706 More Federal Agencies using Undercover Operations; NSA Bullrun program breaks encryption

More Federal Agencies using Undercover Operations; NSA Bullrun program
breaks encryption

Newsletter published on 15 November 2014

(1) More Federal Agencies Are Using Undercover Operations
(2) NSA Bullrun program breaks encryption, despite false perception of
security
(3) Bullrun gives NSA access to email, telephone calls, commerce and
banking
(4) NSA works covertly with IT companies to insert weaknesses into products
(5) U.S. spy agencies decry latest Snowden revelations
(6) A House Divided over NSA Spying on Americans
(7) FISA Court consistently agrees to federal Surveillance requests
(8) Will Snowden Come Between the U.S. and Latin America? - CFR
(9) Edward Snowden's fear of flying is justified - Geoffrey Robertson
(10) Paul Craig Roberts: Role Reversal - How the US Became the USSR
(11) Phone Hacking Scandal: big London companies implicated - Eamonn
Fingleton
(12) The 102 top firms who hired hackers... but the police won't name them

(1) More Federal Agencies Are Using Undercover Operations

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/16/us/more-federal-agencies-are-using-undercover-operations.html

By ERIC LICHTBLAU and WILLIAM M. ARKINNOV. 15, 2014 Inside

Photo Protests at the Supreme Court over issues such as abortion, like
this one in January, often draw undercover officers. Credit Gabriella
Demczuk/The New York Times Continue reading the main story Continue
reading the main story Continue reading the main story Share This Page
Continue reading the main story Continue reading the main story

WASHINGTON -- The federal government has significantly expanded
undercover operations in recent years, with officers from at least 40
agencies posing as business people, welfare recipients, political
protesters and even doctors or ministers to ferret out wrongdoing,
records and interviews show.

At the Supreme Court, small teams of undercover officers dress as
students at large demonstrations outside the courthouse and join the
protests to look for suspicious activity, according to officials
familiar with the practice.

At the Internal Revenue Service, dozens of undercover agents chase
suspected tax evaders worldwide, by posing as tax preparers or
accountants or drug dealers or yacht buyers, court records show.

At the Agriculture Department, more than 100 undercover agents pose as
food stamp recipients at thousands of neighborhood stores to spot
suspicious vendors and fraud, officials said.

Undercover work, inherently invasive and sometimes dangerous, was once
largely the domain of the F.B.I. and a few other law enforcement
agencies at the federal level. But outside public view, changes in
policies and tactics over the last decade have resulted in undercover
teams run by agencies in virtually every corner of the federal
government, according to officials, former agents and documents.
Continue reading the main story Plainclothes Forces in the United&nbspStates

Agencies across the federal government have undercover teams to monitor
threats, fraud, theft and other illegal activity.

Supreme Court Police

Monitor activists and detect possible terrorist attacks or criminal
activity during protests near the Supreme Court building.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Focus on counterintelligence of NASA employees and contractors, as well
as theft or illicit trafficking of technology.

Small Business Administration

Identify organizations involved in committing fraud and abuse of federal
lending and contracting programs.

Department of Energy

Protect the movement of nuclear materials within the United States.

Government Accountability Office

Verify vulnerability assessments of government agencies, airports,
borders, railroads and other related sectors.

Internal Revenue Service

Investigate money laundering, identity theft and also bank, mail and tax
fraud.

Department of Agriculture

Root out illegal food stamp transactions by individuals and businesses
or any financial fraud involving U.S.D.A. programs. Source: New York
Times analysis

Some agency officials say such operations give them a powerful new tool
to gather evidence in ways that standard law enforcement methods do not
offer, leading to more prosecutions. But the broadened scope of
undercover work, which can target specific individuals or categories of
possible suspects, also raises concerns about civil liberties abuses and
entrapment of unwitting targets. It has also resulted in hidden
problems, with money gone missing, investigations compromised and agents
sometimes left largely on their own for months or even years.

"Done right, undercover work can be a very effective law enforcement
method, but it carries serious risks and should only be undertaken with
proper training, supervision and oversight," said Michael German, a
former F.B.I. undercover agent who is a fellow at New York University's
law school. "Ultimately it is government deceitfulness and participation
in criminal activity, which is only justifiable when it is used to
resolve the most serious crimes."

Some of the expanded undercover operations have resulted from heightened
concern about domestic terrorism since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

But many operations are not linked to terrorism. Instead, they reflect a
more aggressive approach to growing criminal activities like identity
theft, online solicitation and human trafficking, or a push from
Congress to crack down on more traditional crimes.

At convenience stores, for example, undercover agents, sometimes using
actual minors as decoys, look for illegal alcohol and cigarette sales,
records show. At the Education Department, undercover agents of the
Office of Inspector General infiltrate federally funded education
programs looking for financial fraud. Medicare investigators sometimes
pose as patients to gather evidence against health care providers.
Officers at the Small Business Administration, NASA and the Smithsonian
do undercover work as well, records show. Continue reading the main story

Part of the appeal of undercover operations, some officials say, is that
they can be an efficient way to make a case.

"We're getting the information directly from the bad guys -- what more
could you want?" said Thomas Hunker, a former police chief in Bal
Harbour, Fla., whose department worked with federal customs and drug
agents on hundreds of undercover money-laundering investigations in
recent years.

Mr. Hunker said sending federal and local agents undercover to meet with
suspected money launderers "is a more direct approach than getting a tip
and going out and doing all the legwork and going into a court mode."

"We don't have to go back and interview witnesses and do search warrants
and surveillance and all that," he added.

But the undercover work also led federal auditors to criticize his
department for loose record-keeping and financial lapses, and Mr. Hunker
was fired last year amid concerns about the operations.

'A Critical Tool'

Most undercover investigations never become public, but when they do,
they can prove controversial. This month, James B. Comey, the director
of the F.B.I., was forced to defend the bureau's tactics after it was
disclosed that an agent had posed as an Associated Press reporter in
2007 in trying to identify the source of bomb threats at a Lacey, Wash.,
high school. Responding to criticism from news media advocates, Mr.
Comey wrote in a letter to The New York Times that "every undercover
operation involves 'deception,' which has long been a critical tool in
fighting crime."

Just weeks before, the Drug Enforcement Administration stoked
controversy after disclosures that an undercover agent had created a
fake Facebook page from the photos of a young woman in Watertown, N.Y.
-- without her knowledge -- to lure drug suspects.

And in what became a major political scandal for the Obama
administration, agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and
Explosives allowed guns to slip into Mexico in 2011 in an undercover
operation known as Fast and Furious.

In response to that episode, the Justice Department issued new
guidelines to prosecutors last year designed to tighten oversight of
undercover operations and other "sensitive" investigative techniques,
officials said. Before prosecutors approve such tactics, the previously
undisclosed guidelines require that they consider whether an operation
identifies a "clearly defined" objective, whether it is truly necessary,
whether it targets "significant criminal actors or entities," and other
factors, the officials said.

Peter Carr, a department spokesman, said that undercover operations are
necessary in investigating crime but that agents and prosecutors must
follow safeguards. "We encourage these operations even though they may
involve some degree of risk," he said.

Those guidelines apply only to the law enforcement agencies overseen by
the Justice Department. Within the Treasury Department, undercover
agents at the I.R.S., for example, appear to have far more latitude than
do those at many other agencies. I.R.S. rules say that, with prior
approval, "an undercover employee or cooperating private individual may
pose as an attorney, physician, clergyman or member of the news media."
Continue reading the main story Continue reading the main story

An I.R.S. spokesman acknowledged that undercover investigators are
allowed to pose in such roles with approval from senior officials. But
the agency said in a statement that senior officials "are not aware of
any investigations where special agents have ever posed as attorneys,
physicians, members of the clergy or members of the press specifically
to gain information from a privileged relationship."

The agency declined to say whether I.R.S. undercover agents have posed
in these roles in an effort to get information that was not considered
"privileged," meaning the type of confidential information someone
shares with a lawyer or doctor.

