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WikiLeaks: NSA Recording All Telephone Calls In Afghanistan
On Monday, The Intercept reported that the NSA is recording the content of every cell phone call in the Bahamas. At the time of publication, The Intercept said there was another country in which the NSA was doing this, but declined to name it because of "specific, credible concerns that doing so could lead to increased violence." Now, reader Advocatus Diaboli points out that WikiLeaks has spilled the beans: the country being fully monitored by the NSA is Afghanistan. Julian Assange wrote,
"Such censorship strips a nation of its right to self-determination on a matter which affects its whole population. An ongoing crime of mass espionage is being committed against the victim state and its population. By denying an entire population the knowledge of its own victimization, this act of censorship denies each individual in that country the opportunity to seek an effective remedy, whether in international courts, or elsewhere. Pre-notification to the perpetrating authorities also permits the erasure of evidence which could be used in a successful criminal prosecution, civil claim, or other investigations. ... We do not believe it is the place of media to 'aid and abet' a state in escaping detection and prosecution for a serious crime against a population. Consequently WikiLeaks cannot be complicit in the censorship of victim state X. The country in question is Afghanistan."
Is the other one the United States?
Considering what's been going on, this is hardly surprising. I hate to sound cynical, but NSAs been doing stuff like this for a long time. Yes, it's a big deal, but I'm not at all shocked by the revelation.
LOOK at the EFFICACY that their wide dragnet provides.
After all, we were at war there. I am wondering as we get to what is being promised as the biggest story of the Snowden documents, what the final scoop will be.
---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
Now they have to hire thousands of Afghan translators. It will give all the liberal arts graduates something to do.
I'm sorry, but there is just no source that is possibly less reliable than this. The asshole has no credibility.
What the hell else are they supposed to do with acres and acres of servers?
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
The only democracy that the U.S. ever intended to bring to Afghanistan and Iraq was of the "You can choose pro-U.S. candidate number 1, or pro-U.S. candidate number 2" variety.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
I figured it was either Afghanistan or Venezuela. I'm not sure how much of a surprise this is going to be with the Taliban, though. Suppose the Karzai government might be pissed if the US made promises that only non-government phones would under surveillance. I don't see how this is going to spur on more violence in the region, though.
More importantly it just goes to show how useless all this phone recording is, as it still hasn't resulted in an overwhelming victory.
Oh noes, a part of the government was doing its job!!! How terrible that our spy agency was spying!!! What? No American citizen could possibly be planning to do something bad to our government, you must be crazy and a criminal to think otherwise. What I do with TCP/IP packets transmitted to the world isn't private? Noooooeeeesssss!!!!
When you listen to what people say and then fire a rocket at their car based on that, it is censorship.
If I was Obama, I would fire every member of the NSA, FBI and CIA for gross incompetence. Throw in the TSA for good measure too.
How can it be, with all this "intelligence" it still took them 10 years to find Bin Laden.
There are still "evildoers" supposedly planning acts of terror.
They still get the drone strikes wrong.
Our mobile phones still get stolen with impunity.
It takes them years to catch a single drug lord.
The 419 and "Microsoft Tech Support" scams are still operating.
Kidnappers are still at large.
These people are obviously just completely useless, and have no idea what to do with the data they are collecting.
Fire every last one of them!
All 15 of them? Wow!
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
When you listen to them planning to kill you, and you fire a rocket at their car, it is war.
When you listen to what people say and then fire a rocket at their car based on that, it is censorship.
Just to play devils' advocate: if you heard people's last minute plans to mount a suicide attack at a market or checkpoint, and you only have a short time to lob a spitfire at them to prevent that, is that censorship?
I mean, I get the general gist of what you mean, but you need to be more articulate and precise, and provide a much better context to your argument.
The "censorship" in question is the decision not to publish the name of the nation in question:
"By denying an entire population the knowledge of its own victimization, this act of censorship denies each individual in that country the opportunity to seek an effective remedy, whether in international courts, or elsewhere."
