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New Snowden Leaks Reveal More About NSA Satellite Eavesdropping (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Newly published documents from Edward Snowden have shed more light on American surveillance operations in the UK. The Intercept details how the NSA and GCHQ used information gathered by Menwith Hill Station, a massive but tightly sealed facility that intercepts satellite data transmissions worldwide. Among other things, the files appear to include evidence that links UK-based surveillance to American anti-terrorism campaigns outside official combat zones. While many surveillance efforts focus on the internet's connective "backbone" cables, Menwith Hill intercepts wireless signals, using an array of antennae and U.S. government satellites to capture up to 335 million pieces of metadata in a 12-hour period. Previous reports -- including an earlier Snowden leak -- have already revealed some of its capabilities. But The Intercept includes more details, particularly about the UK's involvement in "capture-kill" operations against suspected terrorists. It describes how the GHOSTHUNTER program traced the location of targets "when they log onto the internet," often in internet cafes. A different program called GHOSTWOLF, which let the NSA and GCHQ monitor traffic from Yemeni internet cafes, is part of a plan to "capture or eliminate key nodes in terrorist networks" by tracking their locations. This leak fuels existing suspicions that the UK's role in American covert drone strikes is greater than it admits -- potentially implicating it in the civilian deaths that have resulted. GCHQ told The Intercept that all its work "is carried out in accordance with a strict legal and policy framework," and "is entirely compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights."
"is carried out in accordance with a strict legal and policy framework," and "is entirely compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights."
1: No one believes that.
2: You voted to leave the EU. Why even pretend at this point?
"is entirely compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights."
I like how they said "compatible" and not "compliant". How clever.
Of course you did, it says so right here in the massive surveillance server farm that tracked your actions to do so. Seriously though, this is why encryption is so important. All throughout history, you can find examples of excessive government overreach and oppression. How can we in this world not value a right to be private amongst ourselves without massive public backlash? How has it come to the point where it just ends up being brushed off as "oh right, more tin-foil hat jokes, we knew the whole time how bad we have it"?
I believe in the 4th amendment, in principle and in practice, I think it is absolutely necessary in this age of information overload. The government should be spending those dollars on trying to catch the pricks who mean to do it harm, and not drag netting all over our inherent rights. Things have clearly gotten out of hand.
Are you?
Governments are keeping secrets! SECRETS!!!
I fully support Fragnet's extremely large prick. Snowden on the other hand... Russia cold... shrinkage.
Sure, a place where journalists investigating corrupt politicians are regularly murdered. It's so common there's even a Wiki page for it. Not so many whistleblowers East of the Dnieper, then.
So you know, why don't you go and get your fucking shoe shine box?
Or, you might want to be more concerned about Obama's drone program that has murdered countless civilians, and maybe a few terrorists.
Your choice, amigo.
"No. Snowden deliberately dumped these documents. You don't get out of murder charges when you hire the hitman."
What a strained analogy that is.
If you report (and provide proof) of government corruption, overreach, and general malfeasance to the legitimate press; and the press sorts thorugh it, verifies it, and determines what is newsworthy and publishable... that is an important function of the press.
Snowden definitely broke the law taking the information, but I think he should be pardoned.
But holding him responsible for what the press does is as ridiculous as holding you responsible for someone the police kill after you report a crime to them.
a) its not automatically a crime when the police kill someone.
b) even when the police are in the wrong, its STILL not your fault for reporting the original crime to the police.
The massive prick is holed up in Russia. He really needs to get a sense of perspective.
He is "holed up in Russia" because the United States government decided to revoke his passport and trap him in the Moscow airport. It wasn't his intention to stay in Russia.
I'm always amazed when people are quick to demonize Snowden for breaking laws but defend what he exposed: Massive government corruption and disregard for the law.
Someone is angry that Snowden has done more good for the murican people then any expendable clown has done with a machine gun in his hands for the past 60+ years. Feel free to raise your chromosome-enriched children to join the army, this planet will be better off when your bloodline comes to an end.
He leaked to a pair of American journalists.
1: The ECHR is not related to the EU
2: It probably is compatible because the base is regarded as US Sovereign territory and what goes on there is technically not subject to British control similar to a foreign embassy. Hence it is compatible but not necessarily compliant.
