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Since 2008 – Progress Through Politics

The NSA FISA and Glenn Greenwald Did he Lie to Anyone?

In the interest of full disclosure, I don’t like Glenn Greenwald and haven’t for some time.  The incident that put him on my permanent shit list occurred when I was just a little bird deciding to see what this Twitter thing was all about.

There’s a presence out on those twitter streets that goes by the handle @angryblacklady if you aren’t following her I would suggest you do because I was an open fan of hers before I tried to hop out the twitter nest. I was introduced to her by her political writing which has graced places like The Grio among others, I guess I could hit her bio and find tons of other stuff but I didn’t need anyone’s validation then and just trust me she’s wicked wicked smaht.  

One day I’m enjoying watching ABL dissect Glenn Greenwald live and before the world on the issue of the NDAA one of her arguments happened to be the Patriot Act is far more impactful and scary and is going to bite us first let’s work on that she was right.

I know she was taking him apart because he and his followers decided that the issue of the NDAA was no longer the topic of the day but rather the character of Obama supporters.  I once took philosophy way back in High School (I know huh?  Public school taught philosophy) where we went over all the forms logical fallacy in argument.  Mr. Navarro spoke to me from the dim mists of time and said that’s an Ad Hominem Adept, an attack against the person not the topic means the person has nothing to say.

That’s ok, as I said ABL was destroying him all day, it wasn’t that he engaged in Ad Hominem it’s what the attack was.

Glenn Greenwald said the supporters of Barack Obama would watch Barack Obama rape a nun on the cameras of MSNBC enjoy it and defend the action by saying Obama merely wanted to illustrate the evils of rape.

http://thegrio.com/2012/01/02/…

Scratch the record the police are here the party is over everyone has to go home.  Wait a minute you say a Black lady, an Angry Black Lady who fights for feminist causes like just about no other would enjoy watching a rape, in the face of being destroyed in argument?

No he never apologized mollified or adjusted the tone of the statement it stands just like that right now, so when Greenwald steps to me, I don’t care much about what he has to say, so there I did it, I don’t like him find him to be a man that has no integrity and uses tactics to silence dissent that would horrify the people he accuses of stifling his rights.  

Did I shoot the messenger?  I got nothing else to say about the message?  Let’s do that!

The first step in setting up a successful con is developing a lie that the mark or marks want to believe, or as I’m calling it Benghazi Redux.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worl…

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

The NSA access is part of a previously undisclosed program called Prism, which allows officials to collect material including search history, the content of emails, file transfers and live chats, the document says.

The Guardian has verified the authenticity of the document, a 41-slide PowerPoint presentation – classified as top secret with no distribution to foreign allies – which was apparently used to train intelligence operatives on the capabilities of the program. The document claims “collection directly from the servers” of major US service providers.

That’s scary!  Well not to me, in the 80’s I paged a cousin and had the police call me back, but we Black folks have a different expectation of privacy I get that.  However lets take a look at what has been asserted for truthiness.

Direct Access?  No.  Contents of your E-mails your YouPorn history? NO

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06…

“The U.S. government does not have direct access or a ‘back door’ to the information stored in our data centers,” Google’s chief executive, Larry Page, and its chief legal officer, David Drummond, said in a statement on Friday. “We provide user data to governments only in accordance with the law.”

Statements from Microsoft, Yahoo, Facebook, Apple, AOL and Paltalk made the same distinction.

But instead of adding a back door to their servers, the companies were essentially asked to erect a locked mailbox and give the government the key, people briefed on the negotiations said. Facebook, for instance, built such a system for requesting and sharing the information, they said.

So what you have here is a mailbox called prism that the tech companies come and put government requests for information in.  They don’t have access to the Yahoo servers that is unless they do a Yahoo search then who knows what wealth of information is going to tumble out.

