U.S. Spy Chiefs: Government Shutdown Threatens National Security (Updated)

Shutdown Makes U.S. More Vulnerable To Terrorist Attacks, Intelligence Officials Warn -- Washington Post

U.S. intelligence officials warned Wednesday that the government shutdown is making the nation more vulnerable to terrorist attacks and other security risks by forcing U.S. spy agencies to send tens of thousands of employees home.

Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. testified that the furloughs of civilian employees could have an “insidious” effect, degrading intelligence-gathering capabilities in ways that may not become fully clear for weeks or months.

Read more ....

More News On U.S. Spy Chiefs Warning That The Government Shutdown Will Threaten National Security

Intel chief: Shutdown threatens national security -- CBS
Intelligence chiefs deem shutdown 'insidious' danger to U.S. -- Reuters
Shutdown furloughs 70 percent of U.S. intelligence workers -- Washington Times
Fearing blind spots, U.S. spy agencies to recall some laid-off by shutdown -- Reuters
Intelligence head says cutting 'non-essential' CIA, NSA employees puts the country in danger -- The Verge
GOP senator: NSA furloughs ‘scared the hell out of us’ -- MSNBC

Previous Links Posted

Intelligence Chiefs: Shutdown Threatening National Security -- Wall Street Journal
Shutdown Jeopardizes National Security, Intelligence Officials Warn -- ABC News
Intelligence chiefs deem shutdown 'insidious' danger to U.S. -- Reuters
Clapper 'Can't Guarantee' America Will Remain Safe During the Shutdown -- The Atlantic
Clapper says shutdown damaging US spies’ ability to guard against threats -- Washington Post/AP
Intel chief: Shutdown threatens national security -- CBS
Government shutdown 'extremely damaging' to U.S. intelligence operations -- CNN
Furlough of 70% of Workers Damages U.S. Security, Spy Chief Says -- Bloomberg Businessweek
Intelligence Director James Clapper says shutdown hurts national security -- New York Daily News
70% of intelligence staff out in government shutdown -- Al Jazeera
US spy chief: Shutdown 'damaging' -- BBC
US Army and Intel. say shutdown already affecting operations, ‘damaging national security’ -- RT

Read More

The NSA's Massive Utah Data Center May Already Be Operating

New $1.5 Billion Utah NSA Data Center May Now Be Open -- Digital Journal

Salt Lake City - The new $1.5 billion National Security Agency complex in Bluffdale Utah is the most expensive building project in NSA history. You would think that there would be a grand opening with dozens of politicians claiming credit.
The center was supposed to be finished by September of this year. An article in the Salt Lake City Tribune claims that it may already be up and running without any announcement being made at all. Everything about the facility seems cloaked in secrecy and apparently that includes even when it is finished and started operations. As the Tribune article put it:

"Don’t look for balloons or a big "Grand Opening" sign outside the National Security Agency’s new Utah Data Center. "

The Deputy Director of the National Security Agency, John Inglis, did speak at the ground-breaking ceremony at Camp Williams, Thursday January 6, 2011. The Utah center is just one of six that the NSA operates. About 200 technicians are expected to work at the Utah center and there are NSA police who will guard the facility.

Read more ....

More News On The NSA's Utah Data Center

Amid spying scandal, billion-dollar NSA data center may secretly open -- RT
Is the NSA’s Massive Utah Data Center Online Now? -- The Blaze
Shhh … NSA’s Utah Data Center may be open already -- Salt Lake Tribune
Booting Up: New NSA Data Farm Takes Root In Utah -- NPR
NSA Utah Data Center: frequently asked questions -- Salt Lake Tribune

Read More

A US Government Shutdown Likely Won’t Slow The NSA’s Surveillance Activities

Reuters / Jason Reed

Shutting Down The US Government Likely Won’t Slow The NSA’s Surveillance Activities -- Alex Wilhelm, Tech Crunch

According to an unnamed government official speaking with The Hill, shutting down the U.S. government wouldn’t lead to the National Security Agency (NSA) halting its controversial, and broad surveillance efforts.

