Snowden leaks cost billions to NSA, CIA - top US military official
7 March 2014, 09:43 -- The top US military officer says it will take two years of study and billions of dollars to overcome the loss of security to military operations and tactics that were revealed in the massive stash of documents taken by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.
Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey tells the House Armed Services Committee the Pentagon set up a task force to determine how the documents could be used and how to mitigate the problem.
He says the task force will take two years due to the 'magnitude of this challenge.'
Gen Martin Dempsey said the 'vast majority' of documents taken by the ex-NSA contractor were military-related. Since last year, news organisations have published dozens of stories based on the leaked intelligence documents.
Speaking at the House armed services committee on Thursday Gen. Dempsey, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, said that a mitigation task force had been established to investigate the extent of Mr. Snowden's theft and to determine how to overcome it.
'We're working our way through that which we believe he has exfiltrated,' Gen. Dempsey said. 'And we have, I think, a fairly significant amount of knowledge in that regard.
'The vast majority of [the pilfered documents] were related to our military capabilities, operations, tactics, techniques and procedures.'
'I suspect it could cost billions of dollars to overcome the loss of security that has been imposed on us,' he said.
Less than 10 percent involved domestic surveillance programs that have been discussed more widely.
CIA faces new inquiry amid clashes on US controversial surveillance program
The CIA's attempt to keep the details of a defunct detention and interrogation program secret has started a battle between the agency and members of US Congress and led to an investigation by the CIA's internal watchdog into the conduct of its employees.
The agency's inspector general began the inquiry partly as a response to complaints from members of US congressmen that CIA employees were improperly tracking the work of staff members of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
The committee has spent several years working on a voluminous report about the detention and interrogation program, and according to one official interviewed in recent days, CIA officers went as far as gaining access to computer networks used by the committee to carry out its investigation.
The events have elevated the battle which began as a fight over who creates the program's history, perhaps the most controversial aspect of the American government's response to the Sept. 11 terror attacks into a standoff that is, in fact, a dispute over the separation of powers.
It is not known what the agency's inspector general, David B. Buckley, has found in the investigation or whether Mr. Buckley has referred any cases to the Justice Department for further investigation. Spokesmen for the agency and the Justice Department declined to comment.
Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California and chairwoman of the Intelligence Committee, gave few details about the dispute on Tuesday as she left a closed committee hearing on the crisis in Ukraine, but she did confirm that the C.I.A. had begun an internal review.
Asked about the tension between the committee and the spy agency it oversees, Ms. Feinstein said, 'Our oversight role will prevail.'
The episode is a rare moment of public rancor between the intelligence agencies and Ms. Feinstein's committee, which is known for its muscular defense of many controversial intelligence programs — from the surveillance operations exposed by the former NSA contractor Edward Snowden to the Obama administration's targeted killing drones program.
The origins of the current dispute date back more than a year, when the committee completed its work on a 6,000-page report about the Bush administration's detention and interrogation program. People who have read the study said it is a withering indictment of the program and details many instances when C.I.A. officials misled Congress, the White House and the public about the value of the agency's brutal interrogation methods, including waterboarding.
Obama ended the CIA's detention program in one of his first acts in the Oval Office denouncing the interrogation methods as illegal torture.
The Senate's investigation into the intelligence agency's program took four years to complete and cost more than $40 million, partly because the CIA insisted that committee staff members be allowed to review classified cables only at a secure facility in Northern Virginia.
Edward Snowden to speak on surveillance and online privacy at SXSW via video conference
NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden is slated to speak on surveillance and online privacy during the 2014 SXSW Interactive Festival, the festival announced today.
Tuesday South by Southwest organizers announced that NSA leaker Edward Snowden will speak at SXSW Interactive via teleconference on Monday March 10 at 11 am.
Surveillance and online privacy are poised to be some of the most-discussed topics at Interactive.
The National Security Agency leaker will speak with Christopher Soghoian, the principal technologist of the American Civil Liberties Union, about NSA's spying techniques and 'the ways in which technology can help to protect us from mass surveillance.' The event will take place Monday and be moderated by Ben Wizner, director of the ACLU's Speech, Privacy & Technology Project (who is also a legal advisor for Snowden). Snowden will take audience questions.
'Surveillance and online privacy look to be one of the biggest topics of conversation at the 2014 SXSW Interactive Festival. The number of sessions on this topic reflect the importance of this issue to the digital creatives who converge in Austin each March,' South By Southwest Director Hugh Forrest wrote in a news release. 'As organizers, SXSW agrees that a healthy debate with regards to the limits of surveillance is vital to the future of the online ecosystem.'
The session will be moderated by Ben Wizner, director of the ACLU's Speech, Privacy & Technology Project and Edward Snowden's legal advisor.
Audience members will be able to ask questions.
Voice of Russia, the NY Times, AP, BBC
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