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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."
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.
I'm sorry, but there is just no source that is possibly less reliable than this. The asshole has no credibility.
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.
Fix the deficit by mining bitcoins?
Not as long as you might think. The technology needed for this level of data collection is only a few decades old at best. 20-30 years ago even tracing a call in an industrialized nation could be a laborious task and collection like this was just undoable.
There seems to always be the obligatory "didn't we all know this already" comment in these NSA discussions. Every time it can be found. I'm tired of it.
No, we didn't know. Beginning with the revelations by Edward Snowden, people's eyes have constantly opened more and more to the things that are happening behind the scenes. Some of it is crazy Orwellian crap that many of us couldn't make up in their wildest dreams.
Translators? Why bother, the data probably just ends up poorly filed in some tape farm. Data collection is sexy, data processing is dull.
All 15 of them? Wow!
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
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.
Leave me out of this! They are nothing like me.
"Even Prophets don't know everything"
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.
That isn't the problem. Joe Everyman expected them to be doing this, but don't know why it's A Bad Thing. All they see is "It's to stop the terr'rists / perverts / commies!" and don't see how it can be abused, not by those in power now, but those in the future.
20 years from now, when the bigots finally get a real right-wing guy in power, they'll look back at all this data and say "Ok, fella's; Find me everyone who ever talked to a brown guy and revoke their passport."
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
A great deal of linguistic support for the NSA comes from the branches of the military, where enlisted people are sent to Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California to train in the language if skills-testing shows they have linguistic aptitude. A prior university degree -- let alone a liberal arts one -- is not necessary.
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.
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.
Probably not. The NSA is not allowed to spy on Americans.
Given that Afganistan is a military theatre of war, I don't think that it's actually legally an issue that they're monitoring all communications, as those communications are almost certainly being used to conduct warfare.
And perhaps if actually listening to the conversations helps to not detain innocent people because one can actually know what they're talking about, as opposed to the metadata approach where anyone talking to someone associated with opponents is grabbed, then it might not be a bad thing, again, within the scope of a theatre of war.
In the "us versus them" argument, this is a legitimate differentiation between us and them. As opposed to treating us as them as the metadata approach used domestically.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
The wing-wing in the US is fairly good at not being overtly racist. They'e be more likely to target their efforts religiously: Trawl the archives to make a list of everyone who ever insulted God and get them on an employment blacklist. Much as happened during the red scare, when suspected communists faced similar semi-official sanctions, but made possible on a much larger scale by automation.
Everywhere is a "Theatre of war" these days, between the War on Drugs, the War on Terror, etc., etc., etc.
However, while the "war" in Afghanistan is long over, enough people are still running around killing other people, it's hardly surprising that all 5 Afghan telephone circuits would be tapped. With, I have no doubt, complicit approval of the Afghan government.
Officially, the Afghan government would have to protest this gross invasion of their national sovreignity as a matter of face, irrespective of the practical benefits. However, considering what the NSA has done on their own home soil, I guess it actually should be a status symbol. They get treated just like a First World nation!
If you get a good score on your ASVAB (Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery) they send you to take the DLAB (Defense Language Aptitude Battery) if you do well on that you are pulled from your assigned MOS and sent to be a translator. They wanted to send me, but I had 0 interest in learning a middle eastern language. They made me take the DLAB twice because I was only a couple of points from passing the first time. By that time I had found out what it was for, so the second one got christmas treed, and I got a much needed nap. (Basic training wasn't know for giving you lots of time to rest.)
A while back there was an internal report by the DoD giving estimates of how long a US occupation would take before Afghanistan could be rebuilt into a stable industrialized nation. It estimated a 30 year minimum, with 40 or 50 not being out of range. Naturally this was not politically very attractive, but yeah, that is about the timescale it would take.