The United States may shut down in short order, due to political intransigence between the two chambers of Congress. Republicans want to defund the Affordable Care Act, while Senate Democrats and the president do not. It isn’t clear if there is a path forward that avoids a shutdown. Following that deadline, the United States must raise its debt ceiling to continue operations without defaulting. If you aren’t watching the politics, it’s time to catch up.

Read more ....

My Comment: It is when I am reading stories like this one that makes me wonder if the intelligence community is beyond government and the rules that it must abide by.

Read More

The NSA Spied On Muhammad Ali, Martin Luther King, U.S. Senators And Antiwar Protestors

A view from helicopter of the National Security Agency at Ft. Meade, Maryland, January 29, 2010. (Photo: Reuters/Larry Downing)

Secret Cold War Documents Reveal NSA Spied on Senators -- Foreign Policy

...along with Muhammad Ali, Martin Luther King, and a Washington Post humorist.

As Vietnam War protests grew, the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) tapped the overseas communications of prominent American critics of the war -- including a pair of sitting U.S. senators. That's according to a recently declassified NSA history, which called the effort "disreputable if not outright illegal."

For years the names of the surveillance targets were kept secret. But after a decision by the Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel, in response to an appeal by the National Security Archive at George Washington University, the NSA has declassified them for the first time. The names of the NSA's targets are eye-popping. Civil rights leaders Martin Luther King and Whitney Young were on the watch list, as were the boxer Muhammad Ali, New York Times journalist Tom Wicker, and veteran Washington Post humor columnist Art Buchwald. But perhaps the most startling fact in the declassified document is that the NSA was tasked with monitoring the overseas telephone calls and cable traffic of two prominent members of Congress, Sen. Frank Church (D-Idaho) and Sen. Howard Baker (R-Tenn.).

Read more ....

More News On The NSA Spying On Muhammad Ali, Martin Luther King, U.S. Senators And Antiwar Protestors

Declassified NSA files show agency spied on Muhammad Ali and MLK -- The Guardian
NSA bugged Martin Luther King and Muhammad Ali in a 'disreputable' Cold War surveillance program -- Daily Mail
Senators, Muhammad Ali, MLK and journalists landed on NSA watch list during Vietnam War -- NBC
Declassified documents show NSA listened in on MLK, Muhammad Ali and Art Buchwald -- Washington Post
Declassified Documents Reveal NSA Spying On Martin Luther King, Senators, And Journalists During Cold War -- Business Insider/AFP
Evidence NSA ‘illegally’ monitored anti-Vietnam dissidents, including journalists and two senators -- RT
Documents reveal NSA spied on Martin Luther King Jr -- Digital Journal
Why the NSA’s Vietnam-Era Watch List Is Still Relevant -- Caitlin Dickson, Daily Beast

Read More

Does The NSA Spy On Wall Street?

The Wall Street sign is seen outside the New York Stock Exchange, March 26, 2009. REUTERS/Chip East

Why Doesn’t NSA Spy On Wall Street? -- Michael Degerald, Salon

The government claims NSA conducts surveillance to avert financial crises. Seems like they have the wrong suspects.

Since early June when the first stories were released, we have seen a wave of leaked information drastically change our understanding of the United States government. Its activities in intelligence gathering have been shown to be much wider than previously thought; its relationships with major tech corporations have been shown to be much murkier and of a darker nature than was publicly known.

Its relationship with the people of the United States is on shaky ground — revelations have been met with untrue explanations time after time, each exposed as false by further leaks. One of the few things we can say for sure is that things are not as they have been presented to us, by Republicans or Democrats. More will be leaked, and it’s hard to imagine the nature of that information now.

Read more ....

My Comment: I would be shocked if they were not.

Read More

Is One Obscure 'Evil Genius' Engineer Responsible For The Enormous Growth Of The NSA?

Radomes stand on the former monitoring base of the U.S. intelligence organization National Security Agency (NSA) in Bad Aibling, near Rosenheim, southern Germany (Reuters / Michaela Rehle)

An Obscure 'Evil Genius' Engineer Was Instrumental To the NSA's Expansion -- Business Insider

An obscure engineer named James Heath has helped shape the NSA's information empire by serving as the right-hand man of NSA chief Keith Alexander, Shane Harris of Foreign Policy reports in an extensive profile on the four star general.

