Fazliddin Kurbanov is a barrel-chested man from Uzbekistan who came to the United States in 2009, when he was in his late 20s. A Christian who had converted from Islam, Kurbanov arrived as a refugee and spoke little English. Resettled in Boise, Idaho, he rented an apartment, worked odd jobs, and was studying to be a truck driver.
But about three years after entering the U.S., around the time he converted back to Islam, Kurbanov was placed under FBI surveillance. According to emails and internet chat logs obtained by the government, Kurbanov was disgusted by having seen Americans burn the Quran and by reports that an American soldier had tried to rape a Muslim girl. “My entire life, everything, changed,” Kurbanov wrote in a July 31, 2012 email.
After the FBI assigned one informant to live with him and another informant to attend his truck-driving school, Kurbanov was arrested in May 2013. Prosecutors accused him of providing material support to the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and possessing bomb-making materials.
During Kurbanov’s trial, the government notified him that his conversations with an alleged Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan associate based in Pakistan had been intercepted. The spying, federal prosecutors said, had been authorized under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, which regulates the monitoring of agents of foreign governments and terrorist organizations. Kurbanov was convicted at trial and sentenced to 25 years in prison, after which he’ll be deported to Uzbekistan. He is an apparent success story for U.S. counterterrorism officials. If there was any doubt about Kurbanov’s propensity for violence, he eliminated it by stabbing a prison warden in California, an act for which he is now facing additional charges.
But Justice Department lawyers gained their conviction against Kurbanov after failing to disclose a legally significant fact: Kurbanov’s conversations with his alleged terrorist associate had been captured through PRISM, a National Security Agency mass surveillance program whose existence was revealed in documents provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden. Under PRISM, the government obtains communications directly from at least eight large technology companies without the need for warrants, a type of practice authorized in 2008, when Congress provided new surveillance powers under FISA.
The government must disclose when information against defendants originates from warrantless surveillance — but prosecutors did not do so to Kurbanov.
While traditional FISA authority permits spying on a particular person or group through warrants issued by the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, under the new powers, codified in FISA Section 702, monitoring is approved in bulk by the court through what is essentially a recipe for mass surveillance. Once approved, such a recipe can be used against thousands of targets. Under Section 702 authority, the NSA is currently monitoring digital communications of more than 100,000 people; it swept up an estimated 250 million internet communications each year as of a 2011 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court opinion. The FBI frequently searches Section 702 databases when it opens national security and domestic criminal “assessments,” precursors to full investigations.
According to a slide in an NSA presentation, provided by Snowden and published for the first time today by The Intercept, the interception of Kurbanov’s conversations was a “Reporting Highlight” for PRISM. The document indicates that the NSA captured Kurbanov’s Skype conversations from October 2012 through April 2013, roughly the same period the FBI was investigating him with undercover informants. It further details how an NSA unit in April 2013 issued a report describing “how Kurbanov believed he was under surveillance (which he is by the FBI) but was cautiously continuing his work, which was not specified — could be raising money for the IMU or explosive testing.” The alleged terrorist associate with whom Kurbanov was communicating “wanted Kurbanov to set this work in motion, probably related to sending money back to the IMU,” the document added.
The government is obligated to disclose to criminal defendants when information against them originates from Section 702 reporting, but federal prosecutors did not do so in Kurbanov’s case. In fact, when Kurbanov’s lawyers demanded disclosure of FISA-related evidence and the suppression of that evidence, Attorney General Eric Holder asserted national security privilege, claiming in a declaration that disclosure of FISA information would “harm the national security of the United States.” Kurbanov’s lawyer, Chuck Peterson, declined to comment about the government’s use of Section 702 surveillance against his client.
Kurbanov does not appear to be the only defendant kept in the dark about how warrantless surveillance was used against him. A nationwide review of federal court records by The Intercept found that of 75 terrorism defendants notified of some type of FISA spying since Section 702 became law, just 10 received notice of Section 702 surveillance. And yet Section 702 was credited with “well over 100 arrests on terrorism-related offenses” in a July 2014 report from the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, the federal entity created to oversee intelligence authorities granted in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. Additional documents from Snowden, previously unpublished and dated before the Kurbanov case, provide further examples of how NSA intelligence repeatedly played an undisclosed role in bringing accused terrorists to trial in U.S. courts over the past decade and a half. They also reveal an instance in which the NSA incorrectly identified a U.S. citizen as a foreign target of a FISA warrant.
Civil liberties advocates have long suspected that the Justice Department is underreporting Section 702 cases in order to limit court challenges to the controversial law. Some theorize that the government conceals Section 702 use through a process known as “parallel construction,” in which evidence obtained from the warrantless surveillance authority is reobtained through traditional FISA authorization, and the government only discloses the latter authority in U.S. District Court. One defense lawyer referred to this practice in a court filing as “laundering” Section 702 evidence. Beyond the Kurbanov case, circumstantial evidence in other prosecutions suggests that this type of parallel construction could be widespread.
“The government intercepts Americans’ emails and phone calls in vast quantities. … Yet only a handful of individuals have ever received notice.”
“The government intercepts Americans’ emails and phone calls in vast quantities using this spying law and stores them in databases for years,” said Patrick Toomey, staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Security Project. “FBI agents around the country then go searching through that trove of data as a matter of course, including in domestic criminal investigations. Yet, over almost a decade, only a handful of individuals have ever received notice.”
The Justice Department, FBI, and NSA declined to comment for this article. The New York Times in 2013 reported that lawyers in the Justice Department’s National Security Division had believed they did not need to disclose in court whether evidence obtained through FISA specifically originated with Section 702 unless they were presenting material received directly from a Section 702 sweep. The U.S. solicitor general then successfully pushed for a change in policy, bolstered by fallout from the Snowden disclosures; this was followed by a review of past cases by the National Security Division, after which prosecutors filed supplemental Section 702 notices in a handful of cases around the country. In four such cases, the defendants had already been convicted by the time of the disclosure. And whatever changes occurred in 2013 were clearly limited, given that fewer than a dozen such notices have ever been given in court cases, and none at all has been filed in the last year and a half. Kurbanov, meanwhile, was convicted in 2015, well after the purported change in policy.
