Australia gets 'deluge' of US secret data, prompting a new data facility

Australian intelligence agencies are receiving ''huge volumes'' of ''immensely valuable'' information from the United States including through the controversial PRISM program, Fairfax Media can reveal.

The ''data deluge'' has required the Australian government to build a state-of-the-art secret data storage facility just outside Canberra.

Privately labelled by one official as "the new black vault", the high-security data centre is nearing completion at the HMAS Harman communications base and will support the operations of Australia's signals intelligence agency, the top-secret Australian Signals Directorate (ASD).

The revelations about the PRISM program prompted widespread concern by civil libertarians concerned about its vast size and the lack of requirement to obtain a warrant before hoovering up internet and email data of users of Google, Facebook, Apple and other top technology firms.

Greens senator Scott Ludlam said the government must explain the degree to which ordinary people were being spied on and whether this circumvented Australian privacy protections.

Australian officials describe PRISM and "similar capabilities" in relation to internet service providers in Australia as "an inevitable response to the digital communications revolution".

The $163.5 million HMAS Harman Communications Facility Project includes an extension to the existing Defence Network Operations Centre and a new ''communication/data-room facility".

Because of its complexity and expansion of operational requirements, the project is 80 per cent over its original budget and five years behind schedule, but construction is near completion.

There has been no discussion of the project in Senate estimates committee hearings, and the public reports of Parliament's joint committee on intelligence and security make no reference to it.

Officially the Defence Department will say only that the new facility will provide data storage and processing facilities but has confirmed that "the Australian Signals Directorate (also known as the Defence Signals Directorate) will be one of the Defence entities at the facility".

It is understood the centre will also serve the Defence Intelligence Organisation and the Defence Imagery and Geospatial Organisation.

In underlining the importance of PRISM, Australian officials noted that it had been described in leaked documents as the most prolific contributor to US President Barack Obama's daily intelligence brief.

''Given that the US shares so much with us, it should be no surprise that this reporting is critical to Australian intelligence,'' one official said on condition of anonymity, adding that it included ''what goes into the ONA [Office of National Assessments] briefs for Prime Minister Julia Gillard and the national security committee of cabinet''.

The officials said that Australia contributed to targeting undertaken by US intelligence, including "identification of specific individuals of security concern''.

However, they stressed that the ASD complied with legal requirements and ministerial guidelines that limit reporting in relation to Australians, other than those of specific security or foreign intelligence interest.

They expressed confidence in the US's adherence to similar agreements.

"We are overwhelmingly dependent on intelligence obtained by the NSA and the US intelligence community more broadly," one official said.

Officials cited intelligence relating to North Korea's military threats, information relating to Australian citizens involved in fighting in Syria, missile technology acquisition efforts by Iran and Chinese internal political and economic developments as recent examples of the benefits of Australia's intelligence ties with the US.

US signals intelligence was also described as "absolutely critical" to the diplomatic campaign that won Australia a seat on the UN Security Council.

Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus has refused to say whether US intelligence agencies have shared with Australia information gained through PRISM.

With David Wroe

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/national/australia-gets-deluge-of-us-secret-data-prompting-a-new-data-facility-20130612-2o4kf.html#ixzz2W0FRg0pU

It's sad that this stuff will only get worse under Abbott

Governments will always take a mile when given an inch.

I just find it funny that any politician would support something like this when its usually them that have more to hide than your average Facebook user sending out Candy Crush invites.

EDITORIAL
Surveillance: A Threat to Democracy
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD
Published: June 11, 2013

A new Washington Post-Pew Research Center poll found that a majority of Americans are untroubled by revelations about the National Security Agency’s dragnet collection of the phone records of millions of citizens, without any individual suspicion and regardless of any connection to a counterterrorism investigation.

Perhaps the lack of a broader sense of alarm is not all that surprising when President Obama, Senator Dianne Feinstein, the Democratic chairwoman of the Intelligence Committee, and intelligence officials insist that such surveillance is crucial to the nation’s antiterrorism efforts.

But Americans should not be fooled by political leaders putting forward a false choice. The issue is not whether the government should vigorously pursue terrorists. The question is whether the security goals can be achieved by less-intrusive or sweeping means, without trampling on democratic freedoms and basic rights. Far too little has been said on this question by the White House or Congress in their defense of the N.S.A.’s dragnet.

The surreptitious collection of “metadata” — every bit of information about every phone call except the word-by-word content of conversations — fundamentally alters the relationship between individuals and their government.

Tracking whom Americans are calling, for how long they speak, and from where, can reveal deeply personal information about an individual. Using such data, the government can discover intimate details about a person’s lifestyle and beliefs — political leanings and associations, medical issues, sexual orientation, habits of religious worship, and even marital infidelities. Daniel Solove, a professor at George Washington University Law School and a privacy expert, likens this program to a Seurat painting. A single dot may seem like no big deal, but many together create a nuanced portrait.

The effect is to undermine constitutional principles of personal privacy and freedom from constant government monitoring. The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit on Tuesday, challenging the program’s constitutionality, and it was right to do so.

The government’s capacity to build extensive, secret digital dossiers on such a mass scale is totally at odds with the vision and intention of the nation’s framers who crafted the Fourth Amendment precisely to outlaw indiscriminate searches that cast a wide net to see what can be caught. It also attacks First Amendment values of free speech and association.

In a democracy, people are entitled to know what techniques are being used by the government to spy on them, how the records are being held and for how long, who will have access to them, and the safeguards in place to prevent abuse. Only then can they evaluate official claims that the correct balance between fighting terrorism and preserving individual liberty has been struck, and decide if they are willing to accept diminished privacy and liberty. If Americans have been slow to recognize the dangerous overreach of the N.S.A.’s phone surveillance, it is largely because they have scant information to judge the government’s conduct.

Even if most Americans trust President Obama not to abuse their personal data, no one knows who will occupy the White House or lead intelligence operations in the future. The government’s capacity to assemble, keep and share information on its citizens has grown exponentially since the days when J. Edgar Hoover, as director of the F.B.I., collected files on political leaders and activists to enhance his own power and chill dissent. Protections against different abuses in this digital age of genuine terrorist threats need to catch up.

Meet The New York Times’s Editorial Board »
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/12/opinion/surveillance-a-threat-to-democracy.html?hp

Where is left to go?

EDITORIAL
Surveillance: Snowden Doesn’t Rise to Traitor
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD


For several top lawmakers in Washington, Edward Snowden committed the ultimate political crime when he revealed to the world just how broadly and easily the government is collecting phone and Internet records. “He’s a traitor,” said John Boehner, the House speaker. “It’s an act of treason,” said Senator Dianne Feinstein, the chairwoman of the Intelligence Committee.

Among prosecutors and defense lawyers, there’s a name for that kind of hyperbole: overcharging. Whatever his crimes — and he clearly committed some — Mr. Snowden did not commit treason, though the people who have long kept the secrets he revealed are now fulminating with rage.

If Mr. Snowden had really wanted to harm his country, he could have sold the classified documents he stole to a foreign power, say Russia or China or Iran or North Korea. But even that would not constitute treason, which only applies in cases of aiding an enemy with whom the United States is at war.

His harshest critics might argue that by exposing American intelligence practices, he gave aid and comfort to Al Qaeda and its allies, with whom the country remains in a military conflict, thanks to the Authorization for Use of Military Force, which Congress passed after Sept. 11, 2001, and is in force now. It’s unlikely that Qaeda leaders did not already know or suspect surveillance before Mr. Snowden’s disclosures. But treason means more than that, too. In the landmark 1945 case Cramer v. United States, the Supreme Court ruled that one had to provide aid and comfort and also “adhere” to an enemy to be guilty of treason.

“A citizen may take actions which do aid and comfort the enemy,” the court said, “making a speech critical of the government or opposing its measures, profiteering, striking in defense plants or essential work, and the hundred other things which impair our cohesion and diminish our strength — but if there is no adherence to the enemy in this, if there is no intent to betray, there is no treason.”

Clearly, Mr. Snowden did not join a terror cell, or express any hostility toward the United States, when he turned over documents to The Guardian and The Washington Post. (He was also not nearly as reckless as Bradley Manning, the soldier on trial on charges with giving classified materials to WikiLeaks, who seemed not to know or care what secret documents he was exposing.) Mr. Snowden’s goal was to expose and thus stop the intelligence community from what he considered unwarranted intrusions into the lives of ordinary Americans. “My sole motive,” he told The Guardian, “is to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them.”

