The government spying started BEFORE 9/11!!! (article in Slate)

[Wordie]

National security because of 9/11? I don't think so...

Tinker, Tailor, Miner, Spy
Why the NSA's snooping is unprecedented in scale and scope.
By Shane Harris and Tim Naftali
Posted Tuesday, Jan. 3, 2006, at 6:30 AM ET

Fifty years ago, officers from the Signal Security Agency, the predecessor to the National Security Agency, visited an executive from International Telephone and Telegraph and asked for copies of all foreign government cables carried by the company. The request was a direct violation of a 1934 law that banned the interception of domestic communications, but Attorney General Tom Clark backed it. Initially reluctant, ITT relented when told that its competitor, Western Union, had already agreed to supply this information. As James Bamford relates in his book The Puzzle Palace, the government told ITT it "would not desire to be the only non-cooperative company on the project." Codenamed Shamrock, the effort to collect cables sent through U.S.-controlled telegraph lines ultimately involved all the American telecom giants of the era, captured private as well as government cables, and lasted nearly 30 years. Like other illegal Cold War domestic snooping programs —such as the FBI's wiretaps without warrants and the CIA's mail-opening operations—it collapsed under the weight of public reaction to the abuses of executive power revealed by Vietnam and Watergate.

Today's generation of telecom leaders is similarly involved in the current controversy over spying by the NSA. The New York Times reported in December that since 9/11, leading telecommunications companies "have been storing information on calling patterns and giving it to the federal government to aid in tracking possible terrorists." Citing current and former government and corporate officials, the Times reported that the companies have granted the NSA access to their all-important switches, the hubs through which colossal volumes of voice calls and data transmissions move every second. A former telecom executive told us that efforts to obtain call details go back to early 2001, predating the 9/11 attacks and the president's now celebrated secret executive order. The source, who asked not to be identified so as not to out his former company, reports that the NSA approached U.S. carriers and asked for their cooperation in a "data-mining" operation, which might eventually cull "millions" of individual calls and e-mails. (emphasis mine)

Like the pressure applied to ITT a half-century ago, our source says the government was insistent, arguing that his competitors had already shown their patriotism by signing on. The NSA would not comment on the issue, saying that, "We do not discuss details of actual or alleged operational issues."

The magnitude of the current collection effort is unprecedented and indeed marks a shift in how the NSA spies in the United States. The current program seems to involve a remarkable level of cooperation with private companies and extraordinarily expansive data-mining of questionable legality. Before Bush authorized the NSA to expand its domestic snooping program after 9/11 in the secret executive order, the agency had to stay clear of the "protected communications" of American citizens or resident aliens unless supplied by a judge with a warrant. The program President Bush authorized reportedly allows the NSA to mine huge sets of domestic data for suspicious patterns, regardless of whether the source of the data is an American citizen or resident. The NSA needs the help of private companies to do this because commercial broadband now carries so many communications. In an earlier age, the NSA could pick up the bulk of what it needed by tapping into satellite or microwave transmissions. "Now," as the agency noted in a transition document prepared for the incoming Bush administration in December 2000, "communications are mostly digital, carry billions of bits of data, and contain voice, data and multimedia. They are dynamically routed, globally networked and pass over traditional communications means such as microwave or satellite less and less."

The agency used to search the transmissions it monitors for key words, such as names and phone numbers, which are supplied by other intelligence agencies that want to track certain individuals. But now the NSA appears to be vacuuming up all data, generally without a particular phone line, name, or e-mail address as a target. Reportedly, the agency is analyzing the length of a call, the time it was placed, and the origin and destination of electronic transmissions. Those details would be crucial in mining the data for patterns—according to the officials the Times cited, the goal of the NSA's eavesdropping system.

http://www.slate.com/id/2133564/

[Mabus]

1. pre-emptive spying *didn't* stop acts of terrorism on American soil

Despite what the kool-aid drinking idiots keep saying.

[Wordie]

4. Oh, I wish this had all come out before 2004!!! eom

[Old and In the Way]

6. Pre-emptive spying should have validated the 8/6/1 CIA PDB.

Why wasn't the NSA in full analysis mode on 8/6/01? Why weren't the fighters on heightened alert? They had all the puzzle pieces. They just made sure that the corroboration never made it up the chain. Plausible deniability. LIHOP, for sure. If the spying helped them to stage manage the event...MIHOP.