The government’s handling of its Section 702 authority is particularly important at the moment because the powers are scheduled to expire at the end of the year unless Congress reauthorizes them. Three reauthorization bills are winding through Congress. The Senate Intelligence Committee and the House Judiciary Committee have each produced one, while a third has been sponsored by U.S. senators and longtime intelligence community critics Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, and Rand Paul, a Republican from Kentucky. As currently written, the Wyden-Paul bill would strengthen notification requirements and curb the Justice Department’s ability to launder Section 702 evidence through traditional FISA. The bill would require notification of Section 702 surveillance even when evidence derived from that surveillance “was subsequently reobtained through other means.” Meanwhile, the bill that emerged from the Senate Intelligence Committee appears to expand Section 702 without providing additional safeguards.
The undisclosed use of warrantless surveillance to win prosecutions is also troubling from a constitutional standpoint, foreclosing a rare opportunity to discover Section 702 abuses and challenge the law, which civil liberties advocates have argued is unconstitutional. Although FISA stipulates that targets of surveillance may challenge the order that led to spying against them, and although Section 702 is clearly used on a massive scale, courts have been strict in deciding who is a “target” of the surveillance authority, and of similar mass spying programs, and thus has standing to challenge the monitoring. For example, the Supreme Court in 2013 ruled, in a 5-4 decision, that Amnesty International and other plaintiffs could not bring a Section 702-related lawsuit because their claim that they would be targeted or harmed by such eavesdropping was too speculative. During arguments prior to the ruling, the U.S. solicitor general specifically told the justices that more suitable plaintiffs would likely emerge because people charged due to Section 702 surveillance would be notified by prosecutors and could then challenge the use of the surveillance in court.
“The failure to provide notice not only prevents defendants from challenging surveillance programs in court, but also stymies the public’s interest in understanding how and when its vast authorities are used,” said Faiza Patel, co-director of the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Program. “We know that the FBI has a practice of trawling through the vast databases of information captured under Section 702 for information about Americans, but it has only acknowledged relying on such surveillance in a handful of cases and then only when its failure to provide the legally required notice generated public pressure to do so.”
Graphic: The Intercept
Classified documents provided by Snowden expose the questionable use of NSA surveillance to spy on a U.S. citizen and the covert role NSA played in several investigations that resulted in criminal convictions. More broadly, the documents offer a view into how the relationship between the NSA and the FBI has evolved over more than a decade into a de facto partnership for investigating alleged terrorists who ultimately wind up in U.S. courts.
In the immediate years after the 9/11 attacks, as the FBI and NSA refocused on counterterrorism as their top priority, the NSA was acutely reliant on the FBI for its relationships with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, a secret judicial body that provides oversight of surveillance authorization requests, and with U.S. internet and telecommunications companies. In large measure, in these early years the NSA needed the FBI to function effectively as a signals intelligence agency for counterterrorism purposes. For example, when the NSA required authority to target for surveillance a specific phone number or email address — even when the NSA did not know the identity of the person behind that phone number or email address — the FBI went before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to obtain authorization on the NSA’s behalf. In turn, once that authorization was granted, the NSA needed the FBI to contact the internet or telecommunications company to obtain the data.
The NSA defined a U.S. citizen’s email address as not being related to a U.S. person when the NSA and FBI should have known this was incorrect — Tarik Shah had played at Bill Clinton’s inauguration.
An August 17, 2005, edition of SIDtoday, the internal newsletter of the NSA’s Signals Intelligence Directorate, disclosed that at the time 40 percent of all NSA counterterrorism reporting was derived from FISA collection. The newsletter added: “NSA gets most of its (counterterrorism)-related FISA collection from the FBI. The FBI collects, formats, and disseminates international terrorism-related FISA intercept to NSA, CIA, and internally to FBI agents and analysts.” In 2004, the NSA began to embed employees in the FBI’s Data Intercept Technology Unit, in Quantico, Virginia, so that NSA employees could speak more directly with U.S. data providers, such as internet companies, about formatting data to NSA specifications. “This is the first time that the NSA FISA team has had direct access to the providers, which has proven to be extremely useful to NSA,” the newsletter stated.
According to internal NSA documents, FISA data obtained by the FBI is funneled into a special partition in PINWALE , the NSA’s massive database of digital communications that can be queried by email address, internet protocol address, and other parameters. From 2002 through 2008, according to internal files, the NSA kept a spreadsheet titled “FISA recap” of 7,485 FISA surveillance targets consisting of email addresses or phone numbers, with columns indicating the start and end dates of the authorized surveillance and whether the target was associated with a U.S. person, defined by law as a citizen or lawful resident.
A decade later, most of these email addresses and phone numbers can’t be traced to anyone; many belonged at the time to foreigners the government suspected were involved with terrorist organizations. Others were used by civil rights activists, lawyers, and academics in the United States who were never charged with federal crimes, such as Nihad Awad of the Council on American-Islamic Relations and Rutgers University professor Hooshang Amirahmadi. To have obtained FISA surveillance authority for those U.S. persons, the government had to have demonstrated to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that they were acting as agents of a foreign power. It’s unknown how the government demonstrates this, since individual FISA applications are secret, even when evidence derived from FISA surveillance is introduced against criminal defendants.
