Which is Worse…Obama is Lying about Not Knowing NSA Eavesdropping Details or that he Really Didn’t Know?
By Noel Brinkerhoff | AllGov | October 29, 2013
Did he know, or didn’t he? That’s the question surrounding President Barack Obama since it was revealed that the National Security Agency (NSA) had spied on the private communications of German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Obama has been put in the embarrassing position of either admitting that he authorized the NSA to tap into the cell phone and email communications of the leaders of Germany and other allied countries, or that during his presidency spy agencies have been allowed to do as they wish without his knowledge even though many of their programs were already in place before Obama entered the White House.
Media reports out of Germany over the weekend indicated that Obama did know what the NSA was doing, going back several years in fact.
The German tabloid Bild alleged that Obama was personally briefed in 2010 about the operation to target Merkel’s phone by the NSA’s director, Keith Alexander, and that he authorized it to continue.
Another story, published in Der Spiegel, said the U.S. had been spying on Germans from the U.S. embassy in Berlin since 2008, and that surveillance of Merkel may have began as early as 2002.
In response to the stories, the NSA denied that Alexander met with Obama to discuss the controversial program.
The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) cited numerous unnamed sources who said the White House didn’t learn of the NSA spying until this past summer, when the operation against Merkel was shut down. It quoted a senior NSA official as saying, “These decisions are made at NSA. The president doesn’t sign off on this stuff.”
But that could mean Obama was in the dark for years about NSA activities.
“Officials said the NSA has so many eavesdropping operations under way that it wouldn’t have been practical to brief him on all of them,” the WSJ’s Siobhan Gorman and Adam Entous reported.
If that’s the best spin the administration can put on the scandal, it still leaves Obama open to criticism that he’s allowed a multi-billion-dollar spy agency to run amok and pry into the communications of whomever it wishes.
To Learn More:
If Obama Didn’t Know About Merkel Spying, Who Was It For? (by Jon Queally, Common Dreams)
Obama Unaware as U.S. Spied on World Leaders: Officials (by Siobhan Gorman and Adam Entous, Wall Street Journal)
Barack Obama ‘Approved Tapping Angela Merkel’s Phone 3 Years Ago’ (by Philip Sherwell and Louise Barnett, The Telegraph)
Obama knew about NSA spying on Merkel: Report
Press TV – October 27, 2013
A new report has revealed that US President Barack Obama was personally aware of the National Security Agency’s eavesdropping on German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
NSA director Keith Alexander had briefed President Obama on the mobile phone tapping against Merkel in 2010, German newspaper Bild am Sonntag reported on Sunday.
“Obama did not halt the operation but rather let it continue,” according to the paper citing a high-ranking NSA official.
The newspaper also said the US spying agency eavesdropped on Merkel’s predecessor, Gerhard Schroder, after former US president George W. Bush launched the spying program in 2002, adding that Schroder’s refusal to support the Iraq war was a key reason behind the operation.
The new revelation comes one day after German magazine Der Spiegel said that the NSA’s Special Collection Service (SCS) had listed Merkel’s mobile telephone since 2002.
Washington’s ally has demanded explanations from the White House after disclosures about the huge and broad American electronic spying.
On Thursday, Germany summoned US ambassador John Emerson to discuss the tapping allegations.
“For us, spying on close friends and partners is totally unacceptable. This undermines trust and this can harm our friendship,” German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said. “We need the truth now.”
In a phone call with Obama on Wednesday, Merkel said that she “unequivocally disapproves of such practices and sees them as completely unacceptable. There should be no such monitoring of the communication of a head of government. That would be a grave breach of trust.”
The White House, however, rejected the allegations, saying “the United States is not monitoring and will not monitor the communications of Chancellor Merkel.”
The global outrage over US government surveillance further spiked after The Guardian — citing a confidential memo obtained from American whistleblower Edward Snowden – revealed that the NSA is illegally eavesdropping on phone conversations of 35 world leaders.
The revelations have prompted Brazil and Germany to begin drafting a UN General Assembly resolution to restrain the NSA’s surveillance programs against other nations.
Palestinian Woman Arrested in Chicago
Committee to Stop FBI Repression | October 23, 2013
A Palestinian woman, Rasmieh Odeh, was arrested at her home this morning, Oct. 22, by agents of the Department of Homeland Security.