Casting a wide net going fishing?  No they are serving lawful subpoenas at targeted individuals for specific data.  Let’s see what the people at Facebook have to say.

http://newsroom.fb.com/News/63…

Since this story was first reported, we’ve been in discussions with U.S. national security authorities urging them to allow more transparency and flexibility around national security-related orders we are required to comply with. We’re pleased that as a result of our discussions, we can now include in a transparency report all U.S. national security-related requests (including FISA as well as National Security Letters) – which until now no company has been permitted to do. As of today, the government will only authorize us to communicate about these numbers in aggregate, and as a range. This is progress, but we’re continuing to push for even more transparency, so that our users around the world can understand how infrequently we are asked to provide user data on national security grounds.

For the six months ending December 31, 2012, the total number of user-data requests Facebook received from any and all government entities in the U.S. (including local, state, and federal, and including criminal and national security-related requests) – was between 9,000 and 10,000. These requests run the gamut – from things like a local sheriff trying to find a missing child, to a federal marshal tracking a fugitive, to a police department investigating an assault, to a national security official investigating a terrorist threat. The total number of Facebook user accounts for which data was requested pursuant to the entirety of those 9-10 thousand requests was between 18,000 and 19,000 accounts.

With more than 1.1 billion monthly active users worldwide, this means that a tiny fraction of one percent of our user accounts were the subject of any kind of U.S. state, local, or federal U.S. government request (including criminal and national security-related requests) in the past six months. We hope this helps put into perspective the numbers involved, and lays to rest some of the hyperbolic and false assertions in some recent press accounts about the frequency and scope of the data requests that we receive.

Oh yes the NSA now knows that you like bacon and kitty cat pics.

That horse has left the barn and ran around the county but you can read about how Prism really works and no it’s not Skynet

http://www.vanityfair.com/onli…

This is how Hitler did data mining BANG BANG BANG OPEN THE DOOR AND GET YOUR ASS IN THE STREET.  Richard M. Nixon attempted to have people killed.  Eric Holder and Barack Obama limited the reach of the NSA

http://online.wsj.com/article/…

A National Security Agency eavesdropping program exceeded legal limits intended to safeguard privacy, and officials have taken steps to bring the intercepts program into compliance, the Justice Department said Wednesday.

The department, in a statement, said problems with the NSA program were uncovered as the Justice Department and National Security Agency were conducting routine oversight of intelligence activities to ensure compliance with laws and court orders.

Attorney General Eric Holder has sought court approval to renew the NSA program after instituting new safeguards.

Pack your bags and report to the Animal Farm Orwell is here.  Another one of those things that happened back in 2008 so Greenwald didn’t report on it cause then he supported the President’s national security judgement.

Greenwald’s jig is up among the people who still consider reporting more than regurgitating what a 29 year old brings to you along with his sad story.  

http://bobcesca.thedailybanter…

Actual reporters are on the case.  Me I’m just a blogger and a twitter lover who saw something ugly one night and still rails nothing was done.  Greenwald is out there slandering others http://www.thenation.com/blog/…  Karma dictates one day he’ll slander the wrong person.  

Until then your story is bullshit bro.


Categories: Uncategorized.

/ 45 Comments

45 comments

  2. bill d

    Greenwald has, of course, made the story about himself just like he always wanted. His stubbornness to not only correct his highly misleading mistake but to double down on it is a shock to no one.

    At least when conservatives want a real story leaked they don’t give it to Sean Hannity, that is really close to what happened here.

    There was talk about Glenn getting a Pulitzer Prize, that has stopped partly because of his inability or indifference over correcting a proven falsehood.  

  3. Adept2u

    Glenn’s story and the outrage around this hinged on the unfettered access to American’s private data, or spying.  The story is not true.  That the government has accessed and also stores mind you the private information of millions of Americans.  That story is not true.  I believe a question was asked of a member of our National Security Team James Clapper “are we storing or accessing the data of millions of Americans” when he answered no he was called liar by vast swaths of the reality based community.   My next work might be James Clapper did he lie cause I know it takes a whole freaking bunch of 6 and 7 thousands to add up to millions, but the theme is growing tiresome.

