Author Archives: News Sources

Egypt’s experiment with democracy

Peter Hessler writes: In Egypt, the current conflict reflects the vastly different responses that groups can have to a fledgling democracy after decades of dictatorship. For the Brotherhood, this means stubbornly following what it believes to be the correct and legitimate political path, even if it alienates others and leads to disaster; for the military, it’s a matter of implementing the worst instincts of the majority. In each case, one can recognize a seed of democratic instinct, but it’s grown in twisted ways, because the political and social environment was damaged by the regimes of the past half-century.

As for average Egyptians, the last two years have taught lessons that won’t be easily forgotten. After the coup last month, I travelled to Upper Egypt, because I was curious to see how people outside the capital interpreted these events. Upper Egypt is home to about forty per cent of the country’s population, and it played an important role in the post-revolution elections, with the Brotherhood winning vast majorities in the region. But most people I talked to last month had discarded their affection for the Brotherhood. “I was very sympathetic to them,” one man told me, in the town of El-Balyana. “I was sympathetic with Morsi until they removed him. And now I’m going to be sympathetic with whoever comes next!”

“We’re just like football fans here,” an engineer named Mohamed Latif told me, in a village called El-Araba. “When somebody scores, we cheer. But it doesn’t matter. Do you really think that anything we do here matters? Why do you want to talk to us? I voted for Morsi, and I prayed for him, but he failed. I’m against what happened. We should have kept him as an honorary figure. We could have given the power to the Army and others, but left Morsi as the President in name.”

I asked him if he believed that the coup had been a mistake. “No,” he said. “He failed. I won’t vote for them again. I don’t want democracy.” He continued, “Does China have democracy? How is its economy doing? I don’t care about democracy and freedom.”

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An educated guess about how the NSA is structured

Marc Ambinder writes: 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.

But the NSA, with its triple mission — break codes, secure data, collect signals intelligence — has not made its structure public. Even by the standards of U.S. intelligence agencies whose existence was declassified much later, the NSA’s organization chart is largely impermeable to outsiders. The best of its chroniclers, like Jeff Richelson, James Bamford, Bill Arkin and Matthew Aid, have managed to collect bits and pieces of open source data, but many senior intelligence officials who don’t work for NSA still have only a vague idea of what signals intelligence collection entails, and even fewer understand the NSA bureaucracy. The map to the NSA’s inner sanctum is generally given only to a select few members of Congress and their staff.

In the interests of transparency and in an effort to establish a basis for continued public exploration of the world of intelligence, I’ve cobbled together a rough and incomplete but still rather comprehensive organizational chart of the agency’s operational, analytical, research and technology directorates. With only a few exceptions, the information does not come from inside sources. It builds on the work of the researchers mentioned above and it represents the culmination of a lot of time spent cross-checking government documents and LinkedIn profiles, job postings and agency announcements. [Continue reading…]

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Intelligence committee urged to explain if they withheld crucial NSA document

The Guardian reports: The leadership of the House intelligence committee is under growing pressure to explain whether it withheld surveillance information from members of Congress before a key vote to renew the Patriot Act.

A Republican congressman and government ethics watchdogs are demanding that the powerful panel’s chairman, Mike Rogers of Michigan, responds to charges that the panel’s leadership failed to share a document prepared by the justice department and intelligence community.

The document was explicitly created to inform non-committee members about bulk collection of Americans’ phone records ahead of the vote in 2011. Michigan Republican Justin Amash alleged that the committee kept it from non-committee members – the majority of the House.

Now Morgan Griffith, a Republican who represents Virginia’s ninth district, is calling for answers. “I certainly think leadership needs to figure out what’s going on. We’re trying to get information so we can do our jobs as congressmen,” he told the Guardian. “If we’re not able to get that information, it’s inappropriate.”

“Obviously, this is of concern,” he added.

Griffith has been been critical of the committee for blocking attempts by non-members to obtain information about classified programs. On August 4, the Guardian published a series of letters he had written to the committee requesting more details, all of which had gone unanswered.

The accusations broaden the focus of the surveillance controversy from the National Security Agency to one of the congressional committees charged with exercising oversight of it – and the panel’s closeness to the NSA it is supposed to oversee. [Continue reading…]

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The NSA is commandeering the Internet

Bruce Schneier writes: It turns out that the NSA’s domestic and world-wide surveillance apparatus is even more extensive than we thought. Bluntly: The government has commandeered the Internet. Most of the largest Internet companies provide information to the NSA, betraying their users. Some, as we’ve learned, fight and lose. Others cooperate, either out of patriotism or because they believe it’s easier that way.

