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

Not even Barack Obama

[SethJohnson]

Apparently, even President Obama doesn't want to hear complaints about the warrantless wiretaps. The Computerworld story provides a convenient link titled "Obama administration defends Bush wiretapping"

While campaigning against President George W. Bush, Barack Obama had pledged that there would be "no more wiretapping of American citizens," but Obama's administration has continued to use many of his predecessor's arguments when it comes to warrantless wiretapping.

Ok, perhaps the reporter of that story got a few of the facts wrong. (George W. Bush != John McCain)

Seth

Re:Not even Barack Obama

[crazyjimmy]

With regards to the back flip carried out by Obama when he became president (where he changed from opposing the wiretaps to supporting them), the logical explanation is that when he became president the NSA showed him details of the wiretapping and possibly also showed him examples of things the NSA has intercepted via the wiretapping that has in some way benefited the national security of the nation or helped in the war on terror. Having seen that this wiretapping is actually producing beneficial results, he would then be more inclined to keep it going so it can keep producing these results.

Or perhaps the NSA offered to post transcripts of every embarrassing conversation Obama had ever had.

Re:Not even Barack Obama

[drinkypoo]

With regards to the back flip carried out by Obama when he became president (where he changed from opposing the wiretaps to supporting them)

There was no such flip. Obama ALWAYS supported warrantless wiretaps. How do I know? He voted for telecoms immunity. He had some bullshit excuse about it, but no excuse is possible. Believing Obama was ever against those wiretaps is fucking stupid. Check the voting record, understand that you have been duped, and move on.

Obama supported these wiretaps before becoming president:

The law that Congress passed last summer, with the support of then-Sen. Barack Obama, authorized the wiretap program and sought to dismiss lawsuits against companies that had participated.

Believing politicians' campaign promises only makes YOU an idiot. It says nothing about them.

PBS Nova did a show that mentioned Folsom

[billmarrs]

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

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

[Anonymous Coward]

That was a lie promulgated by the Bush administration. The device copied _all_ communication that traveled through this facility, domestic and foreign. There is good evidence also that this wasn't the only place were AT&T, or other carriers, were imposing dragnet surveillance.

Re:I question a key point from TFA

[Kreigaffe]

You're right on both parts, essentially. I think they also were monitoring calls originating in the US that were made to foreign numbers they believed to have ties with terrorism, too, but honestly it's hard to really figure out what the truth is and was with so much fear-mongering and hyperbole going on.

Oh, and the program itself wasn't really new, it's been around forever. Bush & Co. just tweaked the rules around a little bit -- a move that I think was less about invading the privacy of Americans (which they've been able to do for several decades now) and more a matter of removing a bottleneck. The whole secret wiretap deal has to be approved by a secret court, I think there's a 24 or 48 hour window in which they can start a wiretap and then seek approval by this secret court. Well, in the wake of 9/11, they were using this quite a bit, and I'm of the belief that they circumvented the court not because they wanted to be Big Brother but because they knew that most these wiretaps would NOT result in any information but felt that at the time it was best to cast as wide a net as possible, immediately, and later worry about narrowing things down from "possible" to "likely".

The secret court, of course, only would be able to review so many requests for secret wiretaps at once, and if you're looking at a list of 1,000 possibles and you think 100 of them are pretty likely, let's say it would take a week for a court (and you) to go through and decide which of those 1,000 were the ones you wanted.. well, I believe the idea was simply to not worry about the time limit due to the huge volume and keep all the wiretaps in place until some sort of review could be done, rather than potentially miss out on valuable information because of a paperwork bottleneck.

Not that I really care for the idea of secret courts or meetings or wiretaps or anything, but overblown fearmongering and fingerpointing pisses me off even more. Especially when it's hypocritical fingerpointing. It's not like the democrats in power were oblivious to what was going on (see also, criticism of the information on WMDs before the Iraq War from the democrats when in fact they had access and agreed with the intelligence reports at the time.. fucking i'll-have-my-cake-and-eat-it-too bullshit).

Re:I question a key point from TFA

[Repossessed]

I've spoken to a cop who was ordered to systematically search any Arabic persons and arrest any who didn't have proper ID in the months following 9/11. So yes, this was happening.

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

[d3ac0n]

The ironic part of it is, all the 9/11 terrorists had proper ID along with full and legal documentation. So even if every law enforcement officer in the US been given those orders BEFORE 9/11 happened, they still would not have caught the hijackers.