In the case of at least one FISA target, the NSA defined a U.S. citizen’s email address as not being related to a U.S. person when the NSA and FBI should have known this was incorrect, suggesting the government did not have to prove the target was a foreign agent. Tarik Shah, a jazz bassist who had played at Bill Clinton’s inauguration, was arrested in 2005 following an informant-led FBI sting, in which Shah pledged allegiance to Al Qaeda before an undercover agent. Shah’s FISA-authorized surveillance from October 2004 through June 2005 occurred concurrently with the FBI’s sting. Shah had a friend, Mahmud Faruq Brent, who had attended a Lashkar-e-Taiba training camp in Pakistan and complained about how “difficult it was to be back in the United States.” But the primary link between Shah and overseas terrorists was the undercover FBI agent who pretended to be from Al Qaeda. And there was no reasonable reason for ambiguity about whether the email address belonged to Tarik Shah, the U.S. citizen, as opposed to another Tarik Shah somewhere else in the world. The email address was [email protected], the username a reference to Shah’s music profession. In a September 2006 filing, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales asserted national security privilege to prevent disclosure of Shah’s FISA application. Shah pleaded guilty to a material support charge; he is scheduled to be released from prison next year. It’s impossible to know from available NSA records whether the classification of Shah’s email address as a non-U.S. person was an anomaly or part of a broader NSA practice of targeting U.S. persons without having to provide probable cause to the FISA court that they were agents of foreign powers — a requirement intended protect U.S. citizens and legal residents from unreasonable search and seizure.
Because the FBI stood between the NSA and FISA data collection, NSA analysts encountered bottlenecks that frustrated counterterrorism and intelligence operations, internal NSA communication show. In April 2006, for example, the NSA was monitoring Ehsanul Islam Sadequee through a FISA authorization the FBI had obtained. A Bangladeshi-American who was born in the United States and grew up in the Atlanta suburbs, Sadequee came to the attention of U.S. authorities after he and a friend, Syed Haris Ahmed, traveled to Toronto to meet with several young men who were being investigated for terrorism in Canada. After that meeting in Toronto, Sadequee traveled to Bangladesh. He told U.S. counterterrorism agents prior to leaving that he was going to Bangladesh to be married. On April 5, 2006, as the FBI was closing in to arrest Sadequee, an NSA analyst urgently emailed the agency’s FBI liaison asking for the bureau’s help documenting their FISA authorization on Sadequee’s email address. “The reason we are pursing (sic) this is because we would like to retrieve a file that was passed between him and an associate about three weeks ago,” the NSA employee wrote. Sadequee was found guilty at trial of terrorism-related offenses, including material support for terrorists, and sentenced to 17 years in prison. His friend, Ahmed, was also found guilty at trial and received 13 years in prison; he was released in August.
Photo: Khaled Fazaa/AFP/Getty Images
As the NSA was experiencing some gridlock in its FBI-enabled FISA collection, the agency was developing new programs that sidestepped the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court — programs that would later be exposed as warrantless wiretapping and would evolve into the programs codified into law by FISA’s Section 702. Internal NSA documents written before the warrantless wiretapping program was exposed to the public reveal that the information flow slowly began to transform from the FBI to the NSA to a more bidirectional stream between both agencies. And in those early days of mass surveillance, NSA information secretly helped investigate accused terrorists who would be prosecuted in U.S. courts, Snowden documents show, although it’s not clear if the intelligence originated with warrantless eavesdropping or other sources.
In 2003, following a sting operation involving two informants and a meeting in Germany, Yemeni cleric Mohammed Ali Hassan al-Moayad was arrested in Frankfurt and extradited to the United States, where he was charged with raising money for Hamas and Al Qaeda. Moayad was convicted at trial in 2005. In an August 3, 2005, edition of SIDtoday, an NSA employee gave the agency credit for Moayad’s conviction. “Although this fact is unknown to the general public, and to the vast majority of the law enforcement community, NSA reporting played a key role in bringing the sheikh to trial,” the NSA employee wrote. It’s not clear what role NSA played in Moayad’s investigation. Moayad, who was not a U.S. person during the investigation, was not notified of FISA surveillance, court records show; nonetheless, his verdict was overturned after an appeals court ruled that testimony about unrelated terrorist activity had been allowed to prejudice the jury. Moayad was deported to Yemen in 2009 as part of a deal in which he pleaded guilty to conspiring to raise money for Hamas.
A week after crowing about its secret role in Moayad’s trial, the NSA boasted internally through SIDtoday that the agency played a key role in investigating Abdurahman Muhammad al-Amoudi, a U.S. citizen who was involved in financial transactions with Libya and a plot to assassinate the Saudi crown prince. According to SIDtoday, Libyan President Moammar Gadhafi organized the failed assassination plot after a perceived insult and threat by the Saudi crown prince during an Arab League summit. In 2004, Amoudi pleaded guilty to terrorism-related charges and was sentenced to 23 years in prison. “NSA’s contributions were significant,” the agency’s newsletter reported.
“Although this fact is unknown to the general public, NSA reporting played a key role in bringing the sheikh to trial.” —Top-secret passage in internal NSA newsletter
The NSA also played a previously undisclosed role in the capture of Nancy Conde Rubio, who at the time of her arrest was the fourth-ranking member of Marxist guerrilla group FARC in Colombia. Rubio had joined the FARC when she was 16 years old, and U.S. intelligence indicated that she was the girlfriend of a FARC commander suspected of holding hostage three U.S. citizens. Through digital communications intercepts, the NSA discovered that Rubio was to travel from Venezuela to Colombia without valid paperwork, according to a 2008 SIDtoday article. U.S. government officials provided that information to Colombian law enforcement, whose agents arrested Rubio and extradited her to Washington, D.C., for federal prosecution. She pleaded guilty to material support charges and was sentenced to 11 years and six months in prison.
Following the exposure of the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping programs, and the legalization of mass surveillance programs through the FISA Amendments Acts of 2008, which added Section 702 and other new provisions, the NSA continued to play a large, and largely secret, role in terrorism prosecutions in the United States.
