http://cryptome.org/

*2013-0598.pdf <http://cryptome.org/2013/06/tpm-palantir-prism.pdf>
     TPM: Does Palantir Make NSA's PRISM?             June 7,
2013**2013-0597.htm <http://cryptome.org/2013/06/prism-spy-tools.htm>
       PRISM and Other Spy Tools                        June 7,
2013**2013-0596.pdf
<http://cryptome.org/cryptome.org/isp-spy/verizon-spy.pdf?>
Verizon Spying Guide - 2011 Repost               June 7, 2013*
*2013-0595.htm <http://cryptome.org/isp-spy/online-spying.htm>
Online Spying Guides - 2010 Repost               June 7,
2013**2013-0594.htm
<http://cryptome.org/eyeball/verizon-spy/verizon-spy.htm>
Verizon Spying Facilities - 2008 Repost          June 7,
2013**2013-0593.htm <http://cryptome.org/stoa-atpc-so.htm>
Technologies of Political Control - 1998 Repost  June 7,
2013**2013-0592.htm <http://cryptome.org/nsa-cryptome.htm>         NSA
Documents on Cryptome 1996-2006 - Repost     June 7, 2013*

http://www.emptywheel.net/2013/06/07/james-clappers-tip-for-avoiding-lies-dont-do-talking-points/#more-35779

James Clapper’s Tip for Avoiding Lies: Don’t Do Talking Points
Posted on June 7,
2013<http://www.emptywheel.net/2013/06/07/james-clappers-tip-for-avoiding-lies-dont-do-talking-points/>
 by emptywheel <http://www.emptywheel.net/author/emptywheel/>

Video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=QwiUVUJmGjs

 For a guy who warned for years about an abuse of the FISA Amendments Act
and Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act, I have to admit Ron Wyden was pretty
circumspect  yesterday. He issued a
statement<http://www.wyden.senate.gov/news/press-releases/wyden-statement-on-alleged-large-scale-collection-of-phone-records>,
partly to reiterate his call to make this public, partly to suggest the
program isn’t worth much.

 The administration has an obligation to give a substantive and timely
response to the American people and I hope this story will force a real
debate about the government’s domestic surveillance authorities. The
American people have a right to know whether their government thinks that
the sweeping, dragnet surveillance that has been alleged in this story is
allowed under the law and whether it is actually being conducted.
Furthermore, they have a right to know whether the program that has been
described is actually of value in preventing attacks. Based on several
years of oversight, I believe that its value and effectiveness remain
unclear.

And he sent out three tweets:

   - RE: #NSA <https://twitter.com/search?q=%23NSA&src=hash> tracking- Who
   law-abiding Americans call, when they call, & where they call from is
   private information http://1.usa.gov/11v2CYb  <http://t.co/RuPXRKJWlG>
   - In March, DNI Clapper specifically told me
#NSA<https://twitter.com/search?q=%23NSA&src=hash> does
   not wittingly collect any type of data on millions of Americans
   http://youtu.be/QwiUVUJmGjs?t=6m9s … <http://t.co/MnQcGp6ULT>
   - Letter @MarkUdall <https://twitter.com/MarkUdall> & I sent to DoJ last
   year with our concerns about “business records” section of Patriot Act
   http://bit.ly/11k9Iuk  <http://t.co/XY4verrBhx>
#NSA<https://twitter.com/search?q=%23NSA&src=hash>

Of course, it’s the second tweet — showing the Director of National
Intelligence lying in testimony to Congress about whether the NSA collects
“any data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans” – I
found most interesting.

Wyden always has had a knack for
exposing<http://www.emptywheel.net/2012/07/20/ron-wyden-to-dianne-feinstein-pants-on-fire/>
 
people<http://www.emptywheel.net/2012/12/27/ron-wyden-liar-liar-alexander-pants-on-fire/>
as
liars.

By the end of the day the National Journal had
contacted<http://www.nationaljournal.com/whitehouse/james-clapper-clarifies-remarks-over-nsa-snooping-20130606>
Clapper
to provide him an opportunity to explain why this lie to Congress wasn’t a
lie. He offered a nonsensical explanation.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said Thursday that he stood
by what he told Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., in March when he said that the
National Security Agency does not “wittingly” collect data on millions of
Americans.

“*What I said was, the NSA does not voyeuristically pore through U.S.
citizens’ e-mails*. I stand by that,” Clapper told *National Journal* in a
telephone interview.

On March 12, at a hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Wyden asked
Clapper: “Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or
hundreds of millions of Americans?” Clapper responded: “No, sir.” When
Wyden followed up by asking, “It does not?” Clapper said: “Not wittingly.
There are cases where they could, inadvertently perhaps, collect—but not
wittingly.” Clapper did not specify at the time that he was referring to
e-mail. [my emphasis]

Clapper’s lie — that he took Wyden’s “collected any type of data at all” to
mean “voyeuristically pore through emails” — is all the worse for how bad a
non-sequitur it is. Caught in a lie, the head of our Intelligence Community
responded with word salad.

Given that abysmal attempt to explain away his lie, I find it all the more
curious the Administration decided Clapper, newly exposed as a liar, would
be the guy to head pushback to the revelations of the last few days. Late
in the day Clapper issued first
one<http://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/press-releases/191-press-releases-2013/868-dni-statement-on-recent-unauthorized-disclosures-of-classified-information>
, then 
another<http://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/press-releases/191-press-releases-2013/869-dni-statement-on-activities-authorized-under-section-702-of-fisa>“statement”
on the revelations.

Both, of course, issued stern condemnations of leaks revealing that he had
lied (and that Americans have no privacy).

The unauthorized disclosure of a top secret U.S. court document threatens
potentially long-lasting and irreversible harm to our ability to identify
and respond to the many threats facing our nation.

