;)
Tuesday
Aug272013
Forewarned Is Forearmed
I posted this in yesterday's Commentariat:
Laura Poitras,et al., in Der Spiegel: "President Obama promised that NSA surveillance activities were aimed exclusively at preventing terrorist attacks. But secret documents from the intelligence agency show that the Americans spy on Europe, the UN and other countries." The documents come from Edward Snowden. CW: First, Obama did not "promise" that the NSA wouldn't spy on other countries. He was talking about specific NSA programs that target terrorists in the cited remark. No one in the world thinks that the U.S. limits its spying to Al Qaeda & Friends. Second and more important, exactly how is Patriot Snowden (not to mention Poitras, who is a U.S. citizen, too) helping the U.S. public by revealing E.U. building floor plans obtained from the NSA? Are Americans shocked, shocked, that their government wants to know what other governments are saying? This whole article is infuriating crap.
I didn't think I needed to explain more, but this comment from contributor cowichan suggests I do:
UN spokesman Farhan Haq commenting on disclosure of US hacking "The inviolability of diplomatic missions, including the UN and other international organizations, whose functions are protected by the relevant international conventions like the Vienna Convention has been well-established international law."
Vienna Convention: 'A host country cannot search diplomatic premises or seize its documents or property. Host government must permit and protect free communication between diplomats of the mission and their home country'
Deutsche Welle: 'The alleged spying activities are illegal. The US has a long standing agreement with the UN stipulating that the US refrain from covert operations with regards to the UN's activities.' Obama, August 9: "And to others around the world, I want to make clear once again that America is not interested in spying on ordinary people. Our intelligence is focused on finding the information that's necessary to protect our people and, in many cases, protect our allies."
To be honest I would think most people would not consider diplomats to be 'ordinary people' like mechanics or house wives but does Obama really agree with Bolton that the UN and its black helicopters are a legitimate threat to the US? I would expect that the EU mission to the UN qualifies for the same theoretical guarantees of freedom from spying given to the UN itself.
Let's take those one at a time:
UN spokesman Farhan Haq commenting on disclosure of US hacking "The inviolability of diplomatic missions, including the UN and other international organizations, whose functions are protected by the relevant international conventions like the Vienna Convention has been well-established international law."
Peter Grier of the Christian Science Monitor: “'We’ve always assumed that this kind of thing goes on,' IAEA spokesman Mark Gwozdecky told the Post in 2004. 'We wish it were otherwise, but we know the reality.'” … Of course, one reason the US might be interested in spying on the UN is because other nations have used it as a place to assign spies with diplomatic cover.” Grier goes on to list some examples of cases in which Soviet or Russian spies used the U.N. as a base of operations. Feel assured that Europeans are doing the same. I recall reading years ago that at least some of the Concorde “flight attendants” were French spies. The “outrage” you heard from various E.U. spokespeople yesterday was pro forma.
Vienna Convention: 'A host country cannot search diplomatic premises or seize its documents or property. Host government must permit and protect free communication between diplomats of the mission and their home country'
This is apparently a reference to the 1961 Vienna Convention. AP: “... wiretapping and eavesdropping have been rampant for decades, most dramatically between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War.”
CBS/AP: “In Washington, a statement from the national intelligence director's office said U.S. officials planned to respond to the concerns with their EU counterparts and through diplomatic channels with specific nations. However, 'as a matter of policy, we have made clear that the United States gathers foreign intelligence of the type gathered by all nations,' the statement concluded.”
Deutsche Welle: 'The alleged spying activities are illegal. The US has a long standing agreement with the UN stipulating that the US refrain from covert operations with regards to the UN's activities.'
See AP reports above.
Obama, August 9: "And to others around the world, I want to make clear once again that America is not interested in spying on ordinary people. Our intelligence is focused on finding the information that's necessary to protect our people and, in many cases, protect our allies."
No, diplomat-spies whom we are “hosting” at the U.N. are not “ordinary people.”
… does Obama really agree with Bolton that the UN and its black helicopters are a legitimate threat to the US?
See, the U.N. is made up of many, many countries. It is not really “united.” And every single one of those other countries has unique interests – interests that differ and often are at odds with ours. So we like to watch. And, yes, many of those countries – including our erstwhile friends – do pose threats to the U.S., if not existential threats.
If I can do one good & true thing this week, it will be to explain to a few starry-eyed idealists that spying on our friends & enemies alike is a legitimate and necessary function of the federal government. Rather than being “shocked, shocked that there's spying going on here,” we should damned well hope so.
