Guardian exclusive reveals the program, Boundless Informant, contradicts NSA's claims that they cannot estimate number of American communications collected
A screenshot of Boundless Informant: The color scheme ranges from green (least subjected to surveillance) through yellow and orange to red (most surveillance). (Image via the Guardian)Following their recent report that the United States government is conducting massive and covert surveillance of phone and internet communications, the Guardian revealed Saturday new details about a government software program that tracks and maps by country the "voluminous amount of information" sapped from their "Orwellian" exploits.
According to documents viewed by the news outlet, the program called Boundless Informant uses an individual computer's IP Address to categorize by location government surveillance intercepts and filed reports of 'metadata,' which includes the identities of the sender and recipient, and the time, date, duration and location of a communication.
With 14 billion reports, Iran was the country where the largest amount of intelligence was gathered followed by 13.5 billion from Pakistan. One of America's closest Arab allies, Jordan, came third with 12.7 billion. Egypt was fourth with 7.6 billion and India fifth with 6.3 billion.
As journalist Glenn Greenwald, who is one of the reporters behind the disclosure, said Thursday on CNN's Piers Morgan, "the entire world is impacted."
According to the Guardian report:
An NSA factsheet about the program, acquired by the Guardian, says: "The tool allows users to select a country on a map and view the metadata volume and select details about the collections against that country." Under the heading "Sample use cases", the factsheet also states the tool shows information including: "How many records (and what type) are collected against a particular country." A snapshot of the Boundless Informant data, contained in a top secret NSA "global heat map" seen by the Guardian, shows that in March 2013 the agency collected 97bn pieces of intelligence from computer networks worldwide.The disclosed map—in addition to other documents seen by the Guardian—contradicts earlier government assertions made to Congress that the NSA was unable to provide statistics on the amount of data being collected on American citizens, as the authors assert that "the NSA does in fact break down its surveillance intercepts which could allow the agency to determine how many of them are from the US." Despite this, NSA spokeswoman Judith Emmel told the Guardian in a response to the latest disclosures: "NSA has consistently reported – including to Congress – that we do not have the ability to determine with certainty the identity or location of all communicants within a given communication. That remains the case."
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Calls to punish the whistleblower follow exposure of sweeping surveillance program
"Reprehensible."
"Reckless."
"Illegal."
The NSA's PRISM program, which accesses the systems of internet giants like Facebook and Google to obtain user data, was revealed this week. These are the adjectives some officials in Washington are using to describe not the sweeping surveillance of Americans by the NSA revealed this week, but letting Americans know that such surveillance exists.
Speaking to CBS on Friday, WikiLeaks' Julian Assange said, “Let’s ask ourselves whether the whistleblower who has revealed those, and there’s more to come, is going to be in exactly the same position as Bradley Manning is in today.” Journalist and Guardian columnist Glenn Greenwald, part of the team that broke the stories, wrote on Friday of the courage of whistleblowers in the face of such intimidation:
"Reckless."
"Illegal."
The NSA's PRISM program, which accesses the systems of internet giants like Facebook and Google to obtain user data, was revealed this week. These are the adjectives some officials in Washington are using to describe not the sweeping surveillance of Americans by the NSA revealed this week, but letting Americans know that such surveillance exists.
Speaking to CBS on Friday, WikiLeaks' Julian Assange said, “Let’s ask ourselves whether the whistleblower who has revealed those, and there’s more to come, is going to be in exactly the same position as Bradley Manning is in today.” Journalist and Guardian columnist Glenn Greenwald, part of the team that broke the stories, wrote on Friday of the courage of whistleblowers in the face of such intimidation:
Like puppets reading from a script, various Washington officials almost immediately began spouting all sorts of threats about "investigations" they intend to launch about these disclosures. This has been their playbook for several years now: they want to deter and intimidate anyone and everyone who might shed light on what they're doing with their abusive, manipulative exploitation of the power of law to punish those who bring about transparency. That isn't going to work. It's beginning completely to backfire on them. It's precisely because such behavior reveals their true character, their propensity to abuse power, that more and more people are determined to bring about accountability and transparency for what they do. They can threaten to investigate all they want. But as this week makes clear, and will continue to make clear, the ones who will actually be investigated are them.Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) said the revelations proved we are a culture of leaks" and said there should be an investigation to find the source of the leak:
“The fact of the matter is, this was a routine three-month approval that was under seal that was leaked,” Feinstein told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell, who followed up by asking if the source of the leak should be investigated.“I think so,” Feinstein said. “I think we’ve become a culture of leaks now.”Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said the leak was "reprehensible" and could cause "irreversible harm:"
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper called the disclosure of an Internet surveillance program “reprehensible” and said it risks Americans’ security. He said a leak that revealed a program to collect phone records would affect how America’senemies behave and make it harder to understand their intentions. “The unauthorized disclosure of a top secret U.S. court document threatens potentially long-lasting and irreversible harm to our ability to identify and respond to the many threats facing our nation,” Clapper said in an unusual late-night statement.An ABC News headline reads ominously: "On the Hunt for the NSA Wiretapping Leaker:"
"It's completely reckless and illegal... It's more than just unauthorized. He's no hero," one senior law enforcement source told ABC News of the unidentified leaker. The source speculated that a single person could be behind both recent leaks to the British newspaper The Guardian and to The Washington Post. [...] "This guy's trying to be some kind of martyr," the law enforcement source said. [...] If the leaker is in the government, former Deputy Director of the FBI Tim Muphy said he should be punished. "You have an obligation when you have a clearance not to leak this kind of information," Murphy said.At an event in San Jose, California on Friday, President Obama offered this blunt statment:
"I don't welcome leaks."
