{"id":44785,"date":"2013-06-24T17:50:36","date_gmt":"2013-06-24T16:50:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/nsa-spying-and-intelligence-collection-a-giant-blackmail-machine-and-warrantless-wiretapping-program\/44785\/"},"modified":"2013-06-24T17:50:36","modified_gmt":"2013-06-24T16:50:36","slug":"nsa-spying-and-intelligence-collection-a-giant-blackmail-machine-and-warrantless-wiretapping-program","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/nsa-spying-and-intelligence-collection-a-giant-blackmail-machine-and-warrantless-wiretapping-program\/","title":{"rendered":"NSA Spying and Intelligence Collection: A Giant Blackmail Machine and \u201cWarrantless Wiretapping\u201d Program"},"content":{"rendered":"

Despite a stream of mendacious twaddle from President Obama, congressional grifters and spook agency mouthpieces like Office of the Director of National Intelligence head James Clapper, FBI Director Robert Mueller and NSA chief General Keith Alexander, it turns out our guardians are listening in to America\u2019s, and most of the world\u2019s, telephone conversations after all.<\/em><\/p>\n

In the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing, former FBI counter-terrorism agent Tim Clemente was asked<\/a> by CNN whether there\u2019s a way that investigators \u201ccan get the phone companies\u201d to cough up audio of a particular conversation.<\/p>\n

Clemente responded: \u201cNo, there is a way. We certainly have ways in national security investigations to find out exactly what was said in that conversation. It\u2019s not necessarily something that the FBI is going to want to present in court, but it may help lead the investigation and\/or lead to questioning of her [the alleged bomber’s wife]. We certainly can find that out.\u201d<\/p>\n

CNN\u2019s incredulous reply: \u201cSo they can actually get that? People are saying, look, that is incredible.\u201d<\/p>\n

Clemente: \u201cNo, welcome to America. All of that stuff is being captured as we speak whether we know it or like it or not.\u201d<\/p>\n

When questioned<\/a> the next day whether he would confirm his previous statements, Clemente told CNN, \u201cI\u2019m talking about all digital communications are\u2014there\u2019s a way to look at digital communications in the past. I can\u2019t go into detail of how that\u2019s done or what\u2019s done. But I can tell you that no digital communication is secure. So these communications will be found out. The conversation will be known.\u201d<\/p>\n

While there was scant media follow-up to Clemente\u2019s assertions, recent revelations of NSA dragnet spying have confirmed what analysts, researchers and whistleblowers have been saying for years: the secret state has the technological wherewithal to digitally record the content of all electronic communications, including telephone calls, and store them in massive cloud computing server farms in the event they\u2019re needed for future \u201creference.\u201d<\/p>\n

And as it turns out, according to Internet Archive<\/a> founder, computer engineer Brewster Kahle, who has wide experience storing large amounts of data, the cost of doing so is incredibly cheap.<\/p>\n

A spreadsheet<\/a> created by Kahle estimates it would cost the government a mere $27 million to \u201cstore all phonecalls made in a year in the \u2018cloud\u2019.\u201d To do so would require less than 5,000 square feet of space and $2 million in electricity costs to store the estimated 272 petabytes of data generated annually in the United States!<\/p>\n

A Giant Blackmail Machine<\/strong><\/p>\n

Recent disclosures by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden have done much to dispel remaining myths (government spying is \u201cfocused,\u201d \u201clegal,\u201d etc.) surrounding the secret state\u2019s privacy-killing surveillance programs.<\/p>\n

It now seems likely that NSA is hoovering up far more than the \u201ctelephony metadata\u201d revealed by The Guardian\u2019s<\/em> publication of the secret FISA Court Order<\/a> to Verizon Business Services.<\/p>\n