I have one message to the executives of those companies: fight.

Do you remember those old spy movies, when the higher ups in government decide that the mission is more important than the spy’s life? It’s going to be the same way with you. You might think that your friendly relationship with the government means that they’re going to protect you, but they won’t. The NSA doesn’t care about you or your customers, and will burn you the moment it’s convenient to do so.

We’re already starting to see that. Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and others are pleading with the government to allow them to explain details of what information they provided in response to National Security Letters and other government demands. They’ve lost the trust of their customers, and explaining what they do — and don’t do — is how to get it back. The government has refused; they don’t care. [Continue reading…]

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Press suckered by anti-Google group’s bogus claim that Gmail users can’t expect privacy

TechDirt: Okay, so as a bunch of folks have been sending over today, there’s been a bit of a furor over a press release pushed out by Consumer Watchdog, a hilariously ridiculous group that has decided that Google is 100% pure evil. The “story” claims that Google has admitted in court that there is no expectation of privacy over Gmail. This is not actually true — but we’ll get to that. This story is a bit complex because the claims in most of the news coverage about this are simply wrong — but I still think Google made a big mistake in making this particular filing. So, first, let’s explain why the coverage is completely bogus trumped up bullshit from Consumer Watchdog, and then we’ll explain why Google still shouldn’t have made this filing.

First off, you may recall Consumer Watchdog from previous stunts such as a putting together a hilariously misleading and almost 100% factually inaccurate video portrayal of Eric Schmidt, which was all really part of an effort to sell more copies of its founder’s book (something the group flat out admitted to us in an email). They’re not a consumer watchdog site — they’re a group that makes completely hogwash claims to try to generate attention on a campaign to attack Google.

The press release from Consumer Watchdog fits along its typical approach to these things: take something totally out of context, put some hysterical and inaccurate phrasing around it, dump an attention-grabbing headline on it and send it off to the press. In this case, it claimed that Google had said in a court filing that you have no expectation of privacy with Gmail. [Continue reading…]

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Libya is rich but bankrupt

Fayruz Abdulhadi writes: Libya has been an especially difficult place to live over the past few weeks. With a string of high profile assassinations, a jailbreak, and a series of sometimes thwarted car bomb attacks, there is plenty for Libyans to be exasperated by. Yet amidst the lawlessness of recent weeks, nothing has frustrated the Libyan streets more than the daily power outages, sometimes running up to an excruciating 16 hours at a time.

The government has offered explanations, from overconsumption in the summer months to lack of maintenance, a legacy underinvestment in the network, and even sabotage by Qaddafi loyalists. This may be post-Revolution Libya, but given the country’s vast riches, a lack of electricity is a problem that seems especially hard to explain away.

The country boasts some of the world’s largest proven oil reserves, substantial capabilities for natural gas production, $168 billion in foreign assets and an enviable 2000 km-plus stretch of coast on the Mediterranean. For all these assets, Libya (pop. 6.4 million) also has a relatively small number of mouths to feed. In other parts of the world, the combination of small population and ample natural resources has generally proven a surefire formula for success. Why does Libya fail to follow suit?

During Qaddafi’s reign, at the very least it was clear why infrastructure and public services were lacking: the Colonel and his cronies were visibly enriching themselves on the back of oil exports, leaving little of the country’s bounty for the average Mohammed to enjoy. Now that the Qaddafi family and their business associates are gone, however, the lack of public investment is more puzzling. In a nascent democracy, it is also far less tolerable.

Truth be told, conditions for ordinary Libyans have not improved in the two years since the Revolution. The hospitals are “unfit for human beings,” in the Health Minister’s own words. The schools are decrepit. Sewage spills pungently into the once-pristine Mediterranean shoreline. Even an internet connection is a serendipitous occurrence. For Libyans and observers alike, it is not immediately obvious why Libya should be in such dire straits.

