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The
"March 2013-Watchlisting Guidance" was leaked to journalists at The
Intercept by a source within the intelligence community.
“A source within the intelligence community” has leaked the government’s secret guidebook to how it adds names to and manages its controversial terrorist “watchlist” and was published in full by The Intercept on Wednesday. Reported by Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Devereaux, the 166-page document (pdf) issued by the National Counterterrorism Center—and titled “March 2013 Watchlisting Guidance”—details
the most up-to-date government rules for placing individuals on their
main terrorism database, as well as the no-fly list and selectee list.
It was developed by representatives from the nation's top military and
intelligence bodies including the Pentagon, CIA, NSA, and FBI.
According to the report, in 2013 the Obama administration “quietly
approved a substantial expansion” of the watchlist system, “authorizing a
secret process that requires neither ‘concrete facts’ nor ‘irrefutable
evidence’ to designate an American or foreigner as a terrorist.” It was
developed behind closed doors by representatives of the nation’s
intelligence, military, and law-enforcement establishment, including the
Pentagon, CIA, NSA, and FBI.
Scahill and Devereaux report that the guidelines permit “the elastic
concept of 'reasonable suspicion' as a standard for determining whether
someone is a possible threat.”
They continue:
The document’s definition of “terrorist” activity
includes actions that fall far short of bombing or hijacking. In
addition to expected crimes, such as assassination or hostage-taking,
the guidelines also define destruction of government property and
damaging computers used by financial institutions as activities meriting
placement on a list. They also define as terrorism any act that is
“dangerous” to property and intended to influence government policy
through intimidation.
This combination—a broad definition of what
constitutes terrorism and a low threshold for designating someone a
terrorist—opens the way to ensnaring innocent people in secret
government dragnets.
Moreover, the government tracks both “known terrorists” and
“suspected terrorists,” allowing individuals to be placed on the list
even if they are suspected of associating with potential terrorists.
“Instead of a watchlist limited to actual, known terrorists, the
government has built a vast system based on the unproven and flawed
premise that it can predict if a person will commit a terrorist act in
the future,” says Hina Shamsi, the head of the ACLU’s National Security
Project. “On that dangerous theory, the government is secretly
blacklisting people as suspected terrorists and giving them the
impossible task of proving themselves innocent of a threat they haven’t
carried out.”
The report further reveals the Catch-22 of being placed on the list based on the vague premise of “reasonable suspicion.”
"The difficulty of getting off the list is highlighted by a passage
in the guidelines stating that an individual can be kept on the
watchlist, or even placed onto the watchlist, despite being acquitted of
a terrorism-related crime," Scahill and Devereaux report. "The rulebook
justifies this by noting that conviction in U.S. courts requires
evidence beyond a reasonable doubt, whereas watchlisting requires only a
reasonable suspicion. Once suspicion is raised, even a jury’s verdict
cannot erase it."
One of the more notable details revealed in the report is the ability
to elevate an entire category of people from the watchlist to the
no-fly or selectee list, also known as a “threat-based expedited
upgrade,” when there is a “particular threat stream” that indicates that
a certain category of individual “may commit a terrorist act.”
According to the report, the Guidelines do not reveal what categories of
people have thus far been elevated in this manner.
Since 9/11, the number of individuals listed on the government’s no-fly list grew from just 16 to tens of thousands. In a recent court
filing, the government revealed that there were 468,749 nominations for
“known or suspected terrorists” in 2013 alone. Of those nominees, only
4,915—a mere one percent—were rejected.
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The eBay founder was a mild-mannered Obama
supporter looking for a way to spend his time and fortune. The Snowden
leaks gave him a cause — and an enemy.
Pierre Omidyar in 1999.
Photo: Yann Gamblin/Getty Images
In 2003, Omidyar took a trip with some of his real-life peers
to NASA’s Space Camp in Alabama. Larry Page and Sergey Brin were there,
as was Elon Musk, who had just sold PayPal to eBay. They played
astronaut for a week, simulating a space-shuttle launch and
weightlessness. They had dinner with Buzz Aldrin and a NASA official,
during which the campers pressed to know why America hadn’t sent a man
to Mars.
Musk is now building a private company, SpaceX, with the aim of
personally landing on Mars. Brin wants to defeat Parkinson’s disease,
while Page has invested in promoting longevity, even immortality. Jeff
Bezos, Amazon’s founder, has his own rocket company and plans to restore
the Washington Post to financial health — no small challenge
given the struggles of the news business, in part owing to the
disruption of classified advertising by companies like eBay.
Omidyar, by contrast, had trouble settling on a moon-shot project. He
didn’t aspire to live forever or touch the stars. He wanted to do
unglamorous work at the grass roots, applying the optimistic lesson he
drew from eBay: that “people are basically good” and capable of
overcoming forces like disease, ignorance, poverty, and repression. But
how could this humanistic philosophy bring actual humans together?
Through a foundation, Omidyar tried sprinkling angel investments on
“social entrepreneurs” and created a patented technology platform meant
to allow them to trade ideas the way people bought and sold goods on
eBay. (Some users grew frustrated when they learned the conversation
wasn’t meant to be a route to Omidyar’s own money, and it ultimately
shut down.) Meanwhile, Pam, who previously worked in biotechnology,
funded projects like a video game called Re-Mission, designed to help
kids fight cancer, and founded an organization called Humanity United,
which campaigns against human trafficking and genocide. Pierre realized
that information gave rise to action, and that led him to think about
newspapers, too.