    Microsoft Corp said that in the same period it received between 6,000 and 7,000 criminal and national security warrants, subpoenas and orders affecting between 31,000 and 32,000 consumer accounts from local, state and federal U.S. governmental entities.

    http://www.nbcnews.com/technol…

  4. nchristine

    for him.  Yeah, it was stupid of him to double down.

    However…. Google, Microsoft, Facebook, etc are all saying that they haven’t given a backdoor access to their servers.  Unless they own all the fiber going from their servers to your pc, there is a third party somewhere.  It is entirely possible that whatever the third party is may be intercepting data and sending a copy to the NSA.  It can be done.

    One thing that I think has been over looked is that the NSA did get a warrant for Verizon.  With that warrant the Feds are claiming that the 150 million customer accounts are all presumed to have probable cause to have, or will, commit a crime according to US law.  That’s what I have a problem with.  How the hell can the feds contend that they have probable cause on 150 million customers??

  5. Adept2u

    My twitter stream erupted with some CNET story saying Congressman Nadler admitted to a bunch of SPYING

    http://news.cnet.com/8301-1357…

    The National Security Agency has acknowledged in a new classified briefing that it does not need court authorization to listen to domestic phone calls.

    Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat, disclosed this week that during a secret briefing to members of Congress, he was told that the contents of a phone call could be accessed “simply based on an analyst deciding that.”

    If the NSA wants “to listen to the phone,” an analyst’s decision is sufficient, without any other legal authorization required, Nadler said he learned. “I was rather startled,” said Nadler, an attorney and congressman who serves on the House Judiciary committee.

    Again the reporting in this story suffers from a severe lack of truthiness

    http://littlegreenfootballs.co…

    Really, “eavesdrop on phone calls?” And the NSA admitted it?

    If you read this carefully, you’ll notice that the source for this “admission” is not the NSA at all – it’s second-hand information from Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY).

    Here’s how writer Declan McCullagh describes the exchange between Nadler and FBI director Richard Mueller that led to his shocking headline:

    Rep. Nadler’s disclosure that NSA analysts can listen to calls without court orders came during a House Judiciary hearing on Thursday that included FBI director Robert Mueller as a witness.

    Mueller initially sought to downplay concerns about NSA surveillance by claiming that, to listen to a phone call, the government would need to seek “a special, a particularized order from the FISA court directed at that particular phone of that particular individual.”

    Is information about that procedure “classified in any way?” Nadler asked.

    “I don’t think so,” Mueller replied.

    “Then I can say the following,” Nadler said. “We heard precisely the opposite at the briefing the other day. We heard precisely that you could get the specific information from that telephone simply based on an analyst deciding that…In other words, what you just said is incorrect. So there’s a conflict.”

    The key quote here is, “We heard precisely that you could get the specific information from that telephone.” Notice: Nadler did not say they could listen to the phone call, he said “get the specific information.”

    snip

    There’s no mention of it in McCullagh’s article, but this entire discussion was about metadata. They explicitly say this several times, using the word “metadata.” And metadata is not “listening to phone calls,” it’s the equivalent of looking at a telephone bill. That’s why Mueller begins (in the clip above) by saying that the Supreme Court has ruled that this kind of data is not protected by the Fourth Amendment.

    The bottom line: this CNET article and headline are extremely misleading.

    Let the misinformation train roll on.

  6. Adept2u

    The Swiss President has come out and said Snowden’s story is bullscat about his exploits in Geneva. He about said how stupid are you guys but I think he was being diplomatic.

    “It does not seem to me that it is likely that this incident played out as it has been described by Snowden and by the media,” Maurer was quoted as saying in the Der Sonntag and SonntagsBlick newspapers.

    “This would mean that the CIA successfully bribed the Geneva police and judiciary. With all due respect, I just can’t imagine it,” SonntagsBlick quoted him as saying.

