Live: Head of NSA meets with House Intelligence Committee

http://www.c-spanvideo.org/event/220343

by teawithcarl • 13 years ago

138 119 13 years ago

I had to jump around, but this link is where I'm watching live: http://www.c-span.org/Live-Video/C-SPAN3/

cryptoz• 13 years ago

Deputy Attorney General: "We don't get any content...under this program." The use of language across all parties here is really incredible. The Google/Apple/etc denials so carefully worded, the lawyer-speak that avoid saying anything at all for hours at a time in the US gov't...it's amazingly Orwellian.

Edit: Did he just say that the fourth amendment does not apply because nobody expected privacy in the first place? I can't possibly have heard that right.

famousactress3• 13 years ago

under this program.

[edit] and here it is... "Under 702, we do get content"

[edit] I'm sure at this point the endgame here is gonna be a crazy dance around the word 'collect'. It's increasingly obvious that the secret definition they're using for 'collect' is "an analyst pulls it from our database, where we've already collected some broad swaths of communication by any reasonable person's definition of the term"

[edit] One interesting note is that there have been strong denials that the metadata contain any location/cell-tower data. Still wonder if there's another shell game there and it's available via some other source.

LoganCale9• 13 years ago

Exactly. It's already been leaked that content is collected under a different program.

motters2• 13 years ago

They may not get any content, but do they store any content? It could be that "get content" has a very narrow legal interpretation ("taking the book off the shelf and reading it").

nathas2• 13 years ago

He just mentioned under 702 they DO get content, but it "can only be used against non-US citizens and on non-US soil"... So.. how do you confirm that if all you have is metadata?

centralism• 13 years ago

He said that the fourth amendment does not apply to the collection of metadata of phone calls, etc, because we already freely expose that information to phone providers, etc.

dale386• 13 years ago

It's a big jump from "your phone company sees your call logs" to "you don't mind if anyone sees your call logs."

rtpg8• 13 years ago

4th ammendment doesn't apply to this metadata(call duration and number ONLY, no position) per a Supreme Court ruling 35 years ago about phone records.

This hearing , if you listen to all of it, went into surprising amount of detail concerning how these programs function. Just because they have to use big words (because this is about the law) doesn't mean they're trying to hide anything. This has been pretty illuminating.

Still some issues with the problem (notably "probable suspicion" clause concerning querying the database, there isn't enough oversight apart from in NSA).

lettergram3• 13 years ago

hmmm the argument that it is not reasonable that what I view on the internet is private is disturbing. I do have a reasonable expectation of it being private.

This is referring to the Attorney Generals statement that we do not have a reasonable expectation for our meta data not to be public.

nathas2• 13 years ago

"Because you share that information with phone companies, etc".

He referenced a court decision about that. Can someone who knows what the case might be find it?

lettergram3• 13 years ago

That was related to a phone company, not for the internet. The internet providers give me a reasonable expectation of privacy. The point is, this hasn't been tested via the justice system because it was hidden. Therefore the simple explanation that it was a court decision previously (to something similar, but not explicit) is not very comforting.

LoganCale9• 13 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith_v._Maryland

ck22• 13 years ago

He's going to announce two terror plots stopped by this.

Should be interesting.

nodata• 13 years ago

Bet he won't say whether those plots could have been stopped another way.

motters2• 13 years ago

As a person "outside the united states and not a US person" this doesn't fill be with confidence about using US based internet services. It also doesn't give me much confidence about communicating with "US persons".

famousactress3• 13 years ago

Speaking as a US Person... Honestly, thank God for this. Hopefully lots of non-US-persons vote with their dollars and feet on this issue. I think the financial impact has better odds at moving the needle on US public opinion than flogging our representatives with regard to civil liberties or privacy.

adventured2• 13 years ago

I have a visceral negative reaction to what they're doing to my country, and it makes me want to say: please embargo us, foreign nations and citizens. It won't happen unfortunately.

alan_cx• 13 years ago

Indeed. You only have to see the massive trade deal the EU and US are putting through to see how much Europe cares. Could have been some gentle leverage there, but no.

wtvanhest• 13 years ago

Yes, now you know for a fact that using a US internet communications company will result in your data being stored or at least examined by the US government. Unfortunately there is no evidence that other countries will not apply the same tactics to whichever internet communications companies exist on their soil.

mtgx• 13 years ago

Is it me or are most (all?) of these hearings against companies or agencies in this case - a joke? I've watched some of them lately, and the Congressmen always seem to be butt-kissing the company or agency they are supposed to investigate.