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
This part of the Snowden leaks is the part I have a problem with. This is EXACTLY what the NSA is supposed to be doing. Making this part public record does do damage to the US and is part of being a traitor. I have zero problems with Snowden leaking information about the NSA spying on Americans, not because it effects me, but because it's a violation of the Constitution and the NSA does NOT have that authority, regardless of what laws Congress passes. If the SCOTUS wasn't such pussies they would have taken this on years ago and stopped it, but instead they are 100% complicit in this as well. If Snowden has a problem with these actions from the NSA, why did he take a job there in the first place?
When you listen to them talking politics, and then bomb the wedding down the street instead... that's US Intelligence.
There is no confusion between censorship and surveillance in TFA .
Assange was referring to the censorship of the country in question by firstlook, which redacted or referred to as country 'X'.
Wouldn't it just be better at this point to do a "whitelist story", something like "Here are the countries for which there is no proof that the NSA is performing mass-surveillance" than to do individual stories for countries? I mean, we've had one for Germany, France, the United States itself, the UK (even though that's GCHQ actually doing the surveillance and then passing it to the NSA), and now Afghanistan among others.
Err... the censorship he's referring to isn't the recording or surveillance, the (self-)censorship is the media outlets voluntarily not reporting the country's name owing to concerns raised by the US government about the impact of the report.
we did just rebuild their entire infrastructure after knocking it over. What better way to keep our eye on them than to build the spying in right from the start.
Of course if you think the NSA "bugged" an entire country you'd be silly... They bought their surveillance pre-installed from the same companies that sell equipment here. The whole thing is a giant playground to see how well everything works. The government will happily pass this information to other governments and the hardware makers will happily sell their wares to Syria and Noth Korea so the dictators can abuse human rights.
It was mandatory corporations profit somehow from the war.. And cheap opium wasn't nearly enough.
I do not mean to imply that they didn't deserve it, or that I would not have done the same.
I was just pointing out that we as Americans like to consider ourselves morally superior to our counterparts, but in reality we engage in a lot of the same practices.
Sometimes it is cheaper to blow up a school than send in people to determine if there are terrorists there.
Sometimes it is cheaper to have the CIA poison someone who has a different opinion than it is to debate them.
Sometimes it is cheaper to have a motorcyclist throw explosives on the outside of a nuclear scientist's car than it is to try to get the country to stop its program.
Sometimes it is cheaper to execute a cleric rather than have trials to determine guilt.
We are not much different than the people that attack us based on our ideas, we just have a lot more money than they do. It is too easy to dehumanize others and not care about collateral damage when we fight our wars.
Mass surveillance is bad. I would have thought Assange would have said that. Instead, he doesn't seem to know what surveillance is and what censorship is. Twice he called this "censorship". Censorship is when the authority prevents someone from saying something, when communications have to be pre-approved before they are disseminated. I kind of assumed Assange had at least a grade-school education, but I guess not.
If you RTFA, you can see that the censorship being referred to is not the surveillance, but the fact that the name of the country was omitted in the prior articles at the request of the US gvmt. Pretty sure that is censorship.
I bet there are dozens of them in Afghanistan. Dozens!
Yes, because clearly the best way to win over the population there that doesn't support terrorism is to subject them to things we would ourselves find objectionable.
Like most activists, the jump to assumptions, impose their version of their world view, and not try to take a look at the other angle, or try to understand why.
Usually your political opponent is not waking up in the morning going, what Evil can I do today, like in a TV Cartoon. In real life your opponent weighs the seriousness problems differently then you do, and feels particular trade-offs are more acceptable then you do.
The NSA mission is to use intelligence to find threats to the United States Interests. They see the threat of not getting intelligence more dangerous then the privacy of others. If they were pro-privacy organization then they wouldn't be able to function, as their jobs is to get secrets. Now if you see this, you realize that other then vilifying the NSA, you need to take a step back and work with their bosses to come up new regulations to prevent them from going too far.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Sounds like you just logically disproved the existence of "self censorship". Or maybe you don't consider it to be a kind of censorship, despite its suggestive name...
You seem to be under the illusion that the US and the other "5 Eyes" countries were not collecting metadata and recording conversations pre-2001. This is an inaccurate belief on your part.
