NSA whistleblower Russ Tice goes on record with new revelations

http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2013/06/19/podcast-show-112-nsa-whistleblower-goes-on-record-reveals-new-information-names-culprits/

by rl3 • 13 years ago

248 125 13 years ago

boilingfrogspost.com

rl33• 13 years ago

Direct audio link is here (MP3): http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/podpress_trac/web/20927/0/BF...

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At 0:48:26 Tice mentions the intercept order for then-Senatorial candidate Obama.

He also mentions that senior civilian, military and government leaders were explicitly targeted.

Some of the notable intercept targets included Colin Powell, Hillary Clinton, Samuel Alito, former FISA Court judges, U.S. Congressional intelligence committees, law firms, financial firms, State Department personnel, humanitarian NGOs.

Lawyers and civil rights groups were mentioned as well, I'm wondering if EFF was included in that.

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Tice previously played off his unclassified resume's listing of space-based systems expertise as a cover story for his activities at NSA. However, he has now revealed that he specialized in space-based capabilities at NSA all along. This is humorous when you consider the following:

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/01/nsa-whistlebl-2/

Do you have any connection to outer space stuff? I asked.

"I watch Buck Rogers."

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Also of note: NSA's Bluffdale, Utah data storage facility is apparently already online and operational.

mtgx• 13 years ago

So they are spying the very people that are supposed to watch over them and keep them in check? Well that must be very convenient.

ihsw3• 13 years ago

It's one of the many reasons General Alexander is regarded among conspiracy theorists as 'supreme leader' of the USG -- he has the ability to blackmail everybody with 100% effectiveness.

He stands at a very interesting intersection between civilian leadership (head of the NSA) and military leadership (head of US CyberCommand).

brown9-24• 13 years ago

NSA's Bluffdale, Utah data storage facility is apparently already online and operational.

Does the interview mention how someone who left the NSA in 2005 would know this?

rl33• 13 years ago

Yes, he said an insider sent him a coded handwritten message on a basis similar to a one-time pad.

He also said that he could not read most of said message due to misplacing the key-code.

EDIT: My original reply likely butchered terminology, sorry. The relevant audio can be heard verbatim at 1:03:11 in the interview recording.

runjake• 13 years ago

This isn't hard to believe. The scheduled "go live" time for the Utah facility was September 2013.

fnordfnordfnord4• 13 years ago

Maybe Tice reads newspapers. Use of the datacenter would be nearly impossible to conceal. One can look at the power feeds with an IR camera and arrive at a reasonable estimate of power consumption. Also, water vapor from cooling equipment.

doe88• 13 years ago

So they would have pulled a page out from FBI's playbook. It would not be surprising.

programminggeek2• 13 years ago

You know, I've always thought that the Barack "Hussein" Obama political attacks that allege that he's not a citizen, he's a muslim, and he's part of some conspiracy to bring down the USA are particularly crazy insomuch as we have the CIA, FBI, NSA, etc. whose job is to investigate people to keep our country safe.

I've always thought that if the allegations were somehow true, that someone at one of those groups would have leaked something that would keep Obama from being president or from continuing as president. Yet, that never happened despite the fact that he obviously would have been investigated by plenty of people in those spy organizations.

So, the fact that Obama was spied on should not come as a surprise. It would surprise me if people in power weren't spied on.

LoganCale• 13 years ago

Maybe it's not surprising, but it's bad. It puts the non-elected agency officials in a position of power over the people who are supposed to be their bosses and make sure they aren't going out of line. It basically nullifies a lot of checks and balances if the agency officials want to blackmail or threaten to blackmail elected officials.

trevelyan7• 13 years ago

Not to mention that the state spying on its citizens without probable cause and judicial review is unconstitutional, illegal and anti-democratic.

squozzer• 13 years ago

Maybe. But someone who would have been disqualified from the presidency might prove useful to those who hold the information. It would explain the 180 on Gitmo, ferinstance.

gnaritas3• 13 years ago

What 180 on Gitmo? Obama's stance on it has never waivered, congress blocked his attempts to close it.

spdy• 13 years ago

Or they found something and use it against him to keep him in check and get what they want.

This system is all about control and preserve power.

glesica• 13 years ago

So if spying on people in power is good, who spies on the people in charge of the NSA?

josefresco• 13 years ago

China.

Zakharov• 13 years ago

Their employees.

duwease• 13 years ago

The Watchmen.

But wait, who watches..

chubot• 13 years ago

It kind of makes you rethink the whole Petraeus ordeal. Everyone commented on how the director of the CIA couldn't keep his own communications secret. Maybe he pissed off the NSA somehow? Not sure how closely the organizations work together.

Uhhrrr• 13 years ago

It is up to us.

Tangaroa• 13 years ago

Regarding the idea that someone would have leaked something, WorldNetDaily seems to get a lot of leaks from the CIA. This raises several questions about any of these stories starting with how fake is it, what kind of person would leak to WND, and are they trying to plant a story or suppress one?

programminggeek2• 13 years ago

I'm not saying any of this is good, I'm saying it's not surprising.

Torgo2• 13 years ago

If you really want to think like a conspiracy theorist, then they would LET him win so that they had a completely controllable puppet in office.

btipling• 13 years ago

Claims like this may be more convincing when they are supported by evidence.

akiselev2• 13 years ago

The people of the United States are innocent until proven guilt. Their government does not deserve the same benefit of the doubt.

