FBI Deputy Director Sean Joyce recently revealed to Congress that the FBI had also conducted another investigation into Moalin's activities in 2003 and ultimately concluded that there was “no nexus to terrorism.” This evidence was kept from the defense during trial.
So not only didn't they collect evidence wrongfully, but the evidence they collected showed that he was innocent and they hid this from the defense. This isn't just slippery slope, this is greasing the slope and then shoving the American people down it!
You didn't get that right. They closed the case in 2003 and a new one was opened after they were tipped off based on new evidence showing a connection to terrorism. In this case it appears to have been based on direct contact with an overseas terrorist. That would seem to be proper.
MR. JOYCE:...... So initially the FBI opened a case in 2003 based on a tip. We investigated that tip. We found no nexus to terrorism and closed the case. In 2007 the NSA advised us, through the business record 215 program, that a number in San Diego was in contact with an al-Shabab and east — al-Qaida east — al-Qaida East Africa member in Somalia. We served legal process to identify that unidentified phone number. We identified Basaaly Moalin. Through further investigation, we identified additional co-conspirators, and Moalin and three other individuals have been convicted — and some pled guilty — to material support to terrorism.
So based on this it doesn't appear that any skids are being greased, nor are the American people being pushed down it. Some terrorists appear to be having an uncomfortable ride though.
I wouldn't count on the things said in open testimony before congress as being what is said behind closed doors. Ultimately it is up to the Congress, the courts, and the executive branch to provide the bulk of the oversight of secret activities. That is part of their roll as elected officials. There seems to be some move towards additional open aggregate reporting for some things, which will be helpful.
Rape, incest, bestiality are some of the things being targeted. That isn't exactly just bare breasts. Although you raise an issue noted in this bit from the BBC story:
"We outlaw snuff films, child porn and, increasingly, revenge porn, because actual people are harmed during their production," wrote PJ Vogt on OnTheMedia.org.
Long after the fact, yes. That sort of arrangement is pretty much in place now. I'm pretty sure they didn't send letters to the newspapers listing who they had under surveillance at the time. They also hung various spies they found. The hangings were very transparent since they were public. I assume you approve?
Interesting what you selected, and what you left out. The following passage, for example, from just before the fist paragraph that your quote.
“A university may not know that a visiting engineer could be conducting sponsored research on a military program that could hurt Americans in the event of a conflict,” Stokes said. “An engineer supporting a People’s Liberation Army program is unlikely to advertise his or her purpose.”
Or this, just after the second...
...Graham Spanier sought closer collaboration with law enforcement. Reading that a president at another state university expressed shock that a faculty member was under investigation for terrorist ties, he resolved not to be similarly taken aback....
It isn't "xenophobic paranoia" to find unrestricted activity by foreign spies and terrorists undesirable, even at a university. Of course, maybe you prefer the US is an easy target for espionage?
When a foreign entity compromised the computer system of a major university, the bureau contacted the school’s information- technology administrators, who denied that they had a security breach. The FBI consulted Spanier, who persuaded the university’s president to meet with the bureau.
“That opened the door to a higher level of cooperation,” he said. “The problem was solved.”
Similarly, the bureau warned Simon that research in behavioral science by a foreign graduate student at Michigan State “might breach the security of corporate America,” she said. “We were able to find a way for the student to complete his research and still modify it in a way that took away the national security issues.”
Beyond resolving such cases, the FBI has also alerted board members to the overall threat, most dramatically through a presentation by a former Russian spy. As a colonel in Russian intelligence and its deputy resident in New York from 1995 to 2000, Sergei Tretyakov set his sights on Columbia University and New York University, according to “Comrade J: The Untold Secrets of Russia’s Master Spy in America After the End of the Cold War” (2008), by Pete Earley.
Mingled With Professors
“We often targeted academics because their job was to share knowledge and information by teaching it to others, and this made them less guarded than, say, UN diplomats,” Earley quoted Tretyakov as saying. A typical task was to obtain information about “a study of genetically engineered food being done at New York University.”
At the board meeting, Tretyakov described to the presidents how Russian spies used to go to campus events and mingle with professors. “It certainly seemed very bold to me that they felt they could interact with faculty and students and attend seminars,” Spanier said. “We never really think about that happening on our campuses.”
Many prefer the US to be an easier target, you among them I take it.
Even if the stupid thing were working as intended it would still be broken. It's broken by design.
Obamacare is essentially broken by design. They knew it would fail when they passed it. But it does move things closer to their real goal, regardless of the hardships and misery that it causes along the way.