    He added that Snowden was just 23 at the time, and unlikely to have had knowledge of such an operation, and that the CIA usually dealt with terrorism rather than financial espionage.

    http://www.reuters.com/article…

    There are people in the leftist coalition that are easier to play than TIC TAC TOE it’s getting tiresome  

  7. princesspat

    Updated 6/16 at 11:15 a.m. PT The original headline when the story was published on Saturday was “NSA admits listening to U.S. phone calls without warrants,” which was changed to “NSA spying flap extends to contents of U.S. phone calls,” to better match the story. The first paragraph was changed to add attribution to Rep. Nadler. Also added was an additional statement that the congressman’s aide sent this morning, an excerpt from a Washington Post story on NSA phone call content surveillance that appeared Saturday, and remarks that Rep. Rogers made on CNN this morning.]

    http://news.cnet.com/8301-1357…

  8. Rustbelt Dem

    Did GG tell Snowden to work for the NSA for the express purpose of breaching national security?  If so, how is that not a conspiracy?

  9. Adept2u

    Or as I’m calling it the story was is and continues to be bullshit

    http://littlegreenfootballs.co…

    The media is actually mad that an embargo was broken and the information in the interview leaked for clicks.  BWAHAHAHAH!

    Barack Obama: Well, in the end, and what I’ve said, and I continue to believe, is that we don’t have to sacrifice our freedom in order to achieve security. That’s a false choice. That doesn’t mean that there are not tradeoffs involved in any given program, in any given action that we take. So all of us make a decision that we go through a whole bunch of security at airports, which when we were growing up that wasn’t the case…. And so that’s a tradeoff we make, the same way we make a tradeoff about drunk driving. We say, “Occasionally there are going to be checkpoints. They may be intrusive.” To say there’s a tradeoff doesn’t mean somehow that we’ve abandoned freedom. I don’t think anybody says we’re no longer free because we have checkpoints at airports.

    Charlie Rose: But there is a balance here.

    Barack Obama: But there is a balance, so I’m going to get to your – get to your question. The way I view it, my job is both to protect the American people and to protect the American way of life, which includes our privacy. And so every program that we engage in, what I’ve said is “Let’s examine and make sure that we’re making the right tradeoffs.” Now, with respect to the NSA, a government agency that has been in the intelligence gathering business for a very long time –

    Charlie Rose: Bigger and better than everybody else.

    Barack Obama: Bigger and better than everybody else, and we should take pride in that because they’re extraordinary professionals; they are dedicated to keeping the American people safe. What I can say unequivocally is that if you are a U.S. person, the NSA cannot listen to your telephone calls, and the NSA cannot target your emails … and have not. They cannot and have not, by law and by rule, and unless they – and usually it wouldn’t be “they,” it’d be the FBI – go to a court, and obtain a warrant, and seek probable cause, the same way it’s always been, the same way when we were growing up and we were watching movies, you want to go set up a wiretap, you got to go to a judge, show probable cause….

    So point number one, if you’re a U.S. person, then NSA is not listening to your phone calls and it’s not targeting your emails unless it’s getting an individualized court order. That’s the existing rule. There are two programs that were revealed by Mr. Snowden, allegedly, since there’s a criminal investigation taking place, and they caused all the ruckus. Program number one, called the 2015 Program, what that does is it gets data from the service providers like a Verizon in bulk, and basically you have call pairs. You have my telephone number connecting with your telephone number. There are no names. There is no content in that database. All it is, is the number pairs, when those calls took place, how long they took place. So that database is sitting there. Now, if the NSA through some other sources, maybe through the FBI, maybe through a tip that went to the CIA, maybe through the NYPD. Get a number that where there’s a reasonable, articulable suspicion that this might involve foreign terrorist activity related to Al-Qaeda and some other international terrorist actors. Then, what the NSA can do is it can query that database to see did any of the – did this number pop up? Did they make any other calls? And if they did, those calls will be spit out. A report will be produced. It will be turned over to the FBI. At no point is any content revealed because there’s no content that –

    Charlie Rose: So I hear you saying, I have no problem with what NSA has been doing.

    Barack Obama: Well, let me – let me finish, because I don’t. So, what happens is that the FBI – if, in fact, it now wants to get content; if, in fact, it wants to start tapping that phone – it’s got to go to the FISA court with probable cause and ask for a warrant.