“He was genuinely interested and concerned about a dissipating news industry,” says Brian Greenspun, publisher of the Las Vegas Sun, who had lengthy discussions with Omidyar almost a decade ago. “And what impact it will have on our democracy.”
Omidyar believed that powerful institutions needed to be kept in check, so he funded organizations like the Sunlight Foundation, a watchdog for money in politics, and the Center for Public Integrity, an investigative-journalism nonprofit. At the same time, his own philanthropic organization, Omidyar Network,
conducted itself with unusual secrecy. Founded in 2004, it was at the
vanguard of a movement called “venture philanthropy.” It is modeled on a
VC firm, making both grants to nonprofits and equity investments in
for-profit companies. The organization is partly a private entity,
partly a foundation that functions as “just a checkbook,” as Omidyar
wrote in the Harvard Business Review. At the cost of millions in
tax breaks, this hybrid structure allows the Network to get around many
nonprofit regulations. Though Omidyar has been one of the most generous
donors to Guidestar, which tracks federal financial disclosures by
nonprofits, you won’t find much useful information about Omidyar Network
there.
Many in the philanthropy world were aghast when Omidyar began
mingling altruism and capitalism, but he dismissed the objections as
“old thinking.” He found an area that promised to unite both instincts:
microfinance. Omidyar loved the idea that giving out tiny loans in
developing countries could unleash entrepreneurialism. He endowed a $100
million fund, administered by Tufts, that invests in microfinance
institutions, and donated to numerous nonprofits in the sector. In 2008,
Omidyar took a trip to India, where he visited a village near Hyderabad
with the founder of a lender called SKS, in which Omidyar Network was
an indirect shareholder, via a 22 percent investment in a Cayman
Islands–based private-equity fund. He watched as cross-legged women in
saris borrowed cash. But when SKS mounted an IPO, the microfinance
venture turned into a philanthropic debacle. Unitus, Inc., the
Omidyar-supported nonprofit that ran the private-equity vehicle, had a
convoluted structure rife with potential boardroom conflicts of
interest. (“We have managed to stay out of jail, so we must not be
violating any ethics,” one Unitus board member assured a consultant paid
by Omidyar.) As it prepared to reap millions from the stock sale,
Unitus disbanded its charitable microfinance operations, declaring the
concept “validated.” But SKS’s stock later crashed in the midst of
political uproar in India over harsh collection tactics, which were tied
by opponents to a number of suicides.
Omidyar seems to take such setbacks in stride; he sees traditional
philanthropy as overly risk-averse. “In Silicon Valley,” he said at a
2011 nonprofit conference, “we say if you haven’t tried something and
failed, and actually learned something from that failure, then why would
I want to work with you?” But Omidyar’s habit of investing heavily in
big ideas, and sometimes dropping them abruptly, made him appear fickle
and inscrutable to many in the philanthropy world. “He got this
reputation of being an arrogant know-it-all,” says one nonprofit-sector
consultant, echoing Omidyar’s earlier self-assessment. “But they all
kissed the ring because they wanted his money.”
When Omidyar moved away from microfinance, he returned his attention
to another desperate population: journalists. Fixing the problem of news
appealed both to his apocalyptic side — in 2007, he proposed creating a
peer-to-peer text-messaging service that would help people to “survive a
flu pandemic or other widespread disaster” — and to his belief in the
responsibilities of citizenship. In 2008, he started a company called
Peer News, working with a small team of programmers in an office in
Honolulu. At first it developed a system called Ginx, which was supposed
to track the information coursing through Twitter. But it wasn’t able
to break into the crowded market, so Peer News pivoted: It would create
an ad-free subscription website covering Hawaiian government.
Omidyar conceived of the Honolulu Civil Beat,
launched in 2010, as what he called “a new civic square,” and he hoped
to reproduce the model around the country. He recruited a staff of six
“reporter-hosts” led by a newspaper refugee, John Temple, whose last
editing job had terminated with the closure of the Rocky Mountain News.
After a difficult start — half the initial reporting staff left within
months — the Civil Beat found its niche in weighty investigations.
Omidyar was a constant presence in the newsroom. When Pam learned of a
remote beach that was despoiled by washed-up plastic, they flew there on
his private jet with a reporter. Omidyar took the website’s photos
himself.
As a business, however, the Civil Beat never thrived. Omidyar was
tight-lipped about audience numbers, even requiring his reporters to
sign confidentiality agreements, but the subscription model clearly
didn’t work. On Twitter, he pleaded to know how much a reader was
willing to pay for his journalism: “No amount, no matter how small? Or a
fair price?” Ultimately, he formed a partnership with Arianna
Huffington to collaborate on an advertising-supported sister site. While
the Civil Beat still covers politics and pension funds, HuffPost Hawaii
promotes clickable content like yoga articles and photo galleries of
cute seals.
