How Do You Like People Selling Your Social Security Number Online?

I read The Edward Snowden Affair by Michael Gurnow a couple of years ago and did a dozen or so posts about it since then. I keep it handy as an important reference book, not because of the Edward Snowden "gossip," or because for the narrative of his fascinating and important story, but because it's chock full of crucial information pertaining to civil liberties. As the clock ticks down to the Trump-- or Trump-Putin-- takeover of the American government, there are important lessons in Gurnow's book, every American should be aware of. Like this one from the Afterward:

Data brokers take their information, organize it into concise little profiles, and offer it to anyone with an open checkbook. This includes the obvious customers, U.S. government and corporations, but they have other steadfast clients. Many “people locator” websites purchase data mining profiles and resell them to the general public. For a nominal fee, anyone can access a person’s birthday, place of birth, current and past residences, family relations, social security and phone number, educational background, email address, place of current and former employment, and medical, property and court records. Medical insurance firms are curious whether a potential client prints Internet coupons for over-the-counter headache medicine and pays in cash to avoid a rate-hiking paper trail.

Employment agencies want to know an applicant’s hobbies and proclivities without having to ask. Loan companies are interested in a candidate’s choice of recreational locales, be it a casino, truck rally or library. Once this data is combined with receipts from many of the major corporations, buying habits are then merged with wants and desires. The result is a very concise, detailed picture of an individual’s possessions, activities and goals. This is then compared to established buying patterns. The end result is daunting. The owner of an analyzed profile knows who a person was, is, and is going to be. Corporations refer to this as market research. Privacy advocates consider the process an infringement upon the Fourth Amendment and argue third-party cookie usage violates the last sanctuary of privacy, one’s thoughts. Orwell’s prophecy is modestly conservative by 21st-century standards. The main character in Nineteen Eighty-Four believes, “Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimetres inside your skull.”



The surveillance debate has intensified since June 5 and lent new perspectives upon the concept of the safety technology can provide. The underlying political issue is who has the right to particular varieties of information.

The public believes there are two types of conversations, public and private. The intelligence community doesn’t agree.

In the Internet Age, a person can “Like” the activity of fishing enough to let the world know by making it public knowledge on one’s Facebook profile. The individual can also choose to obtain a vanity Facebook URL by confidentially submitting one’s telephone number to the social networking site. The phone number is used for authorization purposes to verify the request is coming from the Facebook account holder. Though it is not placed online, the number is nonetheless (questionably) stored on the company’s servers. David Omand, former head of GCHQ, has no problem with collecting the publicly-known fact Bob likes fishing along with his cell number via Facebook’s FISC order permitting the U.S. government access to the information. For the watchers, there is no line dividing what an individual puts on the Internet and what people have privately entrusted to another party, be it a website, bank, doctor or telephone company.

Government spies also scoff at the notion of intellectual property rights. Bought-and-sold politicians agree. If something is publicly or privately posted online, it automatically becomes the property of the website’s owner. (This is also why most businesses permit and encourage employees to use their company-issued phones and email accounts for personal communications-- the firms have legal license to review an employee’s private network and communications, because they own the devices and programs and therefore the data on them.) It is an absurd proposition analogous to stating an individual surrenders rightful ownership of a vehicle to a bank when it is parked on property whose tenant has yet to pay the mortgage in full. This policy refuses to acknowledge the resources and labor provided by the Facebook account holder, i.e., the computer used to access the social networking site, time it took to create a profile and mental ingenuity in deciding how and what to say about oneself. It is understood that the website has issued the venue which, in turn, makes the information available worldwide but the skewed exchange undermines the statement that profiles are “free.” No profit sharing is offered the user. Without account holders, social networking sites would be empty voids on lonely servers and not multinational corporate affairs.

In the surveillance communities’ opinion, everything is public domain and no one has the right to ask “Do you mind?” to someone eavesdropping on a conversation. Their argument is that if a person doesn’t want what is being said to be known (by whomever), the individual best not speak at all. In the cloak-and-dagger world of data mining, the person having a discussion cannot reasonably expect privacy, because the individual is voicing one’s thoughts, period. It does not matter whether they are spoken in confidence and directed to a particular person, much like an email is addressed “To: Bob” and not “To: Bob; Bcc: The NSA.” If the speaker is naïve enough to say something at a volume where a microphone can detect it, it is de facto public knowledge. Whereas government surveillance only exchanges the recorded conversation with its own kind, corporate surveillance broadcasts the discussion to anyone who is willing to pay to hear it. In the surveillance world, the only guarantee of privacy is dead silence.

Don't you think one of the congressmen interested in civil liberties-- say a Ted Lieu or Justin Amash-- ought to look into drafting a bill making it super-illegal to sell private data online, especially stuff like peoples' Social Security numbers?

Which Members Of Congress Voted For Domestic Spying?

Yesterday, when we talked about conservative assholes who voted to deny Climate Change was real, we were able to look at a roll call vote and see who voted well and who voted badly. We saw that one Republican, Chris Gibson, voted with the Democrats-- and that all the Republicans who try to pass themselves off "mainstream," like Dave Reichert (WA), Frank LoBiondo (NJ), Michael Grimm (NY), Jeff Denham (CA), Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (FL), Charlie Dent (PA), Peter King (NY), Mike Firzpatrick (PA), and David Jolly (FL) voted with the crazy extremists like Michele Bachmann, Fred Upton and Steve King. We also saw the slimy Blue Dogs from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party-- John Barrow (GA), Nick Rahall (WV), Henry Cuellar (TX), Collin Peterson (MN), Jim Matheson (UT)-- slither over to the other side of the aisle to vote with the Republicans, as usual.

But when it came to giving the CIA and NSA the authority to spy on Americans… I can't find a roll call vote. I suspect my own lousy Blue Dog congressman, Adam Schiff, would have voted for that, but I have no actual vote to go by. In his book, The Edward Snowden Affair, Michael Gurnow reported that the 2 heads of the Senate Intelligence Committee, chair Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and ranking member Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), were big supporters of the end of the right to privacy for citizens. Chambliss, in fact, "freely admitted the order had been consistently renewed for seven years but dubiously added, 'Every member of the United States Senate has been advised of this.' (Five days later, as they left a congressional briefing concerning the headline surveillance, Representative Elijah Cummings sardonically stated, 'We learned a lot [ ... ],' and his peer, Bill Pascrell said, 'People should know what’s going on in their name but we need to start with Congress knowing what the heck is going on.')

Snowden told James Bamford in his just-released, extensive interview for Wired that he was pushed into leaking all those NSA documents when he watched James Clapper-- another crook still not in prison-- lying to Congress about the NSA's domestic spying activities against the American public. "It’s like the boiling frog. You get exposed to a little bit of evil, a little bit of rule-breaking, a little bit of dishonesty, a little bit of deceptiveness, a little bit of disservice to the public interest, and you can brush it off, you can come to justify it. But if you do that, it creates a slippery slope that just increases over time, and by the time you’ve been in 15 years, 20 years, 25 years, you’ve seen it all and it doesn’t shock you. And so you see it as normal. And that’s the problem, that’s what the Clapper event was all about."

More from Gurnow: "The NSA’s power underwent a paradigm shift after 9/11. It was granted access to information which it did not have legal right to act upon. Before, the NSA’s domestic domain was restricted to American embassies and missions. The FBI deals with domestic issues, while the CIA contends with foreign matters of security. After 9/11, it was allowed to eavesdrop upon foreigners, then permitted to involve itself in communications between foreigners and Americans, all be- fore obtaining the carte blanche ability to wiretap anyone." Just in case you haven't been paying close attention, Dick Cheney is still not in prison.

