Snowden Has Already Exposed Potentially Illegal Activity

By: Jon Walker, Firedog Lake

Wednesday June 12, 2013 11:21 am

Snowden’s actions have already technically revealed illegal activity. This can be proven without even engaging in a debate about whether the programs revealed have been operating in a fully legal manner.

Perjury is a crime and misleading Congress while it is trying to engage in oversight of the executive branch is very serious wrongdoing. By revealing that the NSA has been secretly collecting data on millions of Americanshttp://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2013/06/11/clappers-lie-to-congress-was-prepared-in-advance/http:// Snowden proved that Director of National Intelligence General James Clapper’s [prepared answers to Congress were false ].

While Clapper currently engaged in extremely semantic hair splitting to make the case he didn’t actually lie but simply answered the question in the “least untruthful manner,” it is clear that Snowden’s actions exposed what was at least potentially a criminal act by a top government official. Regardless if a case is actually brought against Clapper, a serious potential act of wrongdoing was brought to light by this leak.

Fire James Clapper

By Fred Kaplan, Slate

Posted Tuesday, June 11, 2013, at 12:44 PM

Back at an open congressional hearing on March 12, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) asked Clapper, “Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?” Clapper replied, “No sir … not wittingly.” As we all now know, he was lying.

We also now know that Clapper knew he was lying.

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As a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Wyden had been briefed on the top-secret-plus programs that we now all know about. That is, he knew that he was putting Clapper in a box; He knew that the true answer to his question was “Yes,” but he also knew that Clapper would have a hard time saying so without making headlines.

But the question was straightforward. It could be answered “yes” or “no,” and Clapper had to know this when he sat there in the witness chair. (Notice that, in his response to Mitchell, Clapper said he came up with the wife-beating analogy only “in retrospect.”) There are many ways that he could have finessed the question, as administration witnesses have done in such settings for decades, but Clapper chose simply to lie. “Truthful” and “untruthful” are not relative terms; a statement either is or isn’t; there’s no such thing as speaking in a “most truthful” or “least untruthful” manner.

Nor was this a spontaneous lie or a lie he regretted making. Wyden revealed in a statement today that he’d given Clapper advance notice that he would ask the question and that, after the hearing, he offered Clapper a chance to revise his answer. Clapper didn’t take the offer.

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It is irrelevant whether Clapper really believes his definition of “collect” or made it up on the spot. Either way, this is a man who cannot be trusted to hold an honest discussion about these issues. If he lied about what he thinks “collect” means, he will lie about lots of things. If he really thinks the English language is this flexible, it is unwise to assume that any statement he makes means what it appears to mean.

This is crucial. We as a nation are being asked to let the National Security Agency continue doing the intrusive things it’s been doing on the premise that congressional oversight will rein in abuses. But it’s hard to have meaningful oversight when an official in charge of the program lies so blatantly in one of the rare open hearings on the subject. (Wyden, who had been briefed on the program, knew that Clapper was lying, but he couldn’t say so without violating the terms of his own security clearance.)

And so, again, if President Obama really welcomes an open debate on this subject, James Clapper has disqualified himself from participation in it. He has to go.

Clapper’s Lie to Congress was Prepared in Advance

By: Jon Walker, Firedog Lake

Tuesday June 11, 2013 9:19 am

Apparently, when Director of National Intelligence General James Clapper misled Congress it wasn’t simply the case of providing an inarticulate answer to a surprise question. Senator Ron Wyden let it be known today that he not only told Clapper in advance that he would ask the question about domestic surveillance, but even give Clapper a chance afterwards to officially revise his on the record remarks.

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If Clapper is not seriously investigated for misleading Congress it should bring into question why we even bother put people under Oath before testimony to Congress. If the people in power are going to be above this law, both the law and the concept of Congressional oversight are worthless.

Apparently Clapper Makes It a Habit to Lie While Defending NSA Programs

By: Jon Walker, Firedog Lake

Wednesday June 12, 2013 6:52 am

Not only did Director of National Intelligence James Clapper purposely give misleading answers to Congress while under oath to hide the existence of NSA programs, but he also apparently lies about what these programs accomplished. The Obama administration declassified details about a terrorist plot that was supposedly stopped by PRISM, but Clapper got the basic details wrong.

NYC Bomb Plot Details Settle Little In NSA Debate

By MATT APUZZO and ADAM GOLDMAN, Associated Press

06/11/13 03:58 PM ET EDT

In the rush to defend the surveillance programs, however, government officials have changed their stories and misstated key facts of the Zazi plot. And they’ve left out one important detail: The email that disrupted the plan could easily have been intercepted without PRISM.