One of the most notable examples involves Najibullah Zazi, who was arrested before he could move forward in an Al Qaeda-backed plot to bomb the New York subway. Zazi, a legal permanent resident of the United States, pleaded guilty to terrorism-related offenses in February 2010. The next month, on March 11, 2010, SIDtoday celebrated “a watershed period in the fight against terrorism and radical extremist groups,” noting that the NSA first discovered Zazi’s email connections to Al Qaeda operatives in Pakistan.
“Without that SIGINT lead on Zazi, his activities might not have come to the attention of the US intelligence and law enforcement communities until he actually conducted a terrorist attack against the US homeland,” an NSA employee wrote, referring to signals intelligence.
In July 2015, five years after Zazi pleaded guilty, prosecutors in New York notified him that he had been subjected to Section 702 surveillance. Zazi has not yet been sentenced; he is now a cooperating witness, part of a larger effort to flip well-connected terrorists into government informants. His case has become the prime example for counterterrorism officials defending the utility of Section 702 in stopping attacks in the United States.
Photo: Marc Piscotty/Getty Images
Zazi is one of 10 terrorism defendants who have been notified of Section 702 surveillance. Most of those notifications occurred in 2014 and 2015, as supplemental notices intended to correct the record after the Justice Department review of cases in which 702 notice was not provided.
According to a review of nationwide court records by The Intercept, the most recent Section 702 notification was delivered in April 2016, when prosecutors in Chicago informed Aws Mohammed Younis Al-Jayab, a Palestinian refugee who emigrated from Iraq. Jayab is awaiting trial on charges that he lied to federal agents about fighting with terrorist groups in Syria.
“Something is funky on one side of the ledger.”
To those who follow these notifications, the absence of any new Section 702 filings for more than 18 months — a period during which more than 50 terrorism defendants have been charged in U.S. courts and counterterrorism officials have trumpeted the critical need for Section 702 — is suspicious.
“Something is funky on one side of the ledger,” said Neema Singh Guliani, a legislative counsel at the ACLU in Washington, D.C.
If the FBI uses parallel construction to conceal intelligence community information, it would not be the only federal law enforcement agency doing so. In 2013, Reuters obtained documents from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration that showed how agents were trained to “recreate” investigative trails to conceal how intelligence intercepts helped to identify criminal targets. Separately, MuckRock obtained DEA documents that suggested FISA could be used by law enforcement agencies “for prosecutorial purposes in a manner that protects [intelligence community] sources and methods.”
Adding to the suspicion that FBI counterterrorism agents use parallel construction to conceal NSA cooperation is a growing number of filings in terrorism cases in which defense lawyers say circumstantial evidence suggestss some form of mass surveillance program was used against their clients.
In South Florida, the FBI nabbed two brothers, Sheheryar Alam Qazi and Raees Alam Qazi, in an informant-led sting, in which the brothers discussed and planned for a bomb plot in New York. Federal prosecutors notified the Qazis that evidence against them included surveillance authorized under traditional FISA authority. But Sheheryar Alam Qazi’s lawyer questioned whether that evidence might have been first obtained from Section 702 and then re-obtained through traditional FISA. “That argument was what was suspected but no hard evidence to support,” said Daniel L. Ecarius, an assistant federal public defender in Miami. The judge ruled that the government’s FISA notification was legally sufficient.
Across the country, in California, Adam Shafi was accused of providing material support to terrorist groups after the FBI discovered that Shafi had disappeared from his family for two days while they were in Egypt. Shafi later told his family and the FBI that he had traveled to Turkey to see the conditions of Syrian refugee camps, but in an affidavit to support a criminal charge, the FBI disclosed that intercepted communications revealed that Shafi had discussed traveling to Syria to join Nusra Front. Prosecutors in June told Shafi’s lawyer, Galia Amram, that they did not intend to file Section 702 notice in the case. Amram demanded that the judge determine whether Section 702 notice was required, as Qazi’s lawyer had. The judge in California also ruled that the government’s notification was legally sufficient.
The case of Khalid Ouazzani is even more perplexing. In May 2016 testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Matthew G. Olsen, former director of the National Counterterrorism Center, specifically touted Ouazzani’s arrest as a success story for Section 702 surveillance.
“NSA conducted surveillance under Section 702 of an email address used by a suspected extremist in Yemen,” Olsen said. “This surveillance led NSA to discover a connection between the extremist and an unknown person in Kansas City, Missouri, who was then identified as Khalid Ouazzani. The follow-up investigation revealed that Ouazzani was connected to other Al Qaeda associates in the United States, who were part of an earlier plot to bomb the New York Stock Exchange.”
Ouazzani, a used car and auto parts dealer, pleaded guilty in 2010 to sending $23,500 to Al Qaeda. But court records in his case show that he was not notified of either traditional FISA or Section 702 surveillance.
Explaining why Ouazzani would not be notified of Section 702 surveillance while 10 other terrorism defendants were notified of such surveillance is impossible because the Justice Department has refused to release documents related to its notification policy. The ACLU sued the Justice Department in 2013 under the Freedom of Information Act to release documents related to the policy. The Justice Department still refused to comply, claiming none of its documents contained a “binding” interpretation of the obligation to provide Section 702 notice.
“Without knowing the government’s policy, it’s impossible to even begin to audit whether these notifications are taking place in all cases where they are legally required,” said Andrew Crocker, a staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
The notification concerns surrounding Section 702 do not affect only accused terrorists. While to date only terrorism defendants have received notification of Section 702 evidence, the FBI does not have a policy limiting the use of Section 702 searches to suspected terrorists. The searches are available for all domestic criminal investigations.
“The immense authorities given to security agencies for counterterrorism purposes should be of concern to every American,” said Patel of the Brennan Center. “The government is able to circumvent the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement to go poking around into private communications. This allows for targeting for reasons of politics and prejudice.”