    Charlie Rose: But has FISA court turned down any request?

    Barack Obama: The – because – the – first of all, Charlie, the number of requests are surprisingly small… number one. Number two, folks don’t go with a query unless they’ve got a pretty good suspicion.

    Charlie Rose: Should this be transparent in some way?

    Barack Obama: It is transparent. That’s why we set up the FISA court…. The whole point of my concern, before I was president – because some people say, “Well, you know, Obama was this raving liberal before. Now he’s, you know, Dick Cheney.” Dick Cheney sometimes says, “Yeah, you know? He took it all lock, stock, and barrel.” My concern has always been not that we shouldn’t do intelligence gathering to prevent terrorism, but rather are we setting up a system of checks and balances? So, on this telephone program, you’ve got a federal court with independent federal judges overseeing the entire program. And you’ve got Congress overseeing the program, not just the intelligence committee and not just the judiciary committee – but all of Congress had available to it before the last reauthorization exactly how this program works.

    Now, one last point I want to make, because what you’ll hear is people say, “Okay, we have no evidence that it has been abused so far.” And they say, “Let’s even grant that Obama’s not abusing it, that all these processes – DOJ is examining it. It’s being renewed periodically, et cetera – the very fact that there is all this data in bulk, it has the enormous potential for abuse,” because they’ll say, you know, “You can – when you start looking at metadata, even if you don’t know the names, you can match it up, if there’s a call to an oncologist, and there’s a call to a lawyer, and – you can pair that up and figure out maybe this person’s dying, and they’re writing their will, and you can yield all this information.” All of that is true. Except for the fact that for the government, under the program right now, to do that, it would be illegal. We would not be allowed to do that.

    Charlie Rose: So, what are you going to change? Are you going to issue any kind of instructions to the Director of National Intelligence, Mr. Clapper, and say, “I want you to change it at least in this way”?

    Barack Obama: Here’s what we need to do. But before I say that – and I know that we’re running out of time, but I want to make sure I get very clear on this. Because there has been a lot of mis-information out there. There is a second program called the 702 program. And what that does is that does not apply to any U.S. person. Has to be a foreign entity. It can only be narrowly related to counter-terrorism, weapons proliferation, cyber hacking or attacks, and a select number of identifiers – phone numbers, emails, et cetera. Those – and the process has all been approved by the courts – you can send to providers – the Yahoos or the Googles, what have you. And in the same way that you present essentially a warrant. And what will happen then is that you there can obtain content. But again, that does not apply to U.S. persons. And it’s only in these very narrow bands. So, you asked, what should we do? …What I’ve said is – is that what is a legitimate concern – a legitimate critique – is that because these are classified programs – even though we have all these systems of checks and balances, Congress is overseeing it, federal courts are overseeing it – despite all that, the public may not fully know. And that can make the public kind of nervous, right? Because they say, “Well, Obama says it’s okay – or Congress says it’s okay. I don’t know who this judge is. I’m nervous about it.” What I’ve asked the intelligence community to do is see how much of this we can declassify without further compromising the program, number one. And they are in that process of doing so now so that everything that I’m describing to you today, people, the public, newspapers, etc., can look at because frankly, if people are making judgments just based on these slides that have been leaked, they’re not getting the complete story.

    Number two. I’ve stood up a privacy and civil liberties oversight board, made up of independent citizens including some fierce civil libertarians. I’ll be meeting with them. And what I want to do is to set up and structure a national conversation, not only about these two programs, but also the general problem of data, big data sets, because this is not going to be restricted to government entities.

    Charlie Rose: Let me just ask you this. If someone leaks all this information about NSA surveillance, as Mr. Snowden did…. Did it cause national security damage to the United States, and therefore, should he be prosecuted?

    Barack Obama: I’m not going to comment on prosecution…. The case has been referred to the DOJ for criminal investigation… and possible extradition. I will leave it up to them to answer those questions.

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