José Marrero, a former I.R.S. supervisor in Miami, said he knew of
situations in which tax investigators needed to assume the identity of
doctors to gain the trust of a medical professional and develop evidence
that is tightly held.

"It's very rare that you do that, but it does happen," Mr. Marrero, who
has a consulting firm in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and continues to work
with federal agents on undercover investigations, said in an interview.
"These are very sensitive jobs, and they're scrutinized more closely
than others."

Oversight, though, can be minimal. A special committee meant to oversee
undercover investigations at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms
and Explosives, for instance, did not meet in nearly seven years,
according to the Justice Department's inspector general. That inquiry
found that more than $127 million worth of cigarettes purchased by the
bureau disappeared in a series of undercover investigations that were
aimed at tracing the black-market smuggling of cigarettes.

In one investigation, the bureau paid an undercover informant from the
tobacco industry nearly $5 million in "business expenses" for his help
in the case. (The agency gained new authority in 2004 allowing it to
take money seized in undercover investigations and "churn" it back into
future operations, a source of millions in revenue.)

Financial oversight was found lacking in the I.R.S.'s undercover
operations as well. Detailed reviews of the money spent in some of its
undercover operations took as long as four and a half years to complete,
according to a 2012 review by the Treasury Department's inspector general.

Wires Crossed

Across the federal government, undercover work has become common enough
that undercover agents sometimes find themselves investigating a
supposed criminal who turns out to be someone from a different agency,
law enforcement officials said. In a few situations, agents have even
drawn their weapons on each other before realizing that both worked for
the federal government.

"There are all sorts of stories about undercover operations gone bad,"
Jeff Silk, a longtime undercover agent and supervisor at the Drug
Enforcement Administration, said in an interview. "People are always
tripping and falling over each other's cases."

Mr. Silk, who retired this year, cited a case that he supervised in
which the D.E.A. was wiretapping suspects in a drug ring in Atlanta,
only to discover that undercover agents from Immigration and Customs
Enforcement were trying to infiltrate the same ring. The F.B.I. and the
New York Police Department were involved in the case as well. Continue
reading the main story

To avoid such problems, officials said, they have tightened
"deconfliction" policies, which are designed to alert agencies about one
another's undercover operations. But problems have persisted, the
officials said.

It is impossible to tell how effective the government's operations are
or evaluate whether the benefits outweigh the costs, since little
information about them is publicly disclosed. Most federal agencies
declined to discuss the number of undercover agents they employed or the
types of investigations they handled. The numbers are considered
confidential and are not listed in public budget documents, and even
Justice Department officials say they are uncertain how many agents work
undercover.

But current and former law enforcement officials said the number of
federal agents doing such work appeared to total well into the
thousands, with many agencies beefing up their ranks in recent years, or
starting new undercover units. An intelligence official at the
Department of Homeland Security, who spoke on condition of anonymity to
discuss classified matters, said the agency alone spent $100 million
annually on its undercover operations. With large numbers of undercover
agents at the F.B.I. and elsewhere, the costs could reach hundreds of
millions of dollars a year.

In a sampling of such workers, an analysis of publicly available résumés
showed that since 2001 more than 1,100 current or former federal
employees across 40 agencies listed undercover work inside the United
States as part of their duties. More than half of all the work they
described is in pursuit of the illicit drug trade. Money laundering,
gangs and organized crime investigations make up the second-largest
group of operations.

Significant growth in undercover work involves online activity, with
agents taking to the Internet, posing as teenage girls to catch
predators or intercepting emails and other messages, the documents
noted. The F.B.I., Department of Homeland Security and Pentagon all have
training programs for online undercover operations.

Defendants who are prosecuted in undercover investigations often raise a
defense of "entrapment," asserting that agents essentially lured them
into a criminal act, whether it is buying drugs from an undercover agent
or providing fraudulent government services.

But the entrapment defense rarely succeeds in court.

In terrorism cases -- the area in which the F.B.I. has used undercover
stings most aggressively -- prosecutors have a perfect record in
defeating claims of entrapment. "I challenge you to find one of those
cases in which the defendant has been acquitted asserting that defense,"
Robert S. Mueller III, a former F.B.I. director, said at an appearance
this year.

The Times analysis showed that the military and its investigative
agencies have almost as many undercover agents working inside the United
States as does the F.B.I. While most of them are involved in internal
policing of service members and defense contractors, a growing number
are focused, in part, on the general public as part of joint federal
task forces that combine military, intelligence and law enforcement
specialists. Continue reading the main story Continue reading the main story

At the Supreme Court, all of the court's more than 150 police officers
are trained in undercover tactics, according to a federal law
enforcement official speaking on condition of anonymity because it
involved internal security measures. At large protests over issues like
abortion, small teams of undercover officers mill about -- usually
behind the crowd -- to look for potential disturbances.

The agents, often youthful looking, will typically "dress down" and wear
backpacks to blend inconspicuously into the crowd, the official said.

At one recent protest, an undercover agent -- rather than a uniformed
officer -- went into the center of a crowd of protesters to check out a
report of a suspicious bag before determining there was no threat, the
official said. The use of undercover officers is seen as a more
effective way of monitoring large crowds.

A Supreme Court spokesman, citing a policy of not discussing security
practices, declined to talk about the use of undercover officers. Mr.
German, the former F.B.I. undercover agent, said he was troubled to
learn that the Supreme Court routinely used undercover officers to pose
as demonstrators and monitor large protests.

"There is a danger to democracy," he said, "in having police infiltrate
protests when there isn't a reasonable basis to suspect criminality."

Michael S. Schmidt contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on November 16, 2014, on page
A1 of the New York edition with the headline: More Agencies Are Using
Undercover Operations .

(2) NSA Bullrun program breaks encryption, despite false perception of
security

http://securityaffairs.co/wordpress/17577/intelligence/nsa-Bullrun-program-false-perception-security.html

NSA Bullrun program, encryption and false perception of security

by Pierluigi Paganini on September 7th, 2013

Revelations on Bullrun program demonstrated that NSA has capabilities
against widely-used online protocols such as HTTPS and encryption standards.

The latest nightmare for US Administration is named Bullrun, another US
program for massive surveillance. Snowden‘s revelations represented a
heartquake for IT security, the image of NSA and US IT companies are
seriously compromised such the trust of worldwide consumers.

The extension of US surveillance activities seems to have no limits
neither borderlines, every communication and data despite protected with
sophisticated encryption mechanisms were accessible by US Intelligence
and its partners like Britain’s GCHQ.

The New York Times and The Guardian newspapers and the journalism
non-profit ProPublica  revealed details of the new super secret program,
codenamed Bullrun, sustained by the NSA to have the possibility to
bypass encryption adopted worldwide by corporates, governments and
institutions. The Bullrun program is considered the second choice of
U.S. Government to the failure in place a backdoor, the so-called
Clipper chip, into encryption that would have allowed it to eavesdrop on
communications.

Be aware we are not speaking of cracking algorithms, Snowden warned that
NSA bypass encryption targeting end point of communications:

“Properly implemented strong crypto systems are one of the few things
that you can rely on,” Snowden said to the Guardian.

The Intelligence Agency has inducted vendors and manufactures to include
backdoors in their products or to disclose related encryption keys  to
allow the access data, this is the core of the Bullrun program. Snowden
revelations are causing the collapse of many certainties, last in order
of time is the integrity of encryption standards, according the popular
newspapers NSA has worked to undermine the security of those standards.

Following an image of classification guide to the NSA’s Bullrun
decryption program

The repercussions are critical, the diffusion of the defective
encryption standard has exposed the same data accessed by NSA to the
concrete risk of stealing operated by third party actors such as foreign
state-sponsored hackers and cybercriminals.

