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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."
Ok, perhaps the reporter of that story got a few of the facts wrong. (George W. Bush != John McCain)
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
Poor CWmike. He took an effort to write such a nice summary and now no one is going to read it. Hey, did I just see a see a new article? Must be my eyes playing tricks on me...
Ezekiel 23:20
It was called "The Spy Factory".
Here's a transcript (search for "Folsom" 4/5ths down the page):
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/3602_spyfactory.html
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?
Think about it this way. The news is public, now. Do you see any frothing outrage, outside of a few fringe activist groups? Outside of Slashdot? No?
There doesn't seem to be any real interest now, so there definitely wouldn't be any then, in the with-us-or-against-us environment in the years immediately after 9/11. So 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. Why would anyone publish it?
That much for the sad state of "the Fourth Estate, more important than them all" (Edmund Burke) ...
Wilbur F. Storey, 1861
... 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.
From EFF.org
The undisputed documents show that AT&T installed a fiberoptic splitter at its facility at 611 Folsom Street in San Francisco that makes copies of all emails, web browsing, and other Internet traffic to and from AT&T customers, and provides those copies to the NSA. This copying includes both domestic and international Internet activities of AT&T customers. As one expert observed, "this isn't a wiretap, it's a country-tap."
Of course, we may never know all the details thanks to Bush, Obama and all the other assholes that voted for FISA2008:
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".
Henry Louis Mencken
or the amount of comments about this story it scarily low?? this is seriously disturbing ppl... you are being wiretrapped all the way warrantless like sheeps.. and you dont move a finger? that's really twisted imho. Remeber what good old Ben Franklin said about security and freedom.... We must be one of the most stupid type of 'thinking' alien specie tho... the one that lives in the same mudball and can't communicate because we don't even speak the same language (think of the embarrassment at the galaxy council)... and we fight our own specie's immaginary enemies....and even more we witch-hunt within the same faction... This is just plain dumb. Human beings should start to behave....
It seems like every time we get into position to do something about government abuse of the people all coverage suddenly stops.
Nobody in the US fucking cares. If this kind of thing happens in Spain or France (two nations with terrible records on privacy) then you'll see people rioting in the streets and throwing bricks through telecom windows.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
"If it bleeds it leads."
And why, raising hell doesn't get done.
Om, nomnomnom...
Look at the Madoff scandal, SEC didn't want to hear about it.
If by "didn't want to hear about it" you mean "investigated him repeatedly and couldn't pin anything on him." Occasionally, criminals are crafty enough to dupe the police.
"Make it ten--I am only a poor corrupt official."
--Captain Louis Renault (Claude Rains), Casablanca
Be very careful: In the UK, you can be arrested for knowing where to buy the book
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
While I do think there are benefits to this type of surveillance the risks for abuse are far too great. It's all too easy to take this sort of thing way too far, and unfortunately I think it's going to happen whether we like it or not. The government will simply be far more secretive about it. I think Obama is the sort of guy who will engage in these kinds of activities just as intensively as Bush, the difference is he'll be a lot more careful about keeping it quiet.
The real concern I have is how people have grown extremely tolerant of what the government is doing now that we have a democrat as president. People who were rabidly anti-Bush for engaging in these activities, among other things, now blindly adore Obama and everything he does. That's the real danger, to blindly follow any leader and embrace everything he does because you believe he's on your side. When there are so-called journalists out there comparing Obama to god I think there's cause for concern.
Ok, Slashdotters, put your money where your mouth is and start lobbying Slashdot to use https globally. I'll remain highly skeptical of all the talk talk talk around here until we actually do something about it.
The government can't save you.
Actually he voted against immunity for telecoms but the amendment failed (see the post below).
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/07/11/obama.netroots/index.html
What's even more frightening is that they modded you informative when it's public record that he voted to strip the immunity provisions out although the amendment failed.
Yes, he did vote for the larger bill with the amendments that basically put the warrant requirements back in for any American they may have eavesdropped on whether on US soil or abroad.