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Reader Comments (26)
@Marie: Exactly. If you don't think our friends spy on us, AND the UN, you're hopelessly naive. Spying on other countries has been going on since the founding of the US, and probably before that. Do you really think that we don't have agents in our UN delegation? Maybe it shouldn't be that way, but it is.
To quote Lord Palmerston again: "Nations have no permanent friends [or enemies] only permanent interests."
Amen! There's nothing like a little (or a lot of) spying to ruffle the feathers of those that believe in cozy comrades that see eye to eye on all the important issues of the day and would gladly compromise themselves because they dig you big time. Old Lord Palmerston had it exactly right and so is Marie who says we should be damned glad the big eye is working well.
Would you defend these surveillance programs if they were being overseen by Bush or Romney? Answer honestly.
Furthermore, just because we possess the technical capability, and assuming for the sake of argument that there is nothing illegal about the NSA's spying at home and abroad, does not mean that we will not pay a price in the views the world holds about us when we spy on whomever we please.
I assume you have no objection to China,N. Korea, Iran, Syria, Israel, or any other friend or foe de jour spying on us to protect their interests. That's just reality, right?
@Lou: The answers to your questions are so obvious that I would hope the questions are rhetorical. In case you are a fool, I'll answer them:
Q: "Would you defend these surveillance programs if they were being overseen by Bush or Romney? Answer honestly."
A: Of course.
Q: "I assume you have no objection to China,N. Korea, Iran, Syria, Israel, or any other friend or foe de jour spying on us to protect their interests. That's just reality, right?"
A: I expect the intelligence agencies of all governments to do their jobs to the best of their abilities. I expect U.S. agencies to do their best to minimize the effectiveness of foreign spying.
Marie
Nice job personalizing your response to Lou.
@Lou: No. We expect whoever is in office to look out for our interests.
So touchy, be proud CW you are a true authoritarian. Congratulations.
I think these programs stunk when GWB was at the helm and stink even worse with our current "constitutional scholar" president.
Luckily, there are some real journalists working on these issues and brave individuals like Manning and Snowden to reveal our government's misdeeds.
@Lou: Surely you don't think Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, G. H. W. Bush, and Clinton didn't do the same? Presidents inherit the apparatus that exists. They may fine tune it and discontinue some parts of it, but they seldom, if ever, scrap it. The world is too dangerous.
Re: @Lou
And they have been doing one helluva job these past dozen years. From Wall Street to Waziristan those in office have been doing one helluva job.
Re: His Master's voice; "our interests." @ Barbarossa, There's the rub; if our interests are the interests of global multi-nationals seeking to suck every penny of profit from the earth's diminishing natural resources and to driving the wages of the ever increasing labor pool down to a minus daily bread pittance; our interests are well guarded.
If, on the other paw, our interests were more in line with a fair exchange of global goods and services and our interests understood the balance of nature and had an historical understanding of empires past; maybe our interests would not have to be so invasive.
Greed has captured our nation and the corn syrup of greed is ignorance. We have interests but without a honorable structure "our interests" may not be in our best interests.
Hope you are doing OK; I know you have a tough duty. JJG
@Lou. Oh. You are a fool. My mistake. Now, if you'll excuse me, I must get back to practicing my goosesteps & perfecting my straight-armed salute to James Clapper.
Marie
@JJG: It was ever thus: T quote General Smedley D. Butler: “I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.”
― Smedley D. Butler
And back in the days of the Robber Barons, delivering bags of cash to their pet Congress Critters was common.
@Lou: I urgently need that list of "real journalists" so I can be more
informed. Are they by any chance employed by Fox News? If so,
I'm missing out on lots of important reporting. Thanks.
What a discussion today! I find myself saying: "Yes but...."
Of course we need to look out for our interests at home and
abroad, but I agree with JIG that the issue of "our interests" and
what we are looking out FOR is very disturbing. I, too, wish
our government--all governments--had more interest in saving,
rather than exploiting, natural resources. And for truly helping the
poor--focusing (with the cooperation of other nations and all
of their spies) on dealing with the issue of world hunger. I
have long wished that our military would be more concerned with
waging peace than with waging war. That is not to be--with any military. And it is no accident that our most serious worldwide problems are, IMHO, power and greed. We are Empire! This will not change in our lifetimes, and we are on the path to making this sad little world uninhabitable for all--with help from most other countries and their power-seeking leaders. Oh....left out the role of religion--and religious civil wars. Yikes!
But I digress.......
No one in this world expects the US to let law or morality come between it and expediency. If you honestly suspect Great Britain or France or Germany to be plotting the downfall of the US then you are even more paranoid than I thought. Spying against allies serves not the security of the US but its commercial interests and that, in the long run, threatens its security. Why do you sign treaties and accords which you have no intention of following? Treating the world as though it consisted of 195 North Koreas is not in the interest of the US. You do realize what you sound like when you complain about Chinese hacking.