“The encryption technologies that the NSA has exploited to enable its
secret dragnet surveillance are the same technologies that protect our
most sensitive information, including medical records, financial
transactions, and commercial secrets,” “Even as the NSA demands more
powers to invade our privacy in the name of cybersecurity, it is making
the internet less secure and exposing us to criminal hacking, foreign
espionage, and unlawful surveillance. The NSA’s efforts to secretly
defeat encryption are recklessly shortsighted and will further erode not
only the United States’ reputation as a global champion of civil
liberties and privacy but the economic competitiveness of its largest
companies.”commented Christopher Soghoian, principal technologist of the
ACLU’s Speech, Privacy and Technology Project.”

Suddenly the IT world discovered that has perceived a false sense of
security, the repercussion on the global security market are enormous,
customers have put their trust in the wrong companies, too often they
have been deceived by false myths and new paradigms (e.g. Cloud
computing) designed to facilitate the surveillance operated by
intelligence agencies.

Bullrun program is the last revelation on a nefarious policy conducted
by one of the major security agencies, ironically because of its
willingness to supervise each and every date of the largest Internet has
made it unsafe. Chasing the concept of security NSA has actually opened
loopholes in the global information systems that could have benefited
powers such as China or terrorist groups.

The surveillance programs such as Prism and Bullrun are certainly
questionable, as well as the conduct of major American companies that
have gone along with his demands.

NSA and other agencies siphoned data from land and undersea cables, just
after the revelations on PRISM program intelligence has started a
misinformation campaign sustaining that US authorities was working to
find the way to crack encrypted traffic, in reality the agency has no
reason to do it and the Bullrun program is the proof. Misinformation as
a pure diversion to influence the global sentiment and keep the lights
of the media far from the dirty collusions of governments and private
companies.

“None of methods used to access to encryption keys involve in cracking
the algorithms and the math underlying the encryption, but rely upon
circumventing and otherwise undermining encryption.”

The newspapers sustains that NSA maintains an internal database, dubbed
“Key Provisioning Service”, of encryption keys for each commercial
product. Using the Key Provisioning Service the NSA is able to
automatically decode communications and access to encrypted data. Every
time the agency needs a key for a new product it formalizes a request to
obtain it, the request is so-called Key Recovery Service.

Other news reported that in one circumstance the US government learned
that a foreign intelligence had ordered new computer hardware and after
pressure of NS A the US vendor agreed to insert a backdoor into the
product before it was deployed.

Keys are provided by vendors or obtained by the intelligence with
hacking campaign against infrastructures of product providers.

“How keys are acquired is shrouded in secrecy, but independent
cryptographers say many are probably collected by hacking into
companies’ computer servers, where they are stored,” “To keep such
methods secret, the N.S.A. shares decrypted messages with other agencies
only if the keys could have been acquired through legal means.” states NYT.

The most disturbing revelation involves the NSA’s efforts to
deliberately weaken international encryption standards developers use to
make their encryption secure, according to a classified NSA memo
obtained by NYT the fatal weakness discovered by two Microsoft
cryptographers in 2007 in a 2006 standard was intentionally engineered
by the NSA.

“Basically, the NSA asks companies to subtly change their products in
undetectable ways: making the random number generator less random,
leaking the key somehow, adding a common exponent to a public-key
exchange protocol, and so on,”“If the backdoor is discovered, it’s
explained away as a mistake. And as we now know, the NSA has enjoyed
enormous success from this program.” said cryptographer Bruce Schneier.

“Some of the methods involved the deployment of custom-built,
supercomputers to break codes in addition to collaborating with
technology companies at home and abroad to include backdoors in their
products. The Snowden documents don’t identify the companies that
participated.”

The Bullrun program, according to the documents, “actively engages the
U.S. and foreign IT industries to covertly influence and/or overtly
leverage their commercial products’ designs” to make them “exploitable.”
By this year, the Times reports, the program had found ways “inside some
of the encryption chips that scramble information for businesses and
governments, either by working with chipmakers to insert back doors or
by surreptitiously exploiting existing security flaws.”

We are therefore assuming that the U.S. Government has deliberately
prompted to enter bugs in software solutions sold worldwide, the
knowledge of those flaws could then have been sold in the black market
of zero-day vulnerabilities  about which so much has been discussed. At
that point, probably the same U.S. Intelligence would offer big bucks to
buy back the zero-day to cover traces of the shocking activities.

Which are the targets of the NSA?

Everyone! The imperative is global monitoring, ISP, Internet phone call
and text services and mobile operators are privileged targets according
the paper, and I add social media platforms.  Of course now every
internet users desire to stay far from prying eyes, the use of
anonymizing network and secure messaging system is exploding, Tor
metrics data revealed an incredible increase of total number of Tor users.

The unique certainties are that the surveillance program will continue
and the expense of monitoring activities will increase exponentially,
there is another consideration to do related to the global commerce for
security solutions. The global market will be seriously impacted, fall
of trust in US security vendors could advantage other players, the
equilibrium is jeopardized when trust is broken and open source software
will live a new peak of popularity waiting for the next incident.

Pierluigi Paganini

(3) Bullrun gives NSA access to email, telephone calls, commerce and
banking
http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/whistleblower-reveals-australias-spy-agency-has-access-to-internet-codes-20130906-2tand.html

Whistleblower reveals Australia's spy agency has access to internet codes

Date: September 07 2013

Sean Nicholls

Australia's electronic spy agency reportedly has access to a top secret
program that has successfully cracked the encryption used by hundreds of
millions of people to protect the privacy of their emails, phone calls
and online business transactions.

Documents disclosed by US intelligence whistleblower Edward Snowden
reveal the program run by the US National Security Agency, codenamed
Bullrun, has been used to secretly descramble high-level internet
security systems globally.

They show the NSA and British Government Communications Headquarters
(GCHQ) have successfully cracked the encryption used in personal
communications such as email and telephone calls as well as global
commerce and banking systems. [...]

In May, Mr Snowden, a former contractor for the NSA, disclosed documents
revealing efforts by the US agency to track telephone conversations and
internet traffic globally.

(4) NSA works covertly with IT companies to insert weaknesses into products

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/05/nsa-gchq-encryption-codes-security

Revealed: how US and UK spy agencies defeat internet privacy and security

• NSA and GCHQ unlock encryption used to protect emails, banking and
medical records
• $250m-a-year US program works covertly with tech companies to insert
weaknesses into products
• Security experts say programs 'undermine the fabric of the internet'

       James Ball, Julian Borger and Glenn Greenwald
     * Guardian Weekly, Friday 6 September 2013

US and British intelligence agencies have successfully cracked much of
the online encryption relied upon by hundreds of millions of people to
protect the privacy of their personal data, online transactions and
emails, according to top-secret documents revealed by former contractor
Edward Snowden.

This story has been reported in partnership between the New York Times,
the Guardian and ProPublica based on documents obtained by the Guardian.

The files show that the National Security Agency and its UK counterpart
GCHQ have broadly compromised the guarantees that internet companies
have given consumers to reassure them that their communications, online
banking and medical records would be indecipherable to criminals or
governments.

The agencies, the documents reveal, have adopted a battery of methods in
their systematic and ongoing assault on what they see as one of the
biggest threats to their ability to access huge swathes of internet
traffic – "the use of ubiquitous encryption across the internet".

Those methods include covert measures to ensure NSA control over setting
of international encryption standards, the use of supercomputers to
break encryption with "brute force", and – the most closely guarded
secret of all – collaboration with technology companies and internet
service providers themselves.

Through these covert partnerships, the agencies have inserted secret
vulnerabilities – known as backdoors or trapdoors – into commercial
encryption software.

The files, from both the NSA and GCHQ, were obtained by the Guardian,
and the details are being published today in partnership with the New
York Times and ProPublica. They reveal:

• A 10-year NSA program against encryption technologies made a
breakthrough in 2010 which made "vast amounts" of data collected through
internet cable taps newly "exploitable".

• The NSA spends $250m a year on a program which, among other goals,
works with technology companies to "covertly influence" their product
designs.