Objection! Citation needed, and suspiciously close to empty right wing rhetoric. I think that it is much more likely that exposure of the illegal program would give operational details of legal, necessary programs. This would explain the actions of an obviously thoughtful man. Whatever the reason, he's still WRONG. The 4th amendment is non-negotiable and is VERY clear. I accept FISA as a necessary evil in cases of extreme national security (as defined in the Constitution; threat of invasion or rebellion).
One of these days I'm going to cut you into little pieces. - PF
True. But in the real world the military industrial complex has replaced social security. Look at the F-22. It's basically a nation-wide welfare and jobs program. It's never been flown in combat, the pentagon doesn't want any more, each one costs the equivalent of 11,000 family health insurance policies, and, apparently, it can't survive rain. But, fiscal conservatives are falling over each other trying to keep the program running.
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
Either that or the FBI could have bothered to check the phone book for the names and addresses of wanted terrorists that they knew to be living in the US.
If they are doing work which doesn't need to be done, then by definition it's not very useful.
How about we retask them to building out infrastructure or educating children? At least that way we get something useful for making life better, rather than another device we don't need to make it shorter.
The vast majority of welfare payments are actually some sort of unemployment or disability insurance payout, virtually none are for people who simply claim they can't find any work and don't feel like trying to either.
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
But that rioting can't be accomplishing too much, because they are back next year doing it again. Granted I don't live in those countries so it's hard to judge the results, but throwing bricks just seems to be form of recreation in more socialist societies tolerated and maybe even encouraged by the government as a temporary outlet of frustration. The football riots seem to be more spirited than the political ones.
Of course not. If someone contacts you ("you" being a member of the press) with information that just might be covered by secrecy/espionage laws, you'd be insane to look at it. The government could come down on you harder than the person who actually, stole, copied, or otherwise originally obtained the documents. Even if you have no idea what the status of that info is, the feds take the position that "you should have known better".
In fact, the person who originally made off with said information may be in a better negotiating position to defend himself. The gov't is scared sh*tless that such people might have other information that might be released to the public or, worse yet, make it into the public record through a trial. So he can negotiate a "get out of jail free" card. You, the press, cannot.
There's only one solution: Wikileaks. Eventually, the gov't is going to realize that, giving the press some ability to publish such documentation would be better for all. At least, they'd have some ability to negotiate a few redactions of stuff that ws actually sensitive. Rather than just sitting on an entire story because its embarrassing. Until then, if you've got your hands on some interesting stuff, just post it and let the NSA wish that, in a better world, they could have negotiated.
Meanwhile, you kids keep your damned black helicopters off my lawn!
Have gnu, will travel.
This is why spy agencies co-operate with each other. If the CIA/FBI/NSA/??? want some information and they cannot get it legally, they can always get it from a foreign agency.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
GodJesusBuddhaAllah help me, but I have to give the snakes over at Qwerst some credit. They are the only arm of the FCC's oligopoly who refused to set-up the monitoring services on their equipment/property.
Strange things happen by random chance, I guess. Or maybe they thought it was a blatant trap/sting... they were new foreign owners taking over after a major scandal.
Imagination drew in bold strokes, instantly serving hopes and fears, while knowledge advanced by slow increments...
Because it is journalism's job to tell us important things and keep telling us important things, regardless of popular interest. These stories aren't important because of commercial market response. Placing commerce ahead of stories like these is what gets us to where we are now.
The contacts mainstream media covets aren't worth much to begin with. Being a stenographer to power isn't doing journalism and as more media cover-ups, lies, and dismissals are exposed the public has no reason to trust the reports they receive from these organizations. The New York Times both helped push the invasion of Iraq based on cover story lies co-written by Judith Miller and Michael Gordon, and the NYT carried David Barstow's Pulitzer-prize winning expose on how the Pentagon propaganda campaign recruited over 75 retired military officers to appear on TV as "analysts" before and during the Iraq war.
Barstow couldn't get the mainstream media interested in his prize-winning story either for being a scathing expose or because he won a prestigious prize for his investigative journalism. Democracy Now! invited him on the air for what became an exclusive interview:
To date there has been no serious expose of NYT's lies during the run-up to the Iraq invasion. We know they're capable of such an act: they did it for Jayson Blair's stories which were far less important lies that could be framed so as to appear largely the work of one person. Back then there was a full color spread about Blair, his stories, and a follow-up discussion in an auditorium with an audience (CSPAN carried it). But back in 2004, Goodman put the NYT's Iraq run-up lies in perspective as well.