Incompetence and widespread corruption top the list of popular explanations for the country’s current condition. Both are, to some extent, true. Emerging from dictatorship, public servants are equal parts unskilled and corruptible. But the reality is that even a competent and fully transparent government would find governing today’s Libya an impossible task. The reason is simple: despite its apparent wealth, Libya is broke. [Continue reading…]

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Muslim Brotherhood had accepted U.S.-EU-led political plan, but Egypt’s rulers chose violence

Reuters reports: Western allies warned Egypt’s military leaders right up to the last minute against using force to crush protest sit-ins by supporters of the ousted Islamist president Mohamed Mursi, arguing they could ill afford the political and economic damage.

A violent end to a six-week standoff between Mursi’s Muslim Brotherhood and the armed forces that toppled Egypt’s first freely elected president seemed likely once the new authorities declared last week that foreign mediation had failed.

But the United States and the European Union continued to send coordinated messages to army commander General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Interim Vice President Mohamed ElBaradei during the four-day Eid al-Fitr Muslim holiday that ended on Sunday, pleading for a negotiated settlement, Western diplomats said.

“We had a political plan that was on the table, that had been accepted by the other side (the Muslim Brotherhood),” said EU envoy Bernardino Leon, who co-led the mediation effort with U.S. Deputy Secretary of State William Burns.

“They could have taken this option. So all that has happened today was unnecessary,” Leon told Reuters in a telephone interview. The last plea was conveyed to the Egyptian authorities on Tuesday, hours before the crackdown was unleashed. [Continue reading…]

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Statement by Julian Assange on Bradley Manning

Statement by Julian Assange on behalf of WikiLeaks:

Today Bradley Manning reportedly made a statement of remorse in a sentencing hearing at Fort Meade, Maryland. Manning’s statement comes towards the end of a court martial trial pursued with unprecedented prosecutorial zeal.

Since his arrest, Mr. Manning has been an emblem of courage and endurance in the face of adversity. He has resisted extraordinary pressure. He has been held in solitary confinement, stripped naked and subjected to cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment by the United States government. His constitutional right to a speedy trial has been ignored. He has sat for three years in pretrial detention, while the government assembled 141 witnesses and withheld thousands of documents from his lawyers.

The government has denied him the right to conduct a basic whistleblower defense. It overcharged him until he faced over a century in prison and barred all but a handful of his witnesses. He was denied the right at trial to argue that no harm was caused by his alleged actions. His defence team was pre-emptively banned from describing his intent or showing that his actions harmed no one.

Despite these obstacles, Mr. Manning and his defense team have fought at every step. Last month, he was eventually convicted of charges carrying up to 90 years of prison time. The US government admitted that his actions did not physically harm a single person, and he was acquitted of “aiding the enemy.” His convictions solely relate to his alleged decision to inform the public of war crimes and systematic injustice.

But Mr. Manning’s options have run out. The only currency this military court will take is Bradley Manning’s humiliation. In light of this, Mr. Manning’s forced decision to apologise to the US government in the hope of shaving a decade or more off his sentence must be regarded with compassion and understanding.

Mr. Manning’s apology is a statement extorted from him under the overbearing weight of the United States military justice system. It took three years and millions of dollars to extract two minutes of tactical remorse from this brave soldier.

Bradley Manning’s apology was extracted by force, but in a just court the US government would be apologizing to Bradley Manning. As over 100,000 signatories of his Nobel Peace Prize nomination attest, Bradley Manning has changed the world for the better. He remains a symbol of courage and humanitarian resistance.

Mr. Manning’s apology shows that as far as his sentencing is concerned there are still decades to play for. Public pressure on Bradley Manning’s military court must intensify in these final days before the sentencing decision against him is made.

WikiLeaks continues to support Bradley Manning, and will continue to campaign for his unconditional release.

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Time for the U.S. to suspend its ties with Egypt

Marc Lynch writes: With blood in Egypt’s streets and a return to a state of emergency, it’s time for Washington to stop pretending. Its efforts to maintain its lines of communication with the Egyptian military, quietly mediate the crisis, and help lay the groundwork for some new, democratic political process have utterly failed. Egypt’s new military regime, and a sizable and vocal portion of the Egyptian population, have made it very clear that they just want the United States to leave it alone. For once, Washington should give them their wish. As long as Egypt remains on its current path, the Obama administration should suspend all aid, keep the embassy in Cairo closed, and refrain from treating the military regime as a legitimate government.

