Catherina
Catherina's JournalEx NSA leaker to Snowden: Watch your back
Judge Napolitano ?@Judgenap 4m
"There's no room in a democracy for this kind of secrecy." Ex NSA leaker to Snowden: Watch your back
Thomas Drake's Advice To Snowden: "Always Check Your Six"
US government invokes special privilege to stop scrutiny of data mining
Source: The Guardian
US government invokes special privilege to stop scrutiny of data mining
Officials use little-known 'military and state secrets privilege' as civil liberties lawyers try to hold administration to account
Ed Pilkington
guardian.co.uk, Friday 7 June 2013 20.57 BST
Jump to comments (214)
The use of the privilege has been personally approved by Eric Holder, the attorney general, and others. Photograph: Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP
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Civil liberties lawyers trying to hold the administration to account through the courts for its surveillance of phone calls and emails of American citizens have been repeatedly stymied by the government's recourse to the "military and state secrets privilege". The precedent, rarely used but devastating in its legal impact, allows the government to claim that it cannot be submitted to judicial oversight because to do so it would have to compromise national security.
The government has cited the privilege in two active lawsuits being heard by a federal court in the northern district of California – Virginia v Barack Obama et al, and Carolyn Jewel v the National Security Agency. In both cases, the Obama administration has called for the cases to be dismissed on the grounds that the government's secret activities must remain secret.
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The director of national intelligence, James Clapper, has written in court filings that "after careful and actual personal consideration of the matter, based upon my own knowledge and information obtained in the course of my official duties, I have determined that the disclosure of certain information would cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security of the United States. Thus, as to this information, I formally assert the state secrets privilege."
The use of the privilege has been personally approved by President Obama and several of the administration's most senior officials: in addition to Clapper, they include the director of the NSA Keith Alexander and Eric Holder, the attorney general. "The attorney general has personally reviewed and approved the government's privilege assertion in these cases," legal documents state.
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Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/07/us-government-special-privilege-scrutiny-data
Related threads in GD:
N.S.A. Scandal: God Save Us From the Lawyers
Breaking - CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell Resigns
N.S.A. Scandal: God Save Us From the Lawyers
June 12, 2013
N.S.A. Scandal: God Save Us From the Lawyers
Posted by John Cassidy
As the repercussions of Edward Snowden’s leaks about domestic surveillance continue to be debated, law professors and lawyers for the Bush and Obama Administrations are out in force, claiming that the spying agencies have done nothing wrong and it’s all much ado about nothing.
Michael Mmukasey
As the repercussions of Edward Snowden’s leaks about domestic surveillance continue to be debated, law professors and lawyers for the Bush and Obama Administrations are out in force, claiming that the spying agencies have done nothing wrong and it’s all much ado about nothing.
In the Financial Times, Philip Bobbitt, a law professor at Columbia who has worked in Democratic and Republican administrations, argued that the National Security Agency, in sweeping up a big part of the nation’s phone records, was upholding the law rather than subverting it. At the influential Lawfare blog, Joel F. Brenner, a legal consultant who between 2006 and 2009 was the head of counterintelligence at the White House, trotted out similar arguments and claimed that the United States “has the most expensive, elaborate, and multi-tiered intelligence oversight apparatus of any nation on Earth.” On the op-ed page of the Wall Street Journal, Michael Mukasey, who served as Attorney General in the Bush Administration, questioned whether there has even been a meaningful infringement of privacy, writing, “The claims of pervasive spying, even if sincere, appear not merely exaggerated, but downright irrational.”
To which, my reply is: Lord save us from lawyers, especially the big shots who graduate from élite law schools and advise administrations. (Brenner is a Harvard man; Bobbitt and Mukasey are Yalies.) With some honorable exceptions, their primary function is protecting the interests of the political and corporate establishments, often by finding some novel and tendentious way to legitimate their self-interested actions. When lesser mortals object, they turn around and accuse them of being ignorant of the law.
The evolution of the legal framework surrounding electronic spying provides a textbook example of this process at work. In the past decade or so, some of the best legal minds in the country, working for the Bush and Obama Administrations, have reshaped a shadow system of court hearings and court orders that was originally created to serve as a check on the executive branch, but which, in practice, serves to justify its ever-expanding reach. Built upon repeated amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, the system is so secretive it is virtually impossible for the American public, journalists included, to know how it operates. About all we can say is that it rubber-stamps a large number of requests from the intelligence agencies, including one, revealed to us by Snowden, that enables them to sweep up the telephone records of anybody who has service provided by a Verizon subsidiary.
