Category Archives: Government

Government, National Security

The National Security Agency’s XKeyscore…

U.S. INTELLIGENCE

The Guardian Newspaper, a London based broadsheet, has reported that intelligence analysts can conduct surveillance by giving only a ‘broad justification’ by filling in an on-screen form through a system known as XKeyscore. No review is needed either by a court or National Security Agency Staff.

Following disclosures made by the US fugitive and whistleblower, Edward Snowden, that U.S. intelligence agencies collected data on phone calls and other communications of Americans and foreign citizens as a tool to fight terrorism, those revelations have sparked uproar in the United States, Britain and other foreign countries.

America’s National Security Agency (NSA) has called XKeyscore ‘a lawful foreign signals intelligence collection system’. In a statement to the Guardian following the newspaper’s report the agency said it was ‘false’ its collection is arbitrary and unconstrained. Intelligence analysts insist the surveillance programs have helped to thwart terrorist attacks and have saved many lives.

Opposition to the sweeping surveillance has been gaining traction in Congress, despite intense arguments and lobbying on behalf of the intelligence agencies’ from the Obama administration, congressional leaders and members of the House of Representatives and Senate Intelligence Committees.President Obama will meet with U.S. lawmakers today to discuss programs under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. This follows a grilling yesterday of intelligence officials by the Senate Judiciary Committee about their data gathering, the lack of transparency and security lapses that allowed Snowden to get away with so much information.

Two Democratic members of the committee, Senators Al Franken and Richard Blumenthal, said they would introduce legislation to force the Obama administration to provide more information about the data collection programs, including how many Americans’ records were reviewed by federal agents. A covert NSA programme allows analysts to search with no prior authorisation through vast databases.

Senator Franken said: “The government has to give proper weight to both keeping America safe from terrorists and protecting Americans’ privacy.”

Last week, the House defeated by a narrow 217-205 margin a bill that would have cut funding of the NSA program that collects the phone records. Strong support for the measure – bolstered by an unlikely alliance of liberal Democrats and libertarian Republicans – surprised many observers.

Snowden, who has been charged under the U.S. Espionage Act and had his passport revoked, left Hong Kong more than a month ago and is stuck in limbo at a Moscow airport while seeking asylum in Russia, which has refused to extradite him.

Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy, the committee chairman, said: “If a 29-year-old school dropout could come in and take out massive amounts of data, it’s obvious there weren’t adequate controls… has anybody been fired?”

John Inglis, the NSA’s deputy director, said no one had been dismissed and no one had offered to resign.

This week, the director of national intelligence has released three declassified documents in the ‘interest of increased transparency.’ They explained the bulk collection of phone data – one of the secret programs revealed by Snowden.

Much of what is in the newly declassified documents has already been divulged in public hearings by intelligence officials. The released documents included 2009 and 2011 reports on the NSA’s ‘Bulk Collection Program,’ carried out under the U.S. Patriot Act, the anti-terrorism legislation passed shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

They also included an April 2013 order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which directed communications company Verizon to hand over data from millions of Americans’ telephone calls. The declassified documents said the data would only be used when needed for authorised searches.

The 2009 report states: “Although the programs collect a large amount of information, the vast majority of that information is never reviewed by anyone in the government, because the information is not responsive to the limited queries that are authorised for intelligence purposes.”

But the secret NSA slide show from 2008, posted by the Guardian on its website, showed that XKeyscore allowed analysts to access databases that collect and index online activity around the world, including searching for email addresses, extracted files, phone numbers or chat activity.

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Government, Intelligence, Military, National Security, United States

Bradley Manning and the US court-martial verdict…

BRADLEY MANNING

The US military court ruling on finding the WikiLeaks whistleblower Bradley Manning guilty of espionage (but not of aiding the enemy) shows a proportionate sense of perspective after one of the most turbulent episodes in recent US judicial history.

In a highly emotive summing up by the prosecutor, Major Ashden Fein, claimed that Manning was ‘a determined soldier with the ability, knowledge and desire to harm the United States.’ He was not a whistleblower, but a traitor… and Manning had, said Major Fein, ‘general evil intent.’

Nobody ever suggested that this young and disillusioned soldier had deliberately sent military secrets to Al-Qaeda, but the court-martial ruling has proved ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’ that his voluntary actions to disclose more than 700,000 documents would ‘lead to them being in the hands of the enemy.’

Manning was responsible for the largest leaking of classified information in US history. His actions sent shockwaves through America’s military and political establishments, but undoubtedly their response to his actions was part of the US mindset that materialised after 9/11 in policies such as extraordinary rendition, waterboarding and events that have transpired since at Guantanamo Bay.

The presiding judge over Bradley Manning’s court-martial, Judge Colonel Denise Lind, struck a very different note saying that the policies of the George W Bush presidency which were responsible have been reversed. Whilst that does hold some credence, the malign consequences linger on, including the compulsion in the United States to silence those, like Manning, who discovered that the exercise of American power on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan was significantly different from the way it was advertised back home.

In many ways a dichotomy has been exposed. American claims of fostering a culture of free information have often been inflated, and its media have certainly failed to take full advantage of those freedoms they did possess. But the high collision of President Bush’s ‘war on terror’ with the explosion of information released by the internet – which WikiLeaks came to symbolise – created in America a national mood of paranoia reminiscent of Stalinism. President Obama’s attempts to cool that feverish atmosphere is slowly being achieved with the winding down of military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Washington’s refusal so far to countenance any large-scale involvement in Syria or Iran.