These steps won’t matter very much in the short term. Cairo has made it very clear that it doesn’t care what Washington thinks and the Gulf states will happily replace whatever cash stops flowing from U.S. coffers. Anti-American incitement will continue, along with the state of emergency, violence and polarization, the stripping away of the fig leaf of civilian government, and the disaster brewing in the Sinai. It won’t affect Secretary of State John Kerry’s Israel-Palestine peace talks and the Camp David accords will be fine, too; Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi can’t manage his own streets, and it’s unlikely he wants to mess with Israel right now.

The hard truth is that the United States has no real influence to lose right now anyway, and immediate impact isn’t the point. Taking a (much belated) stand is the only way for the United States to regain any credibility — with Cairo, with the region, and with its own tattered democratic rhetoric. [Continue reading…]

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Egypt: It only gets worse from here

As the latest reports indicate that more than 278 people have been killed in violence across Egypt today, Issandr El Amrani looks at the wider picture:

You could ask a thousand questions about the violence that has shaken Egypt, from why police decided to move now against Islamist sit-ins and with such brutality after making so much of its careful planning in the last week, to whether the attacks on churches and Christians more generally that erupted in reaction are part of a pre-planned reaction or the uncontrollable sectarian direction political tensions take in moments of crisis. But the question that really bothers me is whether this escalation is planned to create a situation that will inevitably trigger more violence – that this is the desired goal.

The fundamental flaw of the July 3 coup, and the reason those demonstrators that came out on June 30 against the Morsi administration were wrong to welcome it, is that it was based on an illusion. That illusion, at least among the liberal camp which is getting so much flak these days, was that even a partial return of the old army-led order could offer a chance to reboot the transition that took such a wrong turn after the fall of Hosni Mubarak on February 11, 2011. This camp believed that gradual reform, even of a much less ambitious nature than they desired in 2011, would be more likely to come by accommodating the old order than by allowing what they perceived as an arrangement between the military and the Islamists to continue. Better to focus on fixing the country, notably its economy, and preventing Morsi from sinking it altogether, and take the risk that part of the old order could come back.

In this vision, a gradual transformation of the country could take place while preserving political stability through the armed forces. It would be negotiated and hard-fought, as so many democratic transitions in other parts of the world have been, but the old order would need the talent and competence of a new technocratic, and ultimately political, class to deliver and improve governance. Their hope was that the Islamists would understand that they had lost this round, and that they could be managed somehow while a new more liberal order emerged. This, in essence, was what Mohamed ElBaradei and other liberals bought into on July 3, no doubt earnestly, and what so many other outside of formal politics fervently hoped for: not the revolution radicals want, but a wiser, more tolerant, order in the country. [Continue reading…]

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If Obama wanted an ‘open debate’ on NSA spying, why thwart one for so long?

Jennifer Hoelzer writes: Tim Cushing made one of my favorite points of [last] week in his Tuesday post “Former NSA boss calls Snowden’s supporters internet shut-ins; equates transparency activists with al-Qaida“, when he explained that “some of the most ardent defenders of our nation’s surveillance programs” – much like proponents of overreaching cyber-legislation, like Sopa – have a habit of “belittling” their opponents as a loose confederation of basement-dwelling loners. I think it’s worth pointing out that General Hayden’s actual rhetoric is even more inflammatory than Cushing’s. Not only did the former NSA director call us “nihilists, anarchists, activists, Lulzsec, Anonymous, twentysomethings who haven’t talked to the opposite sex in five or six years”, he equates transparency groups like the ACLU with al-Qaida.

I appreciated this post for two reasons.

First of all, it does a great job of illustrating a point that I’ve long made when asked for advice on communicating tech issues, which is that the online community is as diverse and varied as the larger world we live in. Of course, we are more likely to come across the marginal opinions of twentysomethings with social anxiety online because, unlike the larger world, the internet gives those twentysomethings just as much of an opportunity to be heard as a Harvard scholar, a dissident protesting for democracy or General Hayden himself.

Sure, it can be infuriating to read scathingly hostile comments written by troubled individuals who clearly didn’t take the time to read the post you spent countless hours carefully writing (not that that has ever happened to me), but isn’t one of the things that makes the internet so darn special its unwavering reminder that free speech includes speech we don’t appreciate? Of course, that’s a point that tends to get lost on folks – like General Hayden – who don’t seem to understand that equating the entirety of the online world with terrorists is a lot like posting a scathing comment to a story without reading it. You can’t expect someone to treat you or your opinion with respect – online or anywhere else – when you’re being disrespectful. And I can imagine no greater disrespect for the concepts of transparency and oversight than to equate them with the threats posed by terrorist groups like al-Qaida. [Continue reading…]

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How America is killing itself with sugar

Nature World News: A diet in which 25 percent of one’s calories come from added sugar could be just as harmful to a person’s health as being the inbred offspring of first cousins, a new study conducted by University of Utah researchers found.