She is charged with immigration fraud. Allegedly, in her application for citizenship, she didn’t mention that she was arrested in Palestine 45 years ago by an Israeli military court that detains Palestinians without charge – a court that has over 200 children in prison today and does not recognize the rights of Palestinians to due process.
The arrest today appears to be related to the case of the 23 anti-war activists subpoenaed to a grand jury in 2010. Well-known labor, community and international solidarity activists around the Midwest had their homes raided by the FBI when the U.S. attorney alleged that they had provided material support to foreign terrorist organizations in Palestine and Colombia.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Barry Jonas is leading the investigation against the 23. He was at the courtroom in Chicago this morning, consulting with the assistant U.S. attorney who was presenting the indictment to the judge. Jonas was also the prosecutor in the case of the Holy Land Five, the heads of the largest Muslim charity in the U.S. before 9/11. He was successful in getting prison sentences for as long as 65 years for the five men, who provided charity to children in Gaza.
The Committee to Stop FBI Repression (CSFR) denounces this attack as another example of the continuing repression of Palestinians and people who stand in solidarity with them. Homeland Security, the FBI, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the U.S. Attorney’s office now are carrying out enforcement of the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
Odeh will appear in court in Detroit on Nov. 1, where she will be represented by Jim Fennerty of the National Lawyers Guild. CSFR urges people to attend the proceedings at the Federal Court in Detroit in her defense.
Snowden Rebuts Sen. Feinstein’s Claims That The NSA’s Metadata Collection Is ‘Not Surveillance’
By Tim Cushing | Techdirt | October 25, 2013
Ed Snowden has briefly stepped up to the mic to rebut Dianne Feinstein’s claims that the NSA’s bulk phone records collections are “not surveillance.” While he didn’t specifically name Feinstein, it’s pretty clear who his comments are directed towards, what with the senator putting in overtime over the past few weeks defending the agency’s cherished but useless Section 215 collections haystacks that are definitely not collections (according to the Intelligence Dictionary.)
“Today, no telephone in America makes a call without leaving a record with the NSA. Today, no Internet transaction enters or leaves America without passing through the NSA’s hands,” Snowden said in a statement Thursday.
“Our representatives in Congress tell us this is not surveillance. They’re wrong.”
Her op-ed for the USA Today stated the following:
The call-records program is not surveillance.
Why is it not surveillance? Feinstein claimed, in direct contradiction to someone who’s seen most of the inner workings of the agency’s programs, that because it doesn’t sweep up communications or names, it isn’t surveillance. Also, she pointed out that surveillance or not, it’s legal. So there.
Maybe Feinstein considers the term “surveillance” to mean something closer to the old school interpretation — shadowy figures in unmarked vans wearing headphones and peering through binoculars.
Of course, this kind of surveillance contained many elements completely eliminated by the combination of the PATRIOT Act, the FISA Amendments Act, and a very charitable reading of the Third Party Doctrine. You know, the sort of stuff those shadowy men used to utilize: warrants, targeted investigations, reasonable suspicion, a grudging working relationship with the Fourth Amendment…
That’s all gone now. The courts have declared that sweeping up business records on millions of Americans is no more a violation of the Fourth Amendment than gathering metadata on a single person. The NSA has warped the definition of “surveillance” just as surely as they’ve warped the definition of “relevant.” The wholesale, untargeted gathering of millions of “transactions” from internet and phone activity doesn’t seem to resemble what anyone might historically think of as “surveillance,” but it’s surveillance nonetheless.
Sure, the NSA may not look at everything it gathers, but it has the capability to do so and it shows no interest in letting any of its dragnets be taken out of commission. The NSA’s defenders downplay the agency’s many intrusions by first playing the “legal” and “oversight” cards and, when those fail to impress, belittle their critics by trotting out condescending statements like, “The NSA isn’t interested in Grandma’s birthday phone call or the cat videos you email to your friends.”
Well, no shit. We’re hardly interested in that, either. We’re not worried about the NSA looking through tons of inane interactions. We know it doesn’t have the time or inclination to do so. We’re more concerned it’s looking at the stuff it finds interesting and amassing databases full of “suspicious” persons by relying on algorithms and keywords — a fallible process that robs everything of context and turns slightly pointed hay into the needles it so desperately needs to justify its existence.