Several former intelligence officials described Heath, who has worked with Alexander since at least 1995, as the NSA director's "mad scientist" while another called him an "evil genius."

"He's smart, crazy, and dangerous," one former intelligence official told FP. "He'll push the technology to the limits to get it to do what he wants."

Read more ....

My Comment: I am very skeptical of this report. The NSA is a massive organization with thousands of employees .... no one person will have thta much influence .... even if he is close the the NSA Director. Then again .... for every King Arthur must there always be a Merlin ....hmmmm ....

Read More

A Replica Of The Starship Enterprise Bridge Was Used To Sell The NSA Surveillance Program To Congress

NSA Chief's Former War Room Was Modeled After The Starship Enterprise -- Gizmodo

NSA director Keith Alexander might be the most famous spy in America right now. Everyone wants to know who's really behind the agency's widespread snooping. And now, a lengthy profile of Alexander in Foreign Policy invites even more intrigue. It also reveals some of the general's weird ways.

The core questions raised about Alexander the "cowboy" in the FP story stem from revelations in Edward Snowden's leak of confidential NSA documents earlier this summer. "Cowboy" doesn't quite cut it, though. Alexander sounds a bit more eccentric than that:

When he was running the Army's Intelligence and Security Command, Alexander brought many of his future allies down to Fort Belvoir for a tour of his base of operations, a facility known as the Information Dominance Center. It had been designed by a Hollywood set designer to mimic the bridge of the starship Enterprise from Star Trek, complete with chrome panels, computer stations, a huge TV monitor on the forward wall, and doors that made a "whoosh" sound when they slid open and closed. Lawmakers and other important officials took turns sitting in a leather "captain's chair" in the center of the room and watched as Alexander, a lover of science-fiction movies, showed off his data tools on the big screen.

"Everybody wanted to sit in the chair at least once to pretend he was Jean-Luc Picard," says a retired officer in charge of VIP visits.

Read more ....

More News On The NSA Chief's Former War Room Being Modeled After The Starship Enterprise

NSA Chief Keith Alexander Used To Woo Politicians At A 'Star Trek' Command Center -- Business Insider
NSA chief’s intelligence center designed like Starship Enterprise -- Salon
Replica Enterprise bridge used to sell surveillance to Congress -- Boing Boing

My Comment: Having a war room modeled after the Starship Enterprise is weird .... but what is even more weirder is that it worked in wooing politicians to give the NSA even more authority and power.

Read More

A Look At The Man Who Runs The NSA

General Keith Alexander (Credit: Reuters/Yuri Gripas)

The Cowboy Of The NSA -- Foreign Policy

Inside Gen. Keith Alexander's all-out, barely-legal drive to build the ultimate spy machine.

On Aug. 1, 2005, Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander reported for duty as the 16th director of the National Security Agency, the United States' largest intelligence organization. He seemed perfect for the job. Alexander was a decorated Army intelligence officer and a West Point graduate with master's degrees in systems technology and physics. He had run intelligence operations in combat and had held successive senior-level positions, most recently as the director of an Army intelligence organization and then as the service's overall chief of intelligence. He was both a soldier and a spy, and he had the heart of a tech geek. Many of his peers thought Alexander would make a perfect NSA director. But one prominent person thought otherwise: the prior occupant of that office.

Read more ....

Update: Profile Of NSA Boss General Keith Alexander Reveals: He Wants All The Data, And He Doesn't Care About The Law -- Tech Dirt

My Comment: This is a comprehensive look at NSA chief Gen. Keith Alexander .... read it all.

Read More

The Definitive NSA Parody Site

The definitive NSA parody site.

The Definitive NSA Parody Site Is Actually Informative -- Forbes

When I was working on a story about how much information the NSA data center in Utah might actually hold, a colleague sent me a link to this site, suggesting that the NSA was actually pretty transparent about its plans in Bluffdale. The “nsa.gov1.info” site had maps and photos of the data center, an overview of the plan for the site, and a description of the equipment that would be used there, as well as links to relevant articles. While the site looks very much like the NSA’s and much of the information — as gleaned from news articles — is accurate, it’s a parody site that takes on the bureaucrasona of the fictional “Domestic Surveillance Directorate.”

