The NSA Wiretapping Story Nobody Wanted

CWmike writes "They sometimes call national security the third rail of politics. Touch it and, politically, you're dead. The cliché doesn't seem far off the mark after reading Mark Klein's new book, Wiring up the Big Brother Machine ... and Fighting It. It's an account of his experiences as the whistleblower who exposed a secret room at a Folsom Street facility in San Francisco that was apparently used to monitor the Internet communications of ordinary Americans. Amazingly, however, nobody wanted to hear his story. In his book he talks about meetings with reporters and privacy groups that went nowhere until a fateful January 20, 2006 meeting with Kevin Bankston of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Bankston was preparing a lawsuit that he hoped would put a stop to the wiretap program, and Klein was just the kind of witness the EFF was looking for. He spoke with Robert McMillan for an interview."

Comments

I question a key point from TFA

[Alaska Jack]

TFA:

"Secretly authorized in 2002, the program lets the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) monitor telephone conversations and e-mail messages of people inside the U.S. to identify suspected terrorists."

Hmm. I don't think this is accurate, in the sense that it implies that *intra-U.S.* calls were subject to monitoring. If I understand correctly, it was calls *coming in* to the United States, from individuals or organizations believed to have ties with terrorism.

I'm not certain about this though. If I'm wrong, feel free to set me straight.

    - AJ

Addendum: As I read further, I see this guy is the kind who is going to have a lot of fans on /., but I wonder. This, for example: "I was very worried. The Bush administration was capable of very crazy things and illegal things. I knew they were doing torture. And I knew they had taken into custody and jailed people who were citizens of the United States ... and just thrown them away in a brig with no trial and no charges. "

The Bush administration was not, to my knowledge, grabbing Americans off the street and "disappearing" them. Was this in fact the case, outside this guy's fevered dreams?

Re:I question a key point from TFA

[Jawn98685]

Then you need to expand your knowledge. "The Dark Side", by Jane Mayer would be a good start, though I doubt highly that you will expend the effort, because it would threaten your narrow and comfortable view of the world.

Your assumption that the Bush administration did not wipe it's ass with The Constitution of the United States deserves all the derision it is likely to get here on /., for it is utterly without supporting facts. Indeed, more than one U.S. citizen was detained and denied their rights as citizens with nothing more than the disingenuous process of a handful of lawyers drafting documents telling the President he could do pretty much anything he wanted when it came to "terrorists". Add to these few, (most of which, BTW, are probably quite guilty of the crimes they were suspected of), the thousands of other so-called "enemy combatants" who have also been denied their rights under U.S. and international law and you have an episode in U.S. history that is cause for national shame.

Ours is a nation of laws. Those laws, and the principles of liberty and justice that are their underpinnings, recognize no exigency that justifies a government official systematically ignoring those laws. No, not one. And before you dream up some Jack Bauer hypothetical, ticking-clock scenario, read the first sentence in the paragraph again and note the word "systematically". I rather doubt that history nor the courts would judge anyone to harshly for taking whatever action was necessary in such a far-fetched scenario, but that facts are that such was not the scenario. There was only the realization that, despite abundant intelligence that would have pointed the way, the intelligence and law enforcement arms of our government failed badly in the days leading up to 9/11. With this realization came the almost paranoid conviction that "they will hit us again" and the panic-driven actions of a powerful few to prevent that at any cost. The subsequent list of failures to defend, and insults to, The Constitution are well documented and far too many to list here, but the do most certainly, include the illegal interception of the private communications of U.S. citizens. Seriously, put down the neo-con fanboy kool-aid, stop watching Fox News, and see for yourself.

Re:I question a key point from TFA

[anegg]

I certainly don't speak for all citizens of the US. I have to start from somewhere to lay a foundation of right versus wrong. Having been raised in the US, I have drunk the kool-aid of the colonists fighting against their oppressive mother country, forming a "more perfect union," and laying down the basis for future government in a document we call the "Constitution." This bedrock document created a social compact which the then 13 colonies agreed to follow. I can tell when this compact is violated, because I can read it and understand it.

Other countries have their own forms of government, and their own beliefs in what is right and what is wrong. Many are similar to, but not the same as, the US beliefs. It would be arrogant of me to assume that everyone wants a government just like the US. Trying to understand some concept of "universal" rights given nationalistic differences is difficult for me.