In fact I grew up in Harrogate and have actually been on to the Menwith Hill base when I was a school kid for a party. They were extremely hospitable and even gave us Coca Cola imported from the US. At the time none of us British kids could understand why US coke tasted so bad compared to British coke and it was not until I was living the US ~10 years later that I heard of the "New Coke" debacle.
>> using an array of antennae and U.S. government satellites to capture up to 335 million pieces of metadata in a 12-hour period.
Among those 335 million pieces of metadata, how many of them actually pertain to anything related to terrorism? My guess..less than .000001%.
The government should be spending those dollars on trying to catch the pricks who mean to do it harm, and not drag netting all over our inherent rights. Things have clearly gotten out of hand.
I would tend to agree but government is just way too busy giving money and munitions to the Saudi's to fund Madrassas and conduct indiscriminate bombing operations within Yemen.
Spying is what governments do. Domestic spying by the intelligence services is a good thing.
Domestic spying breeds corruption and isn't a legitimate activity. Hence the reason it's illegal.
Spying has stopped acts of terrorism on US soil.
Meanwhile a 9/11 load of people are murdered in the US each and every quarter like clockwork.
If you are a Muslim, you especially want the government spying on Muslim activities. The last time the US government did not do it's job and spy on Muslims was 911.
60 9/11's worth of murders have occurred since then in this country. Why exactly should everyone give up their rights and privacy in the name of a single outlier event given they are more likely to be murdered by a non-terrorist, killed in a car accident or falling in their own homes?
As a result of that mistake the US government with the support of the U.S. populace destroyed Afghanistan, Iraq, and the United States (we went bankrupt fighting a war on a tactic) The USA overreacts when bad things happen on USAian soil, and we go after people who had nothing to do with the act.
LOL the terrorists made us do it. The terrorists made Bush invade Iraq and the terrorists made the "Intelligence" community make up a bunch of bullshit it's own people with intimate domain knowledge didn't even believe themselves as a pretext for war.
I do not want to get in any more wars. This is why I support the NSA / CIA / whatever spying on and killing anyone who would want to commit an act of terrorism.
The terrorists made us do it... kill them all and then we won't do stupid shit anymore. I promise. Never mind bush already looking for whatever pretext he could to get revenge for the attempt on his daddy. The terrorists MADE US DO IT.
But if you really think Snowden is some kind of hero, you should move to some country where they support heros and never spy.
What Snowden did was expose/confirm illegal activities conducted against everyone who has ever used a phone in this country. I'd be willing to entertain your bullshit about the NSA for a few milliseconds at least when someone from NSA goes to jail.
Source? (And no, lack of evidence is not evidence)
It's not the foreign spying that concerns Americans, you fuckwit. It's spying on citizens that is a problem.
I don't give two fucks if China does. I don't have to worry about being extradited on bogus charges to Shanghai. I do if some Fed gets pissed and decides to structure a story.
So there's a fucking difference.
He didn't expect to get stuck in Russia. Then again, at least he is mostly safe from the US there. They are unlikely to try kidnapping him or drone launched Hellfire missiles while Russia is watching.
It's hard to think of a much better place. US kidnappings have happened in Europe, sometimes thwarted by the local security services and sometimes not. Iceland might be good if security could be guaranteed.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Whatever happened to, "by the people, for the people"? If they want to watch me, I'm going to watch them right back. I'm glad there are people willing to risk their lives and freedom to expose the things our government is doing behind our backs. We have an agencies dedicated to investigating domestic matters, there's no need to common citizen needs to be under surveillance like we are all rogue actors on our own soil. Focus on making sure these terrorist fucks don't get in to the country in the first place. Of course some will slip through the cracks, and these people need to be investigated and stopped. The only way to do that is through good old fashioned investigation and police work. There's what, 350 million people in the US, and what percentage of those people are terrorists? What percentage of those people are upstanding (or otherwise for that matter) citizens who have a right to think and say what they want with out the government monitoring them? Seems like a lot of noise to filter through to try to expose a few bad actors, and I'm willing to bet broad surveillance is far less effective than targeted investigation. So Uncle Sam can stay the fuck out of my business and anyone else's until they have just cause to investigate us. Attempting to have a private conversation is not proof I am a terrorist, encrypting my data is not proof I am a criminal, and exposing actions our government has taken behind our backs is the right thing to do. I love America, I do not like the people running our government. America is the people you see every day, programmers, construction workers, police, doctors and so on. The people giving orders to spy on us the same as they would the citizens of a terrorist state, that is NOT America. FUCK THEM.
