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James Bamford Releases DOJ Report On NSA Warrantless Wiretapping From 1976
For the last several years public focus on the NSA has been on Bush and Obama era reports of illicit domestic spying. From allegations of warrantless wiretapping reported by James Risen in 2005 to secret documents released to journalists at The Guardian by Edward Snowden a year ago. And smack in the middle, Bamford's 2012 revelation of the existence of a huge, exabyte-capable data storage facility then under construction in Bluffdale, Utah.
Given all this attention on recent events, it might come as a surprise to some that almost forty years ago Senator Frank Church convened a congressional committee to investigate reports of unlawful activities by U.S. intelligence agencies, including illegal domestic wiretapping by the NSA. At the time, Church brought an oversight magnifying glass over what was then half-jokingly referred to as "No Such Agency." And then, like today, James Bamford was in the thick of it, with a Snowden-like cloak-and-dagger game of spy-vs-journalist. It all began by giving testimony before the Church Committee. Writing yesterday in The Intercept, Bamford tells his firsthand historical account of what led him to testify as a direct witness to NSA's wiretapping of domestic communications decades ago and then details the events that led to the publication of his first book The Puzzle Palace back in 1982. Read on for more. Bamford writes:
...during the summer of 1975, as reports began leaking out from the Church Committee, I was surprised to learn that the NSA was claiming that it had shut down all of its questionable operations a year and a half earlier. Surprised because I knew the eavesdropping on Americans had continued at least into the prior fall, and may have still been going on. After thinking for a day or so about the potential consequences of blowing the whistle on the NSA—I was still in the Naval Reserve, still attending drills one weekend a month, and still sworn to secrecy with an active NSA clearance—I nevertheless decided to call the Church Committee.
But he didn't stop at the witness stand. Afterward, he continued researching the matter for a book. And the further he dug, the more waves he made. Until someone slipped him a then recently declassified copy of a 1976 Justice Department memo [PDF] detailing a criminal investigation into illicit domestic spying by the NSA. But when agency officials discovered he had that document they took extraordinary measures attempting to get it back. They threatened to prosecute under the 1917 Espionage Act and retroactively reclassified the memo to squelch its contents.
Fearing someone might break into his home and steal the manuscript, Bamford arranged to transport and secure a copy outside of U.S. jurisdiction with a colleague at the Sunday Times of London. It was only upon the 1982 publication of Puzzle Palace that the agency dropped their pursuit of Bamford and his document as a lost cause. That's at least one stark difference between then and today when it comes to whistleblowers — back then, they merely threatened espionage charges.
Yogi Berra famously once said, "It's like Deja Vu all over again." And though the Yankees' star wasn't speaking of illicit domestic wiretaps by the national security state, given a comparison of recent revelations to those detailed by Bamford decades earlier the quote certainly fits. In telling his story of how he published details about the last NSA Merry-Go-Round with warrantless wiretapping, Bamford shows us that our recent troubles of lawless surveillance aren't so unique. It's deja-vu all over again. But if deja vu is like a waking dream, this seems more a recurring nightmare for a body-politic lured to snoring slumber by a siren-song of political passivity.
That old Justice Department memo isn't likely to wake the public from their slumber. But within its pages is a stark warning we all should have heeded. As Bamford notes in that Intercept story, the report's conclusion that NSA lawlessness stems straight from the birth of the agency suggests a constitutional conflict systemic and intentional.
...the NSA's top-secret "charter" issued by the Executive Branch, exempts the agency from legal restraints placed on the rest of the government. "Orders, directives, policies, or recommendations of any authority of the Executive branch relating to the collection ... of intelligence," the charter reads, "shall not be applicable to Communications Intelligence activities, unless specifically so stated." This so-called "birth certificate," the Justice Department report concluded, meant the NSA did not have to follow any restrictions placed on electronic surveillance "unless it was expressly directed to do so." In short, the report asked, how can you prosecute an agency that is above the law?
Here's the "Prosecutive Summary" (PDF).
That does it! I'm not voting for Gerald Ford again!
Table-ized A.I.
Footage released of Guardian editors destroying Snowden hard drives
In two tense meetings last June and July [2013] the cabinet secretary, Jeremy Heywood, explicitly warned the Guardian's editor, Alan Rusbridger, to return the Snowden documents.
Heywood, sent personally by David Cameron, told the editor to stop publishing articles based on leaked material from American's National Security Agency and GCHQ. At one point Heywood said: "We can do this nicely or we can go to law". He added: "A lot of people in government think you should be closed down."
I would no longer consider England a safe country to use as a backup for documents that the American government wants back.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
In both cases the government moved from the concern of external threats to a belief that the threats were internal.
It's a symptom of disunity and of a paranoid government.
Of course we all knew it was the Republicans that shoved this garbage down our throat, but it's nice to have proof. It's too bad that Nixon lackey created the program in such a way that Carter wasn't allowed to stop it when he was President and now the DINO that rules isn't allowed to make any changes either. There is no saving us from the way the Republicans have destroyed this country and now control nearly every bit of our day to day lives.