Actually that isn't really true, is it? Only a small hand full of the documents he stole have been made available. Snowden reportedly had 50,000 documents just on UK intelligence operations. He obviously had many more about the US, not to mention Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Germany, and other countries. We've only seen just the smallest, filtered part of the documents numbering, what, a couple of dozen? I think you are greatly exaggerating what has been seen. Also, we know that what has been released isn't limited to purely domestic surveillance which most people here think it is legitimate to expose, which means foreign intelligence gathering has been compromised, which many people here claim to not support. And yet the damage is still done.
As to repeating this sort of infiltration and theft, once Snowden left there was bound to be an investigation whether he disclosed the documents publically or not. There is no way that they could count on repeating this anyway, even if it was all a Russian operation. This really isn't much different than when the Cambridge Five left, and in particular, Kim Philby.
As for your theory, whatever helps you sleep at night. Personally, I don't believe that either the US or UK government is all powerful, which is why this incident will be so damaging. If they were all-powerful they could shrug off the damage, but they aren't all-powerful. The damage has in fact been irreversible. Regardless of whether or not Snowden had help, he did the inside work, and is responsible for the damage.
You should understand that it will take time before the damage is apparent. In some cases it will probably be years before certain consequences take place since it can take years of planning and preparation for terrorist attacks. But be clear, it is already having an effect.
There is a certain irony at play here. For decades, people suspected, and were very put off about it, that the NSA had weakened the DES encryption standard by the mysterious alteration of the S-Boxes when in fact they had secretly strengthened it against an attack they knew about that nobody outside of IBM (as far as we know) knew about. The mere possibility of the NSA weakening a current NIST approved encryption standard has people in a uproar despite the fact that the so-called evidence for it hovers between thin to non-existent, seems to be magnified in the retelling, and even if it was true could probably only be exploited by a nation state, and possibly only the US. And yet the same people are cheering on what must be the greatest loss of secret intelligence information on methods and operations ever, affecting multiple nations, as if there would be no consequence to that. Time will tell.
Let's assume those secrets were allowed to be released as a smokescreen for other, more damning secrets. I shudder to think of what they might be, as they would have to be truly nightmarish indeed. In that case, we need to stop our own government with greater urgency....
Man oh man, if the fire warden catches you piling that much straw in one place he might issue you a ticket.
A., many people have a favorite part of the Constitution and like to ignore the others. On Slashdot many people are so focused on the 4th Amendment that they totally ignore Article II and the jurisprudence on it. They ignore the fact that the 1st Amendment isn't without limits or subtlety in application, neither are the others. The FISA court is limited in scope, and certainly not tame. It has modified many requests, and the government has withdrawn 3x more than were outright denied. Surveillance inside the US will be needed by some entity as long as there are many, many thousands of foreign spies and members or associates of terrorist groups operating in the US. The only real question is, what are the ground rules? I'm not necessarily completely comfortable with the manner in which some of this has played out, but that is a different question than what the law on it is.
That is silly, really. Tell me, since many NATO countries have military forces fighting alongside America's military forces, how do you explain that? Is all of Europe governed by the "far, far right"?
What has Obama done that the French government hasn't done recently that would make him far right as opposed to the French government?
George Washington ran a spy ring that spied on other colonists as part of his fight to obtain and maintain freedom for the colonies. Benjamin Franklin was head of a committee that opened other colonist's mail for intelligence information for the same reason. I'm pretty certain you aren't a bigger patriot than they were, nor do you have their wisdom. Your proclamation is in fact either demagoguery, or the statement of someone that is uninformed about the history of how the US become free, and maintained its freedom.
America's history of spying began in the beginning, with George Washington, who famously declared ''the necessity of procuring good intelligence is apparent and need not be further urged.'' Washington warned that the process depended on secrecy, ''for upon secrecy, success depends in most enterprises of the kind, and for want of it, they are generally defeated, however well planned and promising a favorable issue.''
Notwithstanding the hanging of Nathan Hale before he could hand off his assessment of enemy troops, America often succeeded at divining British military maneuvers and at manufacturing misinformation. Returning to England after the Revolutionary War, Maj. George Beckwith, London's spymaster in the colonies, remarked bitterly that ''Washington did not really outfight the British; he simply outspied us!''
The NSA may need better oversight for some of its operations, but it plays a vital role in the defense of the US and its allies. It both should and will continue to exist. Any other outcome would be folly of the highest order.