What makes this even more frightening is that the agency then hands this unfiltered, untargeted, massive collection of data off to other agencies, not only in the US but in other countries, subjecting innocent Americans’ data to new algorithms, keywords and mentalities, increasing the possibility of false positives.
But what we’re mainly concerned about is the fact that an agency that claims its doing this to combat terrorism can’t seem to come up with much evidence that its programs are working. The NSA has deprived us of civil liberties while delivering next to nothing in terms of security. Americans have been sold out to a data-hungry beast, and even if it’s not officially “surveillance,” it’s still completely unacceptable.
TSA Runs Background Checks of U.S. Passengers before They Arrive at the Airport
By Noel Brinkerhoff and Danny Biederman | AllGov | October 23, 2013
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has broadened its screening of passengers before they arrive at the airport by using government and private databases revealing personal information.
The expanded screening, which used to apply only to people entering the United States, now affects domestic travelers, and can include TSA agents reviewing car registrations and employment information.
“It is unclear precisely what information the agency is relying upon to make these risk assessments, given the extensive range of records it can access, including tax identification number, past travel itineraries, property records, physical characteristics, and law enforcement or intelligence information,” Susan Stellin wrote for The New York Times.
TSA claims that the purpose of the expanded passenger data scans is to identify low-risk passengers in order to lighten their security screening at the airport and thus make actual searches more targeted. The agency’s goal is to be able to do that with 25% of all passengers by the end of 2014. Those designated low-risk travelers will get to move through a separate line and be able to keep their shoes and jackets on.
Privacy groups expressed concern over the TSA’s widening reach into people’s personal records.
Previously, the air travel background checks, called Secure Flight, only involved a comparison of a passenger’s name, gender and date of birth to terrorist watch list data. Now it is clearly much more.
“I think the best way to look at it is as a pre-crime assessment every time you fly,” Edward Hasbrouck, a consultant to the Identity Project, one of the groups that oppose the prescreening initiatives, told the Times. “The default will be the highest, most intrusive level of search, and anything less will be conditioned on providing some additional information in some fashion.”
TSA has not announced details of the program, but it reportedly has already been launched.
To Learn More:
Security Check Now Starts Long Before You Fly (by Susan Stellin, New York Times)
As TSA Expands beyond Airports, Concerns are Raised over Warrantless Searches (by Noel Brinkerhoff and Danny Biederman, AllGov)
TSA Spreads to Trains, Subways, Bus Terminals and Ferries (by Noel Brinkerhoff and David Wallechinsky, AllGov)
Tennessee First State to Allow TSA Highway Random Search Program (by David Wallechinsky and Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)
Clerical Blunder Reveals TSA Considers Airport Terrorist Attack Unlikely
By JACK BOUBOUSHIAN | Courthouse News | October 22, 2013
Classified TSA documents revealed by clerical error show that the agency does not think terrorists are plotting to attack airplanes, suggesting that nude body scans are unnecessary to protect passengers.
After Rapiscan developed “backscatter” body scanners using Advanced Imaging Technology in 2007, Jonathan Corbett sued the Transportation Security Administration three years later.
He claimed that the TSA procedures violated the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition against unreasonable searches in requiring agents to touch the passengers’ private areas and let them see clear images of the passengers’ nude bodies.
Corbett claimed that the “the abstract risk[s] of terrorism without a credible, specific threat” does not justify the unreasonable screening procedures, which are performed without probable cause or a search warrant.
“The nude body scanners serve to palpate every inch of skin, this time with electromagnetic radiation rather than fingers,” he wrote in a recent brief. “Every crevice, fold, and bump is turned into a picture of the traveler’s nude body. It is, essentially, the high-tech version of an invasive pat-down.”
After a federal judge found in 2011 that only federal courts of appeals can hear challenges to TSA orders, Corbett’s case is now pending before the 11th Circuit.
In the course of discovery, the TSA gave Corbett classified documents, which he incorporated into the brief that he filed under seal.
A clerk at the 11th Circuit somehow neglected to place the document under seal, however, allowing the public to see the redacted information.
This mistake revealed the TSA’s apparent admission that terrorists are unlikely to target airports in a subsequent attack.