Shortly after 9/11, then-President George W. Bush signed a top secret executive order permitting the NSA to wiretap without a warrant. His administration later justified the directive by arguing the process of obtaining war- rants was too time-consuming. As a result of the Times article, the FISC ruled in 2007 that warrants must be obtained if an NSA-desired communication passes through an American network. The Bush administration bought itself time by rebut- ting with a stopgap that permitted the NSA to continue wiretapping. The stopgap expired in 2008. By then everything was in place. Five years later it would be revealed that the U.S. government had merely placated the public. It had re- stricted one clandestine order, thereby insinuating wiretapping had come to an end shortly thereafter, all while gradually imple- menting a covert clone directive. As with the executive order, the public wasn’t privy to these machinations because they had taken place behind closed doors before being classified as top secret.

…The irony is that in 1975 the NSA was subject to a congressional investigation. The inquiry revealed that the agency had been intercepting domestic communications without a warrant since its creation in 1952. The NSA was found guilty of abusing its power after spying on peaceful antiwar protests and civil rights activists. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) was chartered in 1978 as a result. The representative secret court which was created to uphold the FISA laws and prohibit warrantless wiretapping was now rubberstamping one order after another. Americans had been watched by the NSA for almost 60 years… The data being collected is labeled "metadata" instead of "communications" because individual warrants must be issued before "communications" can be confiscated.

[Glenn] Greenwald soundly establishes that the NSA wasn’t acting alone and Congress was privy to and implicated in the surveillance dragnet. He tells the tale of two senators, Ron Wyden and Mark Udall, both members of the Intelligence Committee, and their two-year history of cryptically alluding to the government’s current surveillance policies and practices. Despite being unable to openly discuss the covert directive, it was nonetheless admitted that the American public would be "stunned" if it were made aware of the "secret legal interpretations" which had led to current spying tactics. Perhaps intentionally, Greenwald fails to comment upon the paradox involved in a domestic surveillance directive coming from a court which oversees foreign intelligence. Though the order explicitly states that Verizon calls which originate and end in a foreign land are exempt, it shrewdly includes the clause "[telecommunications] between the United States and abroad" so the court’s authority is applicable.

OK, so Wyden and Udall were good guys here and Feinstein and Chambliss were bad actors. What about everybody else? And did they not vote specifically to prevent us from knowing? I think so.

Would The Government Spy On You And Your Family?

Tuesday, we were looking at some of the reasons Hillary is doing less well-- even in states trending her way like Florida is now-- than she could be doing. While I was writing the post, I got a note from Ted Lieu about the Yahoo revelations. And, the malaise of some millennials who are smart enough to know they're not voting for the narcissistic racist and psychopath but are reticent to commit to Hillary are just uncomfortable with her old school, conservative attitudes about issues around national security state surveillance-- or, as Lieu referred to the Yahoo revelations, "big brother on steroids." He said "it must be stopped." She should too, unless she wants to spend the rest of the campaign pining for those millennial voters. As Lieu said, a government "directive to Yahoo to write a software program and search all of its customers’ incoming emails for certain content is a gross abuse of federal power... Law enforcement and the NSA did not have warrants for the hundreds of millions of customers that had their privacy violated." Justin Amash (R-MI) was as disturbed by this as Lieu was. But you know who felt even stronger about the revelations? Yeah... Ed Snowden. He was tweeting up a storm as soon as the news broke:

His first reaction was to urge everyone with a Yahoo email account to close it. Sounds like an excellent idea to me. He also brought up that "With Verizon buying Yahoo, who was revealed today to be spying on all of their customers, this seems relevant." Very relevant. Did anyone think it was worth mentioning at the VP debate a few hours later?

In the Afterward to Michael Gurnow's 2014 book, The Edwards Snowden Affair, Gurnow wrote, "Somewhat predictably given Clapper’s adamant defense, the NSA hasn’t changed its policies; it has merely tightened its security. Instead of conducting surveillance in a manner that won’t plague an employee’s conscience and spur another Snowden to action, the agency instituted an information lockdown. Shortly after the disclosures stared appearing, a two-person data extraction rule was instituted.

Perhaps the greatest cultural signifier of Snowden’s impact is seen in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Shortly after the world saw Snowden’s face for the first time, sales of the 64-year-old classic skyrocketed. It witnessed a 5,800% overnight increase in sales. The novel went from 7,397 to 125 on Amazon’s bestseller list.

...[T]he public has only heard of the questionable means Washington goes to acquire data directly from communication sources. What is not being talked about is the intelligence it obtains from civilian data mining enterprises. These businesses come in two flavors: Private data collection companies and corporate retailers. The latter consists of commercial retail and fast food establishments. Considering Microsoft, Yahoo, AT&T, Google, Sprint and Verizon’s relationship with the federal government, it is not unreasonable to assume the data these two types of businesses collect is also sequestered by Washington.

Target’s ability to determine a young woman was pregnant before she knew is the tip of the spying iceberg. For example, many cell phone owners forget wifi usage is a revolving door. Most give little thought to accessing and using a store’s wifi, not realizing the company’s systems may be programmed to exploit the Internet connection. Once a connection is made, customer data-- including gender, address, telephone number and a consumer’s personal interests (via Internet searches and an individual’s social network pages, which are frequently left open for convenience)-- are recorded. In retail outlets, a corporation’s programming may also be set to track a person’s movements throughout the building and catalog the individual’s browsing habits. For the customer, the result is customized advertisements and coupons; for the company, consumer analysis is completed at a fraction of the traditional cost. Sadly, advances in technology permit businesses to supersede any attempts at protecting one’s privacy. Much like the U.S. intelligence’s ability to stalk a phone that is turned off, corporations are now able to access phones even if they aren’t deliberately connected to a store’s wifi.

The other and much darker side of corporate surveillance is data mining companies. These include firms such as Acxiom, Datalogix, Euclid, Federated Media, Epsilon, Digital Advertising Alliance, BlueKai and Network Advertising Initiative. Acxiom, the leader in the industry, has over 190 million profiles on American adults.

These entities make it their business to collect every conceivable type of knowledge about U.S. citizens. They first scour the Internet for any information a person is willing to make known before proceeding to public records. Yet these techniques are time and labor-intensive. Both data mining companies and corporations have a surveillance tool which is much more thorough, revealing and, most importantly, automated. They hire software engineers to design and implement third-party cookies. Unlike a first-party cookie, which initiates a discussion between a user’s computer and a specific website, a third-party cookie is equivalent to someone eavesdropping on a person’s power lunch conversation and selling the transcript to a competitor. One method software designers use to hide third-party cookies is by embedding them in advertisements. When an individual enters a website with an ad, a third-person cookie is set. If the user moseys over to another website with an ad by the same company, a notice of the individual’s continued interest-- including the time, date and computer’s IP address-- is sent to the business. By this time, the third-party cookie is controlling a person’s computer. When someone looks at shoes on a retailer’s website and then checks the local news, only toeerily find an ad of the footwear in a sidebar, a third-party cookie is at work. Third-party cookies essentially track and stalk Internet users. Aside from the invasive privacy violations, there are drastic, long-term psychological effects which result from the repetition of third-party cookies’ advertising. Many were confused by Snowden’s objection to surveillance on grounds that it stifled creativity and free thought. When an ad is designed to reappear time and again, it is reinforcing an idea or brand image in a potential consumer’s mind. The Familiarity Principle states a person becomes more comfortable and accepting of an image the more frequently it is encountered. This is basic biology. Familiarity instills trust, often at a subconscious level. Though customers believe they are expressing freedom of choice by picking Brand X over Brand Y, they may be unaware they saw Brand X in a sidebar while browsing online recipes the week before. They purchase Brand X without realizing the subconscious motivations for doing so. They have literally been brainwashed.

