oldephartte(in training): 3 July

English: Title page of "Democracy in America," by the French author and traveler Alexis de Tocqueville, translated by Henry Reeve, with an original preface and notes by John C. Spencer. Printed by George Dearborn & Co., Adlard and Saunders, New York.http://beinecke.library.yale.edu/dl_crosscollex/brbldl/oneITEM.asp?pid=2018812&iid=1074540&srchtype= (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Down The Robot Hole: ‘Less Ethical’ Privacy Protection

.....the justification for keeping all the calls is that all calls must be saved in order to make sure that all terrorist calls are acquired. I posit that these ‘means’ (saving all US calls) is a necessary part of the primary end purpose (save and provide all US calls to the FBI, etc.).
Woah!! I hear you say – NSA’s purpose is foreign directed and the FISA/FAA law is clear in its call for minimization of acquisition and retention of US calls. FISA/FAA also contain a clear prohibition of dissemination of any domestic content that may be inadvertently or unavoidably retained with exceptions only for foreign intelligence, public safety and evidence of a crime.
.....Section 5 of the recently disclosed 2009 Minimization Procedures Used By The NSA… allows for all domestic content (domestic wire, oral, or electronic communications) to be retained and disseminated to the FBI and/or other government entities:
The ‘signal exploitation’ and ‘traffic analytic’ exceptions are where all US electronic communications fall down the robot hole: in them the content may be disseminated throughout the USG. One can see that the prohibition of dissemination in the law is implemented by the counter policy “may be provided to the FBI &/or disseminated to other elements of the USG”. Maybe this is technically legal, but the overall legality of these minimization procedures that disseminate despite specific prohibition is very highly debatable, unless we all agree now that Prohibition can sometimes be Permission.

( Wouldn't that be Standard Operating Procedure for agencies formed by Bu$hCo ? TSA and their secret list of forbidding flying to thousands on an ad hoc basis comes to mind : no information, no appeal,no justification and no review. )

shorter exception 5(3) is:

We don’t destroy any domestic communications: we keep them because it's our job to acquire all communications in order to completely analyze the patterns in the communications we have.

This post was inspired by a post at emptywheel . Keith Alexander’s Secret Lie: Retention and Distribution of Domestic Encrypted and Hacking Communications? that explored the encryption/cyberdefense exception.

"Restore the Fourth" Protests on July 4

Things are going down in Egypt.
Notes in comments on U.S./U.K. supported tyrant ( Muslim Brotherhood ) opposed by Saudi supported 'Islamists' ; except that is too coherent a statement of foreign interference to say openly

A Great Speech on Climate Change: President Obama heralds natural gas, WalMart, and a new nuclear plant in how America will lead the world, and he still gives the Keystone XL Pipeline a pass

Keystone Academy: Where Legislators Learn the Etiquette of Serving Special Interests

Obama, Mandela and Leonard Peltier
( Fun. A clear analogy showing who is persecuting dissidents )

Quote of the day:

“Very few monarchs, from Augustus to our day, have failed to keep up the outward forms of freedom while they destroyed its substance, in the hope that they might combine the moral power of public approval with the peculiar conveniences of despotism. But the experiment has usually failed, and it has soon been found impossible to maintain a deceitful semblance of that which really has no existence.”
Alexis de Tocqueville (1805- 1859) – “The Old Regime and the Revolution”

Gotcha!

Cross posted from: http://seaton-newslinks.blogspot.com

Some 'dissidents' supported by Obama

From the RT blurb… The US claims it has found a way to make sure the arms it sends to the rebels in Syria won’t fall into the wrong hands. This comes after leaked reports from the CIA that it’s about to start funneling heavy weapons to rebel fighters.
From the Grey Lady… Taking Outsize Role in Syria, Qatar Funnels Arms to Rebels
Mr. Lister said there was no hard evidence that Qatar was arming the Nusra Front, but he said that because of existing militant dynamics, the transfer of Qatari-provided arms to certain targeted groups would result in the same practical effect.
“It’s inevitable that any weapons supplied by a regional state like Qatar,” he said via e-mail, “will be used at least in joint operations with Jabhet al-Nusra — if not shared with the group.”
To be sure, folks, about those ‘Islamists’… Syrian rebels threaten to target Shi’ite villages in Aleppo and Sharia ‘spreading’ in Syria’s rebel held areas
Now, talk about your warmongering tomfoolery…
McCain: Arm Syria’s Rebels to End Iran’s Nuclear Program
( U.S. backed 'rebels' have murdered Iranian government and military officials for years, and don't mind adding Russian advisers to the mix. You know, the people supervising nuclear power fuel, technology etc. so as to further Russian interest in NOT having a nuclear threat at their back door which they have created. They point out the facilities are essentially theirs, too. )

http://editors.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2013/07/key_story.php?ref=fpblg

Mursi himself called for foreign intervention in Syria against Assad, leading to a veiled rebuke from the army, which issued an apparently bland but sharp-edged statement the next day stressing that its only role was guarding Egypt’s borders.