[FreedomAngel82]

11. But who is going to shout this?

Send to Reid and the rest. :)

[Wordie]

17. I mailed it off to Countdown and Hardball. n/t

[The Backlash Cometh]

15. Bush's Moron National Security strategy:

They apparently weren't concerned about anything that required translation since they gutted the translators, which means they must have been focusing on English speaking communications. That's my take on all these crazy revelations.

[librechik]

25. exactly right--it's foolish to think they were looking for terrorists

He was pulling a NIxon and spying on Dems (the REAL enemy of "the R state")

I'd bet my mortgage on it.

[PittPoliSci]

53. my thoughts exactly.

[EST]

2. Wow!

Shocking, again, hardly surprising.

[fooj]

3. Send this to anyone who will listen...

Peace.

[bananas]

5. link - doesn't require subscription

Get the whole article free
http://www.slate.com/id/2133564/

[Wordie]

8. Fixed in the OP now too. Thanks for catching it. eom

[Straight Shooter]

7. Cheney was defending eavesdropping by using the "9/11" excuse.

I think it was a quote from this morning, he said if we had been eavesdropping on the hijackers, 9/11 might have been prevented. Fear! Fear! Fear!

The problem with his rationale, though, is that it's impossible to "prevent" LIHOP or MIHOP.

[understandinglife]

9. Dear Gov. Dean -- NSA, Telco illegal spying pre-dates 9/11 ...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x52300


Peace.

[EVDebs]

10. During the Downing St Memo hearings I heard that the Guantanamo

prison stuff was started to be paid for pre-9/11/01 also. Kind of a follow the money trail thing. I hope that Rep Marcy Kaptur, who was going to investigate this follows up !

[KansDem]

23. The cells holding "terrorists" now were built pre-9/11

The contract was devised in the mid-1990s so that military units could quickly obtain construction and engineering services in response to natural disasters, military operations, humanitarian emergencies, and other crises. At the time a ConCap contract is awarded, it is not known precisely what work a company will be required to perform.

The first such contract went to Perini International of Framingham, Mass., and J.A. Jones Management Services of Charlotte, N.C., in 1995. The second, ConCap II, was awarded to KBR in 2001. With payments under that contract close to reaching its $300 million ceiling, a third ConCap contract, this one with a ceiling of $500 million, was given to KBR in July.

The Pentagon agency in charge of the ConCap contract would not disclose how many other companies were considered for the new contract. According to news reports, three firms, including KBR, were considered for ConCap II.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/org/news/2004/041004-gitmo.htm

I wondered about this a couple of years ago when I found out that construction of holding pens at GitMo started before the 9/11 attacks... Why?

[Wordie]

28. Seems significant enough to deserve its own thread, imho. eom

[AuntiBush]

12. !

Speechless...

[LuCifer]

13. WOAH! This NEEDS a KICK!

Glad I got my steel-toeds on!

Like Lynn Samuels said best today "WHAT A PIECE OF SHIT!" Bush* is, or something 2 that affect.

Lu

[Xenotime]

14. IMPEACH!!!!! NOW!!!!!!!

What is being done in Congress? Are our people in office just clueless?

[C_U_L8R]

16. Hold on - this begs a question..

WHO were they spying on BEFORE 9/11 ????

[Roland99]

19. And who authorized the NSA to start spying? Appears to be before *

issued that executive order.


Did the NSA do this on its own or was there some super-secret executive order we don't know about?

[Mabus]

21. Yes, who were the targets of the spying

and why where the targeted? Where are the reporters in the MSM who are asking this question? Where is the press that wanted answers about the blue dress during the Clinton administration?

[Wordie]

26. Shhh...that's SECRET. National security....blah, blah, blah.

[EVDebs]

34. An Enemy of the People, by Ibsen gives us clues....

Arthur Miller's take on the Ibsen classic shows us what happens when you try to tell the truth to a society controlled by and for the wealthiest interests.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/theaterarts/2002183204_enemy18.html

A la Judith Miller et al, even the so-called 'liberal media' is a lapdog for the wealthiest who butters their bread so to speak. In the end, the controlled ignorant masses end up throwing rocks into Dr. Stockman's home, as the family ducks for cover, with their only possession left, their pride and honor in having told the truth.

[nolabels]

55. Ah, so some are finally coming around then?

The Corporate state that WE all living under the thumb of now has viewed the general population as the enemy since forever. Also the people we like to think of living at the top are not in that much of a different position then the rest of us. We will all collectively have to slay this wild unruly dragon together and we will have no choice eventually.

[arcane1]

36. it was obviously NOT bin Laden, Atta, etc....

verrrry interesting....

[EVDebs]

39. Check out new book Spychips and articles lately on backgroundchecks

www.spychips.com and the CSMonitor's article on abuse of background checks with info from, ta-dah, database suppliers like ChoicePoint.