Thanks to Marie for thoughtful treatment of this hot potato. Missing from most NSA/CIA/FBI discussions is the relation of surveillance to the Fourth Amendment. Much, maybe most of what is gleaned would not be useful in a criminal prosecution, for which the bar is rightfully high with respect to probable cause, warrants, etc. Were a piece of warrantless intelligence to prove useful for preventing a crime, the worst case with respect to prosecution would be a wash: successful preemption but no conviction. If we had caught the 09/11 guys before the act and had to send them back to Saudi Arabia without a trial, so what? We would still have the WTC and those 3000+ lives. The graver issues are 1, whether rogue employees or, worse, contractors, engage in some freelance work for their entertainment or ambitions and 2, whether the huge budget these agencies consume are getting us our money's worth. I have the feeling, without much data, that they are morbidly obese with some internal organ failure, as often happens when oversight is lax which, in this case, may owe to excess paranoia over terrorism amongst a slice of our lawmakers constituencies. For perspective, let's remember how Hoover went after Dr. King, and the Dies Commission after all them pinkos.
@cowichan wrote: " If you honestly suspect Great Britain or France or Germany to be plotting the downfall of the US then you are even more paranoid than I thought." This comment does not seem to be tethered to any comment anyone made here on this site, so I don't know who "you" is.
@cowichan: "You do realize what you sound like when you complain about Chinese hacking." Ditto.
Hypothesizing what some imaginary person might say, then dissing the imaginary writer, does not in any way contribute to a conversation about a highly-controversial, nuanced topic.
Marie
Marie
It is with sadness that, after following you very faithfully for several years, I disagree with your position on a political issue. In fact, it is thru your links that I first learned of Glenn Greenwald, and I have always been grateful to you for having pointed me in his direction. Your argument may be correct--perhaps we do need to spy on the UK or France. But what about spying on American citizens? In my view, you are too ready to throw the baby out with the bath water. I am curious to ask you: what is your response to the whole picture? Do you think Americans are better off as a result of Snowden's leaks? Many of your posts suggest you think Americans are worse off. What about Bradley Manning? Do you not agree that learning about US war crimes was worth the costs of diplomatic embarrassment (and possibly even some loss of life)? Perhaps you and I finally do disagree. And I won't stop following you for that reason, but I am disappointed.
@Whyte Owen: Quite right on all counts. The Snowden leaks & subsequent reporting raise a number of legitimate issues, not the least of which is how a low-level contractor was able to access reams & reams of highly-classified documents, copy them to thumb drives, then waltz out of what should be one of the most secure facilities in the nation with a pocketful of said drives. This is, after all, a high-tech version of Sandy Berger's trying to exit the National Archives with classified docs stuffed in his underwear. Differences: Berger had been a high-level official who appears to have had a legitimate reason to access the particular documents he stole (he was preparing for testimony before the 9/11 Commission). AND he got caught.
But the subject of my post today is something that I don't find controversial at all: that the U.S. spies on officials from other countries.
Some commenters have brought up the issue of just what kind of spying they're doing, and I agree that we're probably wasting a helluva lot of taxpayer dollars effectively spying for General Electric & General Motors. That would be something worth investigating, but neither Congress nor the administration is going to put the brakes on that because, as Barbarossa pointed out, our "watchdogs" get a piece of the action.
Marie
It's 3:30 P.M. Appears that the New York Times on-line is down. AGAIN. Or am I the only one experiencing this? Haven't seen word that the NYTimes is 'doing regular maintenance' as they claimed they were the last tinme—no reporting on other sites (Huff Post, NY magazine, etc.) Very strange. Hackers?
@Sue Model: Thanks for commenting. But here's the kind of remark that aggravates me: " But what about spying on American citizens?"
Nowhere in my commentary did I condone or hint of condoning spying on American citizens. Yet you've conflated two entirely different activities: (1) spying on officials of other countries -- the topic of my post -- & (2) spying on ordinary Americans.
My response to the whole picture is that it is apparent the NSA frequently violates several Bill of Rights Amendments. Members of Congress knows this & should have known it before any of Snowden's leaks was published. Evidently Congressmen were too busy dialing for dollars to take the time to protect Americans from their own government's excesses. They should amend the applicable laws (e.g., the Patriot Act) & take measures to gain better oversight of the NSA. Even if they do, of course, "mistakes will be made."
To answer another of your questions, so far it isn't clear that "Americans are better off as a result of Snowden's leaks." He appears to have done more damage than he has helped Americans understand what the government is doing in their names. Of course, part of the fault for that lies with the President, the NSA director & some members of Congress, who have made some untruthful statements to the public about the scope of the NSA's activities. The usefulness of the Snowden leaks is that they forced Congress to pay attention, at least for a while.