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NYT Gives Damning-With-Faintest-Praise-Possible Profile of Glenn Greenwald After Surveillance Scoops
Naked Capitalism The Grey Lady roused itself to profile Glenn Greenwald after his blockbuster stories of the last two days: the first on a secret court order now in effect for Verizon to provide the NSA on all telephone records in its systems, the second on the PRISM program, which has given the NSA direct access to servers of information giants including Google, Facebook, and Microsoft, since 2007. But the piece is mean-spirited, underplaying Greenwald’s credentials and coming too close for comfort to character sniping. Start with first impressions: the headline, the opening paragraph, and the picture: “Blogger, With Focus on Surveillance, Is at Center of a Debate“:
After writing intensely, even obsessively, for years about government surveillance and the prosecution of journalists, Glenn Greenwald has suddenly put himself directly at the intersection of those two issues, and perhaps in the cross hairs of federal prosecutors.So where do we start with this? First, Greenwald is introduced as a blogger, not a lawyer, and most important, a recognized expert on constitutional law and author of four books, including New York Times best sellers. Second, the depiction of him as intense and obsessive (warning! possibly dangerous!) puts his personality rather than his information and analysis in the spotlight. And that photo! The article mentions three times in the first four paragraphs about how Greenwald is likely to have the Administration come after him, including:
“The N.S.A. is kind of the crown jewel in government secrecy. I expect them to react even more extremely,” Mr. Greenwald said in a telephone interview. He said that he had been advised by lawyer friends that “he should be worried,” but he had decided that “what I am doing is exactly what the Constitution is about and I am not worried about it.”But notice how the emphasis is on the risk, as in the how the authorities may stomp on him, and not a peep on how his actions benefit the public. The article, remarkably, sidesteps the elephant in the room: what does this Administration conduct reveal about our democracy and our rights? The Times authors are more interested in telling us about how Greenwald had get down the curve on encryption tradecraft to handle these national security stories. And the Grey Lady picks up on his description of himself as an activist (which per the html and the headline in the browser frame appears to have been in the original headline) and manages to downplay that the through line of his work is Constitutional issues (only two mentions of the Constitution in the piece, one in the quote above, the other from a from a former roomie). The Times also points out how, well, irregular Greenwald’s arrangements with his publishers have been:
Mr. Greenwald’s experience as a journalist is unusual, not because of his clear opinions but because he has rarely had to report to an editor. He began his blog Unclaimed Territory in 2005 after the news of warrantless surveillance under the Bush administration. When his blog was picked up by Salon, said Kerry Lauerman, the magazine’s departing editor in chief, Salon agreed that Mr. Greenwald would have direct access to their computer system so that he could publish his blog posts himself without an editor seeing them first if he so chose. “It basically is unheard of, but I never lost a moment of sleep over it,” Mr. Lauerman said. “He is incredibly scrupulous in the way a lawyer would be — really, really careful.” The same independence has carried over at The Guardian, though Mr. Greenwald said that for an article like the one about the N.S.A. letter he agreed that the paper should be able to edit it. Because he has often argued in defense of Bradley Manning, the army private who was charged as the WikiLeaks source, he said he considered publishing the story on his own, and not for The Guardian, to assert that the protections owed a journalist should not require the imprimatur of an established publisher.Now there a fair bit of straight-up-the center information included as well, for instance, that Greenwald worked for Wachtell Lipton (appropriately described as “high powered”) and his former roommate now immigration lawyer Jennifer Bailey stressing how passionate he is about “equal justice and equal treatment” and does not fit neatly into conventional political categories.
Read Full Article Here
Guardian scoop about NSA surveillance program appears to be incorrect
Worried that the National Security Agency is obtaining your data through the servers of Google and Facebook? You’ve probably got nothing to worry about.Read Full Article Here *********************************************************************************
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