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

Hard evidence

[LittleLebowskiUrbanA]

People are saying this guy was just a mid level analyst. Does he have any hard evidence or is he just drumming up publicity to sell a book?

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:Hard evidence

[Shakrai]

Second, does the friggin' Telecom Immunity Bill ring a bell?

Good thing Obama filibustered that thing like he promise.... oh, never mind.....

Re:Hard evidence

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, so that means ... that there's nothing to look for? How does that work?

It means the savior is a calculating (some would say lying) politician like any other, all claims to "change" notwithstanding. There is still a large contingent of followers who refuse to accept this and provide all manner of rationalizations.

Re:Hard evidence

[TheGratefulNet]

obama this and obama that.

1) he's human
2) humans are corruptable
3) presidency always ALWAYS corrupts (its too much power for any single human being to weild)

draw your own conclusions.

I expect nothing 'new' from obama. the machine is what matters and he's only a small cog; a figurehead. the machine LIKES power and will never give it up once it has it. have we not seen that play over and over, in history?

obama won't be as evil as bush but he's human and will be corrupted by the power he received. its not his fault but ours for giving TOO much power, essentially unchecked by The People, to our own government. the gov no longer works for us, it thinks we work for it. its already broken beyond repair, sorry to say.

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.

Why does Obama support this?

[DoofusOfDeath]

If we assume, for the sake of argument, that Obama hasn't been flat-out lying about his desire for a government that obeys the law, then does anyone know why he supports this kind of BS?

So far, I haven't seen any change I can believe in. And I voted for him.

Re:Why does Obama support this?

[Spazztastic]

p>So far, I haven't seen any change I can believe in. And I voted for him.

It's been only a week. Don't you know how slow things move with the government?

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:Why does Obama support this?

[Shakrai]

Don't you know how slow things move with the government?

Ding, ding, ding, mod parent up. Whether or love Obama or hate him expecting real change on a ship the size of the Federal Government in ten days is pretty unrealistic.

Re:Why does Obama support this?

[squiggleslash]

Not entirely sure why the above was moderated "Troll", but given the AC's response, if the issue is the second paragraph, then the false Slashdot story is here, and the debunking is here and here.

Most media outlets ignoring this

[ISurfTooMuch]

It's interesting that most media outlets are ignoring this. Of course, it took them a little time to get onto the original NSA/AT&T story, which broke online (at Wired, I think) before it went mainstream. When I read it online, I made sure to send messages to several media outlets, including CNN, about this. I never got any replies, but it was nice to see them pick up on the story, and I like to think that maybe I helped the process along.

What I'm trying to say is that it wouldn't hurt for some folks here to take a few minutes to contact one or more news outlets and send them links to the video interviews on MSNBC, Wired articles, etc. Whether this story is real or fabricated is unknown at this point, but it's potentially big enough that it needs wide coverage.

So let's all send this in to CNN, the New York Times, Washington Post, etc. and see if they haven't covered it because they aren't aware of it or because they're deliberately ignoring it.

Re:Corrupt CEOs

[jeffasselin]

It's not rotten, it's in fact a very well-functioning oligarchy.

Re:1984

[mcgrew]

Orwell was an optimist.

We need investigations

[Bemopolis]

This is exactly what someone would say if he were a disgruntled ex-employee fired for insubordination.
This is exactly what someone would say if he were flogging a book.
This is exactly what someone would say if he were a partisan hack who did not like the previous administration.
and
This is exactly what someone would say if it were true and he were loyal to America rather than the party in power at the time.

Either a lot of Bushies need to go to jail, or Tice does.