These past 2 hearings don't seem to intend to shed any light on this. They seem to be held to help protect whatever NSA is doing.

trebor• 13 years ago

Just think of the kind of blackmail material the NSA would have on our representatives under this program. All it would take is "probable cause", which seems very easy to get, to unearth that data and start blackmail or expose the person. These programs give the NSA an incredible amount of power, and it's easily misused.

skue• 13 years ago

And THIS is the ultimate answer to the question: If I have nothing to hide, why should this bother me?

It's not whether each of us individually have something to hide: it's whether our politicians, our activists, our reporters, our lawyers, our doctors, our military, our police, our courts, our spies, our business leaders, our celebrities, our friends & family have something to hide.

Because if any of them can be manipulated by the data that is being gathered, then all of us lose.

VMG• 13 years ago

I can see an interesting collective action problem here.

In principle, members of congress do not have an interest to be monitored and spied on. However raising protest as an individual member can cause you problems, because the NSA can pressure you.

But if they act collectively, they might have a chance.

axelf• 13 years ago

Yep, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Harman#AIPAC_controversy

addflip• 13 years ago

Not sure if you saw the video from last week but this "hearing" seems staged. They're all reading from a script. Sounds like robots.

adventured2• 13 years ago

It's the hearing equivalent of a kangaroo court.

jdp232• 13 years ago

This is why the makeup of the committee is so important. The Chair controls the witness list and the order of questioning - and gets to ask a lot of questions. So, since Mike Rogers supports the NSA, there aren't any civil liberties witnesses; and 75 minutes into a 2 hour hearing we still haven't heard any skeptical questions at all, or anything that deals with the excellent points being brought up by those watching on Twitter.

wheelerwj3• 13 years ago

Exactly,these hearings are a PR session for each of the programs. A total sham.

chiph• 13 years ago

The committee usually sends their questions in advance to the people appearing in front of them. Seldom will you see the people testifying caught unaware. It's theater.

JonnieCache• 13 years ago

    "If you believe the security of the realm is at risk
      you don't hold a security enquiry, you call in the Special Branch.
      Government security enquiries are only used for killing press stories."

    - Yes Prime Minister S01E08

More americans need to watch Yes Minister. It will disabuse you of naive notions like inquiries serving purposes other than finding its subjects innocent and generally hiding the truth.

There are lots of other apposite quotes but I can't seem to find any just now.

asdf3• 13 years ago

Bernard: But surely the citizens of a democracy have a right to know.

Sir Humphrey Appleby: No. They have a right to be ignorant. Knowledge only means complicity in guilt; ignorance has a certain dignity.

rtpg8• 13 years ago

the chairman is doing it a bit. But some congresspeople are being particularly stringent (Check out what Schiff said concerning court oversight). Things are happening, and honestly what's being said here is pretty tempered, there's not much to get outraged about.

declan3• 13 years ago

The members of this committee, House Intelligence, generally knew what the NSA was doing in this area. (There are more secretive intelligence programs that are briefed only to the so-called Gang of Eight, a select group of House and Senate leaders that do not include all members of the Intelligence committees.)

