Spying on Americans: A "Team Sport" Since 2004
One of the more colorful revelations in today's Guardian scoop is the newsletter piece that describes increased sharing of PRISM (Section 702) data with FBI and CIA.
The information the NSA collects from Prism is routinely shared with both…
The Evil Empire
The Guardian has its latest scoop on NSA spying, describing the extent to which Microsoft helps the government spy on its customers. This bullet list is just some of what the article reveals.
Microsoft helped the NSA to circumvent its…
MEK Stirs Pot in Iran Despite Improved Negotiation Outlook After Rohani's Election
In a remarkably welcome surprise, moderate cleric Hassan Rohani won last month's presidential election in Iran and did so with a large enough margin to avoid a runoff. In the immediate aftermath of the election, there was hope that the heated…
Dianne Feinstein Suggests President Obama Personally Violating Our Treaty Obligations
As I noted the other day, in her ruling that she could not halt the force-feeding at Gitmo, Gladys Kessler described the treatment as "degrading," potentially invoking our obligations under Article 16 of the Convention again Torture to prevent…
Uncomfortable Truth: The State Of Evidence in the George Zimmerman Prosecution
I have said this from the get go: In the case of State of Florida v. George Zimmerman, under the actual facts of the case from the State of Florida's own disclosure, as opposed to hype from Benjamin Crump and his public relations team, who have…
Citing a Culture of "Verified Trust," DefCon Asks Feds Not to Come
Even after I wrote this post, few people following the NSA story seem to get that James Clapper's lie to Ron Wyden was just the culmination of a seven month effort on Wyden's part to get Keith Alexander to correct two misleading statements he…
"Is This the New Espionage?" CBS Asks of Leaking Government Files, While Airing Leaked Government Video
"Is this the new espionage," CBS asks, "the spy who believes, for the good of his country, he must reveal its secrets?"
CBS then chooses to give former NSA Director Michael Hayden -- who oversaw the NSA when it engaged in an unprecedented…
PCLOB: An Exercise in False Oversight
As you may have seen from the reporting or my live-tweeting of yesterday's Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board hearing on the government's surveillance program, there were a few interesting bits of news, starting with former FISC judge…
The Torture That Underlies FISA Court's "Special Needs" Decisions
At the core of the expanding dragnet approved in secret by the FISA Court, Eric Lichtblau explained, is the application of "special needs" to "track" terrorists.
In one of the court’s most important decisions, the judges have expanded the…
McKeon Too Low For Zero Option
Late Saturday, the New York Times posted an article with the misleading headline "US Considers Faster Pullout in Afghanistan". In a classic case of burying the lede, the article contained the important news that negotiations between Barack Obama…
Did Umar Patek Lead the US to Osama bin Laden?
Yesterday, Al Jazeera published a leaked copy of the final report from the Abbottabad Commission appointed by Pakistan's government to investigate both how Osama bin Laden could have lived within Pakistan (on military land!) for so long and…
Five Additional Questions for Jim Comey
Colleen Rowley has a great list of questions Jim Comey should be asked today in his confirmation hearing (I'll be live-tweeting it, so follow the twitter feed over there. >>>>>>
Here are five questions I would add:
The…
Bradley Manning Defense: Good Data Miners Are Data Hogs
I happened to need to consult the PressFreedom transcript of today's Bradley Manning trial. And came across this exchange, which goes to the heart of the debate on NSA's dragnet of Americans.
In it, Manning's lawyer, David Coombs, questioned Chief…
Federal Court Strikes Down Obama DOJ's State Secrets Defense
In what can only be described as a significant ruling, Judge Jeffrey White in the Northern California District (CAND) has rejected the federal government's, via the Obama and Holder Department of Justice, assertion of state secrets privilege…
An EPIC Effort to Combat the Dragnet
The Electronic Privacy Information Center has filed a writ of mandamus to SCOTUS to overturn the Section 215 order turning over all of Verizon's call records to the NSA.
Let me be clear: this is a moon shot. I'm doubtful it'll work. A really…
Judge Kessler to President Obama: Will You Save Gitmo Detainees from "Painful, Humiliating, and Degrading" Treatment?
In my post describing the emergency suit to stop force-feeding at Gitmo before Ramadan, I suggested it might be unlikely for the DC District Court judges to accept a challenge about prison conditions. That is exactly what happened: Judge Gladys…
It's Not JUST the Shell Game of Moving Osama bin Laden Records--It's Retroactive Classification of Them
Congratulations to the AP, which has caught up to the reporting I did a month ago on the way SOCOM purged their own systems of Osama bin Laden photos (and, apparently, records) and moved them to the CIA.
But it appears that this shell game…
US Big-Footing Extraterritoriality Again
The Irish High Court has rejected the request for an arrest warrant for Edward Snowden. While most aspects of the request were in order -- the timing of the alleged crimes, Snowden's role in them -- the US somehow neglected to mention where…
Why Has the Intelligence Community Missed So Many Digital Bales of Hay?
In a piece on the intelligence community's increasing reliance on SIGINT, LAT reports that the amount of the President's daily brief that comes from SIGINT has increased from 60% since 2000.
Determined to identify and track Al Qaeda terrorists…
Afghanistan Claims Zakaria Kandahari Arrested Six Weeks Ago
The continuing saga of Zakaria Kandahari, who has been at the heart of the torture and murder cases that prompted Hamid Karzai to ban US Special Forces troops from the Nerkh District of Maidan Wardak Province took another huge twist Sunday,…