JumpCrisscross• 13 years ago

Because our government is made of bricks?

mithaler• 13 years ago

So you automatically assume any allegation leveled against the government to be true until someone in the government spends effort disproving it?

Is it really so much to ask that we criticize the government for things that we know it actually did?

lignuist• 13 years ago

Isn't every potential US president scanned from tip to toe?

krapp• 13 years ago

One would hope, but by the press and the American people...

peterwwillis• 13 years ago

To get security clearance, yes.

jasonjei• 13 years ago

Not elected officials like the President. They are exempt from the OPM/USIS investigations.

dak1• 13 years ago

The President doesn't need a security clearance. His or her election gives him/her the ultimate security clearance.

Zigurd2• 13 years ago

That implies that if a candidate could be denied a clearance they would be disqualified from holding office.

roc• 13 years ago

Security clearance involves being wiretapped these days?

And how would that remotely explain Powell, who would have been cleared to the highest levels decades before this program?

CWuestefeld2• 13 years ago

Background checks and surveillance are two different things.

salimmadjd2• 13 years ago

OT: What's stopping NSA staff from wiretapping CEOs and use that info for insider trading making a bundle?

betterunix2• 13 years ago

What's to stop the NSA from wiretapping foreign companies, then handing their trade secrets over to well-connected US companies?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON

salimmadjd2• 13 years ago

All these are possible. They can use the profit from the stock market to get the funds to hire mercenaries, i.e. defense contractors in Iraq to then silence anyone who ties to expose them.

pvnick2• 13 years ago

WOW, so surprised to see Sibel Edmond's stuff on this site. As a translator for the FBI, she had a lot to say about the 9/11 attacks and how corruption within the FBI's translation unit may have played a factor in failing to prevent those attacks [1]. She went on record to claim that the subsequent 9/11 Commission was a farce and did nothing to gather the relevant facts [2].

As she went through the proper channels to report what she had seen, she was eventually fired as a result of her allegations [3]. Her testimony was also sealed by John Ashcroft under the states secrets privilege [4], which is exactly what has happened with the recent Snowden allegations [5].

Personally I think Sibel Edmonds is one of the most reliable people in the whistleblower community and that she has a lot to say that's being hidden from the public.

[1] http://www.aclu.org/national-security/sibel-edmonds-patriot-...

[2] http://www.nswbc.org/Press%20Releases/NSWBC-911Comm.htm

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sibel_Edmonds#cite_note-oig_upd...

[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sibel_Edmonds#FBI_career

[5] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/07/us-government-sp...

specialist3• 13 years ago

IIRC, she was also gagged by the court during her wrongful termination lawsuit, citing national security. Convenient.

perlpimp• 13 years ago

Can gag order be unconstitutional or illegal?

tptacek18• 13 years ago

Any major media outlet in the country right now could 1.5-3x its pageviews or audience share by going wall-to-wall on the revelation that NSA spied on Barack Obama before he was a candidate. None of them have. Why is that?

pvnick2• 13 years ago

I would say 1) this revelation is too shocking to be parroted without smoking gun evidence to support it (eg copies of the top secret documents themselves) and 2) journalists these days are too much in bed with the establishment to stir the waters that much and ask these kinds of hard questions posed by "fringe elements".

What do you think?

tptacek18• 13 years ago

I don't believe (2) at all. Journalists are careerist and media outlets are bottom-line focused. It would be one thing to argue that some specific venue, like the NYT, is captured somehow (that would be an extraordinary claim but let's stipulate it). But to say that every major media outlet is somehow blinded to its own incentives on a story like this? That's flatly implausible.

Zigurd2• 13 years ago

If there are still substantial disparities between what Snowden alleges and what major tech firms admit to, would you bet against news outlets getting "D-notices" they are not allowed to discuss?

smutticus• 13 years ago

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/20/russ-tice-nsa-obama...

Not exactly a major media outlet. But it's something.

trevelyan7• 13 years ago

This could easily be misinformation. That said, Russ Tice has more credibility than you do when it comes to talking about NSA capabilities, in that his claims of unconstitutional spying (dating back to 2005) anticipated and are well-supported by the leaked NSA documentation, while your claims dating two weeks back about how everything is operating under reasonable judicial oversight have already been proven wrong.

tptacek18• 13 years ago

I don't understand what my credibility has to do with the question I asked. This is the rare example of a genuinely fallacious (if gently posed) ad-hominem argument.

fnordfnordfnord4• 13 years ago

Because they have no evidence beyond Russell Tice's statements. And no other person has stepped forward to corroborate.

tptacek18• 13 years ago

Sure, but they have to believe they're never going to get that corroboration until the story gets some legs. Why aren't they "reporting the controversy"?

acqq• 13 years ago

Starting from about 25:00 in the interview he gives examples why. Everybody can listen an make an opinion.

rl33• 13 years ago

Russell Tice on MSNBC this morning: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKyIil9OdF4#t=0m04s

callenish• 13 years ago

I think this calls for a meme.

http://qkme.me/3uxsx0

NSA whistleblower Russ Tice goes on record with new revelations

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