Whatever his deepest personal inclinations are, President Obama won an election, not a revolution. He has to govern within the existing structure, with another party in opposition, and conform to the existing rules. You would certainly be mistaken to think he isn't shifting things noticeably to the left within that framework. There really isn't any question about the politics of his former "green jobs czar," Van Jones, is there? And an interesting comment from his former press secretary, Anita Dunn. Early on in his campaign, there were a number of reports or interviews of his early supporters, and several of them that I saw had a similar motif in the wall coverings. Move along, nothing to see here, right?
I would also advise you to not make the mistake of thinking that the US does not have a genuine Left. Among others, the Communist Party USA would beg to differ with you. Since they have little open support, guess what many of the hard left do when they want to actually hold office? Tone down the rhetoric, declare themselves to be "progressives," and join a more moderate party than they would prefer. Once in office, incrementalism moves them towards their goals.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, it's both. From the article:
So not only didn't they collect evidence wrongfully, but the evidence they collected showed that he was innocent and they hid this from the defense. This isn't just slippery slope, this is greasing the slope and then shoving the American people down it!
You didn't get that right. They closed the case in 2003 and a new one was opened after they were tipped off based on new evidence showing a connection to terrorism. In this case it appears to have been based on direct contact with an overseas terrorist. That would seem to be proper.
Hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Strengthening Privacy Rights and National Security: Oversight of FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) Surveillance Programs - July 31, 2013
MR. JOYCE: ...... So initially the FBI opened a case in 2003 based on a tip. We investigated that tip. We found no nexus to terrorism and closed the case. In 2007 the NSA advised us, through the business record 215 program, that a number in San Diego was in contact with an al-Shabab and east — al-Qaida east — al-Qaida East Africa member in Somalia. We served legal process to identify that unidentified phone number. We identified Basaaly Moalin. Through further investigation, we identified additional co-conspirators, and Moalin and three other individuals have been convicted — and some pled guilty — to material support to terrorism.
So based on this it doesn't appear that any skids are being greased, nor are the American people being pushed down it. Some terrorists appear to be having an uncomfortable ride though.
I particularly like all of the "TODO" comments in production code.
It's part of the test plan.
I wouldn't count on the things said in open testimony before congress as being what is said behind closed doors. Ultimately it is up to the Congress, the courts, and the executive branch to provide the bulk of the oversight of secret activities. That is part of their roll as elected officials. There seems to be some move towards additional open aggregate reporting for some things, which will be helpful.
This could be a boon for Brazil in tech. Offering services that are free of surveillance could make Brazil a tech powerhouse.
It already is.
Rape, incest, bestiality are some of the things being targeted. That isn't exactly just bare breasts. Although you raise an issue noted in this bit from the BBC story:
"We outlaw snuff films, child porn and, increasingly, revenge porn, because actual people are harmed during their production," wrote PJ Vogt on OnTheMedia.org.
Long after the fact, yes. That sort of arrangement is pretty much in place now. I'm pretty sure they didn't send letters to the newspapers listing who they had under surveillance at the time. They also hung various spies they found. The hangings were very transparent since they were public. I assume you approve?
Interesting what you selected, and what you left out. The following passage, for example, from just before the fist paragraph that your quote.
“A university may not know that a visiting engineer could be conducting sponsored research on a military program that could hurt Americans in the event of a conflict,” Stokes said. “An engineer supporting a People’s Liberation Army program is unlikely to advertise his or her purpose.”
Or this, just after the second...
...Graham Spanier sought closer collaboration with law enforcement. Reading that a president at another state university expressed shock that a faculty member was under investigation for terrorist ties, he resolved not to be similarly taken aback. ...
It isn't "xenophobic paranoia" to find unrestricted activity by foreign spies and terrorists undesirable, even at a university. Of course, maybe you prefer the US is an easy target for espionage?
When a foreign entity compromised the computer system of a major university, the bureau contacted the school’s information- technology administrators, who denied that they had a security breach. The FBI consulted Spanier, who persuaded the university’s president to meet with the bureau.
“That opened the door to a higher level of cooperation,” he said. “The problem was solved.”
Similarly, the bureau warned Simon that research in behavioral science by a foreign graduate student at Michigan State “might breach the security of corporate America,” she said. “We were able to find a way for the student to complete his research and still modify it in a way that took away the national security issues.”
Beyond resolving such cases, the FBI has also alerted board members to the overall threat, most dramatically through a presentation by a former Russian spy. As a colonel in Russian intelligence and its deputy resident in New York from 1995 to 2000, Sergei Tretyakov set his sights on Columbia University and New York University, according to “Comrade J: The Untold Secrets of Russia’s Master Spy in America After the End of the Cold War” (2008), by Pete Earley.