Something that presents an especially thorny problem is how to deal with is operations against my country undertaken by individuals acting not as agents of a foreign government, but as part of a virtual community. We know how to handle "prisoners of war" (conceptually), how to tell when hostilities are over (usually), and how to repatriate citizens to their homeland. But terrorists don't easily fit into either of the two models for dealing with violent acts: its not exactly war (with another country) and its not exactly a typical law enforcement situation.

So, for me, the focus arises probably because I'm trying to find a problem with rules I understand, some minimal basis for determining "yes this is right" and "no that is wrong." I know that a US citizen is part of the social compact that I believe all US citizens operate under. And since I understand that social compact, especially the bedrock guarantees that are in it, I can argue it.

So I didn't answer your question about how I would feel if this guy had not been a US citizen, because I don't know how I feel. I don't have any idea how we should treat violent individuals who wish to kill thousands of my countrymen, and who would kill me without thinking twice, yet who aren't of my country.

I'm sure my comments will provoke a lot of discussion, because I'm making them without thinking through all of the possible interpretations and possible outcomes, and have probably stated my concerns and thoughts rather poorly. But there it is.

'It's a paper's duty to print the news&raise h

[D4C5CE]

Klein: I really was panicking because [...] the government knew everything and probably knew my name, but I didn't have any publicity.
IDGNS: The media merit a full chapter (entitled: 'Going Public vs. Media Chickens'). What happened there?
Klein: [...] They were the first entity I'd given all the documents to. Then they talked to the government about it, and it turned out they were talking to not only the NSA director, but the director of national intelligence

That much for the sad state of "the Fourth Estate, more important than them all" (Edmund Burke) ...

It is a newspaper's duty to print the news and raise hell.

Wilbur F. Storey, 1861

They were not looking for terrorist...

[3seas]

... there is no way to detect common phrases and other seemingly normal communications that only the sender and receiver know the true meaning of.

This common phrases and normal communications has long been used in such a manner of hiding the true meaning of communication. Even during slavery days there was teh underground rail road that used sing song in the cotton fields to pass messages along...

The wiretapping went further than email and phone conversations but into tracking credit card purchases and other financial transactions.

Given the ease of codifying communication so to be undetectable by the NSA (not to mention we don't have the computing power for analysis of the mass amount of such ongoing), there is one thing that could most certainly be done, instead.

To determine what the public attitude was regarding such things as the war on Iraq and other bullshit and public reaction to the real pounding terrorizing acts by the Bush administration against and on the American public and Media (anthrax threats to whip the media into submission and "Clear Channel" network used)..

If you know what the public is really thinking and you have control over the media to influence the public, you can pretty much control the public and even gain their support for the wrongs you intend to do and this is clearly evidenced with the Exposure of much of the crap the Bush Administration was up to.

They had no choice "not to want it"

[D4C5CE]

how would a newspaper or media outlet gain by breaking the story? It'll just instantly lose all its government contacts, but not gain any new readership

How would it deserve keeping its present government contacts (while putting them to no use, let alone snitching whistleblowers to them!) and readers by holding back The News?!
(Assuming a residual journalistic ethos defines the latter as more than "just the stuff to fill the space between the ads", as allegedly a Fleet Street media baron once put it...)

Even with an anti-terror spin (and possibly actual arrests), e.g. of eavesdropping only on the bad guys (and "inevitably" listening in on everyone else in the process as well), the founders considered this issue important enough to merit a Fourth Amendment, which doesn't leave much leeway (or should we say: "weasel way"?) for a paper (especially with the profession's self-image of a Fourth Estate as part of democracy's "checks and balances") to decide on making it "non-news".

The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.

Henry Louis Mencken

Re:Not even Barack Obama

[PopeRatzo]

McCain may have been the GOP candidate, but Obama was running against George W. Bush.

It was an excellent strategy, too. Since McCain was sort of the null candidate, running against an unpopular president with eight years of disastrous policies, who entered office with a surplus and left it with a deficit, who started two wars, who was on duty the day the United States was attacked by terrorists who flew planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

How could he lose? Hell, everything was thrown at him but the kitchen sink ("he's a terrorist, he's not a US citizen, he's a drug abuser, he smokes, he's a gay Socialist, hell, he's fucking BLACK!") and the American people still said "please, take over from this imbecile". "You got a college degree? You're in!"

He could have been a serial killing child molester and would have been able to successfully run against George Bush's record.