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The rest here: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2013/06/nsa-scandal-god-save-us-from-the-lawyers.html
No kidding. This is why they're sputtering mad. Snowden exposed their hypocrisy
Wednesday, 12 June, 2013, 4:19pm
Mathew M. Aid
Last weekend, US President Barack Obama sat down for a series of meetings with China’s newly appointed leader, Xi Jinping. We know that the two leaders spoke at length about the topic du jour – cyber-espionage – a subject that has long frustrated officials in Washington and is now front and centre with the revelations of sweeping US data mining. The media has focused at length on China’s aggressive attempts to electronically steal US military and commercial secrets, but Xi pushed back at the "shirt-sleeves" summit, noting that China, too, was the recipient of cyber-espionage. But what Obama probably neglected to mention is that he has his own hacker army, and it has burrowed its way deep, deep into China’s networks.
When the agenda for the meeting at the Sunnylands estate outside Palm Springs, California, was agreed to several months ago, both parties agreed that it would be a nice opportunity for President Xi, who assumed his post in March, to discuss a wide range of security and economic issues of concern to both countries. According to diplomatic sources, the issue of cyber-security was not one of the key topics to be discussed at the summit. Sino-American economic relations, climate change, and the growing threat posed by North Korea were supposed to dominate the discussions.
Then, two weeks ago, White House officials leaked to the press that Obama intended to raise privately with Xi the highly contentious issue of China’s widespread use of computer hacking to steal US government, military, and commercial secrets. According to a Chinese diplomat in Washington who spoke in confidence, Beijing was furious about the sudden elevation of cyber-security and Chinese espionage on the meeting’s agenda. According to a diplomatic source in Washington, the Chinese government was even angrier that the White House leaked the new agenda item to the press before Washington bothered to tell Beijing about it.
So the Chinese began to hit back. Senior Chinese officials have publicly accused the US government of hypocrisy and have alleged that Washington is also actively engaged in cyber-espionage. When the latest allegation of Chinese cyber-espionage was levelled in late May in a front-page Washington Post article, which alleged that hackers employed by the Chinese military had stolen the blueprints of over three dozen American weapons systems, the Chinese government’s top internet official, Huang Chengqing, shot back that Beijing possessed "mountains of data" showing that the United States has engaged in widespread hacking designed to steal Chinese government secrets. Last week’s revelations about the National Security Agency’s Prism and Verizon metadata collection from a 29-year-old former CIA undercover operative named Edward J. Snowden, who is now living in Hong Kong, only add fuel to Beijing’s position.
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More here: http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1259175/inside-nsas-ultra-secret-china-hacking-group
Former CIA operative makes more explosive claims and says Washington is ‘bullying’ Hong Kong to extradite him
Thursday, 13 June, 2013
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One of the targets in the SAR, according to Snowden, was Chinese University and public officials, businesses and students in the city. The documents also point to hacking activity by the NSA against mainland targets.
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“We hack network backbones – like huge internet routers, basically – that give us access to the communications of hundreds of thousands of computers without having to hack every single one,” he said.
“Last week the American government happily operated in the shadows with no respect for the consent of the governed, but no longer. Every level of society is demanding accountability and oversight.”
Snowden said he was releasing the information to demonstrate “the hypocrisy of the US government when it claims that it does not target civilian infrastructure, unlike its adversaries”.
“Not only does it do so, but it is so afraid of this being known that it is willing to use any means, such as diplomatic intimidation, to prevent this information from becoming public.”
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http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1259508/edward-snowden-us-government-has-been-hacking-hong-kong-and-china
ChunkyMark "Wow!!!!! Edward Snowden...just stunning"
"Wow!!!!! Edward Snowden...just stunning"
Hong Kong activists now have a website to support Snowden
Hong Kong activists now have a website to support Snowden: http://www.supportsnowden.org/ 
3-5:30pm, Saturday June 15, 2013 - March to the US consulate, then HK SAR HQ in Tamar.
Albert Ho, Chairman of HK Alliance & ex-Democratic Party leader: "Why this case is important for HK's future"
Law Yuk Kai, Director, HK Human Rights Monitor: “Hong Kong’s legal system & international legal system"
Leung Kwok-hung (Long Hair) - LegCo member, activist:
Ip lam Chong, In-Media HK: “The implications of Edward Snowden coming to Hong Kong”
Claudia Mo, LegCo member, founding member of Civic Party: “Whistleblowers and free speech in HK”
Charles Mok, LegCo: “The right to communicate safely online and freedom of expression”
-- We call on Hong Kong to respect international legal standards and procedures relating to the protection of Snowden; we condemn the U.S. government for violating our rights and privacy; and we call on the U.S. not to prosecute Snowden.”
-- Do you want to stand for freedom and the rule of law? Or should we totally disregard Hong Kong's legal system? This episode marks a crossroads in Hong Kong's future. Stand up for the future of Hong Kong.
-- Time: 3-5:30pm, Saturday June 15, 2013.
-- Rally route: Starting 3pm at Chater Garden, Central MTR exit J2. Rally to the U.S Consulate and then Tamar SAR government building.