But during the summer of 1975, as reports began leaking out from the Church Committee, I was surprised to learn that the NSA was claiming that it had shut down all of its questionable operations a year and a half earlier. Surprised because I knew the eavesdropping on Americans had continued at least into the prior fall, and may have still been going on. After thinking for a day or so about the potential consequences of blowing the whistle on the NSA—I was still in the Naval Reserve, still attending drills one weekend a month, and still sworn to secrecy with an active NSA clearance—I nevertheless decided to call the Church Committee.
So over 30 years ago, the NSA was doing the same thing its doing now. When it gets caught it says it stops doing it, yet it continues to do it (yet we didnt shut them down 30 years ago??!?!)
and this one is a doozy. At the same time the feds are complaining about google and apple using system wide encryption as in their eyes it "puts people above the law" yet at the SAME time the NSA charter puts the NSA above the law
The report’s prosecutive summary also pointed to the NSA’s top-secret “charter” issued by the Executive Branch, which exempts the agency from legal restraints placed on the rest of the government. “Orders, directives, policies, or recommendations of any authority of the Executive branch relating to the collection . . . of intelligence,” the charter reads, “shall not be applicable to Communications Intelligence activities, unless specifically so stated.” This so-called “birth certificate,” the Justice Department report concluded, meant the NSA did not have to follow any restrictions placed on electronic surveillance “unless it was expressly directed to do so.” In short, the report asked, how can you prosecute an agency that is above the law?
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
If you think this is either a Democrat of Republican thing, but not both, then you are part of the problem.
[AC to keep my mods]
It occurs to me (aas it should have LONG ago) that when something secret becomes more and more "known" that it is being used as a distraction to help hide the newer "really secret" secret.
What I am saying is that the NSA is a decoy. Who and what is the new intelligence organization?
"Waitress I need two more boat-drinks..."
I read the entire article -- a damn good story if you have time. Aside from the obvious political implications explicitly stated by Bamford, it's interesting to see what a risk he took to write and publish his first book: "The Puzzle Palace", despite intimidation from the government.
For those who think the two major political parties have been the same on the NSA, it's also interesting to note that the Carter Administration's DOJ declassified the key memo whereas the Reagan Administration's DOJ reclassified the memo and tried to put the toothpaste back in the tube. Note that the Democratic Obama Administration to the right of the Reagan Administration on this issue. Another reason I'm an independent.
Finally, there are the detective aspects: Bamford found that one of the NSA's early leaders soured on the agency and deliberately left his papers to the Virginia Military Institute (VMI), where Bamford recognized them as a gold mine. Bamford also used to just go sit in the entrance area at the NSA and listen to people chatting about work around him while they waited to be processed in!
This is nothing new. many of us have known about warrantless wiretapping going on since the 60's, but everybody just calls us nutz and hands us tin foil for our hats. It has never stopped and most likely never will till enough people wake and force change. Then stay awake and make sure it sticks. Those that choose to ignore the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them.
A book isn't right merely by being published. It is always wise to be prudent about what you believe.
However, in this case, the Church Committee is known to have had strong views. It is also a matter of record that Echelon involved all of the Five Eyes members spying on electronic communications. Further, allegations at that time of other spying operations at that time (including telephonic and domestic wireless intercepts) are certainly mirrored by the Snowden Files.
These matters, and some horribly rudimentary inside information on the British army signals post in Cyprus in the 50s tells me the basics are accurate enough, regardless of the accuracy of the high adventure.
There have been past allegations about how Reagan won the election. If the claims are entirely legit, that might get revisited.
The birth certificate claim is troublesome. It means the President has no authority over the NSA. At all.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
The Church Committee also discovered that CIA had people stationed inside every major broadcasting network, in order to monitor and manipulate the information we get. They are supposed to have stopped that kind of activity. Yeah...
I just assume that the intelligence agencies do what they please and try not to get caught. They will lie, deny and withhold to maintain their programs. And with all the classification, black ops and special access programs, it's nigh impossible to find out what they're doing. Such things have no place in a representative government; it is beyond control of the people or their representatives. We are told it is necessary in a dangerous world. But the people who tell us that are the same ones who lie to us on a regular basis.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
What I love is that these guys who are the OG investigators and journalists, real ones, like Woodward, Bernstein, or Bamford, are just chilling now as things are 100000x worse.
Why couldn't DARPA or the NSA fund a Massive Search engine (without Ads) then {they} would have all their users information, and tacit approval to use it under Terms of Usage.
As an "Ad free" means to Search and avoiding Spammy "Scare the Geezies out of you, Creepware Flasher videos"
They would become the most Popular Search engine on the Planet.
Then they wouldn't need a Court order, to Search their own Servers.. if they're Located in a Foreign Country.
I was just graduating high school, an intern in the IT department of a sizable company in CA, my first tech job. We had an issue with a Unix print server and the IT manager (awesome boss who loved the Grateful Dead and drove an old beetle) called in a friend to consult for a couple days. Being a bright eyed youth with lots of interest in how this grey haired consultant was able to command a $150/hr consulting fee, I asked a lot of questions. And he told me some awesome stories about the early internet. This guy was a battle hardened networking/internet engineer going back to the early 1970s (graduated from MIT in the early 60s), he helped connect the first copper trans-pacific data cables from San Fransisco to Asia. Probably the most interesting stories he told were about what the NSA was doing circa 1980s.