What makes the site incredibly fun to read is its taking on the voice of an NSA that embraces the openness about domestic intelligence gathering brought on by the Snowden leaks. The shadowy, secretive agency finally gets to put its feet up and brag about what it’s doing to “secure the future.” (That, by the way, is the NSA’s real tagline.) The “Surveillance Strategies” section raves about PRISM giving the NSA “ important insights into [targets'] thoughts and intentions.” In a candid explanation about why “Your Data” is being collected, the site explains that it’s “ thanks to top-secret Fourth Amendment exceptions allowed by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.”

Read more ....

WNU Editor: The NSA parody site is here.

Read More

NSA’s Gen. Keith Alexander: U.S. Cyberwar Offense ‘Best In The World’

Photo: General Keith B. Alexander. Wikipedia

U.S. Cyberwar Offense ‘Best In The World’: NSA’s Gen. Keith Alexander -- Washington Times

The United States has the best offensive military capacity in cyberspace of any nation, the head of the agency at the center of a domestic spying scandal said in congressional testimony published Monday.

Gen. Keith B. Alexander, director of the National Security Agency and commander of U.S. Cyber Command, said, “We believe our [cyber] offense is the best in the world.”

His comments came in answers to questions from a March 2013 hearing of the House Armed Services Committee

Gen. Alexander said the United States maintains a “deep, persistent and pervasive presence on adversary [computer] networks.”

Read more ....

Update #1: NSA director told lawmakers US has 'best' cyber offense, but adversaries catching up -- The Verge
Update #2: US Cyber Offense is “The Best in the World” -- Secrecy News

My Comment:  Talk about thumping your chest .... especially after the latest Edward Snowden's NSA revelations.

Read More

NSA whistleblower Bill Binney advocates dismantling spy agency through defunding, August 26, 2013

Source: RT.com, whistleblower.org



This weekend the NSA made headlines once again. According to a report by The Wall Street Journal, there are multiple cases of the agency employees using resources to spy on their love interests. Also German media accused the NSA of spying on United Nations officials. As more and more details about NSA activities become public, people start questioning whether they want to fund questionable spying operations with their tax dollars. Whistleblower Bill Binney joins us for more on the latest developments. -RT.com

Read More

Using The NSA To Spy On Your 'Love Interests'

An undated aerial handout photo shows the National Security Agency (NSA) headquarters building in Fort Meade, Md.. Reuters

NSA Officers Sometimes Spy On Love Interests -- Wall Street Journal

WASHINGTON—National Security Agency officers on several occasions have channeled their agency’s enormous eavesdropping power to spy on love interests, U.S. officials said.

The practice isn’t frequent — one official estimated a handful of cases in the last decade — but it’s common enough to garner its own spycraft label: LOVEINT.

Spy agencies often refer to their various types of intelligence collection with the suffix of “INT,” such as “SIGINT” for collecting signals intelligence, or communications; and “HUMINT” for human intelligence, or spying.

The “LOVEINT” examples constitute most episodes of willful misconduct by NSA employees, officials said.

Read more ....

My Comment: NSA officials "sometimes" spy on their love interests ?!?!?! .... I suspect that such behavior happens more than what they are admitting.

Read More

NSA Spying is Nothing New

Image: The cover of book two of the Church Committee’s 1976 final report on intelligence activities. (U.S. Senate)

How The NSA Spied On Americans Before The Internet -- Caitlin Dewey, Washington Post

In May 1984 — an apt year for columns about “Big Brother” — The Post’s Michael Schrage warned of a future in which the government could snoop on unsuspecting citizens by subpoenaing their floppy discs. Personal computers were new, expensive and not particularly common; the first dot-com domain wasn’t even registered until the following year.

“In a very real way, your personal computer can be a warehouse of private information about you. It can be as revealing to others as Orwell’s telescreen was to Big Brother,” Schrage wrote of the new technology. “He can access the personal computer to find out what’s going on. Be careful.”

Read more ....

My Comment: The more things change .... the more that they stay the same .... but with better technology.

