Another NSA "Bombshell" Starts to Fizzle Out, as Greenwald Pushes Government Conspiracy Theory

[ProSense]

Another NSA "Bombshell" Starts to Fizzle Out, as Greenwald Pushes Government Conspiracy Theory

by Reggid

Or: How Histrionics and Hysteria Continue to Drive A Misleading Narrative

As has been discussed in numerous diaries over the last two days, a Washington Post article reported on Thursday that the NSA "broke privacy rules thousands of times" per year, according to a May, 2012, audit covering several intelligence analysis facilities over the course a year, covering the last 3 quarters of 2011 and the first quarter of 2012.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-broke-privacy-rules-thousands-of-times-per-year-audit-finds/2013/08/15/3310e554-05ca-11e3-a07f-49ddc7417125_story.html

This report has been seized by many purportedly as evidence of a lack of oversight over a supposedly out-of-control NSA which is allegedly abusing its programs to spy illegally on Americans at will.

But looking past all the usual histrionics, hyperbole, and gross exaggerations, what do the report and the audit upon it which it was based actually show? As usual, once the initial hysteria dies down, when one gets past all the usual outrage porn, one discovers that the reality of the "violations" is actually far less sinister, and in fact much more mundane, than suggested in the article and the diaries it spawned here. Indeed, a careful reading of the actual details of the report beyond the hysterical headlines not only confirms that the "violations" were actually just mistakes and errors, most having little or no impact on Americans' communications at all, and representing only an infinitesimally tiny portion of the communications data processed by the faciliities at issue; but also confirms, contrary to the existing narrative, that there are numerous working safeguards in place. An actual close reading of the article and the audit document further demonstrates that there is zero evidence that any of the "violations" were willful or intentional, and confirms, once again, that there is still no evidence of any actual abuse of the programs, much less any policy of abuse.

A healthy dose of reality, in a super-sized cup, below the fold.

Part I: In Which the "Privacy Violations" are Grossly Exaggerated and Over-Hyped

The WaPo report goes to great length to note that the audit reflects 2,776 separate incidents amounting to "violations" of one privacy rule or another. But we have now learned, based on a more detailed analysis of the "violations" by the New York Times, that more than 2/3 of those "violations" consisted entirely of the programs monitoring the foreign communications of foreign targets as they are authorized to do, but failing to recognize when those foreign targets had actually come to the U.S. and brought their foreign cellphones with them. So, in over 1,900 cases, the "violations" had zero to do with Americans' communications at all, but rather resulted solely from a geographic anomaly not picked up by the computer programs, which impacted otherwise perfectly legal, authorized surveillance of foreign calls:

The largest number of episodes — 1,904 — appeared to be “roamers,” in which a foreigner whose cellphone was being wiretapped without a warrant came to the United States, where individual warrants are required.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/16/us/nsa-often-broke-rules-on-privacy-audit-shows.html

Which actually, therefore, leaves less than 900 total incidents of errors and mistakes causing inadvertent over-reach across numerous facilities over an entire year -- less than 3 per day among thousands and thousands of analysts and billions and billions of pieces of data! Hardly the doomsday scenario pushed in the WaPo article, by Greenwald, and in various diaries here.

But wait, there's more (or less, in fact). It turns out, again per the more thorough and less histrionic anlysis by the NYT, that the "202"/"20" area code/nation code mix-up is likewise much less alarming than initially suggested by the WaPo article and in diaries and comments here. Indeed, it turns out that when the 202 area code was used instead of the 20 nation code, only metadata and not the calls themselves were collected:

In one case in 2008 . . . the system collected metadata logs about a “large number” of calls dialed from Washington – something it was already doing through a different program – because of a programming error mixing up the district’s area code, 202, with the international dialing code of Egypt, 20.

So once again, we see that this supposedly "serious" and "scary" incident turns out to be essentially no incident at all. In this case, there really is no there there, as the error merely resulted in the programs doing what the NSA was already separately authorized by the FISC to do -- collect telephone metadata. But that apparently didn't stop the WaPo and numerous diaries and comments here from hyping this non-incident into a mountain of spying-on-Americans outrage porn:

Some language in the Washington Post story requires a bit of parsing as well. On page one, there is mention of a computer mix-up where Egypt’s calling code (20) is accidentally input as DC’s area code (202), resulting in a “large number” of calls being “intercepted.” However, on page four, the incident is clarified to have only involved collecting the metadata about those calls, and not their content — a key distinction.