Documents
- SSO Weekly Brief 25 April 2013: Excerpt
- SIDtoday: FISA: Teaming with the FBI in the Global War on Terrorism
- PINWALE: Transnational DNI Training
- Re: Ehsanul Sadequee FISA Request
- SIDtoday: Life as the SID Liaison to the Joint Terrorism Task Force in NYC
- SIDtoday: The Saudi Assassination Plot — How It Was Thwarted
- SIDtoday: 2009: A Watershed Year in the Fight Against Terrorism
- SIDtoday: Perseverance Pays Off: Eight-Year SIGINT Effort Culminates in the Arrest of Elusive Colombian Terrorist
- NSA Classification Guide for FISA
Top photo: A security officer stands outside of U.S. Federal Court House on the morning the court begins jury selection for the Abu Hamza terrorism trial on April 14, 2014 in New York City.
OK, so information obtained under 702 authority can be used in domestic criminal investigations that are not related to terrorism?
I thought this was strictly prohibited.
Does this mean an email collected under 702 — where a guy tells a friend he shoplifted — can be used to arrest and convict, even if the NSA just happened upon the email while looking for something or someone else?
If you think this is bad, just wait until Trump gets all his loyal cronies in place at CIA, NSA etc. Nixon is watching with envy.
If the NSA is so good where is all the info on Trump? Time to bring that cache of sewer communications forward so we know if we are dealing with treason.
The NSA squirrels have lost their nuts.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/01/us/politics/nsa-nghia-pho-classified-information-stolen-guilty.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news
While Reality remains locked up, kept from escaping out into the free world.
WHO ARE THE TERRORISTS ?
As part of the U.S. Foreign Surveillance Surveillance Act (FISA) the New York City Police Department twice in six months carried-out warrantless raids of my Manhattan apartment after breaking its door.
There were no arrests and they left a hand-written note with the word “intel”, and the name of a high official of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security as the person that sent them.
sent them.
My complains to New York City Mayor William de Blasio, Police Commissioner William Bratton, District Attorney Cyrus Vance, U.S. Senator Charles Schumer, and the Civilian Complaint Review Board were ignored.
Lawyers and news groups that I contacted such as The New York Times ran away at the mention of FISA.
WHO ARE THE TERRORISTS ?
LOL.
“Contact the Russians” AFTER the election.
President-Elect has the right to visit with anyone he wants. In fact, I’ve talked to various diplomats at various times over the years. Even more in your face, YOU can call the Russians if you want to — legally.
Obama expelled a long list of Russian diplomats for the FAKE HACKING of the DNC and thus putting Russia on notice of a potential “first strike.” We expelled the Japanese in similar fashion at the onset of WW II. (Like Hillary said during the election, she would consider a cyber attack the same as a nuclear attack and would nuke anyone who sends a “ping” to your computer.)
Obama’s mama. DNC wasn’t hacked. DNC email was third-party hosted at APPRIVER.COM. (This article is about spying and the third party doctrine. Guess what? IMHO, it appears that APPRIVER claims ignorance after taking money from the DNC to cover it up.)
Furthermore, truth be known, Biden was forced to apologize to the Turkish Prez because Obama/Biden sent US GUNSHIPS to whack the Turkish President summer-before-last.
I saw the Turkish live feed where Biden had to suck a Turkish drumstick. The Obama WH even redacted Biden’s confession as “inaudible.” BS.
I heard it plain and clear. (Turkish Prez and Russian Spetsnaz sent a TAXI to pick Biden up at the airport.)
You are confused…
https://www.politico.com/story/2017/12/02/trump-mueller-probe-strategy-275982
–An excerpt from McFarland’s email, according to the NYTimes.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/02/us/russia-mcfarland-flynn-trump-emails.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0
Update: ABC suspended Brian Ross for 4 weeks for inaccurate reporting related to this statement.
other posts in this thread are drawn from other sources relating to separate elements of the Trump/Russia collusion. … excuse me, “no collusion, no collusion, no collusion!”nyah nyah ~Donnie Blowfish
That topic has nothing to do with the subject of this article.
Further, nobody but butt-hurt crybabies give a damn about this “wha-wha-wha, RUSSIA DID IT” excuse about why your candidate LOST.
Frankly, I think it’s a GOOD THING if leaders have back-channels between nuclear powers – might even help avoid a nuclear detonation someday.
And even if there was _contact_ between the groups, there’s not the tiniest bit of evidence the election was somehow altered by the Russians.
Now, there IS evidence that Team Hillary cheated in the primary – wanna talk about that?
The warantless wiretap protocol for the “gov office” is a magnet for the recruitment of selfish wicked types which always poison a democracy. This poisoning mutates a gov into a totalitarian dictatorial foundation which, in the case of the US, provides a platform for the aristocracy, oligarch and facist corporatocracy. The phase 2 of this poisioning is when the souls of the agencies become slaves of the criminals at the top. This is already happening in the US.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12I6LeRlDng
And now facebook wants you to VOLUNTEER your mug so that facebook can have a nice database for your personal safety – never mind that the thieves and murderers in israel stole the identities of a dozen people or more to commit an assassination. Rest assured, that once the face thing has been oblivioned, the criminals at the top will insist on RF implants, for your shopping convenience – and instead of street thugs cutting off your finger for your ring, they will re-invent armed robbery.
Facial recognition software is already being used as a matter of course (no doubt the reason why Facebook wants your mugshot). Also, according to an article recently published here, Amazon also wants a key to your house so they can leave their deliveries inside instead of on your front porch. All of this is for your convenience and protection, of course.
The REAL PROBLEM with this warantless crap is this..
1. it allows for criminal minded political accomplices and candydates to spy on Americans and thwart real democracy which requires a balance of power.