Mingled With Professors
“We often targeted academics because their job was to share knowledge and information by teaching it to others, and this made them less guarded than, say, UN diplomats,” Earley quoted Tretyakov as saying. A typical task was to obtain information about “a study of genetically engineered food being done at New York University.”
At the board meeting, Tretyakov described to the presidents how Russian spies used to go to campus events and mingle with professors. “It certainly seemed very bold to me that they felt they could interact with faculty and students and attend seminars,” Spanier said. “We never really think about that happening on our campuses.”
Many prefer the US to be an easier target, you among them I take it.
That is just sad. You clearly have no clue.
I don't think that's what she meant. I read no promise to do better in that statement at all.
I think you need to listen to her carefully.... she .. did not ...have relations with that agency... the NSA.
I was able to register fairly early (around the 3rd) - when the site was still undergoing the initial onslaught of gawkers....
Wow, this is kind of like seeing an endangered species or something.
Only Five Iowans Have Signed Up on Obamacare Exchange - 10 Oct 2013
Hawaii Relaunching Obamacare Exchange After Not Selling Any Health Insurance Due To Software Problems - October 10, 2013
Good news: Maryland has successfully enrolled 326 people in ObamaCare - October 7, 2013
Just 51,000 Americans Have Enrolled in Federal Obamacare Exchanges? - Oct 11, 2013
Double Down: Obamacare Will Increase Avg. Individual-Market Insurance Premiums By 99% For Men, 62% For Women
For some reason people want health care that won't bankrupt them. They look at what citizens of other industrialized nations get and want the same.
You mean eight hour waits in ambulances to game national healthcare system metrics, going to the US for treatment to avoid waits, and crackdowns on treatment for immigrants? Americans don't want the first, the second is redundant, and Obamacare will probably rule out the third.
Even if the stupid thing were working as intended it would still be broken. It's broken by design.
Obamacare is essentially broken by design. They knew it would fail when they passed it. But it does move things closer to their real goal, regardless of the hardships and misery that it causes along the way.
Sen. Harry Reid: Obamacare 'Absolutely' A Step Toward A Single-Payer System
Actually that isn't really true, is it? Only a small hand full of the documents he stole have been made available. Snowden reportedly had 50,000 documents just on UK intelligence operations. He obviously had many more about the US, not to mention Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Germany, and other countries. We've only seen just the smallest, filtered part of the documents numbering, what, a couple of dozen? I think you are greatly exaggerating what has been seen. Also, we know that what has been released isn't limited to purely domestic surveillance which most people here think it is legitimate to expose, which means foreign intelligence gathering has been compromised, which many people here claim to not support. And yet the damage is still done.
As to repeating this sort of infiltration and theft, once Snowden left there was bound to be an investigation whether he disclosed the documents publically or not. There is no way that they could count on repeating this anyway, even if it was all a Russian operation. This really isn't much different than when the Cambridge Five left, and in particular, Kim Philby.
As for your theory, whatever helps you sleep at night. Personally, I don't believe that either the US or UK government is all powerful, which is why this incident will be so damaging. If they were all-powerful they could shrug off the damage, but they aren't all-powerful. The damage has in fact been irreversible. Regardless of whether or not Snowden had help, he did the inside work, and is responsible for the damage.
You should understand that it will take time before the damage is apparent. In some cases it will probably be years before certain consequences take place since it can take years of planning and preparation for terrorist attacks. But be clear, it is already having an effect.
There is a certain irony at play here. For decades, people suspected, and were very put off about it, that the NSA had weakened the DES encryption standard by the mysterious alteration of the S-Boxes when in fact they had secretly strengthened it against an attack they knew about that nobody outside of IBM (as far as we know) knew about. The mere possibility of the NSA weakening a current NIST approved encryption standard has people in a uproar despite the fact that the so-called evidence for it hovers between thin to non-existent, seems to be magnified in the retelling, and even if it was true could probably only be exploited by a nation state, and possibly only the US. And yet the same people are cheering on what must be the greatest loss of secret intelligence information on methods and operations ever, affecting multiple nations, as if there would be no consequence to that. Time will tell.
Let's assume those secrets were allowed to be released as a smokescreen for other, more damning secrets. I shudder to think of what they might be, as they would have to be truly nightmarish indeed. In that case, we need to stop our own government with greater urgency....
