
Live: Head of NSA meets with House Intelligence Committee - teawithcarl
http://www.c-spanvideo.org/event/220343
======
marknutter
Arguing that these programs are effective by revealing a few foiled terrorist
plots is entirely beside the point. Obviously monitoring every communication
on the planet would help the government track down a few terrorist plots here
and there. If they really want the debate to focus on the effectiveness of
these programs then they should explain why they failed so spectacularly to
prevent the Boston Marathon bombings, a plot carried out by two of the most
careless and naive terrorists to date. Heck, even a direct warning from
Russian officials fell on deaf ears. Perhaps the NSA was too busy listening to
innocent people's phone calls to respond?

The effectiveness isn't what's at issue here, though. The problem is the loss
of privacy for innocent civilians, to which Obama and other government
officials respond to with wishy-washy arguments about "tradeoffs" between
security and privacy.

~~~
rtpg
It's always a tradeoff between privacy and security. The rules behind the use
of the metadata are pretty stringent. For example:

    
    
        Metadata is JUST number + duration. Not localtion, cell phone tower...
    
    
        targetting cannot be done on citizens or permanent citizens, or people in the US. Permanent citizen in Madrid is safe.
    
        No "reverse" targetting(targetting foreigner but really interested in US nat'l)
    
        if citizen/perm. res accidentally targeted, info not used, FISA court signalled, house intel + judiciary signalled.
    
        If targeted person is initially out of US, but venture in, targeting stops IMMEDIATELY.
    
        Info accidentally gotten (for example, lag when stopping of the targetting mentioned previously), ineligible info is purged. All ineligible info is purged.
    
        All targeting is reviewed beforehand , both by DNI and judiciary. All targets are audited
    
    

Plus this was used on less than 300 numbers. 20 people in the world have
access to the info. The justification procedures are stringent.

This hearing restored some confidence in checks and balances. And a good point
by Deputy AG Cole: This is for foreign surveillance ONLY. There used to be no
oversight for foreign surveillance. Now there is through FISA Court and this
second court order with all these rules in it.

Also, NSA can't listen to the calls without fixed warrant, and the brothers
were in the US at the time of planning their thing, so out of NSA jurisdiction
anyways.

~~~
codeulike
Whats your source for those quotes? Is that from the hearing happening now?

~~~
dthunt
This stuff sometime around like minute 45 or thereabouts.

I'm frustrated by them asking the wrong questions to the wrong people. They
should be asking FBI about listening to Americans' phone calls. They're not
dong it, in the bits I've heard, yet.

Edit: FBI did chime in on reading emails in real-time, indicating FISA court
as the means for doing so, but nothing else I heard. (~1:28?) Edit2: Grunt. I
clearly don't understand what's going on here. (~1:42). I'm just going to shut
up for another couple days and see what the Guardian releases in response.

~~~
CaptJax
I haven't been able to follow the hearing from my desk, but I'm curious if
anyone asked why the NSA director lied to Congress. Moreover, there were many
questions prefaced with "Under these two programs..." These are the programs
that have been made public. Who knows what they're running that is not public.

~~~
declan
Correct. This is the same kind of very narrow denial that we saw under the
Bush-era warrantless wiretapping programs as well. There are multiple
programs.

------
mtgx
Is it me or are most (all?) of these hearings against companies or agencies in
this case - a joke? I've watched some of them lately, and the Congressmen
always seem to be butt-kissing the company or agency they are supposed to
investigate.

These past 2 hearings don't seem to intend to shed any light on this. They
seem to be held to help protect whatever NSA is doing.

~~~
trebor
Just think of the kind of blackmail material the NSA would have on our
representatives under this program. All it would take is "probable cause",
which seems very easy to get, to unearth that data and start blackmail or
expose the person. These programs give the NSA an incredible amount of power,
and it's easily misused.

~~~
axelf
Yep,
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Harman#AIPAC_controversy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Harman#AIPAC_controversy)

~~~
LoganCale
That is _huge_ , and I'd never heard of it before.

------
cryptoz
Deputy Attorney General: "We don't get any content...under this program." The
use of language across all parties here is really incredible. The
Google/Apple/etc denials so carefully worded, the lawyer-speak that avoid
saying anything at all for hours at a time in the US gov't...it's amazingly
Orwellian.

Edit: Did he just say that the fourth amendment does not apply because nobody
expected privacy in the first place? I can't possibly have heard that right.

~~~
famousactress
under _this_ program.

[edit] and here it is... "Under 702, we _do_ get content"

[edit] I'm sure at this point the endgame here is gonna be a crazy dance
around the word 'collect'. It's increasingly obvious that the secret
definition they're using for 'collect' is "an analyst pulls it from our
database, where we've already _collected_ some broad swaths of communication
by any reasonable person's definition of the term"

[edit] One interesting note is that there have been strong denials that the
metadata contain any location/cell-tower data. Still wonder if there's another
shell game there and it's available via some other source.

~~~
LoganCale
Exactly. It's already been leaked that content is collected under a different
program.

------
ihsw
Hopefully this will shift the conversation from "listening to phone calls" and
"collecting internet records (eg: emails, browsing history)" to "storing phone
calls" and "storing internet records (eg: emails, browsing history)".

At this point it's become abundantly clear that _everything_ is stored and
indexed in a database, and the only defense against abuse of this database is
_only_ policies.