While that principle is the right one, he should brace himself for the charges and possible punishment that may come in its wake. Most likely, he will be charged with disclosure of classified information under the Espionage Act, which carries a possible 10-year jail term for each count. Mr. Snowden broke the agreement he made to keep these materials secret. He appeared forthright in confessing to the act and can use his testimony, should he be brought to trial, to make the case that he exposed a serious abuse of power (though, technically, he did not blow the whistle on fraud or criminal activity).

That’s what civil disobedience means: accepting the consequences of one’s actions to make a larger point. Mr. Snowden may well be going to jail for exposing practices that should never have been secret in the first place.

Meet The New York Times’s Editorial Board »
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/12/opinion/surveillance-snowden-doesnt-rise-to-traitor.html?hp

Would you say that if you were an inmate of Guantanamo Bay, being water boarded, without any basic legal or human rights....all because you were wrongly identified as a terrorist?

You do realise that the very reason terrorists are known prior to an attack is because of data observation projects just like this.

I think they're treading the line right now between community safety and big brother. I think it comes down to how swiftly the data is analysed and responded to.

US sued over privacy as Snowden disappears

Date
June 12, 2013 - 10:24AM

Civil rights groups file a lawsuit against the US National Security Agency over its program of collecting millions of telephone

Even before it can work out the how and why of its latest classified leak scandal, the US government is under legal challenge over the constitutionality of its phone surveillance, with the American Civil Liberties Union suing on the grounds that it tramples the rights to freed speech and privacy.

Quoting the First Amendment [free speech] and the Fourth [privacy], the case filed in the US District Court in New York describes the surveillance as 'vacuum[ing] up information about every phone call placed within, from or to the US.”

Mr Snowden's leaks have left Americans reeling in wonder at the illusory nature of privacy in a post-9/11 world. Some are suggesting that it is the news media's treatment of the contents of the Snowden leaks that is illusory.

At the same time, ACLU and other rights organisations have launched a website – stopwatching.us – to protest at widespread surveillance in the name of combatting terrorism.

Last heard from in Hong Kong, the man at the centre of the scandal, Edward Snowden, has gone to ground –– and advice is coming thick and fast on how he might evade American efforts to capture him.

Officials in Moscow said that Russia would consider an asylum application by Mr Snowden and legal experts are warning that he is misguided in his belief that authorities in Hong Kong will shield him from any US dragnet.

Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder who is holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, urged Snowden to head for Latin America, in an interview on ABC TV's Lateline on Monday evening.

And Mr Snowden's girlfriend Lindsay Mills has blogged recently that 'sometimes life doesn't afford proper goodbyes.'

Mr Snowden reportedly checked out of the Mira Hotel in Hong Kong on Monday, as at least two US investigations geared up for the effort to extradite his to face charges over his sensational leaks to The Guardian and The Washington Post of the extent of Washington's spying on phone and email communications by hundreds of millions of Americans and foreigners. One is being run by the FBI; the other by the National Security Agency.

Mr Snowden says he chose Hong Kong because of its 'spirited commitment to free speech and the right to political dissent.' But citing documents showing that Hong Kong cooperated in the CIA's controversial below-the-radar movement of dissidents around the globe, a process called 'rendition,' the New York-based Human Rights Watch, advised the 29-year-old American to move on.

“I certainly would not consider Hong Kong a safe place for him at the moment,” HRW's emergencies director told The Guardian.

However, it seems that Mr Snowden could buy time, perhaps months, if he opted to stay in Hong Kong – legal technicalities reportedly have rendered the island's asylum laws inoperable and experts say that all current applicants for asylum are entitled to remain in Hong Kong until the legal anomaly is rectified.

Mr Snowden was an employee of the defence and intelligence contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, not directly of the NSA. On Tuesday, the contracting firm issued a brief statement, confirming that Snowden had commenced working for it as recently as March and, in the wake of the leaks, he had been fired.

“Booz Allen can confirm that Edward Snowden, 29, was an employee of our firm for less that three months, assigned to a team in Hawaii,” it said. “Snowden, who had a salary of $US122,000, was terminated on June 10, 2013 for violations of the firm's code of ethics and firm policy.”

Mr Snowden's 28-year-old girlfriend Lindsay Mills, a ballerina who performs with a Hawaii dance troupe, blogs under the banner 'Adventures of a world-travelling pole-dancing superhero.'

The site was removed soon after Mr Snowden outed himself as the leaker. But in cached versions, Ms Mills writes: “I don't know what will happen from here. I don't know how to feel normal…my world has opened and closed all at once, leaving me lost at sea without a compass – at the moment all I can feel is alone.”

Mr Snowden's leaks have left Americans reeling in wonder at the illusory nature of privacy in a post-9/11 world. But some are asking where have they been, suggesting that it is the news media's treatment of the contents of the Snowden leaks that is illusory.

In The Washington Post, the respected columnist Walter Pincus quotes a 2006 report in USA Today, which disclosed that the NSA “has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth.

“The NSA program reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans – most of whom aren't suspected of any crime. This program does not involve the NSA listening to or recording conversations. But the spy agency is using the data to analyse calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity…”

Similarly, Mr Pincus pulled out a March 2012 report from Wired magazine, in which author and intelligence expert James Bamford describes the NSA $US2 billion new data centre in Utah and its capacity to 'intercept, decipher, analyse and store vast swathes of the world's communications as they zap down from satellites and zip through the underground and undersea cables in international, foreign and domestic networks.”

Writing about how the centre would operate when it comes on stream at the end of this year, Bamford writes: “Stored in near-bottomless databases will be all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails – parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases and other digital 'pocket litter.'”


Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/it-pro/security-it/us-sued-over-privacy-as-snowden-disappears-20130612-2o2yh.html#ixzz2W0WyrBkt

The first amendment has no baring on this, that much is clutching at straws. They're basically saying "the first amendment protects my right to break the law".

The fourth amendment however, is a different story.

[youtube]riNIjE-J4NQ[/youtube]

The flowery intent of protecting people and how it actually plays out can be miles apart.

Give over these former rights to privacy and it sets a precedent u may not like when someone is in power u are not so keen on. Its weird watching a lot of US political commentary as i do, and seeing the same types who would have complained under Bush falling into line with it under Obama.

The sort of infrastructure that gets set up under these programs takes on an unaccountable life of its own in short time. Its been there in one form or another for decades and is just becoming more pervasive in our digitised world.

Im not especially into the whole majoritarian democracy thang, but will be voting Wikileaks in september on transparency alone. We have no one asking any of the sort of questions that are at least asked by some fringe Repubs and Dems in the US. With the exception of the wonderful Tim Wilson and a few others. No one in parliament really...even the Greens have gone very soft on foreign policy lately.

Where did you get your information from to base such outrages accusation?

Only free press will deliver news like this, Labor unsuccessfully attempted to change print press laws, this attempt was best described by The Daily Telegraph equaling Gillard to Stalin, Mao, Saddam and other dictators on their front page, about a month ago.

Accusing Abbott for something he will do in the future without a proof, only exposes your stupidity on the subject.

How do you classify the Egyptian boat person wanted by Interpol for murder, terrorism and who knows what other charges, who went across half a dozen countries and was placed in temporary community accommodation in Adelaide by current Labor government.

We have to lose some liberties for the good of the country, but also make stricter laws against the abuse of the information gathered.

NSA "trigger words"