“As of mid-2011, terrorist threat groups present in the Homeland are not known to be actively plotting against civil aviation targets or airports; instead, their focus is on fundraising, recruiting, and propagandizing,” the TSA said.
In addition, the brief states that “the government concedes that it would be difficult to have a repeat of 9/11 due to hardened cockpit doors and the willingness of passengers to challenge hijackers rather than assume a hijacking merely means a diversion to Cuba. The government also credits updated pre-flight security for that difficulty assessment, but the assessment was written before the en masse deployment of body scanners and before the update to the pat-down procedure. Further, the government admits that there have been no attempted domestic hijackings of any kind in the 12 years since 9/11.”
The nude body scanners are not very good at detecting explosives, and almost everything caught by the machine, such as guns, could be found using a traditional metal detector, Corbett says.
The only thing the scanners allegedly excel at over a metal detector is finding illegal drugs, which do not threaten the safety of passengers.
Because less intrusive, but equally effective, search methods exist, the TSA’s use of nude scanners and full pat-downs is unnecessary and unconstitutional, according to the brief Corbett filed pro se.
“The limited support that the TSA has for the nude body scanners and pat-down procedures in Congress, in the eyes of the public, and in the courts so far is a direct result of the TSA’s insistence that these devices are necessary to mitigate the threat of non-metallic explosives,” it states. “When given the choice between sacrificing some of their privacy or risk being blown up, many people – especially politicians who would not want to have the finger pointed at them for being ‘responsible’ for allowing the next terrorist attack to happen – choose the former.
“However, this is a false choice, and the TSA has deliberately misled the public, Congress, and the courts into concluding that no less invasive alternatives can ‘do the job.’ At least three other technologies are available to the TSA for the purpose of screening travelers for explosives, and a review of the administrative record shows that the TSA’s decision to use nude body scanners and pat-downs over these other technologies was arbitrary and capricious.”
Related article
NSA spied on 125bn phone calls in one month
Press TV – October 24, 2013
The US National Security Agency monitored nearly 125 billion phone calls from around the world in just one month, including around 3 billion calls from US soil, according to documents released by whistleblower Edward J. Snowden.
The sheer extent of the NSA’s data collection effort was compiled from multiple sources and organized on Wednesday by members of intelligence website Cryptome, which regularly publishes government documents and other information.
The majority of calls monitored by the NSA originated from Afghanistan and Pakistan, where 13.76 billion and 21.98 billion calls were respectively collected during January 2013, according to the Boundless Informant “heat map” revealed by the Guardian.
Billions of phone calls were also recorded from countries in the Middle East, including Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran and Jordan.
Additionally, some 6.28 billion calls from India were collected. An estimated 3 billion US phone communications were also tapped by the NSA.
Perhaps the most controversial element of the NSA spying program is the effort to collect phone data from Western nations that have friendly relations with the US.
Germany, France and several other countries have expressed concerns about US spying after Snowden, former NSA contractor, revealed classified information about US surveillance programs.
The chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, admitted in July that Snowden’s exposés have seriously damaged US ties with other countries. “There has been damage. I don’t think we actually have been able to determine the depth of that damage.”
Related articles
- NSA Spies on 500 Million Germany Data Connections Monthly (leaksource.wordpress.com)
- US spied on French diplomats- report (worldbulletin.net)
- Angela Merkel Calls Obama, Enquires Why Her Phone Was Spied On (eteknix.com)
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The Maidan Killings and the False-Flag Case
By Freddie Ponton | 21st Century Wire | September 5, 2026
Before the killings that helped bring down Ukraine’s president in February 2014, American diplomats were discussing who should enter its government. In a leaked telephone call, senior State Department official Victoria Nuland told US ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt, “I think Yats is the guy,” referring to opposition leader Arseniy Yatseniuk. Washington had clear preferences and was working to advance them. Later that month, Yatseniuk became prime minister.
Ivan Katchanovski’s The Maidan Massacre in Ukraine examines the violence that preceded that transfer of power. Drawing on television footage, witness testimony, forensic examinations and Ukrainian court proceedings, he argues that elements of the opposition shot protesters and police in a false-flag operation. His case centres on evidence of protesters being shot from opposition-controlled locations, including Hotel Ukraina, overlooking the killing ground. … continue
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