2. it allows criminals on wallstreet to get their lawfirms to use their hired “security and investigative” personel to do favors so that the criminals of wallstreet can rob businesses of their contacts, supplier info, and business plans, and a lot more.
3. it allows some jealous stalker types to go nuts and shoot up the relationship of their targets.
4. it allows certain employers to promote or deny employees, but worstly to recruit employees willing to cheat for more corpo profits.
5. it creates a police state atmosphere upon a population and therefor plies for the meakest, weakest, least talented, least challenging, thoughtless morons to comprise a society of dumbstumps and other nazi styled gofers – much like an organized crime network.
On the plus side, gathering info on criminal enterprises and gov corruption for lead material in investigations, as long as the information is not used in court unless it can be challenged, not a problem.
Use your own scale of values, weigh it out, see if the price is right.
O/T
https://www.yahoo.com/news/full-text-charge-michael-flynn-153043254.html
At Yahoo.com link posted above, they have the actual charges brought by Mueller investigation regarding Flynn and it highlights something.
There are 3 instances cited in this charges of lying to the FBI by Flynn. In each of the incidents listed, all seem to be after the election has taken place. This would seem to indicate that Mueller may be less focused or still cannot find evidence of ‘collusion’ to affect the 2016 presidential election. But does hightlight the interim period before Trump took oath of office.
And that the actual charge of lying to the FBI falls clearly within the confines of the period after which Trump was sworn in. In other words, this seems to be focused on Trump and impeachment for obstruction and acts while in office and less about collusion and affecting the 2016 election, IMHO.
Here is the actual text:
Sorry…looks like 1 date about lying (instance) regarding two items that were lied about. 3 dates total.
The last place I expect to see adequate examination of Trump and Russia is the Intercept, sadly.
Infested with “nothingburger” bots
Well, you know, you’ve got nothing, so a “nothingbuger” response is appropriate.
And even if your wildest fantasy were true, there’s nothing that can be done about it anyway.
If you really care about that topic, then you should be advocating for hack-proof election strategies, including a strong paper trail, etc. But neither the Ds nor Rs want a secure election because then they can’t steal it, and that’s why its in the dismal state it’s in.
Obedience trained Flynn will remain on Robert S. Mueller III’s leash for as long as the former Trump National Security advisor and campaign insider remains serviceable.
Looking forward to the Intercept’s investigation into Trump’s coordination with Russia, and his directives to Flynn to make contact.
…and the buffoons who daily deride their wish that this ‘russo’ phobia would all go away.
ain’t happening.
It is an ironic form of cognitive dissonance that the author’s can write this article and yet simultaneously applaud the NSA for spying on the Trump campaign at the behest of Obama’s political appointments.
Poor Trump…he is sooo misunderstood. ~ sigh~
Hey, we are waiting for the corrupt clowns of the intercept to publish ALL the snowden NSA documents.
Those documents belong to the public, But it turns out the intercept is just a bunch of corrupt clowns financed by paypal-ebay and cooperating with the US government, withholding information from the public.
Consider this:
It dosen’t take a Pulitzer prize winner to understand that with some information, such as this specific information about ‘Kurbanov’s conversations’, it is often better to keep one’s powder dry. .. until there is something to shoot at.
*note: evidently, this now comes as such a shock even Kurbanov’s lawyer … has refused to comment!
The government is doing what it has to in order to protect us. Anyone that has the ability to write, publish, or read and support an article like this needs to seriously have their loyalties checked. This is a wonderful place to live, but the government is not a human being, and in order to protect millions, it’s needs to have a different set of standards to follow. It’s not feasible that a government that protects and regulates millions of people be forced to comply with citizen standards.
Baaa baaa baaa… Bend over!
No doubt NSA is on the attack.
When a government employee says we should not follow the constitution because it is too difficult they should immediately be fired. I am not loyal to a violent, autocratic regime usurping the very democracy from it purports to derive its power.
The one who needs to check their loyalties is you.
The “different set of standards” is called The Constitution, perhaps you’ve heard of it. Our founders intended us to be free – even free to harm ourselves if we wish – and it’s the obligation of the government to adhere to the limits of government provided for in The Constitution. The Constitution calls for “a common defense”, it doesn’t call for a standing army or coast guard, or even a police force, and certainly it doesn’t call for curtailing our liberties or violating our privacy in some misguided effort to “keep us safe.”
This mass surveillance is also ripe for the very worst abuse imaginable; complete tyranny. Compile sufficient information on everyone, anyone is blackmailable, trade secrets can be gotten, anyone who is seen as a threat to the ultra-rich or to any political faction can be eliminated all without anyone even knowing – murdering people isn’t required, just screw up people’s lives…. It’s the ultimate in control. And best of all, nobody needs to even look at the data until someone rises to the attention of whatever oligarch thinks there might be a threat to their business or whatever. Complete Tyranny. And YOU support that. Who are YOUR loyalties to, buster?
This grossly misrepresents how US intelligence actually collects data. All communications across all border wires are recorded inasmuch as is technologically feasible.
NSA bots are on the attack. What a wonderful use of taxpayers money!
Ahh, got it. You’ve done too much hard work to break now from your traditions of censorship against relevant opposing commenters here, all in the name of supporting the propaganda behind your political agenda.
Got it . You fear terrorists and support the NRA ‘in the real world’ you are more likely to die from a follow NRA member
Nope, it’s happening to all of us.
It’s wonderful to see that we’re paying for the clusterfuck that is the NSA so they can spy on us and then unleash dumb bots to derail the conversation on what they are unlawfully doing. What a country!
This place is censored, I’ve had relevant comments of value just magically “not show up”.
Again, today, I made comments here that were critical of this article and magically they didn’t show up.
Why would you have the audacity to publish such articles then censor the views of your viewers? Hypocrisy. You’re not going to win any wars taking off the gloves against neutral bystanders like me.
There are at least 2 non-nefarious reasons why your comments won’t show up for a while.
