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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
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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
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.'"
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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