.
Anyone's ability to do his job without (a warrant|probable cause) and with impunity is a legislative or judical issue.
See Wikipedia: Enemy of the State if you haven't seen it (good film).
So, is this to say that you're recommending a movie immediately before revealing a spoiler?
Yeah! Time for slashtard liberals to jaw on about something they don't have the slightest clue about. This entire article is flamebait.
You're adorable.c le/2005/12/21/AR2005122101994.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/arti
This is way off topic (I only mentioned the movie for context), but, anyway, FTR, the murder is the first thing that happens so I'm not spoiling anything. Not that I think one can really spoil Hollywood films (which I generally desist--though this one isn't too bad and is relatively accurate so it is one of the few I have on DVD).
Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley
[This post is in the public domain (copyright-free) unless otherwise stated]
Your chances of dying en route to your destination as a passenger (1 in 6,050), and as a driver (1 in 6,498) should scare you and your family far more than any act of terrorism. Lifetime odds for heart disease (1 in 5), cancer (1 in 7) and stroke (1 in 24) should be scaring the crap out of you far more than any planned act of violence. If we'd have shoved a third of the money spent on the war on terrorism on reducing the risk of cancer, heart disease and stroke, we'd likely all have a much longer life.
By fearing an act of terrorism, you are enabling them to win. By focusing our attention on them, we are proving that it is a viable method of controlling the population of the United States. By panicking at the mere mention of a possible act of terrorism, we are begging our government to take away some of our liberties. And what right do we have to our liberties when we so readily ask our government to use any means necessary to fix the problem for us?
America should not respond to these threats with cowardice. Countering violence with more violence is not the solution, but the act of a country fearful of the terrorists committing these acts. The terrorists need to know that what they do will not change us, and will not change who we are. America should really just turn to them and say, "Go ahead and do your worst. We shall still be here at the end. We will NOT be intimidated by you. We shall prevail." A leader with any kind of backbone and dignity would not have reduced this country to the same level as our enemy. It has only emboldened the terrorists and confirmed that what they are doing (acts of violence) will achieve the results they seek.
So do not fear them. Any person who resorts to resolving an argument via violence is not one who should merit our respect as an equal.
Well, you know texting can get real expensive. Of course with every thing else going on, I'm not sure why he was worried about getting out of his contract, I doubt it would have effected his credit ratings any more then several countries wanting him arrested and locked up for a long time.
This might be a sign of how crazy he really is.
In the US, there is a trend to avoid this congress/senate confusion and start calling them "defendant."
The disclosure has already gotten some people killed. But, you don't want to hear that, so go ahead and ignore it. The rest of the world will, his widow will never know that he died for his country. Sucks, but it'll get some politicians re-elected and sell advertising, so that's the way it is.
Bullish Machine Tzar
First off, the "illegality" of conducting surveillance of comms passing through the US with either endpoint being foreign is based on the (laughable) assertions of a hard-left FISA judge appointed by Clinton. Which brings a larger question:
Absent US authority, i.e. the actual physical ability of the US to control the world outside it's borders, does US Law and more broadly protections historically only due US citizens, apply to foreign nationals in foreign countries?
Historically the courts have said "no" but the hard-left "lawfare" folks determined to aid (usually by Saudi terror-financier money) jihadis are intent on overturning this precedent.
Secondly, the FISA court ruling is being appealed, it will likely be heard (eventually) by the Supreme Court.
In the meantime, YES this decision HAS COST US LIVES:
The NSA was unable to get warrants to conduct surveillance of AQ in Iraq members who had kidnapped US soldiers and were using various comms that routed through the US (rumored to be IM traffic). As a result Pvt Joe Anzack was tortured, mutilated, and murdered by his Al Qaeda in Iraq captors. Another soldier who was also captured by AQ was also tortured, mutilated, and killed a while later.
So yeah, this decision cost lives. As discussion of Osama's satellite phone by Dem Sen. Rockafeller in the US Senate floor cost US lives. As NYT disclosure of the whole NSA intercept program cost lives (AQ comms went "dark" and operations went off undetected, mostly in Iraq-Afhanistan, killing Americans). As did the disclosure in the AT&T trial of surveillance logs of the Saudi-financed terror group. Which even the UN banned as a terror-financing front.
I'm all for some sort of oversight on NSA and other governmental surveillance activity. But the REAL threat to my privacy is guys like Google and Yahoo and Amazon selling off my personal information in bulk to anyone with the cash (aggregated with everyone else's). NSA has neither the manpower nor the desire (they're accountable if an attack succeeds and they KNOW IT) to listen in on my boring conversations.
It's not 1972 anymore, Nixon is not President, and the enemy (Jihadis) really do want to kill us and will eventually (look at how Pakistan is collapsing into Jihadi control by OSAMA) get nukes.
It's time to be a grown-up and adult. Taking 200 man hours for a single warrant to surveil a target GUARANTEES that terrorists intent on killing us will slip through. People on this site work with private data every day. As long as general guidelines are followed and an annual report is made to a committee in the Senate that is bipartisan (with strict penalties for disclosing national security info) then I'm OK with it. You can't expect anyone to get the job done when all they do is fill out mindless paperwork.
Which doesn't btw guard privacy either.
RESULT: surveilling every jihadi com possible, with little impact on US privacy, not PROCESS: filling out warrant applications inches thick, ought to be the goal.
It's only a matter of time before it is found since people are looking for it. Security through obscurity NEVER works. It may seem like it works for a while but that is a woefully false sense of security.
now if all of these people were ohhh nice conspiracy we could lead on there.
illuminati
In Soviet Russia, the National Intelligence Director interviews you!
Maybe he came clean on the telco intercepts because the grandson of the man who helped hide the telecom bunkers threatened to start posting their locations on Google Maps.
Glenn L. Powers
http://www.globalshout.net/