BTW, Global Information Group Ltd. in the Bahamas is Ben H. Bell, IIIrd's company which got the condtracts for Total Information Awareness when it was outsourced, offshored and privatized. If NSA and the other intell groups want to reconoiter (sp ?) they just wire eachother. I assume the other US/UK intel orgs will do the same.

Total Surveillance (using RFIDs)
www.motherjones.com/interview/2005/12/albrecht.html

and on background checkers
Who is checking the background checkers ?
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1128/p13s02-wmgn.html

and
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0805/p11s02-legn.html

By RFIDs 'they' can track you ... but they can't seem to track that OBL guy with his kidney dialysis requirements into the Hindu Kush. You see what I'm getting at ? And with RFIDs and background checks based on poor databases (maintained by ChoicePoint, with its poor security), you have a government that can put bad data on you into a database and then harass you out of a job, and then make sure you never work again to boot. I'd be more scared of Bush & Co. with this technology in their possession than crazy Islamists right now.

[mikelewis]

18. I'd be shocked...

if I didn't expect it already.

[texpatriot2004]

20. Right. They are such criminals. nm

[W2Hague]

22. Only 1 solution

Mr. Bush has tallied a virtual laundry list of unconstitutional behavior during the past 5 years. The only way to alleviate the suffering that is and will be is to remove the Chimp from office (along with ALL his henchmen). It is incumbent upon the Congress to act in the interests of the American People and begin Impeachment proceedings post haste. And if Congress turns its back on its solemn duties, then the American People must respond at the polls in November 2006.

The graphic speaks for itself.

_____________________________ http://www.bruindesign.com _______________________________



Peace
D.L. Bruin

[Wordie]

27. Has anyone sent this to John Conyers?

The email page on his website says it's to be used only by his constituents, which I am not. He ought to read this, imho.

Who else should this be sent to?

[librechik]

24. This is such a stupid premise--everyone knows OBL uses couriers

to communicate, and they are all relatives of his, or similarly committed to him. NSA is NOT going to find "terror activity" of any substance on the broadband waves. They are smarter than that.

This electronic sweep ONLY victimizes the American people and gives the NSA too much material to translate effectively. ONLY "Humint" ever works on this stuff, and they WON'T invest in that because the defense industries can't profit off training a few experts who know what they're doing to infiltrate the "terror cells" They want to perform intelligence gathering with the same precision they do "shock and awe" carpet bomb and let the almighty sort 'em out.

[Free the Press]

29. um, are a corporation's counsel so gullible and stupid? I think not!

Perhaps corporations are about to be outed for their complicity, and this is their PR breaking the news their way?

That seems more realistic to me.

[thefool_wa]

30. Its always assumed

That the corporations had to be cajoled into these activities. I find that hard to believe. Those in charge of the corporations are so intertwined with our government officials they probably just handed the information over in return for favors, or legilative priorities or something.

[Wordie]

32. There was huge change in laws regarding the telecoms back in the mid-90s

There was a law, CALEA (Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act), passed under pressure from law enforcement and the intelligence community. It specifically required the telecoms to revamp their equipment, to vastly improve law enforcement surveillance capacity. Sad thing is, it ultimately provided a window for spying on the spies spying on us, according to this article from 2003 (PBS):

JULY 10, 2003
Shooting Ourselves in the Foot:
Grandiose Schemes for Electronic Eavesdropping May Hurt More Than They Help

By Robert X. Cringely

Whom do you trust? If you are a policeman, you trust the police. How much information is enough? When it comes to the electronic gathering of intelligence information, it appears that no amount of information is enough. These two concepts have collided in America with the result that creating the very capability of gathering electronic intelligence is putting all of us in greater danger. The supposed cure may be worse than the disease. Maybe -- and only maybe -- we know a little more about what the bad guys in our society are doing, but it is coming at what might be a horrible cost. And a big part of the problem is that if you are a policeman, you trust the police.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation administers the Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), which was passed by Congress in 1994. CALEA was a response to advances in digital communications. It was a way for law enforcement and intelligence agencies to go beyond old-fashioned phone taps and listen in on mobile phone calls, pagers, the Internet and any other form of electronic messaging that might be used by enemies of the state. CALEA made the phone companies and pager companies and Internet companies responsible for building into their equipment the capability to tap all types of communications on the order of a judge or -- in the case of foreign surveillance -- of the U.S. Attorney General. Every telephone switch installed in the U.S. since 1995 is supposed to have this surveillance capability, paid for, by the way, with $500 million of your tax dollars. Not only can the authorities listen to your phone calls, they can follow those phone calls back upstream and listen to the phones from which calls were made. They can listen to what you say while you think you are on hold. This is scary stuff.

