Luminous Animal

Luminous Animal's Journal

July 31, 2013

Manning sentencing trial: No Afghan national killed as a result of leaks

Brig. Gen. Robert Carr confirms on stand that

Via @kgosztola https://twitter.com/kgosztola
"Afghan national killed was not in war logs, Carr testified. So no person whose name was in war logs was ever killed as result "

"Brig. Gen. Carr testified Afghan war logs had 900-plus Afghan names (but no one was killed as result of disclosure)"

Via @nathanLfuller https://twitter.com/nathanLfuller

"Judge Lind affirmed that she would disregard testimony about the person the Taliban killed, as he was not connected to the releases "

July 15, 2013

WAPO: For NSA chief, terrorist threat drives passion to ‘collect it all,’ observers say

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/for-nsa-chief-terrorist-threat-drives-passion-to-collect-it-all/2013/07/14/3d26ef80-ea49-11e2-a301-ea5a8116d211_story.html

In his eight years at the helm of the country’s electronic surveillance agency, Alexander, 61, has quietly presided over a revolution in the government’s ability to scoop up information in the name of national security. And, as he did in Iraq, Alexander has pushed hard for everything he can get: tools, resources and the legal authority to collect and store vast quantities of raw information on American and foreign communications.

His successes have won accolades from political leaders of both parties as well as from counterterrorism and intelligence professionals who say the NSA chief’s efforts have helped foil dozens of terrorist attacks. His approach also has drawn attack from civil rights groups and a bipartisan group of lawmakers. One Democrat who confronted Alexander at a congressional hearing last month accused the NSA of crossing a line by collecting the cellphone records of millions of Americans.

“What authorization gave you the grounds for acquiring my cellphone data?” demanded Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), waving his mobile phone at the four-star general.

.......

He is absolutely obsessed and completely driven to take it all, whenever possible,” said Thomas Drake, a former NSA official and whistleblower. The continuation of Alexander’s policies, Drake said, would result in the “complete evisceration of our civil liberties.”

Alexander frequently points out that collection programs are subject to oversight by Congress as well as the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, although the proceedings of both bodies are shrouded in secrecy. But even his defenders say Alexander’s aggressiveness has sometimes taken him to the outer edge of his legal authority.

Glenn Greenwald comments:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jul/15/crux-nsa-collect-it-all

"The outer edge of his legal authority": that's official-Washington-speak for "breaking the law", at least when it comes to talking about powerful DC officials (in Washington, only the powerless are said to have broken the law, which is why so many media figures so freely call Edward Snowden a criminal for having told his fellow citizens about all this, but would never dare use the same language for James Clapper for having lied to Congress about all of this, which is a felony). That the NSA's "collect it all" approach to surveillance has no legal authority is clear:

"One Democrat who confronted Alexander at a congressional hearing last month accused the NSA of crossing a line by collecting the cellphone records of millions of Americans.

'What authorization gave you the grounds for acquiring my cellphone data?' demanded Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), waving his mobile phone at the four-star general."

I know this is not as exciting to some media figures as Snowden's asylum drama or his speculated personality traits. But that the NSA is collecting all forms of electronic communications between Americans as well as people around the world - and, as I've said many times, thereby attempting by definition to destroy any remnants of privacy both in the US and globally - is as serious of a story as it gets, particularly given that it's all being done in secret.

July 13, 2013

What Greenwald said vs Reuters summary of what he said:

Reuters (which cherry picked two sentences from two paragraphs thus removing the context for those two sentences) :

"Snowden has enough information to cause harm to the U.S. government in a single minute than any other person has ever had," Greenwald said in an interview with the Argentinean paper La Nacion. "The U.S. government should be on its knees every day begging that nothing happen to Snowden, because if something does happen to him, all the information will be revealed and it could be its worst nightmare."

Greenwald's interview (I bolded the parts of Greenwald's replies that Reuters cut out)
(via Google translate)

- Beyond the revelations about the spying system performance in general, what extra information has Snowden?

-Snowden has enough information to cause more damage to the U.S. government in a minute alone than anyone else has ever had in the history of the United States. But that's not his goal. Its objective is to expose software that people around the world use without knowing what they are exposing themselves without consciously agreeing to surrender their rights to privacy. It has a huge number of documents that would be very harmful to the U.S. government if they were made public.

- Are you afraid that someone will try to kill him?

It's a possibility, although I do not bring many benefits to anyone at this point. Already distributed thousands of documents and made sure that several people around the world have their entire file. If something were to happen, those documents would be made public. This is your insurance policy. The U.S. government should be on your knees every day praying that nothing happens to Snowden, because if something happens, all information will be revealed and that would be their worst nightmare.

http://translate.google.com.br/translate?sl=es&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.lanacion.com.ar%2F1600674-glenn-greenwald-snowden-tiene-informacion-para-causar-mas-dano

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