Think of it this way: If you've been briefed on some supersecret surveillance since at least 2008, when the FAA was enacted, and you never raised a privacy alarm, what do you do when everyone else finds out? Do you say "I was wrong?" Or do you say "Nothing to see here, move along."

marknutter2• 13 years ago

Arguing that these programs are effective by revealing a few foiled terrorist plots is entirely beside the point. Obviously monitoring every communication on the planet would help the government track down a few terrorist plots here and there. If they really want the debate to focus on the effectiveness of these programs then they should explain why they failed so spectacularly to prevent the Boston Marathon bombings, a plot carried out by two of the most careless and naive terrorists to date. Heck, even a direct warning from Russian officials fell on deaf ears. Perhaps the NSA was too busy listening to innocent people's phone calls to respond?

The effectiveness isn't what's at issue here, though. The problem is the loss of privacy for innocent civilians, to which Obama and other government officials respond to with wishy-washy arguments about "tradeoffs" between security and privacy.

vermontdevil2• 13 years ago

I would also add to the argument that the following things are also happening and will happen:

1) More money being wasted to support certain corporations (Booz etc) in return for future plum jobs by these representatives/senators or heads of these agencies. Thus the cycle continues in favor of supporting these programs rather than analyzing whether we really need it or not.

2) Abuses by contractors or employees when they have this much access and power in seeing all the private data

3) Corruption of these committees due to the feeling of being "in" where others are not.

In other words, it's going to get worse.

Loughla• 13 years ago

Do you have any citations for any of these items? Or is it just time for wild speculation? I am pretty good at that:

And they'll listen to who is pregnant in the future, and force us to all get implants for the babies, thereby making a super race of Americans to rule the world! lightning flash MWAHAHAHA.

Please cite any proof you have.

dclowd9901• 13 years ago

Not only that, but I can imagine the number of false positives for a collection that large would have to be off the charts. Your assessment that they missed a direct warning from a tenuous ally because they were too busy listening (chasing down) domestic leads is probably even truer than you think.

GVIrish2• 13 years ago

I would argue that even if these programs were effective in foiling some terrorist plots, that it's still not worth it. I mean, we could probably could prevent some mass shootings if we put everyone with a history of serious mental illness in an institution for the rest of their lives but that wouldn't make it right.

And perhaps the bigger risk to using the 'it prevented terorrist plots' argument is that it creates a convenient excuse for more surveillance and curtailing of rights. All that needs to happen is for a few more terorrist plots to slip through, then the argument will be, 'We need MORE power to stop these people' or, 'If you just allowed us to do this, this, and this, we could've prevented that'.

Then long after a significant threat of Jihadist terrorist attack is gone, we'll still be dealing with a uber-powerful police state.

malandrew2• 13 years ago

By their measure we should wiretap everyone in government to prevent graft, corruption, revolving doors and regulatory capture.

rtpg8• 13 years ago

It's always a tradeoff between privacy and security. The rules behind the use of the metadata are pretty stringent. For example:

    Metadata is JUST number + duration. Not localtion, cell phone tower...


    targetting cannot be done on citizens or permanent citizens, or people in the US. Permanent citizen in Madrid is safe.

    No "reverse" targetting(targetting foreigner but really interested in US nat'l)

    if citizen/perm. res accidentally targeted, info not used, FISA court signalled, house intel + judiciary signalled.

    If targeted person is initially out of US, but venture in, targeting stops IMMEDIATELY.

    Info accidentally gotten (for example, lag when stopping of the targetting mentioned previously), ineligible info is purged. All ineligible info is purged.

    All targeting is reviewed beforehand , both by DNI and judiciary. All targets are audited

Plus this was used on less than 300 numbers. 20 people in the world have access to the info. The justification procedures are stringent.

This hearing restored some confidence in checks and balances. And a good point by Deputy AG Cole: This is for foreign surveillance ONLY. There used to be no oversight for foreign surveillance. Now there is through FISA Court and this second court order with all these rules in it.

Also, NSA can't listen to the calls without fixed warrant, and the brothers were in the US at the time of planning their thing, so out of NSA jurisdiction anyways.

codeulike2• 13 years ago

Whats your source for those quotes? Is that from the hearing happening now?