1984, ACTIVE, AEC, AFSATCOM, AGCY, AIRFORCE, ALDERGROVE, ALERT, ALGORITHM, ALPHA, AMU, ANONYMOUS, ANTI, AREA51, ARPA, ASSASSINATION, BASE, BI, BIRD DOG, BLACKLIST, BLACK-OPS, BLOCKS, BLUEBIRD, BND, BRONZE, BUGS BUNNY, CAMOUFLAGE, CAPRICORN, CARBON, CBOT, CDC, CELL, CHAINING, CIA, CLASSIFIED, CLEARANCE, CLONE, CODE, COLD, COLLAT, COMPSEC, CONSPIRACY, CONTROL, COUNTER, CROSS, CRYPTO, CYPHER, DATA, DEATH, DEBUGGING, DEFCON, DEFENSE, DEVICE, DIRECT, DNA, DOA, DOD, DOOR, DUPLEX, E-BOMB, EBE, ECHO, EHF, ELECTRONIC, ENCRYPTION, ENERGY, ENIGMA, EPIDEMIC, ERROR, ESPIONAGE, ETERNITY SERVER, EUROFED, FACE, FACTOR, FBI, FIELD, FILES, FILTER, FIREFLY, FLU, FOREIGN, FOX, FREQ, FUSION, G-MAN, GATE, GENETIC, GOVERNMENT, GP, GROUND, GRAY DATA, GROOM, GROUP, GSG-9, GUARD, H, HACKERS, HALCON, HALO, HITWORD, HOUSE, HUMINT, HYPER, ICBM, INDIGO, INFORMATION, INFOSEC, INFOWAR, INFRASOUND, INSERT, INTEGRATE, INTELLIGENCE, IRBM, JASON, JET, JPL, JUPITER, KEY, LABLINK, LAW, LD, LETHAL, LEVEL, LF, LIQUID, LOCK, LOG, MAILBOMB, MAJIC, MAL, MAPLE, MASER, MASS, MECHANICS, MERCURY, MERLIN, MEV, MI, MICRO, MIL, MILITARY, MILSATCOM, MINUTE, MISSILE, MIT, MJ-12, MOBILE, MOLE, MONITOR, MOSAIC, NAS, NASA, NATIONAL, NATO, NAVELEXSYSSECENGCEN, NAVWAN, NEVADA, NEWTON, NOISE, NORAD, NSA, NSC, NUCLEAR, NUMBER, OBJECTIVE, OBSERVE, OIL, ORDER, OSS, OVERKILL, PASSWORD, PATENT, PENTAGON, PERL-RSA, PGP, PI, PINE GAP, PING, PLUTONIUM, PRESIDENT, PRIVACY, PROOF, PROPAGANDA, PROPULSION, PROTON, PSYOPS, QUANTUM, R00T, RADINT, RADIO, RECORD, REGISTER, REMAILER, RETINAL, ROSWELL, RSA, RSP, S/KEY, SAC, SAM, SASCOM, SATELLITE, SCAN, SCREENING, SECDEF, SECOPS, SECRET, SECURE, SEQUENCE, SHAPE, SHF, SIG, SIGDEV, SIGNATURE, SNIPER, SOP, SP4, SPECIAL, SPHINX, SPIES, STANFORD, STEALTH, STP, STRATEGIC, SUPERCOMPUTER, SUPRA, SURVEILLANCE, SYSTEM, T BRANCH, TACTICS, TECHNOLOGY, TI, TOP, TRACE, TRANSFER, TRANSMIT, TRAP, TRINITY, TROJAN, UHF, ULTRASOUND, UMBRELLA, UNDERCOVER, UNIT, US, USAF, VACCINE, VIRUS, VLF, WARFARE, WHITE, WIRE, WORM, XI, ZERO, ZETA, ZONE

.... Operation Troll the NSA ....

http://trollthensa.com/


AT 7:00 PM EDT ON WEDNESDAY, JUNE 12, CALL/EMAIL THIS SCRIPT TO A FRIEND:

Hey! How’s it going? I’m all right.

My job is so shitty I wish I could overthrow my boss. It’s like this oppressive regime where only true believers in his management techniques will stay around. I work marathon-length hours and he’s made all these changes that have made it the worst architecture firm to work at in Manhattan. Like he moved the office to the Financial District and fired my assistant. She was the only one who knew where the blueprints were! I need access to those blueprints to complete my job! F my life, right? And he keeps trying to start all these new initiatives to boost revenue, but seriously we just need to stick to what we do best. There’s only one true profit center. I seriously feel ready to go on strike at any second.

I just read this article about how these free radical particles can cause the downfall of good health and accelerate aging. These could actually cause death to millions of Americans. If these particles are flying around undetected everywhere, does that mean we’re all radicalized?

Have you seen the second season of Breaking Bad? I just finished it. I couldn’t believe that episode where they poison the guy with ricin! That was the bomb! I won’t say any more because I don’t want to reveal the earth-shattering events to come.

Oh! So I’ve been planning a big trip for the summer. I’m thinking of visiting all of the most famous suspension bridges in the United States. So probably like the Golden Gate Bridge, The Brooklyn Bridge, and the Verrazano Narrows Bridge. I’m gonna bring my younger brother and I know he’ll want to go to bars, so I’m thinking of getting him a fake drivers license, but I hope that doesn’t blow up in my face.

Okay, I gotta run! I’m late for flight school. I missed the last class where we learn how to land, so I really can’t miss another one. Talk to you later!


Edited by blacka: 13/6/2013 10:13:55 AM

A pointless exercise in reality but a fun idea...

As for us surveillance "foiling" all these attacks...its actually on the record (NYT and elsewhere) that many of these planned attacks originate from the security and intelligence agencies. The times square one as an example.

As much as Alex Jones turns people off with his OTT style, he is actually very enlightening on these military/intelligence industrial complex issues. He has some very good videos up on his Youtube channel this morning. :)

One in 3 Americans see NSA leaker Edward Snowden as ‘patriot’ than traitor
Thursday, 13 June, 2013, 10:19am
Reuters

Roughly one in three Americans say the former security contractor who leaked details of top-secret US surveillance activity is a patriot and should not be prosecuted, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Wednesday.

Some 23 per cent of those surveyed said former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden is a traitor while 31 per cent said he is a patriot. An additional 46 per cent said they did not know.

Snowden, 29, revealed last week that the NSA is monitoring a wide swath of telephone and internet activity as part of its counterterrorism efforts.

“I’m neither traitor nor hero. I’m an American,” Snowden told the South China Post, an English-language newspaper in Hong Kong, in an interview published on Wednesday.

US authorities have said they are weighing possible criminal charges against Snowden, who was an employee of Virginia-based consultant Booz Allen Hamilton when he leaked documents indicating the NSA’s surveillance of Americans is much broader than had been disclosed publicly.

In the Reuters/Ipsos poll, 35 per cent of those surveyed said Snowden should not face charges while 25 per cent said he should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. An additional 40 per cent said they did not know.

Snowden told the South China Morning Post he intends to stay in Hong Kong and fight any effort to extradite him to the United States to face legal action.

The online survey of 645 Americans was conducted on Tuesday and Wednesday. It has a credibility interval of plus or minus 4.4 percentage points for each result.

Snowden’s revelations, first reported by Britain’s Guardian newspaper and the Washington Post, have fuelled a national discussion over how the United States should balance its national security efforts with Americans’ right to privacy in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks.

Reuters/Ipsos polling conducted since the leaks were revealed last Thursday have found Americans divided over the merits of the NSA surveillance programme.

Some 45 per cent of those surveyed say the programme is acceptable under some circumstances, while 37 per cent say it is completely unacceptable, the polling found. Only 6 per cent say they have no objections to the programme.

http://www.scmp.com/news/world/article/1259688/one-3-americans-see-nsa-leaker-edward-snowden-patriot-traitor?

Actually that raises another question. Wikileaks gives up the government secrets and people are ok with that, the government finds out some of ours and all of a sudden it's "invasion of privacy". Isn't that a bit hypocritical?

Governments secrets have the potential to be a lot more damaging then any single persons. It is an extreme example but compare a 15 year old girl that downloads music to the US army wrongly blowing up citizens.

A lot of people say oh well I have nothing to hide but would you like it if the authorities could just come through your house go through anything they want , whenever they want? Which is kinda what stuff like this is.

Well i guess it comes down to who owns the government secrets? Isnt govt meant to be of, by and for the people. Or are they some power elite of themselves? It seems like in many countries, govts act counter to the interests of free people.

Wikileaks was about exposing government secrets to the People ...the sort of infrastructure that has been set up especially in the last decade by govts has been about creating a default surveillance state with very little oversight.

You really dont need to think too far ahead to see how that could all go badly. Once its set up remember it is there even when 'your guy' (politically) is no longer in power.

For decades the very heavy on defence and intelligence spending country of the USA has been warned of a rise of a military industrial complex. Back to Lyndon Johnson and continues on via whistleblowers and fringe commentators. If people take the time to look just a little at what is already admitted to be there its quite substantial, and thats not even getting into the super secret stuff lol....

lol America.

-PB

Living in a state of surveillance
Date
June 13, 2013
8 reading nowRead later
Philip Dorling
Gathering intelligence and conducting surveillance can be in the interest of all Australians. But when is enough, enough?

There is unquestionably a voyeuristic pleasure in reading other people's mail. Everyone who has worked in the field of intelligence and security knows this and is not being entirely honest if they deny it. Knowing someone else's secrets is not just interesting, it's empowering. Knowing a great many secrets can be addictive.

This reality should be kept in mind amid the present debate about surveillance and privacy triggered by the dramatic revelations by intelligence whistleblower Edward Snowden about the vast scope of US electronic intelligence collection programs.

It's nearly two decades since I was first introduced to the world of secret intelligence as a relatively junior officer in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade in Canberra.