All this manpower and infrastructure to catching so called terrorists. They really do a fantastic job considering the situation in Europe and the middleeast today. But I guess that's not the focus of the operation.
Since it was the government that killed them, I would argue that is not entirely unreasonable.
I'm a full on Snowden supporter, but I don't think it's demonising him to point out that this isn't too big a deal.
I'm concerned that the debate about security servers has descended to the point where people are basically just arguing they shouldn't exist.
I profoundly disagree, I think they serve an important purpose, to me the problem is that they've completely overstepped those bounds in recent decades but that doesn't mean I believe everything they do is wrong.
I disagree with the bulk collection of data, but if they're performing targeted interception against legitimate threats to the state, or are performing counter-intelligence against foreign state threats or similar, then to me that's exactly what they should be doing, and I don't really see what exposing that achieves - no shit, we know they're doing it, they're supposed to be doing it, it's their fundamental purpose.
I think this view that everything the security services does is evil and bad is fundamentally flawed, I think it's an argument that can't (and shouldn't) ever be won, and I think it gets in the way of legitimate criticism of situations where security agencies have overstepped the mark, by carrying out widespread spying on their own populace.
I think it's important people start making a distinction between spy agencies spying on who they're supposed to be spying on, and when they spy on people who have done nothing wrong. I think the argument holds a lot more weight in that context.
We need to know what Snowden has to say about them spying on their home population, and innocent people in other populations, but frankly I don't care about them spying on legitimate terrorist targets in Yemeni cyber cafes, it's what they're supposed to be fucking doing.
Well said!
Nope, he was the one entrusted with a security clearance. He is the one who signed the NDR. And he is the one who handed classified data on our intelligence gathering systems to individuals not cleared to receive it
"to individuals not cleared to receive it" aka "the press" aka "a proxy to the public".
He did exactly what you said, and not only does he deserve a pardon, he deserves a medal. There is simply no way the VAST majority of what he released shouldn't have been known by the public funding it; our internal surveillance, and even the extent to which we collaborate with other countries, and the extent to which we spy on allies...
Are they hiring?
Tracy Johnson
Old fashioned text games hosted below:
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BT
I don't know about your bosses, dumbass, but I certainly expect better shilling for my tax dollars.
So, you think he is a hero for betraying his country.
It isn't exactly betrayal when they cast the first stone.
Say we have a legally binding contract. Between you and over 300 million people. And you break said contract, regularly. How is it betraying you to let everybody else know that you have broken our contract and should not be trusted?
False, the public does not have any right to know our national secrets. If we reveal all our secrets we have none, and have no leverage in international relations. Just because we fund it does not mean we are entitled to know everything the government does. A government with no secrets cannot stand.
the vast majority of what he released was not for public release and has compromised many legitimate intelligence operations that we the people have tasked the intelligence community to engage in.
He signed the NDR, that means he promised to protect those national secrets. The only ones he was not bound to protect are those that were illegal, i.e. the phone surveillance of US citizens inside the US.
He does not deserve a pardon or a medal. He deserves a very long stint at Ft Leavenworth breaking big rocks into little rocks.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
The NDR is a legal contract. It has been well vetted and challenged in the courts. The SF 312 NDR is not an illegal contract by any definition. He is not bound to protect secrets about illegal acts, thus he would have been justified and even a hero in revealing the illegal phone surveillance of US citizens inside the US. But that was revealed in his first release when he was still in China. Everything since then has been fully legitimate intelligence collection efforts and thus still subject to the lawful contract he signed.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
the public does not have any right to know our national secrets
That's some fine circular reasoning you've got going there.
If the government had been acting legally, it wouldn't have had any misbehaviour to keep secret. And declaring its illegal and undesirable activities to be secret absolutely does not deny the public the right to know about them.
. Just because we fund it does not mean we are entitled to know everything the government does. A government with no secrets cannot stand.