Data brokers take their information, organize it into concise little profiles, and offer it to anyone with an open checkbook. This includes the obvious customers, U.S. government and corporations, but they have other steadfast clients. Many “people locator” websites purchase data mining profiles and resell them to the general public. For a nominal fee, anyone can access a person’s birthday, place of birth, current and past residences, family relations, social security and phone number, educational background, email address, place of current and former employment, and medical, property and court records. Medical insurance firms are curious whether a potential client prints Internet coupons for over-the-counter headache medicine and pays in cash to avoid a rate-hiking paper trail.

Employment agencies want to know an applicant’s hobbies and proclivities without having to ask. Loan companies are interested in a candidate’s choice of recreational locales, be it a casino, truck rally or library. Once this data is combined with receipts from many of the major corporations, buying habits are then merged with wants and desires. The result is a very concise, detailed picture of an individual’s possessions, activities and goals. This is then compared to established buying patterns. The end result is daunting. The owner of an analyzed profile knows who a person was, is, and is going to be. Corporations refer to this as market research. Privacy advocates consider the process an infringement upon the Fourth Amendment and argue third-party cookie usage violates the last sanctuary of privacy, one’s thoughts. Orwell’s prophecy is modestly conservative by 21st-century standards. The main character in Nineteen Eighty-Four believes, “Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimetres inside your skull.”

The surveillance debate has intensified since June 5 and lent new perspectives upon the concept of the safety technology can provide. The underlying political issue is who has the right to particular varieties of information. The public believes there are two types of conversations, public and private. The intelligence community doesn’t agree.

In the Internet Age, a person can “Like” the activity of fishing enough to let the world know by making it public knowledge on one’s Facebook profile. The individual can also choose to obtain a vanity Facebook URL by confidentially submitting one’s telephone number to the social networking site. The phone number is used for authorization purposes to verify the request is coming from the Facebook account holder. Though it is not placed online, the number is nonetheless (questionably) stored on the company’s servers. David Omand, former head of GCHQ, has no problem with collecting the publicly-known fact Bob likes fishing along with his cell number via Facebook’s FISC order permitting the U.S. government access to the information.

For the watchers, there is no line dividing what an individual puts on the Internet and what people have privately entrusted to another party, be it a website, bank, doctor or telephone company. Government spies also scoff at the notion of intellectual property rights. Bought-and-sold politicians agree. If something is publicly or privately posted online, it automatically becomes the property of the website’s owner. (This is also why most businesses permit and encourage employees to use their company-issued phones and email accounts for personal communications-- the firms have legal license to review an employee’s private network and communications, because they own the devices and programs and therefore the data on them.) It is an absurd proposition analogous to stating an individual surrenders rightful ownership of a vehicle to a bank when it is parked on property whose tenant has yet to pay the mortgage in full. This policy refuses to acknowledge the resources and labor provided by the Facebook account holder, i.e., the computer used to access the social networking site, time it took to create a profile and mental ingenuity in deciding how and what to say about oneself. It is understood that the website has issued the venue which, in turn, makes the information available worldwide but the skewed exchange undermines the statement that profiles are “free.” No profit sharing is offered the user. Without account holders, social networking sites would be empty voids on lonely servers and not multinational corporate affairs.

In the surveillance communities’ opinion, everything is public domain and no one has the right to ask “Do you mind?” to someone eavesdropping on a conversation. Their argument is that if a person doesn’t want what is being said to be known (by whomever), the individual best not speak at all. In the cloak-and-dagger world of data mining, the person having a discussion cannot reasonably expect privacy, because the individual is voicing one’s thoughts, period. It does not matter whether they are spoken in confidence and directed to a particular person, much like an email is addressed “To: Bob” and not “To: Bob; Bcc: The NSA.” If the speaker is naïve enough to say something at a volume where a microphone can detect it, it is de facto public knowledge. Whereas government surveillance only exchanges the recorded conversation with its own kind, corporate surveillance broadcasts the discussion to anyone who is willing to pay to hear it. In the surveillance world, the only guarantee of privacy is dead silence.

The U.S. government knows the difference but deliberately ignores it. It does not want a distinction to be made, because it would restrict its power and the power of those who fund political campaigns: defense contractors, telecoms, Internet companies, corporate retailers, fast food enterprises and multimillion-dollar data mining firms. The last thing the U.S. government or private business wants is account holders to have control over their own information. Snowden’s skepticism of political solutions is understandable. The people who were hired to watch the watchmen did a poor job. American citizens were told their rights were being protected as a secret oversight court rubberstamped itself into extraneousness while never bothering to see what the NSA might be hiding. Regardless whether a new law is created or a task force is assigned, it can be expected that parties in possession of private information will continue to swear a consumer’s data is sacrosanct and they would never dream of violating a client’s privacy; all the while information is being steadily placed on the open market, swapped and surveilled. Every data mining opt-out form absolves itself by including the clause that the representative business cannot guarantee a person’s information will not conveniently fall into the company’s lap at a later date. If a causal web search produces an individual’s home address alongside the resident’s place of employment, a robber can look up the employer’s hours of operation and know when the house will likely be vacant. When situations like these are presented to those in power, the ball of accountability is bounced back and forth as witnessed when the U.S. government and telecoms pointed the finger of blame at one another after Greenwald exposed Verizon. No one is held accountable, violations continue and people are put at risk. Snowden was correct once again. Current surveillance practices make us less safe.

Regardless of how futile a circumstance may appear, it is instinct to try to defend oneself from perceived harm. Both businesses and private citizens reacted to the disclosures, some rather violently.

How Close Is 1984 Today?

When I think back to high school and recall the books I read that have had the most impact on my thinking since then, certainly the dystopian novels 1984 (1949) by George Orwell and Brave New World (1932) by Aldous Huxley ranked high among them. Our world must never turn into the world’s created by Huxley and Orwell. This afternoon we looked at a reason to cast a vote to reelect Colorado Senator Mark Udall based on his role in preventing 1984 encroachment by the CIA and the rest of the U.S. Military-Industrial-Intellegence Complex on our society and our democracy. Will Colorado voters appreciate how important this Udall ad is for them-- and for all of us?



After wrting it, I came across a summary of a Guardian investigation in the homeland of both Brave New World and 1984 that reveals that most telephone carriers automatically give all of their customers’ information to the police.

Most of the U.K.’s big mobile carriers give the police automated access to their customers’ metadata, the Guardian reported on Friday.

British data retention laws, notably the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA), ensure that operators must hang onto call records so they can be queried without a warrant by the authorities-- but they don’t say the cops should get direct access. Nonetheless, that seems to be what EE, Vodafone and Three allow, with O2 being the only standout.

The Guardian compared this direct-access program with the Prism scheme in the U.S. Indeed, though Edward Snowden’s revelations have been wide-ranging, the first one to emerge was about the NSA accessing Verizon call records— more of a scandal in the U.S., which doesn’t have U.K.-style data retention laws.

RIPA has recently been implicated as a mechanism for the police to secretly figure out the identity of journalists’ sources. According to a separate Guardian report on Sunday, the government will alter the law so that any requests relating to journalistic sources must be approved by a judge.

