Not necessary, just evil

NEW REVELATIONS about the vast scope of government spying haven't stopped the Obama administration from pressing forward to defend its ability to snoop into every aspect of the lives of ordinary Americans.

Despite the revelations--largely the result of the leaks from whistle-blower Edward Snowden--of unprecedented spying by the U.S. government against its own citizens, a vast program of bulk data collection by the National Security Agency (NSA) continues, and the Obama administration continues to champion it.

According to the government, such programs are a "necessary evil" to thwart terrorism. But not only are these Big Brother policies merely evil, and not necessary at all--they aren't even productive on their own terms. Both a new report and a recent admission by the Obama administration prove that the NSA's data collection has been of practically zero use in stopping terrorism.

The real purpose of the NSA spying programs is as a tool in the expansive arsenal of the U.S. security state--a tool that successive administrations, like Obama's, will try not to give up. Bulk data collection and other spy measures are the "new normal" as far as those at the top of the government are concerned--a massive erosion of our privacy rights that Obama and Co. say is for our own good.

Each successive revelation from documents leaked by Edward Snowden, with the help of journalists Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras, has shown that what we knew about government spying was only been the tip of the iceberg. Not only has the NSA mined data indiscriminately from the phone calls and e-mails of American citizens, but we also know--thanks to Snowden--that the U.S. government spied on both allies and enemies among foreign governments, not to mention foreign corporations.

The sheer volume of revelations from Snowden--who was forced to seek asylum in Russia for the "crime" of informing the U.S. public about what the government has been so doing in its name--can only really be matched by the number of lies of those who defend the Big Brother state. Like Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who last year falsely told Sen. Ron Wyden, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, that the NSA was not intercepting data on millions of Americans.

More recently, the German magazine Der Spiegel last month revealed a secret NSA "hacking unit," known as Tailored Access Operations (TAO), that reportedly steals data and inserts invisible "back door" spying devices into computer systems. As Britain's Guardian reported:

According to the Spiegel report, TAO staff are based in San Antonio, Texas, at a former Sony computer chip factory, not far from another NSA team housed alongside ordinary military personnel at Lackland Air Force Base. The magazine described TAO as the equivalent of "digital plumbers," called in to break through anti-spying "blockages." The team totaled 60 specialists in 2008, the magazine said, but is expected to grow to 270 by 2015.

TAO's areas of operation range from counter-terrorism to cyber attacks, the magazine said, using discreet and efficient methods that often exploit technical weaknesses in the technology industry and its social media products.

According to Der Spiegel, once the NSA tracks an order from a "target" for, say, a computer or other electronic device, the TAO can have the hardware intercepted while in transit. The computer--or drive or whatever--is then secretly fitted with spy software.

Reading like a list from an 21st century episode of Get Smart, the tools that the TAO works with include, according to Al Jazeera America, "computer monitor cables specially modified to record what is being typed across the screen, USB sticks secretly fitted with radio transmitters to broadcast stolen data over the airwaves, and fake base stations intended to intercept mobile phone signals on the go."

DESPITE THESE and many other revelations, the Obama administration has continued to defend this massive intrusion into the lives of ordinary Americans.

Earlier this month, outgoing NSA Deputy Director John C. Inglis told NPR that the agency would welcome oversight from a "public advocate"--who would supposedly be empowered to argue for privacy concerns in front of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Court.

That's the Big Brother government's equivalent of an oxymoron--a "public advocate" arguing for privacy in front of a secret court.

No wonder the Obama administration is signaling it would allow such a measure. It would be an easy way to pretend it is holding Big Brother to account, while still maintaining the government's right to keep its spying secret--especially given that the FISA court has historically approved almost all of requests the government makes of it.

On January 17, Obama is expected to announce a series of "reforms" to the NSA spying operation. According to reports, they will include a proposal for the government to allow "third parties," rather than the Feds, to store a database of bulk collected domestic call records.

But why should anyone believe the "third parties"--private telecommunications companies, which have also historically bowed to every demand of the government--will be any less intrusive than the government? Why should we feel safer with Corporate America tracking our calls and e-mails rather than the government?

