The NSA Ate My Rights

There is a drip, drip, drip, of facts. I know there are still those who defend the NSA program, and continue to attack Snowden. I wonder about them. What will it take for Americans to understand that in the wake of 9-11, we have traded in many of our personal liberties?

Obama has suggested that Americans need to endure a bit of inconvenience in order to maintain our security and that the dialogue among Americans on the program is both necessary and important. Even so, he has denounced American awareness of the program through Snowden, Greenwald, The Guardian, The Washington Post and other media outlets. But member of his own administration, up to and including the president have given misleading and incomplete answers as to the extent of the program. Some have gone so far as to suggest that the White House and/ or The NSA ought to be held in Contempt of Congress and that release of documents ought to be forced through subpoena. That would be interesting, but the sad truth is that Congress with few exceptions has shown no interest or capacity for oversight. Like most Americans the prevailing attitude in Congress has been to bury their head in the sand while  the NSA tramples the Constitution and our Civil Rights.

Whatever has been released through courageous reporting, particularly based on the efforts of Greenwald and Snowden, is only a fraction of what is knowable.

This is so much worse than what we have been led to believe. For those that disagree, taken the basic facts of the case, I would like to know what the alternative argument would be.

Following is a partial list of what has been reported. Again none of this would have come out without Snowden and Greenwald:

“The National Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon, one of America's largest telecoms providers, under a top secret court order issued in April.”
--The Guardian, June-2013

“The National Security Agency has obtained direct access to the systems of Google, Facebook, Apple and other US internet giants, according to a top secret document obtained by the Guardian.”

--The Guardian, June-2013

“The Obama administration for more than two years permitted the National Security Agency to continue collecting vast amounts of records detailing the email and internet usage of Americans…”

--The Guardian, June-2013

“The National Security Agency and the FBI are tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies, extracting audio and video chats, photographs, e-mails, documents, and connection logs that enable analysts to track foreign targets, according to a top-secret document…”

Washington Post, June-2013

Despite Government assurances that the programs are critical to and used solely in the case of National Security Investigations, the information has been shared at least with the DEA and potentially other investigative agencies, who are now attempting to cover the source of the information since this is a prohibited activity:

 “A day after we learned of a draining turf battle between the NSA and other law enforcement agencies over bulk surveillance data, it now appears that those same agencies are working together to cover up when those data get shared. The Drug Enforcement Administration has been the recipient of multiple tips from the NSA. DEA officials in a highly secret office called the Special Operations Division are assigned to handle these incoming tips, according to Reuters. Tips from the NSA are added to a DEA database that includes 'intelligence intercepts, wiretaps, informants and a massive database of telephone records.' This is problematic because it appears to break down the barrier between foreign counterterrorism investigations and ordinary domestic criminal investigations. Because the SOD’s work is classified, DEA cases that began as NSA leads can’t be seen to have originated from a NSA source. So what does the DEA do? It makes up the story of how the agency really came to the case in a process known as 'parallel construction.'"

--Washington Post, August-2013

Multiple media outlets have reported that the NSA has also shared the data with it’s counterpart in the UK. Though we are told that the surveillance generally does not target specific communications which are protected, the sharing of the information with both the DEA and UK Intelligence agencies suggests that that is a misleading picture.

In subsequent reporting the tech firms in an effort to protect their brands have asked for permission to publish the number and nature of the requests they have received from the Federal Government.  

“The largest Internet companies in the United States have joined forces with top civil liberties groups to call on the White House and Congress to increase the transparency surrounding the government’s controversial National Security Agency surveillance programs. Apple, Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Microsoft and Twitter are among the tech giants that have signed a letter to the feds, asking for the right to disclose more information about national security data requests. Notably absent are the nation’s largest phone companies, including AT&T and Verizon Wireless, which have remained silent about their participation in the government’s snooping program.”

--Time Magazine July-2013

President Obama has repeatedly referred to the fact that members of Congress were briefed and that the program comes under the broad review of the FISA court. However…

“Ten of the court’s 11 judges — all assigned by Chief Justice Roberts — were appointed to the bench by Republican presidents; six once worked for the federal government. Since the chief justice began making assignments in 2005, 86 percent of his choices have been Republican appointees, and 50 percent have been former executive branch officials.”