He said the buildings that house the trans-oceanic data cables were designed from the ground up with small rooms, broom closet sized, that the primary data cables run through. Nobody other than federal agents with code word level clearance were allowed in via a heavy security door that had a guard 24/7. He said that all data traffic entering those rooms left them with a noticable amount of latency (at the time, late 80s he said it was about 10ms), but no hops. He claimed that the federal government had been monitoring internet activity in these data hubs since the dawn of the web.
I still believe him to this day, and have not been surprised by Snowden's revelations or really any news I see about the government snooping on traffic. The internet started as a DARPA project. It would be stupid to assume that data traversing what is essentially a military network can't be monitored by government entities.
Funny how NSA posts get the least comments now-a-days on Slashdot :)
are the biggest liars alive. if something can be hidden or covered up, they will do it. this isn't the land of "justice, and freedom" for all...
The Snowden leaks were good, but myself, a DOD/CIA whistleblower Dr. Robert Duncan, and another NSA whistleblower Russell Tice, have repeatedly pointed out that the Snowden leaks were rubbish and hid many methods of spying. Tice himself worked with space capability and satellites in the black world doing warrantless surveillance on Americans, yet not a single document of Snowden's contains information on this. Tice claims it was because Snowden was a low leveler with only access to one particular NSA system, while several other systems were not provided. Makes sense. Tice says these other systems operate on computer networks of their own, and are classified under "Special Access Programs," "Exceptionally Controlled Information" programs, and "Very Restricted Knowledge" programs. Duncan himself worked on many of the systems and has seen his work classified, then later dumped to the public for use. But he backs Tice up, basically they have several technologies he worked on from space capability, like tracking breathe and heart rate, and license plates. To mind reading and mind altering technologies, fully deployed and in use today, fully patented. There's also building and ground penetrating radar technologies, that work FROM SPACE and are being used today, to actually spy on and scan people remotely like tracking air craft or other objects.
Not a single leak from Snowden covered the NSAs ability to read emanations of electromagnetic frequencies from space or radar, but they're capable of that as well. Which enables tapping of what is being processed by a computer, what is on your screen, USB, Ethernet, telephone, and other cables, without a physical connection to the devices or network in question, again all done from space and long range. Turns out the brain emanations aren't any different, and once intercepted can be passed to neural decoders to extract passcodes, memories, thoughts, and other gogglygook.
When will the public listen or figure it out? This has been going on since the 1970s. The first neural accessing devices were deployed themselves in 1976, according to Robert Duncan.
http://www.obamasweapon.com/.
sdguero wrote:
Mark Klein, former tech from AT&T, claimed to have witnessed installation of one such room at a San Francisco POP in 2002. He gave a formal statement to attorneys at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which was printed in this Wired Article. The money quote is below:
EFF proceeded to file a lawsuit (Hepting v. AT&T) claiming infringement of privacy by the firm. Though no finding of fact was challenged, ultimately it was dismissed due to retroactive FISA legislation signed by Bush legalizing the process. On appeal, the Supreme Court refused to review the case.
Though many argued that Klein was just one person with a grudge against his employer, and thus dismissed his testimony as overblown or vindictive, in 2013 Edward Snowden's revelations "proved what he'd said was true. That the government did work with network service providers - including AT&T - to install monitoring systems throughout the Internet backbone.
in 2013 Edward Snowden's revelations proved what he'd said was true.
I really hated Men In Black---
that movie stuck in my craw
So arrogant and smug
as they tampered with minds
in parody of due process of law.
There is a special brand of stupid
that only affects those who are smart.
By their own hands they have brought this great evil
in which they knowingly play a part.
NSA is to gather blackmail, is all---
for when and why--- they haven't a clue.
Just following orders for the almighty buck
---they fuck
their own children, fuck me and fuck you.
And so to St. Peter I must say
They learned their lesson well---
They continue to serve today's NSA
so send them on to hell!
Oath breakers! Get the hell out of there and blow the lid off this thing while there is still time!
(But first... ya gotta get mad!)
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
but you're going up against Dr. Robert Duncan, BA, MS, MBA, PHD. And many other government whistleblowers.
Including Dr. Judy Wood. Dr. Fred Bell. Thomas Bearden. Dr. Nick Begich, son of Senator Nick Begich, and other of book "Angels Don't Play This HAARP".
Please review Dr. Robert Duncan's interviews, watch the video on HAARP and weather control, and read some of he attached documents of these two articles.
http://www.oregonstatehospital.net/d/story.html#nsabrainlink
http://www.oregonstatehospital.net/d/russelltice-nsarnmebl.html
Dr. Robert Duncan's two interviews on Coast to Coast AM and Jesse Ventura's Conspiracy Theory are there. As is his free eBook, The Matrix Deciphered.
Come on. Call bullshit all you want, but you ain't got skill compared to these people. So who's more believeable, a crackpot or someone established like the experts?