Nearly three years after NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden gave journalists his trove of documents on the intelligence community’s broad and powerful surveillance regime, the public is still missing some crucial, basic facts about how the operations work.
Surveillance researchers and privacy advocates published a report on Wednesday outlining what we do know, thanks to the period of discovery post-Snowden — and the overwhelming amount of things we don’t.
The NSA’s domestic surveillance was understandably the initial focus of public debate. But that debate never really moved on to examine the NSA’s vastly bigger foreign operations.
“There has been relatively little public or congressional debate within the United States about the NSA’s overseas surveillance operations,” write Faiza Patel and Elizabeth Goitein, co-directors of the Brennan Center for Justice’s Liberty and National Security Program, and Amos Toh, legal adviser for David Kaye, the U.N. special rapporteur on the right to freedom of opinion and expression.
The central guidelines the NSA is supposed to follow while spying abroad are described in Executive Order 12333, issued by President Ronald Reagan in 1981, which the authors describe as “a black box.”
Just Security, a national security law blog, and the Brennan Center for Justice are co-hosting a panel on Thursday on Capitol Hill to discuss the policy, where the NSA’s privacy and civil liberties officer, Rebecca Richards, will be present.
And the independent government watchdog, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, which has authored in-depth reports on other NSA programs, intends to publish a report on 12333 surveillance programs “this year,” according to spokesperson Jen Burita.
In the meantime, the authors of the report came up with a list of questions they say need to be answered to create an informed public debate.
1. How far does the law go?
The authors ask: How does the NSA actually interpret the law — most of which is public — and use it to justify its tactics? Are there any other laws governing overseas surveillance that are still hidden from public view?
When Congress discovered how the NSA was citing Section 215 of the Patriot Act as giving it the authority to vacuum up massive amounts of information about American telephone calls, many were shocked. One of the Patriot Act’s original authors, Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., has repeatedly said the NSA abused what was meant to be a narrow law.
“The public deserves to know how the agencies interpret their duties and obligations under the Constitution and international law,” the authors write.
2. Who’s watching the spies?
How can we know there’s proper oversight of the intelligence community, both internally and through Congress? Does Congress even know what it’s funding, especially when intelligence work is contracted out to the private sector?
Lawmakers have complained that they learned more about NSA spying from the media and Snowden than from classified hearings.
3. How much foreign spying ends up in domestic courts?
The authors wonder how evidence collected through foreign spying is used in court, and whether or not “targets” of the surveillance are told about the NSA’s search when that search finds data that can be used against them.
Officials told New York Times reporter Charlie Savage that “in practice … the government already avoids” introducing evidence obtained directly from 12333 intercepts “so as not to have to divulge the origins of the evidence in court.” “But the officials contend,” Savage wrote, “that defendants have no right to know if 12333 intercepts provided a tip from which investigators derived other evidence.”
4. How many words don’t mean what we think they mean?
Some of the report’s questions focus on the NSA’s use of language when it describes different programs. Though words like “collection” and “gathering” sound synonymous to us, the NSA could be using them differently, leading to misinterpretation of what the agency is actually doing. “Is the term ‘collection’ interpreted differently from the terms ‘interception,’ ‘gathering,’ and ‘acquisition’?” the authors ask.
5. Where does it end?
When the NSA says a search is “targeted,” could the agency still be sweeping up a lot of information? And not just about foreigners?
Does the agency use vague search terms like “ISIS” or “nuclear” when combing through communications, thereby grabbing up data from millions of innocent people simply discussing the news?
And how much American data is swept up, either on purpose or incidentally, when Americans talk with friends overseas, or their messages are routed through other countries due to the way the internet works?
“The fact that [12333 programs] are conducted abroad rather than at home makes little difference in an age where data and information flows are unconstrained by geography, and where the constitutional rights of Americans are just as easily compromised by operations in London as those in Los Angeles,” the authors write.
Related:
- The Ghost of Ronald Reagan Authorizes Most NSA Spying
- Obama Faces Calls to Reform Reagan-Era Mass Surveillance Order
Top photo: NSA’s Fort Meade headquarters in 2006.
Jenna McLaughlin’s article today makes wonderful points. Recall that post 9/11 when the CIA and military went torture happy, that most if not all of that was intentionally situated outside of the US or even outsourced to friendly dictatorships. Likewise the fetish over keeping Guantanamo for such purposes, otherwise subject to US court jurisdiction.
This reflects the hyper-legalistic-bureaucratic mindset that if it didn’t happen on US soil, it must be legal and okay to do. What happens in Diego Garcia stays in Diego Garcia.