The National Security Agency at Fort Meade, Maryland, USA.
I'd worked for two years as an in-house historian, shuffling through piles of dusty files and diplomatic cables. I had read plenty of secrets, but most of them were decades old. In late 1994, however, I made a move into the diplomatic mainstream and took a position as a policy officer in the department's arms control branch.

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It was a busy time. Labor Foreign Minister Gareth Evans was committed to an activist approach to Australian diplomacy and had a particular interest in arms control and non-proliferation issues; international negotiations were under way to extend the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty; and Australia was at the forefront of efforts to conclude a comprehensive nuclear weapons test ban treaty.

Meanwhile, France would soon move to conduct a final round of underground nuclear tests at Mururoa Atoll and Iran, North Korea and other countries were busily trying to advance their nuclear and ballistic missile programs.


Against this background, the arms control branch of Foreign Affairs and Trade received a large and steady flow of highly classified intelligence reports. We were avid customers of the Australian intelligence community. In a time before the electronic distribution of intelligence, the material came in hard copy - lots and lots of it.

Each morning a long-serving and highly trusted officer from the department's intelligence liaison section would push a heavily laden trolley down the corridor to our office. Piled on the trolley were dozens of red and green satchels, each addressed to senior executives who would sign a receipt and break a security seal to extract the contents - anything from a dozen to more than a hundred highly classified reports.

Most senior officers would quickly skim the material before passing it down the line to their subordinates. I would usually get one or two bulging satchels around lunchtime or maybe afternoon tea, and could then work my way through the material at my leisure.

There was much to read. As a foreign policy wonk with an interest in military technology and science I was a pig in gravy.

There were carefully crafted analytical papers by Australia's Office of National Assessments. These would incorporate material from a very wide range of sources, from media reports to the most sensitive intelligence. Then there were more narrowly focused and often highly technical papers from the Defence Intelligence Organisation - discussions of the finer points of North Korean missile capabilities and explanations of just why France needed to test one more nuclear device.

There was reporting from the Australian Secret Intelligence Service, including much material received through liaison with its counterparts - the British Secret Intelligence Service, better known as MI6, and the US Central Intelligence Agency.

Given the arms control branch's interest in weapons technology, there were numerous imagery reports - high-resolution satellite pictures of ballistic missile test facilities and missiles in North Korea, or the line-up of aircraft on a military runway in Tibet.

Nuclear tests were generally proceeded by a series of snaps documenting laborious logistical preparations at the test sites. The imagery was generally comparable to what is now available via Google Earth and commercial satellite imagery providers.

Sometimes, however, it was of much, much higher resolution, showing remarkable detail. For example: technicians enjoying a smoko while a nuclear test device was slowly lowered down its vertical shaft.

Overwhelmingly, however, the red and green satchels were filled with signals intelligence or ''sigint'' reports. Distributed by the Defence Signals Directorate, these were not raw intercepts of communications but polished reports generally paraphrasing or summarising intercepts and providing context. Most were classified ''top secret'' with an array of codewords and caveats on distribution.

The bulk of the sigint reports came from the United States National Security Agency and Britain's Government Communications Headquarters. DSD's own reporting was more common in relation to events in south-east Asia and the Pacific.

The volume was enormous, and the detail often fascinating. On any given day there were reports documenting military exercises, trade negotiations, arms trafficking, movements of political delegations and diplomatic negotiations. Dealing with the sheer volume of sigint material was a significant commitment of time and effort.

Although the precise methods of collection were carefully concealed in the reporting, it was apparent that this torrent of information could only be obtained by siphoning off a large part of global telecommunications traffic. This was the voluminous product of industrial-scale intelligence collection. Access to undersea telecommunications cables and bulk interception of satellite communications traffic was and is the lifeblood of modern signals intelligence collection.

Despite the prodigious flow of information, over two years there were only a handful of occasions when I saw the intelligence directly influence diplomatic policymaking.

On one occasion we received a comprehensive statement of another government's negotiating strategy before a major international conference. It took the form of instructions and draft negotiating text sent from a foreign ministry to a mission overseas. The information, which came unusually in the form of ''raw'' or unprocessed intercept, enabled Australia to adjust its diplomatic position and anticipate the other country's initiative, with the result that Australia's objectives were achieved.

One other occasions intelligence had limited, if any, direct value. It was certainly a source of considerable satisfaction that we knew a great deal about French policy and diplomacy during France's final nuclear test series. One of my colleagues declared that it was ''Agincourt again'' when reading one report.

But knowing is one thing, taking advantage is another. Good and timely intelligence did not change the fact that President Jacques Chirac was determined to carry out the nuclear tests, that the Australian public was very angry about that, and that we could not do much other that watch, listen and protest.

More generally, and arguably more importantly, the piles of intelligence reports that accumulated in my office safe provided confidence - confidence that we knew what was happening in the world, including in places quite inhospitable to outside scrutiny. We could be confident that Australian policy and diplomacy was based on a clear understanding of realities rather than what foreign governments chose to tell us or what was reported in the media.

Timely and well-targeted intelligence can do many things. It can provide warning of threats, including terrorist attacks, and other otherwise unexpected developments. It can often help explain after the event why things happened. It can directly influence policy and negotiations between governments. It is a foundation for an activist foreign policy.

Perhaps most importantly, however, intelligence improves transparency and reduces uncertainty for decision makers. In a world in which many countries still maintain large military capabilities and view each other with suspicion, greater transparency is by and large a good thing.

Four years later I engaged with the intelligence community from a rather different perspective. As an adviser to then Labor foreign affairs spokesman Laurie Brereton I was deeply involved in parliamentary negotiations on what became the Intelligence Services Act, which put both the Australian Secret Intelligence Service and the Defence Signals Directorate on a statutory basis. For the first time the functions of both agencies were set down as a matter of law and both were placed under oversight by the Parliament's intelligence and security committee.

It was an immensely interesting task. Foreign Minister Alexander Downer delegated much of the detailed negotiations to the then director-general of security, Dennis Richardson, who was accompanied by ASIS director-general Alan Taylor and DSD director Ron Bonnington.

The intelligence chiefs and their lawyers sat on one side of Brereton's small conference table. The shadow minister and I sat on the other and over a series of meetings we thrashed out the major provisions of the legislation.

Brereton had a keen sense of the importance of personal privacy and the potential for secret agencies to overreach themselves. He was no great fan of the intelligence community and was determined to see adequate checks and balances and accountability mechanisms built into the legislation. The Coalition government and the intelligence agencies wanted bipartisan support so a real negotiation took place.

Particular attention was paid to defining as narrowly as was reasonably possible the circumstances in which Australian citizens might legitimately be the subject of intelligence collection by Australian agencies overseas. All things considered, I think we struck a good balance in the negotiations and the resultant legislation was as good as anyone could have hoped for, especially given that the final negotiations took place after the September 2001 terrorist attacks.

Over the subsequent decade much attention was focused on other aspects of Australia's national security legislation, especially the expansion of ASIO's role and powers to include compulsory questioning and detention of terrorist suspects.

In retrospect, however, it looks as if we missed the really important issue - namely the revolutionary implications of the internet, not only for our economy and society, but for intelligence collection, surveillance and privacy.

Although they come as no great surprise to those who have followed these issues closely, Edward Snowden's revelations about the mass acquisition of telecommunications data and bulk interception of internet traffic by the US National Security Agency provide a salutary warning of how technological change has developed the architecture for a surveillance state.

The fact that this has taken place in the United States - and Australia within established legal and parliamentary frameworks - ought to give pause for thought as to how robust those frameworks really are.

From my experience, I have a keen sense of how valuable intelligence can be for the national interest and for the lives and wellbeing of individual Australians. However, there does need to be a serious and open debate about how much intelligence and surveillance, at home and abroad, is enough. We need to think very carefully about how we manage uncertainty and risk; and what mechanisms are now required in an increasing digital age to ensure democratic accountability.

Some of those mechanisms have already proved disappointing. The joint parliamentary committee on intelligence and security functions less as a mechanism for scrutiny than a co-opted political supporters' club that argues for greater budgets and resources for the intelligence and security agencies. Regrettably, the office of the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security remains woefully under-resourced to oversee a massively expanded intelligence community.

Most seriously, however, there is an urgent need for a deep public debate about the implications of technological change for privacy and the relationship between citizens and government.

In today's world of email, text and internet chat, Facebook and Twitter, electronic business transactions and ever wider CCTV coverage of business premises and public spaces, almost every aspect of people's daily lives will soon be recorded electronically in one medium or another. Often this data may be stored overseas and accessible to foreign government agencies - some of which are Australia's intelligence partners, some of which are not.