While both Bradley Manning and the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange were guilty of recklessly flooding media outlets with secret and classified information with little concern for what has subsequently happened to the people who had been named, their underhand dealings enabled many to learn about atrocities committed by the US military which otherwise would have been covered up for ever.

Governments and their military establishments are known in wanting to keep their dirty secrets to themselves, but we should also know they must not be allowed to. Freedom of information is one of the cornerstones of democracy, and whistleblowers just happen to be a vital component to the functioning of societies that aspire to be free. Reconciling that to the authority of their rulers will always throw up issues perfectly witnessed in the court-martial of Bradley Manning.

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Britain, Environment, Government

Energy firms heavily criticised by MPs on the Energy and Climate Change Committee…

ENERGY FIRMS SLAMMED

A major report by MPs has warned that swingeing green stealth levies on energy bills are ‘perverse’ and should be scrapped.

MPs also call for middle-class pensioners to lose their winter fuel allowance, with the savings redirected to help low-income households insulate their homes.

They have also attacked the regulator OFGEM for failing to hold giant energy firms to account for soaring prices.

The findings were delivered in a report by the Commons energy and climate change committee, which warns that, based on Government estimates, green levies will add a third to electricity prices by 2020 – even before likely rises in wholesale prices are factored in.

The Government has been accused of using stealth taxes to fund the huge subsidies given to green energy firms. These are needed, ministers say, to meet controversial carbon reduction targets set by the last government.

But MPs on the Commons energy and climate committee have warned that most families have no idea that the green energy drive is costing them dear. Their report states:

… There is no widespread understanding by consumers of how much of their bills is made up of levies.

The average family pays £1,267 towards energy bills, with £112 comprising green taxes – £18 of which is directly spent on subsidising giant wind farms. By 2020 the contribution will have increased by more than 150 per cent, with each household estimated to pay £286 as part of their bills, according to the Department for Energy and Climate Change.

The committee’s report also says:

… Increasing use of levies on bills to fund energy and climate policies is problematic since it is likely to hit hardest those least able to pay.

MPs on the committee suggested that if the green subsidies are to continue they should be funded through the tax system which is more transparent and ‘less regressive than the levies’.

The report questions the repeated claims by ministers that families will see lower bills as a result of Government policies, which include measures to promote energy efficiency. The committee is calling on ministers to start an ‘honest conversation’ about the fact that energy bills are highly likely to continue to rise.

Since 2007, average prices of gas and electricity have increased by 41 per cent – 20 per cent in real terms – leaving millions of households in ‘fuel poverty’. MPs warned that the public’s ‘deep mistrust’ of energy providers will continue unless they show greater transparency and reassure households that high prices are not fuelling excessive profits.

The Renewable Energy Foundation, a think tank, says there is little or nothing to be said in favour of energy bill levies. They hurt the poor most, they reduce competition in the energy markets and make supplier-switching less effective. The Energy Foundation says that because the levies camouflage government taxation they reduce democratic accountability.

Green taxes account for nearly 10 per cent of energy bills. They include an EU-imposed levy on industry and power generators for each tonne of carbon dioxide emitted, the cost of which is then passed on to consumers.

Customers also cover the cost of energy companies’ obligation to source more electricity from costly renewable sources – such as offshore wind farms and biofuel, to reduce fossil fuel use – and the requirement for suppliers to install free or subsidised heat saving measure, such as loft insulation or draught-proofing.

Whilst David Cameron has ruled out any change to the winter fuel allowance before the election in 2015, the report by MPs re-opens the debate over whether better-off pensioners should continue to receive the payment which is worth up to £300 a year. The cross-party committee is urging ministers to introduce ‘better targeting of the winter fuel allowance through means-testing’ and to consider ‘how savings could be used to boost investment in energy efficiency programmes’.

MPs also said they were ‘disappointed at OFGEM’s slow progress’ in forcing the energy giants to reveal how much they are making from household bills.

The regulator must ‘use its teeth’ and force energy firms to explain the reasons behind price rises, the report says.

Energy firms were also criticised for ‘falling far short of what is required to increase transparency’ as well as failing to improve consumer trust.

But Energy Secretary Ed Davey has rejected the suggestion that ministers were misleading the public over the impact of green measures on bills. He said:

… Our policies to support renewable energy and reduce energy waste are insulating consumers from the rising cost of fossil fuels.

… And by 2020, our analysis shows household energy bills will on average be £166 lower than they would if we did nothing.

COMMENT

After years of relentless price rises, families across Britain are already struggling to pay electric and gas bills which, on average, include £112 in green taxes and levies.

Yet, as Westminster’s climate and energy committee has warned, this crisis is to get much worse – with the value of these ‘perverse’ levies rocketing by 150 per cent between now and 2020.

On countless occasions, government ministers and supine regulators have promised they will force energy companies to introduce simplified, easily comparable tariffs and bills the public can readily understand.

Yet still the obfuscation goes on. As utility charges soar – along with profits for the Big Six – customers remain saddled with indecipherable bills that leave them dumbfounded over whether they are getting the best deal. Charitable organisations, including the Citizen’s Advisory Service, are receiving record numbers of calls from desperate households struggling with debts, after energy bills have rocketed by as much as 40 per cent in real terms since 2007.

And with yet more increases threatened on top of the 11 per cent so far this year, those on fixed low incomes will suffer the most. How much longer can the authorities stand by while this ruthless exploitation continues?

There are many things that could be done. For instance, minsters could scrap the posturing green taxes that already add £112 to average bills. This could be done at a stroke. The regulator, OFGEM, could also do far more by ensuring gas and electricity companies are more transparent and straightforward in their dealings.

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