The compromise solution assured the Civil Beat’s survival, but it was
far from Omidyar’s original vision. For all his good intentions, he was
still searching for that galvanizing cause. Little did he know it had
been hidden there all along, in an underground bunker 25 miles outside
Honolulu that served as an NSA signals operation center. On June 1, 2013
— three days after the HuffPost Hawaii partnership was announced — a
technician who worked at the facility, Edward Snowden, made his
rendezvous with reporters at a hotel in Hong Kong. The radicalization of Pierre Omidyar happened with jarring
swiftness. In 2012, he advertised his proximity to Obama — he served on a
presidential commission — by tweeting out a photo of Marine One
hovering above the White House lawn. That same year, he responded to
campaign-season viciousness by tweeting out a list hashtagged
#RepublicansIRespect, citing figures like Robert Gates (a former CIA
director) and Condoleezza Rice. He started the Democracy Fund, a
foundation intended to promote moderation. “I’ve heard him use the term anti-partisan
to describe himself,” says Joe Goldman, the fund’s president. “He
believes it’s dangerous to get caught up on one side or the other.”
But on June 5, 2013, Omidyar’s Twitter account posted a link to a Greenwald story in the Guardian:
“Revealed: NSA collecting phone records of millions of Americans
daily.” The issue touched a nerve in him — if ever there were a power
that needed watching, it was the NSA. As further stories described the
extent of the surveillance and Snowden identified himself, Omidyar
vented his outrage. “Mr. President, look in the mirror,” he tweeted on
June 23, “when did America become a country to seek asylum from?
Whistleblowers are not spies.” On July 4, Omidyar tweeted the text of
the Fourth Amendment. At this juncture, there were many ways Omidyar
could have gone about influencing policy. He could have sought a meeting
at the White House — Pam’s human-rights organization collaborates
closely with the national-security staff — or he could have funded a
super-PAC. He could have rallied his fellow Silicon Valley billionaires
to flex their lobbying might. Instead he decided to build a machine for
confrontation and, as he puts it, “to convert mainstream readers into
engaged citizens.”
Omidyar kicked the tires on the Washington Post and raised the possibility of working with — or even somehow acquiring — the nonprofit outfit ProPublica. But the Post
sold to his old competitor Bezos. ProPublica, like other nonprofits
Omidyar talked to, wasn’t for sale. Amid a flurry of furious interaction
with privacy activists, Omidyar encountered Trevor Timm of the Freedom
of the Press Foundation. While discussing the Snowden leaks via an
encrypted video chat, Omidyar mentioned that he was thinking of starting
his own media organization. Timm suggested that he contact Greenwald.
“I think within a week, I talked to Glenn on the phone,” Timm says.
“And he said, ‘Yeah, we’ve already hired ten people.’ ”
Greenwald had a tempestuous relationship with his Guardian
editors and had already been planning to launch a website with Poitras
and Scahill. “It was really kind of amazing, because we were actually in
the process of doing almost exactly the same things,” Greenwald told
me. “The obvious difference between what we were doing and what he was
doing is that he has $8 billion.”
During last year’s Clinton Global Initiative, Omidyar summoned NYU
journalism professor Jay Rosen to his suite at the Hilton to discuss
surveillance, whistleblower prosecutions, and the future of journalism.
Rosen later became a formal adviser to what would be called First Look
Media, espousing what he calls the “personal franchise model” of
building a new-media brand: buying up stars with portable readerships.
But while acquiring the Greenwald franchise made business sense, it came
with complications. Practically, it was dispersed — Omidyar in
Honolulu, Greenwald in Rio, Poitras in Berlin — and the journalists were
afraid of what might happen if they returned to the U.S. Director of
National Intelligence James Clapper labeled them “accomplices” to
Snowden’s alleged espionage, and Mike Rogers, the Republican chairman of
the House Intelligence Committee, likened them to a “thief selling
stolen material.” Now that material was First Look’s chief journalistic
asset.
Before any firm plans were in place, much to Omidyar’s chagrin, word leaked to BuzzFeed that Greenwald was leaving the Guardian
to pursue what he called a “once-in-a-career dream journalistic
opportunity.” The founders’ initial statements were full of
revolutionary swagger. “To quote that old CIA torturer,” Scahill told a
German interviewer, “we gotta put on the big-boy pants.” He described “a
journalist’s paradise,” where reporters would write what they pleased
without interference from editors, the government, or Omidyar himself.
To the world, First Look looked like Greenwald’s personal project,
but Omidyar never expected to be a passive investor. He engaged in
extensive discussions with Arianna Huffington, including a brainstorming
session aboard a private jet when they went to India last October for a
conference organized by the Dalai Lama. “He wants to do it in a way
that can reach a mass audience, not just a niche audience,” Huffington
told me. Omidyar thought he would create an omnibus site covering news,
sports, and entertainment, generating readers and revenue for a galaxy
of star-centered publications. He hired Taibbi, the Rolling Stone writer most famous for likening Goldman Sachs to a “vampire squid,” to start Racket, lampooning the financial industry in the tradition of Spy.
First Look released an animated video in which Omidyar pledged to
“bring back to journalism what’s been lost,” as a cartoon reporter
sweated over a computer. “How does a company support itself given such
ambition?” he narrated. “We’re figuring that out.” In fact, there were
still lots of things to figure out, such as who was in charge, whether
First Look’s journalism would be expected to make money, and if so, how.