With the costs of data collection and storage continually falling, comprehensive surveillance is now achievable at the touch of a button. The latest revelations from the United States confirm this.

The pull of technology and push of security will continue to radically erode privacy. We may be ''safer'', but privacy at home and abroad will be at the discretion of law enforcement, security and intelligence agencies.

With that comes a profound, qualitative change in the relationship between citizens and government that is yet to be considered by Parliament or the public.

Arguably, the fight for privacy has already been lost. Intelligence is both empowering and addictive. I do remember my eager anticipation when I heard the squeaky wheel on the intel trolley coming down the corridor. What has already been taken won't be surrendered easily.

Philip Dorling is a senior writer.


Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/it-pro/security-it/living-in-a-state-of-surveillance-20130612-2o4au.html#ixzz2W6KTSSLp

Is your iPhone under surveillance? Apple received 10,000 US requests

Apple releases statement on ‘Commitment to Customer Privacy’

By Vicky Kapur
Published Monday, June 17, 2013

Following in the footsteps of Facebook, which revealed last week that the US government had sought access to up to 19,000 user accounts on the social media site under the infamous Prism programme, the Cupertino-based Apple has responded to the explosion in interest in the covert surveillance program with its own set of data.

“We have been authorized to share some of that data, and we are providing it here in the interest of transparency,” Apple said in a media statement issued yesterday.

“From December 1, 2012 to May 31, 2013, Apple received between 4,000 and 5,000 requests from US law enforcement for customer data.
Between 9,000 and 10,000 accounts or devices were specified in those requests, which came from federal, state and local authorities and included both criminal investigations and national security matters,” the company has revealed.

That’s up to 10,000 accounts in six months, and only recently did Apple clearly state that it had never heard of the government’s Prism program. In fact, that might be true – it might not have known the official name of the programme under which it was sharing information with the government, but it did receive requests for data-sharing, and maybe should have owned up a tad earlier, before others did.

“Two weeks ago, when technology companies were accused of indiscriminately sharing customer data with government agencies, Apple issued a clear response: We first heard of the government’s “Prism” program when news organizations asked us about it on June 6. We do not provide any government agency with direct access to our servers, and any government agency requesting customer content must get a court order,” the iPhone-maker says in its latest statement.

The company has also now revealed the kinds of data-sharing requests it receives. “The most common form of request comes from police investigating robberies and other crimes, searching for missing children, trying to locate a patient with Alzheimer’s disease, or hoping to prevent a suicide,” it says.

That’s quite understandable, and we’re sure there’s not much to hide in those cases.

“Regardless of the circumstances, our Legal team conducts an evaluation of each request and, only if appropriate, we retrieve and deliver the narrowest possible set of information to the authorities. In fact, from time to time when we see inconsistencies or inaccuracies in a request, we will refuse to fulfil it,” Apple insists.

The company further maintains that it “has always placed a priority on protecting our customers’ personal data, and we don’t collect or maintain a mountain of personal details about our customers in the first place. There are certain categories of information which we do not provide to law enforcement or any other group because we choose not to retain it.”

What kinds if information? “For example, conversations which take place over iMessage and FaceTime are protected by end-to-end encryption so no one but the sender and receiver can see or read them. Apple cannot decrypt that data. Similarly, we do not store data related to customers’ location, Map searches or Siri requests in any identifiable form,” it discloses.

The move to share this information comes in response to media reports that Facebook, along with eight other major tech companies, has been providing the National Security Agency access to data on its servers through a program called ‘Prism.’

http://www.emirates247.com/news/emirates/is-your-iphone-under-surveillance-apple-received-10-000-us-requests-2013-06-17-1.510713

Fighting the Secrecy/Surveillance State
Sunday, 16 June 2013 09:18
By Dennis J Bernstein, Consortium News | Interview