• The secrecy of their capabilities against encryption is closely
guarded, with analysts warned: "Do not ask about or speculate on sources
or methods."

• The NSA describes strong decryption programs as the "price of
admission for the US to maintain unrestricted access to and use of
cyberspace".

• A GCHQ team has been working to develop ways into encrypted traffic on
the "big four" service providers, named as Hotmail, Google, Yahoo and
Facebook.

(5) U.S. spy agencies decry latest Snowden revelations
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/06/net-us-usa-security-snowden-intelligence-idUSBRE9850RU20130906

WASHINGTON | Fri Sep 6, 2013 6:00pm EDT

(Reuters) - U.S. spy agencies said on Friday that the latest media
revelations based on leaks from former National Security Agency
contractor Edward Snowden will likely damage U.S. and allied
intelligence efforts.

On Thursday, the Guardian, the New York Times and journalistic nonprofit
ProPublica published stories saying the security agency has secretly
developed the ability to crack or circumvent commonplace Internet
encryption used to protect everything from email to financial
transactions. The stories were based on documents made public by
Snowden, now a fugitive living under asylum in Russia.

The reports also said the NSA had worked with Government Communications
Headquarters, its British partner, and had used a variety of means,
ranging from the insertion of "back doors" in popular tech products and
services, to supercomputers, secret court orders and the manipulation of
international processes for setting encryption standards.

In a statement on Friday, the Office of the U.S. Director of National
Intelligence, which said it was speaking on behalf of all U.S. spy
agencies, did not confirm details of the media reports.

The statement did acknowledge that the U.S. intelligence community
"would not be doing its job" if it did not try to counter the use of
encryption by such adversaries as "terrorists, cybercriminals, human
traffickers and others."

The statement said, however, that the stories published on Thursday
revealed "specific and classified details about how we conduct this
critical activity." It claimed that anything that the news stories added
to public debate about government surveillance was "outweighed by the
road map they gave to our adversaries" about specific eavesdropping methods.

(Reporting by Mark Hosenball; Editing by Karey Van Hall and Jackie Frank)

From: "FJA" <fja0527@bellsouth.net> Date: Sun, 28 Jul 2013 19:46:59 -0400

(6) A House Divided over NSA Spying on Americans

http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2013/july/28/a-house-divided-over-nsa-spying-on-americans.aspx

Congressman Ron Paul's Weekly Column for July 29, 2013

Sunday July 28, 2013

Last week’s House debate on the Defense Appropriations bill for 2014
produced a bit more drama than usual. After hearing that House
leadership would do away with the traditional “open rule” allowing for
debate on any funding limitation amendment, it was surprising to see
that Rep. Justin Amash’s (R-MI) amendment was allowed on the Floor. In
the wake of National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Edward
Snowden’s revelations about the extent of US government spying on
American citizens, Amash’s amendment sought to remove funding in the
bill for some of the NSA programs.

Had Amash’s amendment passed, it would have been a significant symbolic
victory over the administration’s massive violations of our Fourth
Amendment protections. But we should be careful about believing that
even if it had somehow miraculously survived the Senate vote and the
President’s veto, it would have resulted in any significant change in
how the Intelligence Community would behave toward Americans. The US
government has built the largest and most sophisticated spying apparatus
in the history of the world.

The NSA has been massively increasing the size its facilities, both at
its Maryland headquarters and in its newly built (and way over-budget)
enormous data center in Utah. Taken together, these two facilities will
be seven times larger than the Pentagon! And we know now that much of
the NSA’s capacity to intercept information has been turned inward, to
spy on us.

As NSA expert James Bamford wrote earlier this year about the new Utah
facility:

     “The heavily fortified $2 billion center should be up and running
in September 2013. Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in
near-bottomless databases will be all forms of communication, including
the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google
searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails—parking receipts,
travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital “pocket
litter.” It is, in some measure, the realization of the “total
information awareness” program created during the first term of the Bush
administration—an effort that was killed by Congress in 2003 after it
caused an outcry over its potential for invading Americans’ privacy.”

But it happened anyway.

Over the last week we have seen two significant prison-breaks, one in
Iraq, where some 500 al-Qaeda members broke out of the infamous Abu
Ghraib prison, which the US built, and another 1,000 escaped in a huge
break in Benghazi, Libya – the city where the US Ambassador was killed
by the rebels that the US government helped put in power. Did the US
intelligence community, focused on listening to our phone calls, not see
this real threat coming?

Rep. Amash’s amendment was an important move to at least bring attention
to what the US intelligence community has become: an incredibly powerful
conglomeration of secret government agencies that seem to view Americans
as the real threat. It is interesting that the votes on Amash’s
amendment divided the House not on party lines. Instead, we saw the
votes divided between those who follow their oath to the Constitution,
versus those who seem to believe that any violation of the Constitution
is justified in the name of the elusive “security” of the police state
at the expense of liberty. The leadership – not to my surprise -- of
both parties in the House voted for the police state.

It is encouraging to see the large number of votes crossing party lines
in favor of the Amash amendment. Let us hope that this will be a growing
trend in the House – perhaps the promise that Congress may once again
begin to take its duties and obligations seriously. We should not
forget, however, that in the meantime another Defense Appropriations
bill passing really means another “military spending” bill. The
Administration is planning for a US invasion of Syria, more military
assistance to the military dictatorship in Egypt, and more drones and
interventionism. We have much work yet to do.

Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided
full credit is given.

(7) FISA Court consistently agrees to federal Surveillance requests

http://www.cfr.org/intelligence/has-fisa-court-gone-too-far/p31095

Interview

Has the FISA Court Gone Too Far?

Interviewee: Matthew C. Waxman, Adjunct Senior Fellow for Law and
Foreign Policy
Interviewer: Jonathan Masters, Deputy Editor
July 12, 2013

In the wake of the Snowden leaks, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Court (FISC) has come under intense public scrutiny for its central, but
often little understood, role in determining how the government collects
and examines information on its citizens. Some legal scholars have
criticized the top secret court for providing intelligence agencies
overly expansive authority to monitor Americans as well as consistently
signing off on federal surveillance requests. CFR's Matt Waxman says
it's difficult to assess the court's interpretations of the law because
its opinions are classified. He says that while he understands the
court's demands for secrecy, he is "very concerned about the idea of
secret law." However, he believes "the characterization of the FISA
process as a 'rubber stamp' is inaccurate," explaining that U.S.
officials rarely go to a FISC judge without a strong case.

  The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court operates out of the E.
Barrett Prettyman U.S. Courthouse near Capitol Hill in Washington, DC.
(Photo: Courtesy Wikimedia)

For starters, how does the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court fit
into the U.S. national security apparatus, and how has it evolved since
September 11?

The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, which prohibits unreasonable
searches and seizures, has been interpreted to generally require a
warrant from a judge--backed up by probable cause--before the government
can listen in on calls in the United States. Until the late 1970s, the
prevailing legal view was that this warrant requirement did not apply to
so-called foreign intelligence collection, meaning things like espionage
or collecting military secrets or many other kinds of national security
information. But after the abuses of domestic spying came to light in
the 1970s, Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act,
which established a special court, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Court (FISC), to regulate many kinds of foreign intelligence
surveillance conducted in the United States.

For example, rather than having to show a regular judge that there was
probable cause to believe that the target of surveillance has committed
a crime, the government would have to show a FISC judge that there was
probable cause to believe that the target was working on behalf of a
foreign power, which includes international terrorist organizations.

However, several reforms to the law occurred after 9/11. The first was
that Congress made it easier in some ways for the government to get FISA
warrants. So we've seen an increase in the workload of the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Court, more requests for FISA warrants, and
more of them being issued. The second major change was that Congress
required FISC to review not just these sorts of individual warrant
applications that are specific to particular people or places, but also
in some cases to review the legality of entire surveillance programs.