As First Look raced to launch the Intercept, its vehicle for
advancing the Snowden disclosures, an Omidyar Network headhunter was
dispatched to harvest talent, promising journalists the creative freedom
that comes with a $250 million budget. Omidyar probably expected that
the potential beneficiaries would be grateful. Instead, there was much
gossip and trepidation. Within the ecosystem of journalism and
transparency nonprofits, there is hardly an organization that doesn’t
take Omidyar’s money, or hope for it, but many are wary of his
influence. “If you’re answering to Omidyar,” says the director of one,
“then you’re really not independent.” And Greenwald himself, who had
declared war on U.S. intelligence and rejects journalistic pieties about
objectivity, is a polarizing force. “I think the concept of adversarial
journalism is a limited and flawed one,” says Steven Aftergood, the
author of Secrecy News, a respected blog that has received past Omidyar
Network funding. “It is not an impartial search for truth as much as it
is a combative attempt to defeat a perceived adversary.”
To take on the intelligence agencies, First Look has adopted some
elements of spycraft. It is seeking out moles, and one of its first
hires was a cryptography expert, who fortified its systems against
penetration. To protect journalists from government retaliation, Omidyar
established the Press Freedom Litigation Fund. But despite his
aggressive approach, Omidyar ran into immediate criticism from the
conspiratorial extremes of the left. Julian Assange attacked the “big power” of First Look,
calling Omidyar an “extreme liberal centrist” and questioning his
suspicious visits to the White House. The tech-news site PandoDaily
published a series of scathing articles. “Never before has such a vast
trove of public secrets,” journalist Mark Ames wrote last November, “been sold wholesale to a single billionaire as the foundation of a for-profit company.”
Earlier this year, Omidyar convened a staff retreat at his Las Vegas
mansion, which produced a declaration of editorial independence,
promising that First Look would be incorporated as a nonprofit and that
he would have “no involvement in the newsroom’s day-to-day operations.”
In reality, though, he was deeply involved, demanding personal approval
of even trivial expenses, and intent on finding a way to make the
venture financially self-sustaining. But his staff was determined to
hold him to his promise of “independence.” Many are vociferous
personalities, not known for playing well with others. When one
prominent editor was approached about a management role, he told
Omidyar’s headhunter, “You don’t need an HR department, you need a
psychotherapist.”
The confusion inherent to any start-up has been exacerbated by
Omidyar’s ruminative style. This spring, he went through a period of
deep thinking, highlighted by a summit with news-industry veterans at a
hotel he part-owns in Laguna Beach, California. Under “Chatham House
Rules,” no one was to talk directly about what was said. “He’s a true
believer, I believe,” says Ken Doctor, a media analyst who attended.
Many of those who have heard Omidyar and his aides, at that summit and
other meetings, have come away thinking his plans sounded naïve and not
fully baked. Sandy Rowe, a former editor of the Oregonian who was
brought on as a consultant, says the fuzzy vision gives Omidyar
flexibility. “This is a man who, since he said he would put down this
$250 million, has never said, ‘Here is my plan.’ ”
The absence of a plan, however, contributed to dissension within
First Look, and chatter began to emanate from behind its wall of
operational secrecy. There was an East Coast–West Coast feud, a divide
between the journalists and the technologists. Omidyar’s loyalists out
in California and Hawaii grumbled as Greenwald traveled the world,
promoting a book, picking up awards, and speaking out of turn. Poitras,
meanwhile, was immersed in finishing a documentary on Snowden. There was
an internal battle over budgets, which stalled hiring and hindered
journalistic output. The Intercept initially published at a piddling
rate. In June, the three co-founders of the Intercept and Taibbi wrote a
joint letter to Omidyar demanding freedom to proceed with their
expansion.
Omidyar then published a blog post
saying he had “definitely rethought some of our original ideas and
plans.” Instead of quick expansion, he announced that First Look would
be in “planning, start-up, and experimental mode for at least the next
few years,” focusing its immediate efforts on the Intercept and Racket
while working to develop new journalistic technology and design with a
team in San Francisco. He also appointed a confidant as First Look’s
editorial boss: the former Civil Beat editor John Temple. “I think that
the message,” Temple told me in August, “is that we’re not trying hard
enough if we’re not failing a little bit, if we’re not saying things
that don’t bear fruit.”
The shift proved beneficial to the Intercept, which is no longer under the day-to-day management of its founders. Omidyar lured editor John Cook
away from Gawker to run the site, and after a publication pause and a
redesign, it has been gaining momentum, breaking big stories about the NSA’s surveillance of American Muslim leaders and the seemingly arbitrary standards of the government’s terrorist-screening system.
The latter disclosure reportedly came from a leaker other than Snowden;
the FBI recently searched the home of a government contractor suspected
of being the source.
The factional conflicts within Omidyar’s enterprise, however, seem
far from settled. In August, Temple spoke enthusiastically about Racket,
which he said had broadened its focus to include political topics. But
as its launch date neared, Taibbi disappeared from the company
amid disputes with First Look higher-ups. Omidyar announced Taibbi was
leaving and that First Look would now “turn our focus to exploring next
steps” for Racket, a project that a spokeswoman said had cost him $2
million over its eight months of development. In the wake of the
tumultuous departure, the Intercept published a remarkable inside account
describing “months of contentious disputes” between Taibbi and his
superiors over his management, including a complaint from an employee
that he was “verbally abusive.” But the journalists did not spare
Omidyar from blame, describing what they called “a collision between the
First Look executives, who by and large come from a highly structured
Silicon Valley corporate environment, and the fiercely independent
journalists who view corporate cultures and management-speak with
disdain.” The iconoclasts even questioned Omidyar’s “avowed strategy” of
hiring “anti-authoritarian iconoclasts.”