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Zazi, an Afghan-American cab driver living in the Denver suburbs, was an al-Qaida-trained bomber. In September 2009, he sent a coded message to a Yahoo email address in Pakistan. Months earlier, British officials had linked the Yahoo address to a known al-Qaida operative.

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The NSA intercepted that email, touching off a frenzied two-week investigation in New York and Colorado that led to Zazi’s arrest. He pleaded guilty and provided information that helped send two friends to prison.

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When news of the phone-records program broke, officials quickly credited it with thwarting an attack.

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A senior intelligence official confirmed soon afterward that Rogers was talking about Zazi, but offered no explanation.

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Now, in talking points declassified by the administration, the government says that Internet eavesdropping, not archiving phone records, disrupted Zazi’s plans.

The use of PRISM to catch Zazi does little to resolve one of the key questions in the surveillance debate: whether the government needs to take such vast amounts of data, sometimes sweeping up information on American citizens, to keep the country safe.

That’s because, even before the surveillance laws of 2007 and 2008, the FBI had the authority to – and did, regularly – monitor email accounts linked to terrorists. The only difference was, before the laws changed, the government needed a warrant.

To get a warrant, the law requires that the government show that the target is a suspected member of a terrorist group or foreign government, something that had been well established at that point in the Zazi case.

In using Zazi to defend the surveillance program, government officials have further confused things by misstating key details about the plot.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said investigators “found backpacks with bombs.” Really, the bombs hadn’t been completed and the backpacks the FBI found were unrelated to the plot.

Why Clapper’s Deception Destroys Obama’s Defense of Newly Revealed NSA Programs

By: Jon Walker Tuesday June 11, 2013 9:57 am

Not only are the prepared deceptive answers given by Director of National Intelligence General James Clapper in Congressional testimony potentially serious crimes, but the entire incident completely undermines President Obama defense of the newly revealed NSA domestic surveillance programs.

When asked about revelations Obama defended both the legality and legitimacy of the programs by repeatedly claiming they were subject checks by the other branches of government. Obama’s entire case for why these programs are acceptable is based on the premise that Congress is fully briefed and has complete oversight.

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If this member of the executive branch in charge of said programs is going to mislead Congress under oath about the program then Congress is not being “fully briefed.” If the executive branch is going to actively and potentially illegally deceive Congress then it is impossible for Congress to engage in real oversight. Congress can’t provide a real check on that which it has been lied to about.

This problem is not only limited to Clapper. It should be noted that several members of the administration should have known about Clapper deceptive remarks when they were made. Yet apparently the administration did nothing to encourage Clapper to amend his answers while there was still ample time, publicly correct the record or punish him for his unacceptable behavior.

Crossposted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

The Logic of the Surveillance State

by Ian Welsh

2013 June 9

The problem with surveillance states, and with oppression in general, is the cost.  This cost is both direct, in the resources that are required, and indirect in the lost productivity and creativity caused by constant surveillance.  Surveillance states, oppressive states, are not creative places, they are not fecund economically.  They can be efficient and productive, for as long as they last, which is until the system of control is subverted, as it was in the USSR. We forget, in light of the late USSR’s problems, that it did create an economic miracle in the early years, and tremendously boost production. Mancur Olson’s “Power and Prosperity” gives a good account of why it worked, and why it stopped working.

Liberalism, in its classic form, is, among other things, the proposition that you get more out of people if you treat them well.  Conservatism is the proposition that you get more out of people if you treat them badly.

Post war Liberalism was a giant experiment in “treat people well”.  The Reagan/Thatcher counter-revolution was a giant experiment in “treat people worse”.  The empirical result is this: the rich are richer and more powerful in a society that treats people like shit, but a society which treats people well has a stronger economy, all other things being equal, than one that treats them badly.  This was, also, the result of the USSR/West competition.  (Treating people well or badly isn’t just about equality.)

Liberalism, classic and modern, believes that a properly functioning “freer” society is a more powerful society, all other things being equal.  This was, explicitly, Adam Smith’s argument.  Build a strong peacetime economy, and in wartime you will crush despotic nations into the dirt.

If you want despotism, as elites, if you want to treat everyone badly, so you personally become more powerful and rich, then, you’ve got two problems: an internal one (revolt) and an external one: war and being outcompeted by other nations elites, who will come and take away your power, one way or the other (this isn’t always violently, though it can be.)

The solution is a transnational elite, in broad agreement on the issues, who do not believe in nationalism, and who play by the same rules and ideology. If you’re all the same, if nations are just flags, if you feel more kinship for your fellow oligarchs, well then, you’re safe.  There’s still competition, to be sure, but as a class, you’re secure.