1. You inadvetently posted them in the LATEST tab. The moderators usually take a few hours to 1 day to move them over to the other THREADS tab.
2. You used 2 links in your post. Multiple links causes a post to be delayed for some reason. I have seen other use multiple links in thier posts and not suffer this fate. But I’m currently at a loss as to how to avoid this trap.
3. You inadvertently hit CANCEL instead of SUBMIT button. Clumsy, but it does happen on occasion. ;)
Hope this helps.
Hi Galactus-36215:
3. I’ve never mistakenly hit Cancel here, mistakenly or otherwise.
2. I’ve never included any hyperlink in a response here, mistakenly or otherwise.
1. I’ve never posted in the “LATEST” tab, mistakenly or otherwise.
0. However, despite the above, my responses were “moderated” (i.e. hidden, not shown) while others got through first, such as the Gene troglodyte nonsense.
-1. This means there was a chance my responses would have been censored, because they needed to be “approved” by some chain of authority (just theorizing here).
$\neg\infinity$. Yes, the delays could have been non-nefarious, still, for some other reason not considered between us.
Thanks for bringing up valid points.
-CSR
Last night, I too had the experience others are complaining about – except my post supported the article and author. I made several (unsuccessful) attempts to post.
Interestingly, the subject matter was very similar – and there was only one (1) comment total on the topic, even after more than an hour.
I think it’s a system issue. Or, perhaps we are seeing the Internet Freedom Act in all of it’s glory?
Yes, this place is censored, often with petulance and arbitrary nonsense.
Nonetheless, do not post with more than one link, and do not overly criticize the somewhat obvious idiocy of the article writers…
…or you will be censored, for ‘reasons.’
Your post will turn up sometimes about 24 hours later if it is deemed offensive or dubious.
Sometimes it won’t turn up at all.
But this is a private business, with the right to be dicks if they choose. And they do.
If this is the most relevant remaining revelation from Snowden’s <=$250MM trove of secrets, those secrets have run their course.
Maybe this was the thought process: "We better put together something *really* good to justify all of this fanfare around our privacy advocate celebrity Snowden and the pending legal battles. What's left? Oh, documents related to how most folks in the IC were doing their jobs. How can we spin them?"
Snowden knew how the judicial process worked at the time of his crimes against America, and refuses to face them, which is not a principled, yet a self-interested stance. Now that there's little left to be leaked from his trove, will he come home to face his fate?
To make this fanfare worthwhile, what we really need to see is a pattern of direct abuses against American civilians that were not complicit in any crimes, and not just an anecdotal depiction of that in some Hollywood movie., nor those theorized in the whole "privacy is good, surveillance is bad" narrative. Without this, it seems dubious that Snowden has acted in America's best interest. Let the IC do their jobs. Most are good folks, and some I assume are American. This situation is a disgrace.
Who knows, maybe Omidyar saved America by buying up those secrets.
How does this relate to the government’s failure to comply with its legal obligation to provide notice?
Ahh, it doesn’t. Keep fighting the good fight. You’re keeping us safe.
Carry on.
The comment doesn’t have to relate to that aspect of the article. The article is based on a series of stolen / leaked documents related to crime fighting activities by the USG.
Based on the timeline of release, the relevance of those documents is diminishing, so it’s quite likely there is no major new revelation forthcoming from that trove.
So the government has a legal obligation to notify terrorist suspects of their intention to gather information on the suspects through either visual or technological observation?
That’s gonna work out tremendously, right.
So far those constitutional protections have worked out well. The only terrorists we need protection from are in the White House, Washington and, yes! NSA.
Thanks. I keep forgetting how many people just don’t understand the system we have and how it’s supposed to work. Small wonder we are where we are.
You sure nailed it with that one!
Probably the most important part of this article:
Let’s see how this progresses.
Most NSA employees and contractors are probably well-meaning and rightly concerned about keeping us safe. The real problem is not the employees and contractors following orders but their agency leaders and politicians dictating illegal orders.
So-called “intelligence” and “law enforcement” simply cannot coexist in the same agency.
The entire premise of the Fourth Amendment is it prevents unconstitutional searches without a warrant from a judge. If intelligence agencies or intelligence divisions are allowed to share personal information – obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment – with law enforcement agencies (restrained from doing so) it makes the Fourth Amendment restraints entirely meaningless.
The Fourth Amendment is chronological in both it’s wording and spirit: first a real crime has to occur, a police officer or other official then must submit an affidavit under penalty of perjury to a judge. If the judge agrees with the oath-sworn affidavit he or she may grant a search warrant.
Well-meaning officials are trying to solve crimes by bypassing constitutional due process but it actually increases “color of law” crimes by government officials blacklisting the wrong people. It actually results in far more violations of statutes than it prevents.
First off, the comments here are absolutely censored. This is an echo chamber with just a *little* bit of noise and trolling (such as the comment from Gene) allowed through, so as to give the illusion of neutrality.
Secondly, what source of information do you have to support your conclusion that “it” (which presumably you mean the existence of mass surveillance and the open channels associated with it) results in more violations of statutes than it prevents, other than some anecdotes?
..who wrote that headline?? Is it a test??
NSA Secretly Helped Convict – – Defendants in U.S. Courts, Classified Documents Reveal
NSA Secretly Helped – – Convict Defendants – – in U.S. Courts, Classified Documents Reveal….
I read it innocence until proven guilty in a court of law……
NSA helped “convict”…. defendants
NSA helped “convict defendants”
Either way WHERE IS THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT’S PART…..
FUNNY ODOR
Wow, don’t ever take away psychiatric drugs…please.
SHARE YOURS. . .