Digital Citizen
Read "The Puzzle Palace", the first book by James Bamford (and then you can read the rest of them). He's made a career of exposing the NSA. This first book was written at a time when congress critters would not even admit publicly that the NSA existed. Bamford provides a history of eavesdropping and spying by the USA and shows that illegal listening has been going on ever since there has been anything at all to listen to.
For example, I recall that the first Western Union offices, those that were the terminations of the Transatlantic cables, and others in NYC, had secret government offices right next door where the cables were spliced and terminated for us to spy on transmissions as soon as they arrived.
Do you recall an item in the news about 15 or so years ago regarding a backdoor in Windows NT? Some security expert in, I think from memory, one of the major gov research campuses (Los Alamos or Livermore) was quoted as saying in a security overview seminar, rather casually, that there was a backdoor to the mil-spec security in NT, and that the government had the keys. Having read that book, this made complete sense to me.
The fact that this is "same as it ever was" does not mean that we should not be aware of it. It matters a great deal. My opinion is that some of this access is necessary "for a free and functioning democracy" in this world of ours. We want to know if some extremist asshole (no matter what the persuasion) is planning to set off a nuke anywhere. But much of the rest of it can be exploiting us, it can be used by people against their political enemies or for their individual profits, for purposes that has nothing to do with the well-being of the world. And we can keep an eye on which is which only if we know it's going on in the first place.
Odd word choice there. One would think the President of the United States of America would be the most obvious person who doesn't want to hear complaints about warrantless wiretaps.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this just further proof of the systemic opinion that most Americans have that "it doesn't matter what you believe, only what lies you are willing to subscribe to"? From just casually spending the last 25 years of my life trying to impartially observe why it is that the vast majority of people in America are willing to tolerate a government that abuses it's authority and having heard over and over and over again replies to the effect of "eh - whatcanya' do?", the only conclusion I can draw is that people in America are willing to tolerate outrageous, often unlawful behavior on the part of their so-called "leaders" so long as they continue to enjoy the benefits and comforts those leaders seem to be providing them - even to the point of abdicating their so-called "constitutional rights".
If you are a student of history, you might have at some time noticed a disquieting trend from the earliest civilizations to what we have today: technological advances don't create a more "civilized" society. In fact, it empowers those who have the means to use it to cause people to become less civil towards each other. Should you doubt this you could take a little tour through the sewer that is 4chan. Does anyone with even an iota of civil behavior in them believe for an instant that 4chan is a reflection of the proper use of one's first amendment right of freedom of speech? If you do I would submit that you, in fact, are part of the problem and if that is what you are, your opinions and views are made moot by association and are therefore not part of any solution. The unrealistic paradigm that simply because you CAN say (or do), a thing you SHOULD is the hallmark of uncivilized thinking. ("Do As Thou Wilt" is not "the law", it is the anti-thesis of law - and civil behavior - sorry to disillusion those of you out there with a Crowley Hardon and completely misunderstand this).
Fact of the matter is: so long as you are willing to tolerate a government that will listen, record, observe, make note of, and in far too many instances eliminate those who would oppose it, you're part of the problem and you have no right to bitch, no ground to stand on and object, no reason to do so in the first place and should go back to masturbating with your shiny little WIRETAPPED iPhone because THAT, My Fellow American, is the lie that you're willing to subscribe to.
Kudos and Good Luck to Mr. Klein and the EFF for stepping up to the plate.
~Just as a thing fails if it lacks a kernel, so too it fails if it lacks a skin. ~ Rumi, Discourses
It's no surprise that he supports warrantless wiretaps. He did by his actions while he was running for office, no matter what he SAID.
I suppose that he's better than his opposition would have been. But there's no way to prove this, and that's definitely faint praise.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Why do you believe their purpose is what they claim it to be?
Has the government been so honest with you in the past that you find it incomprehensible that they might be lying, and have different motives than those they claim?
Does the representatives of government when dealing with other display such scrupulous honesty that you believe them when they say something you can't possibly check?
