The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review August 07, 2013
Snowden's 'secrets' should not surprise
By Lou Kilzer
Almost all the information about spying made public by celebrity American intelligence leaker Edward Snowden could have been gathered during the past seven years by any foreign agency, terrorist organization or individual with Internet access.
And little about the National Security Agency's information gathering should surprise Americans.
The NSA's programs were so well-publicized in news articles and books that a federal judge in 2010 called the government's spying "common knowledge to most Americans,a Tribune-Review examination found.
By then, dozens of civil rights lawsuits over NSA snooping had been filed - almost all receiving news coverage. They were dismissed, though appeals are pending.
"One thing that is 'new' is that there is controversy, where previously there was pretty much none,John Pike, who directs the national security website GlobalSecurity.org, said of Snowden's disclosures, many of them to The Guardian, a U.K. newspaper.
Retired Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden, former head of the NSA and subsequently, the CIA, told the Trib that Snowden added little to what had been publicly reported.
His primary concern, he said, is that Snowden took computers that could contain strategic information when he fled the United States.
"I would lose all respect for Chinese State Security or the (Russian) FSB if they hadn't drained Snowden's computers,Hayden said.
Hayden doubts encryption on the computers could withstand a concerted attack.
"I used to laugh when someone said the encryption on something was unbreakable,he said.
The Guardian this past week published Snowden's latest "top secretannouncement about the NSA's using the XKEYSCORE program to spy overseas. The program reportedly captures content of foreign emails.
The NSA, established in 1952 specifically to gather foreign electronic intelligence, responded with a statement that any "implication that NSA's collection is arbitrary and unconstrained is false."
As of 2008, XKEYSCORE had led to the capture of more than 300 terrorists, the NSA said.
Marc Ambinder, who co-authored a book that discussed XKEYSCORE, pointed out online that searching LinkedIn profiles for national security information will yield hundreds of individuals who worked for NSA and list fluency in XKEYSCORE as a skill.
"I quibble with The Guardian's description of the program as 'top secret.' The word is not secret; its association with the NSA is not secret. That the NSA collects bulk data on foreign targets is, well, probably classified, but (not) at the secret level,Ambinder said.
Public disclosure in 2005
Snowden's supporters contend he revealed to an unknowing public two critical parts of the snooping program: that Verizon released "metadataon customers' calls to the NSA, giving their origin, destination and duration, and that the NSA can examine the content of emails and phone calls.
None of this, however, appears to be new, although names of the programs and mechanics evolved over the years.
In December 2005, The New York Times - after waiting for more than a year at the Bush administration's request - revealed the essence of what would evolve into the capture of telephone and Internet content. Based on interviews with more than 10 sources, the newspaper said the government intercepted certain calls and emails to or from the United States in which the originator or recipient were foreigners.
Hundreds, even thousands, of American communications were intercepted involving citizens, the Times said.
In response to some public outcry, President George W. Bush acknowledged authorizing that but said the disclosure was improper: "As a result, our enemies have learned information they should not have, and the unauthorized disclosure of this effort damages our national security and puts our citizens at risk."
The Justice Department began a widely publicized search for leakers.
Six months later, USA Today laid out the metadata aspect: "The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth."
The newspaper quoted a source saying the agency's goal was "to create a database of every call ever made within the United States."
Access initially restricted
"Warrantless wiretap programs,then and now, seemed to be fused in many people's minds.
Yet initial warrantless spying on U.S. citizens was restricted and limited, Bush reported, an assertion supported by an Inspector General report released by The Washington Post and The Guardian.
The IG's report shows that between Oct. 4, 2001, when Bush authorized the program, and Jan. 17, 2007, when the warrantless program ended, the government read content from 406 email addresses and intercepted conversations between U.S. citizens and foreigners from 2,612 phone numbers. Ninety-two percent of data intercepted was foreign.
The three American telecoms providing data collectively supply 81 percent of international telephone access in the Unites States. The IG noted that in 2002, nearly all of the world's Internet traffic traveled through the United States.
Snowden claimed that nine Internet companies such as Google, Yahoo and Microsoft later gave NSA direct access to their servers - an assertion each company disputes.
Before American communications were intercepted, such requests went through rigorous review, the inspector general reported.
Alan Freedman of the Washington-based nonprofit Brookings Institution said many people wrongly believe the government recorded content of most telephone calls or emails. "This is not the case,he said.
However, Freedman said the NSA never before intercepted calls to or from the United States. The gravity of that depends on one's stance on privacy, he said.
Amplified awareness
Under Bush, the President's Surveillance Program, as it was called, bypassed seeking warrants from a court established to handle matters of national security after the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (commonly referred to as FISA court). After 9/11, Bush said it was necessary to act speedily, and he authorized snooping for 30 days. In 2002, an appeals court ruled he had the power to do so.
President Obama campaigned in 2008 with a pledge to end warrantless wiretaps. But by then, the program had ended; the FISA court took it under its wing. As a senator in 2008, Obama voted to amend the FISA legislation to require warrants for such spying. The legislation immunized companies that participated in Bush's warrantless program. As president, Obama has fought to retain the 2008 changes.
Experts believe social media may be one reason that people are more aware of domestic spying. Twitter, for example, did not exist when the 9/11 attacks occurred, nor did Facebook, smartphones and rampant texting.
Joshua Benton, director of the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University, said social media enable people with similar views to align. If groups of people find a story interesting, he said, it can instantly burgeon - within and outside those groups.
Snowden gives the spying story a narrative and a face, said Benton, a former reporter. It became not an abstract story about intelligence but one about a young man scrambling around the world to escape the clutches of authorities.
"The Web and social media do make it much easier for news junkies to sink their teeth into a story and amplify it across their networks,Benton said. "But I think this story would have blown up big even if we still only had newspapers and television. It's just a good old-fashioned, juicy, dramatic story."
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