risking his life to tell you about NSA surveillance [ot]

Simple as that. Stop the trade in personal data, cold.

NSA to cut system administrators by 90 percent to limit data access

By Jonathan Allen
Thu Aug 8, 2013 8:58pm EDT

(Reuters) - The National Security Agency, hit by disclosures of classified data by former contractor Edward Snowden, said Thursday it intends to eliminate about 90 percent of its system administrators to reduce the number of people with access to secret information.

Keith Alexander, the director of the NSA, the U.S. spy agency charged with monitoring foreign electronic communications, told a cybersecurity conference in New York City that automating much of the work would improve security.

"What we're in the process of doing - not fast enough - is reducing our system administrators by about 90 percent," he said.

The remarks came as the agency is facing scrutiny after Snowden, who had been one of about 1,000 system administrators who help run the agency's networks, leaked classified details about surveillance programs to the press.

Before the change, "what we've done is we've put people in the loop of transferring data, securing networks and doing things that machines are probably better at doing," Alexander said.

Using technology to automate much of the work now done by employees and contractors would make the NSA's networks "more defensible and more secure," as well as faster, he said at the conference, in which he did not mention Snowden by name.

These efforts pre-date Snowden's leaks, the agency has said, but have since been accelerated.

Alexander's remarks largely echoed similar comments made to Congress and at other public appearances over the past two months since his agency came under fire from civil liberties advocates and lawmakers concerned by Snowden's revelations.

Snowden leaked documents to the Guardian and the Washington Post, which published stories revealing previously secret telephone and internet surveillance programs run by the U.S. government.

Snowden now faces criminal charges but has since been granted temporary asylum in Russia.

Other security measures that Alexander has previously discussed include requiring at least two people to be present before certain data can be accessed on the agency's computer systems.

"At the end of the day it's about people and trust," Alexander said. He again defended his agency's conduct, much of which he said had been "grossly mischaracterized" by the press.

"No one has willfully or knowingly disobeyed the law or tried to invade your civil liberties or privacies," he said. "There were no mistakes like that at all."

He told his audience to "get the facts" and make up their own minds, adding that the agency itself could do more to enable this: "We've got to push out more, I recognize that," he said.

"No one has willfully or knowingly disobeyed the law or tried to invade your civil liberties or privacies,"

I can guarantee this is going to go badly (on numerous fronts)...

There was a coup that was only days away by Pentagon, DHS, AIPAC, drug cartels and key leaders of extremist GOP and Tea Party factions against the Obama administration.

The traitor John McCain got sent offshore on purpose to keep him away since that fukhead is involved also.

Gawd damn do you people even have clue what's going on?

I doubt it .....

Hard to explain what Obama is doing unless you assume the government absolutely must know how seriously the NSA has been compromised. If Snowden comes back he has to assume he will be water boarded very intensely. Absent the possibility of serious compromise Obama would be going to Russia and joking about it with Putin. We do after all have many important things to discuss with the Russians...

We need not to ignore the fact that globalization has made partners of all the participants. As long as we can keep crazies out of the white house. And that is not a given.

"As long as we can keep crazies out of the white house. And that is not a given."

So you could do anything you like in a library, including plotting terrorism and communicating with fellow terrorists, and any attempt to surveil that is 4th amendment infringement.

Thursday, Aug 8, 2013 12:03 PM PST
Glenn Greenwald offered Brazilian protection from U.S.

Greenwald tells Salon he intends to visit the U.S. soon -- but says the risk of prosecution against him is real
By Brian Beutler

A Brazilian official has taken the unusual step of publicly announcing that the Brazilian government will offer Guardian writer Glenn Greenwald protection from the U.S. government after determining he risks facing legal action if he returns to the U.S.

To receive protection from Brazil, Greenwald would have to officially request it. But though he takes the risk of prosecution seriously, Greenwald tells me he has no intention of taking the Brazilian government up on the offer — and that he plans to return to the U.S. sooner than later, come what may.

“I haven’t requested any protection from the Brazilian government or any other government because, rather obviously, I’ve committed no crime — unless investigative journalism is now a felony in the U.S.,” Greenwald said via email. “But the fact that Brazilian authorities believe there is a real possibility that the U.S. would unjustly prosecute journalists for the ‘crime’ of reporting what the U.S. government is doing is a powerful indictment of the U.S.’s current image in the world — just as was the requirement that the U.S. promise it will not torture or kill Snowden if he’s returned. It’s an equally potent reflection of the massive gap in opinion between the U.S. Government and the rest of the world when it comes to how the NSA disclosures, my reporting, and Snowden are perceived.”

The offer, published in the Sao Paulo newspaper Estadao, doesn’t indicate in any way that the U.S. government is pursuing or will pursue legal action. It also doesn’t mean that the Brazilian officials genuinely believe Greenwald would be arrested or tried for violating U.S. laws if and when he returns stateside. But it at least suggests that people in Brazil and other countries believe it’s a plausible enough scenario that government officials can credibly validate it.

A Department of Justice official did not respond to requests for comment on the Estadao article.

Greenwald — who once wrote for Salon — has published several articles based on classified surveillance documents he received from National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden. Prominent elected officials in the United States have accused Greenwald of being complicit in the crimes they accuse Snowden of committing, which feeds suspicions, both domestically and abroad, that Greenwald might face legal action if he returns to the U.S. That’s part of the reason why Greenwald himself — a former appellate lawyer — isn’t shrugging off the possibility.

US lawmaker compares Edward Snowden with Mahatma Gandhi
PTI Aug 8, 2013, 03.58PM IST

WASHINGTON: A senior lawmaker from President Barack Obama's Democratic party has compared US intelligence leaker Edward Snowden with Mahatma Gandhi, saying the controversial whistleblower was engaged in a "non-violent" act of "civil disobedience".