[snip]

The unauthorized disclosure of information about this important and
entirely legal program is reprehensible and risks important protections for
the security of Americans.

Those are hollow warnings, of course, for the reasons I laid out
here<http://www.emptywheel.net/2013/06/06/section-215-order-reveals-secrecy-only-serves-to-prevent-court-challenge/>
.

Clapper then goes on to claim that both stories misrepresent the programs.

The article omits key information regarding how a classified intelligence
collection program is used to prevent terrorist attacks and the numerous
safeguards that protect privacy and civil liberties.

[snip]

*The Guardian* and *The Washington Post* articles refer to collection of
communications pursuant to Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act.  They contain numerous inaccuracies.

Worlds tiniest violin! After refusing urgent requests from members of
Congress who had been briefed on this to be transparent for years, the
Intelligence Community has lost its ability to spin this!

Perhaps the most interesting part of Clapper’s two statements, however, is
the way Clapper purportedly clarified a detail about the
WaPo<http://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/us-intelligence-mining-data-from-nine-us-internet-companies-in-broad-secret-program/2013/06/06/3a0c0da8-cebf-11e2-8845-d970ccb04497_story.html>
/Guardian<http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants-nsa-data>
stories
on PRISM.

Clapper — and an anonymous statement from a Senior Administration Official
issued minutes before Clapper’s — made explicitly clear PRISM operates
under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act.

*Section 702* is a provision of FISA that is designed to facilitate the
acquisition of foreign intelligence information concerning non-U.S. persons
located outside the United States. It cannot be used to intentionally
target any U.S. citizen, any other U.S. person, or anyone located within
the United States.

Activities authorized by *Section 702* are subject to oversight by the
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the Executive Branch, and
Congress. They involve extensive procedures, specifically approved by the
court, to ensure that only non-U.S. persons outside the U.S. are targeted,
and that minimize the acquisition, retention and dissemination of
incidentally acquired information about U.S. persons.

*Section 702* was recently reauthorized by Congress after extensive
hearings and debate.

Section 702, Section 702, Section 702.

This claim had only been implicit in the reporting in the WaPo and Guardian.

The WaPo provides this explanation for the genesis of the program.

PRISM was launched from the ashes of President George W. Bush’s secret
program of warrantless domestic surveillance in 2007, after news media
disclosures, lawsuits and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court
forced the president to look for new authority.

Congress obliged with the Protect America Act in 2007 and the FISA
Amendments Act of 2008, which immunized private companies that cooperated
voluntarily with U.S. intelligence collection. PRISM recruited its first
partner, Microsoft, and began six years of rapidly growing data collection
beneath the surface of a roiling national debate on surveillance and
privacy. Late last year, when critics in Congress sought changes in the
FISA Amendments Act, the only lawmakers who knew about PRISM were bound by
oaths of office to hold their tongues.

[snip]

In exchange for immunity from lawsuits, companies such as Yahoo and AOL are
obliged to accept a “directive” from the attorney general and the director
of national intelligence to open their servers to the FBI’s Data Intercept
Technology Unit, which handles liaison to U.S. companies from the NSA. In
2008, Congress gave the Justice Department authority for a secret order
from the Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Court to compel a reluctant
company “to comply.”

The Guardian includes this.

The NSA access was enabled by changes to US surveillance law introduced
under President Bush and renewed under Obama in December 2012.

[snip]

The revelation also supports concerns raised by several US senators during
the renewal of the Fisa Amendments Act in December 2012, who warned about
the scale of surveillance the law might enable, and shortcomings in the
safeguards it introduces.

When the FAA was first enacted, defenders of the statute argued that a
significant check on abuse would be the NSA’s inability to obtain
electronic communications without the consent of the telecom and internet
companies that control the data. But the PRISM program renders that consent
unnecessary, as it allows the agency to directly and unilaterally seize the
communications off the companies’ servers.

[image: Screen shot 2013-06-07 at 11.08.29
AM]<http://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Screen-shot-2013-06-07-at-11.08.29-AM.png>

But look at what they say about the timing. WaPo says the program started
in May 2007.

 Apple demonstrated that resistance is possible when it held out for more
than five years, for reasons unknown, after Microsoft became PRISM’s first
corporate partner in May 2007.

Guardian says MS got involved in December 2007.

 Some of the world’s largest internet brands are claimed to be part of the
information-sharing program since its introduction in 2007. Microsoft –
which is currently running an advertising campaign with the slogan
“Your privacy is our priority” – was the first, with collection beginning
in December 2007.

The image included, however, says Microsoft got started in September 2007.

Clapper’s claim that this program is a 702 one is a half truth. If the
chronology laid out in the two pieces is true at all, it means the program
pre-dates FAA, which was passed in July 2008. Indeed, the WaPo’s chronology
dates the program to before the Protect American Act, which was passed in
August 2007.

Furthermore, there appears to be far more involvement from the FBI in the
program that Section 702 would require or even allow.

Confirming — or claiming — that this program operates exclusively under
Section 702 would be a leak of illegal information if it came from anywhere
else. I’ve got a suspicion it is not, in fact, entirely true.

Yesterday, the National Journal also asked Clapper to assess his own
career. Clapper responded by repeating a comment he made at a recent
hearing when asked about Benghazi.

 Clapper, asked to reflect on his tenure as DNI for a special issue of
*National
Journal*, also commented on the intelligence community’s handling of the
Sept. 11, 2012, Benghazi attack that left U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris
Stevens and three other Americans dead. “The major lesson I learned from
that is, don’t do talking points,” Clapper said.

He made this comment, of course, before the Administration issued in his
name what must have been hastily drafted talking points.


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]



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