Many legal scholars have recently criticized the court for its
interpretations of surveillance law, which underpin some of these
controversial NSA programs leaked by Snowden. What's your sense of this?

It's hard to know for sure because the court's opinions are secret, but
the FISC has probably interpreted some terms of congressional
surveillance authorization very broadly. For example, the authority to
collect certain types of records that are "relevant" to a terrorism
investigation--that has reportedly been interpreted to allow for
collection of vast data sets.

However, there seems to be a split in views. Some members of Congress
are saying that when they passed the statute authorizing these
surveillance powers, they never intended something so broad. On the
other hand, government officials point out that many members of Congress
have known for a long time what's going on and they haven't raised
complaints.

Why are there different legal standards for search and surveillance in
the national security context versus the criminal justice context?

Historically, this started with some distinctions that the executive
branch had been asserting that, outside of the criminal justice context,
the government had a very broad authority to conduct warrantless
surveillance in the name of national security or foreign intelligence. A
number of courts in the United States agreed over the years with the
executive branch that when it comes to foreign intelligence
surveillance, the normal warrant requirements of the Fourth Amendment
don't apply.

But following the Church Committee in the 1970s, Congress tried to fill
that gap, effectively saying that "even if the Constitution doesn't
require a warrant, we Congress are going to establish a special court
and require that the executive branch get a warrant for at least some of
these foreign intelligence surveillance activities." So it is really a
product of [FISA] and successive amendments to that statute that have
created different types of court review and different substantive
standards for different kinds of intelligence and surveillance activities.

Is it fair to say that constitutional protections are weaker in this
national security context?

As in many areas of the law, when it comes to dealing with national
security threats, especially foreign threats, the executive branch is
given more constitutional latitude to take action.

Some critics have characterized FISC as a rubber stamp, citing the fact
that the overwhelming majority of surveillance requests by the Justice
Department have been approved; reportedly all requests were approved
last year. Given that this is a non-adversarial system--no one arguing
the other side--do you think this is balanced, workable?

I don't think the characterization of the FISA process as a "rubber
stamp" is accurate for several reasons. First of all, warrant requests
are always ex parte (i.e., non-adversarial), and most regular warrants
are approved in the criminal justice context as well. The reason being
that government agents don't usually go to a judge at all unless they
are quite confident that they have solid grounds for a warrant.

Second, most of the scrutiny of FISA warrant requests occurs well before
they even go to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, in the form
of intense and high-level vetting within the executive branch and the
Justice Department. And third, the government is able to maintain a high
success rate of approvals in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court
because it protects its credibility with that court by not bringing weak
applications.

Do you think that the court's proceedings, which are classified, should
be opened up to the public so that people like yourself, others in the
legal community, and the general public can debate the merits of the
court's actions?

"I'm very sympathetic to the government's need to protect the secrecy of
intelligence sources, methods, targets, etc., but I'm also very
concerned about the idea of secret law."

This is a tough issue. I'm very sympathetic to the government's need to
protect the secrecy of intelligence sources, methods, targets, etc., but
I'm also very concerned about the idea of secret law. It's not always
possible to pry those things apart--to be transparent about the details
of legal interpretations without also exposing information about
intelligence activities themselves. There is a middle ground here, which
is to ensure that Congress has adequate information to know how its own
laws and statutes are being interpreted so it can make adjustments to
them as necessary or impose new legal protections if desired.


What, if any, reforms would you recommend?

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court is only one of several
checks on government surveillance power. It's better to think of
oversight in this area as layered. In addition to FISC, you have, for
example, internal executive branch legal oversight, you have inspectors
general from the various departments and agencies, and you have
congressional oversight, all operating together.

In terms of reform, we need to focus heavily on some of these other
forms of oversight, especially inspectors general and congressional
oversight, because those mechanisms, those bodies, can take a broader
view of not just the legality but the policy effectiveness of
surveillance programs and because they can audit intelligence programs
to assess how they have been operating and practiced.

Where do you see this debate headed, if you were to prognosticate? Do
you think there will be procedural changes? Statutory changes?

"Over time, I do think we will see some legislative reform in this area,
and we may see courts intervening as well. But it's going to be a while
before law in this area is in any way settled."

This is very hard to predict, and the American public has been somewhat
fickle when it comes to its views of surveillance powers and the
appropriate balance of privacy and security. In some ways, the latest
disclosures of vast surveillance powers are just a slice of a much
broader issue. New communication technologies, information analysis
technologies, etc., provide the government with very powerful
intelligence and surveillance tools, and, not just in the coming months,
but in the coming years and decades, we are going to see efforts to try
to strike new balances between security and privacy in order to adjust
to some of these new technologies. Over time, I do think we will see
some legislative reform in this area, and we may see courts intervening
as well. But it's going to be a while before law in this area is in any
way settled.

Is there a component of this debate that you think deserves more attention?

Assessing the efficacy of these programs is often very difficult because
they rarely operate in isolation. These surveillance programs are one
among a number of different intelligence instruments, counterterrorism
tools, and policies that the government employs. So it is very difficult
to try to assess the effectiveness of any one particular program. That's
often overlooked by people on both sides of this debate. Opponents of
these kinds of programs don't always take adequate account of how
important they may be when used in combination with other
counterterrorism tools. Meanwhile, proponents of these programs
sometimes exaggerate the degree to which any one program can be deemed
responsible or critical to having thwarted a plot.

(8) Will Snowden Come Between the U.S. and Latin America? - CFR

http://www.cfr.org/latin-america-and-the-caribbean/snowden-come-between-us-latin-america/p31109

Will Snowden Come Between the U.S. and Latin America?

Interviewee: Christopher Sabatini, Senior Director of Policy, Americas
Society/Council of the Americas
Interviewer: Brianna Lee, Senior Production Editor

July 16, 2013

U.S.-Latin American relations have hit a bump after leaked National
Security Agency documents revealed that covert U.S. surveillance
operations allegedly extended into Central and South America. The leaks
came shortly after a plane transporting Bolivian president Evo Morales
from Moscow was grounded on suspicions he was transporting NSA leaker
Edward Snowden. The event prompted Bolivia, Venezuela, and Nicaragua to
offer asylum to Snowden, and Latin American leaders have collectively
denounced both the grounding of the plane and the NSA programs.

Christopher Sabatini, senior director of policy at the Americas
Society/Council of the Americas, says that for many of these countries,
the wide scope and nature of the alleged U.S. surveillance activities
have "triggered an understandable reaction"—though he acknowledges that
some responses have been disproportionate. In the end, he says, the
practical implications for U.S. relations in the region "will be
minimal, in part because the United States has such a multifaceted
relationship with these countries."

  Presidents Evo Morales, Cristina Kirchner, Jose Mujica, Dilma
Rousseff, and Nicolas Maduro attend the Mercosur summit in July 2013.
(Photo: Courtesy Reuters)

Recent leaks reveal that U.S. surveillance programs extended into Latin
America, going beyond security and military affairs into commercial
enterprises as well. How surprising is this?

It's surprising that in most of the cases, the United States was spying
on some of its closest allies in the region. Mexico, Colombia,
Brazil—these weren't places that were hotbeds of terrorism or where we
were even spying or gathering information on matters of terrorism. If
proven true, [the allegations] reveal that we were gathering information
that extended beyond the supposed justification for the NSA program.

Second, while all countries spy on each other, what's different is the
type of spying. We were massively collecting information, potentially
even on their citizens communicating with each other. That has triggered
an understandable reaction from these governments for the United States
to explain what it was doing. This isn't government-to-government
spying, or even government spying on people they suspect could place our
national interests at risk. This is casting a very wide net both in
terms of the people whose information is being collected and also the
topics around which it's being collected. If proven to be true, this
surveillance may very much violate the U.S. congressional justification
under which a lot of this had occurred. A third surprising element, if
proven true, is that the United States was doing this with the
complicity of telecom companies in Brazil—though the U.S. ambassador to
Brazil denies these reports.

