The Verge: “According to a new report from Der Spiegel based on internal NSA documents, the signals intelligence agency’s elite hacking unit (TAO) is able to conduct sophisticated wiretaps in ways that make Hollywood fantasy look more like reality. The report indicates that the NSA, in collaboration with the CIA and FBI, routinely and secretly intercepts shipping deliveries for laptops or other computer accessories in order to implant bugs before they reach their destinations.”
NSA Phone Surveillance Found Legal
A federal judge “ruled that the National Security Agency’s program that is systematically keeping phone records of all Americans is lawful, creating a conflict among lower courts and increasing the likelihood that the issue will be resolved by the Supreme Court,” the New York Times reports.
Washington Post: “The decision conflicts with that of a U.S. District Court judge who ruled against the government early last week, finding that the NSA’s program was almost certainly unconstitutional. The divergent decisions make it more likely that the Supreme Court will make its own ruling.”
Quote of the Day
“Recently we learned that our governments, working in concert, have created a system of worldwide system of mass surveillance watching everything we do. Great Britain’s George Orwell warned us of the danger of this kind of information. The types of collection in the book — microphones and video cameras, TVs that watch us — are nothing compared to what we have available today.”
— Edward Snowden, in an “alternative Christmas message” broadcast on UK television.
White House Defense of NSA Spying May Be Unraveling
Washington Post: “From the moment the government’s massive database of citizens’ call records was exposed this year, U.S. officials have clung to two main lines of defense: The secret surveillance program was constitutional and critical to keeping the nation safe. But six months into the controversy triggered by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, the viability of those claims is no longer clear.”
“In a three-day span, those rationales were upended by a federal judge who declared that the program was probably unconstitutional and the release of a report by a White House panel utterly unconvinced that stockpiling such data had played any meaningful role in preventing terrorist attacks.”
Daily Beast: “Obama told his blue-ribbon panel on reforming the government’s domestic spying program that he didn’t want them to pull their punches. He got what he asked for and a good bit more.”
U.S. May Never Know Extent of Snowden’s Leaks
“American intelligence and law enforcement investigators have concluded that they may never know the entirety of what the former National Security Agency contractor Edward J. Snowden extracted from classified government computers before leaving the United States,” the New York Times reports.
“Investigators remain in the dark about the extent of the data breach partly because the N.S.A. facility in Hawaii where Mr. Snowden worked — unlike other N.S.A. facilities — was not equipped with up-to-date software that allows the spy agency to monitor which corners of its vast computer landscape its employees are navigating at any given time.”
Panetta Revealed Bin Laden Secrets
AP:
“Newly declassified documents show Tuesday that former CIA Director
Leon Panetta revealed secret information to Zero Dark Thirty
scriptwriter Mark Boal when Panetta gave a speech at CIA headquarters
marking the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. Panetta said through a
spokesman that he didn’t know Boal was in the room.”
Gillibrand Sees Vote on Assault Bill Slip Away
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) “is headed back to the drawing board with her controversial proposal to take sexual assault cases outside the chain of command,” The Hill reports.
“Gillibrand had been assured a vote on her plan during work on the Defense authorization bill. But a dispute over amendments is prompting Congress to ready an alternative procedure to pass the legislation — one that isn’t likely allow the Senate to consider any major changes to the bill.”
New Yorker: The relentless rise of Kirsten Gillibrand
Americans See U.S. Power Declining
Pew Research: “For the first time in surveys dating back nearly 40 years, a majority (53%) says the United States plays a less important and powerful role as a world leader than it did a decade ago. The share saying the U.S. is less powerful has increased 12 points since 2009 and has more than doubled – from just 20% – since 2004.”
“An even larger majority says the U.S. is losing respect internationally. Fully 70% say the United States is less respected than in the past, which nearly matches the level reached late in former President George W. Bush’s second term (71% in May 2008). Early last year, fewer Americans (56%) thought that the U.S. had become less respected globally.”
