Snowdon is a dummy

http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/318657-corker-congress-largely-in-the-dark-on-nsa-programs

Corker: Congress in the dark on NSA
By Carlo Muñoz - 08/25/13 10:38 AM ET

Congressional lawmakers remain largely in the dark about ongoing domestic intelligence operations, according to Sen. Bob Corker.
“The American people want to know that those of us who are elected ... understand fully what's happening here. I don't think we do,” Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) said Sunday on Fox News.
“I would imagine there are even members of the [congressional] intelligence committee themselves that don't fully understand the gamut of things that are taking place,” he added.
Corker this week fired off a scathing letter to the White House, arguing lawmakers learned more about National Security Agency surveillance programs on the front page of the newspaper than at closed-door security briefings with administration officials.
White House briefings on the NSA's domestic operations have “generally been limited to simply discussing the facts underlying specific public disclosures” of domestic surveillance operations, he said.
“As a result, members of Congress regularly read new revelations on the front pages of various newspapers,” Corker wrote.
On Wednesday, intelligence officials admitted the NSA improperly spied on people in the United States with no connection to terrorism beginning in 2008.
The NSA collected as many as many as 56,000 emails from Americans before the mistake was identified.


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The NSA collected as many as many as 56,000 emails from Americans before the mistake was identified.

In the US, we've had one of the key authors of the Patriot Act, Jim Sensenbrenner, speak out strongly, saying that the NSA interpretation of the law appears to be completely different than what was meant when the bill was written. It looks like something similar may be happening in the UK. Charles Falconer, who helped craft the UK's Terrorism Act, which was used to detain David Miranda and swipe all of his electronics, has now spoken out, saying that it was an illegal use of the Act he wrote.

...schedule 7 powers can only be used "for the purpose of determining" whether the detained person is a terrorist. The use of the power to detain and question someone who the examining officer knows is not a terrorist is plainly not for this purpose, so it would neither be within the spirit nor the letter of the law.

There is no suggestion that Miranda is a terrorist, or that his detention and questioning at Heathrow was for any other reason than his involvement in his partner Glenn Greenwald's reporting of the Edward Snowden story. The state has not even hinted there is a justification beyond that involvement.

He also hits back, pretty strongly, against the suggestion by some, including home secretary Theresa May, that the "terrorism" connection was that the content might fall into the hands of terrorists. But Falconer claims that this doesn't make any sense:

It is important to understand the ramifications of May's justification. She is not suggesting there is an issue about whether Miranda is a terrorist – the only lawful basis on which his detention and questioning could be justified. Rather, she is suggesting that he was in possession of stolen material which could help terrorism, presumably by publication. There is a world of difference between the two.

Had schedule 7 been in force when Salman Rushdie was writing Satanic Verses, May's justification would have allowed his detention and questioning and the removal of his manuscript.

Using very loose, and obviously ridiculous, definitions to justify deplorable actions just don't seem like a good idea -- and yet the defenders of these programs continue to do so, seemingly forgetting that the people who put this stuff together in the first place, are still around. Source

Unfortunately I don't the British public really cares that much about Miranda's detention,

[...]
What makes Germans so sensitive about their data? Many have pointed to Germany’s history: Both the Nazi secret police Gestapo and the East German Stasi spied extensively on citizens, encouraging snitching among neighbors and acquiring private communication.

But that’s not the whole story. Politics and the media in Germany today are dominated by (male) citizens raised in the democratic West who have no personal recollection of either of the Stasi or Gestapo.

Germany lacks the long tradition of strong individual freedoms the state has guaranteed in the U.S. for more than 200 years. Precisely because of that, these values, imported from the Western allies after 1945, are not taken for granted.
[...]
While the U.S. has few laws concerning data privacy, Germany has something unknown to Americans: 17 state data protection supervisors (one national and one for each state), who watch over the compliance of authorities and companies with data privacy laws. Since the German state Hesse introduced the first of these laws in 1970, strict oversight like this has become common in Europe.

Some of the German data supervisors have been regular talking heads in the media for years, bashing U.S. companies like Facebook for their alleged violations of privacy of their customers. When Google photographed German streets for its Street View service, they were pushing the company to give citizens the possibility of opting out. That is why today, tens of thousands of buildings in Germany are blurred on Street View.
... ... ...