Some critics have accused some of these countries of hypocrisy for
denouncing the United States, because they have their own domestic
wiretapping programs. So to what extent is this about privacy, or are
the reactions more about sovereignty?

First, there was a lot of heated rhetoric from some leaders even before
the allegations came out—about the asylum-seeking, about the unfortunate
grounding of President Morales's plane—that goes far beyond the
legitimate concerns of what the spying actually entailed. That rhetoric
spilled over in ways that are not very constructive, to the point where
you even had Mercosur, a trade association, promise to pull its
ambassadors out of Europe—a move that goes far beyond the actual
functions of a supposed customs union.

Additionally, two presidential summits have been dedicated to this in
Latin America—the Unasur summit that brought together [Rafael] Correa,
[Nicolas] Maduro, and [Cristina] Kirchner to denounce the grounding of
Evo Morales's plane, and then Mercosur. It seems disproportionate that
so much of these presidents' time, especially in countries that are
facing very severe economic news, would be dedicated to this at a summit
level. That's unprecedented when compared to other regions.

Second, it is largely a sovereignty issue. For a number of these
countries, the memories of authoritarian regimes spying on citizens,
rounding up activists and opposition, are still very fresh. [Brazilian
president] Dilma Rousseff was tortured and detained during the military
regime. Mexico dissidents and leaders were also spied on by the PRI
[Institutional Revolutionary Party] before 2001. The reactions need to
be understood in that sense.

The other thing is, yes, the United States has helped some of these
countries set up surveillance programs. Washington was instrumental in
helping Colombia set up the programs it uses to monitor FARC
[paramilitary group Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia], but the
United States has always tried to separate those efforts from spying on
citizens for political reasons. But once the equipment and know-how has
been turned over, anything can happen. That's what we've seen in the
case of Panama, for example, where it became known fairly early on that
the government has a tendency to eavesdrop on perceived political
opponents. That's where we do need to understand that the alleged NSA
revelations are a different kettle of fish. In some ways, it's "they're
our citizens; we get to spy on them, but you don't."

Are there clear distinctions in the ways that Latin American countries
have reacted?

There is a range of differences: some reactions are serious, some are
performative, and some are simply taking advantage of this. In countries
that have taken this as a serious matter—Mexico, Colombia, and
Chile—there has been that level of "let's get to the bottom of it,"
couched within a legitimate sense of national sovereignty and protecting
their citizens. And the responses have been delivered [to the United
States] through diplomatic channels.

In between, you have countries like Brazil, which, for reasons perhaps
very much tied to recent history, has made moves outside the realm of
typical diplomatic activity, and has called the U.S. ambassador to
testify before the Brazilian congress.

Countries on the other end of this spectrum [Venezuela, Bolivia, and
Nicaragua] were already trying to make hay even before the revelations,
by offering asylum to Snowden, which, in some ways, has become somewhat
of a red herring. Oddly enough, with the exception of Venezuela, those
are not the countries where most of the alleged spying occurred. So it's
completely out of proportion to their level of legitimate
victimization—with the exception of Morales's plane getting grounded.

"[P]olitical leaders may use this for domestic political advantage,
[but] it certainly doesn't play as well as many think."

Having said that, most citizens of these countries—and we see this in
surveys—retain very positive views of the United States. As much as
political leaders may use this for domestic political advantage, it
certainly doesn't play as well as many think. Popular opinions hinge
much more on domestic issues. A classic example right now is that
Rousseff's popularity went from 57 percent to about 30 percent—that has
to do with protests and unmet economic demands; that has nothing to do
with spying. These reactions make for good political theater, but I'm
not sure they make for good political campaigns.

Are there any concrete consequences for U.S.-Latin American relations?
Rousseff recently said the leaks would not affect her planned October
trip to Washington.

The practical implications will be minimal, in part because the United
States has such a multifaceted relationship with these countries on
everything from immigration to education, cultural exchanges, and
economic ties. Those things reflect a very diverse relationship that
goes far beyond the diplomatic government-to-government activities.

But there are two implications for U.S. relations in the region that are
important. One is that the U.S. is currently negotiating the
Trans-Pacific Partnership in Latin America that will bring together
economies from most of the Asia-Pacific region with Latin America,
except for Colombia and Central America. When telecommunications comes
down as one of the areas they are talking about, a lot of those
negotiating parties are going to take a very close look at what's in
there and that there are safeguards that protect potential intervention
and the flow of communication.

The second is that the United States' moral standing on being able to
talk about issues like freedom of expression and access to information
has taken a serious hit at a time when a number of countries are
challenging domestic laws and regional norms concerning these very
issues. That's clearly why we see leaders like Correa, Maduro, Morales,
[Nicaragua's Daniel] Ortega—none of whom are paragons of freedom of
expression—suddenly become these champions of transparency. It's ironic,
and it also means that the ability of the United States, and in some
cases U.S.-based organizations, to speak out in some of these cases is
going to be a little more difficult.

On the asylum requests from Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nicaragua, it does
appear Snowden is trying to get to Latin America. What are realistic
possibilities for him as far as ending up there?

I may be proven wrong on this, but I still find it to be a very
difficult practical matter that he can find his way to these countries.
As much as these leaders have been saying out loud that he is welcome if
he can get there, none of them are actually offering to lend their
presidential jets to fly him down. For now, it just remains an empty
gesture.

[Furthermore,] these governments are elected, however imperfectly. Let's
imagine Snowden has a good, healthy lifespan. I find it hard to believe
that a chavista government is going to stay in power in Venezuela for
fifty years—the same goes for the Morales and Ortega governments. So
[asylum in these countries] may provide him a temporary respite, but
it's no permanent guarantee. Sadly, he is being manipulated for
international public opinion by these leaders, and who knows when he
himself could become a bargaining chip?

What can the United States can do to ease tensions in the coming weeks?

This is going to be resolved quietly and diplomatically, as a couple of
leaders have said—[Colombian president Juan Manuel] Santos has said
this; [Mexican president Enrique] Pena Nieto implied the same.
Explanations and sharing of details as to the extent of the
[surveillance] program and the like hopefully will be addressed. Rather
than engage in megaphone diplomacy with the generally aggrieved
countries, the United States is handling this quietly. On the other
matters of asylum and other things, I think the United States is just
letting these countries engage in their own megaphone diplomacy, and
when the dust settles, their rantings will probably not have amounted to
much.

(9) Edward Snowden's fear of flying is justified - Geoffrey Robertson

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jul/23/snowden-asylum-america-international-law

Edward Snowden's fear of flying is justified

Snowden is a refugee, not a spy. But America has history when it comes
to forcing down planes in defiance of international law

Geoffrey Robertson

The Guardian, Wednesday 24 July 2013 04.30 AEST

As Edward Snowden sits in an airside hotel, awaiting confirmation of
Russia's offer of asylum, it is clear that he has already revealed
enough to prove that European privacy protections are a delusion: under
Prism and other programmes, the US National Security Agency and
Britain's GCHQ can, without much legal hindrance, scoop up any
electronic communication whenever one of 70,000 "keywords" or "search
terms" are mentioned. These revelations are of obvious public interest:
even President Obama has conceded that they invite a necessary debate.
But the US treats Snowden as a spy and has charged him under the
Espionage Act, which has no public interest defence.

That is despite the fact that Snowden has exposed secret rulings from a
secret US court, where pliant judges have turned down only 10
surveillance warrant requests between 2001 and 2012 (while granting
20,909) and have issued clandestine rulings which erode first amendment
protection of freedom of speech and fourth amendment protection of
privacy. Revelations about interception of European communications (many
leaked through servers in the US) and the bugging of EU offices in
Washington have infuriated officials in Brussels. In Germany, with its
memories of the Gestapo and the Stasi, the protests are loudest, and
opposition parties, gearing up for an election in September, want him to
tell more.