Man oh man, if the fire warden catches you piling that much straw in one place he might issue you a ticket.
Sorry, but you are ill informed.
Just all by itself; China also has more than 3,000 front companies in the U.S.
That isn't spies, that is just front companies that have spies in them. The Russians have many spies, and so do many other nations.
Hezbollah has at least hundreds of operatives. It adds up.
A., many people have a favorite part of the Constitution and like to ignore the others. On Slashdot many people are so focused on the 4th Amendment that they totally ignore Article II and the jurisprudence on it. They ignore the fact that the 1st Amendment isn't without limits or subtlety in application, neither are the others. The FISA court is limited in scope, and certainly not tame. It has modified many requests, and the government has withdrawn 3x more than were outright denied. Surveillance inside the US will be needed by some entity as long as there are many, many thousands of foreign spies and members or associates of terrorist groups operating in the US. The only real question is, what are the ground rules? I'm not necessarily completely comfortable with the manner in which some of this has played out, but that is a different question than what the law on it is.
Actually it's 3 L's. You left out C-L-I-n-t-o-n. ;)
Oddly enough, it's 3 total for B-I-L-L too. Runs in the family I guess.
We have a surveillance program for the Brits. One if by land, two if by sea.
Yes, and it was compromised long ago. Of course there were implementation issues too.
Let me know when governments in the US and UK stop changing by election.
That is silly, really. Tell me, since many NATO countries have military forces fighting alongside America's military forces, how do you explain that? Is all of Europe governed by the "far, far right"?
What has Obama done that the French government hasn't done recently that would make him far right as opposed to the French government?
And there it is, you think you're holier, wiser, and more patriotic than George Washington and Benjamin Franklin. Just what I expected.
Tell me your Eminence, have you been so blessed all your life, or was there some point at which you had an epiphany?
Exactly - you don't know, and you don't care. You're peddling BS, not defending anything.
George Washington ran a spy ring that spied on other colonists as part of his fight to obtain and maintain freedom for the colonies. Benjamin Franklin was head of a committee that opened other colonist's mail for intelligence information for the same reason. I'm pretty certain you aren't a bigger patriot than they were, nor do you have their wisdom. Your proclamation is in fact either demagoguery, or the statement of someone that is uninformed about the history of how the US become free, and maintained its freedom.
War of Secrets; Spy History 101: America's Intelligence Quotient
America's history of spying began in the beginning, with George Washington, who famously declared ''the necessity of procuring good intelligence is apparent and need not be further urged.'' Washington warned that the process depended on secrecy, ''for upon secrecy, success depends in most enterprises of the kind, and for want of it, they are generally defeated, however well planned and promising a favorable issue.''
Notwithstanding the hanging of Nathan Hale before he could hand off his assessment of enemy troops, America often succeeded at divining British military maneuvers and at manufacturing misinformation. Returning to England after the Revolutionary War, Maj. George Beckwith, London's spymaster in the colonies, remarked bitterly that ''Washington did not really outfight the British; he simply outspied us!''
The NSA may need better oversight for some of its operations, but it plays a vital role in the defense of the US and its allies. It both should and will continue to exist. Any other outcome would be folly of the highest order.
Whatever his deepest personal inclinations are, President Obama won an election, not a revolution. He has to govern within the existing structure, with another party in opposition, and conform to the existing rules. You would certainly be mistaken to think he isn't shifting things noticeably to the left within that framework. There really isn't any question about the politics of his former "green jobs czar," Van Jones, is there? And an interesting comment from his former press secretary, Anita Dunn. Early on in his campaign, there were a number of reports or interviews of his early supporters, and several of them that I saw had a similar motif in the wall coverings. Move along, nothing to see here, right?
I would also advise you to not make the mistake of thinking that the US does not have a genuine Left. Among others, the Communist Party USA would beg to differ with you. Since they have little open support, guess what many of the hard left do when they want to actually hold office? Tone down the rhetoric, declare themselves to be "progressives," and join a more moderate party than they would prefer. Once in office, incrementalism moves them towards their goals.
Not really. NSA employees and contractors routinely engage in LOVEINt and BIZINT now.
The "LoveInt" thing is about 1 person per year, and they have been disciplined or fired.
We're talking about them selling HSBC or UBS secrets to Goldman-Sacks. An NSA employee might not even do jail time for this.
You're kidding yourself.
Booz Allen would not lose future contracts for this.
Air Force suspends Booz Allen's San Antonio office
You don't really seem to have gotten anything right in your post. Maybe you could try again?