But not nearly as scary as the way CALEA's own internal security is handled. The typical CALEA installation on a Siemens ESWD or a Lucent 5E or a Nortel DMS 500 runs on a Sun workstation sitting in the machine room down at the phone company. The workstation is password protected, but it typically doesn't run Secure Solaris. It often does not lie behind a firewall. Heck, it usually doesn't even lie behind a door. It has a direct connection to the Internet because, believe it or not, that is how the wiretap data is collected and transmitted. And by just about any measure, that workstation doesn't meet federal standards for evidence integrity.

And it can be hacked.

And it has been.

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20030710.html

Scary, indeed.

[thefool_wa]

33. I remember this

It was passed about the same time as the E911 and other wireless communications bills were passed (if, in fact, they weren't the same thing).

It essentially gave the federal government a switchboard that they could use to tap phone lines once they had a warrant (I know that is over-simplification of the issue, but that's essentially what it is).

Of course the warrant part of that is apparently now obsolete. :grr:

[Wordie]

38. Yep...but the scary thing is the lack of security with CALEA changes.

(I must admit I'm not familiar with E911 and the other bills you mention.)

Did you have a chance to read the full CALEA article I posted? It says the new system that CALEA put in place has horrible security overall; even beyond the issue of whether the government can spy on us, other people can, and can do so easily! It is truly frightening.

[thefool_wa]

40. Frightening is an understatement

The idea that it can be hacked easily scares the crap out of me, but the assimilation of a national communications database is THE MOST FRIGHTENING THING OF ALL!!!

Now it seems that our conversations can just be recorded, and stored, so they can go back and peruse them later after we have been caught doing something (crime, misdemeanor, or violation) and then pin us after the fact? The article sights people who have been wronged as a result, is there any further documentation on that?

[Wordie]

42. The telco exec in the Slate article (OP) suggests it's common.

I can't right now cite anything else myself, but I bet there are other DUers who can.

Anyone?

Edited to add: ...and since it's all secret how can anyone know?

[Wordie]

45. Could the NSA have found a LEGAL (or quasi-legal) way to spy?

Does anyone really understand those privacy notices the telcoms send? I wonder if the NSA's argument might be that we are technically giving them the OK to do this. After all, the telcos cooperated with law enforcement and intelligence agencies in developing the technology - it's certainly available to them, as discussed earlier (CALEA). I don't understand all that legal stuff. If something is in there though, could it technically be seen as phone customers giving their approval for this??? (But not on the government side; instead through the telco side, in order to evade the constitutional and legal issues.)

I think most people just sign off when presented with those kinda agreements, and it even seems to me that one doesn't even have to sign it, it's just sent out, saying what the parameters of the service are.

What if those telcom privacy agreements say that the telcos can provide our info to the NSA?

Am I way off base here?

[thefool_wa]

46. I have never

signed a privacy statement form my telco provider, but I believe the "use of our services implies concent" clause is in there. However, I will now be going over one to see what they say.

[Wordie]

47. I've checked mine - here's what it says:

Under the "Liability" section:
NEITHER QWEST NOR ITS SUPPLIERS OF EQUIPMENT, AGENTS OR AUTHORIZED DISTRIBUTERS OF SERVICE ARE LIABLE FOR ANY LOSS OR DAMAGE WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM MISTAKES...UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS TO DATA, FILES OR EQUIPMENT...

Qwest shall not be liable for any failure to perform its obilgations under this Agreement due to any cause or causes beyond its reasonable control, as determined by Qwest. Qwest shall be entitled to take and shall have no liability whatsoever by any action as deemed necessary by Qwest to bring the Services or its practices into conformity with any rules, regulations, orders, decisions or directives of the FCC or other governmental agency.

What does that mean? Could "other governmental agency" mean the NSA?

[thefool_wa]

48. So they are saying

If we give recordings of your wiretaps to the NSA we aren't liable for violating your rights, even if they didn't have a court order?

Yeah, and monkeys might fly out my butt. The great thing about these statements is, just because they make them, doesn't make them true. You can still fight it and a judge isn't (I hope) going to say "well, you signed away your rights to this corporation, there's nothing we can do".

[Wordie]

49. I'm not saying that's what it says, I'm saying I just don't KNOW what it

says. The statement in the agreement is just too vague and broad.