Even before the turmoil, Temple hinted that a strategic
reconsideration was under way. “It will be more complex,” he told me,
“than an organization of iconoclasts.” He says that Omidyar sees
journalism as “the third phase of his professional life,” bringing
together his technology experience and philanthropy, and is prepared to
be patient, even if it perplexes outsiders. Temple says there is no
incongruity between Omidyar’s communitarian ideals and his financing of
an insurgency. “It’s not all about civility,” Temple says. “It’s about
having a healthy and open society.” There’s a tangible insight buried in
that amorphous sentiment: Omidyar’s interest in journalism is
mechanistic. He wants to aggregate to himself the power to declassify
and to bring about the “greater good,” as he defines it.
In October, the founding Intercept gang — minus Omidyar — got
together for a party at Mayday Space, a loft in a graffitied section of
Bushwick. The Snowden saga had entered its Redford-and-Hoffman phase
with the premiere of Poitras’s documentary Citizenfour,
which was partly financed by Skoll’s Participant Media and looks
destined for Oscar consideration. A DJ spun songs next to a huge
propaganda-style poster reading WHISTLE-BLOWER! KNOW YOUR PLACE … SHUT
YOUR FACE. Smokers congregated on the balcony, which had a distant view
of the Empire State Building, lit red. Greenwald hinted of further
scoops. “Stay tuned, is all I can say,” he told me.
Greenwald says that he and Omidyar plan to finally meet later this
month, when they will appear at a very different sort of gathering: an
invite-only event called Newsgeist, co-sponsored by Google and the
Knight Foundation. Billed as an “unconference,” it has no agenda other
than “reimagining the future of the news.” Greenwald told me “top
editors, executives, moguls, and founders” are expected to attend,
including Dean Baquet of the New York Times. I asked the
organizer from Google about other attendees and speakers, but he said he
could disclose no further details, to “protect the privacy and security
of our invited guests.” It seems that the Newsgeist is very hush-hush.
Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad reported it, headlining “NSA infected 50,000 computer networks with malicious software.”
It cited leaked Edward Snowden information. His revelations are the
gift that keeps on giving. Activists representing him keep important
information coming.
It’s vital. Everyone needs to know. Unchecked NSA spying threatens fundamental freedoms. They’re fast disappearing.
Their on the chopping block for elimination. Police state lawlessness runs America. It’s too great a threat to ignore.
According to NRC, NSA hacked over 50,000 computer networks. It installed malware. It facilitates surveillance.
It’s “designed to steal sensitive information.” Snowden provided
documents prove it. A 2012 management presentation showed NSA uses
“Computer Network Exploitation (CNE) in more than 50,000 locations.”
It secretly infiltrates computer systems through malware. Belgian telecom provider Belgacom was hacked.
Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) installed
malware in its network. It did so to gain access to its customers’
telephone and data traffic.
It did it through a false Linkedin page. It was done through unwitting company employees.
NSA has a “special department.” It has over 1,000 military and
civilian hackers, intelligence analysts, targeting specialists, computer
hardware and software designers, and electrical engineers.
It’s top secret. It’s called the Office of Tailored Access Operations
(TAO). It identifies computer systems and supporting telecommunications
networks to attack.
It successfully penetrated Chinese computer and telecom systems for around 15 years. It does the same thing globally.
Most NSA employees and officials know little or nothing about TAO.
Its operations are extraordinarily sensitive. Only those needing to know
are kept informed.
Special security clearances are required to gain access to its top secret work spaces. Armed guards keep others out.
Entering requires a correct six digit code. Retinal scanner checks are used. TAO targets foreign computer systems.
It collects intelligence by hacking, cracking passwords, compromising
computer security systems, stealing hard drive data, and copying all
subsequent emails and text messages.
NSA calls doing so Computer Network Exploitation (CNE). In October 2012, Obama issued a secret presidential directive. It selected overseas targets for cyber attacks.
His Offensive Cyber Effects Operations (OCEO) claimed to “offer
unique and unconventional capabilities to advance US national objectives
around the world with little or no warning to the adversary or target
and with potential effects ranging from subtle to severely damaging.”
Washington “identif(ies) potential targets of national importance
where OCEO can offer a favorable balance of effectiveness and risk as
compared with other instruments of national power.”
It operates domestically the same way. NSA director Keith Alexander
heads US Cyber Command (Cybercom). He’s waging global cyberwar.
US Cyber Command (USCYBERCOM) has full operational control. It’s a cyber hit squad. It’s part of the US Strategic Command.
Rules of engagement are classified. Anything goes is policy.
Cyber-warriors are freewheeling. They operate globally. Cyber-preemption
reflects greater police state power.
TAO personnel penetrate, steal, damage, destroy or otherwise
compromise targeted sites. It’s perhaps the most important component of
NSA’s Signal Intelligence (SIGINT) Directorate.