The emergence of Bradley Manning, Julian Assange and now Edward Snowden represents just the tip of the iceberg of a popular resistance that is challenging the U.S. government’s excesses in secrecy and surveillance, a movement that Iceland MP Birgitta Jonsdottir discusses with Dennis J. Bernstein.
The U.S. government’s “war on terror” and its companion “surveillance state” have become troubling issues not only for the civil liberties of Americans but even more so for the rest of the world where popular movements are arising to challenge the electronic penetration of people’s information and violation of their privacy.
Iceland Member of Parliament Birgitta Jonsdottir of the Pirate Party was in Berkeley, California, recently to speak at a forum with Daniel Ellsberg on “Disappearing Civil Liberties in The United States.” Jonsdottir is also Director of the International Modern Media Institute and co-producer of WikiLeaks’ “Collateral Murder” video, which revealed the slaughter of Iraqis in 2007 by a U.S. aerial weapons team.
Jonsdottir, who has worked closely with WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange, discussed the status of this emerging international struggle against government secrecy and surveillance in an interview with Dennis J Bernstein.
DB: How did you get involved in “Collateral Murder”?
BJ: I was working with spokespersons for WikiLeaks in 2009. They came to Iceland and spoke at a Freedom Society event where I was speaking as well. They were talking about an idea that originated in this area of the world, from John Perry Barlow, who a year earlier, in the wake of our financial collapse, said that Iceland could become a safe haven for freedom of information, expression and speech. Julian [Assange] and Daniel [Ellsberg] talked about the same concept, and it was ripe.
I was elected to Parliament, the only geek in Parliament at the time. I approached them after the conference and we began to work on this project, which is to look at the best functioning laws in the Twenty-first Century that protect freedom of information, expression and speech. The reason I chose to work with WikiLeaks was they had hands-on experience in keeping things up no matter what. They had released some documents from the Church of Scientology, and anybody who knows anything about the Church of Scientology knows that it’s very difficult to keep things up because they have very good lawyers. They managed to keep their bible up and you can still access their bible through the Internet because they have archive versions of the WikiLeaks website before the big leak, which came a few months later.
As I was working with them and some other people, we came up with what politicians and people who want to increase civil liberties can do, and that is to get experts from all over the world to cherry pick the best laws that have proven to function. We wrote it on an “ether pad” in English, then translated it into Icelandic. For some mysterious reason that I can’t comprehend, maybe because there is such a need for it not only in Iceland, but everywhere, I got unanimous acceptance for it in Parliament. That is equivalent to both the Senate and [House of Representatives] voting yes on something.
The government of Iceland has been working on creating these laws. We have the best source protection in the world, and a very good freedom of information act for the Twenty-first Century, with transparency about media ownership, etc. We are working on something very important in the context of what has been happening in this country in the last week, which is we want to have the best whistleblower laws in the world put into place, and that is being processed currently in the ministry.
DB: Tell me about your response to the content of the “Collateral Murder” video shown on WikiLeaks. What did that mean to you? What did it tell you about what was going on?
BJ: I was one of the millions of people around the world who tried to stop the war in Iraq before it began and were nearly successful. We coordinated through the Internet. I was one of the few who kept protesting after the war, such as against such atrocities as Fallujah. One man posted the horrible things that were happening there. I was following the Iraq body count and knew what was happening. But you can’t express it enough to get people to feel the compassion or empathy that is needed to act.
When I saw the video that Jullian Assange showed me at a cafe opposite the Icelandic Parliament, I wept. I wept many times over this video. It is painful not only to see the war crimes that happen in this video. Particularly troubling for me was when I looked at the wounded man who was trying to get up, and good samaritans came to help, just ordinary citizens. Imagine there was an accident on the road here, and someone would come and try to take the wounded to the hospital – just like in this video. They had kids in their car and they were killed, slaughtered. It was a murder of innocent people who were trying to do a decent thing, by saving somebody who was dying, and they way the soldiers spoke about it was horrifying.
DB: There was almost a gleeful hysteria.
BJ: It was, “Look at the dead bastards. Line them up, nice. It’s their fault to bring their kids to war.” I mean, who brought the war to Iraq? It certainly wasn’t these people. It was from a country far, far away. I knew when I helped release this video that my life would never be the same afterwards. I knew that I was participating in making world history and I never thought twice about doing it. If I would be in the same situation tomorrow, I would do it without thinking about it.
DB: How did it change your life?
BJ: It changed in both positive and more disturbing ways. I felt I had done something that would make me feel I had done something important with my life, because it had a tremendous impact on so many people, all over the world. It helped bring voices to the voiceless. People in Iraq are trying to tell how it is and what is happening there every day, and nobody pays attention to it.
It also – and this was so important to me – showed the truth to the families of these people who were killed in the video. It is an incredible gift to somebody to be able to do that. So in various aspects it was good. On the other hand, I had an unexpected visit by the FBI. They came into my home, and went through everything, looked at letters I had been sending to my kids and my mother. They looked at who I was with and where and for how long. They went through everything, everything. But they didn’t come through my front door – they came through my back door, the Internet. They demanded that there would be no knock. Instead, they demanded that Twitter hand over all their meta data, IP numbers and messages, without my knowledge, within three days.
Twitter took them to court and managed to unseal a secret document saying what a very scary person I am, a terrible terrorist. I wasn’t able to take them to court, but I was advised to contact the EFF [Electronic Frontier Foundation] and the ACLU. I contacted them, and they offered to help and take this to court pro bono. In the first ruling, which was not reported in either the U.S. or Europe, the judge said that I, as an individual, or you, or any individual who listens to this program, do not have the right to look after our own back when it comes to our information that is being stored and kept by social media companies like Gmail and Skype. So we have to trust these companies to look after us, and some of them have a very bad track record. …
I’m talking about social media companies, the new generation – Google, Facebook, Skype and phone companies as well. When the FBI entered into my home, this is exactly what happened. There are four more companies that I cannot possibly get unsealed by your courts, although we took this to three different court levels. This goes hand-in-hand with what has now been revealed with the NSA, which is that I cannot unshield the companies that apparently are in all these documents. There are four others that handed over my information.
The Department of Justice demands that this is kept sealed because of some investigative thing, but I am not the subject of any criminal investigation, so I don’t get it. I am a member of Parliament of a sovereign country, yet your government feels they need to find something about me, which compromises everybody who communicates with me, and I communicate with a lot of people. It also compromises their private information to me, so it’s not only about me – it’s about all of us. I was trying to tell people this. That’s why I took this to court, so now we can see. If they can do this to me, they can do it to anybody.
I am so thankful to the whistleblower in the NSA case, Edward Snowden, because he put forward and got the entire world to pay attention to what many of us have been saying of the NSA, suspicions that it was being abused. I learned much from Thomas Drake, a NSA whistleblower who they tried to put him in a long-term prison. I think it’s important that people wake up – your government is not only prying into U.S. civilians’ private data, but into every person on the planet who uses Facebook or smart phones. You have become like China, Russia, and you must roll it back because you still can. Europe is thinking about building a digital fortress around itself to protect the civilians in Europe against tyranny – not against China, Iran or North Korea, but against the United States surveillance state.
DB: The video transformed the nature of the war effort in Iraq and forced the U.S. hand to at least get some soldiers out of the country more quickly. We know what the U.S. left is sectarian violence, and May had the most deaths since the so-called end of the war – 1,000 people killed because of U.S. foreign policy. Let’s talk more about this “Collateral Murder” and the work of Julian Assange, and others. What do you think about what Julian did and what happened to him?
BJ: Julian and I share a similar vision that it is not enough to talk about the problems – we need to figure out solutions, work on them, and try to inspire others to do it. I worked with him nearly every day for five months so we got quite well acquainted and it was very stimulating to talk with him and brainstorm. He’s not very easy to work with, to be honest. He’s peculiar – he works so much. I would leave him at midnight and wake up at 6, and he would still be sitting in the same position, not having had anything to drink, just working. He is a very dedicated person to the cult of transparency.
It was not only Julian at WikiLeaks – there was always a team of people behind WikiLeaks who are making it possible. He and his organization managed to bring into the public debate a very necessary discussion that has been ongoing – the status of the freedom of information in our world. Bradley Manning managed to get into the discussion with his act, then when he was caught, it raised the necessity of whistleblowers. This word has almost been forgotten since Daniel Ellsberg, who says, “I was Bradley Manning.” It is uncanny to think about the newest whistleblower coming forward from the NSA, who looks almost like Daniel Ellsberg, and had access to the same security clearances as Ellsberg, at the same level. I heard somebody say, “Daniel Ellsberg is back.”
It is a tremendous service that these people have given to our societies. Julian Assange is among them. He has had lots of controversy about his person, and I don’t want to go deeply into that. I want to see the message that he is delivering. Yesterday I watched him give a speech by Skype at an event for a company called Thoughtworks. He was so right on it. He wrote a book with three very other important people called Cyber Punks, which is a very important book to read. There is another important book about the history of cryptography called This Machine Kills Secrets by Andy Greenberg, who writes for Forbes as well. That book is both very creepy and very inspirational. If people want to get a crash course in the persons behind the cryptography movement and the leaking culture that has been developing after WikiLeaks, they should read these books.
DB: Let’s conclude this way: we do know that structurally the U.S. government is engaged in a system of permanent war and is supported by a military industrial communications network that is tough to take on. You have been going up against it. Bradley Manning is facing life. Some people want to kill him for telling the truth. We are facing tough times. What guides you through all this, what’s at the core for you.
BJ: Most of us are brought up to have the ethics of “if we witness a crime, we are supposed to tell about it.” If you see somebody stealing a very expensive perfume, would you look the other way? If you see somebody abusing children, would you look the other way? If you see somebody killing somebody, would you look the other way? If you see somebody committing war crimes, would you look the other way? I am brought up to tell the truth. I am brought up that if I see a crime, I am supposed to report it.
Most of the world is a part of the Geneva Convention, except the United States. If the people of the U.S. want to earn respect, trust and compassion from the rest of the world, they need to start cleaning up their garden. It is absurd and very depressing that nobody has been questioned or held accountable for the murders that we witnessed in the “Collateral Murder” video, except Bradley Manning, who showed it to us, who had the guts, heart and ethics to put it out there.
DB: We have the First Amendment here and the example they use is you can’t shout fire in a crowded theater if there’s no fire. I like to say, if there is a fire in that theater and you turn and walk away, then you are responsible for what happens in the aftermath. We live by that on Flashpoints on Pacifica radio. We believe that information is power and that it’s important to get this information out, and it’s important for people to understand how essential it is to have somebody like Daniel Ellsberg and Bradley Manning.
BJ: Yes, and let’s not forget about the journalist Barrett Brown. They managed to character-assassinate him by saying he threatened the FBI people who were harassing him. He was taken into the trapwire that has now been revealed in the NSA leak. I encourage people to look at what trapwire is. Brown was digging deeper than they wanted him to dig. WikilLeaks has the spy files, much of them now revealed by the NSA. Those of us who have known of these things for a while, have been trying to warn the public.
Barrett Brown was too close for comfort, so they arrested him and he’s in prison for submitting a link to leaked files, the Stratfor files, I think. Jeremy Hammond, sometimes called the Robin Hood of the Internet, is in prison and facing probably ten years for getting the files from Stratfor. There’s a campaign for him. Stratfor is a private surveillance company that is contracted by the government to look after us, or look at us, without our knowledge. They were doing a specific attempt to undermine WikiLeaks, people associated with it, and spy on WikiLeaks. Jeremy Hammond revealed this.
This is all interconnected – WikiLeaks, Bradley Manning, Jeremy Hammond, Barrett Brown, Thomas Drake … There are many more. I encourage people to look at these people, because it all falls under the category of mass surveillance and a mass secrecy state. They are surveilling everything about us, and in particular in the U.S. and Europe, we don’t have a clue about who is doing it. I have heard that 70 percent of the surveillance state is contracted with private firms. Imagine how money is spent on this when infrastructure is absolutely collapsing – health care, education, even bridges are collapsing because there’s no money to be put in there It’s all being paid to private firms that are dancing in the revolving door.
DB: In the aftermath of the permanent war policy, when people ask me if America loves its children, I say we hate our kids. I know, because I taught emotionally disturbed for almost 15 years. We build advanced weaponry, bugging each other, while the kids die, the bridges fall, and the wars continue. It is a big struggle to restrain this endless war policy, isn’t it?
BJ: While you have the revolving door, and accept that as the right way to govern, then something is wrong. Do people want this? Do they want Monsantos to genetically modify our food, killing farmers in India and the United States? They are taking their own lives because they don’t see any future, and they are frankensteining our food. If people will not change, they need to think of the issue we can unite around – what is the single most important thing the American people can do to put a crack in the system. That is the task.
This piece was reprinted by Truthout with permission or license. It may not be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source.