That leaves the internal problem, of revolt.  The worse you treat people, the more you’re scared of them.  The more you clamp down.  This is really, really expensive and it breaks down over generations, causing internal rot, till you can’t get the system to do anything, no matter how many levers you push.

What is being run right now is a vast experiment to see if modern technology has fixed these problems with surveillance and oppressive states.  Is it cheap enough to go full Stasi, and with that level of surveillance can you keep control over the economy, keep the levers working, make people do what you want, and not all slack off and resist passively, by only going through the motions?

The oligarchs are betting that the technology has made that change.

Ai Weiwei is a Chinese contemporary artist, active in sculpture, installation, architecture, curating, photography, film, and social, political and cultural criticism.  …  As a political activist, he has been highly and openly critical of the Chinese Government’s stance on democracy and human rights. He has investigated government corruption and cover-ups, in particular the Sichuan schools corruption scandal following the collapse of so-called “tofu-skin schools” in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. In 2011, following his arrest at Beijing airport on 3 April, he was held for over two months without any official charges being filed; officials alluded to their allegations of “economic crimes” (tax evasion).

NSA surveillance: The US is behaving like China

Ai Weiwei, The Guardian

Tuesday 11 June 2013 09.30 EDT

In the Soviet Union before, in China today, and even in the US, officials always think what they do is necessary, and firmly believe they do what is best for the state and the people. But the lesson that people should learn from history is the need to limit state power.

If a government is elected by the people, and is genuinely working for the people, they should not give in to these temptations.

During my detention in China I was watched 24 hours a day. The light was always on. There were two guards on two-hour shifts standing next to me – even watching when I swallowed a pill; I had to open mouth so they could see my throat. You have to take a shower in front of them; they watch you while you brush your teeth, in the name of making sure you’re not hurting yourself. They had three surveillance cameras to make sure the guards would not communicate with me.

But the guards whispered to me. They told stories about themselves. There is always humanity and privacy, even under the most restrictive conditions.

To limit power is to protect society. It is not only about protecting individuals’ rights but making power healthier.

Civilisation is built on that trust and everyone must fight to defend it, and to protect our vulnerable aspects – our inner feelings, our families. We must not hand over our rights to other people. No state power should be given that kind of trust. Not China. Not the US.

Are we through yet?

I’m sorry about my apparent lack of enthusiasm, but as I’ve mentioned it’s the busiest time of the year.  This third race of the Triple Crown is the longest even though it doesn’t get the hype or coverage the other two do and usually serves as a reminder that we aren’t going to have a Triple Crown winner, not that it’s important.

For one thing Thoroughbred race horses are as ridiculously inbred as any Hillbilly, Hapsburg, or Versailles Villager (yes, I’m talking about you Luke Russert).  For another it’s just stupid to judge them on the basis of 3 races when they are a mere 3 years old.

But we’ve indulged in Bullfighting and Bear Baiting for thousands of years and cock and dog fights are still popular with a certain sadistic mindset.  Horse racing, as cruel as it is, isn’t necessarily harmful to the ponies or those that watch them.  It is a spectacular display of wasted resources by our oligarch upper class.

The Belmont Stakes are perhaps the most democratic of the Triple Crown Races even though it is held in Queens.  Indications of that are they can’t settle on a song or a drink.  The song has ranged from Sidewalks of New York, a charming Tin Pan Alley tune better known as East Side, West Side, to the Theme from New York, New York (as performed by Frank Sinatra and appropriated as the Yankees anthem and not the original Liza Minelli rendition), to 2010’s Empire State of Mind by Jay-Z (I can’t believe that will last for long).

Likewise the drink has changed from the absolutely un-potable White Carnation to the refined trashcan punch that is the Belmont Breeze.

I suggest instead the classic Cosmopolitan.

This year is the 145th running and once again there is no Triple Crown at stake so the coverage is thin indeed even though there are several compelling storylines in the 14 horse field.

• It might be an off track, though Stars Hollow is not so very far away and you’ve been able to see shadows since 10 am so conditions should be improving.

• Orb and Oxbow face off again in the rubber game of the match.  Orb has a breeding advantage in that he has a past Belmont winner in his bloodline.  Will this give him the stamina he needs in the longest Triple Crown race?

• We have a filly in the mix, Unlimited Budget.  Admittedly she starts from outside, but she has shown good form so if you want to root for the underdog (or horse) you now have a choice.

Racing Ambassadors is trying to make this a more ‘Turn Left’ type experience for the proles with the $10 tickets who arrive on the Subway.  I’m not altogether sure this is a good idea.

I’m not sure this is a good idea.

I have taught you well.

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