Following-up on PRISM program reporting, The Washington Post<\/a><\/em> disclosed June 15 that the Bush administration\u2019s \u201cwarrantless wiretapping\u201d program STELLAR WIND \u201cwas succeeded by four major lines of intelligence collection in the territorial United States, together capable of spanning the full range of modern telecommunications, according to the interviews and documents.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTwo of the four collection programs, one each for telephony and the Internet,\u201d Barton Gellman reported, \u201cprocess trillions of \u2018metadata\u2019 records for storage and analysis in systems called MAINWAY and MARINA, respectively.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to the Post<\/em>, \u201cMetadata includes highly revealing information about the times, places, devices and participants in electronic communication, but not its contents. The bulk collection of telephone call records from Verizon Business Services, disclosed this month by the British newspaper the Guardian, is one source of raw intelligence for MAINWAY.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dropping a bombshell, although withholding supporting documents, Gellman reports that the \u201cother two types of collection, which operate on a much smaller scale, are aimed at content. One of them intercepts telephone calls and routes the spoken words to a system called \u00adNUCLEON.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cMARINA and the collection tools that feed it are probably the least known of the NSA\u2019s domestic operations,\u201d the Post<\/em> averred. \u201cYet they probably capture information about more American citizens than any other, because the volume of e-mail, chats and other Internet communications far exceeds the volume of standard telephone calls.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe NSA calls Internet metadata \u2018digital network information.\u2019 Sophisticated analysis of those records can reveal unknown associates of known terrorism suspects. Depending on the methods applied, it can also expose medical conditions, political or religious affiliations, confidential business negotiations and extramarital affairs.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In other words, it seems likely that harvested data gleaned from phone calls, emails, video chats and credit card records are being used in ways that are as old as the spy game itself: political and economic blackmail<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Indeed, NSA whistleblower Russ Tice, the principal source for The New York Times<\/a><\/em> expos\u00c3\u00a9 of illegal Bush administration spy programs, told Sibel Edmonds\u2019 Boiling Frogs Post<\/em> podcast<\/a> that the secret state has ordered surveillance on a wide range of groups and individuals, including antiwar activists, high-ranking military officials, lawmakers and diplomats.<\/p>\n

According to Tice:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cOkay. They went after\u2014and I know this because I had my hands literally on the paperwork for these sort of things\u2014they went after high-ranking military officers; they went after members of Congress, both Senate and the House, especially on the intelligence committees and on the armed services committees and some of the\u2014and judicial. But they went after other ones, too. They went after lawyers and law firms. All kinds of\u2014heaps of lawyers and law firms. They went after judges. One of the judges is now sitting on the Supreme Court that I had his wiretap information in my hand. Two are former FISA court judges. They went after State Department officials. They went after people in the executive service that were part of the White House\u2014their own people. They went after antiwar groups. They went after US international\u2014US companies that that do international business, you know, business around the world. They went after US banking firms and financial firms that do international business. They went after NGOs that\u2014like the Red Cross, people like that that go overseas and do humanitarian work. They went after a few antiwar and civil rights groups. So, you know, don\u2019t tell me that there\u2019s no abuse, because I\u2019ve had this stuff in my hand and looked at it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHere\u2019s the big one,\u201d Tice told hosts Sibel Edmonds and Peter B. Collins, \u201cthis was in summer of 2004, one of the papers that I held in my hand was to wiretap a bunch of numbers associated with a 40-something-year-old wannabe senator for Illinois. You wouldn\u2019t happen to know where that guy lives right now would you? It\u2019s a big white house in Washington, D.C. That\u2019s who they went after, and that\u2019s the president of the United States now.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Other political targets revealed by Tice included all nine<\/em> Supreme Court justices, Senate Intelligence Committee head Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), House Minority leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and ousted CIA director General David Petraeus, who allegedly resigned over a sex scandal.<\/p>\n

Is it any wonder then, that House and Senate leaders driving the \u201coversight\u201d clown car are the ones now braying loudest for Ed Snowden\u2019s head!<\/p>\n

Like ECHELON, Only on Steroids<\/strong><\/p>\n

A new series of disclosures published by The Guardian<\/a><\/em>, based on the Snowden files but, like the Post<\/em>, without public disclosure of the actual documents, we learned that Britain\u2019s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) \u201chas secretly gained access to the network of cables which carry the world\u2019s phone calls and internet traffic and has started to process vast streams of sensitive personal information which it is sharing with its American partner, the National Security Agency (NSA).\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe sheer scale of the agency\u2019s ambition is reflected in the titles of its two principal components: Mastering the Internet and Global Telecoms Exploitation, aimed at scooping up as much online and telephone traffic as possible,\u201d The Guardian<\/em> reported.<\/p>\n

Britain\u2019s \u201cMastering the Internet\u201d scheme was first reported by The Register<\/a><\/em> and The Sunday Times<\/a><\/em> back in 2009; Antifascist Calling<\/a><\/em> published an analysis of NSA\u2019s key role in the GCHQ program; a few months later, citing documents posted by WikiLeaks<\/a>, AFC<\/a><\/em> commented on the cozy relations amongst private intelligence contractors, the European Union and the secret state.<\/p>\n

The architecture of these highly intrusive, illegal programs was created decades ago however, in intelligence-sharing arrangements in the English speaking world under the rubric of NSA\u2019s global surveillance network known as ECHELON.<\/p>\n