Don’t overdo it, please. You’ve already proved the point. :)
sorry paragraph three
about three years after entering the U.S., around the time he converted back to Islam, Kurbanov was placed under FBI surveillance. According to emails and internet chat logs obtained by the government, Kurbanov was disgusted by having seen Americans burn the Quran and by reports that an American soldier had tried to rape a Muslim girl. “My entire life, everything, changed,” Kurbanov wrote in a July 31, 2012 email.
has there been any investigation into it’s veracity…..
a set-up leading to entrapment??
OR any attempt to explain – freedom as WE the PEOPLE see it??
paragraph three
about three years after entering the U.S., around the time he converted back to Islam, Kurbanov was placed under FBI surveillance. According to emails and internet chat logs obtained by the government, Kurbanov was disgusted by having seen Americans burn the Quran and by reports that an American soldier had tried to rape a Muslim girl. “My entire life, everything, changed,” Kurbanov wrote in a July 31, 2012 email.
has the versatility of the statement been checked?
ANY attempt to explain our FREEDOM. as WE the PEOPLE see it?
a set-up / entrapment……placed under surveillance – (about that time???
> are my comments disappearing??
Fucking mudslime should have never been let in the country in the first place. Pres. Trump is right!
You are correct. Many wish the Natives could have enforced their laws so that the likes of you and the three-legged horses your criminal ancestors rode into town in would have never been let it. Trump is right…they were here first and much, much longer before you and your racist ilk.
Don’t worry. Maybe ignorant, bigoted racists such as yourself will prevail one day. If that happens, and you find yourself in your lily white paradise, let’s see what happens to y’all once there is no more ‘mudslime’ to go after.
And, yeah, I realize that this comment is wasted on the stupid as you will never be able to fathom what it means.
One of the core concerns about the sweeping nature of the most recent set of FISA “reforms” was that it would not only enable if not encourage the NSA to secretly “share” allegedly legitimately collected intel on US persons with domestic law enforcement agencies, but that there were specifically crafted to make this possible, so that the federal government could basically spy on US persons it didn’t like, and use any evidence gathered, directly or indirectly, to prosecute and convict them, even they had nothing to do with terrorism, organized crime, spying or any other conspiratorial crimes that cross US borders, or had committed a crime at all, of any sort, beyond a minor misdemeanor such as are committed in acts of civil disobedience or protests.
I.e. to crack down on political dissidents and protesters, political opponents, corporate watchdogs and whistleblowers, and other “undesirables”. I.e. anyone who poses a threat to the power, money and military establishment currently in power. First, the NSA spies on them, since it can spy on literally anyone, for any or no reason. Then, if it finds potential dirt on such undesirables, since any intel it collects can’t be used directly in regular courts, plus it would reveal the NSA’s means, methods and activities, it informs the appropriate law enforcement agencies, so that they can then collect evidence that can be used in court and which won’t reveal any NSA involvement.
This was always the point of expanding the NSA’s lawful capabilities and making it even less subject to judicial scrutiny, being motivated by the same power-grabbing aspirations that led to CItizens United, voter suppression, gerrymandering and president Trump. This is 100% about power and the gradual lurch towards open fascism.
This article doesn’t really expose anything that wasn’t already common knowledge – at least to anyone that bothered to follow up the Snowden’s leaks and the daily shenanigans of the US government. However, a few couple little things do jump out, for example:
Uzbekistan seems to be a hotbed of patsies. Either the people from this country are particularly stupid or the meddling the US is doing in that country can only be compared to a silent Syria or Iraq.
There is no expanding on the fact that Kurbanov seems to have been clearly set up by the FBI, as they usually do in these cases and has so extensively been reported and shown. It all starts with thought crime and they take it to the next level from there. In other words, the FBI’s manufacturing of “terrorism” by every possible means. The fact that this dude had several spooks assigned to him night and day wasn’t necessarily for his personal protection or amusement as so many other cases have shown, one of them featured here not too long ago.
[from the article] “If there was any doubt about Kurbanov’s propensity for violence, he eliminated it by stabbing a prison warden in California, an act for which he is now facing additional charges.”
This right here is a load of shit and a highly dishonest personal observation/comment. Just a couple of weeks ago, this very outlet reported on the plague of rapes in the US prison system – most of them committed by the guards. I’ve never been in jail but can only surmise that with the violence and corruption inherent in those places, sometimes, stabbing or hurting someone else can only be a matter of personal defense. Stating that the fact that he stabbed a guard proves his violent tendencies is dishonest conjecture at best.
As for the rest, there’s nothing new here. When the Snowden leaks were made public, one of the first things that became apparent was how the NSA was passing information on to DEA, local police departments, FBI and the rest of the alphabet soup bureaucratic joggernaut who, in turn, were using that information to arrest people without disclosing the source of their information. So again, there’s nothing new here to anyone that has been paying attention. As for the contention that these are constitutional violations or violations of the law and blah blah blah, a couple of quotes that illustrate the state of affairs on the subject come to mind:
“The Constitution is just a goddam piece of paper.” President George W. Bush
Laws? What laws? We don’t need no stinkin’ laws… [borrowed from “Badges? What badges? We don’t need to stinkin’ badges.” From the movie Treasure of Sierra Madre
From page 14 of the Responsive Documents that you have linked
@Trevor,
Here is your answer above in the quote provided. CIA/NSA are providing intelligence information as to the ‘binding’ obligations mentioned in your article.
The CIA and NSA are supplying and using all tools available including cell phone monitoring to provide law enforcement all the information they need. The provide pictures from their cells cameras, recorded transcripts of their cell phone conversations or conversations with others while their cell phone is present and tracking information.
It gets all bundled up in a nice little envelope and delivered to law enforcement agencies. And in doing so, this implies structure. It implies people acting covertly within each of the 50 united states obtaining this information from point A (collection house) to point B (Recipient).
Perhaps this is why Flynn was fired from DIA? Because he wanted the DIA to take over certain CIA international function because CIA is actually utilizing covert resources here in the USA.
Perhaps.