DENNIS J BERNSTEIN
Dennis J. Bernstein is a host of “Flashpoints” on the Pacifica radio network and the author of Special Ed: Voices from a Hidden Classroom. You can access the audio archives at www.flashpoints.net. You can get in touch with the author at dbernstein@igc.org.
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G8 nations have patchy record on free expression
17 Jun 2013

Stop G8 graffiti in London. (Photo: David Rowe / Demotix)

When G8 leaders meet in Northern Ireland today, they will focus on transparency, trade and development. But they cannot hope to achieve their declared goals on transparency, corruption and human rights without a clear commitment to respecting freedom of expression at home. Sean Gallagher writes

While the G8 nations generally perform well in indicators of media freedom, digital freedom and civil liberties more widely, there are some key weaknesses including constraints on the media, and digital surveillance. Russia is an outlier with a deteriorating record on free expression with the Russian government having increasingly pursued a course of restrictions on speech and free assembly.

While most of the G8 stand for digital freedom internationally, the Prism revelations drastically undermine the US stance in favour of an open internet on the international stage. Revelations that some of the G8 nations – generally seen as having the freest media, open digital spheres and a supportive artistic environment – have engaged in ongoing, intrusive and secret population-wide surveillance is deeply concerning. All of these nations are pledged to uphold the right of the individual to the freedom of expression through either native legislation or international agreements.

The G8’s emphasis on transparency at its Northern Ireland meeting is welcome – not least since one of the areas of considerable concern and varying performance across the G8 is corruption. Most of the G8 perform relatively well on corruption (though not as strongly as might be hoped for), Italy lags behind the US, Canada, Germany, UK, France and Japan to a striking degree, while Russia’s ranking is one of the worst internationally (as shown in table one).

How the G8 nations stack up against each other on media freedom

In terms of media freedom Germany and Canada come first (according to Reporters without Borders 2012 index). The United Kingdom and the United States are behind these two but still ranked fairly highly while France, Japan and Italy lag behind these four a bit more. Russia is substantially lower indicating a weak and deteriorating environment for media freedom.

The press freedom measurements only give a snapshot of the G8 nations. Briefly, here are the key issues affecting the media in the G8 nations.

Germany’s media is largely free and the legal framework protects public interest journalism. Germans are ill-served by their country’s lack of plurality in broadcast media.

In Canada, Canadian Journalists for Free Expression and other observers have found that access to information has become more difficult since Conservative Stephen Harper became prime minister in 2006 – particularly when it comes to climate change. The country’s hate speech laws and lack of protection for confidential sources are issues our research highlights.

The United Kingdom’s move to reform libel laws is a clear positive for free press and expression, a change that our organisation helped deliver. Cross-party proposals to introduce statutory underpinning for media regulation via the Royal Charter on the Regulation of the Self-Regulation of the Press cross a red line by of introducing political involvement into media regulation. The shelving of the Communications Data Bill, or “Snooper’s Charter”, is also an encouraging sign, although a number of politicians are still calling for its reintroduction — especially after the Woolwich attack — which raises more questions.

In the United States, recent revelations of the Obama administration’s continued surveillance both around the world and of the American people – the Prism expose – through secret subpoenas raise serious questions about the government’s activities. Alleged mistreatment of “tea party”-related organisations by the Internal Revenue Service also embroiled the Obama administration in questions about its commitment to transparency.

France’s media is generally free and offers a wide representation among political viewpoints but there is unwelcome government involvement in broadcasting and the country’s strict privacy laws encourage self-censorship. Here, too, government surveillance has increased and politicians have used security services to spy on journalists.

While Japan’s press environment can be called free, self-censorship is rife and rules detailing “crimes against reputation” are enshrined in the constitution. Compounding these issues is the cozy relationship between government and journalists. The government’s poor transparency on the nuclear crisis at Fukushima has been singled out as a contributing factor to its decline in international rankings.

Italy’s media environment is robust in some ways but is hamstrung by political involvement in ownership and high media concentration in too few hands (not least by former PM Berlusconi). The country’s leaders are also adept at using the media in support of their own agendas.

Never a beacon for a free media, Russia has experienced an outright government takeover of the major broadcasting outlets and widespread violence and threats against journalists. When compared to the rest of the G8, Russia’s record is decidedly bad although censorship is not at the level of China (which does not though claim to be a democracy).

Citizen Surveillance on the Digital Frontier

The digital freedom index created by Freedom House is another useful indicator although it encapsulates many different dimensions into just one number. The US and Germany perform strongly in this index, with Italy and the UK somewhat behind. Russia’s ranking is very low. However, the Prism affair surely more than dents the US ranking – and shows how hard it is to combine surveillance and censorship (and other aspects of digital freedom) into one index.

The UN’s Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression Frank La Rue issued a timely report on government surveillance, privacy and freedom of expression ahead of the revelations of massive and appalling data mining carried on by the US government under the cloak of secrecy. This is a clear breach of transparency and digital freedom on a global scale.

While the US and European countries have been pushing back against the Russian and Chinese model of top-down internet governance, the widespread moves toward online surveillance undermines their efforts to ensure a multistakeholder approach to the web as part of the ITU process.

Though the US leads the world on Google requests for user data (a number that now seems just the tip of the iceberg in comparison to the Prism revelations), the G8 nations do not approach the levels that Brazil and India reach on demanding content be removed from the search engine.

The United States government has granted itself unprecedented powers to snoop on its citizens at home and abroad. First, the PATRIOT Act, parts of which were renewed in 2011, gave the US government unprecedented power to intrude into the online lives of its citizens in extra-judicial ways. Later, in 2008, Congress approved the FISA Amendments Act, which envisioned the Prism and other programmes described in articles released by The Guardian and the Washington Post. Despite this, several bills that would have given the government additional powers in the area of surveillance and copyright infringement have been withdrawn after concerted campaigns by internet and civil society activists.

The United Kingdom has stepped back recently from mass population surveillance with the shelving of the Communication Data Bill. But revelations of data-sharing activities with its US partner, as reported by The Guardian suggest we do not have the full picture. Beginning with the 2000 Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act and continuing with the recently shelved Communication Data Bill, successive governments have looked to surveillance of online activity in the name of national security. On a more positive note, interim guidelines on prosecutions of offensive speech on social media have been issued with the aim of hemming in criminal prosecutions, though restrictions on “grossly offensive” speech are still on the statute book. Takedown requests aimed at Google and Twitter are of a level comparable to France and Germany.

Japan is generally seen as having a positive record on digital freedom despite the government’s pressure to force telecom companies to remove “questionable” material from the web in regard to the Fukushima crisis. The country also instituted a strict piracy law at the behest of the Recording Industry of Association of Japan.

While Italy has generally been slower to adopt new technology, Italians internet users are bound by rules on data retention that can be seen as a threat. The regulations allow the government to target criminals and protect national security, yet do not guarantee the privacy of the data it collects. Italy has strict copyright and piracy legislation. Most worrying is the conviction of Google executives for violation of privacy laws due to material posted to the search engine giant by a third party.

Germany’s approach to digital rights is regarded as open and courts have ruled that access to the internet is a basic human right. But in 2011, German authorities acquired the license for a type of spyware called FinSpy, produced by the British Gamma Group. Hate speech laws are beginning to have an impact on digital free speech.

In France, online surveillance has been extended as a result of a 2011 anti-terror law and Hadopi 2 (the law “promoting the distribution and protection of creative works on the Internet”) which is supposed to reduce illegal file downloading. Hadopi 2 makes it possible for content creators to pay private sector companies to conduct online surveillance and filtering, creating a precedent for the privatisation of censorship. Another 2011 law requires internet service providers to hand over passwords to authorities if requested.

In Canada, too, the right to free expression online is coming under increased pressure. On a positive note, civil society activists were able to derail the Conservative government’s attempt to obtain online activity records without judicial oversight. Yet, the Canadian government recently introduced a law requiring librarians to register before posting on social media without first registering for either personal or professional use.

Though Russia’s online environment is relatively open, the government has been tightening restrictions leading to blocking of websites. The government claims this is to tackle crime and illegal pornography. However there are fears that it will apply the regulations too broadly and damage free expression in the digital realm through the creation of extra judicial block lists and censorship of content.

Muzzling Artistic Expression

While most of the G8 have a wide ranging and often vibrant artistic sphere, there are many pressures that can lead of censorship or self-censorship whether from public order, obscenity or hate speech laws or from self-censorship including especially timidy by arts institutions. As Index on Censorship noted in its recent conference report on artistic expression in the UK, institutional filters are stifling creativity. The same can be said for the arts in the other G8 nations, though for different reasons. The specific reasons for brakes on creativity will be explored more fully in each of the country reports. But common themes emerge around hate speech, fear of offence and budget constraints that force arts organisations to shy away from controversial works. Arts funding continues to be used as a political weapon in some countries. In Russia, artists must avoid offending the sensibilities of government partners like the Russian Orthodox Church — as in the Pussy Riot prosecution.

http://www.indexoncensorship.org/2013/06/g8-nations-have-spotty-record-on-free-expression/?