John Lewis, one of America's most revered civil rights leaders, says Snowden, who has come in for some harsh criticism from Obama Administration for leaking details of classified surveillance programmes, was continuing the tradition of civil disobedience.

Opinion
Snowden, Greenwald and Wikileaks are winning

Americans are becoming more concerned that government 'anti-terror' programmes are actually restricting civil liberties.

Last Modified: 07 Aug 2013 11:33

NSA whistle blower Edward Snowden and Sarah Harrison, a legal researcher for WikiLeaks, leave Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport after Snowden spent nearly six weeks in hiding there [Reuters]

"It is a slap in the face of all Americans," said Senator John McCain (R - AZ), referring to Russia's decision to grant asylum to Edward Snowden. He demanded that the Russians face " serious repercussions " for their decision.

Well, turn the other cheek, I say. McCain ran for president in 2008 promising to be more belligerent towards the Russians, so this is normal for Dr.Strangelove and his crusty Cold War foaming at the mouth.

Not to be outdone, Democratic Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) said that Russia had "stabbed us in the back," and that "each day that Mr. Snowden is allowed to roam free is another twist of the knife".

The spectacle of US attorney general Eric Holder trying to offer Russia assurances that his government would not torture or execute Snowden speaks volumes about how far the US government's reputation on human rights - even within the United States - has plummeted over the past decade.

Twist and shout! The Russians did a big favour for the freedom-loving peoples of the world, including those in the US who can still think with our own brains. The self-righteous pundits who complain about Russia's own human rights record, as if this were even remotely relevant, might try to recall how Snowden ended up there in the first place. He was passing through Moscow on his way to South America, and it was only by virtue of Washington's "gross violations of his human rights," as Amnesty International called it, that he got stuck there.

Indeed, the whole chase scene is symbolic of the difficulties in which Washington finds itself immersed. Unable to win their case in the court of public opinion, the self-styled leaders of the free world resort to threats and bullying to get their way - which kind of sums up American foreign policy in the second decade of the 21st century. And the spectacle of US attorney general Eric Holder trying to offer Russia assurances that his government would not torture or execute Snowden speaks volumes about how far the US government's reputation on human rights - even within the United States - has plummeted over the past decade.

Meanwhile, Snowden and Glenn Greenwald and Wikileaks are winning. At the outset Snowden said his biggest fear was that people would see "the lengths that the government is going to grant themselves powers unilaterally to create greater control over American society and global society and that 'nothing will change'". But his disclosures have already created a new debate, and political change will follow.

Two weeks ago there was a surprisingly close call in the US House of Representatives, with the majority of House Democrats and 94 of 234 Republicans defying their House (and Senate) leadership, the White House, and the national security establishment in a vote to end the NSA's mass collection of phone records. The amendment was narrowly defeated by a vote of 205 to 217, but it was clear that "this is only the beginning," as John Conyers (D-MI), ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee announced.

A week later Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Democratic Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, called a hearing where he challenged the Obama administration's claims that the NSA dragnet had been effective in disrupting terrorist plots. According to Leahy, the classified list that he had been shown of "terrorist events" did not show that "dozens or even several terrorist plots" had been thwarted by the NSA's surveillance of domestic phone calls.

It is beginning to sink in that the main target of the NSA's massive spying programmes is not terrorism but the American people themselves (as well as other non-terrorist populations throughout the world). Pew Research finds for the first time since 2004 that there are more Americans concerned that government "anti-terror" programmes have "gone too far in restricting civil liberties" than those who think not enough has been done to protect people from terrorism.

Then Glenn Greenwald broke the story of the NSA's XKeyscore programme, the "widest reaching" of its secret surveillance systems, based on Snowden's revelations. Greenwald has become a one-man army, swatting down attackers from the national security/journalistic establishment like a hero from a video game. Here you can see him wipe the floor with CNN's Jeffrey Toobin, or David Gregory of Meet the Press; or the most devastating takedown ever of a Washington Post journalist, Walter Pincus, who had to run a massive correction after promoting a false, far-fetched conspiracy theory about Greenwald and Wikileaks.

Greenwald was joined on CNN by James Risen, a 15-year veteran of the New York Times , who is himself being threatened with jail for refusing to testify in a criminal trial of former CIA employee Jeffrey Sterling. Sterling, like Snowden, has been charged under the infamous Espionage Act for leaking classified information to Risen. It is another case with ominous implications for civil liberties and investigative journalism.

"I can tell you, I've been an investigative reporter for a long time," said Risen. "And almost always, the government says that when you write a story, it's going to cause damage. And then they can never back it up. They say that about everything….It's getting old."

Indeed it is. And as Washington threatens to worsen relations with Russia - which together with the United States has most of the nuclear weapons in the world - over Snowden's asylum there, it's hard not to wonder about this fanatical pursuit of someone Obama dismissed as a "29-year-old hacker". Is it because he out-smarted a multi-billion dollar "intelligence community" of people who think they are really very smart but are now looking rather incompetent?

If Snowden really leaked information that harmed US national security, why haven't any of these "really very smart" people been fired? Are we to believe that punishing this whistleblower is important enough to damage relations with other countries and put at risk all kinds of foreign policy goals, but the breach of security isn't enough for anyone important to be fired? Or is this another indication, like the generals telling Obama what his options were in Afghanistan, of the increasing power of the military/national security apparatus over our elected officials?

Mark Weisbrot is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, in Washington, D.C. He is also president of Just Foreign Policy.