As one of the \u201cFive Eyes\u201d partner agencies of the Cold War-era UKUSA Security Agreement (US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) exposed by journalists Duncan Campbell<\/a> and Nicky Hager<\/a> in their ECHELON investigations, GCHQ, through a contemporary operation code named TEMPORA, has tapped into and stored vast quantities of data gleaned from fiber optic cables passing through the UK.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis includes recordings of phone calls, the content of email messages, entries on Facebook and the history of any internet user\u2019s access to websites\u2014all of which is deemed legal, even though the warrant system was supposed to limit interception to a specified range of targets,\u201d The Guardian<\/em> reported.<\/p>\n

But as we know from Campbell and Hager\u2019s reporting, while intelligence and law enforcement officials in Britain and the United States are required to obtain an individualized<\/em> warrant to target a suspect\u2019s communications in their own nation, no such restrictions apply<\/em> should one of the five \u201cpartner agencies\u201d spy on another country\u2019s citizens. One must assume this arrangement continues today.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe documents reveal that by last year GCHQ was handling 600m \u2018telephone events\u2019 each day,\u201d The Guardian<\/em> disclosed, and \u201chad tapped more than 200 fibre-optic cables and was able to process data from at least 46 of them at a time.\u201d<\/p>\n

That GCHQ did so on the basis of \u201csecret agreements with commercial companies, described in one document as \u2018intercept partners\u2019,\u201d should come as now surprise to readers of this blog.<\/p>\n

According to Snowden documents \u201cseen\u201d but not published by The Guardian<\/em>, \u201csome companies have been paid for the cost of their co-operation and GCHQ went to great lengths to keep their names secret. They were assigned \u2018sensitive relationship teams\u2019 and staff were urged in one internal guidance paper to disguise the origin of \u2018special source\u2019 material in their reports for fear that the role of the companies as intercept partners would cause \u2018high-level political fallout\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not just a US problem. The UK has a huge dog in this fight,\u201d Snowden told The Guardian<\/em>. \u201cThey [GCHQ] are worse than the US.\u201d<\/p>\n

The latest revelations have certainly raised eyebrows in Hong Kong and China, long accused by US political hacks of waging \u201caggressive cyberwarfare\u201d against US defense and financial networks.<\/p>\n

On Sunday, the South China Morning Post<\/a><\/em> disclosed that \u201cUS spies are hacking into Chinese mobile phone companies to steal text messages and attacking the servers at Tsinghua University,\u201d according to documents provided to the Post<\/em> by Edward Snowden.<\/p>\n

The Post<\/em> revealed that the US is \u201chacking\u201d computers \u201cat the Hong Kong headquarters of Pacnet, which owns one of the most extensive submarine cable networks in the region.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPacnet,\u201d the Hong Kong newspaper explained, \u201crecently signed major deals with the mainland\u2019s top mobile phone companies, owns more than 46,000 kilometres of fibre-optic cables. The cables connect its regional data centres across the Asia-Pacific region, including Hong Kong, the mainland, Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan. It also has offices in the US.\u201d<\/p>\n

Talk about the (US) pot calling the (Chinese) kettle black!<\/p>\n

NSA Data Fed to Main Core Security Index?<\/strong><\/p>\n

As sinister as these programs are, is there another component which taps \u201cinto data from an ad-hoc collection of so-called \u2018black programs\u2019 whose existence is undisclosed,\u201d as alluded to by The Wall Street Journal<\/a><\/em> five years ago?<\/p>\n

In a recent interview with the conservative web site, The Daily Caller<\/a><\/em>, former NSA technical director and whistleblower William Binney said while he doesn\u2019t think \u201cthey\u2019re recording all of it,\u201d what they do however, \u201cis take their target list, which is somewhere on the order of 500,000 to a million people. They look through these phone numbers and they target those and that\u2019s what they record.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201c500,000 to a million people\u201d? Who are they? Foreign citizens, Americans? If the latter, is Binney\u2019s statement confirmation of reporting by journalists Christopher Ketchum<\/a> and Tim Shorrock<\/a> about the existence of a secret \u201cContinuity of Government\u201d database of \u201csuspect\u201d Americans known as Main Core?<\/p>\n

\u201cOne knowledgeable source claims that 8 million Americans are now listed in Main Core as potentially suspect,\u201d Ketchum reported. \u201cIn the event of a national emergency, these people could be subject to everything from heightened surveillance and tracking to direct questioning and possibly even detention.\u201d<\/p>\n