As over half a million RIPA requests were made by UK public authorities in 2013 alone, it’s not hard to see why an automated system is preferable for efficiency reasons, though I’d argue that the fact it has to do with customer privacy means the practice is ethically questionable.

One of the things we found out from the Snowden revelations is that the US indeed did share the PRISM spy technology with the U.K. and that the U.K., like the NSA and CIA uses it to illegally spy on its own citizens. In fact, the two countries’ spy establishments work together— much more than anyone ever imagined. In his book, The Edward Snowden Affair, Michael Gurnow paints a frightening picture of how the spy establishments in the U.S. and U.K. trample their own laws to spy on everyone and everything always.

A week after Snowden had gone public and two days after the SCMP [South China Morning Post] went into greater, more incriminating detail about American surveillance in China, Ewen MacAskill led a team of Guardian journalists with “GCHQ intercepted foreign politicians’ communications at G20 summits.” Whereas the SCMP’s exposés only made reference to unseen, unverified directives and forms, The Guardian provided its readers with primary documentation. The article’s sources are a top secret January 20, 1999 briefing paper, various classified documents and confidential PowerPoint slides all provided by Snowden. The report debuted a day before the eight wealthiest countries— all of which were potential targets of the headline spying— were to meet in Ireland at the annual G8 Summit.

Started in 1999, the G20 Summit is the once biannual and now annual aggregation of 19 of the world’s top financial leaders with the European Union (EU) as the final member. They represent two-thirds of the world’s population and 80 percent of its gross product and trading. Its purpose is to discuss and examine international economic policy issues which lie outside the scope and capability of any one particular country or organization to address. Due to the growth of other world nations, in 2009 the G20 replaced the G8— started in 1975— as the main economic forum for wealthy nations.

MacAskill and Co. offer no quarter from the beginning: “Foreign politicians and officials who took part in two G20 summit meetings in London in 2009 had their computers monitored and their phone calls intercepted on the instructions of their British government hosts, according to documents seen by The Guardian. Some delegates were tricked into using Internet cafes which had been set up by British intelligence agencies to read their email traffic.” GCHQ’s stated eavesdropping agenda was to learn each country’s negotiating position and leverage so Britain could have tactical advantage during the April and September 2009 meetings. However, Snowden’s documents make clear the confiscated user access data, i.e., user names and passwords, was intended to be used to continue spying on various nations’ officials after the summit ended: “[We] were able to extract key logging info, providing creds for delegates, meaning we have sustained intelligence options against them even after [the] conference has finished.” England’s specific targets were its allies South Africa and Turkey. South Africa was a crucial swing vote. With the latter, Britain’s ob- jective was to “establish Turkey’s position on agreements from the April London summit” and its “willingness (or not) to co- operate with the rest of the G20 nations.” The overriding concern was the various countries’ positions and attitudes regarding financial reform after the 2008 global banking meltdown.

British intelligence had already hacked into South Africa’s foreign affairs network in 2005. It had gathered information by “investigating” the country’s telephone lines and compromising diplomats’ user accounts. The mission was successful, because South Africa updated its systems shortly thereafter. GCHQ countered by immediately installing electronic backdoors “to increase reliability.”

Multiple delegates had been led into Internet cafes that had email filtration and keystroke logging software installed on the diners’ computers. For wireless communications, remote relays retrieved the politicians’ cell phone data, which was telecast almost live to 45 stand-by GCHQ analysts. The analysts would make their assessments then “provide timely information to UK ministers.” Keystroke logging is the recording of what is being typed as it is being typed. This permits the viewer to see the content of any document as it appears on the screen as well as login information, including passwords and phrases, as it is being entered. Over 20 new email “selectors” were obtained by GCHQ.

The Guardian highlights that the covert directives originated at the senior level during then-prime minister Gordon Brown’s time in office. Once finalized, orders were issued to various ministers. They were therefore sanctioned by the British government. Like the NSA’s data intercepts within Hong Kong and mainland China, none of the G20 targets were under any suspicion of wrongdoing by GCHQ. Britain legally justified its eavesdropping with the 1994 Intelligence Services Act, which states clandestine foreign intelligence is “in the interests of the economic well-being of the United Kingdom in relation to the actions or intentions of persons outside the British Island.” Britain had given itself permission to spy if not doing so risked financial loss or inhibited economic growth.

As disclosed in a classified report titled, “Russian Leadership Communications in support of President Dmitry Medvedev at the G20 summit in London— Intercept at Menwith Hill station,” the NSA intercepted and decrypted then-Russian president Dmitry Medvedev’s telephone calls as they dispatched through satellite links to Moscow starting the day he arrived at the first summit, April 1. Menwith Hill is an NSA outpost located in Harrogate, North Yorkshire in England. Until 2013, it was believed to be the largest intelligence facility in the world. Menwith Hill occupies 560 acres.


Without having to lend a word to the topic, MacAskill made demonstrably clear the United States was in espionage cahoots with England. As Gellman had reported, the NSA had given Britain PRISM and was in possession of classified GCHQ documents. Like Greenwald, MacAskill left the reader to discover that Menwith Hill had been in operation since 1966, is leased to America and suspiciously staffed with both American and British intelligence agents. As of March 2012, there is a one-to-three mix of British to American Menwith employees: 400 to 1,200. Menwith Hill is so productive it was given the NSA’s “Station of the Year” award in 1991. The obvious question remained: Why wouldn’t Britain be concerned with more powerful attendees’ data, such as its former colony, Australia, or America’s neighbor, Canada? The answer was coming.

Turkey flipped out and today we’re seeing the results in their refusal to cooperate with the West’s strategy against ISIS in Syria and Iraq. “Turkey’s Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoðan, reports Gurnow, “specifically cited the BBC as sustaining and advocating civil unrest in Turkey amid nationwide demonstrations and violent protests.” China and Russia noted the behavior against them as well. Rest assured. Doesn't Ron Paul look young in this clip from the House floor?

15 House Republicans Join The Democrats To Stand Up Against Encroachments By Big Brother

Do you remember what these 15 congresscritters have in common?

• Justin Amash (MI)
• Mo Brooks (AL)
• Mike Coffman (CO)
• Warren Davidson (OH)
• Jimmy Duncan (TN)
• John Faso (NY)
• Garret Graves (LA)
• Jaime Herrera Beutler (WA)
• Walter Jones (NC)
• Tom McClintock (CA)
• Dave Reichert (WA)
• Mark Sanford (SC)
• Elise Stefanik (NY)
• Kevin Yoder (KS)
• Lee Zeldin (NY)

Yes, they are all Republicans. Some are crazy right-wing lunatics from the Freedom Caucus like Mo Brooks and Warren Davidson; some are libertarians like Walter Jones, Jimmy Duncan and Justin Amash; some are relatively mainstream conservatives like John Faso snd Jaime Herrera Beutler. Because of the nature of their districts, some are in precariously vulnerable positions for reelection, like Mike Coffman, and some are set-for-life, like Garret Graves. But all 15 crossed the aisle on March 28 of thise year to vote with every single Democrat against Jeff Flake's Joint Resolution-- which has since been signed into law by Trump-- to allow Internet providers to sell our personal online data to the highest bidders without our permission and, in fact, without even informing us.

That was insane for the Republicans-- regardless of how many of them took massive bribes from the internet providers-- to do. The bill passed narrowly, 215-205 and it makes every Republican, other than those 15, vulnerable on an issue millions American voters care very much about regardless of partisan politics.