As mencioned below, censorship in this case refers to the self censorship of not reporting the country, but I'll give you something to consider:
The US has declined to state the evidence they use for some of the drone strikes against civilians, but now we know they have more information they couldn't tell you about because national security. Most likely some of them were killed because they joked (or planned) on the phone about grabbing their cousin and attacking the bastard soldiers harassing them or something. Next wedding they are at with their cousins they get killed by a drone strike.
That's some hard core censorship
Is CIA does localized espionage, assassinatons, etc.
NSA does anything that falls under broad SIGINT, computer security, etc.
Given the level of scope creep and 'mission restatement' going on with our three letter agencies nowadays. I am not really sure any of them remember what they are actually supposed to be doing anymore.
"most probable cause of why we have not seen more 9/11's in the last 10 years."
Doubtful at best, and the chance of an actual 9/11 style attack (with planes) will never again occur. Heck, it didn't even work by the four plane that same morning.
However, I do agree that the monitoring they are doing is exactly what we set them up to do in the first place. Nobody ever wants to be spied on, but everybody wants to spy. When the magical pixie horse utopia arrives and there are no wars or conflicts and everybody loves everybody else (or hates but avoids everyone else in a back cabin miles from the nearest other living thing, for libertarians) we won't need to spy. Until then, I still feel the NSA is operating in the best interest of the US as a whole.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
in order to win hearts and minds, one must know what secrets lie within them. Our series of sponsored elections in iraq failed ultimately because we assumed our liberation theology was a mutually shared concern. Hamid Karzai's relations with NATO countries is strong, especially with the United States seeing as during the elections we sponsored, he was the candidate we placed the most effort behind to win. we labelled the opposition "terrorists" and regardless of how moderate their islamic platform was, branded them outlaws and sentenced them to summary execution by drone. The fact that the NSA is monitoring the entire country is reason enough to assume the united states does not have enough confidence in the afghani people to rest assured they will continue to vote for one of "our" guys. We can have democracy in Afghanistan, so long as its the democracy we select. religious or islamic candidates are flatly forbidden regardless of how conservative or progressive they may be as we fear a nationalist element to their political aspirations that would preclude us from installing military bases at will, or outsourcing the country to make tshirts and sweatpants as we did in cambodia and viet nam once the democracy we wanted was had.
If you think this is morally wrong, it is. In american elections we're routinely given to elect fundamentalist christian leaders without so much as questioning the idea they believe in say, the death penalty as is biblically prescribed. We elect leaders at all levels of government in part based on their religion, as would islamic citizens.
Good people go to bed earlier.
> Like most activists, the jump to assumptions, impose their version of their world view, and not try to take a look at the other angle, or try to understand why
So that's like Keith Alexander too? Besides, this scoundrel lies through his teeth.
In your view, Alexander would be an activist-plus?
Most of us can live with the fact that our security and secret agencies sustain our way of life, maintain our security and liberties, preserve our freedoms and protect our and values by denying others (often in far flung lands) of the same as long as we are not forced to confront the morality of that reality or explain to those whose rights, freedoms and liberties the preservation of our own tramples upon why they are not worthy of the very values, liberties and freedoms that we are willing to go to such lengths to protect and preserve?
The activities of spy agencies of every country are conducted in secret for a reason. Often we, the tax payers in whose name those agencies conduct their business, do not want to know the price that some innocent person in some part of the world that we barely know of may have paid for the preservation of our own way of life. We would much rather believe that they deserved to have their rights trampled upon, their liberties denied, their freedom curtailed and yes, if necessary, their life snuffed out; so we grasp at the justifications that our security agencies give us to help us sleep at night: Afghanistan is a cesspool of terrorists... they want to destroy our way of life... etc, etc.
So, it seems that the NSA is monitoring every cell phone call in the Bahamas, Afghanistan and probably every other country that uses US made telecommunication equipment. This revelation should not be a surprise, and we, the tax payer that pays for this should, be relieved to see confirmation that our spy agencies are using our tax dollars to detect threats to our freedoms, liberties, and general way of life before they materialise on our shores...
