Category Archives: National Security

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, Government, National Security, Politics, Syria

Engage in Syria at your own peril…

SYRIA: A RISKY VENTURE

The Defence Secretary, Philip Hammond, has hinted that hundreds of British soldiers could be sent to Syria to prevent a chemical threat to the West.

Mr Hammond has refused to rule out ordering troops to the war zone to rein in President Bashar al-Assad’s regime or seize stockpiles of illegal weapons.

He said it was ‘unlikely’ but no option was ‘off the table’ – in the most serious warning yet that the UK could deploy forces to Syria.

Mr Hammond gave his remarks after the outgoing head of the Armed Forces, General Sir David Richards, said Britain risked being dragged into the war.

Sir David, who has stepped down after three years as Chief of the Defence Staff, said ministers ‘would have to act’ if hoards of chemical weapons were discovered.

The UK must be prepared to ‘go to war’ if it wanted to stop the bloodshed inflicted by President Assad to crush a pro-freedom uprising in his country, he said.

At a ceremony at Horse Guards Parade in London to mark the end of General Richards’ tenure, the Defence Secretary said:

… I think it’s very unlikely we would see boots on the ground but we must never take any options off the table.

… It’s not our job to decide how and when and if to deploy forces but to make sure the Prime Minister and the National Security Council have the maximum range of options open to them.

General Richards revealed planning for a major operation led by Special Forces was under way. He said:

… The risk of terrorism is becoming more dominant in our vision for what we do in Syria.

… If that risk develops, we would almost certainly have to act … and we are ready to do so. Some could characterise that as war.

OPINION

The Prime Minister should consider very carefully the words of the outgoing Chief of Defence Staff, General Sir David Richards, before promising to give military assistance to rebel forces in Syria.

On leaving his post, Sir David has warned that plans under consideration to arm the rebels and set up a no-fly zone (NFZ) would be the start of a deeper and more dangerous British involvement. Stemming from that would invariably be aerial attacks on ground targets, followed by advisers to train the rebels, and, potentially, British combat troops on the ground.

Do we really know who these rebels are? Can we be confident that if they overthrow Assad, who has an advanced Air Force, they would govern any better? If Britain was to arm the rebels, could those weapons be used against British or other Western targets?

Syria has evolved into a pernicious bloody civil war with complex sectarian dimensions the West barely understands.

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