Matt Coffay is a leader of Our Revolution in western North Carolina. He's running for Congress, taking on Freedom Caucus chieftain Mark Meadows, one of the Republicans who voted to allow Internet providers to sell our personal information to whoever wants to buy it. Matt disagrees with that vote. This morning he told us, "My position on internet privacy is much like that of Senator Bernie Sanders: your internet history belongs to you, and not to corporations. This isn't complicated, or radical. How can Republicans in Congress claim that they want government to stay out of people's lives, and then vote for a bill that allows people's private browsing data to be sold to the highest corporate bidder? This bill is a violation of our right to privacy, plain and simple."

David Gill is the progressive candidate for the IL-13 seat currently held by knee-jerk Republican Rodney Davis, who, of course, backed giving the Internet providers the green light to sell our personal information. David wasn't amused by his decision. "This vote represents yet another betrayal of his constituents by Rodney Davis: he took $49,000 from the telecom industry, and then he voted to allow those companies to sell your web browsing history to marketers and other third parties-- so much for privacy! I support undoing Citizens United & reforming campaign finance laws. When we take those steps, we'll have representatives who stand up for their constituents, rather than reps who sell out their constituents."

Three years before Flake wrote his Joint Resolution, Michael Gurnow wrote The Ed Snowden Affair, a book that tackles many of the issues the GOP legislation starkly brings up for Americans. Even back then, he wrote that "data brokers take their information, organize it into precise little profiles, and offer it to anyone with an open checkbook."

This includes the obvious customers, U.S. government and corporations, but they have other steadfast clients. Many “people locator” websites purchase data mining profiles and resell them to the general public. For a nominal fee, anyone can access a person’s birthday, place of birth, current and past residences, family relations, social security and phone number, educational background, email address, place of current and former employment, and medical, property and court records. Medical insurance firms are curious whether a potential client prints Internet coupons for over the counter headache medicine and pays in cash to avoid a rate-hiking paper trail. Employment agencies want to know an applicant’s hobbies and proclivities without having to ask. Loan companies are interested in a candidate’s choice of recreational locales, be it a casino, truck rally or library. Once this data is combined with receipts from many of the major corporations, buying habits are then merged with wants and desires. The result is a very concise, detailed picture of an individual’s pos- sessions, activities and goals. This is then compared to established buying patterns. The end result is daunting. The owner of an analyzed profile knows who a person was, is, and is going to be. Corporations refer to this as market research. Privacy advocates consider the process an infringement upon the Fourth Amendment and argue third-party cookie usage violates the last sanctuary of privacy, one’s thoughts. Orwell’s prophecy is modestly conservative by 21st-century standards. The main character in Nineteen Eighty-Four believes, “Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimetres inside your skull.”

The surveillance debate has intensified since June 5 and lent new perspectives upon the concept of the safety technol- ogy can provide. The underlying political issue is who has the right to particular varieties of information.

The public believes there are two types of conversations, public and private. The intelligence community doesn’t agree. In the Internet Age, a person can “Like” the activity of fishing enough to let the world know by making it public knowledge on one’s Facebook profile. The individual can also choose to obtain a vanity Facebook URL by confidentially submitting one’s telephone number to the social networking site. The phone number is used for authorization purposes to verify the request is coming from the Facebook account holder. Though it is not placed online, the number is nonetheless (questionably) stored on the company’s servers. David Omand, former head of GCHQ, has no problem with collecting the publicly-known fact Bob likes fishing along with his cell number via Facebook’s FISC order permitting the U.S. government access to the information. For the watchers, there is no line dividing what an individual puts on the Internet and what people have privately entrusted to another party, be it a website, bank, doctor or telephone company.


Government spies also scoff at the notion of intellectual property rights. Bought-and-sold politicians agree. If something is publicly or privately posted online, it automatically becomes the property of the website’s owner. (This is also why most businesses permit and encourage employees to use their company-issued phones and email accounts for personal communications-- the firms have legal license to review an employee’s private network and communications, because they own the devices and programs and therefore the data on them.) It is an absurd proposition analogous to stating an individual surrenders rightful ownership of a vehicle to a bank when it is parked on property whose tenant has yet to pay the mortgage in full. This policy refuses to acknowledge the resources and labor provided by the Facebook account holder, i.e., the computer used to access the social networking site, time it took to create a profile and mental ingenuity in deciding how and what to say about oneself. It is understood that the website has issued the venue which, in turn, makes the information available worldwide but the skewed exchange undermines the statement that profiles are “free.” No profit sharing is offered the user. Without account holders, social networking sites would be empty voids on lonely servers and not multinational corporate affairs.

In the surveillance communities’ opinion, everything is public domain and no one has the right to ask “Do you mind?” to someone eavesdropping on a conversation. Their argument is that if a person doesn’t want what is being said to be known (by whomever), the individual best not speak at all. In the cloak-and-dagger world of data mining, the person having a discussion cannot reasonably expect privacy, because the individual is voicing one’s thoughts, period. It does not matter whether they are spoken in confidence and directed to a particular person, much like an email is addressed “To: Bob” and not “To: Bob; Bcc: The NSA.” If the speaker is naïve enough to say something at a volume where a microphone can detect it, it is de facto public knowledge. Whereas government surveillance only exchanges the recorded conversation with its own kind, corporate surveillance broadcasts the discussion to anyone who is willing to pay to hear it. In the surveillance world, the only guarantee of privacy is dead silence.


The U.S. government knows the difference but deliberately ignores it. It does not want a distinction to be made, because it would restrict its power and the power of those who fund political campaigns: defense contractors, telecoms, Internet companies, corporate retailers, fast food enterprises and mul- timillion-dollar data mining firms. The last thing the U.S. government or private business wants is account holders to have control over their own information.

Crime And Punishment-- National Security Style… Forget Dostoevsky

Over the long 4th of July weekend many of us turned to The Guardian for news. An Edward Snowden/Hillary Clinton article from that paper got picked up by dozens of U.S. outlets all during the weekend. The gist of it was that Hillary thinks Snowden, who has been charged with three separate violations of the Espionage Act (which doesn't distinguish between a spy and a whistleblower) should return to the U.S. if he is serious in engaging in the debate. Hill: "If he wishes to return knowing he would be held accountable and also able to present a defence, that is his decision to make."

Is it? I doubt Hillary has read Michael Gurnow's book, The Edward Snowden Affair, the subtitle of which is "Exposing the Politics and Media Behind the NSA Scandal." Perhaps she should, or at least the second chapter, "How To Blow A Whistle," which goes a long way towards describing how disingenuous-- or just idiotic-- Hillary's responses to Snowden questions have been. You think she doesn't know what happens to whistleblowers, even whistleblowers who "go by the book?" Start by watching the 60 Minutes report up top-- and watch Hillary at the bottom… then make up your own mind if you want to see someone like her become President.

The world might not have ever heard of Edward Snowden if it hadn't been for Thomas Drake.

…Drake's contention was that then-NSA director General Michael Hayden had chosen a program called "Trailblazer" over another, titled "ThinThread." Both programs were designed to contend with monitoring the new and exponentially expanding World Wide Web and the advent and increased use of cell phones. Drake was part of a small but well-versed minority that believed ThinThread might have been able to detect and stop the 9/11 attacks had it not been discontinued three weeks prior (some reports claim it was never implemented). Remarkably Trailblazer was still theoretical on September 11, whereas ThinThread had been fully operational since the beginning of the year. Drake and his coalition had outlined that ThinThread was more effective in processing gross amounts of data, and unlike Trailblazer, it was mindful of Americans' pocketbooks and Fourth Amendment privacy rights. ThinThread cost $3 million; Trailblazer had a $1.2 billion price tag.