Both the Nazi secret police Gestapo and the East German Stasi spied extensively on citizens, encouraging snitching among neighbors and acquiring private communication.

It's always been a terribly paranoid country, the sheeple often times running scared from stories passed to them by government officials of boogeymen.

Okay, now let's ask that second question. What does the National Surveillance State want?

Well, let's use that handy tool of trying to put ourselves in the shoes of those determined to spy on everything boundlessly and totally. You're determined to make journalism harder, slower, and less secure by interdicting backup means of communication -- detaining couriers, invading newsrooms, that sort of thing. But you're smart, too, and you know that for every action, there is a reaction. Spies and soldiers are trained never to attack without first asking, How will the enemy react to my attack? Because that reaction could be dangerous, meaning you might have to reconsider your original plan, or it might be useful, creating a new vulnerability that you can then exploit.

Let me put it this way: do you think it's even conceivable that the National Surveillance State is engaging in tactics like detaining the spouses of journalists and invading newsrooms, without having first imagined how journalists might respond? Is it even conceivable that the spooks are unaware they're are creating an incentive for journalists to just dump everything on the Internet as a way of preempting governmental attempts at interdiction? No, it isn't conceivable. The government is engaging in these tactics knowing full well that the tactics will incentivize less careful, patient, discriminate reporting. What follows, then, is one of two things: a journalistic "data dump" reaction is either a risk the National Surveillance State is willing to take… or it is an objective it is attempting to achieve.

Which is it? I would argue the latter. Again, put yourself in the shoes of our secret overlords: if you can goad someone like Greenwald into rashly dumping improperly vetted secret information onto the Internet, is that a loss for you… or is it in fact a significant win?

WASHINGTON, Aug 26 (Reuters) - Eight Democratic U.S. senators and congressmen have asked Attorney General Eric Holder to answer questions about a Reuters report that the National Security Agency supplies the Drug Enforcement Administration with intelligence information used to make non-terrorism cases against American citizens.

The August report revealed that a secretive DEA unit passes the NSA information to agents in the field, including those from the Internal Revenue Service, the FBI and Homeland Security, with instructions to never disclose the original source, even in court. In most cases, the NSA tips involve drugs, money laundering and organized crime, not terrorism.

Five Democrats in the Senate and three senior Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee submitted questions to Holder about the NSA-DEA relationship, joining two prominent Republicans who have expressed concerns. The matter will be discussed during classified briefings scheduled for September, Republican and Democratic aides said. Huff Post

On the CBS program Face the Nation on Aug. 18, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte of Virginia, a Republican, said the use of NSA intelligence to make non-terrorism cases should be scrutinized. "I think we need to have a very careful examination of this. I think that the trust of the American people in their government is what's at stake here," he said.

A declaration in support of the motion by Edward Felten, a professor of computer science and public affairs at Princeton, warns that "even basic inspection" of the metadata on the calls made in the US each day allows the government to pry into the population's most intimate secrets. They include, Felten wrote, the "rise and fall of intimate relationships" the diagnosis of a life-threatening disease or the identity of a prospective government whistleblower.

It can reveal, Felten wrote, "when we are awake and asleep; our religion, if a person regularly makes no calls on the Sabbath, or makes a large number of calls on Christmas Day; our work habits and our social aptitude; the number of friends we have; and even our civil and political affiliations".

Calls to certain helplines, or support groups, for instance sexual assault, domestic violence or abortion clinics are all tracked by the NSA, the motion says.

The NSA's mass collection of phone metadata was approved by the Fisa Court but the ACLU says that part of the basis for the court's approval, a Supreme Court ruling called Smith vs Maryland 1979, involved narrow surveillance directed at a specific criminal suspect over a limited time period.

It argues that nothing in Smith "remotely suggests that the constitution allows the government's mass collection of sensitive information about every single phone call made or received by residents of the United States over a period of seven years."

It says that the Supreme Court has "repeatedly recognised" that the government's surveillance and investigatory activities can infringe on associational rights protected by the first amendment.