NRC said TAO operations installed about 20,000 “implants” by early 2008. By mid-2012, they “more than doubled to 50,000.”
NSA prioritizes cyber operations. “Computer hacks are relatively
inexpensive.” They give NSA information otherwise not available.
Malware “can remain active for years without” detection. ” ‘Sleeper
cells’ can be controlled remotely and be turned on and off at will.”
Implants are digital sleeper cells. A “push of a button” activates
them. NSA has been conducting these type operations since the late
1990s.
Dutch intelligence services AIVD and MIVD “displayed interest in hacking.” In early 2013, a Joint Cyber Unit (JSCU) was created.
It’s an inter-agency operation. It uses experts with a range of IT
skills. It doesn’t go as far as NSA. Dutch law prohibits it. For how
long remains to be seen.
Last August, the Washington Post headlined “The NSA has its own team of elite hackers.” It discussed TAO operations.
It may “have had something to do with (developing) Stuxnet and Flame malware program.” Washington and Israel were involved.
In spring 2010, Iranian intelligence discovered Stuxnet malware
contamination. It infected its Bushehr nuclear facility. At the time,
operations were halted indefinitely.
Israel was blamed. So was Washington. Had the facility gone online
infected, Iran’s entire electrical power grid could have been shut down.
Flame is a more destructive virus. Internet security experts say it’s
20 times more harmful than Stuxnet. Iran’s military-industrial complex
is targeted.
So is its nuclear program. Maximum disruption is intended. Whether
plans to do so continue remains to be seen. Iran is alerted to the
possibility. Leaksource calls
itself the “#1 source for leaks around the world.” Last August, it
headlined “Codename GENIE: NSA to Control 85,000 ‘Implants’ in
Strategically Chosen Machines Around the World by Year End,” saying:
According to “top secret documents” the Washington Post obtained, “US
intelligence services carried out 231 offensive cyber-operations in
2011.”
Doing so represents “the leading edge of a clandestine campaign that
embraces the Internet as a theater of spying, sabotage and war.”
Snowden leaked information revealed it. GENIE involves using computer
specialists. They break into foreign networks. They do so to “put
(them) under surreptitious US control.”
“Budget documents say the $652 million project has placed ‘covert
implants,’ sophisticated malware transmitted from far away, in
computers, routers and firewalls on tens of thousands of machines every
year, with plans to expand those numbers into the millions,” said
Leaksource.
GENIE’s next phase involves an automated online system code-named
“TURBINE.” It’s able to potentially manage “millions of implants.”
It elevates intelligence gathering to a higher level. It lets it engage in widespread “active attack(s).”
Teams of FBI, CIA, and Cyber Command operatives work at NSA’s Remote Operations Center (ROC).
Their missions overlap. So does NSA’s National Threat Operations Center. It focuses on cyberdefense.
Snowden was involved as a Booz Allen Hamilton contractor. He learned NSA’s best hacking techniques.
The agency designs most of its implants. It spends millions of
dollars annually on “additional covert” “software vulnerabilities”
purchases.
It gets them from “private malware vendors.” They represent a growing source. They’re largely European based.
China, Russia, Iran and North Korea are called the “most challenging targets” to penetrate.
Other prioritized countries include so-called terrorist safe havens.
They include Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Iraq and Somalia.
NSA’s goal is sweeping. It wants to revolutionize data gathering. It wants to access “anyone, anywhere, anytime.”
It intends to “identify new access, collection and exploitation
methods by leveraging global business trends in data and communication
services.”
It wants total information control worldwide. It wants to go where no
previous spy agency went before. It wants no operational restraints. It
intends to keep doing whatever it wants.
Congress is a willing facilitator. Fake fix legislation facilitates
NSA lawlessness. It codifies collecting phone records of hundreds of
millions of Americans.
It permits the same thing online. It’s already out of committee. It’s heading for Senate passage.
Obama will sign into law whatever Congress sends him. He supports mass surveillance.
He’s waging war on fundamental freedoms. Police state lawlessness is official US policy. Obama is its leading exponent. Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. His new book is titled “Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity.” http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanII.html Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com. Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on
the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network. It airs Fridays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening. http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour http://www.dailycensored.com/nsa-infects-50000-computer-systems-worldwide/
Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has condemned a big power deal
with Iran on its nuclear activity, said he would meet U.S. President
Obama in Washington next month to further the goal of denying Tehran an
atomic bomb capability.
on.aol.com
President Barack Obama's National Security Advisor Susan "Benghazi video" Rice appeared on Friday before a room full of news reporters regarding the Wall Street Journal's story
about a letter from Obama sent to Iran's supreme leader and not one
reporter questioned her veracity. Rice stated that the Obama
administration has not engaged in any operations against the Islamic
State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) nor are there any plans to do so.
White House Press Office
Rice, who angered a large number of Americans when she blamed a
YouTube video for the attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi,
Libya, in 2012, was sent out to do what she does best: look straight
into a television camera and "lie through her teeth on behalf of hr
feckless bosses in the White House," said former military intelligence
officer and police anti-terrorism operative Michael Snopes.
"When [Susan] Rice shows up, get ready to be lied to. With four
Americans dead in Benghazi and radical Islamic groups vying for power in
the post-Gaddafi Libya -- which she should have known about -- Rice
blamed a poorly produced motion picture about the Islamic Prophet
Mohammed. As far as a lie, it ranked right up there with Bill Clinton's
'I never had sex with that woman... Monica Lewinsky,'" Snopes quipped .