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange prepared to stay in Ecuador embassy for five years

Foreign minister says South American country will continue to provide asylum to Australian
MAJID MOHAMED

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is prepared to remain in the Ecuadorian embassy for five years, says a foreign minister.

There seems to be little hope of an end to the legal and political impasse which has seen Mr Assange holed up inside the building ever since his asylum claim in June last year, despite today's meeting between Foreign Secretary William Hague and his Ecuadorian counterpart Ricardo Patino.

Mr Patino says Mr Assange believes staying at the embassy in London is preferable to facing the US legal system.

Mr Patino told a news conference that the Ecuadorian government was prepared to continue to allow Mr Assange to remain inside the embassy, following the decision last year to grant him political asylum.

This Wednesday, Mr Assange will pass the first anniversary of being holed up in the Ecuadorean embassy in an effort to avoid extradition to Sweden where he is under investigation for alleged sex offences. He believes the claims are a ruse so he can eventually be sent to the US for trial over the leaking of formerly secret US cables. The authorities deny this.

Mr Patino made it clear that Mr Assange would not be smuggled out of the embassy in the boot of a car, saying he should be allowed to leave and go to Ecuador.

There was now a legal dispute between the UK and Ecuador, which Mr Patino said he hoped could be resolved by the working party.

A Foreign Office spokesman said the two ministers agreed to keep channels of communication open, but made no breakthrough, adding: "Ministers agreed that officials should establish a working group to find a diplomatic solution to the issue of Julian Assange, but no substantive progress was made.

"The Foreign Secretary was clear once again that any resolution would need to be within the laws of the United Kingdom."

Mr Patino said it was "grossly unjust" that Mr Assange could not leave the embassy without being arrested.

Police have mounted a round-the-clock guard on the building, in London's Knightsbridge area, in an operation which has cost millions of pounds.

Mr Patino admitted the police presence was "uncomfortable" for the embassy staff.

He revealed that the group of legal officials should meet in the next few weeks, followed by a series of meetrings between the two governments, in the UK and Ecuador.

He talked with Mr Assange until 4am today and said he was in "good spirits".

"He did not say anything about his health. He said he was strong enough to stay in our embassy for at least five years if he is not granted safe passage.

"I would consider it a total injustice if he has to spend more time in our embassy. I hope Mr Assange will not grow old and die in our embassy - but we are defending human rights.


http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/wikileaks-founder-julian-assange-prepared-to-stay-in-ecuador-embassy-for-five-years-8662000.html

If Assange stays in the embassy for long enough, becomes an Ecuadorian citizen and then diplomat, are crimes committed prior to being a diplomat covered by diplomatic protection?

The FBI is investigating whether the highly protected and segregated computer systems that store the secret court warrants authorizing electronic surveillance inside the United States have been breached, according to current and former U.S. intelligence officials. Thirteen days after the Guardian published a top-secret court order from the top-secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court disclosing the National Security Agency's collection of all phone records from Verizon's business customers over a three-month period, the U.S. intelligence community has yet to determine how the warrant, one of the most highly classified documents inside the U.S. government, was leaked.


Edward Snowden speaks during an interview in Hong Kong. Snowden, a 29-year-old former technical assistant for the CIA, revealed details of top-secret surveillance conducted by the United States' National Security Agency regarding telecom data. (The Guardian via Getty)

Those who receive the warrant—the first of its kind to be publicly disclosed—are not allowed “to disclose to any other person” except to carry out its terms or receive legal advice about it, and any person seeing it for those reasons is also legally bound not to disclose the order. The officials say phone companies like Verizon are not allowed to store a digital copy of the warrant, and that the documents are not accessible on most NSA internal classified computer networks or on the Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System, the top-secret internet used by the U.S. intelligence community.

The warrants reside on two computer systems affiliated with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and the National Security Division of the Department of Justice. Both systems are physically separated from other government-wide computer networks and employ sophisticated encryption technology, the officials said. Even lawmakers and staff lawyers on the House and Senate intelligence committees can only view the warrants in the presence of Justice Department attorneys, and are prohibited from taking notes on the documents.

“The only time that our attorneys would have gotten to read one was if Justice Department lawyers came over with it in a secure pouch and sat there with them when they read them,” said Pete Hoekstra, a former Republican chairman and ranking member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. “There was never one in the intelligence committee spaces, never one left there without someone from the Justice Department. It would not have been left there over night.”

U.S. intelligence officials were careful to say investigators have not yet concluded there is a mole inside the FISA Court or that the secure databases that store the court warrants have been compromised, only that both prospects were under active investigation.

If the secret court has been breached, it would be one of the most significant intelligence failures in U.S. history, potentially giving America’s adversaries a road map to every suspected agent inside the United States currently being watched by the FBI, according to the officials. Unlike the Verizon order and other such sweeping collection demands that have been received by internet and telecom companies, many FISA warrants identify a specific individual or entity being monitored by the U.S. government.

“If we have a human or electronic breach in this system it could be a counter-intelligence disaster. It would allow our adversaries to see what we are targeting and how,” said Joel Brenner, a former inspector general and senior counsel for the NSA who left the agency in 2010.

“If they got access into the database or mainframe that the warrants are housed in, this compromises our country’s most closely guarded ongoing investigations,” Hoekstra said. “This would be like be like Aldrich Ames,” referring to the CIA officer who told the Soviet Union about moles inside the USSR working for the United States for nearly a decade, with several of the operatives he outed arrested and executed by the Soviets. “This would be breathtaking.”

Stewart Baker, a former general counsel to the NSA, just said such a breach would be “very bad.”

The leading suspect in the leak of the FISA court warrant is Edward Snowden, the 29-year old NSA contractor who announced himself earlier this month as the source of NSA documents leaked to the Washington Post and the Guardian. Snowden, however, has not acknowledged being the source of the FISA court warrant. When asked on ABC News earlier this month to speak more about his source’s motivations, Glenn Greenwald, the journalist who broke the first stories for the Guardian said, “Well, first of all, I am not going to confirm that there is only one individual, there could be one or more than one.”

“This would be like be like Aldrich Ames. This would be breathtaking.”

A U.S. intelligence official with knowledge of the current investigation said Snowden would not be able to access a court warrant by himself. “This is not something, even if you are a contractor and you work for an intelligence agency like NSA, that you are going to be able to get a hold of,” this official said of the FISA warrant. ABC News first quoted law-enforcement sources last week saying that Snowden would not have access to the FISA warrant in his job as a system administrator employed by contractor Booz Allen Hamilton working for the NSA.

When asked if Snowden had more such warrants on Thursday, Rep. Mike Rogers, the Republican chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said, “Candidly, nobody really knows the answer to that today. I think we will know the answer to that shortly.”

A U.S. intelligence official on Monday told the Daily Beast that investigators still did not know how many other FISA court warrants, if any, might make their way into the public eye, or if Snowden was the source of the Verizon document and, if so, whether or not he was working alone.

If the court has been compromised, it would not be the first breach of FBI surveillance targets inside the United States. In April, CIO.com quoted Microsoft's Dave Aucsmith, the senior director of the company's Institute for Advanced Technology in Governments, saying a 2009 hack of major U.S. internet companies was a Chinese plot to learn the targets of email and electronic surveillance by the U.S. government. In May, the Washington Post reported Chinese hackers had accessed a Google database that gave it access to years worth of federal U.S. surveillance records of counter-intelligence targets. But current and retired U.S. intelligence officials stressed that the government has jealously guarded access to FISA Court warrants, and doubted that they could have been obtained from the databases of U.S. internet or telephone companies.

Spokespeople for the Justice Department, the FISA Court, Verizon and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment for this story.

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Eli Lake is the senior national-security correspondent for Newsweek and the Daily Beast. He previously covered national security and intelligence for the Washington Times. Lake has also been a contributing editor at The New Republic since 2008 and covered diplomacy, intelligence, and the military for the late New York Sun. He has lived in Cairo and traveled to war zones in Sudan, Iraq, and Gaza. He is one of the few journalists to report from all three members of President Bush’s axis of evil: Iraq, Iran, and North Korea.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/06/18/fbi-looks-for-leaks-at-foreign-intelligence-surveillance-court.html?

No. And England would have to recognise/approve his diplomatic status.

Smuggle him out of the embassy in a diplomatic package.