Followed by a straw man. Nobody is arguing that the government should have NO secrets. But it should not have had THESE secrets.
and has compromised many legitimate intelligence operations that we the people have tasked the intelligence community to engage in.
"we the people" asked for no such thing, and do not support MANY of these operations."
If a few criminals and whatnot go free, so fucking what... that is the entire premise of our justice system, that it is better to let a criminal or even a terrorist go then to imprison the innocent. That is a premise the NSA seemed to abandon, and since it was keeping it a secret the fact that it was abandoned couldn't be debated by the public.
The NSA did not have a mandate to spy on our closest allies and our own citizens en masse. No to trade intel with our allies for intel on our own citizens to get around what few legal restraints they were still observing. Full stop.
Anonymous Paranoid acting tough on the internet. Shocking.
Are you serious? Intelligence Agencies are by definition not obeying country X's laws. Country X has a law against spying.
For fuck's sake what is wrong with you people? It's almost like you're being deliberately fucking stupid.
I am kind of a Snowden supporter here...
If you report (and provide proof) of government corruption, overreach, and general malfeasance to the legitimate press; and the press sorts thorugh it, verifies it, and determines what is newsworthy and publishable... that is an important function of the press.
This part (government corruption/overreach) of what Snowden did makes him a national hero and a patriot. He deserves a statue and reverence from every American for it.
What this story is covering is NOT about American government corruption and overreach. It is about GCHQ corruption and overreach. Snowden had no business revealing such secrets that he got from the NSA. He is a traitor and a coward for running from the consequences of his actions.
Long story short, every government has the responsibility to spy on every other government. Each State is sovereign and the real world is dangerous. I fully expect GCHQ to spy on me as I am not one of their citizens. I also expect Russia and China to spy on me as I am not a citizen of those countries either.
Snowden released too much information. If he had kept his release of information strictly to what the American government was doing illegally, I would drop to my knees and praise him. As it is, I am torn. The depth of his treachery is almost unfathomable. The height of his courage is almost unfathomable. What to do?
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
What this story is covering is NOT about American government corruption and overreach. It is about GCHQ corruption and overreach.
And therefore what is the problem with it exactly?
Long story short, every government has the responsibility to spy on every other government
Every government has a responsibility to protects its national security, and that can involve spying on other governements. But it is an absurd waste of resources to spy on every member of every government everywhere all the time. Canada, for example, is not threatening the US. The UK is a longtime ally. The US should be keeping tabs on these countries and others, monitoring their policies, profiling key people, etc. But they don't need to hack their email and tap their phones; not unless there are some serious red flags. Instead they do it as a matter of course. That's a waste of resources. Resources that could be put to better use elsewhere.
I fully expect GCHQ to spy on me as I am not one of their citizens.
Because dedicating resources to spying on strikethree's phone conversations with his grandmother is a good use of a Brit's taxpayers money? No. Of course not. The money would be better spent elsewhere. I fully expect the GCHQ to have the authority to try and spy on you if it needs to. But I would expect its not in the UK's interests to actually do it... what is the return on that effort? Assuming you aren't a legitimate threat to the security of the UK... the return is ZILCH.
The UK public should be as disgusted at the GCHQ as you should be at the NSA.
If he had kept his release of information strictly to what the American government was doing illegally,
Who decides what was illegal or not? .... that there were extenuating circumstances that made it ok in this case... ". Who was Snowden to 2nd guess them on it? Deciding he rely on the NSA to determine what was legal would be would be a pretty pointless position to take; nothing would be released ever.
The NSA? They'd decided everything was legal; or at least legal enough that they could argue it was legal; or perhaps if not strictly legal
Snowden should be the judge for himself? If so, we are faulting him for not having the arrogance to decide for the entire country which information should be released or not. That's a pretty heavy burden to lay at his feet, and how could you possibly be satisified trusting his judgement. So that's a fascinating position to take too.
So that leaves what he actually did... give it to the press; to disseminate it to the public; you know so we can decide for ourselves like adults. If we decide not every detail was necessary, that's fine. Its good to know that perhaps not everything the NSA did was a shitshow. But there was so much wrong with the NSA, that seeing it all, so we have the big picture, and the context, so we can see where the boundaries were crossed, and decide for ourselves. That seems like the best option by far to me.