We're worse off if Snowden's leaks produce the negative reactions that they potentially can -- terrorists find more secure ways to communicate, other governments & international institutions better protect themselves from our snooping, people in other countries hate us more, etc.
I find it very troubling that people with the lack of judgment of Laura Poitras & David Miranda are running around the world carrying material that even Glenn Greenwald has acknowledged is too sensitive to publish. That is all Snowden's doing. What he did was drop this stuff on a now-expanding group of journalists & told them to decide what the public should know & what to withhold. You don't have to be too smart to see the flaw in that plan. I find it even more troubling that Snowden has traveled to China & Russia with this sensitive material & offers the laughable assurances that Chinese &/or Russian spies have no possible way to get hold of the information he's holding. He's LIVING in Russia, ya know. What can be encrypted can be decrypted.
I don't think Manning's leaks were especially helpful. The one leak that we probably should have learned directly -- the killings of innocent civilians & two journalists by an Apache crew -- is ambiguous. The video itself is highly disturbing & pretty damning, but as contributor Patrick & some journalists like Mark Thompson of Time have pointed out, it doesn't tell the whole story. The "Afghan war logs," according to expert reporters, did not expose anything -- in general -- that they did not already know & had not already reported. The "Iraq war logs" may have been a little more useful in that they did implicate U.S. military personnel for at least being complicit in war crimes by turning over prisoners to Iraqis whom they knew would torture the prisoners. So, yeah, you could call that "war crimes." The bulk of Manning's leaks were diplomatic gossip, and we don't need to know what the U.S. Ambassador to Whatzitstan thinks about the petty tyrant who runs Whatzitstan.
So all in all, the leaks were mistakes. And they don't just embarrass the U.S.: they embarrass the countries & institutions who are the subjects of our spying. The biggest loseers in the Iraq war logs were Iraqis, ferinstance.
I know it's easy to read Greenwald & get at least half as lathered up as he does. And there's no doubt he & others have exposed some government abuses in this administration & the last. We should be grateful for that. But try to bear in mind that some of Glenn's histrionics are just that.
Marie
@cowichan's opinion
"If you honestly suspect Great Britain or France or Germany to be plotting the downfall of the US then you are even more paranoid than I thought.....Treating the world as though it consisted of 195 North Koreas is not in the interest of the US."
Besides reiterating Marie's comment, easy on the absurd hyperbole. You seriously believe that the US views Canada in the same light as North Korea just because it's a foreign nation? If that were the case the US would have doubled its territory long ago.
The act of espionage consists in serving multiple layers of national interest all at once. Preserving national sovereignty obviously ranks on the top, but it is far from a simple one level game: destroy or be destroyed.
So no, the US government is far from worried about the French plotting our downfall, but you do realize what you sound like when you make those accusations...?
What Marie said clearly and repeatedly. I wish that the lather generated over the Snowden leaks would be at least matched by outrage over the all out suppression of voter rights. The suppression of voter rights, fomented by Republicans and supported by the Supreme Court is as in-your-face as a turd on the table during Sunday dinner. There is no question of the motivation for the suppression of voter rights. The Snowden motivation, the results of the document dumps, and the integrity of all those involved in the saga can be debated. The goal of voter suppression is disenfranchisement, boom, period.The prospect of people losing their voter rights should create spontaneous combustion all around. If the vote is compromised, the rest of it is moot.
Excuse me, I am going to shout: WHAT DIANE SAID.
That said....WHAT MARIE SAID.
I have nothing important to add - just sort of a gossipy aside. I heard a BBC interview with Miranda. He sounded like a dolt.
'Do you honestly suspect Great Britain or...' comes from Marie's 'spying on our friends and enemies alike is a legitimate and necessary function' which obviously divides the world into 2 factions; them and us. Or am I missing some subtle gradation from Niue good, minimal espionage required to North Korea bad, maximum effort required. From the response I gather spying to Americans is so ubiquitous that no offense is implied. ie we spy on 312,000,000 fellow Americans so get used to it. I would point out that spying on fellow Americans is, or is intended to be, in compliance with laws and regulations while bugging the UN and embassies is in contravention of same.
Count me among the readers disappointed with Marie here (whose work I admire a lot otherwise). I totally agree with cowichan who based his comments on "Marie's 'spying on our friends and enemies alike is a legitimate and necessary function'". Alliances need trust to function; in the long run, the bully who thinks he can break treaties (like the one regarding the seat of the UN) at will will lose the allies' trust.