Read More

'Truly secure email service impossible in US' - Lavabit owner, August 22, 2013

Source: RT.com



The owner of the now-shuttered encrypted email service used by Edward Snowden told RT that he will continue to defend online security free of government surveillance, hopefully with success in courts or a possible move of his company overseas. Read more at: RT.com

Read More

Govts threats to journos 'signalling rise of fascism' - WikiLeaks, August 20, 2013

Source: RT.com



The Guardian's editor Alan Rusbridger said that UK authorities raided the paper's London office to destroy hard drives in a bid to stop further damaging publications. He also said that intelligence officials from the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) had told him that he had the option of handing over all the classified documents or seeing the newspaper's hard drives destroyed. For more RT talks to WikiLeaks spokesperson, Kristinn Hrafnsson. Read more at: RT.com

Read More

NSA Violated Surveillance Rules Thousands of Times, Intercepted All 202 Area Code Calls By Accident, August 16, 2013

Source: democracynow.org



The Washington Post has revealed the National Security Agency has broken privacy rules or overstepped its legal authority thousands of times each year since Congress granted the agency broad new powers in 2008. According to an NSA audit from May 2012 leaked by Edward Snowden, there were 2,776 incidents in the preceding 12 months of unauthorized collection, storage, access to or distribution of legally protected communications.

In one case, the NSA intercepted a "large number" of calls placed from Washington when a programming error confused the U.S. area code 202 for 20, the international dialing code for Egypt. The audit only counted violations committed at the NSA's Fort Meade headquarters and other facilities in the Washington area. We speak to Alex Abdo of the American Civil Liberties Union. -democracynow.org

Read More

How Big Is The NSA's Data Haul?

The NSA's Data Haul Is Bigger Than You Can Possibly Imagine -- Matthew M. Aid, Foreign Policy

And so are its mistakes.

The electronic spies at the National Security Agency have tried lately to play down the amount of Internet traffic they inspect -- and play up how central that monitoring is to stopping terrorist attacks. Neither one of those arguments is entirely true. Yes, the NSA claimed in a recently released white paper that it "touches" only 1.6 percent of the planet's online data, but the agency neglected to note that this is roughly equivalent to the Library of Congress's entire textual collection, inspected 2,990 times every day. And sure, the NSA's Internet surveillance has been instrumental in some counterterrorism operations. But this analysis of online communications has also been central to U.S. spying on places like Syria, Libya, China, and Iran.

Read more ....

My Comment: An excellent summary on the NSA's data collection efforts. This is one of those"must reads".

Read More

RT | After Snowden leaks NSA replaces people with computers, August 15, 2013

Source: RT.com



Late last week, President Obama addressed the NSA's surveillance program leaks and declared a thorough review of the agency's operations before Edward Snowden leaked the information to The Guardian, but now the NSA is going to fire 90 percent of its system administrators to minimize the number of people who have access to sensitive classified information. RT's Meghan Lopez has more. -RT.com

Read More

Is This The NSA's Organization Chart?

The National Security Agency headquarters building in Fort Meade, Md. NSA/Reuters

What The NSA’s Massive Org Chart (Probably) Looks Like -- Marc Ambinder, Defense One

Want to understand how an organism really works? Take a look at its plumbing. Figure out where the pipes fit together. That’s the approach I take to national security and that’s the spirit behind this look at the structure of one of the most important institutions in U.S. intelligence: the National Security Agency.

Some intelligence organizations, such as the National Reconnaissance Office and the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, have declassified most of their organizational charts. The NRO develops, launches and controls spy satellites; the NGA analyzes and distribute imagery. For these agencies, the plumbing matters less than what flows through the pipes, which is highly classified.

Read more ....

My Comment: A well done chart .... and probably very close to the original

Read More

RT | Kerry On Damage Control: NSA spying under fire in Latin America, August 13, 2013

Source: RT.com



The massive NSA snooping revelations have cast a shadow over John Kerry's trip to Latin America - his first visit there since he assumed the position of Secretary of State. He has already received a chilly reception in Colombia - where officials demanded an explanation to reports that Washington had collected vast amounts of internet data there. The next stop on his trip is Brazil - which allegedly was the top regional target of the surveillance program. For more perspective RT talks to geopolitical analyst Eric Draitser. -RT.com

Read More