He Lied Again? What a Surprise.

Remember this?

"I called for a thorough review of our surveillance operations before Mr. Snowden made these leaks," Obama said. "My preference, and I think the American people's preference, would have been for a lawful, orderly examination of these laws; a thoughtful fact-based debate that would then lead us to a better place."

  CNN, August 2013

Really, that was his preference? Then why this, which has just been learned by the AP?

[A] now-retired NSA official, a longtime code-breaker who rose to top management, [...] says he argued to then-NSA Director Keith Alexander that storing the calling records of nearly every American fundamentally changed the character of the agency, which is supposed to eavesdrop on foreigners, not Americans.

Alexander politely disagreed, the former official told The Associated Press.

[...]

He said he also warned of a scandal if it should be disclosed that the NSA was storing records of private calls by Americans - to psychiatrists, lovers and suicide hotlines, among other contacts. Alexander, who led the NSA from 2005 until he retired last year, did not dispute the former official's account, though he said he disagreed that the program was improper.

[...]

The dissent prompted NSA leaders to examine whether the agency could stop gathering and storing domestic landline calling records and instead access the records as needed from the telephone companies, Alexander said. The NSA consulted with the Justice Department, Congress and the White House, newly occupied by President Barack Obama.

[...]

But the government ultimately decided against changing what most officials still view as a necessary bulwark against domestic terror plots, Alexander and other former officials said.

  AP Nov 19, 2014

So much for your “thoughtful, fact-based debate”. Assuming he was talking about a public debate, and not just him and a couple of NSA officers.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

There Ought to Be a Law

Keith Alexander, the former director of the National Security Administration, is filing for tech security patents related to his work running the NSA.

He's hawking a hacker/intrusion-detection service to banks and big corporations for a reported fee of one million dollars a month.

  BoingBoing

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Like Cornered Rats

As the NSA points the finger at the Obama Administration for ordering the mass surveillance of European citizens, the White House is seeking to distance itself from the scandal, intimating the NSA was acting of its own volition.

Secretary of State John Kerry addressed the accusations, that the NSA recorded millions of European citizens’ telephone calls, in a video conference to London on Thursday. Kerry conceded that US surveillance had “reached too far” and stated that the NSA had been conducting its espionage on “automatic pilot.”

  RT

On Thursday evening, the director of the NSA, General Keith Alexander, blamed US diplomats for requests to place foreign leaders under surveillance.

During a pointed exchange with a former US ambassador to Romania, James Carew Rosapepe, Alexander said: "We, the intelligence agencies, don't come up with the requirements. The policy-makers come up with the requirements."

He added: "One of those groups would have been, let me think, hold on, oh: ambassadors."

  Guardian

Nasty Alexander may be exploding before he resigns. And I'm sure HE knows things about lots of people. There may be hostages.

Drip, Drip, Drip

The National Security Agency has secretly broken into the main communications links that connect Yahoo and Google data centers around the world, according to documents obtained from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden and interviews with knowledgeable officials.

By tapping those links, the agency has positioned itself to collect at will from hundreds of millions of user accounts, many of them belonging to Americans.

[...]

The NSA’s principal tool to exploit the data links is a project called MUSCULAR, operated jointly with the agency’s British counterpart, the Government Communications Headquarters . From undisclosed interception points, the NSA and the GCHQ are copying entire data flows across fiber-optic cables that carry information between the data centers of the Silicon Valley giants.

[...]

Tapping the Google and Yahoo clouds allows the NSA to intercept communications in real time and to take “a retrospective look at target activity,” according to one internal NSA document.

[...]

The infiltration is especially striking because the NSA, under a separate program known as PRISM, has front-door access to Google and Yahoo user accounts through a court-approved process.

[...]

In 2011, when FISC learned that the NSA was using similar methods to collect and analyze data streams — on a much smaller scale — from cables on U.S. territory, Judge John D. Bates ruled that the program was illegal under FISA and inconsistent with the requirements of the Fourth Amendment.

  WaPo

Constitution? What’s that?

National Security Agency Director Keith Alexander on Wednesday denied knowledge of an agency program that reportedly tapped Google and Yahoo data centers around the world without the companies' knowledge.

  TPM

Oh, So THAT'S What It Is

National Security Agency Director Gen. Keith Alexander told the United States Congress that recent media reports detailing the NSA’s surveillance of foreign citizens are “completely false.”

[...]

The NSA chief said reporters cite screen shots leaked to the media that show a “Web tool used for data management purposes,” and said “both they and the person who stole the classified data do not understand what they were looking at.”

[...]

“To be perfectly clear, this is not information that we collected on European citizens,” said Alexander. “It represents information that we and our NATO allies have collected in defense of our countries and in support of military operations.”

  RT

Is It Getting Hot in Here?

General Keith Alexander apparently got pretty busy right after the world discovered that the National Security Agency, which he heads, has back doors built into much of the Internet's encryption.

He has cancelled his spot as a keynote speaker at a cybersecurity conference, three days before he was supposed to go on. The Dutch telecommunication company KPN announced Saturday that Alexander, who was scheduled to speak at their Cybersecurity Congress, wasn't going to make it, citing pressure on his agenda.

  Daily Dot

Is that a medical issue?

