Chelsea Manning may be Supreme Court bound
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Tag Archives: Espionage
Snowden supporters: NSA whistleblower did not commit espionage
NSA Veterans: The White House Is Hanging Us Out to Dry
National Security Agency Seal (Photo credit: DonkeyHotey)
SHANE HARRIS | Social Reader | October 13, 2013
Gen.Keith Alexander and his senior leadership team at the National Security Agency are angry and dispirited by what they see as the White House’s failure to defend the spy agency against criticism of its surveillance programs, according to four people familiar with the NSA chiefs’ thinking. The top brass of the country’s biggest spy agency feels they’ve been left twisting in the wind,abandoned by the White House and left largely to defend themselves in public and in Congress against allegations of unconstitutional spying on Americans.
Former intelligence officials closely aligned with the NSA criticized President Obama for saying little publicly to defend the agency, and for not emphasizing that some leaked or officially disclosed documents arguably show the NSA operating within its legal authorities.
“There has been no support for the agency from the President or his staff or senior administration officials, and this has not gone unnoticed by both senior officials and the rank and file at the Fort,” said Joel Brenner, the NSA’s one-time inspector general, referring to the agency’s headquarters at Ft.Meade, Maryland.
Legislation Seeks to Bar N.S.A. Tactic in Encryption
Ryan Collerd for The New York Times
Legislation proposed by Representative Rush D. Holt Jr., Democrat of New Jersey, would eliminate much of the escalation in the government’s spying powers undertaken since 2001.
SCOTT SHANE and NICOLE PERLROTH | New York Times | September 6, 2013
After disclosures about the National Security Agency’s stealth campaign to counter Internet privacy protections, a congressman has proposed legislation that would prohibit the agency from installing “back doors” into encryption, the electronic scrambling that protects e-mail, online transactions and other communications.
Representative Rush D. Holt, a New Jersey Democrat who is also a physicist, said Friday that he believed the N.S.A. was overreaching and could hurt American interests, including the reputations of American companies whose products the agency may have altered or influenced.
“We pay them to spy,” Mr. Holt said. “But if in the process they degrade the security of the encryption we all use, it’s a net national disservice.”
Spying for Us
New (2008) seal of the United States . This new version is the same as the previous version except it has a different inscription. For more information, see here. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Tom Engelhardt | TomDispatch | Reader Supported News | August 7, 2013
Hey, let’s talk spying! In Surveillance America, this land of spookery we all now inhabit, what else is there to talk about?
Was there anyone growing up like me in the 1950s who didn’t know Revolutionary War hero and spy Nathan Hale’s last words before the British hanged him: “I only regret that I have but one life to give for my country”? I doubt it. Even today that line, whether historically accurate or not, gives me a chill. Of course, it’s harder these days to imagine a use for such a heroically solitary statement – not in an America in which spying and surveillance are boom businesses, and our latest potential Nathan Hales are tens of thousands of corporately hired and trained private intelligence contractors, who often don’t get closer to the enemy than a computer terminal.
What would Nathan Hale think if you could tell him that the CIA, the preeminent spy agency in the country, has an estimated 20,000 employees (it won’t reveal the exact number, of course); or that the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which monitors the nation’s spy satellites, has a cast of 16,000 housed in a post-9/11, almost $2 billion headquarters in Washington’s suburbs; or that our modern Nathan Hales, multiplying like so many jackrabbits, lack the equivalent of a Britain to spy on. In the old-fashioned sense, there really is no longer an enemy on the planet. The modern analog to the British of 1776 would assumedly be… al-Qaeda?
No deaths due to Manning’s leaks, US military admits
The Chilling Manning Trial
English: Bradley Manning (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Frank Rich | New York Magazine | Reader Supported News | August 1, 2013
Every week, New York Magazine writer-at-large Frank Rich talks with contributor Eric Benson about the biggest stories in politics and culture. This week: Bradley Manning gets convicted, Obama offers a “grand bargain,” and Chris Christie and Rand Paul exchange blows.
Yesterday, Private Bradley Manning was convicted on multiple counts of violating the Espionage Act (which could result in 136 years of prison) but was found not guilty of the most serious charge against him, “aiding the enemy.” What do you make of the verdict?