So Jenna is right to question how much of NSA claims about not spying on Americans is really true. If the spying mechanisms are located in say, Canada, do they then claim Americans aren’t spied upon? They did this for torture, so invasive spying would be a logical extension of that thinking.
And since Congress and the courts are kept in the dark (for “our” protection they say) no one really knows what the NSA is doing.
The Quantum Hand. Microtubules inside neurons are like quantum computers having superposition (being both 1s and 0s) because of quantum gravity. Hanging there right on the the edge between quantum and classical levels the physics of the very small put much much more in play than any Cointelpro 2 Hacking Team FinFisher FBI TAO aided psyops currently on the market.
Free will is the collective process of millions of individual neurons being presented with an exponential series of choices within ever expanding multiverses yielding in each case a single outcome from the point of the each observer in turn.
Quantum mechanics is the stuff dreams are made of. Quantum mechanics is the stuff moral or immoral choices (Recording analyzing and quantifying subject responses to adverse physicial or psychological stressors reduced to simple “human experimentation”) are made of ones own free will.
The amount of energy required to power or redirect quantum mechanics at the sub neural level is minimal. Think Parameceum. Things like room temperature, ambient light or diffuse electromagnetic fields (or not so diffuse electromagnetic fields like your home communications network, smart meters and/or our respective internets of things) provide infinite sources of power for initiating or inhibiting processes on the quantum level.
http://mkaku.org/home/publications/about-the-future-of-the-mind/
I do agree that that’s a very disconcerting situation that has (for whatever reason) come to exist in the world today. Sometimes I have trouble sleeping
because I can’t help but wonder who’s playing with who’s life as though they’re pieces of dust that can simply be swept away or removed from existence at the click of a button because somebody somewhere blinked at the wrong time after some delusional psychopath spying on them illegally noticed them be unable to prevent the fact that they were aware of the human rights violation being committed against them. What are their names, anyway? And how do they prevent themselves from becoming emotionally attached to the people whose lives they ruin or end with the click of a mouse? Why won’t they tell us how either becoming completely emotionally detached or attached is useful to them regarding the control of society’s thoughts and actions and beliefs?
the fetishizement of collect it all to know it is at large, and smells plain worst than all the kosher hitlerianism, kosher bolchevism regimes combined. At the rate the usa governance is going, the constitutional rule of law is being subverted. There is no such thing as consitutional subvertion either just like the no such agency slogan. Disgusting is short- Alejandro Grace Ararat
Oh, BTW, I hope Edward Snowden has more on the NSA’s collection of our brain waves.
http://www.offthegridnews.com/privacy/report-nsa-data-mining-project-working-to-read-brain-waves/
Reading brain waves isn’t necessary. Consumer electronic devices are so ubiquitous now that the spy agencies could know more about one individual than she knows about herself, just be tapping those devices. With huge data centers springing up in Utah and elsewhere around the world, the spy agencies are trying to apply this to every single person in the industrialized world.
The capabilities go beyond anything the old East German “counterterrorism” agency, the Stasi, could have dreamed up.
So, regarding a brain waves project: I see the glass as being half full. More money spent on outlandish stuff like that means less money spent on harassing ordinary people who pose no threat. What can be done using existing consumer electronics is way more scary than anything than can be done with brain waves.
I haven’t read the article about the data mining of peoples’ brainwaves yet, but what happens when they can read peoples’ thoughts without their permission, consent or knowledge and know that they only buy gas at Wal-Mart because they know that the NSA (for example) prefers for them to do so because they’ll be more likely to purchase a firearm legally instead of from some gang banger who they’ll never speak to again so that they can continue to profit from the delusion that the NSA and the FBI perpetuate separate revolving doors in order to have more visible minorities end up in prison for crimes they never did or will commit? And when is the NSA going to inform the FBI before a Senate committee that they can essentially read peoples’ minds and prevent a terrorist attack in order to negate the responsibility allocated to them by whatever war criminal is in the White House at the time whenever whichever one it is decides to finally renege on their commitment to themselves and corporate CEOs to not explain how breaking the law by saying that not breaking the law is a justification for
breaking the law as long as you don’t say don’t break the law before you break the law and force preventative law enforcement instead of reactionary methods that are mainly used to control the general populace?
Guess I’ll go read that article now before the NSA decides it’s worth their time to have me arrested (or to convince the police that it’s worth theirs) for reading it.
Question: Why do we have to pay taxes to have our government spy on us? Shouldn’t there be some deduction for that? Perhaps the National Screwyouity Agency’s motto should be: Bend over America!
