DarkGovernment

NSA Employees Getting Entertained at Your Expense

Americans inclined to have phone sex on international calls may have an unintendedmenage a trois instead.  ABC spoke to two former NSA operatives on the record about their work in the Terrorist Surveillance Program, and let’s just say that they weren’t completely focused on the task at hand.  Instead of the narrow surveillance promised by the Bush administration, the NSA in practice likes to keep themselves amused:

Despite pledges by President George W. Bush and American intelligence officials to the contrary, hundreds of US citizens overseas have been eavesdropped on as they called friends and family back home, according to two former military intercept operators who worked at the giant National Security Agency (NSA) center in Fort Gordon, Georgia.

“These were just really everyday, average, ordinary Americans who happened to be in the Middle East, in our area of intercept and happened to be making these phone calls on satellite phones,” said Adrienne Kinne, a 31-year old US Army Reserves Arab linguist assigned to a special military program at the NSA’s Back Hall at Fort Gordon from November 2001 to 2003.

Kinne described the contents of the calls as “personal, private things with Americans who are not in any way, shape or form associated with anything to do with terrorism.”

She said US military officers, American journalists and American aid workers were routinely intercepted and “collected on” as they called their offices or homes in the United States.

Another Navy Arab linguist, David Murfee Faulk, worked at NSA from 2003 to late 2007, and told ABC essentially the same thing.  They saved conversations that amused them, often getting other operators to listen to phone sex, pillow talk, and other salacious tidbits. They also eavesdropped on journalists and aid workers, even after the NSA knew the numbers had nothing to do with terrorism.

They also intercepted critical information that saved lives in Iraq and elsewhere.  Faulk talked about discovering IEDs that got dismantled because of NSA intercepts, actions that saved the lives of American troops targeted by terrorists.  However, both Faulk and Kinne expressed frustration that the refusal of the NSA to winnow out numbers that clearly would produce no actionable intelligence made it harder for them to find the needles in the haystacks.  “By casting the net so wide and continuing to collect on Americans and aid organizations, it’s almost like they’re making the haystack bigger and it’s harder to find that piece of information that might actually be useful to somebody,” Kinne told ABC.  “You’re actually hurting our ability to effectively protect our national security.”

Americans have trusted the NSA to act professionally in its pursuit of terrorists, and to use its limited resources wisely.  We have heard for the last seven years about the shortage of qualified Arab linguists in the American intelligence community.  If these two are telling the truth, it’s not only a breach of that necessary trust in defending Americans from the asymmetrical threat of terrorists, it’s a criminal misuse of that limited resource.

We need a strong and focused effort from the NSA to discover terrorist plots before they have a chance to reach fruition in their goals of killing Americans.  If these accounts can be independently corroborated, then current management doesn’t appear up to the task.

Update: One commenter says, “Ed, you make a good point, but wouldn’t you possibly be tempted to listen in on a few phone sex calls after listening to thousands of hours of boring garbage?”  In my former career in commercial security, other companies in our field made extensive use of microphones in both residential and commercial applications, which can help cut down false alarms.  They can also provide endless hours of amusement for alarm company operators, especially the residential installations (if you get my drift), who don’t mind telling these stories to pass the time at their new jobs.  Believe me, I understand the impulse, although thankfully I’ve never been in that position myself.

That was why I understood the point of the NSA’s critics on the TSP.  A program like this requires strict supervision to keep abuses from happening.  If what ABC reports is correct, it doesn’t look like we’re getting it.

Update II:  Hmm.  It looks like ABC didn’t do enough research on one of its sources.  Adrienne Kinne is also on the board of directors of Iraq Veterans Against the War, a fact ABC doesn’t mention in its piece.  Faulk now works for the Metro Spirit as a reporter and doesn’t appear to have joined any organized political opposition to the war, but has spoken out against it.

Does that make them not credible?  Not necessarily, especially with Faulk.  They may have come to oppose the war based on these very experiences.  However, ABC certainly should have told its readers and viewers about Kinne’s association with IVAW.

Update III: Just to remind readers, the Bush administration claimed the TSP would only surveil without search warrants calls from phone numbers that had been previously implicated in terrorist activities.  They claimed they would get warrants, as provided by FISA, for all other calls with at least one destination point within the US.  If they’re recording calls outside of those parameters, they’re explicitly violating the law and breaking that promise.