Lawmakers Warn Americans Are No Safer Today
“Americans shouldn’t feel safer today than they did before the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the leaders of the Senate and House intelligence committees said Sunday,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“The country now faces a larger number of threats from splintered terrorist groups and more complex weapons than when the U.S. began combat operations in Afghanistan in 2001… At the same time, the nation’s spy programs-which can help foil terrorist plots-are under heavy scrutiny that could ultimately lessen their effectiveness.”
The Nuclear Launch Code Was 00000000
Karl Smallwood says that “during the height of the Cold War, the US military put such an emphasis on a rapid response to an attack on American soil, that to minimize any foreseeable delay in launching a nuclear missile, for nearly two decades they intentionally set the launch codes at every silo in the US to 8 zeroes.”
NSA Spied on Porn Habits
“The National Security Agency has been gathering records of online sexual activity and evidence of visits to pornographic websites as part of a proposed plan to harm the reputations of those whom the agency believes are radicalizing others through incendiary speeches,” Huffington Post reports.
No Partisan Divide on Johnson Nomination
Jed Johnson’s dissent with President Obama over authorization to bomb Libya in 2011 may actually be paying off, the Los Angeles Times reports.
“It won him some fans among Republicans in Congress, and they haven’t forgotten. On Wednesday, Johnson, President Obama’s pick to run the Department of Homeland Security, appears headed for something few high-profile Washington nominees receive these days: a smooth confirmation hearing.”
White House Approved Spying on Allies
The White House and State Department “signed off on surveillance targeting phone conversations of friendly foreign leaders, current and former U.S. intelligence officials said Monday, pushing back against assertions that President Obama and his aides were unaware of the high-level eavesdropping,” the Los Angeles Times reports.
“Professional staff members at the National Security Agency and other U.S. intelligence agencies are angry, these officials say, believing the president has cast them adrift as he tries to distance himself from the disclosures by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden that have strained ties with close allies.”
Cheney Defends Spying on World Leaders
Former Vice President Dick Cheney told CNN that “there is an interest in conducting surveillance on a country or a leader, even a clear ally.”
Said Cheney: “We do have a fantastic intelligence capability, worldwide against all kinds of potential issues and concerns. We are vulnerable, as was shown on 9/11, and you never know what you’re going to need when you need it.”
He added: “We do collect a lot of intelligence. Without speaking about any particular target or group of targets, that intelligence capability is enormously important to the United States, to our conduct in foreign policy, to defense matters, economic matters, and I’m a strong supporter of it.”
Why Didn’t U.S. Stop Tapping Merkel’s Phone?
New York Times:
“New details about the monitoring of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s
cellphone by the National Security Agency further stoked the German
government’s anger on Sunday and raised two questions: Why did the
United States target her as early as 2002, and why did it take five
years for the Obama administration to put a halt to the surveillance?”
Obama Unaware as U.S. Spied on World Leaders
“The National Security Agency ended a program used to spy on German Chancellor Angela Merkel and a number of other world leaders after an internal Obama administration review started this summer revealed to the White House the existence of the operations,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“Officials said the internal review turned up NSA monitoring of some 35 world leaders, in the U.S. government’s first public acknowledgment that the U.S. government tapped the phones of world leaders… The White House cut off some monitoring programs after learning of them, including the one tracking Ms. Merkel and some other world leaders… Other programs have been slated for termination but haven’t been phased out completely yet.”
White House Official Fired for Tweeting Under False Name
Josh Rogin: “A White House national security official was fired last week after being caught as the mystery Tweeter who has been tormenting the foreign policy community with insulting comments and revealing internal Obama administration information for over two years.”
“Jofi Joseph, a director in the non-proliferation section of the National Security Staff at the White House, has been surreptitiously tweeting under the moniker @natsecwonk, a Twitter feed famous inside Washington policy circles since it began in February, 2011 until it was shut down last week.”
NSA Spied on Senators During Cold War
Foreign Policy: “As Vietnam War protests grew, the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) tapped the overseas communications of prominent American critics of the war — including a pair of sitting U.S. senators. That’s according to a recently declassified NSA history, which called the effort ‘disreputable if not outright illegal.'”
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