A nice article. I especially like Question #4. Somebody is getting smarter.
The NSA used to be called No Such Agency. The Feds denied that it even existed despite the fact that it was much larger the the CIA.
So my question would be What other Spy agencies are we funding that we don’t know about? Wiki-Spypedia?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_intelligence_agencies
“The public is still missing some crucial, basic facts about how the operations work.”
Good.
Because there would be mass rioting if people found out?
I’ve got one, Jenna, but they won’t like it.
Q: Exactly who the hell do the NSA and CIA really work for and take orders from?
Empire’s hidden owners clearly hold a more enduring power of command than OUR country’s constitutionally elected and empowered civilian authority, which hasn’t been allowed true oversight of anything since Iran-Contra?
So just wondering, though I wouldn’t expect an answer.
It’s a problem. You see, the way the system works is that material and programs are compartmented, which means that need to know does not extend very far. Now, a reasonable person might think that certain individuals, such as the POTUS, DNI, DCI, and DIRNSA would have purview over all their programs (or in the case of the President, all the programs) but practically speaking that is an impossibility, because there are so many of them that at most the leadership has only vague knowledge of a given program’s existence.
While this precludes effective oversight, it also provides credible deniability. So Clapper for instance might have been telling a version of the truth when he lied to Congress about domestic spying; it may be that he was not aware of the scope of the program over which he had supervisory authority. (I am not excusing him, BTW.)
Given that the system is so large and complex as to be uncontrollable, the only logical thing to do is to pare it back to something that is manageable. Though the agencies might fret over the loss of money (couched in their terms of coverage) it would actually be beneficial for more than monetary and civil libertarian reasons: it might enable them to actually coordinate, so that in the future things like 9-11 do not fall through the crack.
You see, Jeff, having spent a lifetime in the belly of the beast – you parroted a lot apologist crap I’ve heard plenty before and almost nothing I haven’t lived. All of it avoids a legitimate question like a pro, though, laying any inherent evil solely at the doorstep of an empire that’s somehow just too big and out of control. I ain’t buyin’ it. Somebody’s implementing what looks to be a 10 year plan to take Africa – and Western “democracies,” those not being overthrown by the CIA / State Department for placing people above corporations, are increasingly also in a lock-down mode against journalists and leakers. No need to strap those blinkers a bit tighter though. You didn’t just excuse it, you actually apologized for it all like a believer.
Apologist crap? I think not. The fact is that the lack of control is due in part to the sheer size, coupled with the system of compartmentalization. My remarks were addressed to your question as to whether anyone was in charge of the detailed operations. As for policy, that is an entirely different matter, and I agree that the agendas of every president since Carter have shared the common goal of overthrowing any government that is not compliant to the interests of the US, which is to say, US corporations. And Carter himself was not free of sin.
As for conspiracy theories, might I suggest you do a web search on “Fractal wrongness”.
“Q: Exactly who the hell do the NSA and CIA really work for and take orders from?”
You could email the NSA directly about it, but you might want to be
slightly more tactful in the language you use. If you do get a reply, I would like very much to read it and have a laugh for myself about it. I tried and received no response, unfortunately.
One problem with that is I don’t dislike Admiral Rogers as much as his two predecessors, and don’t seek to antagonize him more than I already might with the occasional comment. Even if someone at that level would answer such a question, even in a secure room, it’s the thoughts in the back of their head you’d want to hear and not the words coming out of their mouth. While 24b4Jeff is correct that compartmentalization, need to know and bureaucracy provides considerable momentum and – convenient forgetfulness, I couldn’t disagree more those things are sufficient to also produce long-term agenda or the militarization whips currently being used to herd.
The top questions should be:
“Why hasn’t Edward Snowden been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize & the Presidential Medal of Freedom?”
Agreed.
wow Jenna ! – out here in the “rest of the world” we’ve been asking those questions (well most of them) and more for the past 3 years … admittedly, we couldn’t give a flying fuck about the poor U$ citizens who’s data might be moved temporarily offshore to get around data collection laws (that incidentally ONLY apply to U$ citizens – so why would we? … just more American Exceptionalism).
as for the intelligence community and lack of oversight or by Congress … um i hope i’m not talking out of turn when i say that the intelligence community is a global co-operative and has nothing to do with governmental oversight in any country. this should not come as a surprise – it’s a fact that has been in the public domain since the 80’s (you know …. “all the secret police in the world work together – that is their biggest secret” … which is no longer a secret as it was exposed 30 years ago – re-branded the Intelligence Community).