Then there's the question of what the government is accomplishing with all this spying. Inglis, in his interview with NPR, could only claim that one terrorist attack might have been thwarted as a result of the NSA's bulk collection of all American phone data.

That assessment is supported by a new report by the New American Foundation, "Do NSA's bulk surveillance programs stop terrorism?" which found that the Obama administration's claims that NSA spying has been essential to preventing terrorism are "overblown" and "even misleading."

The White House claims that as many as 54 incidents of terrorism have been thwarted by data-mining surveillance programs. But according to the report:

Surveillance of American phone metadata has had no discernible impact on preventing acts of terrorism and only the most marginal of impacts on preventing terrorist-related activity, such as fundraising for a terrorist group.

Furthermore, our examination of the role of the database of U.S. citizens' telephone metadata in the single plot the government uses to justify the importance of the program--that of Basaaly Moalin, a San Diego cabdriver who in 2007 and 2008 provided $8,500 to al-Shabaab, al-Qaeda's affiliate in Somalia--calls into question the necessity of the Section 215 bulk collection program.

According to the government, the database of American phone metadata allows intelligence authorities to quickly circumvent the traditional burden of proof associated with criminal warrants, thus allowing them to "connect the dots" faster and prevent future 9/11-scale attacks. Yet in the Moalin case, after using the NSA's phone database to link a number in Somalia to Moalin, the FBI waited two months to begin an investigation and wiretap his phone...

This undercuts the government's theory that the database of Americans' telephone metadata is necessary to expedite the investigative process, since it clearly didn't expedite the process in the single case the government uses to extol its virtues.

Yet Inglis and other Obama administration official continue to describe bulk collection of metadata as a necessary "insurance policy" against suggested potential future acts of terrorism. "I'm not going to give that insurance policy up, because it's a necessary component to cover a seam that I can't otherwise cover," Inglis said.

YOU WOULDN'T think the American "justice" system would have any trouble identifying the civil liberties being violated by these spying programs, but rulings in the past month have come down on both sides of the question.

In late December, a federal judge declared that the NSA's bulk data collection related to the telephone calls of every American was legal--just a week after another judge said the program was not only likely unconstitutional, but "almost Orwellian."

In the earlier ruling, U.S. District Judge Richard Leon found that bulk collection was a violation of privacy rights:

I cannot imagine a more "indiscriminate" and "arbitrary invasion" than this systematic and high-tech collection and retention of personal data on virtually every citizen for purposes of querying and analyzing it without prior judicial approval. Surely, such a program infringes on "that degree of privacy" that the Founders enshrined in the Fourth Amendment.

Then, on December 27, U.S. District Judge William Pauley ruled that bulk collection of phone records was legal under the USA PATRIOT Act. "This blunt tool only works because it collects everything," Pauley wrote. "The collection is broad, but the scope of counterterrorism investigations is unprecedented."

In other words, in a post-9/11 world, anything goes as long as it can be described as necessary to stop terrorism.

Meanwhile, as the Obama administration defends its right to spy on us, it continues to threaten former NSA contractor Edward Snowden for his role in letting the world know about the latest rights-shredding dirty tricks of the U.S. government. This despite an odd-bedfellows coalition of Congressional liberals and right-wing libertarians stepping up their complaints about an unfettered surveillance state.

Among the mainstream media, the New York Times has called for leniency for Snowden, but most outlets are demanding that Snowden be prosecuted.

Pointing out the hypocrisy, commentator Glenn Greenwald noted that if Snowden is prosecuted under the Espionage Act--where there is no "whistle-blower exemption"--then why shouldn't Director of National Intelligence James Clapper be held to account for lying to Congress about the scope of the NSA programs?

"People in Washington continuously make excuses for those in power when they break the law," Greenwald said on CNN. "They would never call on someone like James Clapper, who got caught lying to Congress--which is a felony--to be prosecuted. They only pick on people who embarrass the government and the administration to which they're loyal, like Edward Snowden. It's not about the rule of law."

Greenwald is right--this isn't about the rule of law. It's about the government requiring subservience from the rest of us while it shreds our rights in the name of fighting terrorism.