The scientists chose this threshold due to the National Research Council’s formal recommendation that a person’s calories from added sugar not exceed 25 percent of their total caloric consumption. However, even this may be far too much, according to the study’s results which found female mice died at twice the normal rate and males were a quarter less likely to hold territory and reproduce when fed the diet reflective of many Americans.

“Our results provide evidence that added sugar consumed at concentrations currently considered safe exerts dramatic adverse impacts on mammalian health,” the researchers said regarding their findings published in the journal Nature Communications, adding they were careful to keep the administered levels of sugar proportionate to the amount consumed by humans through candy, beverages and baked goods. For example, the researchers stressed that the mice’s diet directly corresponded with one in which a person drinks three sodas a day “plus a perfectly healthy, no-sugar-added diet.”

According to Wayne Potts, a biology professor and the study’s senior author, the researchers placed groups of mice in room-sized pens with multiple nest boxes and allowed the mice to compete more naturally for mates and desirable territories, thereby revealing even subtle effects of the diet on mice’s behavior.

As a result, the scientists found 35 percent of females on the extra sugar diet died after 32 weeks in the mouse barns versus 17 percent of the control group. And while no difference appeared in the case of the rate of death for the male mice, those on the added-sugar diet acquired and held 26 percent fewer territories than males on the control diet and ultimately went on to produce 25 percent fewer offspring.

Such “level of health degradation is almost identical,” the researchers pointed out, to that of cousin-level inbreeding and persisted despite a lack of obesity and few metabolic symptoms. [Continue reading…]

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Egypt security forces launch deadly assault to crush Cairo protests


The Guardian: Egyptian security forces have launched a deadly assault on protest sites backing the ousted president Mohamed Morsi, clearing one and besieging another.

The crackdown on Wednesday has left scores of people dead and many more wounded, and has sparked clashes in other parts of the country.

The dawn raids in Cairo at the sites on either side of the Nile came after two weeks of ever more bellicose warnings from the military-led government that replaced Morsi after he was toppled almost six weeks ago.

Sky News cameraman Mick Deane has been shot and killed in Egypt this morning. Mick had worked for Sky for 15 years, based in Washington and then Jerusalem.

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Egypt’s military will not get away with human rights abuses

Michael Mansfield and Tayab Ali write: Just over a year ago, Egypt threw off the shackles of its military dictatorship and took on the mantle of a civil democracy, becoming for a short period, the torchbearer of liberty and equality throughout the Arab world. On 24 June 2012, Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice party won the country’s first contested election. It was the first time that an Egyptian president had been freely elected from outside of the military establishment.

By 3 July 2013, President Morsi had been ousted in a coup d’etat. The uprising against the previous Mubarak regime resulted in the free and fair election of President Morsi – a new dawn of democracy and human rights for Egypt. The current spate of protests have seen the rapid destruction of that new promise and an excuse for the military to regain control.

The immediate aftermath of the July coup reminds us what Egypt is without its democracy and that cannot have been what the many who were angry at President Morsi’s government had in mind when they chose to (and were allowed to) vocalise their discontent in street protests.

Everyone in Egypt should now be concerned about the legality and consequences of the military overturning its first democratically elected government. Whatever the stated justification, disenchantment with a democratically elected leader cannot legitimise the use of force and should never be used to remove a democratically elected government.

We can see where Egypt has descended to in the aftermath of the coup. The new military-installed regime does not appear to be interested in safeguarding Egypt’s democracy. The hallmarks of a democratic state have vanished almost immediately. Morsi has been detained in a secret location along with much of his administration. Suddenly dubious and historic criminal charges have surfaced and been levelled against them. So far these detainees have not had access to their families or legal teams. How they are being treated is anyone’s guess. [Continue reading…]

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America’s global ‘stop and frisk’ operations

Stephen Walt writes: Here in the United States, federal judge Shira Scheindlin has ruled that New York City’s “stop and frisk” policy is in fact a form of racial profiling that violates basic constitutional rights. According to the New York Times editorial:

“Under the Fourth Amendment, police officers can legally stop and detain a person only when they have a reasonable suspicion that the person is committing, has committed or is about to commit a crime. Over the years, however, the Police Department has adopted a strategy that encourages cops to stop and question mainly minority citizens first and to come up with reasons for having done so later.”