Following government protocol, Drake worked his way up the administrative grievance ladder. He appealed to his superiors, the NSA inspector general, the Defense Department inspector general, then the House and Senate. As a last resort, Drake-- along with the Republicans' staff expert on NSA's budget for the House Intelligence Committee, Diane Roark, and the lead designers of ThinThread, William Binney, Ed Loomis and J. Kirk Wiebe-- presented a book-length complain to the Department of Defense in 2002. Roark even went as far as contacting Dick Cheney's attorney, David Addington. What Roark didn't know was Addington had been the pen behind the Bush Administration's warrentless wiretapping program. The the Defense Department would eventually internally acknowledge that Drake and Co. had been correct in their assessment, the wasteful, ineffective and invasive programs [also very, very profitable for Bush-Cheney military-industrial complex campaign donors] continued.

There are three motivating factors that permitted the flawed system to persist. One, the government was reluctant to end any security project for fear of appearing unpatriotic. Two, the intelligence agency wanted the illicit data. These two are not mutually exclusive, because any politician labelled unpatriotic during this time risked reelection, and the biggest political donors were corporations who had a vested interest in personal data for marketing and advertising purposes. Three, Hayden was a lieutenant general closing in on retirement. He only had been director of the NSA for a few years and wanted to make a name for himself. He was made a full general a year before retiring in 2006.

No, Hayden is still not in prison. In fact, on May 8, Bush nominated him to be the director of the CIA and he was confirmed by the Senate, 78-15 less than 3 weeks later. Among those few with the sense of decency to vote no were Ted Kennedy, Russ Feingold, John Kerry, Ron Wyden, Tom Harkin, Dick Durbin, Maria Cantwell, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Today, instead of rotting in a prison cell, he's a senior partner at Michael Chertoff's security consulting firm and on the Board of Motorola. Ed Snowden, however, would disappear forever into a medieval prison cell if he ever follows Hillary Clinton's advise.




UPDATE: Amy Goodman Talks With Julian Assange

I don't understand why this interview hasn't gotten wider coverage by the media. It's certainly worth reading or watching, Maybe if Kim Kardashian had come along…

Goodman asked him about the new "letter that was written to Attorney General Eric Holder, signed by many organizations, including Human Rights Watch, Anthony Romero of the ACLU, Reporters Without Borders, World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters and many others, calling on the Justice Department to officially close all criminal investigations against WikiLeaks… and to stop harassment and other persecution of WikiLeaks for publishing in the public interest." Among other things, he replied with a statement that went right to a very uncomfortable aspect of what we've been talking about above:

[I]f you look at how the Espionage Act prosecutions have developed, there is now more investigations and prosecutions by the Obama administration of people under the Espionage Act-- principally, whistleblowers and journalists-- than all previous presidents combined, going back to 1917-- in fact, more than double. And people understand that it’s not just us. In fact, the precedent has been set that you can perhaps do this to almost anyone.

The Patriot Act-- Back For Another Go-Round

The intrinsically embarrassing nature of the Patriot Act came front and center again with the appearance on the national scene of NSA whistleblower Ed Snowden. This is a mature democracy? And for Obama... how did he shift from a senator so eloquently critical of unconstitutional surveillance practices to a chief proponent of expanding them? In his book The Edward Snowden Affair, Michael Gurnow looked at how Obama was forced to make a fuss about the Patriot Act once Russia granted Snowden political asylum.

The first is "reforms to Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act" even though "[I]t does not allow the government to listen to any phone calls without a warrant. But given the scale of this program, I understand the concerns of those who would worry that it could be subject to abuse." Obama stated adjustments will be made to these two laws to ensure "greater oversight, greater transparency, and constraints on the use of this authority."

He then proposed FISC oversight in the form of a legal representative being present to review request orders, because the court currently "only hears one side of the story, may tilt it too far in favor of security, may not pay enough attention to liberty." Obama, a Harvard lawyer, acknowledged a kangaroo court was in effect because no defense attorney was present to represent those whom the U.S. government was attempting to target.

...The impact of the international disclosures-- especially those pertaining to China, Germany and the EU-- was obvious during the conference. The president very gingerly acknowledged, "[ ... ] how these [surveillance] issues are viewed overseas [is important] because American leadership around the world depends upon the example of American democracy and American openness, because what makes us different from other countries is not simply our ability to secure our nation; it’s the way we do it, with open debate and democratic process." He went on to state, "[ ... ] to others around the world, I want to make clear once again that America is not interested in spying on ordinary people. "

By now you have surely heard of a new Senator from Arkansas by the name of Tom Cotton. He was a 37-year-old congressman who won the Senate seat formerly held by conservative Democrat Mark Pryor in 2014. Cotton took the Senate by storm penning one of the most embarrassing documents ever written by a sitting Senator and then getting the entire GOP Senate caucus to co-sign it-- the infamous Iran Letter.

Undaunted by this humiliation, the Republican Party has decided that Cotton is the man to lead them into the future on national security issues. And unfortunately, he's decided that his next mission will be to lead the Republican charge to extend certain provisions of the Patriot Act which are set to expire this June. They've even added some new powers for the NSA, just to make things interesting.

There was a lot of talk at one time about a new coalition of civil libertarian Republicans and civil libertarian Democrats coming together to reform these programs now that the nation is aware of what they're actually doing. Sadly, the number of civil libertarians in the Republican Party can fit in a small Smart Car and the civil libertarians in the Democratic Party are not a majority. And with über-hawk Tom Cotton waving the “national security” banner we can be sure the Republicans are intent upon squelching any thoughts of reform. This is why it's so important for Democrats to elect more real progressive civil libertarians to Congress. We cannot count on this tiny faction of libertarian Republicans, led by their hypocritical grandstanding leader Rand Paul, to ever provide the numbers required to roll back the surveillance state. Hawkish national security and authoritarian police policies are in the modern GOP's DNA.

This is going to require a majority progressive Democratic Party led by people like Congresswoman Donna Edwards, who is now running for the Maryland Senate seat currently held by retiring Senator Barbara Mikulski. Edwards has been consistent on these issues throughout her career in congress. For instance, in 2014 she voted against the USA Freedom Act, originally conceived as a reform measure, but which was later gutted by the Republicans in committee. She issued this statement at the time:

“After much deliberation I opposed the USA Freedom Act because I continue to believe it doesn’t strike the necessary balance between protecting our national security and protecting our 4th Amendment rights. Without question, national security issues are critically important, and I applaud all those who work at the Department of Defense, the National Security Agency, and others for their dedication to duty and professionalism. We must provide them with the means to gather the information necessary to keep America safe. However, we cannot allow the pursuit of that goal to infringe on the civil liberties that we, as Americans, hold sacred and fought so hard to defend.”

She will bring that same principled clarity to the Senate.

Last week the House passed yet another Republican surveillance bill. Blue America's slate of progressive civil libertarians voted against, while all the usual suspects supported it.

