More Claims From NSA Whistleblower Russell Tice

eldavojohn writes "Russell Tice, former NSA employee & whistleblower, has revealed yet more details claiming that wiretapping was combined with credit card data to target civilians. He also suggests the CEOs of major companies hold the truth: 'To get at what's really going on here, the CEOs of these telecom companies, and also of the banking and credit card companies, and any other company where you have big databases, those are the people you have to haul in to Congress and tell them you better tell the truth.' Will Congress follow his suggestions?" This adds to information revealed by Tice last week that the wiretaps targeted journalists in particular.

Comments

Re:Hard evidence

[yakmans_dad]

Two points. First, he isn't making a new allegation. Second, does the friggin' Telecom Immunity Bill ring a bell? Hellooooooo, McFly. They didn't decide to protect these people on a hypothetical.

Re:Why does Obama support this?

[squiggleslash]

What makes you think he does?

We've had one Slashdot story claiming that he does that turned out to be complete bullshit, the words of a Bush-appointee who hasn't left yet being put in President Obama's mouth that themselves didn't say what the story said it did, and that certainly wasn't about bugging the phones of journalists.

I'm not optimistic that Obama is going to haul those who made a mockery of the rule of law and the constitution over the coals, but it's a little too early to be sure he isn't going to, and it's highly improbable he'll follow in Bush's footsteps.

Wait and see.

Re:Hard evidence

[EQ]

Having worked there in the black tower at Ft Meade (and more importantly, the lower brick building with the looooong hallways that is connected to it, which is where the real work gets done), this guy is appearing to be less and less believable.

There one thing that rings the BS bell for this guy: NSA is VERY compartmentalized. Information simply does not cross boundaries there, and there are multiple checks and curbs to see that compartmentalized intelligence is not shared out, so that the sources and methods are protected. In the past, there have (allegedly) been times when people died or bad events were allowed in order to preserve sources and methods. This is RELIGION at NSA: protect sources and methods, PERIOD. That means compartmentalization really slices the world up, and you only get to see your sliver of it as an analyst.

That's one of the major frustrations I and others had there when working there as an analyst: you only get blindered, partial, or gappy info and data. Many times, the best you get are "sanitized" analyst/reporting products from other programs and compartments that has been scrubbed so clean of sources and methods that it is scarcely useful. This makes one's analysis necessarily incomplete in many case because one simply do not have the raw data on hand except that for which one's own compartment is responsible. As an analyst, you end up using hedge-words, and all kinds of "fudge factor" language.

So I doubt anyone his level or near his level (above him) has that much scope, nor has that sort of visibility into programs across such a broad swath of intelligence collection, processing, analysis and reporting. Because it would ring alarm bells in personnel security if one person of that level were to be read-on to so many special compartmented access programs, sufficent enough to be privy to so many programs, sources and methods.

Furthermore, he cites no real specifics in these cases, not a shred of *actionable* evidence, only vague and overly-broad allegations, all given in a conspiracy-tinged "dramatic" way.

He may have reported some issues correctly regarding telecom intercepts (the legality of which have been upheld, and which the Obama administration seems to find useful now that they are tasked with protecting the nation), but a lot of this seems to me to be simply speculation on his part.

The applicable USSIDs and Presidential Directives are pretty tight about these sorts of things, and the NSA Inspector General pounds people for violating these sorts of things. This is another reason Tice's claims seem hollow to an insider(aside from the utter lack of actionable specific hard evidence): he apparently never went to the IG.

Initially his claims appeared to merit attention, but all in all, Tice is beginning to sound more like a crank who wants face-time on Olberman than anyone with a legitimate, actionable claim, with evidence to back it up.

Advice from one ex-"A wing" denizen: Start naming names, places, and activities, ones that can be verified by the IG and the US Attorney General; they love to rip NSA program managers. Otherwise, Tice needs to realize he's not "Mother" and this isn't Sneakers.