Collect It All

[ In late 2005,] more than 100 teams of U.S. analysts were scouring Iraq for snippets of electronic data that might lead to the bomb-makers and their hidden factories. But the NSA director, Gen. Keith B. Alexander, wanted more than mere snippets. He wanted everything: Every Iraqi text message, phone call and e-mail that could be vacuumed up by the agency’s powerful computers.

“Rather than look for a single needle in the haystack, his approach was, ‘Let’s collect the whole haystack,’ ” said one former senior U.S. intelligence official who tracked the plan’s implementation. “Collect it all, tag it, store it. . . . And whatever it is you want, you go searching for it.”

  WaPo

Numerous NSA documents we've already published demonstrate that the NSA's goal is to collect, monitor and store every telephone and internet communication that takes place inside the US and on the earth. It already collects billions of calls and emails every single day.

[...]

The NSA is constantly seeking to expand its capabilities without limits. They're currently storing so much, and preparing to store so much more, that they have to build a massive, sprawling new facility in Utah just to hold all the communications from inside the US and around the world that they are collecting - communications they then have the physical ability to invade any time they .

[...]

That is the definition of a ubiquitous surveillance state - and it's been built in the dark, without the knowledge of the American people or people around the world, even though it's aimed at them.

[...]

“[NSA chief General Keith Alexander] is the only man in the land that can promote a problem by virtue of his intelligence hat and then promote a solution by virtue of his military hat,” said one former Pentagon official, voicing a concern that the lines governing the two authorities are not clearly demarcated and that Alexander can evade effective public oversight as a result.

[...]

Alexander maintained in a speech last month that he is mindful to “do everything you can to protect civil liberties and privacy.”

He then added a warning: “Everyone also understands,” he said, “that if we give up a capability that is critical to the defense of this nation, people will die.”

[...]

t a private meeting with financial industry officials a few years ago, Alexander spoke about the proliferation of computer malware aimed at siphoning data from networks, including those of banks.

[...]

His proposed solution: Private companies should give the government access to their networks so it could screen out the harmful software.

[...]

The group of financial industry officials, sitting around a table at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, were stunned, immediately grasping the privacy implications of what Alexander was politely but urgently suggesting. As a group, they demurred.

  Glenn Greenwald

As though that would stop him from collecting their information if he wanted.

And in all this, let us not forget that the US has been using their spying capabilities to pick up information on other governments’ trade secrets. That’s got nothing to do with terrorism and keeping us safe.

NSA Still Trying to Buffalo the Public About Surveillance

On Monday, Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Mark Udall (D-Colo.) wrote to the head of the [NSA] alleging that one of [two documents posted on the NSA website] was misleading and inaccurate. The senators claimed, without elaborating, that a fact sheet “contains an inaccurate statement about how the section 702 authority has been interpreted by the U.S. government.”

NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander responded to the two lawmakers Tuesday, and while he didn't admit inaccuracy, he said the documents could have been clearer.

"After reviewing your letter, I agree that the fact sheet that the National Security Agency posted on its website on 18 June 2013 could have more precisely described the requirements for collection under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act," Alexander said in a letter of his own.

[...]

“Given the intense interest from the media, the public, and Congress, we believe the precision of the source document (the statute) is the best possible representation of applicable authorities,” NSA spokesperson Judith Emmel said in a statement.

  Politico

” Could have more precisely described.. .” In other words, could have been accurate, but wasn’t.

The documents were removed from the internet, but if you want to look at them, there are links in the Politico article.

But It's All Cyber - It's Not Like It's Terrorism Or Something

General Keith Alexander, a man few even in Washington would likely recognize. Never before has anyone in America’s intelligence sphere come close to his degree of power, the number of people under his command, the expanse of his rule, the length of his reign, or the depth of his secrecy. A four-star Army general, his authority extends across three domains: He is director of the world’s largest intelligence service, the National Security Agency; chief of the Central Security Service; and commander of the US Cyber Command. As such, he has his own secret military, presiding over the Navy’s 10th Fleet, the 24th Air Force, and the Second Army.

[...]

The military has for years been developing offensive capabilities, giving it the power not just to defend the US but to assail its foes. Using so-called cyber-kinetic attacks, Alexander and his forces now have the capability to physically destroy an adversary’s equipment and infrastructure, and potentially even to kill. Alexander—who declined to be interviewed for this article—has concluded that such cyberweapons are as crucial to 21st-century warfare as nuclear arms were in the 20th.

And he and his cyberwarriors have already launched their first attack. The cyberweapon that came to be known as Stuxnet was created and built by the NSA in partnership with the CIA and Israeli intelligence in the mid-2000s.

[...]

Alexander has said he plans to retire in 2014; when he does step down he will leave behind an enduring legacy—a position of far-reaching authority and potentially Strangelovian powers at a time when the distinction between cyberwarfare and conventional warfare is beginning to blur. A recent Pentagon report made that point in dramatic terms. It recommended possible deterrents to a cyberattack on the US. Among the options: launching nuclear weapons. [ed: emphasis mine]

  Wired

Islamic terrorism is not and never has been an existential threat. This, I'm not so sure about. We should at least have a little chat about it before we let Cyber Buck Turgidson and his friends run wild.

  Digby

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.