As we now know, US government intelligence agencies including the CIA, DHS, the FBI, military outfits such as US Northern Command and the 70-odd \u201cpublic-private\u201d fusion centers scattered across the country have spied on antiwar activists, Ron Paul supporters, anarchists, socialists, gun rights\u2019 proponents and, as revealed by journalist Beau Hodai in his troubling report, Dissent or Terror<\/a><\/em>, Occupy Wall Street.<\/p>\n

Did all the data secretly scooped up on law-abiding Americans exercising their constitutionally protected right to free speech wind up in the government\u2019s ultra-secret Main Core security index?<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cAnother well-informed source\u2014a former military operative regularly briefed by members of the intelligence community\u201d told Ketchum: \u201c\u2018The more data you have on a particular target, the better [the software] can predict what the target will do, where the target will go, who it will turn to for help,\u2019 he says. \u2018Main Core is the table of contents for all the illegal information that the U.S. government has [compiled] on specific targets.\u2019 An intelligence expert who has been briefed by high-level contacts in the Department of Homeland Security confirms that a database of this sort exists, but adds that \u2018it is less a mega-database than a way to search numerous other agency databases at the same time\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

A few months after Ketchum\u2019s report appeared, Shorrock informed us that during an interview with financial consultant Norman Bailey, who headed \u201ca special unit within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence focused on financial intelligence on Cuba and Venezuela\u2014the NSA has been using its vast powers with signals intelligence to track financial transactions around the world since the early 1980s.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u201cAfter 9\/11,\u201d Bailey told Shorrock, NSA signals intelligence intercept capabilities were \u201cinstantly seen within the US government as a critical tool in the war on terror\u2014and apparently was deployed by the Bush administration inside the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIn September 2001,\u201d Shorrock disclosed, \u201ca contemporary version of the [Reagan era] Continuity of Government program was put into play in the hours after the 9\/11 terrorist attacks, when Vice President Cheney and senior members of Congress were dispersed to \u2018undisclosed locations\u2019 to maintain government functions.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was during this emergency period,\u201d Shorrock wrote, \u201cthat President Bush may have authorized the NSA to begin actively using the Main Core database for domestic surveillance.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf Main Core does exist, says Philip Giraldi, a former CIA counterterrorism officer and an outspoken critic of the agency, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is its likely home,\u201d Ketchum averred.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201c\u2018If a master list is being compiled, it would have to be in a place where there are no legal issues\u2019\u2014the CIA and FBI would be restricted by oversight and accountability laws\u2014\u2019so I suspect it is at DHS, which as far as I know operates with no such restraints\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGiraldi notes that DHS already maintains a central list of suspected terrorists and has been freely adding people who pose no reasonable threat to domestic security. \u2018It\u2019s clear that DHS has the mandate for controlling and owning master lists. The process is not transparent, and the criteria for getting on the list are not clear.\u2019 Giraldi continues, \u2018I am certain that the content of such a master list [as Main Core] would not be carefully vetted, and there would be many names on it for many reasons\u2014quite likely, including the two of us\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

While we don\u2019t know whether Binney is referring to the NSA component of Main Core, or some other highly illegal, hitherto unknown program, his statements seem to confirm Gellman\u2019s reporting in The Washington Post<\/em> that \u201cspoken words\u201d are routed \u201cto a system called \u00adNUCLEON.\u201d Again, without publishing supporting documentation supplied by Edward Snowden, the picture is far from clear.<\/p>\n

Recent revelations however, building on scandals surrounding the interception of the sensitive communications of Associated Press and Fox News reporters, along with President Obama\u2019s Nixonian obsession with stopping \u201cleaks\u201d as part of the administration\u2019s war on whistleblowers, it should be clear by now that the police state Rubicon has already<\/em> been crossed.<\/p>\n

In 1976, during Senate hearings into earlier government lawbreaking, Senator Frank Church warned: \u201cThe National Security Agency\u2019s capability at any time could be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn\u2019t matter. There would be no place to hide. If a dictator ever took over, the NSA could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want to see this country ever go across the bridge,\u201d Senator Church cautioned. \u201cI know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.\u201d<\/p>\n

What should also be clear, is that the bipartisan consensus<\/em> that seeks to criminalize the leak and not the illegality of the programs exposed, reflects the profound fear in elite Washington circles of the American people. As opposition to endless war and austerity continues to percolate below the surface, it is only a matter of time before the breaking point is reached.<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on: Global Research<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Despite a stream of mendacious twaddle from President Obama, congressional grifters and spook agency mouthpieces like Office of the Director of National Intelligence head James Clapper, FBI Director Robert Mueller and NSA chief General Keith Alexander, it turns out our guardians are listening in to America\u2019s, and most of the world\u2019s, telephone conversations after all. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-44785","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-breaking-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44785","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44785"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44785\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}