Techdirt: NSA Chief Begs His Public To Help Agency 'Get The Facts Out'
Apparently sitting in the captain's chair on the bridge of the USS Surveillance* has lost its thrill.
Keith Alexander, the director of the National Security Agency, called Wednesday on the public to help defend his agency's powers as Congress mulls restrictions aimed at protecting privacy.
He warned that if Congress hampers the NSA's ability to gather information, it could allow for terrorist attacks in the United States similar to last week's massacre in a mall in Nairobi, Kenya.
"If you take those [surveillance powers] away, think about the last week and what will happen in the future," he said. "If you think it's bad now, wait until you get some of those things that happened in Nairobi."
Yeah, just you wait. 'Some of those things' like the Boston Marathon bombing or the Navy Yard shooting - things like that.
Meanwhile here at home, it has now been two weeks since Canadian media declined to make any mention whatsoever of an NSA agreement purporting to share raw data with Israel - data which
"includes, but is not limited to, unevaluated and unminimized transcripts, gists, facsimiles, telex, voice and Digital Network Intelligence metadata and content."
So - likely emails and phone calls as well then.
Not to worry though.
The Israelis were required to “destroy upon recognition” any communication “that is either to or from an official of the US government“. Such communications included those of “officials of the executive branch (including the White House, cabinet departments, and independent agencies), the US House of Representatives and Senate (member and staff) and the US federal court system (including, but not limited to, the supreme court)”.
So that's the important USians taken care of. What about the rest of us?
The doc specifies that US citizens are not to be targeted and that the NSA has agreements with its Five Eyes partners - Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the UK - to protect information on their citizens and that Israel should respect those privacy agreements when looking through the data.
That must be why our media wasn't fussed enough to mention it.
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2 comments:
If this is raw SIGINT data not previously reviewed by the NSA, then they don't know what's in it, do they?
No, and apparently neither do the Israelis because they swore to close their eyes while they looked, or something, and they would never ever lie about something like that, would they?
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