LoganCale9• 13 years ago

Plus this was used on less than 300 numbers.

The metadata is still collected and presumably stored for all, they just escalated it to additional surveillance for 300 numbers.

20 people in the world have access to the info.

[citation needed] Keith Alexander today said they have 1000 sysadmins like Snowden, most contractors. Snowden said, and the other NSA whistleblowers confirmed, that a sysadmin at the NSA has access to all data with little to no restrictions.

This is for foreign surveillance ONLY.

And how do they determine whether or not it's foreign or domestic? Surely they must analyze content in order to be sure?

marknutter2• 13 years ago

The issue isn't the use of this content, it's the collection of the content. I don't think anyone would have an issue with the NSA collecting and storing data on specific targets after receiving a court order to do so. What people are taking issue with is the collection and storing of data on innocent civilians without a court order, to be used in the event they receive a court order. What makes this collection worse is that apparently low-level government contractors like Edward Snowden can access this vast pool of data, whether or not approved to do so. It's the equivalent of having the US Postal Service open and photocopy every single piece of mail that goes through their system to be stored in a database and used later by NSA/FBI/CIA analysts who have received the proper court order to do so.

badclient• 13 years ago

Heck, even a direct warning from Russian officials fell on deaf ears.

You're also the kind of person that would be up in arms when the FBI takes someone into custody because Russia says he's trouble.

nym• 13 years ago

You missed the point.

austenallred• 13 years ago

You could summarize the entire hearing in one sentence.

"The 4th amendment doesn't apply under the Patriot Act."

chris_mahan• 13 years ago

In theory, the 4th Amendment trumps the Patriot Act. In practice, it doesn't.

knowaveragejoe• 13 years ago

Well, to be fair, the boston bombers' carelessness and naiveté might have been what helped them pull it off.

mpyne3• 13 years ago

AFAIK the NSA was not informed, the FBI was. They investigated and concluded that there was no firm evidence of intent, case closed. Due process at work in our police state, strange.

Also, a student with a naturalized American brother who travels to visit family and speak with radical Islamists at his old home is not the kind of thing that either collecting phone call information or using Facebook Open Graph^W^W^W Prism is going to work well against. There are other types of terroristic threats, Prism/phone watch lists will work better against those.

If anything Maj. Nidal Hasan would almost be a better example, except that the NSA system worked perfectly... it was only in the follow-up investigation that it was decided that Hasan was just making innocent probes, so it was the investigation that failed and not the NSA system.

Arguing that monitoring every communication on the planet makes no sense... even with contractor augments there are not enough U.S. citizens to monitor all world communications, and the pool of available analysts quickly drops when you consider security clearance issues, training required, pay available, the qualifications needed, etc.

So no, it doesn't follow that you could perfectly foil terrorist plots even with interception and monitoring of worldwide communications, so the fact that NSA is as successful as they are can't be waved away by saying "anyone could do it". They can't monitor everyone even with their Utah data center, so apparently they've been doing a good job at focusing their resources at the mission at hand.

Any either way there's always a tradeoff. You wouldn't accept a 9/11 in your country every day to ensure absolute privacy as soon there would be no one left to be private from, so let's not act like the priority value is ∞. The staggering success of Twitter, Facebook and Google reveal how much people truly value their privacy.

Even the Constitution is in on the act, as both warrants and "reasonable searches" are explicitly mentioned as limits to Fourth Amendment rights, and people don't seem to freak out about those.

So while people may have different answers about where they fall on privacy <==> security (where a given program has a tradeoff between the two), don't act like the extreme choice is the only one; even the Framers didn't think that.

fnordfnordfnord3• 13 years ago

You know what? The fact that a person uses Facebook, Google, etc. is in no way a declaration from that person that they do not value their privacy, especially privacy from the government. The 4th amendment makes participation in those things possible.

jdp232• 13 years ago

Get FISA Right has a Twitter list with live tweets from several accounts following the hearing -- EFFLive, Julian Sanchez, Marcy Wheeler, Michelle Richardson of the ACLU, etc.

https://twitter.com/GetFISARight/nsa

choult• 13 years ago

I would personally like to know if there's a blacklist for any such program which prevents electronic systems from surveilling anyone on it. I can imagine that a senator knowing their details have been/can be accessed without due cause would be a real PITA for the NSA.

ck22• 13 years ago

The clowns questioning him keep saying "UNDER THIS PROGRAM".