Update IV: Conn Carroll reminds me that satellite phones are not covered under the FISA law and the NSA can listen to any and all conversations on them without warrants.  ABC didn’t bother to mention that either.  Still, is this really what the NSA should be doing?  If the satellite phone number belongs to an Army officer instead of a terrorist, why are we wasting resources on surveilling it?
Source: Hotair

Tags: communications intercept, domestic spying, national security agency, NSA, spying, wiretapping

Whitehouse Wants Spying Eye on Citizens

On Tuesday, the House Appropriations Committee approved an amendment denying money for the new domestic intelligence operation—cryptically named the “National Applications Office”—until the Homeland Security secretary certifies that any programs undertaken by the center will “comply with all existing laws, including all applicable privacy and civil liberties standards.”

Rep. Jane Harman, a California Democrat who chairs the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on intelligence, told Newsweek that majorities in both the House and Senate intend to block all funding for the domestic intelligence center at least until August, when the Government Accountability Office, an investigative agency that works for Congress, completes a report examining civil-liberties and privacy issues related to the domestic use of picture-taking spy satellites.

Harman, who was the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee when Republicans controlled Congress earlier in Bush’s tenure, said she still felt burned by the president’s secret expansion of domestic electronic spying after 9/11. At the time, she and other intel committee leaders were assured that the increased intelligence activity was legal, only to learn later that the basis for the new surveillance was a set of opinions by administration lawyers that are now widely considered to be legally questionable.

Because of the administration’s poor handling of the electronic spying program (mainly conducted by the super-secret National Security Agency, which operates a worldwide web of electronic eavesdropping systems), Harman says she and other members of Congress will be more cautious about accepting civil-liberties assurances from administration officials. “We have to make sure this is not a back door for spying on Americans,” Harman told Newsweek.

Harman said that she had discussed the administration’s plans for expanding domestic use of picture-taking spy satellites—which are supposedly capable of taking very high-resolution photographs of buildings, vehicles and people—with Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. According to Harman, he promised strict procedures to protect the rights of Americans, including obtaining court authorization for law enforcement-related surveillance operations where appropriate. Despite Chertoff’s assurances, however, Harman said that Congress probably would not fully approve the program until the administration is more explicit about how it would operate.

A congressional aide familiar with the views of Senate Democrats said they share Harman’s concerns. However, this aide, who asked for anonymity when discussing sensitive material, said that the administration is close to providing Capitol Hill with detailed new protocols for protecting civil rights and privacy when conducting such surveillance. A Homeland Security official said that the administration had hoped to begin full operations of the National Applications Office, which would be located at a secret facility somewhere in the Washington, D.C., area, in October. But Harman said that full congressional funding for the new center almost certainly would be held up until after the presidential election in November.

Earlier this week, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which is supposed to manage federal disaster relief efforts, and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which directs the operations of picture-taking spy satellites and analyzes their output, issued a statement describing how they were currently working together to help out with flood-relief efforts in the Midwest.

According to the statement, NGA is “providing analysis, unclassified commercial imagery of flooded areas and geospatial intelligence products to FEMA and emergency responders in the affected areas to aid in rescue and recovery efforts.” Intelligence experts note that commercial picture-taking satellites, such as one operated by a company called DigitalGlobe, already make available for public use satellite imagery with a resolution as fine as 18 inches—meaning, said one expert, that the satellite picture can zoom in on a single car.

Classified imaging satellites, operated at NGA’s direction and built by a secretive Pentagon agency called the National Reconnaissance Office, can produce pictures of even greater clarity, though precise details are state secrets. An intelligence official confirmed that information from secret Pentagon satellites is currently being made available to agencies involved in flood-relief efforts. But to protect intelligence secrets, classified spy-satellite pictures are not being provided directly to flood-relief agencies, the official said. Instead, intelligence analysts are using pictures from secret satellites to make unclassified paper maps and to produce unclassified electronic data that can be used both by emergency services and ordinary homeowners. Some of the intelligence community’s flood-relief data can be viewed on an NGA website.

