Hypocrisy and the Surveillance Hawks - TTG

So now, with yesterday’s (30 December) WSJ report, we witness the tawdry spectacle of large numbers of people who for years were fine with, responsible for, and even giddy about NSA mass surveillance suddenly objecting. Now they’ve learned that they themselves, or the officials of the foreign country they most love, have been caught up in this surveillance dragnet, and they can hardly contain their indignation. Overnight, privacy is of the highest value because now it’s their privacy, rather than just yours, that is invaded.

What happened to all the dismissive lectures about how if you’ve done nothing wrong, then you have nothing to hide? Is that still applicable? Or is it that these members of the U.S. Congress who conspired with Netanyahu and AIPAC over how to sabotage the U.S. government’s Iran Deal feel they did do something wrong and are angry about having been monitored for that reason? - Glenn Greenwald in “The Intercept”

****************************

Adam Entous, the author of the Wall Street Journal article (behind a paywall), described the situation in an interview with Gwen Ifill. In this interview, Entous describes how the White House decided to limit collection on some allies, but continued collection on Netanyahu was a no brainer. He was doing his best to subvert our political process and scuttle the Iran deal at the time. To not bring all our surveillance capabilities to bear on Israel would have been egregiously negligent. Entous also mentioned NSA’s use of minimize in their reports of recorded conversations between Netanyahu’s aides and the Congress critters. That means the Congress critters weren’t identified by name. They were referred to as U.S. Person #1, U.S. Person #2 and so on. That’s standard practice.

The same Congress critters who fought for years to maintain NSA’s programs to collect it all on U.S. citizens are now harumphing in the most exuberant fashion about their conversations being caught in the dragnet. Unfortunately, I doubt these sorry bastards have the sentience to realize the ridiculousness of their positions.

 I’m damn proud that we continued collecting on Israel, Turkey and probably many more of our supposed allies. I wasn’t bothered about tapping Merkel’s phone either. It was somewhat embarrassing when we were caught, but that’s the nature of the business. I expect the Germans to do the same to us, just as the Israelis do. It’s up to each country to protect their own communications… and to protect their people. In the U.S. that means mandating and encouraging more protection for our information and communications. I’ve said it before. We need ubiquitous encryption.

TTG

 

Comments

[J]

TTG,

After 911, they (NSA) took USSID18 which afforded protection for the American Citizenry regarding internal surveillance monitoring, and threw it in the trash can. In effect making U.S. Citizens little more than Russians, or Chinese, or Israelis, or Germans, or other nations around the globe. Was this NSA's way of saying to US the U.S. Citizenry that our U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights mattered little anymore? Their actions sadly against U.S. Citizens have been louder than their words where claims are they're doing it for our protections. Didn't we hear similar in the late 30's out of Nazi Germany? And didn't we hear the same during the period of the former Soviet Union with their NKVD?

IMO, and I say IMO after the fall of the former Soviet Union, two monsters should have been dismantled, those being NATO and NSA. The latter should have been run through a gauntlet of 'each and every one of their programs and physical assets they possessed put under the microscope by the Congress and White House jointly -- is by continuing such programs and assets really in our benefit as a nation or not, and does it protect or hurt our citizenry and Constitution and Bill of Rights. NSA is supposed to be 'under' DoD oversight, but they don't act like it do they.

As kids, both you and I played with pellet/bb guns and played with them in public without a care in the world. Today if a American kid has a pellet/bb gun, the Police and Law Enforcement agencies shoot first and ask questions later, instead of using their heads and asking first and shooting last, of is it real or is it a play toy. Same sad errant mindset applies today to how they surveillance the American citizen.

We need to go back to the old days, where common sense mattered and a man's word was his bond.

[Ishmael Zechariah]

re: "The same Congress critters who fought for years to maintain NSA’s programs to collect it all on U.S. citizens are now harumphing in the most exuberant fashion about their conversations being caught in the dragnet."
Ah, Karma is a beautiful bitch all right...
Happy new year all.
Ishmael Zechariah

[confusedponderer]

From the WSJ article:

"One tool was a cyber implant in Israeli networks that gave the NSA access to communications within the Israeli prime minister’s office."

Quite a scoop.

[confusedponderer]

Excellent commenatary, as usual, from emptywheel:

"“Intelligence professionals have a saying: There are no friendly intelligence services,” the WSJ describes former House Intelligence Chair Mike Rogers saying, on the record. While there’s no way of telling — particularly not with WSJ’s described “more than two dozen current and former U.S. intelligence and administration officials” sources behind it’s blockbuster story on US spying on Bibi Netanyahu and other Israelis, Rogers is a likely candidate for some of the other statements attributed to “former US officials,” a moniker that can include agency officials, consultants, and members of Congress.

Which is awfully funny, given that two of the people squealing most loudly in response to the story are Rogers’ immediate predecessor, Crazy Pete Hoekstra, who called it a “Maybe unprecedented abuse of power,” and successor, Devin Nunes, who has already started an investigation into the allegations in the story.

It is the height of hypocrisy for these men, who have been privy to and by their silence have assented to this and, in Crazy Pete’s case, far worse patently illegal spying, to wail about a story that shows the Administration abiding by NSA minimization procedures they’ve both celebrated as more than adequate to protect US person privacy. If NSA’s minimization procedures are inadequate to protect US persons, the first thing Nunes should do is repeal FISA Amendments Act, which can expose far more people than the tailored, presumably EO 12333 tap placed on Bibi, not to mention OmniCISA, which can be targeted at Americans and will have even fewer protections for US persons.

The immediate attempt by a bunch of surveillance maximalists to turn compliant spying into a big scandal raises the question of why this story is coming out now, not incidentally just after Iran turned over its uranium stockpile over to Russia and in the process achieved another big step of the Iran deal."

https://www.emptywheel.net/2015/12/31/why-tell-the-israeli-spying-story-now/

[Swami Bhut Jolokia]

Well said, pl.

[Fred]

J,

"As kids, both you and I played with pellet/bb guns and played with them in public without a care in the world."

Except that lots of gang bangers shoot each other and feel quite justified in shooting cops too; which is why law enforcement doesn't wait to get shot at. That wasn't happening so often in the good ole days. Of course we don't hear about those killings from the Black Lives Matter Media or the anti-gun politicians. I won't even mention the school system that routinely goes ape s*%^ if someone even brings a picture of a bb gun to school.

[Dissenter]

Well Fred if the cops shoot your grandchild because gang bangers shoot at them, well hey, that's OK. It's like the gang bangers shot your grandchild not the cops. It's all good? Something about common sense LE tactics come to mind here.

[The Twisted Genius]

Dissenter,

You have a point about common sense LE tactics. Our local sheriff's office is opening a training center with an emphasis on deescalation procedures. I applaud that move. However, I find your comment about cops shooting Fred's grandchildren disturbing. Please think about what you write before you write it.

[Peter]

Even if certain laws get passed or repealed, the collection agency's just pick another law to collect under.