Yeah well the ones we know. Now we need to know the others.

wheelerwj3• 13 years ago

yeah exactly. One doesn't allow content to be captured, the other does, but only for non-american citizens, except when it is an accident... so when you combine all three incidences... yes they have full access and admit it several times.

MisterWebz• 13 years ago

"Does the NSA listen to the content of phone calls?"

General Alexander: "No we do not have that authority."

I think it's pretty clear by now that they're collecting phone call content.

Here's another and I'm paraphrasing:

"Is there something else being collected?"

"Besides the 215(?) and 702(?)? I'm not sure as I don't know whether that info has been declassified."

benburleson• 13 years ago

What a political circle-jerk. The questioning plays out like a rehearsed commercial.

tghw• 13 years ago

"But if we do acquire any information that relates to a US person, under limited criteria only, can we keep it. If it has to do with foreign intelligence in that conversation or understanding foreign intelligence, or evidence of a crime or a threat of serious bodily injury, we can respond to that. Other than that, we have to get rid of it, we have to purge it, and we can't use it." (emphasis mine)

This seems very close to an admission that they both have and analyze the data before purging it. Combined with the idea that most people commit three felonies a day and pretty quickly all of these assertions about not spying on US citizens or people in the US goes out the window.

waterlesscloud2• 13 years ago

Here's the thing- if they get and store this data, in any way whatsoever, it's going to come out. With a 100% certainty, that fact will out in time.

And when it does, any word games they try to play now will just be devastating to them then. Absolutely devastating. It will not protect them, it will not help them, it will damn them.

So, given that it will come out and it will hurt them when it does...why play the games?

Either they aren't storing the data (which seems possible still, though less likely than I thought 2 weeks ago), or they're operating with the future planning capability of a fruit fly.

I don't know which it is,but this doesn't feel like it's going to end well for anyone.

lettergram3• 13 years ago

Someone did try to say that they keep data... In the original release by Snowden.

narag• 13 years ago

That's why a gradual release of revelations is such a good strategy. We've been seeing this in Spain in corruption cases. The target doesn't know what to expect: has the leaker had access to the real stuff or did he just scratched the surface? The danger of a too dismisive response is being caught in outright lies. With time, more people appears involved and the matter stays in the news.

pezh0re2• 13 years ago

Suggesting that there are several plots that have been thwarted - and that somehow justifies the program seems too "ends justify the means".

(probably because that's exactly what they're arguing)

pezh0re2• 13 years ago

"The documents that have been released so far ironically show the oversight" ...

I like what John Oliver said on the Daily Show - “We’re not saying anyone broke any laws, we’re just saying it’s a little bit weird that you didn’t have to.”

ihsw3• 13 years ago

Hopefully this will shift the conversation from "listening to phone calls" and "collecting internet records (eg: emails, browsing history)" to "storing phone calls" and "storing internet records (eg: emails, browsing history)".

At this point it's become abundantly clear that everything is stored and indexed in a database, and the only defense against abuse of this database is only policies.

One of the worst cases to come out of this entire ordeal is the legal dance around the definition of "listen" and whether it refers to automatically capturing phone calls or an individual listening to a recording of a phone call after it's been captured.

pvnick2• 13 years ago

the only defense against abuse of this database is only policies.

This point is extremely important and is what Snowden continuously returns to. In yesterday's Q&A he said "policy is a one-way ratchet that only loosens." This idea is critical to having an intelligent debate of the issues at hand.

ihsw3• 13 years ago

This is where I disagree with him, during last Wednesday's CSPAN cyber-security session Senator Leahy made it abundantly clear that he supports sunset provisions that indicates an expiration and discontinuation on such surveillance programs.

moskie2• 13 years ago

I don't find this to be an extremely compelling point, though.