This last bit is key. Charlie Savage, a fantastic reporter at the New York Times who’s done wonders in reporting on intelligence issues, had to correct his story when he thought the mention of “intercept” on page one meant “listen to.” Slippery language in reporting — a sadly common trend in a lot of the coverage of the NSA leaks — leads to assumptions that tend to be false. Metadata is not content, and is treated differently under the law and Supreme Court precedent, and that’s an important thing to keep in mind.

http://joshuafoust.com/nsa-rule-violations-matter-but-arent-severe/

And here we see the typical pattern from all of these NSA stories: Lead with the outrageous headline, then hype the scary story, but bury the contradictory clarifications, caveats, and actual facts pages later. And in this case, the factual clarification really matters: The scary-sounding area-code mix-up did not, as widely claimed, result in any eavesdropping on Americans' communications; instead, it merely resulted in the gathering of phone metadata, which the NSA was already doing anyway pursuant to FISC authorization.

Oh, but wait, there's still more (again, actually less)! Just as the WaPo article and its progeny over-hyped the number of of actual incidents having any impact at all on domestic communications, the claim that similar "thousands of violations" occur "each year" is completely unsupported by anything in the audit or any other document cited in the WaPo report. As noted above, and as appears on the face of the audit, it covers a period of one year. So, for that one yearlong period, from the 2Q 2011 through 1Q 2012, there were 2,776 total incidents at the various facilities covered by the audit. But that figure includes the 1900+ foreign roaming non-incidents. So, where does the report get the claim that there are "thousands" of incidents each and every other year, too? Nowhere -- the report doesn't cite any information for any other year, so that claim is apparently based purely and entirely on assumption and speculation. Now, it may turn out that other years have similar error rates as 2Q 2011 - 1Q 2012, but we don't know that, and the WaPo article provides no information to suggest that they know it, either. The article provides no support for the claim at all -- it apparently just makes an assumption and then engages in speculation, yet states its unsubstantiated claim as a fact anyway.

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Part III: In Which Glenn Greenwald Goes Off The Rails

So, given all the foregoing fundamental flaws and misleading claims in the latest NSA "story" and The Narrative, how does the poster-boy for fundamentally flawed and misleading NSA reporting, Glenn Greenwald, respond to the fact that it was the NSA's system and audit safeguards and oversight which caught and identified the incidents of over-reach? If you guessed, "Come up with a way to blame the government and push a conspiracy theory instead of acknowledging that it was NSA system and audit safeguards that caught and documented the errors and mistakes," then you're correct!

Faced with the knowledge that it was, in fact, the NSA itself which caught all of these incidents and thoroughly documented them through an audit, and it was, in fact, the carrying out and documenting of that audit that even allowed knowledge of the incidents to come to light, how does Greenwald spin the existence of the audit? As a government conspiracy, naturally:


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Good grief. Really, Glenn? If these were supposed to be secret "internal" audits, then why would they be white-washed? Why would they "white-wash" something that no one was supposedly ever supposed to see? And if it's a cover-up, then why would the audit look so bad, at least on its face? If the NSA was secretly trying to abuse the programs and cover up any such abuse, then why would they identifyy and document more than 2,700 separate incidents? If they were were really trying to abuse the programs and get away with it, why document any actual incidents of over-reach at all, much less 2,700 of them? And why, as the article notes, would the DOJ self-report incidents of over-reach to the FISC? As usual, Greenwald's anti-government hysteria makes no sense. But as we know, with Greenwald, if something doesn't fit The Narrative, it must be ignored or explained away, and for Glenn, government conspiracy is always an easy fall-back position. Like I said, good grief.

- more -

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/08/17/1231839/-Another-NSA-Bombshell-Starts-to-Fizzle-Out-as-Greenwald-Pushes-Government-Conspiracy-Theory

It's all hype
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023474183




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