Blue America primary candidate Alex Law, who is challenging New Jersey Congressman Donald Norcross, gave this statement:

Yet again we have a clear difference between myself and my opponent in the Democratic primary in NJ-01. Today, Donald Norcross voted in support of the Protecting Cyber Networks Act, a bill that is a surveillance bill disguising itself as a cyber-security bill. This bill gives companies a significant expansion in their ability to monitor customers' online activities. It allows them to share vaguely defined 'cyber threat indicators,' which then automatically go to the NSA. The NSA is then authorized broad law enforcement rights that could stretch beyond cyber-security. This chain of events is a slippery slope. I totally disagree with the structure of this bill. We must stand up for individual privacy. What we have in this bill is a wolf in sheep's clothing, and if I were in Congress, I would have voted against it like other progressives such as Alan Grayson and Judy Chu.

The provisions of the Patriot Act which are set to expire in June should not be extended. We don't know for sure if they will. The USA Freedom Act ultimately died in the Senate when the Democrats who were in the majority at the time added a few safeguards and then couldn't overcome a filibuster. (Yes, the GOP ultimately filibustered the bill for being too weak ...) The Republicans are now in charge and Tom Cotton is working overtime to give the NSA every last item on their wish list. Perhaps we'll get lucky and gridlock will work in favor of freedom once again. But I wouldn't count on it.

There are simply not enough principled, progressive civil libertarians in Congress to stop these abuses. We must elect more of them. Please give what you can to stalwart civil libertarians like Donna Edwards and Alex Law.

Then, give your current representatives a call and tell them you want them to vote against any extension of the Patriot Act.

How Glenn Greenwald Made President Obama's Meeting WIth China's President Xi Jinping In The California Desert A Drag

Walter Annenberg was connected. He built his familiy's business from publishing a shady race track form to an empire publishing TV Guide, Seventeen, the Philadelphia Inquirer. Nixon appointed him Ambassador to England in return for his financial and editorial assistance to the Republican Party. In 1976 the Queen made him an honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE), something every Republican plutocrat aspires to. His palatial estate in Rancho Mirage, our near Palm Springs, was often billed as Camp David West and hosted events for Nixon, Ford, Reagan, both Bushs, Margaret Thatcher, as well as for every puffed-out monarch that had thus far escaped being decapitated-- from Queen Elizabeth to the last criminal Shah of Iran. Reagan appointed his second wife, Leonore, Chief of Protocol for the State Department.

Today, his Sunnylands estate, is still used for diplomatic events and in 2013-- June 7 and 8, it was the site of the "shirtsleeves summit" between Obama and Xi Jinping. As Bobby Flay was preparing dinner to delight the two presidents' taste buds, The Guardian was publishing an article by Glenn Greenwald, Obama orders US to draw up overseas target list for cyber-attacks. This was especially ill-timed for Obama who wanted to meet with President Xi to get on his ass about cyberattacks from China.

President Obama said Friday that he told China's President Xi Jinping that it's critical they come to an understanding on how they'll work together on cybersecurity, one of the most contentious issues facing the two nations.

…China has been widely linked to network break-ins of numerous Western companies and agencies. And Obama issued an executive order this year to compel government and industry to share intelligence about network breaches, mainly to protect the nation's infrastructure.

The Pentagon also blamed China for cyberattacks in its annual report to U.S. lawmakers on Chinese military capabilities. The report, published in May, stated that some of the recent cyberattacks in the United States appeared "to be attributable directly to Chinese government and military."

Xi didn't address those charges but said China was also the victim of cyberattacks. He added that through good faith negotiations the U.S. and China could make the issue "a positive area of cooperation."

Greenwald's article included an unpublished Presidential Policy Directive issued in October 2012, which, according to Michael Gurnow's book, The Edward Snowden Affair, "instructs the secretary of defense, director of national intelligence and head of the CIA to create a list of overseas targets of 'national importance' for possible cyberattacks. The purpose of the tentative attacks is not heightened defense, retaliatory action or even as a pre-emptive measure. It is to 'advance U.S. national objectives around the world with little or no warning to the adversary or target and with potential effects ranging from subtle to severely damaging.' Dauntingly the commander in chief also humors domestic targeting but specifies such theoretical operations cannot be carried out unless he has issued his consent or there is a national emergency, whereby various departments are authorized to act autonomously. Likewise the 18-page manuscript states cyberattacks are to conform to U.S. and international law unless they are overridden by presidential approval." Obama must have flipped. I bet he's still mad at Glenn!

The administration published some declassified talking points from the directive in January 2013, but those did not mention the stepping up of America's offensive capability and the drawing up of a target list.

Obama's move to establish a potentially aggressive cyber warfare doctrine will heighten fears over the increasing militarization of the internet.

The directive's publication comes as the president plans to confront his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping at a summit in California on Friday over alleged Chinese attacks on western targets.

Even before the publication of the directive, Beijing had hit back against US criticism, with a senior official claiming to have "mountains of data" on American cyber-attacks he claimed were every bit as serious as those China was accused of having carried out against the US.

Presidential Policy Directive 20 defines OCEO as "operations and related programs or activities… conducted by or on behalf of the United States Government, in or through cyberspace, that are intended to enable or produce cyber effects outside United States government networks."

Asked about the stepping up of US offensive capabilities outlined in the directive, a senior administration official said: "Once humans develop the capacity to build boats, we build navies. Once you build airplanes, we build air forces."

The official added: "As a citizen, you expect your government to plan for scenarios. We're very interested in having a discussion with our international partners about what the appropriate boundaries are."

…The US is understood to have already participated in at least one major cyber attack, the use of the Stuxnet computer worm targeted on Iranian uranium enrichment centrifuges, the legality of which has been the subject of controversy. US reports citing high-level sources within the intelligence services said the US and Israel were responsible for the worm.

In the presidential directive, the criteria for offensive cyber operations in the directive is not limited to retaliatory action but vaguely framed as advancing "US national objectives around the world."

The revelation that the US is preparing a specific target list for offensive cyber-action is likely to reignite previously raised concerns of security researchers and academics, several of whom have warned that large-scale cyber operations could easily escalate into full-scale military conflict.

Sean Lawson, assistant professor in the department of communication at the University of Utah, argues: "When militarist cyber rhetoric results in use of offensive cyber attack it is likely that those attacks will escalate into physical, kinetic uses of force."

An intelligence source with extensive knowledge of the National Security Agency's systems told the Guardian the US complaints again China were hypocritical, because America had participated in offensive cyber operations and widespread hacking--breaking into foreign computer systems to mine information.

Provided anonymity to speak critically about classified practices, the source said: "We hack everyone everywhere. We like to make a distinction between us and the others. But we are in almost every country in the world."

The US likes to haul China before the international court of public opinion for "doing what we do every day," the source added.

One of the unclassified points released by the administration in January stated: "It is our policy that we shall undertake the least action necessary to mitigate threats and that we will prioritize network defense and law enforcement as preferred courses of action."

When Americans win something big-- like some kind of title or a ball game series or something like that, Obama calls them and congratulates them and sometimes invites them to the White House. Greenwald, like Obama, a constitutional lawyer (although not that much like Obama) was awarded the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service as well as the George Polk Award for National Security Reporting. No invitation to visit the White House… and not even a hacked phone call!

Why Hasn't Obama Fired John Brennan Yet?

We've been going through Michael Gurnow's book, The Edward Snowden Affair and finding some pretty awful facts about domestic spying. Basically, Cheney put a system in place they allowed for no privacy from government snooping for anyone for any reason at any time. Neither Bush nor Obama was completely comfortable with it-- but comfortable enough to leave it in place.

Microsoft, Yahoo and Google, for example, accounted for 98% of PRISM data intake. They and all the commercial internet firms were facilitating the government to spy-- unconstitutionally-- on their own customers. And then they lied about it.