The intelligence official said that domestic agencies, ranging from the FBI to the Agriculture Department, have for years been able to request spy-satellite data. Such information has been used in the past not only to help organize disaster responses (to events such as Hurricane Katrina), but also to help plan security for major public events, ranging from papal visits and presidential inaugurations to sporting championships such as the World Series and Super Bowl. The official said that before intelligence agencies can spy on individual households, they must first consult government lawyers to ensure such activities are legal.

Intelligence and law enforcement experts say that under present laws, criminal investigators or intelligence operatives would probably not need a warrant to conduct surveillance on buildings or suspects from street level—or from above, using a helicopter or airplane. Nor would they need express authority to use commercially available satellite pictures. On the other hand, in a 2001 opinion authored by conservative Justice Antonin Scalia, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that investigators had inappropriately invaded the privacy of a marijuana grower when they used information collected by an external heat-sensing device to obtain a search warrant for the man’s home.

An intelligence official could not specify whether the new domestic intelligence office would be required to obtain a warrant before conducting particularly close satellite surveillance. A spokesman for NGA said the agency would have no comment on the program. But Russ Knocke, a Homeland Security spokesman, told Newsweek that fears about the program are unfounded. “We’ve repeatedly met with Congress to answer questions about the NAO,” he said. “As we have said, the purpose of the NAO is not to expand existing legal authorities. Rather, it will allow the government to better and more efficiently prioritize the use of scarce resources in support of major disasters, homeland security efforts and perhaps—in the future—law enforcement. We have also been clear that we would brief Congress before moving to support law enforcement. Efforts to further stall the NAO are misguided and keep us from making the best use of overhead imagery for a number of public safety and security missions.”

Tags: CIA, domestic spying, NSA, spy, spy satellite, spying

Democrats Claim DHS Plans to Spy on Americans

New DHS Office Would Share Detailed Surveillance Capabilities of Military Intel Satellites With Local Law Enforcement

The Department of Homeland Security wants to set up a new program to illegally spy on Americans, two senior Democratic lawmakers charged Thursday in a letter urging colleagues to deny funds for the program.

In a letter to three colleagues obtained by ABC News, House Homeland Security Chairman Bennie Thompson, Miss., and Rep. Jane Harman, Calif., voiced objections to a new office DHS wants to create that would share the detailed surveillance capabilities of military intelligence satellites and other monitoring technology with state and local law enforcement.

The size of the National Applications Office, as DHS has named it, and its proposed budget, remain classified. The department has said the office would not traffic in eavesdropped conversations. It would primarily be used to share data from military assets for disaster response, monitoring climate change and other purposes, according to DHS.

Noting that the Pentagon is already cleared and capable of sharing satellite imagery on a legal and limited basis to aid authorities protecting major events or responding to natural disasters, Thompson and Harman said the purpose of expanding the program and placing it in a classified office could only be to surveil U.S. residents illegally.

“We are left to conclude that the only reason to stand up a new office would be to gather domestic intelligence outside the rigorous protections of the law — and, ultimately, to share this intelligence with local law enforcement outside of constitutional parameters,” Thompson and Harman wrote.

The two urged their colleagues to bar funding for the program, which they said would likely violate long-standing laws prohibiting military involvement in peacetime law enforcement. Current law bars money for the program until Congress’ auditors review and approve a legal argument from DHS justifying the office, which is expected later this year.

The letter contained some of the harshest language yet from the lawmakers, who have raised serious questions about the proposed office since the administration announced its plans for NAO late last year.

DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff has called their concerns baseless and has pushed to institute the program. “I think we’ve fully addressed anybody’s concerns,” Chertoff reportedly said in a recent chat with bloggers. “I think the way is now clear to stand it up and go warm on it.”

But if the House appropriators who control DHS’ pursestrings listen to Thompson and Harman, that may not be the case. “Having been burned before on the Terrorist Surveillance Program and knowing this administration’s disdain for obeying the laws Congress passes, we need to be extraordinarily careful,” Thompson and Harman warned in their letter today.

“We are confident that [congressional auditors] will soon conclude — like the DHS Inspector General — that the NAO is a lawful and effective tool for protecting the country,” said department spokeswoman Laura Keehner. She said the lawmakers fundamentally misunderstood the office, were “wrong on the law” and charged that their efforts “are misguided, and plainly political.”

Tags: DHS, domestic spying, Homeland Security, privacy, spying