recent evidence of this fact is contained in your own article (above) when you say:
“Lawmakers have complained that they learned more about NSA spying from the media and Snowden than from classified hearings.”
as for funding, there is no shortage of cash donations made on behalf of the citizens and taxpayers in the budgets of every country around the globe … plus there are many “conspiracy theories” on how the intelligence community fund their activities outside of government coffers (and almost as many “denialists” on the subject … open your TOR browser and do some research to make you your own mind).
as for the level of U$ spying the rest of the world is subjected to – it’s total. we’re not happy about it, but at the same time, we’re not under the illusion that we’re not completely surveilied – unlike i suspect, some of y’all – our brothers and sisters in the U$A.
Fantastic article.
BRAZIL, the movie, was supposed to be a comedy, not a documentary. There are some very scary things about the future.
1. The act of watching everyone is a flipside of the concern for caring for everyone.
2. The growth of the Spy Virus is because as usual, people fail to plan for anything good and just let sh*t happen.
3. Since everyone needs something to do to pay the bills (presumably), what are they to do but feed in to the power structure?
The pre-crime scenario will not be science fiction for long. The perfectionist virus infecting the “i can’t handle any pain” population is the achilles heel.
Choose your pain.
Does the NSA still use the Three Hop rule to choose who to surveillance? Or was it regulated with the USA Freedom Act?
6. What’s the central agenda behind NSA’s foreign surveillance program?
“NSA Busted Conducting Industrial Espionage In France, Mexico, Brazil, China and All Around the World”
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/10/nsa-busted-conducting-industrial-espionage-in-france-mexico-brazil-and-other-countries.html
The U.S. government regularly deplores China’s habit of conducting industrial espionage via cyberattacks – while also loudly claiming, over and over, that the NSA never engages in such activities. The evidence revealed by Snowden makes that claim as suspect as Clapper’s congressional testimony is.
We can be sure that the State Department and the Pentagon was and is a main client of the NSA, and everyone knows there is a revolving door between these government entities and their private corporate partners, with people constantly moving back and forth between government and corporate jobs – and taking their NSA-provided information with them as they do so.
Access to NSA’s data pool would clearly facilitate everything from corporate-industrial espionage to insider trading. The NSA claims it has never engaged in information theft for economic purposes, that it never makes information available to investment banks or oil corporations – but then they’re found spying on G20 economic conferences, African human rights associations, environmental groups, Brazilian oil companies, etc.
Speaking of Brazil, who wants to bet that the current political upset there isn’t an NSA-affiliated manipulation program aimed at putting a more U.S.-subservient regime in power? If so, what’s to keep the NSA from going after uncooperative U.S. politicians in the same way?
Yeah, right on — so much documental evidence has by now been presented, incrementally, of industrial espionage as an integral component of the US/UK surveillance agenda, yet still we know so very little about how exactly this works.
Do company execs whisper requests to the NSA/GCHQ as to what specific trade secrets or whatever they would like to obtain, whereupon targeted surveillance is then undertaken on their behalf? Do the NSA/GCHQ embark on massive fishing expeditions, then share the fruits of their trawling with highly interested US/UK company execs? Or is a bit of this & a bit of that? Overall, what is the actual nature (social/economic/political) of the conduit between NSA/GCHQ industrial spying and its beneficiaries in big bizniz? Snowden, do please speak up.
read The WikiLeaks Files … the answer to your questions is there.
7. Why is The Intercept hoarding the Snowden material?
8. Why can’t it suggest answers to 1-5 from what it has on hand?
The terrifying surveillance case of Brandon Mayfield
With NSA overreach, nobody is safe from confirmation bias
February 8, 2014 12:00PM ET
by Matthew Harwood @mharwood31
http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/2/the-terrifying-surveillancecaseofbrandonmayfield.html
And from a CNN piece:
“Mayfield charged he was a victim of profiling because the Portland-area attorney was a Muslim convert.
He and his family later sued the U.S. government for damages.
“We lived in 1984,” Mayfield told reporters Wednesday. “I’m talking about the George Orwell, frightening brave new world in which Big Brother is constantly watching you.” (Watch Mayfield discuss the case Video)
“I, myself, have dark memories of stifling paranoia, of being monitored, followed, watched, tracked,” he said, choking back emotion.
“I’ve been surveilled, followed, targeted primarily because I’ve been an outspoken critic of this administration and doing my job to defend others who can’t defend themselves, to give them their day in court, and mostly for being a Muslim.”