This just shows the general incompetence of government, and how the larger a government is the more likely it is to attract incompetents to it's rolls.

Just another argument for the conservative ideal of smaller, more local, limited government.

Re:I question a key point from TFA

[anegg]

"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/José_Padilla_(prisoner)" This was an American citizen grabbed off the street and "disappeared."

We know all about this guy *now*, but we didn't when he was first grabbed... I'm more conservative than liberal, I voted for Bush both times, but I am not a fan of ignoring the foundation of American government, the Constitution of the United States of America. The Bush administration vastly overstepped the powers given to the Executive Branch of the federal government in the Constitution.

Re:I question a key point from TFA

[c6gunner]

I've spoken to a cop who was ordered to systematically search any Arabic persons and arrest any who didn't have proper ID in the months following 9/11. So yes, this was happening.

Yuhuh. And Jesse Macbeth supposedly took part in the murder and rape of entire Iraqi villages. Of course, upon actual review of his record, it turns out he got booted out of the military before even completing basic training. He wasn't the only one, either - there are multiple examples of people claiming to be soldiers in order to tell insane stories about all the horrible things they've done. Not only are there at least 3 examples I can name off the top of my head, but those 3 are just the ones who managed to get enough media attention for everyone to hear about them. There are tens of thousands of people doing similar things who don't make the news.

The moral of the story - don't believe everything you hear. Lots of people seek attention by pretending to be something they're not.

Re:I question a key point from TFA

[shaka]

I don't think what the parent was asking about was whether you think it's ok to detain people who has, or very certainly will, "kill thousands of [your] contrymen". Or at least that's only part of it.

The bigger issue is that your soldiers, and their allies (which are either mercenaries or Afghan war lords), have been running around arresting and torturing people, against whom there is zero evidence that they have done or even wished, as you put it, anything wrong.

For instance, Mehdi Ghezali from Sweden who has not been charged with any crime: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehdi_Ghezali

And the Uighur Adel Abdulhehim, who might have been fleeing his occupied, far-away country or might have taken part in "military training" (which may have consisted of firing a couple rounds with an AK-47, and that's it). The point is, there's no evidence, he won't be convicted, and yet he was locked up and tortured by American soldiers in Guantanamo. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adel_Abdulhehim

It's hard not to find it absurd that American soldiers are traveling to the other side of the globe to arrest people who may or not may have done or "wished" anything, and take them back to yet another country, Cuba (because they don't want to do their dirty business on American soil) and arrest and torture them.

Trying to understand some concept of "universal" rights given nationalistic differences is difficult for me.

Yeah, you know what? Let's agree that it's a universal right not to be tortured, no matter what. We decided on that in 1949 because we didn't want to keep on with the same shit that had kept us in wars since the collapse of the Roman empire. I guess we'll just have to enjoy that brief period of dignity, since you are the largest military empire in the history and you seem to have a knack for electing war lords as leaders.

of course they didn't want it

[dnwq]

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?

'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.

Domestic traffic too

[Anonymous Coward]

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:

• Prohibits the individual states from investigating, sanctioning of, or requiring disclosure by complicit telecoms or other persons.
• Protects telecommunications companies from lawsuits for "'past or future cooperation' with federal law enforcement authorities and will assist the intelligence community in determining the plans of terrorists."

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:Its about time.

[drinkypoo]

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.

Mis-information modded 'Informative'?

[DJRumpy]

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.

Re:Mis-information modded 'Informative'?

[drinkypoo]

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.

What's sad is that you're such a dupe.

That amendment was NEVER going to pass, EVERYONE knew it. Except, apparently, you. Obama can safely be assumed to be not that stupid.

Nobody with two brain cells to rub together believed that shit about "but I'm so surprised the amendment didn't pass!"

Re:Mis-information modded 'Informative'?

[witherstaff]

Dodd made a proposal to filibuster the immunity and the other Dem candidates pledged support. Then Clinton, Obama, etc forgot their pledge as no such filibuster occurred. Dodd was left standing in the cold (I joined his email list because of his stance on this issue).

I can't say Obama's vote on a failed amendment counts as positive at all as there would be no need for such an amendment if he had lived up to his pledge. Weaseling out of a promise of support and then doing a less than half hearted attempt at saving face is politics as normal,wheres the change?

Re:Mis-information modded 'Informative'?

[The Moof]

Yea, and apparently he didn't feel it was that important since he still voted the bill through with the immunity intact. http://www.votesmart.org/voting_category.php?can_id=9490&type=category&category=13