The idea here from a public relations viewpoint is to reveal a small crime to conceal a large one.
Individuals will be described to have violated the NSA's strict internal rules and snooped on their cheating spouse or whatever. One, two, three incidents. Look, we've come clean!
Not mentioned will be the wholesale storage of every communication of every American, which the NSA does not deem to be surveillance until they specifically search on your name while knowing you are an American.
This is pretty much the exact same playbook as we observed with Abu Ghraib. Rape rooms run by the government are NOT illegal; that's official US government rape, and covered by memos saying it is legal, so everything is fine. And if over 100 people are killed by U.S. official torture and rape, that too is just fine.
But if overenthusiastic PFCs make prisoners lay on top of each other and give a thumbs-up, that's an error that needs to be disclosed and heavily punished.
The idea in each case is to make the unobservant member of the public think that all the abuses have been disclosed, and they are minor, and the individuals responsible have been punished.
Indeed, the brilliant part of immoral espionage is that they are the best people on the planet at not getting caught. As John Le Carre would say: the only rule of espionage is that it works. They often don't have to deal with the complex moralities of the public world.
> In a 2012 case, for example, an NSA analyst “searched her spouse’s personal telephone directory without his knowledge to obtain names and telephone numbers for targeting,” according to one report. The analyst “has been advised to cease her activities,” it said.
How is this not a crime? It they can come over you from downloading off JSTOR using legitimate access, why is this person still employed at the NSA rather than behind bars?
It is. But a crime does not need to be punished if those that commit it are powerful enough.
People in the NSA know lots of secrets of everybody. They know if the president has a mistress. They know if members of congress or their family do take drugs. They know who is corrupt and who does not. They know all the mistakes people did for getting where they are.
Remember that the NSA records and stores all telephone conversations so they can years later analyze and make sense of it.
So telling the person not to be a bad boy again is the best solution for everyone involved. Angry employees are not good here.
Obviously at any big organization, you will get misbehaving employees. But the way you prevent misuse and handle incidents defines whether it's a major issue or just a minor annoyance.
What possible use could this person serve after they've proven they had no qualms willfully and grossly misusing their position of power? How could they keep such a person employed?
Lack of oversight by Congress and complacency by the public leads to government agencies to get away with petty things like this and more serious abuses as well.
Releasing such documents, even if fully redacted, is important for State Agencies when dealing with a branding windfall. This, along with for example Obama's recent memo to the US Intelligence community asking them to be more considerate of civil liberties for allied nations, do nothing to actually address the problem but they do give off the appearance of caring.
Compare this to how a corporation deals with a negative branding windfall. Take the case of GM this year in dealing with their ignition switch recall. The controversy increased as their response was based on rationalization without dealing with the fallout of trust. Eventually the increased negativity brought their CEO to practically beg the public for forgiveness.
The US Gov, perhaps just another corporation, stands in contrast by conducting a rational response like Toyota, albeit slower, but it has no reason to consider the wider trust fallout, apart from measures this article mentions. It feels there is no reason to prosecute anyone for torture (Obama's look forward not backward argument). This protection of their gangsters [1] is a mentality that trickles down through the whole system of governance including how wrongful acts by the police are handled.
When Toyota's trust was damaged they had to beg to keep customers. When the US Gov's trust is damaged... meh, you're not going anywhere.
I'm confused how you could consider this situation to be a "windfall" for these agencies in any sense? A windfall is a positive thing, the surveillance story is a negative for them surely?
Windfall, as a word, is a fossilized metaphor. A windfall is that which falls from a tree as the result of wind. It can be fruit, small branches, or the whole tree. It can be good, or it can be bad: think of a tree falling on your car or house.
"The heavily-redacted reports include examples of data on Americans being e-mailed to unauthorized recipients, stored in unsecured computers and retained after it was supposed to be destroyed, according to the documents."
Therein lies one of the major problems with these mass surveillance programs. Not only are they collecting information on millions of innocent Americans, but now it appears that they are not properly securing that data. This whole thing just makes my blood boil.
> Not only are they collecting information on millions of innocent Americans, but now it appears that they are not properly securing that data.
I cannot tell whether you're being paid for by these folk, or just plain politically naive, or suffer from induced helplessness.
Your argument of "outrage" has levels built into it.
L1: collect information
L2: of innocent
L3: americans
L4: properly securing data
L1+L2+L3+L4 => boiling your blood.
For one, why do you even care about L4? Who cares if they secure data properly, they are already doing L1+L2+L3
Why do you care that it is Americans? Would it be better if they focused only on non-Americans, would you have cared less? They are already doing L1+L2.