Our feigned disapproval comes not from finding out the details of what our spy agency has been up to in our name, but rather from the internal conflict that we all must confront at discovering the true price of our way of life.
Here is a reality check for all of us: our freedom, liberties and way of life often come at at the cost of denying someone else of their freedom, liberty and sometimes their life. So, instead of pretending to be surprised at the discovery of what the NSA has been up to in Afghanistan, we should instead seek to bestow upon the people of Afghanistan the very same freedom, liberties and values that we treasure and hold dear, so that hopefully one day, they too can attain the same levels of property that we enjoy and drive out the terrorists who not only threaten us, but threaten them and their ability to prosper as well.
I think I see your confusion, you seem to be under the impression that all of this is actually helping US National Security. Don't get me wrong its easy to see how you would feel that way, the media here in the US is obviously quite cozy with the government. I wouldn't call it propaganda so much as a mutual agreement, you (media) keep from overly questioning us & we (gov) won't shut you out of press conferences, imbedded reporting, etc. However virtually all evidence points to the opposite, we have more terrorists & more animosity towards the US than we had a decade or so ago. What the NSA & our defense agencies in general HAVE been doing is making sure the defense contractors have a VERY lucrative contracts providing supplies, surveillance equipment, bombs & drones, and through their actions have been ensuring that we will have to continue to pay them for decades more because at the very least we are creating as many terrorists as we kill with every attack.
We were at war with Afghanistan, and it used to be run by a totalitarian regime. Monitoring their phones for a decade or two as part of attempting to transition them to democracy doesn't seem unreasonable. We did the same in Germany after WWII, and also limited German democracy in some ways.
If then, it will be inevitable that the rest of the world starts seeing the US much less as the victim and much more as the perpetrators.
You can play by the rule of the jungle, but then don't try to call for international cooperation, or try to name your enemies "axis of evil". And you don't, that is why the US did not say we're occupying afghanistan, but rather kept sprouting bullshit like "democracy". It is not democracy what US wants to implant, in middle east nor anywhere else. And most of the hate that the US spurs is, well, quite deserved by your opinion that supports and is in consonance with the US policies.
And no, it did not start with 9/11. The US has been like this since it abandoned the isolationist policy. It was like this in Latinamerica, and in Vietnam, and everywhere else.
You can use force just because you're more powerful, but you cannot at the same time claim the higher moral ground.
To hell with safety issues, agreed upon by all reputable outlets... Wikileaks needs its fucking scoop. Typical BS shortsightedness from Assange and crew.
Worked reasonably well in Germany as part of a managed transition to democracy after WWII. The listening posts are still there. In addition to extensive surveillance of communications and the population, German politicians and policies were subject to US scrutiny and approval.
There's a big difference between "spying" and mass surveillance of the entire communications of a country. When you "need" to stop a stop/delay a nuclear program in a country you target the facilities/scientists, you don't MOAB the cities/villages around them as well.
Breaking news I'm sure will come as total shock to people of Afghanistan especially Taliban members who had no idea they were being targeted for death from above from their mobile handset.
And you've got proof that Snowden gave the info to Wikileaks, how? You do realize that copies of Snowden's materials have been dispersed to news organizations, and have shown by Greenwald and Poitras to people like Bruce Scheiner, James Bramford and others, right? The truth is there's a lot of people that could have leaked the name to Wikileaks besides Snowden. You know nothing and are talking out your ass.
I record all calls at my company. http://www.digital-loggers.com.... Cheap and simple... SIP is even easier.
To extrapolate this is being done to entire countries isn't much of s stretch of the imagination.
I believe that's a general human trait, and not specifically American.
The British Mandate and the Balfour Declaration had far more influence upon the nationalities, peoples, and borders of the Middle East than did any influence of the United States.
The NSA mission is to use intelligence to find threats to the United States Interests. They see the threat of not getting intelligence more dangerous then the privacy of others. If they were pro-privacy organization then they wouldn't be able to function, as their jobs is to get secrets. Now if you see this, you realize that other then vilifying the NSA, you need to take a step back and work with their bosses to come up new regulations to prevent them from going too far.