What matters here is not that Manning was found guilty of leaking – which he admitted to and will not get anything like 136 years for – but that he was found not guilty of “aiding the enemy.” That “not guilty” is a good thing, but it doesn’t mitigate the reality that “aiding the enemy” was a bogus and dangerous charge in the first place. The fact that the government would even pursue it is chilling to a free press. Under the prosecution’s Orwellian logic, essentially any classified information given by a whistle-blower to a journalistic outlet (whether WikiLeaks or the Times, which published Manning-WikiLeaks revelations) amounts to treason if “the enemy” can read it. Well, the enemy, whomever it may be at any given moment, can read anything it wants on the Internet, the government can (and does) stamp its every embarrassing action “classified,” and so almost any revelatory investigative reporting on national security (the Pentagon Papers, the Abu Ghraib revelations, you name it) could in principle lead to the death penalty (even if that punishment wasn’t sought in the Manning case). That’s a powerful deterrent, clearly designed to stop whistle-blowers, reporters, and news organizations from taking the risk of uncovering government misbehavior. It’s a particularly devastating blow at a time when investigative journalism is shrinking anyway because of the financial woes of the news business. The Obama administration’s increasingly virulent efforts to shut down hard-hitting journalism – exemplified as well, recently, by the attempt to force Times reporter James Risen to testify in another leak case – is not just outrageous on First Amendment grounds but also makes you wonder what else the White House is hiding. Let’s not forget that high among Manning’s revelations were the cockpits videos chronicling the killing of civilians in an American air strike. What else is there that the Obama administration is so desperate to keep quiet that it will take on leakers with a virulence unmatched by any modern White House?
Another summer, another looming battle over the federal budget, with rank-and-file Republicans threatening to shut down the government rather than fund Obamacare and the President offering the GOP a “grand bargain”-style deal. We’ve seen this movie before. Is there any reason to think it could end better for Obama this time?
The Obama offer – to cut some corporate taxes in exchange for some job-creating spending – was not an alluring bargain anyway for either his party or the Republicans, and was surely dead on arrival. After all these years battling the Party of No, the president must know that and no doubt expected his proposal to be rejected immediately (as it was, not just by the tea-party right but by Establishmentarians like Mitch McConnell and the Wall Street Journal editorial page). So, what was the point of this week’s Kabuki theater? Mainly to keep establishing battle lines for the looming confrontation over a potential government shutdown. Offering a “grand bargain,” even if less than grand, sets Obama in sharp relief to those Republicans on Capitol Hill who are threatening to hold the budget (and the economy) hostage until by some miracle Obamacare is repealed. Obama’s poll numbers may be mediocre these days, but even without a shutdown, Congress hit its lowest approval rating in history last week in the WSJ-NBC News poll. And so the president has everything to gain by positioning himself as the constructive alternative to the right’s bomb throwers come fall.
US Seemingly Unaware of Irony in Accusing Snowden of Spying
Andy Borowitz | The New Yorker | Reader Supported News | June 23, 2013
The article below is satire. Andy Borowitz is an American comedian and New York Times-bestselling author who satirizes the news for his column, “The Borowitz Report.”
The United States government charged former intelligence analyst Edward Snowden with spying on Friday, apparently unaware that in doing so it had created a situation dripping with irony.
At a press conference to discuss the accusations, an N.S.A. spokesman surprised observers by announcing the spying charges against Mr. Snowden with a totally straight face.
“These charges send a clear message,” the spokesman said. “In the United States, you can’t spy on people.”
So When Will Dick Cheney Be Charged With Espionage?
Juan Cole | Informed Comment | Reader Supported News | June 23, 2013
The US government charged Edward Snowden with theft of government property and espionage on Friday.
Snowden hasn’t to our knowledge committed treason in any ordinary sense of the term. He hasn’t handed over government secrets to a foreign government.
His leaks are being considered a form of domestic spying. He is the 7th leaker to be so charged by the Obama administration. All previous presidents together only used the charge 3 times.
Charging leakers with espionage is outrageous, but it is par for the course with the Obama administration.
US Charges Snowden With Espionage
Peter Finn and Sari Horwitz | The Washington Post | Reader Supported News | June 22, 2013
Federal prosecutors have filed a criminal complaint against Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who leaked a trove of documents about top-secret surveillance programs, and the United States has asked Hong Kong to detain him on a provisional arrest warrant, according to U.S. officials.
Snowden was charged with theft, “unauthorized communication of national defense information” and “willful communication of classified communications intelligence information to an unauthorized person,” according to the complaint. The last two charges were brought under the 1917 Espionage Act.
The complaint, which initially was sealed, was filed in the Eastern District of Virginia, a jurisdiction where Snowden’s former employer, Booz Allen Hamilton, is headquartered and a district with a long track record of prosecuting cases with national security implications. After The Washington Post reported the charges, senior administration officials said late Friday that the Justice Department was barraged with calls from lawmakers and reporters and decided to unseal the criminal complaint.
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