The government refused, he said, to tell him where they put their cameras and surveillance devices, leaving his family wondering if their private conversations and intimate moments were on display.
“The days and weeks and months following my arrest were some of the hardest and darkest that myself and my family have ever had to endure,” he said.
“And all because of this government’s ill-conceived war on terror. … What I really want is for this not to happen to anyone else.” ”
Mayfield describes the surveillance well, but it’s not only Muslims who are being profiled. Furthermore, in some cases other harassment tactics are being employed, as well: theft, vandalism, the use of noise and bright lights to harass, mail-tampering, and interference with employment, family and other associations.
The predatory facist nazi-styled reputation of the FBI has been known for decades since the murder of Fred Hampton and their “enemy of the state” abuse tactics against civil rights and MLK. They operate like an arm of the KKK.
“The predatory facist nazi-styled reputation of the FBI has been known for decades…”
Known to some, but many people are still unaware. So is the answer to let it run amok, unchecked? Or do we try to change things?
@anon –
Thanks for this — I went to that link and read the story. It was indeed chilling. Everyone needs to become aware if not already of abuses and potential abuses.
And thanks, Jenna for an article reminding us that this issue is still important!
You’re very welcome, feline16.
From page six of the report:
“There are very few things we cannot accomplish within the existing rules, using the authorities we have and those authorities we can receive.” — NSA training slide, slide no. 83.1
“Overseas Surveillance in an Interconnected World”??? Personally, I’d like to see a report titled “Domestic Surveillance in an Interconnected World.”
This is what’s taking place on U.S. soil:
fightgangstalking.com
Nothing “crazy”, but rather the tools of Cointelpro: stalking, harassment, intrusive surveillance, mail-tampering, inference with employment, vandalism, and thefts.
And no one will touch it.
Deserves got nothing to do with it. However, I see no harm in answering these simple questions.
How Far Does the Law Go?
This is a technical detail. After an operation is complete, the lawyers are ordered to write a memo saying it was all legal. However, they’re encouraged to be creative in their legal reasoning, as there is no chance of it being tested in a court of law.
Who’s Watching the Spies?
Nobody. They wouldn’t be very good spies if they allowed themselves to be watched.
How Much Foreign Spying Ends Up in Domestic Courts?
None. The NSA just gives the police hints on where to look for evidence. This is known as a ‘secure firewall’.
How Many Words Don’t Mean What We Think They Mean?
Words mean what the NSA wants them to mean. What we think is irrelevant.
Where Does It End?
Just enjoy the ride. You will recognize the destination when we get there.
quote” Just enjoy the ride. You will recognize the destination when we get there.”unquote
No asshole..I won’t “enjoy the ride” . People are getting killed over metadata. People in the US are going to prison based on parallel construction. The 4th Amendment is being tortured, and this country has developed into a Police/Surveillance State. This is not the world I want to see my grandchildren and great grandchildren live in.
As for “when we get there”… it’s blindingly obvious you are a liar..cause we’re ALREADY there dimwit. It’s also blindingly obvious you have no children or grandchildren. Cause if you did, you might display a more “concerned” tone, vs your usual pseudo sarcasm bullshit. In that light…fuck you. You enjoy the ride. Meanwhile, I’ll do everything in my power to expose and stop this abomination occurring in my country…vs you, fuckface.
Now..fuck you.
I image that many of these questions can be answered by the release of the remaining ‘trove’ of NSA documents still in Glenn Greenwald’s possession…
Make that “imagine”. (English is not my 1st or even 2nd language)
Yes, the idea that you don’t release them all is absurd. If planning to release them all at some point, simply drawing out the release to keep things in the public consciousness that would be one thing.
But the idea that some things are not releasable is nonsense. The only individuals being protected are those whom participated in oppression, and seeing as how they do not seem to care much about the oppressed, I fail to see why one should care if harm comes to such sociopathic ideologues.
“I fail to see why …”
You hit that nail on the head.
You have fallen into the trap of painting with too broad a brush. There are operations carried out by the NSA which are 100% legitimate, moral, ethical, whatever word you use to describe something that protects the innocent and counters those who would cause harm to innocents. Then there is genuine national security information, like for example to codes that are used to communicate with our strategic forces. Would you like to have those codes? Or for the North Koreans to have them?
Glenn and the Intercept team are doing a superb job of sorting through the Snowden documents, releasing material that is in the public interest, and timing the releases to have maximum impact. To see that the latter is true, just review the history, how they have released material that consistently demonstrated how various individuals have lied in their public statements.