Not only do we need to come up with new regulations, we need a way to hold the NSA to those limits, a system of checks and balances if you will.
No, I do not consider the FISA courts to be an adequate system of checks and balances on the NSA. Imagine a baseball game where one of the team's managers was allowed to pull the umpire into their dugout to dispute a call in secret, and when that happened the call invariably went their way, but the other team was not allowed to do the same or even listen in on the discussion. I think there's be quite a few managers from the other teams getting ejected from games for arguing with the umpires over the unfairness of this policy.
I think the final scoop will be that the USG did 9/11.
While just barely possible, that is about as likely as a theory of gravity involving Green Elephants and Duct Tape.
What is far more possible (and wouldn't surprise me) would be to find out that the Bush administration "stood down" their anti-terrorism vigilance in order to allow "an event" to happen in order to legitimize a presidency that many at the time viewed as illegitimate, and they got a hell of a lot more than they bargained for. I remember when I saw the planes hit, and everyone cried "Pearl Harbor" while I thought "the burning of the Reichstag". Not because I think any US agencies were involved, but because I suspected some in the administration willfully looked the other way, waiting for "something" to happen, to then rally Americans around the newly unelected president.
Which, if this were to turn out to be true, worked exactly as intended.
The definition you state is just one of multiple definitions. It is not the singular, end-all-be-all definition. Self-censorship is still censorship.
It would be different if these facts were out in the open to be debated by the populous. They are instead hidden, even from the ones making the laws (Clapper). Thats the real irony here. They rob everyone else of their privacy, but yet demand their own secrets hidden behinds claims of state secrets. Since they will not tell us about it, we the tax payers are forced to pay for them to rob us of our own privacy. What a effing joke.
Just curiosity... The bandwidth required to do this should be enormous, how did they implement it? Are the trunk switches compromised and they locally record every conversation, and later send it to the USA? Did they install dedicated fibers to do this? TFA lacks any details.
Thanks.
Years ago, some of my relatives had contact with scientific community members in the Soviet Union from time to time. Their comment was that, contrary to the view that their country was totalitarian - dissent privately spoken among friends was not a big deal; the problem came when that dissent became public, when people made waves or challenged the government.
Same here. We know the NSA and company can collect all sorts of data. We simply rely on the fact there is far too much, and that therefore they can only make time to examine the troublemakers in detail. This leads to what Jerry Pournelle describes as the crime of "majestus" - failure to give sufficient deference to the leaders and the government. If you come to the attention of authorities, they will crush you with charges totalling decades or centuries of prison, slander you with "anonymous" leaks about your personal life, etc.
We are not quite at the point of "transcendence of big brother" - where the computerized world collects and summarizes what they know about you for the delight of authorities everywhere. We track your phone GPS - spend too much time in bars, you got a drinking problem. Spend nights not at home, you are a horny bastard - the more different places, the worse you are. License plate readers track your travel patterns. Spending analysis of credit cards and debit tells the story of what you like and how careful you are with money (can serial number tracking of even smaller bills in ATMs and self-checkouts be far behind?) Medical records and prescriptions are analyzed to gauge your mental and physical stability. Not just your browsing history in analyzed - Computers attempt to link you to online comments or witter by IP address, or if anonymized and VPN'd, by grammar analysis of your style and typos. Phone calls are voice-recognized, transcribed, and added to your file. Some clever AI tries to piece together all of the above in a summary of your political views, personal biases, and mental state that tells the officer who pulled you over, or the border guard - in 25 words or less - whether you are likely to have drugs, whether you have hostility to authority, whether you might be a DUI, whether you are a problem in some way, whether you bought anything interesting on your trip abroad so customs can dig deeper...
You'll know it's started when police license readers alert them not just to stolen or expired plates, but cars registered to households with a DUI (pull him over and check).
New regulations like the 4th amendment? Because they're doing such a good job following that one.
Regulations aren't going to help here. The government has begun to view its own people as the enemy. That's a short, ugly road.