--NY Times, July 2013

As far as Congress goes, there are layers of questions regarding the levels of statutory oversight.

“NSA Director Keith B. Alexander claim[s] that the Intelligence Committees didn’t find any NSA wrongdoing may be technically true. But that’s only because Congress appears to not have been fully briefed on the NSA’s compliance record. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) reportedly did not receive a copy of the 2012 NSA audit released by Gellman until The Post asked her staff about it. Upon seeing the audit, a statement from her staff said that the committee “can and should do more to independently verify that NSA’s operations are appropriate, and its reports of compliance incidents are accurate.”

--Washington Post Aug, 2013

 It appears even possible that some member of Congress chose to keep details of the program away from the prying eyes of other members of Congress.

 “A letter drafted by the Obama administration specifically to inform Congress of the government’s mass collection of Americans’ telephone communications data was withheld from lawmakers by leaders of the House Intelligence Committee in the months before a key vote affecting the future of the program.

"The February 2011 document was declassified last month and has been cited repeatedly by administration officials and legislative leaders as evidence that the surveillance program had been properly examined by Congress as part of an aggressive system of checks and balances.

"A cover letter to the House and Senate intelligence committees that was sent with the document asked the leaders of each panel to share the written material with all members of Congress.

"Ronald Weich, who was an assistant attorney general at the time, wrote that making the material available to Congress would be an 'effective way to inform the legislative debate about reauthorization' of the provision of the Patriot Act that served as the legal basis for the phone surveillance. A similar document was available to all members of Congress in 2009, prior to a 2010 reauthorization vote.

"But the House Intelligence Committee opted against making the 2011 document widely available. Instead, the committee invited all 435 House members to attend classified briefings where the program was discussed — briefings that critics say were vague and uninformative.”

--Washington Post, Aug-2013

So in the end what we get is a massive government surveillance program overseen by a FISA court, packed with Ex-Executive Branch employees, mostly Republican, and with scattered Congressional oversight.

I understand the political imperative of Obama’s speech and his statement that “The programs are secret in the sense that they are classified. They are not secret, in that every member of Congress has been briefed. These are programs that have been authored by large bipartisan majorities repeatedly since 2006. Your duly elected representatives have consistently been informed."

Let’s just say that was misleading at best.

He talked about FISA court review: “This program, by the way, is fully overseen not just by Congress but by the FISA Court, a court specially put together to evaluate classified programs to make sure that the executive branch, or government generally, is not abusing them and that they’re — it’s being out consistent with the Constitution and rule of law.”

Well, can we now at least admit that those that challenge these “protections” as mere words may have a point? Under what other circumstances would the President not have mentioned the Republican imbalance on a court pack court reviewing his administration's decisions or programs?

 Is it any wonder that a lack of transparency has led to violations of the laws that created the program, or more broadly Constitutional protections of free speech and association and against illegal search and seizure?

 
“’We’re a human-run agency operating in a complex environment with a number of different regulatory regimes, so at times we find ourselves on the wrong side of the line,' a senior NSA official said in an interview, speaking with White House permission on the condition of anonymity.’”
--Washington Post, Aug-2013

 The entire program in my view becomes exponentially more dangerous when one considers it in the context of other surveillance  conducted by the Federal Government of those pursuing their Constitutionally protected First Amendment Rights, the Occupy Movement.

 “On May 20, 2013, The Center for Media and Democracy 
released the results of a year-long investigation: "Dissent or Terror:
 How the Nation's Counter Terrorism Apparatus, In Partnership With 
Corporate America, Turned on Occupy Wall Street.”
The report, a distillation of thousands of pages of records obtained
 from counter terrorism/law enforcement agencies, details how
state/regional "fusion center" personnel monitored the Occupy Wall
 Street movement over the course of 2011 and 2012.”

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Government_Surveillance_of_Occupy_Movement

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