Ms. Rice told reporters point blank: the United States is not engaged
in any type of military coordination with Iran over combating the
Islamic State militants. However, she stopped short of denying the
letter from President Obama to Iran's real leader, Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei. As described in an Examiner news story,
The Wall Street Journal claims that the Obama letter was supposed to be
a top secret document, but counterterrorism analyst, former police
training officer Larry Bengalina, who trained cops in Iraq and
Afghanistan, said he believes the letter was actually leaked by Obama's
White House minions in order to show Americans he's "on top of the war
on ISIS."
"The fact is that in his figurative eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation
with the Iranian government, Obama blinked," said Bengalina, who is a
candidate for a doctorate in public safety administration. "The Iranians
weren't oblivious to Obama's 'red line' with Assad that showed our
President was all talk. That so-called red line appears to have moved to
U.S. states such as Arizona and Texas, where Obama decided to sic his
Attorney General [Eric Holder] on GOP politicians and sheriffs who dared
to try to curtail illegal immigration," he told the Examiner on Friday morning.
Rice also dismissed any link between Iran's nuclear program and the
campaign against the Islamic State. "We have never made that linkage, so
the reports that suggest the contrary are inaccurate," she told
reporters the White House Press Corps on Friday.
The Wall Street Journal had reported on Thursday that in his letter
sent to Khamenei in the middle of last month, Obama stressed that "any
cooperation on Islamic State was largely contingent on Iran reaching a
comprehensive agreement with global powers on the future of Tehran 's
nuclear program by a Nov. 24 diplomatic deadline."
Safety of children in general was not a consideration
No abusers will be prosecuted
Victims banned from launch of shocking report
Church
leaders and government watchdogs covered up 'endemic' and 'ritualised'
abuse of thousands of children in Roman Catholic schools and orphanages
in the Irish Republic, a shocking report revealed yesterday.
For
six decades, priests and nuns terrorised boys and girls in the
workhouse-style schools with sexual, physical and mental abuse.
Kevin Flannigan, right, and John Kelly, left,
from the group Survivors of Child Abuse, protest at not being allowed
into the launch of the long-awaited Child Abuse Commission report at the
Conrad Hotel Dublin
But officials in Ireland's Catholic
Church shielded paedophile staff from arrest to protect their own
reputations despite knowing they were serial attackers, according to the
2,600-page report, which took nine years to complete.
Irish government inspectors also failed to stop the chronic beatings, rape and humiliation, it found.
Justice Sean Ryan launches the report at the Conrad Hotel in Dublin today - but refuses to take questions from journalists
About 35,000 children and teenagers who were orphans, petty thieves,
truants, unmarried mothers or from dysfunctional families were sent to
Ireland's network of 250 Church-run industrial schools, reformatories,
orphanages and hostels from the 1930s up until the early 1990s.
The
report by Ireland's Commission to Inquire Into Child Abuse found 'a
climate of fear, created by pervasive, excessive and arbitrary
punishment, permeated most of the institutions and all those run for
boys'.
It added: 'Children lived with the daily terror of not knowing where the next beating was coming from.'
Judge
Sean Ryan, who chaired the commission, said that when confronted with
evidence of sex abuse, religious authorities responded by moving the sex
offenders to another location, where in many instances they were free
to abuse again.
'There was evidence that such men took up
teaching positions sometimes within days of receiving dispensations
because of serious allegations or admissions of sexual abuse,' the
report said.
'The safety of children in general was not a consideration.'
The leader of Ireland's four million Catholics, Cardinal Sean Brady,
said he was 'sorry and deeply ashamed' after the report was published
yesterday.
'Children deserved better and especially from those caring for them in the name of Jesus Christ,' he said.
The report found that molestation and rape were 'endemic' in boys' facilities, chiefly run by the Christian Brothers order.
Judge Sean Ryan, centre, delivers the Child Abuse Commission report at the Conrad Hotel in Dublin to a media frenzy today
Girls supervised by orders of nuns,
chiefly the Sisters of Mercy, suffered much less sexual abuse but
frequent assaults and humiliation designed to make them feel worthless.
'In some schools a high level of ritualised beating was routine,' the report said.
'Girls
were struck with implements designed to maximize pain and were struck
on all parts of the body. Personal and family denigration was
widespread.'
Victims of the system have long demanded that the truth of their experiences be documented and made public.
John Kelly, from the group Survivors of Child Abuse, protests at not being allowed into the hotel for the launch today
But some victims' groups said the report didn't go far enough,
particularly because there will not be any prosecutions as a result.
This
is because in 2004 the Christian Brothers secured a ruling that
guaranteed all of its members, dead or alive, would remain anonymous in
the report.
John Kelly, from victim group Irish Survivors of
Child Abuse, said the report should have examined how children like
himself were taken away from parents without just cause, and why Irish
governments ceded control over the lives of so many young people to the
Church.
Children at work in one of the notorious Magdalen asylum, earlier this summer
He said any apologies offered now were 'hollow, shallow and have no substance or merit at all'.
The group's John Walsh said he felt 'cheated and deceived' that the perpetrators would not be brought to justice.