So far Snowden has had three offers of asylum from Latin America, but to
travel there means dangerous hours in the air. International law (and
the Chicago Convention regulating air traffic) emphatically asserts
freedom to traverse international airspace, but America tends to treat
international law as binding on everyone except America (and Israel).
Thus when Egypt did a deal with the Achille Lauro hijackers and sent
them on a commercial flight to Tunis, US F-14 jets intercepted the plane
in international airspace and forced it to land in Italy, where the
hijackers were tried and jailed. President Mubarak condemned the action
as "air piracy contrary to international law" and demanded an apology,
to which Reagan replied: "Never." The UK supported the action as
designed to bring terrorists to trial.

In 1986 Israel forced down a Libyan commercial plane in the mistaken
belief that PLO leaders were among its passengers, and the US vetoed UN
security council condemnation. So there must be a real concern,
particularly after Nato allies collaborated in forcing down the Bolivian
president's jet, that the US will intercept any plane believed to be
carrying Snowden to asylum, either because he is tantamount to a
terrorist (Vice-President Biden has described Julian Assange as a
"hi-tech terrorist") or simply because they want to put him on trial as
a spy.

That, no doubt, is why Snowden cancelled his ticket to Cuba a few weeks
ago, fearing the flight would end in Florida. Russia has, in effect,
provided him with temporary asylum (there is no legal magic about
staying airside – he is in Russia) so he might be best advised to accept
the gag and enjoy Moscow's hospitality. Until, perhaps, a new government
in Germany after its September elections offers him a platform if he
turns up as a refugee, whereupon he could take a tramp steamer to Hamburg.

In the meantime, states should start considering the impact of the
information he has revealed so far. It was, ironically, the White House
that last year called for an international convention to regularise
"consumer data privacy in a networked world". There is no international
standard for permissible periods of data retention, for what data can be
retained or to whom data can be released. Western democracies differ in
modes of protection. Canada, Germany and Australia require warrants from
independent judges; the US from judges in a secret security court whose
record shows them to be rubber stamps. In Britain ministers lack the
time or ability to assess the warrants they routinely sign. France is
even worse – the prime minister's office can authorise "national
security" interceptions with no oversight.

Does this mean that the possibility intelligence services might find a
terrorist needle in a data haystack justifies abandoning any hope of
effective privacy regulation? Foreign secretary William Hague, who is in
political charge of GCHQ, seems to think so: "Law-abiding citizens have
nothing to fear." But it is precisely law-abiding citizens who have had
careers ended by dissemination of secret state surveillance. Ironically,
it has been suggested that one victim of the NSA's metadata search
machine was none other than the CIA director General Petraeus – guilty,
at least in American eyes, of adultery.

Snowden is not a "traitor", and nor does he deserve to be prosecuted as
a "spy". These laws have no public interest defence, and until they do
any European country that surrenders him to end his life in an American
supermax prison would be in breach of the free speech guarantee of the
European convention of human rights, which is meant to protect those who
release information of importance to democratic debate.

(10) Paul Craig Roberts: Role Reversal - How the US Became the USSR

From: Paul de Burgh-Day <pdeburgh@harboursat.com.au>
Date: Thu, 25 Jul 2013 15:40:17 +1000
Subject: Paul Craig Roberts:- Role Reversal: How the US Became the USSR

Role Reversal: How the US Became the USSR

By Paul Craig Roberts

July 24, 2013

http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2013/07/23/role-reversal-how-the-us-became-the-ussr-paul-craig-roberts/
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Role-Reversal-How-the-US-by-Paul-Craig-Roberts-130723-676.html

I spent the summer of 1961 behind the Iron Curtain. I was part of the
US-USSR student exchange program. It was the second year of the program
that operated under auspices of the US Department of State. Our return
to the West via train through East Germany was interrupted by the
construction of the Berlin Wall. We were sent back to Poland. The East
German rail tracks were occupied with Soviet troop and tank trains as
the Red Army concentrated in East Germany to face down any Western
interference.

Fortunately, in those days there were no neoconservatives. Washington
had not grown the hubris it so well displays in the 21st century. The
wall was built and war was avoided. The wall backfired on the Soviets.
Both JFK and Ronald Reagan used it to good propaganda effect.

In those days America stood for freedom, and the Soviet Union for
oppression. Much of this impression was created by Western propaganda,
but there was some semblance to the truth in the image. The communists
had a Julian Assange and an Edward Snowden of their own. His name was
Cardinal Jozef Mindszenty, the leader of the Hungarian Catholic Church.

Mindszenty opposed tyranny. For his efforts he was imprisoned by the
Nazis. Communists also regarded his as an undesirable, and he was
tortured and given a life sentence in 1949.

Freed by the short-lived Hungarian Revolution in 1956, Mindszenty
reached the American Embassy in Budapest and was granted political
asylum by Washington. However, the communists would not give him the
free passage that asylum presumes, and Mindszenty lived in the US
Embassy for 15 years, 79% of his remaining life.

In the 21st century roles have reversed. Today it is Washington that is
enamored of tyranny. On Washington’s orders, the UK will not permit
Julian Assange free passage to Ecuador, where he has been granted
asylum. Like Cardinal Mindszenty, Assange is stuck in the Ecuadoran
Embassy in London.

Washington will not permit its European vassal states to allow
overflights of airliners carrying Edward Snowden to any of the countries
that have offered Snowden asylum. Snowden is stuck in the Moscow airport.

In Washington politicians of both parties demand that Snowden be
captured and executed. Politicians demand that Russia be punished for
not violating international law, seizing Snowden, and turning him over
to Washington to be tortured and executed, despite the fact that
Washington has no extradition treaty with Russia.

Snowden did United States citizens a great service. He told us that
despite constitutional prohibition, Washington had implemented a
universal spy system intercepting every communication of every American
and much of the rest of the world. Special facilities are built in which
to store these communications.

In other words, Snowden did what Americans are supposed to do--disclose
government crimes against the Constitution and against citizens. Without
a free press there is nothing but the government’s lies. In order to
protect its lies from exposure, Washington intends to exterminate all
truth tellers.

The Obama Regime is the most oppressive regime ever in its prosecution
of protected whistleblowers. Whistleblowers are protected by law, but
the Obama Regime insists that whistleblowers are not really
whistleblowers. Instead, the Obama Regime defines whistleblowers as
spies, traitors, and foreign agents. Congress, the media, and the faux
judiciary echo the executive branch propaganda that whistleblowers are a
threat to America. It is not the government that is violating and raping
the US Constitution that is a threat. It is the whistleblowers who
inform us of the rape who are the threat.

The Obama Regime has destroyed press freedom. A lackey federal appeals
court has ruled that NY Times reporter James Risen must testify in the
trial of a CIA officer charged with providing Risen with information
about CIA plots against Iran. The ruling of this fascist court destroys
confidentiality and is intended to end all leaks of the government’s
crimes to media.

What Americans have learned in the 21st century is that the US
government lies about everything and breaks every law. Without
whistleblowers, Americans will remain in the dark as “their” government
enserfs them, destroying every liberty, and impoverishes them with
endless wars for Washington’s and Wall Street’s hegemony.

Snowden harmed no one except the liars and traitors in the US
government. Contrast Washington’s animosity against Snowden with the
pardon that Bush gave to Dick Cheney aide, Libby, who took the fall for
his boss for blowing the cover, a felony, on a covert CIA operative, the
spouse of a former government official who exposed the
Bush/Cheney/neocon lies about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

Whatever serves the tiny clique that rules america is legal; whatever
exposes the criminals is illegal.

That’s all there is to it.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic
Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist
for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate.
He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have
attracted a worldwide following. His latest book, The Failure of Laissez
Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West is now available.