They might just be being incompetent. I'm not at all certain that that's the way to bet.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
In general, I find that government employees - not politicians, or any kind of elected official, mind you - tend to be lazy, rule-bound, and HONEST. This is in the US where low-level corruption and bribery is not very common. And certainly in comparison to people who have the opportunity to get a buck out of me. Business transactions of all kinds - Circuit City warranties, car mechanics, mortgage loans, the price of a donut at a local deli - all these things are subject to manipulation due to simple greed. When I go to register my car, the clerk may be surly and unhelpful, but they have no opportunity or reason to screw me.
Qui bono, follow the money, etc, etc. Don't be so gullible about de gubmint and all that.
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
I'm way beyond the tinfoil skullcaps stage. It really doesn't matter to me if the feds want to park a block away in black vans deciphering my screen's radio haze. Good luck to them, and best wishes at the world's dullest job, but if they need to plant bugs the least they could do is debug their @#$%ing software. You expect that kind of crap from Microsoft — Bill Gates' entire fortune isn't worth the cost of a single nuclear aircraft carrier, after all, so he can't really afford QA. From the feds, though, you kinda expect a higher standard. A black ops budget can afford a few world-class, genius-level systems debuggers, wooden cha think?
``Tension, apprehension & dissension have begun!'' - Duffy Wyg&, in Alfred Bester's _The Demolished Man_
The F22 is an insurance policy. It doesn't run flights in Afghanistan because it's not our best tool for that job. For firing on targets with a moments notice and cheaply, a Predator drone is cheaper and does the job faster.
The F22 is an air superiority fighter. If the Taliban had fighters of their own, we'd fly F22 sorties until they didn't anymore. If we do get into another air war, the F22 would save pilot, airmen, soldier, and civilian lives doing a job that no other plane does as well. I hope we never have to use the F22, but I'm sure glad we have it. I hope the maintenance issues get worked out as well, but that's unfortunately not always something that's foreseeable.
I hope that we continue to build defenses for all types of threats. When anthrax in the mail was the terror tool of choice, we placed hazard detectors in the USPS. When global superpowers were our likely next threat, we prepared with the F22. Now, with insurgent conflicts, we are designing tools for unconventional warfare.
It's only by preventing all possible threats that we have that insurance policy. How much worse would it be to develop our entire capability towards fighting against insurgents only to be threatened by a nuclear armed nation with cruise missiles, fighters, and a standing army and be unprepared again. I'll keep my F22s, just in case.
Write your representatives! Repeal the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics!
Government employees, yes. Government spokesmen, no.
Actually, most government employees that I've known have also not been lazy. Overworked is closer...though also not totally accurate. Overworked in certain particular areas would be more accurate. As is common in bureaucracies, the goals of the supervisors don't always fall in line with the job requirements. Somebody that you find lazy may just have written a 50 page memo on the paperclip supply. (OK, I chose that example to be humorous. It's also true. I've known many government employees who have worked illegal overtime in an effort to get their job done. It's true, these people eventually stop caring whether they get their job done or not. It doesn't help them, and it's impossible anyway.)
Spokesmen, however, are chosen for their ability and willingness to say whatever they are told to say. And appear honest. I'd sooner trust a used car salesman. (Actually, LOTS sooner. I know a company that I've bought used cars from several times, and they've got a VERY good reputation. I can't say "Buy a used Toyota off the local dealer's lot", because I've got no reason to believe that all Toyota dealers follow the same practice. But that's where I'll start looking next time.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
See what I mean? If you are unwilling to spend infinite resources on military hardware then you are putting "pilots, airmen, soldiers, and civilian lives" at risk. That's why the DoD is the new third rail. Eisenhower warned us about this.
Let me repeat: The Pentagon Doesn't Want Any More! This isn't hippies putting daisies in rifle barrels, this is Pentagon brass saying that money spent on the F-22 would be better spent elsewhere.
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
Too bad they killed the Canadian Avro Arrow due to a weak Prime Minister (like all our Progressive Conservative PMs) at the time, in the face of American pressure to bury it so their inferior designs would not be shown for the failures they were. It would still be a superior jet fighter today, and would not require $44,000 to fly one single mission like the F-22.