Mr
Walsh said: 'I would have never opened my wounds if I'd known this was
going to be the end result. It has devastated me and will devastate most
victims because there are no criminal proceedings and no accountability
whatsoever.'
The victims were also banned from entering the Press conference on the report held in a Dublin hotel.
Ellen
O'Malley-Dunlop, chief executive of the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre, said
of the victims: 'The way that they have been treated here has been
disgraceful and is in effect little more than a repetition of abusive
behaviour.'
Key steps in struggle to confront child abuse in the Catholic Church
June 1994 Catholic
priest Brendan Smyth pleads guilty to 17 counts of indecently
assaulting five girls and two boys in Belfast. His order, the
Norbertines, spent decades shuttling him among Irish and American
parishes and harbored Smyth from British arrest.
November 1994 Taoiseach
Albert Reynolds resigns, and his government collapses, amid claims that
his attorney general colluded with church authorities to delay the
British extradition demand for Smyth. It shatters the taboo against
pursuing criminal charges against priests.
July 1995 Former
altar boy Andrew Madden becomes first person to speak publicly about
abuse by a priest. Madden says the Church paid him €35,000 to keep quiet
about three years of assaults by Fr Ivan Payne. Archbishop Desmond
Connell denies the deal until Madden provides documentary proof of
church payoff. Case spurs hundreds to pursue civil lawsuits against
church authorities.
January 1996 Panel
of Irish Catholic leaders instruct bishops to tell senior police
officers ‘without delay’ about all suspected sex-abuse cases. Some
bishops continue to suppress such information over the coming decade.
February 1996 Dear
Daughter, a documentary shown on RTÉ details abuse suffered by
Christine Buckley and others at St Vincent's Industrial School,
Goldenbridge, Inchicore, Dublin.
July 1997 After
serving prison term in Northern Ireland, Smyth is extradited south and
pleads guilty to 74 counts of sexually abusing 20 boys and girls between
1958 and 1993. He dies of a heart attack one month into 12 year
sentence.
January 1998 Payne is convicted in Dublin on 14 counts of sexually abusing eight boys aged 11 to 14. He serves only four years in prison.
March 1999 Fr
Sean Fortune commits suicide in prison while awaiting trial on 66
criminal charges of molesting and raping 29 boys in the southeast Ferns
diocese. One Fortune victim, former altar boy Colm O'Gorman, launches
victims support group One in Four. It lobbies government for
investigations into abuse cases, particularly in Ferns.
April 1999 Groundbreaking
documentary series ‘States of Fear’ by RTÉ exposes abuse of children in
church-run workhouses, reformatories and orphanages since the 1940s.
May 1999 Taoiseach
Bertie Ahern issues ‘long overdue apology’ to all those abused in
church-run institutions and vows to establish a financial compensation
board and a fact-finding commission into extent of abuse. Ms Justice
Mary Laffoy is appointed to head the Commission to Inquire into Child
Abuse.
May 2000 Government
gives investigatory powers to Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse to
measure causes and extent of unchecked child abuse in institutions from
1937 onward.
July 2001 The deadline for complaints of abuse to be made to the Commission. Some 3,149 people ask to testify.
April 2002 Ferns
Bishop Brendan Comiskey becomes first, and only, church figure to
resign because of failures to stop abuse. He admits he did too little to
stop pedophile priests.
December 2002 Government
establishes board to pay compensation to people who suffered sexual,
physical or mental abuse in church-run institutions. Payouts require
claimants to give up their right to sue church and state authorities.
Taxpayers, not the church, cover bulk of cost.
September 2003 High
Court Judge Mary Laffoy resigns complaining that the Department of
Education, which holds most records on church-run institutions, is
obstructing her investigation into child abuse. Her successor, Justice
Sean Ryan, says probe must severely limit the number of abuse cases it
considers or it will never finish.
April 2004 A
Vatican modernizer and diplomat, Diarmuid Martin, replaces Connell as
Dublin archbishop. Pledges full cooperation with state and police in
exposing past cover-ups of abuse and protecting children in future.
June 2004 Judge
Ryan announces the Commission will not name abusers unless they have
been convicted. The Christian Brothers religious order drops legal
actions against the Commission.
July 2004 The
Christian Brothers testify at a public hearing that files only recently
discovered in its Rome-based archive show evidence of 30 canonical
trials of brothers based on proven incidents of child sexual abuse
against boys in their care from the 1930s onwards.
October 2005 Investigation
led by retired Supreme Court justice finds that church, police and
state authorities did too little to stop sexual abuse of hundreds of
children by 21 priests in Ferns. Report says Ferns bishops sheltered and
promoted priests known to have raped altar boys and molested
schoolgirls on an altar.
December 2005 Residential
Institutions Redress Board says more than 14,000 people who claim to
have suffered childhood abuse in church-run institutions have filed
claims for state payouts.
December 2008 Board
says it has paid nearly 12,000 victims average of €64,230 each, about
2,000 claims remain. Cost including lawyers' fees expected to reach
€1.1bn.
May 20, 2009 Commission
to Inquire into Child Abuse unveils 2,575-page report into thousands of
child abuse cases in institutions. Two more reports into the church's
protection of sex-predator priests in the Dublin archdiocese and the
southwest diocese of Cloyne may be published later this year.