I read this story and immediately thought about the similarities to certain aspects of U.S. foreign and national security policies. “Stop and frisk” is essentially an act of preemption or prevention: The suspect hasn’t committed a crime, but the police go after the person on the basis of the thinnest of suspicions, like a bulging pocket or the loosely defined “furtive gestures.”

Now think about the United States’ use of drones or special operations forces to conduct “targeted assassinations” of suspected terrorists. In many cases, U.S. officials have some reason to think somebody might be planning a terrorist operation, but the person isn’t actually doing it when officials decide to take the individual out. Notice that this policy goes way beyond mere “stop and frisk”: If the United States can’t apprehend someone it thinks might be dangerous, these days it just blows the person away and calls the individual a “suspected terrorist” afterward. [Continue reading…]

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Hiroshima, Nagasaki and ‘bomb Iran’

Marsha B Cohen writes: Last week marked the 68th anniversary of the WWII destruction of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima (Aug. 6) and Nagasaki (Aug. 9) — the first and only deployment of nuclear weapons in human history. Within moments of the nuclear explosions that destroyed these cities, at least 200,000 people lost their lives. Tens of thousands subsequently died from radiation poisoning within the next two weeks. The effects linger to this day.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has implied that this would the be fate of Israel if Iran was allowed to obtain nuclear weapon-making capabilities, including the ability to enrich high-grade uranium. To prevent this from happening, the economy of Iran must be crippled by sanctions and the fourth largest oil reserves in the world must be barred from global markets, as the oil fields in which they are situated deteriorate. Israel — the only state in the region that actually possesses nuclear weapons and has blocked all efforts to create a Middle East Nuclear Weapon Free Zone – should thus be armed with cutting-edge American weaponry. Finally, the US must not only stand behind its sole reliable Middle East ally, which could strike Iran at will, it should ideally also lead — not merely condone — a military assault against Iranian nuclear facilities.

Netanyahu invariably frames the threat posed by Iranian nuclear capability (a term that blurs distinctions between civilian and potential military applications of nuclear technology) as “Auschwitz” rather than “Hiroshima and Nagasaki”, even though the latter might be a more apt analogy. The potential for another Auschwitz is predicated on the image of an Israel that is unable — or unwilling to — defend itself, resulting in six million Jews going “like sheep to the slaughter.” But if Israel and/or the US were to attack Iran instead of the other way around, “Hiroshima and Nagasaki” would be the analogy to apply to Iran. [Continue reading…]

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What NSA reforms?

Eugene Robinson writes: President Obama’s message about the government’s massive electronic surveillance programs came through loud and clear: Get over it.

The president used more soothing words in his pre-vacation news conference Friday, but that was the gist. With perhaps the application of a fig leaf here and a sheen of legalistic mumbo jumbo there, the snooping will continue.

Unless, of course, we demand that it end.

The modest reforms Obama proposed do not begin to address the fundamental question of whether we want the National Security Agency to log all of our phone calls and read at least some of our e-mails, relying on secret judicial orders from a secret court for permission. The president indicated he is willing to discuss how all this is done — but not whether.

“It’s not enough for me, as president, to have confidence in these programs. The American people need to have confidence in them as well,” Obama said. But if this is truly what he believes, he should have kicked off this confidence-building debate years ago, long before former intelligence analyst Edward Snowden blew the whistle.

Snowden’s disclosures do look increasingly like whistle-blowing, by the way, rather than espionage or treason. If administration officials really welcome the discussion we are now having, shouldn’t they thank Snowden rather than label him an enemy of the state? [Continue reading…]

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How much data the NSA really gets

Jeff Jarvis writes: Fear not, says the NSA, we “touch” only 1.6% of daily internet traffic. If, as they say, the net carries 1,826 petabytes of information per day, then the NSA “touches” about 29 petabytes a day. They don’t say what “touch” means. Ingest? Store? Analyze?

For context, Google in 2010 said it had indexed only 0.004% of the data on the net. So, by inference from the percentages, does that mean that the NSA is equal to 400 Googles?

Seven petabytes of photos are added to Facebook each month. That’s .23 petabytes per day. So that means the NSA is 126 Facebooks. [Continue reading…]

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