Prism and Verizon surveillance discussion thread

[Cain]

I think he's saying the government can't do anything to enforce compliance, if said companies grew a backbone.

If Google were shut down tomorrow, for example, what would happen?  People would lose their shit.  If Google prioritised their ethics over their access to Obama's White House, and acted accordingly, they would be untouchable.

IOW, this isn't purely a legal "oh, we have to do it cuz the Senate said so" affair.  They could refuse.  They choose not to.

[Junkenstein]

Ah, I read it the other way. To me, it seemed to be implying that they can't refuse due to reasons unstated. (Tax/legistlative/straight-up blackmail would be the obvious)

Just seems a bit off, I would have guessed that if random contractor ended up with this, then there would have been a self righteous hipster in facebook/apple by now who would have leaked anything they had. I suppose the total silence from the corporations isn't unexpected, I just think we'll need to see someone break ranks to take this up a notch.

Like you say with google there's a bit of "Fuck me? FUCK YOU!" in the mix. It's probably quite embarrassing how many government departments are running with Gmail as their only email system. 


There's a snide joke about Petraeus here, but I can't think of a classy way to do it. Fuck Petraeus.

[Junkenstein]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-22952011

NOT HELPING DAD:

he father of Edward Snowden, the ex-CIA worker who leaked top secret information on US surveillance programmes, has issued a public plea urging his son to not commit "treason".

"I hope, I pray and ask that you will not release any secrets that could constitute treason," Lon Snowden said in an interview with Fox News.

He also asked his son, currently in hiding in Hong Kong, to "face justice".

With friends like these....

[Faust]

surely it's the the system that he has exposed that is treasonous. The entirety of the prism system is detrimental to the United states security, business confidence, and is open to abuse against the people. All he has done is highlight treason in the highest ranks of the administration.

[P3nT4gR4m]

Shush. It's only the little people who can treason, silly!

[Cain]

http://consortiumnews.com/2013/06/17/uk-grapples-with-spying-disclosure/

Arriving in Northern Ireland today, British Prime Minister David Cameron refused to answer media questions about UK/US eavesdropping on his VIP colleagues. Meanwhile, "independent" UK media seem to be under some constraint – witness the bizarre behavior recently encountered by some of my British colleagues in Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence (SAAII).

Not surprisingly, two of them – Katharine Gun (formerly of GSHQ) and Craig Murray (former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan) – were eagerly sought for interviews to provide expertise and insight regarding the revelations about spying on visiting VIPs and other disclosures of joint GCHQ/NSA snooping emanating from documents leaked by American Edward Snowden.

Both Gun and Murray have a history of speaking truth to power. Gun disclosed NSA spying on (or attempted blackmailing of) UN Security Council members whose votes were sought to give some legal cover to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and Murray exposed human rights crimes in Uzbekistan. (For their risky truth-telling, both were recipients of SAAII awards.)

Despite the timeliness of getting their comments on the Guardian reports, the British media was having trouble trying to "manage" – as the British like to say – their efforts to flesh out the story. Here's the text of Katharine Gun's e-mail to SAAII members. (This is provided, in part, as a courtesy to GCHQ and NSA which, busy as they are today, probably have not yet had time to do anything more than collect and store the metadata.)

Katharine Gun wrote: "Anyone read the latest headlines in The Guardian today? Kind of strange, although don't know if this sort of thing is perfectly normal. I got a call from Sky News, they wanted to interview me today regarding the latest releases, they said they would send a TV truck, then a call back to say the truck had technical problems.

"Next they propose to use the local TV studio, but needed to make sure there was a cameraman available; just got call back to say, 'no cameraman, so have to call it off.' Left it vaguely that they would be in touch perhaps at a later date."

Ambassador Murray commented: "I had precisely the same experience and precisely the same excuse, last week with the BBC. They don't have difficulty finding satellite trucks to film Prince William's wife attending a gardening class."

You won't be surprised to learn that the Cabinet has issued a D-Notice to the British press in regards to the PRISM revelations.

[Q. G. Pennyworth]

I do not understand why the British put up with that kind of nonsense against the press.

That said, I don't know why Americans put up with the bullshit press here, either, so maybe it's a personal problem...

[Cain]

In practice, a D-notice has no legal authority.  It doesn't automatically shut down the press on the given topic - which is why the Guardian, for example, continues to publish articles related to PRISM.

However, in practice, the press barons of this country form part of the ruling class, and so have a broad agreement with the government on a wide range of topics.

[Q. G. Pennyworth]

Ah, so you also have the spineless press core problem. That's at least familiar.

[Junkenstein]

Ah, so you also have the spineless press core problem. That's at least familiar.

It's not so much spineless as complicit.

[Q. G. Pennyworth]

Ah, so you also have the spineless press core problem. That's at least familiar.

It's not so much spineless as complicit.

Is that the thing? Here the bosses are complicit and the minions are too spineless to take the industry back.

[Junkenstein]

I see various levels as complicit. Most, if not all really.

Press barons have very well known political affiliations and goals, and their mates in government, even up to the PM is no big secret.

Journo's of various standing get preferential access to various levels of Police and government depending on who they know, which government is in power and what policies are being pushed.

Low level journo's and paps frequently deal with "normal" police and bribe money flows around all of them.


I've got a theory that the one of the reasons this government is getting so much shit from the press all the time is that they were not able to secure enough preferential media access as part of the coalition split. That's resulted in every paper hating them when you would normally have at least a couple on your side by tradition. Anti-tory stories like the recent ones would be veto'd in the Daily Mail 10 years ago, at least for 24 hours.

[Cain]

http://blogs.fas.org/secrecy/2013/06/ssci-candid/

Much of the continuing controversy over intelligence surveillance policy revolves around whether the sweeping collection of U.S. telephone data by intelligence agencies violates constitutional norms.  But it is also an occasion to assess the quality of intelligence oversight, and to review the performance of oversight mechanisms in representing the public and defending its interests.

So it was disappointing to read that the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has blocked its former general counsel, Vicki Divoll, from speaking to Talking Points Memo (TPM) on the record about how the Committee functions.

"TPM was reporting a story based on interviews with members of Congress and current and former aides about the successes and pitfalls of intelligence oversight on Capitol Hill," wrote Brian Beutler of TPM DC.

"The goal was to answer some basic questions for readers: How does a classified process differ from public oversight? What challenges do the combination of government secrecy, classified briefings, and strict committee protocols present to legislators trying to control the nation's sprawling intelligence apparatus?"

A Committee spokesman told TPM that this kind of information was "committee sensitive" and that therefore Ms. Divoll's remarks on the subject should not be made public.

"STFU about PRISM.  Your privacy is safe, we have oversight of the processes in place."
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"Secret processes for secret oversight that you can't know about.  Because it's a secret."
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[Telarus]

Such a perfect emote. Appreciate you passing that one along.

[Doktor Howl]

http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/06/21/19079389-us-charges-nsa-leaker-snowden-with-espionage?lite