When you listen to them planning to kill you, and you fire a rocket at their car, it is war.
And I guess they're planning to "kill you" (whoever it might be) because...
"they hate you for your freedoms"
Right?
But notice how they were framed.
Can we stop the bullshit and quit pretending like releasing this information isdangerous?
The delay is what's dangerous. The longer the information is kept under wraps and the less willing they are to take the hard shots, the more FUCKED UP BULLSHIT will be perpetrated by these government organizations.
That interpretation of a wife's duty is not terribly uncommon. Some even argue that I Corinthians 7:5 is a biblical mandate to both the husband and wife to never deny their partner sex. If that's the case, the most chaste wives are also the most sinful. Ahhh the irony.
Of course on the opposite side of the spectrum are those wackos that think all sex is rape, and that all porn stars are being taken advantage of.
How much storage would be required to store all those conversations for a month? Any guesses?
"Microsoft Tech Support" scams
If they could just drop a few hellfire missiles on those goddamn Pakled feebs, I'd be willing to give them a little bit more slack on the leash.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
While it is very probably true, where is the proof that Wikileaks is right about it being Afghanistan? Show me ole' JA isn't just pulling this out of his ass to get a little limelight back from an honorable man that *has* vetted documentation.
Afganistan (which was mostly lawless before the US came in) was a country that harbored and bred a highly disturbed and highly productive terrorist organization that has bomb two embassies across a contentment in near real time, devastated a warship of one of the strongest navy's in the world, blew up dance clubs in the far east, blew up a bus in London, crashed four airplanes into three separate buildings killing thousands, and has had the creativity to create underwear and shoe bombs. Their base of operations was right out of Afganistan and their allies in the Taliban still have many supporters based there as well. Never mind the countless IED's, EFP's, mortars, ambushes, and other niceties that have been dreamt up there as well.
Yeah, I can't imagine why the US would want to gather intelligence there. No clue at all. Shocked really. ...
Why would *this* revelation make an increase in violence?
It was obvious that the US was gathering data Iraq/Afghanistan even before Snowden, and nobody could possibly have believed otherwise the last few months?
Subject should be corrected to: NSA Recording All Telephone Calls on Earth and Around Earth's Orbit
Sounds like you just logically disproved the existence of "self censorship".
> Censorship is when the authority prevents someone from saying something
I don't think so.
Government censorship = government is the authority preventing it.
Network censorship = the TV network is the authority preventing it from going on-air.
Self censorship = your own higher principles or prudence is the authority preventing you from saying something.
> Or maybe you don't consider it to be a kind of censorship, despite its suggestive name...
Where "self censorship" is defined as being just what the words imply - the self choosing what one wishes to say or not say, I don't really classify that as censorship. At least, most intelligent discussion about censorship wouldn't include a free person making up their own mind as to what they want to say or not say. You COULD call it self-censorship if I decide not to call you a fathead, but that dilutes the meaning of the word so much that censorship becomes a _good_ thing.
Self censorship, as defined above, should not be confused with "soft censorship". We said censorship is when the authority prevents publication. Soft censorship, therefore, would be when the authority uses "soft" methods to prevent publication. If a government prevents the publication by "strongly suggesting" that it not be published, that is still the government preventing publication. They aren't excused because they used veiled threats as opposed to explicit threats.
Congress passed and president signed a use of force resolution: http://news.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/terrorism/sjres23.enr.html
Use of force is a longer way of saying war. The courts upheld it, reading law blogs you don't find this "war was not declared" talk, even on law blogs of people who oppose the war. The President even warned the Taliban (government of Afghanistan at the time) in advance they should cooperate with bringing Al Qaeda to justice or been seen as support terrorism (which they were anyway).
Joint Resolution
To authorize the use of United States Armed Forces against those responsible for the recent attacks launched against the United States.
Whereas, on September 11, 2001, acts of treacherous violence were committed against the United States and its citizens; and
Whereas, such acts render it both necessary and appropriate that the United States exercise its rights to self-defense and to protect United States citizens both at home and abroad; and
Whereas, in light of the threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States posed by these grave acts of violence; and
Whereas, such acts continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States; and
Whereas, the President has authority under the Constitution to take action to deter and prevent acts of international terrorism against the United States: Now, therefore, be it
Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This joint resolution may be cited as the `Authorization for Use of Military Force'.
