Spintested

Inside 'Prism' Success: Even Bigger Data Seizure

Sunday, June 16, 2013

I just want to point to a part of this exchange that everyone is ignoring (but that I pointed out while live tweeting this).

Mueller: I’m not certain it’s the same–I’m not certain it’s an answer to the same question.

Mueller didn’t deny the NSA can get access to US person phone content without a warrant. He just suggested that Nadler might be conflating two different programs or questions.

And that’s one of the things to remember about this discussion. Among many other methods of shielding parts of the programs, the government is thus far discussing primarily the two programs identified by the Guardian: the phone metadata collection (which the WaPo reports is called MAINWAY) and the Internet content access (PRISM).

Thus, we are effectively just talking about two programs, and not two that intersect via targeted technology, as MAINWAY would with NUCLEON and MARINA with PRISM. So, while there are a slew of other possibilities for what Mueller might mean by “another question,” one big one is “how may an analyst access NUCLEON information if she had MAINWAY data”?

And, as Sanchez notes in his piece, the way 702 is supposed to work (and indeed, would have to work for the claims made about PRISM’s role in thwarting the Najibullah Zazi attack to be remotely true) is that US person information comes up along with targeted foreign targets. Indeed, as I noted last year during the FISA Amendments Act debate, in an effort to defeat this amendment prohibiting effectively what Sanchez has laid out, Sheldon Whitehouse said that getting US content without a warrant was the entire point.

He referred back to his time using warrants as a US Attorney, and said that requiring a warrant to access the US person communication would “kill this program,” and that to think warrants “fundamentally misapprehends the way in which this program operates.”

The possibility that the government would do this kind of thing has been raised repeatedly since Russ Feingold did so in 2009 during the FISA Amendments Act debates, speaking specifically about the content of calls to people overseas.

KEEP READING
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Inside 'Prism' Success: Even Bigger Data Seizure

The CNET “Bombshell” and the FOUR Surveillance Programs

NSA has acknowledged in a new classified briefing that it does not need court authorization to listen to domestic phone calls.

In general, I’m just going to outsource my analysis of what the exchange means to Julian Sanchez.

What seems more likely is that Nadler is saying analysts sifting through metadata have the discretion to determine (on the basis of what they’re seeing in the metadata) that a particular phone number or e-mail account satisfies the conditions of one of the broad authorizations for electronic surveillance under §702 of the FISA Amendments Act.
[snip]

The analyst must believe that one end of the communication is outside the United States, and flag that account or phone line for collection. Note that even if the real target is the domestic phone number, an analyst working from the metadatabase wouldn’t have a name, just a number. That means there’s no “particular, known US person,” which ensures that the §702 ban on “reverse targeting” is, pretty much by definition, not violated.
None of that would be too surprising in principle: That’s the whole point of §702!

That is, what Nadler may have learned that the same analysts who have access to the phone metadata may also have authority to issue directives to companies for phone content collection. If so, it would be entirely feasible for the same analyst to learn, via the metadata database, that a suspect phone number is in contact with the US and for her to submit a request for actual content to the providers, without having to first get a FISA order covering the US person callers directly. Since she was still “targeting” the original overseas phone number, she would be able to get the US person content without a specific order.

KEEP READING
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Inside 'Prism' Success: Even Bigger Data Seizure

NSA admits listening to U.S. phone calls without warrants

National Security Agency discloses in secret Capitol Hill briefing that thousands of analysts can listen to domestic phone calls. That authorization appears to extend to e-mail and text messages too.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Ralph Nader Blasts Minimum Wage, Obama: 'Has There Ever Been A Bigger' White House 'Con Man'?

Thursday, June 13, 2013

Nader-bashing again?

Nader didn't do anything to Gore that HarryBrowne, PatBuchanan, HowardPhillips, et al (other party candidates) didn't also do, yet you don't hear them being blamed. Gore and Bush weren't owed other party's voters, and studies have shown that Nader pulled more votes from Bush than from Gore.

You presume that Nader voters would've voted for Gore (or voted at all) when studies and exit polling have indicated that's not the case.

Had Nader not run Bush still would've won because Republicans had gamed that election more ways than we're ever going to know about. You might as well blame PatBuchanan with the same vigor and vitriole.

AlGore won. Gore got more votes in Florida. Any way it was counted (and the biggest point that people seem to forget is that there were 179,000 perfectly readable ballots that never got counted), Gore got more votes than Bush.

Whatever the means necessary to get BushCheney into the WhiteHouse would've happened. Had Nader not run, the outcome would've been the same. The powers that be weren't going to let Gore win, no matter what, and they gamed it innumerable ways.

If the means for getting BushCheney into the WhiteHouse required a close election and Nader not been running, some other means would've been used.

For pity's sake, the CIA was working on GOP absentee ballots in the weeks leading up to election day in Florida. That was the most amazing revelation from the televised court hearings in the post-election days in Florida -- 'CharlesKane' testified to altering absentee ballots in the MartinCounty's Registrar's office in the two week period prior to election day (it's against the law and should render the ballots null and void). When Kane was sworn in, he had to identify himself and give his occupation and employer. Retired CIA. The judge asked him why he was altering the absentee ballots, and he answered "I go where I'm told." Verbatim quote. The judge didn't follow up. There was next to no news coverage of this, and none by the networks.

Have you forgotten JebBush's vote purging scheme?

Have people really forgotten all the different ways that that election was gamed by the GOP? And that's just in Florida. And just the ways that we learned about because of legal proceedings in the post-election days.

There was a coup d'etat in America in 2000. A bIoodless coup, but a coup nonetheless.

And Democrats suppressed investigations, and then screwed over the CongressionalBlackCaucus's attempts to expose that stolen election.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

House Approves Derivatives Deregulation Bills That Would Open More Loopholes For Wall Street

When you say something like "You just want to take it away from the right and let the left run mad" after I've already said that ALL money needs to be eliminated from politics, you show yourself to be a dishonest agent, a dissembling prevaricator, and I no longer treat you as anyone worthy of attention.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

House Approves Derivatives Deregulation Bills That Would Open More Loopholes For Wall Street

When Roosevelt got into the White House, he did the same thing that Obama did (not enough stimulus) and when the economy began to improve, Roosevelt let the conservatives talk him into putting on the brakes. The result was just like what we're seeing now: The US slipped back into Depression in 1937. It took the MASSIVE GOVERNMENT SPENDING of WWII to get us out of it. Finally.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost