Snowdon is a dummy

WASHINGTON—The National Security Agency—which possesses only limited legal authority to spy on U.S. citizens—has built a surveillance network that covers more Americans' Internet communications than officials have publicly disclosed, current and former officials say.

The system has the capacity to reach roughly 75% of all U.S. Internet traffic in the hunt for foreign intelligence, including a wide array of communications by foreigners and Americans. In some cases, it retains the written content of emails sent between citizens within the U.S. and also filters domestic phone calls made with Internet technology, these people say.
[...]
The NSA defends its practices as legal and respectful of Americans' privacy. According to NSA spokeswoman Vanee Vines, if American communications are "incidentally collected during NSA's lawful signals intelligence activities," the agency follows "minimization procedures that are approved by the U.S. attorney general and designed to protect the privacy of United States persons."

As another U.S. official puts it, the NSA is "not wallowing willy-nilly" through Americans' idle online chatter. "We want high-grade ore." ... ... ...

PM instructed Sir Jeremy Heywood to request The Guardian hand over classified material

David Cameron instructed the Cabinet Secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood to contact The Guardian to spell out the serious consequences that could follow if it failed to hand over classified material received from Edward Snowden, it can be revealed.

Senior Whitehall sources confirmed to The Independent the Prime Minister’s central role in trying to limit revelations about UK and US intelligence operations contained in information the whistleblower received from the National Security Agency.
[...]
However security sources contacted by The Independent admit MI6 officials could have been involved. Bindmans said this account did not surprise them. “It was unclear throughout just who exactly was doing the questioning,” said Ms Morgan. Mr Miranda’s legal team in London are preparing an injunction which will demand a judicial review of the way the Schedule 7 anti-terrorism law was used against him.
[...]
Government sources deny the Prime Minister was involved in “intimidation” of a Fleet Street editor. One source said “There was no injunction, no arrests. We just wanted to get these documents [in Snowden’s possession] back.”

It was suggested that inside Number 10, Sir Jeremy had been tasked with warning The Guardian of the “dangers of holding highly sensitive information on insecure servers [computers] that could damage Britain.”

It was denied that the Cabinet Secretary’s contact with Mr Rusbridger was “threatening”. The source suggested: “We had a mature conversation.”

Yvette Cooper says parliament's intelligence watchdog should investigate after cabinet secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood reportedly asked the Guardian to destroy or surrender the files

Parliament's intelligence watchdog should investigate David Cameron's role in asking the Guardian to destroy or surrender leaked secret NSA documents, Yvette Cooper has said.

The shadow home secretary made her call after the Daily Mail and the Independent reported that Sir Jeremy Heywood, the cabinet secretary, made the request to the Guardian on the instructions of the prime minister.

Cooper told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "We don't know what was on the [disk drives] or what the material was that the government was pursuing. Clearly the government does have a responsibility to protect national security. However, I think this may be another area where an inquiry by the intelligence and security committee [ISC] may be the right way forward in terms of this particular case and what the prime minister's role was."

Alan Rusbridger, the editor of the Guardian, disclosed on Monday night that a "very senior government official claiming to represent the views of the prime minister" asked him to return or destroy all the NSA documents leaked to the paper. The Guardian agreed to destroy two hard drives last month in the presence of two security experts from Britain's GCHQ eavesdropping centre after the government threatened to take legal action.

Rusbridger told officials that the Guardian would continue to report from the leaked documents because it had backup copies in the US and in Brazil. Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian journalist who received the documents from the US whistleblower Edward Snowden, lives in Rio de Janeiro.

The Guardian declined to name the official who contacted Rusbridger. But the Daily Mail, the Independent and the BBC said that Heywood had contacted the Guardian editor, acting on the authority of the prime minister.

A government source denied to the Independent that Heywood had acted in a "threatening" manner. The source said: "We had a mature conversation." A Guardian spokeswoman declined to comment on the Independent's disclosure, telling the BBC: "We're not going to comment on this."
... ... ...

Sir Malcolm Rifkind's interview - Summary and analysis
Why was the interview with Sir Malcolm Rifkind so interesting? Well, my colleague Paul Johnson has the answer.



Spooks don't generally give interviews in the UK. But, if you want to know what the "securocrats" are thinking (to use a term favoured by Irish republicans but which, as Roy Greenslade pointed out yesterday, the Daily Mirror has started adopting too), the chair of intelligence and security committee is the next best thing. This committee reports to the prime minister, not to parliament, and it tends to be chaired by an establishment figure who has had dealings with the intelligence agencies in a ministerial career. Although it is supposedly independent, the committee is often seen as a classic Whitehall example of "regulatory capture". Rifkind's interview will do nothing to dispel this.

Here are the main points that stood out, with my analysis.

• Rifkind claimed that the Guardian's stories about the National Security Agency and GCHQ, based on information from the US whistleblower Edward Snowden, could have made it harder for the authorites to catch terrorists.

What Snowden has given to various newspapers, in the US and the UK, gave information about the way in which the intelligence agencies are able to access emails or telephone calls by people they suspect are terrorists. There are procedures that are much more sophisticated than perhaps were previously understood. And terrorists, some of whom are very smart people, will have picked up that information and will have responded accordingly, and potentially made it more difficult to get access to that information.

However, this is at odds with what Whitehall sources told the Guardian. This is what Alan Rusbridger said about this in one of his interviews yesterday.

When we met with Whitehall officials, they emphasised that they thought we had behaved responsibly in treating this material.

• Rifkind accepted that not every leak of intelligence information would be helpful to terrorists. But he went on to argue that newspapers could never be in a position to know what impact publishing intelligence information might have. The logical implication of this argument is that publishing leaked intelligence information can never be responsible, and that news organisations should never do this. It's is one view of the public interest, I suppose, but of course it is not one that most journalists would accept.

• Rifkind claimed that the Guardian agreed to destroy the hard drives with the leaked information because Rusbridger realised he was on "pretty dodgy ground". Rusbridger has already rejected this. (See 8.44am.) As he explained in interviews yesterday, he decided to destroy the hard drives because other copies were available abroad and because fighting the government over this in court could have led to the Guardian being stopped from using the material pending the outcome of the case.

• Rifkind rejected suggestions that getting the Guardian to destroy hard drives in London was a waste of time because other copies of the leaked intelligence material were available abroad. The Guardian may have been lying about other copies being available, Rifkind suggested.

• He said that there should be a "proper investigation" into whether David Miranda should have been detained using the Terrorism Act. "The question of whether the Terrorism Act should have been used in the case of Mr Miranda is a sensitive issue and it is one that deserves proper investigation," he said. He may well be carrying out that investigation himself. Earlier on the programme Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, said Rifkind's committee should carry out an inquiry (although she was concentrating on David Cameron's role in getting the Guardian to destroy computer hard drives).

I'll leave the last word to the editor (always a wise move in a news organisation).

11.52am BST
The Daily Mail has published a hatchet job on the Guardian today in relation to the David Miranda affair. It's by Stephen Glover. Here's an extract.

Here we come to the darkest part of this story. Mr Greenwald’s reaction to the detention of his partner has been to threaten Britain explicitly. ‘I will be far more aggressive in my reporting from now,’ he said. ‘I have many documents on England’s spy system. I think they will be sorry for what they did.’

In other words, Mr Greenwald has information damaging to Britain which, for whatever reason, he has not yet published, but will now do so because of what was done to his partner. I am sickened by this ugly threat and amazed that any journalist could utter it.

If the Guardian is employing at least one reporter driven by revenge to damage this country, hasn’t the time come for the paper to review this connection with Edward Snowden? Hasn’t this whole thing got out of hand?

The police at Heathrow may have acted excessively, but the Guardian appears to have entered very dangerous waters where journalists who care for their country should not venture.

Obviously, the idea of a Mail journalist complaining about "aggressive" journalism is something that can give us all a good laugh.

Q: Lord Falconer says the law used to detain David Miranda should only be used to establish if someone is a terrorist.

May says she was concerned to hear the BBC argue this morning, in the Evan Davis interview with Malcolm Rifkind, that Miranda was detained to prevent embarrassment to the police. That was not the case.

Q: But do you agree with Falconer?

May says the police thought they were entitled to detain Miranda.

Q: But do you think they were right?

May says the police thought Miranda had information that could be of value to terrorists.

Q: When were you told about Miranda's detention?

May says she was told in advance.

Q: David Davis says that means you endorsed the detention.

May says she does not take operational decsions. Those are matters for the police.

Q: Where you told on the day? Or some days before?

May says she was told in advance.

Q: How far in advance?

May says she will not go into that. She believes that it is right for the police to use schedule 7 against someone if they believe they have information that could be of value to terrorists.

Q: If this information was so important, why did it take so long to act against the Guardian?

May says the government decided to take action. There were discussions with the Guardian. Officials were able to destroy the material.

Q: But it was purely symbolic, wasn't it?

May says the Guardian may be claiming that other copies of the information exist. But the government had to act. If the government had acted earlier, Kearney would be complaining about the Guardian not being allowed to publish stories.

In fact the main point I might give him is that it does seem as if Greenwald has intentions of engaging in revenge reporting.

I will be far more aggressive in my reporting from now. I am going to publish many more documents. I am going to publish things on England too. I have many documents on England's spy system. I think they will be sorry for what they did," Greenwald, speaking in Portuguese, told reporters at Rio's airport where he met Miranda upon his return to Brazil.

I want to make one primary point about that. On Monday, Reuters did the same thing to me as they did last month: namely, they again wildly distorted comments I made in an interview - speaking in Portuguese, at 5:00 am at the Rio airport, waiting for my partner to come home -to manufacture the sensationalizing headline that I was "threatening" the UK government with "revenge" journalism. That wasn't remotely what I said or did, as I explained last night in a CNN interview (see Part 2).

But vowing to report on the nefarious secret spying activities of a large government - which is what I did - is called "journalism", not "revenge". As the Washington Post headline to Andrea Peterson's column on Monday explained: "No, Glenn Greenwald didn't 'vow vengeance.' He said he was going to do his job." She added:

"Greenwald's point seems to have been that he was determined not to be scared off by intimidation. Greenwald and the Guardian have already been publishing documents outlining surveillance programs in Britain, and Greenwald has long declared his intention to continue publishing documents. By doing so, Greenwald isn't taking 'vengeance.' He's just doing his job."More

May and her Tory colleagues have not always had a happy relationship with the police, but on this issue they are defending them unusually robustly. (Perhaps that's a sign that Miranda's detention was politically motivated, but at this stage that is just speculation.)

I'd really like to know what the US position/response was when it was given a "heads up" that Miranda was likely to be retained under an anti-terrorism law.

... Officials, including NSA Director Keith Alexander, have assured the public that the government knows the scope of the damage, but two separate sources briefed on the matter told NBC News that the NSA has been unable to determine how many documents he took and what they are.
[...]
One U.S. intelligence official said government officials “are overwhelmed" trying to account for what Snowden took. Another said that the NSA has a poor audit capability, which is frustrating efforts to complete a damage assessment.
Appearing at the Aspen Security Forum on July 18, NSA Director Alexander responded "Yes" when NBC News correspondent Pete Williams asked, "Do you feel you now know what [Snowden] got?" Asked "Was it a lot?", Alexander again said, "Yes."
On Tuesday, NSA spokesperson Vanee Vines said Alexander's Aspen answer was not intended as "a hard, 'We know everything, completely,' answer to Williams' question."
"He did not say the assessment had been completed in absolute terms," Vines added in an email. "The Director answered a question about his general sense." ... ... ...

The leadership of the House intelligence committee is under growing pressure to explain whether it withheld surveillance information from members of Congress before a key vote to renew the Patriot Act.

A Republican congressman and government ethics watchdogs are demanding that the powerful panel's chairman, Mike Rogers of Michigan, responds to charges that the panel's leadership failed to share a document prepared by the justice department and intelligence community.

The document was explicitly created to inform non-committee members about bulk collection of Americans' phone records ahead of the vote in 2011. Michigan Republican Justin Amash alleged that the committee kept it from non-committee members – the majority of the House.

Now Morgan Griffith, a Republican who represents Virginia's ninth district, is calling for answers. "I certainly think leadership needs to figure out what's going on. We're trying to get information so we can do our jobs as congressmen," he told the Guardian. "If we're not able to get that information, it's inappropriate."

"Obviously, this is of concern," he added.

Griffith has been been critical of the committee for blocking attempts by non-members to obtain information about classified programs. On August 4, the Guardian published a series of letters he had written to the committee requesting more details, all of which had gone unanswered.

The accusations broaden the focus of the surveillance controversy from the National Security Agency to one of the congressional committees charged with exercising oversight of it – and the panel's closeness to the NSA it is supposed to oversee.

Amash told the Guardian on Monday that he had confirmed with the House intelligence committee that the committee did not make non-committee members aware of the classified overview from 2011 of the bulk phone records collection program first revealed by the Guardian thanks to whistleblower Edward Snowden. The document was expressly designed to be shared with legislators who did not serve on the panel; it appears that a corresponding document for the Senate in 2011 was made available to all senators.

"Nobody I've spoken to in my legislative class remembers seeing any such document," Amash said.

Amash speculated that the House intelligence committee withheld the document in order to ensure the Patriot Act would win congressional reauthorization, as it ultimately did.

For the second consecutive day, the House intelligence committee's spokeswoman, Susan Phelan, did not respond to the Guardian's queries about the accuracy of Amash's allegation. Phelan, however, told The Hill newspaper that the committee held pre-vote briefings for all House members ahead of the Patriot vote. She did not deny Amash's claim.

Amash countered that members who attend classified briefings conducted by the panel, formally known as the House permanent select committee on intelligence or HPSCI, often receive fragmentary information.

"The presenters rarely volunteer the critically important information and it becomes a game of 20 Questions," Amash told the Guardian.

Government ethics experts accused the committee of betraying its oversight mandate. More

Ever since the intelligence reforms of the 1970s, Congress has struck an institutional deal with the intelligence agencies: to balance the needs for protecting government secrets and informing the public, oversight is the responsibility of two committees, one in the House and one in the Senate, that conduct most of their business in secret.

Members who do not sit on the committees have little recourse but to rely on their colleagues on the secret panels to accurately inform them about complex and often controversial intelligence programs.

Yet over decades, the relationship between the intelligence committees and the intelligence agencies has become more often collegial than adversarial. When the House intelligence committee held its first public hearing into the ongoing NSA bulk collection of Americans' phone records, it titled the hearing 'How Disclosed NSA Programs Protect Americans, and Why Disclosure Aids our Adversaries'.

The panel's chairman, Mike Rogers, is a former FBI agent. Its ranking Democrat, Dutch Ruppersberger of Maryland, received over $220,000 in campaign contributions during his past term from the defense and intelligence industries, according to David Kravets of Wired. Both are staunch advocates of the NSA bulk surveillance programs.

"The congressional committees charged with oversight of the intelligence community have long been captive to, and protective of, the intelligence agencies," said Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight.

"Many of the congressional staff, in fact, come from those agencies. This latest revelation demonstrates the harm caused by that conflict of interest. When the congressional oversight committee is more loyal to the agency it oversees than to the legislative chamber its members were elected to serve in, the public's interest is seriously compromised."

Prime minister John Key defends shakeup of GCSB spy agency after critics warn of threat to freedom
... The prime minister, John Key, said the changes bolster oversight and settle confusion in the previous law, making it clear that the GCSB – similar to Britain's GCHQ – can conduct surveillance on behalf of domestic agencies, under warrant.

Opponents of the bill have argued that the new provisions giving GCSB the task of protecting New Zealanders from cyber-attack open a door to mass surveillance of electronic communications.

The prime minister has maintained that the measures, which he has compared to a Norton Antivirus for the country, do no such thing, and has pledged to resign should the agency be found to have embarked on mass surveillance. ...