SEC. 2. AUTHORIZATION FOR USE OF UNITED STATES ARMED FORCES.
(a) IN GENERAL- That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.
(b) War Powers Resolution Requirements-
(1) SPECIFIC STATUTORY AUTHORIZATION- Consistent with section 8(a)(1) of the War Powers Resolution, the Congress declares that this section is intended to constitute specific statutory authorization within the meaning of section 5(b) of the War Powers Resolution.
(2) APPLICABILITY OF OTHER REQUIREMENTS- Nothing in this resolution supercedes any requirement of the War Powers Resolution.
Speaker of the House of Representatives.
Vice President of the United States and
President of the Senate.
The 2nd SOMALGET country was first leaked by defense contractor resume. Hinted at, in any case. Defense Contractors put all the illegal shit they do in their resumes to get more jobs doing those things.
Christopher Soghoian's tweet on the subject.
Erica A's resume
Erica A spent December 2012 to October 2013 in Afghanistan, is an expert in "Somalget Retro GUI" and is available for hire immediately.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
Things like this point out that he is about 99% traitor and 1% hero.
What a total POS he is.
Saint Assgunge(*) seems to be confusing "censorship" with "snooping". Those calls aren't being arbitrarily shut down by a govt agency.
It's a given that the NSA is snooping what it can - that's its job.
The shock comes from how easily it (and other intel agencies) are able to hoover up _everything_ (once you can snoop everything, the stuff that stands out for further targetting is encrypted conversations). If the NSA is doing it you can be pretty much assured everyone else is doing it too.
One of the more surprising things is how useless all that snooping is proving to be. Given the DEA is getting a feed, if it was more useful than random chance, the enormous wholesale(**) illegal drug trade would have been shut down already simply by following the money.
If intelligence agencies were properly accountable for their actions, most of their employees would be out on their ear as utterly useless and unemployable in the outside world.
FWIW it used to be said that the most effective form of espionage involved sitting in the reading room of public libraries, collating reports from local newspapers. It's still pretty much true.
(*)wikileaks == useful. Assange =- egotistical prick who's conflated his own importance. Best to discard him and find someone else to carry the flag.
(**) for all the publicity, seizures amount to less than 0.1% of overall traffic. There are hundreds of thousands (possibly millions) of tons of illegal narcotics being shipped around the globe annually in order to account for known addiction statistics.
Oh yeah! Captain Obvious did it again uncovering hidden secrets surrounded by secrecy!! Together with his sidekick Lieutenant Danger and his faithful dog Spot. In this episode the secret identity if Liutenant Danger (Julian Asange) is discovered by the evil Dr. Quake (Dr Doom was on holiday).
-- 29A the number of the Beast
Did I miss something? Why are they recording every cell phone call in the Bahamas? What is the Bahamas important?
I can't understand the reason for tapping all the telephone calls in Afghanistan.
I believe that's a general human trait, and not specifically American.
Bingo.
I do not mean to imply that they didn't deserve it, or that I would not have done the same. I was just pointing out that we as Americans like to consider ourselves morally superior to our counterparts, but in reality we engage in a lot of the same practices.
You need to travel more. You will find that this is true of every nation and culture.
Sometimes it is cheaper to blow up a school than send in people to determine if there are terrorists there. Sometimes it is cheaper to have the CIA poison someone who has a different opinion than it is to debate them. Sometimes it is cheaper to have a motorcyclist throw explosives on the outside of a nuclear scientist's car than it is to try to get the country to stop its program. Sometimes it is cheaper to execute a cleric rather than have trials to determine guilt. We are not much different than the people that attack us based on our ideas, we just have a lot more money than they do. It is too easy to dehumanize others and not care about collateral damage when we fight our wars.
Welcome to human civilization, and the modus operandi that has been in place since we started gathering in permanent, sedentary villages.