Speaking on behalf of Apple, Steve Dowling announced, "We have never heard of PRISM" while the chief security officer for Facebook, Joe Sullivan, declared, "We do not provide any government organization with direct access to Facebook servers," despite the PRISM slide which includes the phrase, "Collection directly from the servers of."

A couple weeks ago, Conor Friedersdorf, writing for The Atlantic asked an uncomfortable question: Does John Brennan Know Too Much for Obama to Fire Him?. Brennan's broken a lot of law and lied his ass off, as you can see in the BraveNewFilms clip up top. And he's pissed off a lot of senators. But Obama says, he still has confidence in his CIA chief. The two of them were certainly in cahoots in regard to drone strikes of dubious legality.

When John Brennan assured the country that the CIA hadn't improperly monitored the Senate team that compiled a report on Bush-era torture, he fed us false information. That much is clear from Thursday's news that "the C.I.A. secretly monitored a congressional committee charged with supervising its activities." Either the CIA director was lying or he was unaware of grave missteps at the agency he leads. There are already calls for his resignation or firing from Senator Mark Udall, Trevor Timm, Dan Froomkin, and Andrew Sullivan, plus a New York Times editorial airing his ouster as a possibility.

President Obama could surprise the country by axing his former counterterrorism adviser, explaining that under Brennan's management, employees broke laws and undermined the separation of powers core to our democracy. Obama may well make a good-faith effort to act in the national interest. But it's impossible to believe that he won't be aware of the following: No U.S. official knows more than Brennan about Obama's many drone killings. Some of the killings were solidly grounded in international law. And others may have violated the Fifth Amendment, international law, or the laws of war.

In the past, Brennan has been willing to lie about those drone strikes to hide ugly realities. For example, he stated in the summer of 2011 that there had been zero collateral deaths from covert U.S. drone strikes in the previous year, an absurd claim that has been decisively debunked. What if he grew more forthright, either in public statements or by anonymously leaking information?

…I am not suggesting that Brennan is blackmailing Obama, or even that he would necessarily retaliate if fired. Still, if Obama is like most people in positions of power, he fires no subordinate without first asking himself, "Could this person damage me?" If Obama is a normal person, rather than an unusually principled person, the answer factors into his decision. Look at what Brennan said in March, immediately after denying that the CIA spied on the Senate Intelligence Committee, when Andrea Mitchell asked if he'd resign his post if that turned out to be wrong: 

... if I did something wrong, I will go to the president, and I will explain to him exactly what I did, and what the findings were. And he is the one who can ask me to stay or to go. 

He's a smart man.

All this may be irrelevant to his continued tenure. Perhaps Obama has always believed and continues to believe that Brennan is doing a heckuva job. But just as secret torture acted as a cancer on the U.S. government, encompassing acts so barbaric and criminal that, even recently, the CIA spied on a Senate subcommittee investigating the subject, America's semi-secret policy of semi-targeted killing rendered everyone involved complicit in activities sufficiently dubious that all desire their secrecy. Would you fire a guy who knows as much about your most morally fraught acts as Brennan knows about who Obama has killed in secret? Yeah, me neither. This isn't the biggest cost of presidents who hide arguably illegal actions by declaring them state secrets. But it is certainly one of the costs.

There's inevitably a need to review the job performance of people party to these secrets. They typically keep their jobs. So George W. Bush left us a CIA staffed partly with people willing to torture, and Obama will likely leave us with a CIA that includes torturers, people willing to kill American citizens in secret without due process, and people willing to spy on their Senate overseers. The Senate intelligence committee was established precisely to stop this sort of thing from playing out, but it is failing in its duties, as yesterday's crimes spawn today's efforts to spin or suppress those crimes. If the Senate doesn't act now to rein in the CIA, what will it take?

Colorado Voters Are Making The CIA Domestic Spy Agents Very Happy-- Very, Very Happy

Getting control over congressional oversite was the biggest goal of the CIA and NSA in this election cycle. They’re actively infiltrating CIA agents into Congress itself. On the Democratic side, Steve Israel conspired with them to push forward several CIA candidates, including, among others, Kevin Strouse (PA-08) and Bobby McKenzie (MI-11). They were unable to gain any traction and were eventually abandoned by the DCCC to their own miserable fates. Both are expected to lose badly November 4. But don’t feel badly for the CIA.

The National Surveillance Establishment’s top goal of the election season is to replace their most fearless and relentless critic in the Senate, Mark Udall (D-CO)— to send a message to the rest of Congress that they can be taken out— with a slimy little right-wing worm who has shown a willingness to acquiesce to whatever the CIA and NSA want— so long as he can target women’s rights, equality and working families struggling to get a fair shake.

I bet the CIA would rather see Udall defeated— and will do anything and everything they can to get Cory Gardner in— than even catch Ed Snowden. In fact, let me turn, once again to Michael Gurnow’s book, The Edward Snowden Affair, for some insight into why the CIA is so freaked out about having someone as courageous as Mark Udall in Congress.

Snowden reiterates from his interview with Poitras that there are no technological limitations to what can be gathered and requested. Previewing a forthcoming disclosure, he states, “[T]he intelligence community doesn’t always deal with what you would consider a ‘real’ warrant like a [p]olice department would have to, the ‘warrant’ is more of a templated form they fill out and send to a reliable judge with a rubber stamp.” Policy, which is subject to administrative whim, is the only restraint, but Snowden declares “policy protection is no protection— policy is a one-way ratchet that only loosens and one very weak technical protection— a near-the-front-end filter at our ingestion points. The filter is constantly out of date, is set at what is euphemistically referred to as the ‘widest allowable aperture,’ and can be stripped out at any time.” Like the NSA’s reminder to its analysts that accidental intercepts are “noth ing to worry about,” Britain’s system of checks and balances for query protocol is equally lax. “For at least GCHQ,” Snowden tells his audience, “the number of audited queries is only 5% of those performed.” It is worthy to note Menwith Hill is over— seen by a Royal Air Force officer.

Toward the end of the interview, Snowden overtly condemns America’s invasive surveillance policies and practices: “Journalists should ask a specific question: [S]ince these programs began operation shortly after September 11th, how many terrorist attacks were prevented SOLELY by information derived from this suspicionless surveillance that could not be gained via any other source?” He assures his audience that regardless of what happens to him or how strict whistleblowing legislation becomes, gray hat leaking will not cease, because “[c]itizens with a conscience are not going to ignore wrong-doing simply because they’ll be destroyed for it: the conscience forbids it.” He boldly proclaims, “Truth is coming, and it can- not be stopped.”

I wonder if the CIA and NSA agents were laughing when they read that— or just too busy trying to undermine Mark Udall to stop long enough to laugh. The latest poll— released by Quinnipiac yesterday— is bad news for America, bad news for Colorado… good news for the CIA and other agencies that are spying on Americans.

U.S. Rep. Cory Gardner, the Republican challenger in the Colorado U.S. Senate race, leads U.S. Sen. Mark Udall, the Democratic incumbent 47 - 41 percent among likely voters, with 8 percent for independent candidate Steve Shogan, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today. Another 4 percent are undecided… Colorado likely voters give Sen. Udall a negative 42 - 49 percent favorability rating, compared to Gardner's positive 47 - 41 percent rating. [Wait! An even more recent poll was released by the more accurate Mark Mellman and it shows Colorado voters coming to their senses and giving Udall a 44-41% lead over Gardner. This is going to be a nail-biter... for ordinary Americans as well as for the spy-masters of the CIA and NSA.]