The worst case scenario in my worries goes like this:

NSA has a long time desire for data mining of US citizen phone information. Back in the 1990's CALEA creates the legal requirement for this to occur. Telcos therefore re-design their equipment to enable this data mining, and add to their privacy notices a statement that essentially says, "...if the government asks for info, we can give it to them, and hey, it's not our problem." (Again, I'm not really certain that's what it really says, but that could be an interpretation, as I read it.)

So, what happens then? Could NSA conceivably use the fact of that privacy notice, and the tacit agreement to it by the customer, as a sort of backdoor around other laws outlawing such data mining? Could the agreement be considered a relinquishing of other privacy rights vis a vis the government? Do the combination of this agreement between telco and customer, when combined with other agreements that NSA may have with the telcos trump our right to privacy?

As you can see, this has got me wondering quite a bit. I have no way of knowing if this particular concern is valid or not, because I don't know clearly what that telco agreement really means. The thing that makes me think I may be on the wrong track is that I haven't seen anyone raise this issue, and so I've just presumed that our privacy rights are protected by phone company policies. But in light of all this new information, I'm not sure anymore.

Just had a funny memory that relates to this (which will reveal how old I am). Did you ever see that old movie, The President's Analyst?

[thefool_wa]

51. No I have not

If its at bb.com I'll add it to my queue. Nothing beats a good conspiracy movie.

I agree that the language is vague and I think, short of being a lawyer (which I don't believe either of us are) we won't be able to decipher it.

This type of abuse of our rights by corporations starts with the privacy of their customers and extends out to the workplaces they manage, the jobs they take on, the people they hire/fire, all of it. It seems more and more that our rights only apply when it is convenient to whoever wants to enforce/ignore them and ALL of them are sacrificed when we deal with a major corporation in some way.

I just hope I never have to go broke (and its not a long trip) fighting this type of thing.

:grr: :banghead:

[Wordie]

52. Have you ever asked some rep to explain those agreements we all

sign without understanding them? I have. They act as if I must be crazy for asking!

It is troubling that we all agree to things without understanding them. How can we, without an attorney to review it? And who could afford to hire an attorney for something like that?

[Wordie]

50. Are there any DU legal minds who could answer this question?

Exactly what does all that mean, in terms of phone customer privacy?

[opusprime]

31. We should have fun with this...

on all your phone calls say stuff that is off-the-wall.

"Tomorrow is D-Day, bring on the brains!"

"Is everything in place? Allah von Mallah."

"I see 4... i c-4, that's FOUR... trees in my yard at the moment"

"They'll never get us alive... muwhahahah... muwhhahah..."

"No no Salleem... your the co-pilot this time!"

"They are allowing scissors again? They are just make it too easy!"

"May I mow a dock to the bananna patch?"

any more good ones?

[in_cog_ni_to]

35. Well, THAT blows the hell out of THAT LIE.

Cheney JUST SAID...."We had to spy on Americans. Had we had THIS NSA spying capability BEFORE 911, it would have possibly been prevented.":rofl::rofl::rofl: What a bunch of psychopathic LIARS.

[EVDebs]

37. Bamford's books disclose that 'training' lessons allow for domestic

spying. That kinda shocked me. A nice big legal loophole you can drive a Peterbuilt through.

Someone should ask Bamford about that, as it always bothered me. The intel agencies are overloaded with conservative types who would just love to go off on their own witchhunts it seems to me.

Time Magazine Aug 4, 1997, page 52 in an article on the Mormons titled 'Kingdom Come' had this to say: '...the FBI and CIA...have instituted Mormon recruitment plans...'

So this conservative hiring preference, from the background checkers on up the pecking order in intelligence favors even more conservative views. Until you get to a position where the country is in today. The smart and liberal ones are driven out, the tightlipped Bush koolaid-drinkers assume the power positions. Great.

[Nothing Without Hope]

41. I wonder if this is one of the tidbits that the NYT is STILL sitting on,

after a year of holding the story. I bet it is. Blasts the hell out of the half-assed claims of the Administration, of course, and shows this massive breaking of constitutional law for what it is.

Need to media=blast on this one.

ETA: K & R

[Wordie]

43. Wasn't there supposed to be a big NYT story out this past Wed.?

I haven't seen anything. Wonder why.

[Justice Is Comin]

44. NSA could you please spy on my television

and keep Bush off of it?

[tinfoilinfor2005]

54. Robert Kennedy Jr. was about to discuss that subject on Ring of Fire

tonight with a man who had recently written about it, and then the station went out and I wasn't able to make out their conversation. Did anyone hear that?