What is the reason you are hanged up on "innocent"? What does that even mean? Who and how do you determine if someone is innocent? Are you that devoid of critical thinking that you fail to see the rhetoric of "innocents" legitimizes whatever is to be done to those deemed not innocent? They are already doing L1.
They are doing L1. That by itself should have boiled your blood without any regard for L2+L3+L4, which are false arguments inserted into the debate in order to legitimize the actual assault on human rights under the disguise of "better security" by the same agencies that always turn these kind of tricks time and time again.
I think it's perfectly reasonable to use "innocence" as a qualifier for whether or not intelligence should be gathered about a person. Law enforcement uses it, why shouldn't intelligence agencies?
Of course, the problem is that innocence in this case is determined behind closed doors and secret courts, instead of public courts.
I, for one, think it's awfully naive to think that all collection of information by the intelligence community is an outrage. Authorities collecting information has been going on for about as long as our species has had language.
Collecting, yes. Storing, indexing, warehousing all meaningful communication, movement, and transactions of all humanity indefinitely - that is the new and condemnable part. I call that absolute power.
Innocence doesn't appear to be a factor, at least according to former Vice President Dick Cheney. In his interview on Meet The Press, he didn't appear to be concerned we tortured innocent people.
Presumably, as Europeans are by definition not subject to American laws, they are not relevant to a case involving an American intelligence agency breaking American laws limiting American intelligence agencies' ability to spy on American citizens.
Because of course, spying on people outside one's own country is what intelligence agencies are supposed to do.
Europeans are by definition not subject to American laws
This isn't true.
"Richard O'Dwyer, a computing student at Sheffield Hallam University, faces a potential 10-year term in a US jail despite never having been to America or using web servers based in the country."
America as a nation has always been drawn taut between its interests - intelligence, military, economic, political and otherwise - and its ideals which clearly state that "all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights" which includes a right to a liberty which excludes suspicion-less search and seizure and a right to be secure in their persons.
Throughout the history of America we've seen the tension shift to one side of this rope or the other. through a series of Supreme Court decisions in the very early 1900's (during the Spanish American war) it was settled at the highest level that American occupied territories do not have a right to self-determination nor to many other constitutional rights. Today this is status quo.
Spying in enemies is, of course, expected behavior.
Spying on allies... is also expect, but there's a catch: you're not supposed to get caught. This might mean avoiding some types of spying that are too risky. As long as everybody uses spies "under the table" so nobody notice, it's hard to accuse each other of impropriety.
If a spy screws up badly and IS caught, it IS going to cause a scandal. Traditionally, this means the spying country is going to have to make some sort of gesture or reparation to patch over the relationship. In extreme cases this could be real payments of cash or goods (rarely, even letting the spy be tried in the foreign court). Modern realpolitik probably requires only a minor concession in a future trade agreement.
This isn't a law or treaty; failure to do something to amend the relationship simply leave the insult/animosity unresolved which is probably bad for future negotiations.
So yes, spying will happen on our European allies. We just weren't supposed to get caught at it. Now that we are, it's on us to patch over that relationship, if we care about the future of those relationships.
Europeans are not subject to American laws, but they would be if they stole something in the states, or they would expect to be protected by US police when visiting the states. Can someone with knowledge comment on how this applies to someone engaging in commercial relationship with a US citizen or corporation? I.e. is it fair to make the assumption in that case that their information in the context of that exchange is protected from espionage? If yes, do they have legal resource for breach in this trust or is the right only enforceable by the US citizen or corporation in this relationship?
I'm sure the EU governments each have a hand in the cookie jar as well. This isn't about state secrets as much as having an emotional and mental thermometer into the subjects of the elite. The machine must continue evolving and becoming more efficient in their conglomerate of corporations and their employees. Like many countries using microsoft software, I imagine they're all using Surveillance 1.0 SaaS from your very own US Government[0].
Individuals will be described to have violated the NSA's strict internal rules and snooped on their cheating spouse or whatever. One, two, three incidents. Look, we've come clean!
Not mentioned will be the wholesale storage of every communication of every American, which the NSA does not deem to be surveillance until they specifically search on your name while knowing you are an American.
This is pretty much the exact same playbook as we observed with Abu Ghraib. Rape rooms run by the government are NOT illegal; that's official US government rape, and covered by memos saying it is legal, so everything is fine. And if over 100 people are killed by U.S. official torture and rape, that too is just fine.
But if overenthusiastic PFCs make prisoners lay on top of each other and give a thumbs-up, that's an error that needs to be disclosed and heavily punished.
The idea in each case is to make the unobservant member of the public think that all the abuses have been disclosed, and they are minor, and the individuals responsible have been punished.