(11) Phone Hacking Scandal: big London companies implicated - Eamonn
Fingleton

http://www.forbes.com/sites/eamonnfingleton/2013/07/25/phone-hacking-scandal-goes-nuclear-blue-chips-law-firms-and-insurers-caught-in-the-crosshairs/

Phone Hacking Scandal Goes Nuclear: Blue Chips, Law Firms And Insurers
Caught In The Crosshairs

Eamonn Fingleton

Forbes 7/25/2013 @ 10:19AM

The London phone hacking affair began as a local controversy involving a
few rogue British news organizations. Now, in a highly explosive
development, it emerges that blue-chip corporations, law firms,
insurers, and even wealthy private individuals are suspected of similar
crimes. Yet in a remarkable contrast with how they dealt with the press,
the British authorities are actively shielding these new suspects — 102
of them — and are withholding their names.

The policy is said to be justified in the UK’s national interest. An
intelligent inference is that many of the suspects are not British and
the authorities fear that if names were named this would undermine
London’s attractiveness as an international financial center. It is also
a reasonable bet that some of the phones allegedly hacked were not
British. The nearest thing the UK has to an industrial policy these days
is to promote London as an “anything-goes” international financial and
business center. If the only entities in the dragnet were British, the
authorities probably wouldn’t hesitate to throw the book at them. The
calculations are different, however, if non-British entities are
involved. The entire British way of life has been turned upside down in
the last three decades to provide foreign entities with a “favorable”
regulatory environment. The red carpet has been rolled out for all sorts
of foreign geese, provided only they lay golden eggs. In a parallel with
Swiss banking secrecy, the London establishment affords a haven where
foreign entities are free to do much that would never pass muster at
home. Basically it hardly seems a stretch to say that the British are
engaged in a regulatory race to the bottom and that London these days
aspires to do for financial and business ethics what Macau has done for
sexual mores. (Is that a bit harsh? Perhaps but only the most obvious
evidence of London’s amoral approach to finance is its resistance to the
proposed EU “Tobin tax,” which would discourage overly frequent trading
and impose some long-term discipline on investment houses. The losers
would be a handful of stockbroking firms which profit from short-term
trading. The UK also stands alone in the EU in refusing to countenance
any regulation that might curb the abuse of stock options.)

Principal credit for bringing all this to light goes to the London-based
Daily Mail, which has been doggedly pressing the issue for months. For
the Mail’s account of latest developments, click here.

What follows is based largely on the Mail’s reporting. The list of 102
suspects has been compiled by the UK’s so-called Serious Organised Crime
Agency. After previously balking, this agency, known familiarly as Soca,
has finally handed over the suspects list to the House of Commons’s Home
Affairs Committee – but only on condition that the names be kept
strictly secret.

It turns out that some of the evidence Soca has compiled dates back as
far as 2008. Soca’s objective seems to have been to focus on private
investigators acting for various deep-pocketed clients.

These investigators broke the law in obtaining sensitive information
including mobile phone records, bank statements and other personal data.
However, an official inquiry into phone hacking by media organizations
chose to exclude from its purview any investigation of other
perpetrators of hacking.

The Mail comments: “Lawyers, insurers, money exchanges and high-profile
individuals fuelling the trade for sensitive information were never
prosecuted. But journalists were dragged out of their beds at dawn,
arrested, and questioned over allegations of phone hacking and bribing
public officials.”

What in the world can these new suspects have been interested in? The
mind boggles. For an unscrupulous investment bank (is there such a thing
– just asking!), it would be interesting to gain advance knowledge of,
for instance, a corporation’s quarterly earnings. For a law firm , it
might be useful to glean an advance look at the other side’s case. For a
takeover bidder, it would be nice to know how united a target company’s
board is in holding out for its price.

Viewed in purely economic terms, the stakes here would be vastly larger
than they were for newspapers trying to gain a beat on, for instance,
how criminal investigations were going or who is sleeping with whom. And
the best part of it is that by “contracting out the contracting out”
(using an array of intermediaries to engage private investigators), they
could surround themselves with a cordon sanitaire proof against legal
action. Of course, all this reckons without their names being revealed
in public.

(12) The 102 top firms who hired hackers... but the police won't name them

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2375572/The-102-firms-hired-hackers--police-wont-MPs-furious-told-report-locked-safe.html

Saturday, Jul 27 2013 3AM

The 102 top firms who hired hackers... but the police won't name them:
MPs furious after being told to 'keep this report locked in a safe'

   The Serious Organised Crime Agency compiled the list as far back as 2008

   But report was suppressed even as the media was investigated over hacking

By CHRIS GREENWOOD, JAMES SLACK and JACK DOYLE

PUBLISHED: 22:42 GMT, 23 July 2013 | UPDATED: 06:30 GMT, 24 July 2013

The true extent of the ‘secret’ phone-hacking scandal involving law
firms, insurers and high-profile business people was laid bare last night.

More than 100 companies and individuals are suspected of fuelling the
trade in illicit information obtained by hacking, blagging and theft.

The Serious Organised Crime Agency finally handed an explosive list
containing 102 names to MPs yesterday.

But, to the fury of members of the Commons Home Affairs Committee, it
insisted that it remain secret to protect those involved.

Last month it emerged that as long ago as 2008 Soca compiled a dossier
outlining how firms and individuals hired ‘unscrupulous’ private
investigators.

They broke the law to obtain sensitive information including mobile
phone records, bank statements and other personal data.

However, the report – which showed the practices went far wider than the
media – was suppressed and did not form part of Lord Justice Leveson’s
inquiry. He refused to admit the documentation, saying it was outside
his narrow terms of reference.

Critics question why the media has been the subject of a public inquiry
and multi-million-pound criminal investigation while others ‘got away
with it’.

Lawyers, insurers, money exchanges and high-profile individuals fuelling
the trade for sensitive information were never prosecuted.

But journalists were dragged out of their beds at dawn, arrested and
questioned over allegations of phone hacking and bribing public officials.

No one at Soca appeared to push the report forward as three Scotland
Yard inquiries focused almost entirely on the media.

Last night, after weeks of demands from MPs for the identities of
businesses and individuals involved to be published, Soca finally agreed
to let the Home Affairs Committee see the list – but only under strict
rules of confidentiality.

It demanded the list be ‘kept in a safe in a locked room, within a
secure building and that the document should not be left unattended on a
desk at any time’.

Initially, Soca wanted only committee chairman Keith Vaz to have access
to the documents.

Officials claimed that publishing the names could harm the commercial
interests of those involved and even ‘breach their human rights’.

In theory, the move prevents the committee from making public the names
or referring to them in any subsequent report.

But last night Mr Vaz, who has led questioning of Soca’s shortcomings,
said he would try to find a way of releasing the names.

He said: ‘Those companies or individuals who either instructed private
investigators to break the law or did nothing to stop them must be held
to account.’

Mr Vaz said police had claimed any publicity could undermine ongoing or
future criminal investigations, but added: ‘These events took place up
to five years ago. I will be writing to the police to ask in how many
cases their investigations are ongoing.’

Committee member James Clappison attacked the secret arrangements,
saying: ‘I do not believe the full extent of phone hacking has been
brought out.

‘We need complete transparency and the public needs to know what has
been going on. The public were very concerned about the original
phone-hacking revelations. There is no reason they should not be
concerned about these new revelations.’

Pressure is now mounting on Soca to explain why, at the height of the
phone-hacking scandal in 2011, it made no attempt to alert ministers
that lawyers, insurance companies and other blue-chip firms were also
involved.

In an exchange with Tory MP Nicola Blackwood, Soca director general
Trevor Pearce admitted the Home Office had not been contacted to
highlight the 2008 report. He said it had been passed to then Home
Secretary Jacqui Smith, and that had been considered sufficient. But Mrs
Smith and the Labour government had departed, and the current Home
Secretary, Theresa May, had no way of knowing what had been going on.

It meant that when the Leveson terms of reference were being drawn up,
ministers were in the dark about the activities of legal firms, insurers
and others.

Last night Miss Blackwood said: ‘In a separate report in 2010, Soca
identified private investigators as one of four key sources of police
corruption.

‘I cannot understand why they did not make these points to the Home
Office when the Leveson Inquiry terms of reference were being set.’