-- Rally preparation: Please bring your friends, prepare for rain and try to bring water resistant posters. Slogan suggestions: "Defend Free Speech, Protect Snowden", "No Extradition", "Respect Hong Kong Law", "Shame on NSA", "Stop Internet Surveillance", "Betray Snowden = Betray Freedom".
What do Edward Snowden, Bradley Manning and the Steubenville hacker have in common?
Expose injustice and pay the price.
By Laurie Penny Published 10 June 2013 12:50
Edward Snowden, the NSA whistleblower. Photograph: Getty Images
Bad things happen to whistleblowers right now. Last year, two high-school football players in Steubenville, Ohio, raped an unconscious sixteen-year-old girl over several hours. They took photo footage of themselves doing it, and shared it among their friends. When the pair were finally convicted and sentenced to between one and two years in jail earlier this year, mainstream news outlets wailed that two promising athletes had had their futures ruined, the implication being that the victim really should have shut up and kept quiet and understood that her future and her trauma are far less important than the ambitions of young men.
What was truly shocking, however, was that the case was only prosecuted after a sustained campaign by internet activists, including the protest group Anonymous, which released video and photographic evidence of the crime and drew the world's attention to how little local law enforcement cares about rape victims. Now one of the hackers who helped bring the Steubenville rapists to justice, 26-year-old Deric Lostutter — otherwise known as “KYAnonymous” - is being prosecuted by the FBI.
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This is how the surveillance state works, and it's also how patriarchy works. The message is: don't tell. Don't ever tell. The people who have power, whether that's the state or the boys on the football team, are allowed to know what you're up to, constantly, intimately, and they can and will punish you for it, but if you turn the tables and show the world how power is abused, you can expect to be fucked with, and fast.
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It takes us right back to that kitchen in Steubenville, Ohio, and those pictures of that half-naked teenager slung like a dead deer between her rapists. It’s about who, in the future, will be allowed to hurt and abuse other people and expect complicity. It’s about who will be allowed to speak up and call out, and who will be made to pay the price.
http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/06/what-do-edward-snowden-bradley-manning-and-steubenville-hacker-have-common
AT&T Leaker: Give Snowden Retroactive Immunity
AT&T Leaker: Give Snowden Retroactive Immunity
Published on Jun 11, 2013
Before there was Edward Snowden, there was Mark Klein _ a telecommunications technician who alleged that AT&T was allowing U.S. spies to siphon vast amounts of customer data without warrants. (June 11)
NSA and GCHQ: mass surveillance is about power as much as privacy
NSA and GCHQ: mass surveillance is about power as much as privacy
Western spying agencies are instruments of control, and their record is disastrous. They have to be held to account
Seumas Milne
The Guardian, Tuesday 11 June 2013 22.15 BST
Democratic institutions have spectacularly failed to hold US and other western states' intelligence and military operations to account. So it's been left to a string of whistleblowers to fill the gap. Link to video: NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden: 'I don't want to live in a society that does these sort of things'
Nothing to worry the "law-abiding", American and British politicians have assured us, in the wake of the revelations of mushrooming mass US surveillance of phone, email and internet traffic. The electronic harvesting is in fact "very narrowly circumscribed", Barack Obama insisted. The behaviour of Britain's intelligence services was, David Cameron declared, entirely "proper and fitting".
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The NSA and GCHQ, whose collaboration is at the heart of the US and British "special relationship", have been central to that for decades. Their global eavesdropping role is the cornerstone of the "five eyes" alliance of anglophone states (including Australia, Canada and New Zealand) which underpins US-dominated western global power. Both agencies were founded to spy on the rest of the world, but ended up also targeting their own people.
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In reality, both the NSA and GCHQ, along with their sister spying outfits, are fuelling as much as fighting terrorism. It is they who provide the intelligence for drone attacks that have killed thousands of civilians in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen and Somalia. And it's the same US and British intelligence services that have been involved in widespread torture, kidnapping and other crimes in the past decade – as well as scandalous intelligence manipulation over Iraqi weapons of mass destruction – who now claim to be protecting us from some of the consequences.
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The US and allied intelligence services are instruments of both domestic and global power and dominance, far beyond issues of terrorism. Revealingly, the state shown by the leaks to be the NSA's biggest intelligence target in Europe is the economic powerhouse of Germany – to a flurry of cautious protests from German politicians.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/11/surveilllance-about-power-as-much-as-privacy
So it's been left to a string of whistleblowers – from Cathy Massiter and Katharine Gun to Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden – to fill the gap. It's now up to the rest of us to make sure their courage isn't wasted.
Here's the complaint filed by the ACLU challenging the legality of the NSA bulk records program
Glenn Greenwald ?@ggreenwald 3h
Here's the complaint filed by the ACLU challenging the legality of the NSA bulk records program - decide for yourself http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/712395-aclu-call-log-program-complaint.html
In PDF and text format.
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Name: CatherinaGender: Female
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