More Snowden leaks – and this time Al Qaeda is the surveillance target

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Security-Watch/Backchannels/2014/0130/More-Snowden-leaks-and-this-time-Al-Qaeda-is-the-surveillance-target

by csandreasen • 12 years ago

2 4 12 years ago

csmonitor.com

csandreasen2• 12 years ago

Don't get me wrong, I think the terrorism card is definitely overplayed. The article brings up an interesting point, though. The redacted portion flies in the face of the accusation that the NSA isn't using its capabilities to pursue legitimate terrorist targets. Yes, that one phrase doesn't prove that all of its targets are legitimate, but it makes me wonder what else is in all of those redactions and missing slides. Do they jive with the existing narrative? How much is left out for national security and how much is left out to make a better story?

krapp2• 12 years ago

To be fair though, how many people actually believed that none of what Snowden revealed was ever being used for pursuing such legitimate targets? Or that a news organization might not spin a story to fit a particular bias?

Even given everything else, I would think that would be a pretty obviously extremist point of view.

csandreasen2• 12 years ago

Maybe I've just been reading too many comments on HN. :)

I think most of the reporting so far tends to further that bias. It seems like a lot of the disclosures talk a good deal about how the NSA collects information and just leaves the reader to fill in the part about who they're targeting, which in turns causes most people to jump in and assume that it's being used against everyone. I went back and re-read the articles on the New York Times[1], Guardian[2] and Propublica[3] and I see something that I notice in just about every NSA revelation: they always mention that the documents in question don't say how much of the communications of Americans or ordinary civilians were collected, but they also don't give any examples of whose communications were being collected. The Angry Birds articles would be more accurate if they said something like "The documents did not reveal if any U.S. citizens were targeted, but did indicate that this information was being gathered from members of a middle-eastern terrorist organization." But then, if they said something like that, there wouldn't be so much of a civil liberties angle to play (in fact, it might backfire and draw some outrage to the news outlet itself).

Which brings me back to my original question - what's in all of the other redactions?

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/28/world/spy-agencies-scour-p...

[2] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/27/nsa- gchq-smartphone-app-angry-birds-personal-data

[3] http://www.propublica.org/article/spy-agencies-probe-angry-b...

More Snowden leaks – and this time Al Qaeda is the surveillance target

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