There's infinite bad things that can be committed by anyone, from the government or otherwise, where the only thing preventing it is policy and procedure. The only thing preventing an Apache helicopter from firing on schoolchildren under order of the president.... is policy. Theoretically, as commander-in-chief, the president has the authority to order that, right? But what's important is that he doesn't. What's important is there's policy that prevents it.

mbesto• 13 years ago

At this point it's become abundantly clear that everything is stored and indexed in a database

Where is that made clear? Listen at 1:00:20-1:01:00

seansoutpost• 13 years ago

If you are not actually watching, the narrative of this talk is entirely defensive of the work going on by the NSA. They are flat out denying the information leaked my Mr. Snowden.

Also, Rep. Dutch Ruppersberg just said the words "True Facts"

marmot1101• 13 years ago

If the FISA court was transparent in any way having them issue warrants and provide oversight might be valuable. But it is not, thus that court is meaningless.

_k2• 13 years ago

Let's take any country, other than the US, e.g. Switzerland, Luxembourg, ... why isn't Al-Qaeda flying into the buildings of those countries ?

wheelerwj3• 13 years ago

Listening to this is absurd. Any intelligent human being can see that this open meeting is nothing more than a PR piece. So far I have heard three congressmen testify that this is legal and nothing illegal is happening. They are preloading the conversation and giving people the opportunity to tune out before General Alexander can even speak.

LoganCale9• 13 years ago

Confirmed: NSA Analyst doesn't need a separate court order to query database. Analysts can decide what is "reasonably suspicious."

https://twitter.com/efflive/status/347019679073710082

_k2• 13 years ago

It's PR. They say there's court involvement but it's a rubber stamp and then they access all data they got on you. They do say there has to be reasonable suspicion but we all know how that goes.

One guy says people don't have an expectation of privacy because they are used to giving their data to the phone companies.

I think I heard enough. And Europe and China, yes, all communications of your citizens are being recorded, and yes it's a privacy violation.

I've heard enough.

dlss• 13 years ago

at 1:02:30

"Does the technology exist at the NSA to record american's phone calls, or read their emails?"

"No"

There's something weird going on -- this seems too far off from Snowden's reports to be true. Like, p(Snowden leak | no technology like that) is just too small relative to p(Snowden leak)

codeulike2• 13 years ago

The get-out-clause here is that they avoid "American's" phone calls. However if an American phones a non-American, or sends an email via a non-USA IP address, they'll hoover it up.

That is consistent with what Snowden said in the Q+A with the guardian yesterday:

US Persons do enjoy limited policy protections (and again, it's important to understand that policy protection is no protection - policy is a one-way ratchet that only loosens) and one very weak technical protection - a near-the-front-end filter at our ingestion points. The filter is constantly out of date, is set at what is euphemistically referred to as the "widest allowable aperture," and can be stripped out at any time. Even with the filter, US comms get ingested, and even more so as soon as they leave the border. Your protected communications shouldn't stop being protected communications just because of the IP they're tagged with.

hoytie• 13 years ago

A hearing like this reinforces secrecy and benefits only the people in that room. They are given a platform to legitimize their activities and deny the existence of anything that may violate the constitution or upset Americans.

"Hey guys, we're here to tell you all about anything except what you actually want to know about" = the game of secrecy vs the public

davenull• 13 years ago

That was the largest gathering of nervous looking politicians and military brass I have ever witnessed. I don't think a lot of them were comfortable talking about information that became declassified immediately before they were to discuss them with the public.

fnordfnordfnord3• 13 years ago

Good grief Mike Rogers is a windbag. His opening statement to the hearing is a pretty good indication to me that he/they intend to investigate nothing, but rather to distract and deceive the public wrt to their activities.

Live: Head of NSA meets with House Intelligence Committee

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