One of the worst cases to come out of this entire ordeal is the legal dance
around the definition of "listen" and whether it refers to automatically
capturing phone calls or an individual listening to a recording of a phone
call after it's been captured.

~~~
pvnick
>the only defense against abuse of this database is only policies.

This point is _extremely_ important and is what Snowden continuously returns
to. In yesterday's Q&A he said "policy is a one-way ratchet that only
loosens." This idea is critical to having an intelligent debate of the issues
at hand.

~~~
moskie
I don't find this to be an extremely compelling point, though.

There's infinite bad things that can be committed by anyone, from the
government or otherwise, where the only thing preventing it is policy and
procedure. The only thing preventing an Apache helicopter from firing on
schoolchildren under order of the president.... is policy. Theoretically, as
commander-in-chief, the president has the authority to order that, right? But
what's important is that he doesn't. What's important is there's policy that
prevents it.

~~~
pvnick
I understand your point, but [http://beta.dawn.com/news/772409/no-obama-tears-
for-children...](http://beta.dawn.com/news/772409/no-obama-tears-for-children-
killed-by-drones-in-pakistan)

To be fair, it wasn't apache helicopters.

~~~
moskie
Heh, I walked into that one, but I think my point still stands: the problem
you linked to is one of policy. And the solution is to find a better one.

------
tghw
"But if we do acquire any information that relates to a US person, under
limited criteria only, can we keep it. If it has to do with foreign
intelligence in that conversation or understanding foreign intelligence, or
_evidence of a crime_ or a threat of serious bodily injury, we can respond to
that. Other than that, we _have to get rid of it_ , we have to purge it, and
we can't use it." (emphasis mine)

This seems very close to an admission that they both have and analyze the data
before purging it. Combined with the idea that most people commit three
felonies a day and pretty quickly all of these assertions about not spying on
US citizens or people in the US goes out the window.

~~~
waterlesscloud
Here's the thing- if they get and store this data, in any way whatsoever, it's
going to come out. With a 100% certainty, that fact will out in time.

And when it does, any word games they try to play now will just be devastating
to them then. Absolutely devastating. It will not protect them, it will not
help them, it will damn them.

So, given that it will come out and it will hurt them when it does...why play
the games?

Either they _aren 't_ storing the data (which seems possible still, though
less likely than I thought 2 weeks ago), or they're operating with the future
planning capability of a fruit fly.

I don't know which it is,but this doesn't feel like it's going to end well for
anyone.

~~~
narag
That's why a gradual release of revelations is such a good strategy. We've
been seeing this in Spain in corruption cases. The target doesn't know what to
expect: has the leaker had access to the _real stuff_ or did he just scratched
the surface? The danger of a too dismisive response is being caught in
outright lies. With time, more people appears involved and the matter stays in
the news.

------
MisterWebz
"Does the NSA listen to the content of phone calls?"

General Alexander: "No we do not have that authority."

I think it's pretty clear by now that they're collecting phone call content.

Here's another and I'm paraphrasing:

"Is there something else being collected?"

"Besides the 215(?) and 702(?)? I'm not sure as I don't know whether that info
has been declassified."

------
motters
As a person "outside the united states and not a US person" this doesn't fill
be with confidence about using US based internet services. It also doesn't
give me much confidence about communicating with "US persons".

~~~
adventured
I have a visceral negative reaction to what they're doing to my country, and
it makes me want to say: please embargo us, foreign nations and citizens. It
won't happen unfortunately.

~~~
alan_cx
Indeed. You only have to see the massive trade deal the EU and US are putting
through to see how much Europe cares. Could have been some gentle leverage
there, but no.

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famousactress
I had to jump around, but this link is where I'm watching live:
[http://www.c-span.org/Live-Video/C-SPAN3/](http://www.c-span.org/Live-
Video/C-SPAN3/)

------
ck2
The clowns questioning him keep saying "UNDER THIS PROGRAM".

Yeah well the ones we know. Now we need to know the others.

~~~
wheelerwj
yeah exactly. One doesn't allow content to be captured, the other does, but
only for non-american citizens, except when it is an accident... so when you
combine all three incidences... yes they have full access and admit it several
times.

------
pezh0re
"The documents that have been released so far ironically show the oversight"
...

I like what John Oliver said on the Daily Show - “We’re not saying anyone
broke any laws, we’re just saying it’s a little bit weird that you didn’t have
to.”

------
_k
It's PR. They say there's court involvement but it's a rubber stamp and then
they access all data they got on you. They do say there has to be reasonable
suspicion but we all know how that goes.

One guy says people don't have an expectation of privacy because they are used
to giving their data to the phone companies.

I think I heard enough. And Europe and China, yes, all communications of your
citizens are being recorded, and yes it's a privacy violation.

I've heard enough.

------
benburleson
What a political circle-jerk. The questioning plays out like a rehearsed
commercial.

------
dlss
at 1:02:30

"Does the technology exist at the NSA to record american's phone calls, or
read their emails?"

"No"

There's something weird going on -- this seems too far off from Snowden's
reports to be true. Like, p(Snowden leak | no technology like that) is just
too small relative to p(Snowden leak)

~~~
codeulike
The get-out-clause here is that they avoid "American's" phone calls. However
if an American phones a non-American, or sends an email via a non-USA IP
address, they'll hoover it up.

That is consistent with what Snowden said in the Q+A with the guardian
yesterday:

 _US Persons do enjoy limited policy protections (and again, it 's important
to understand that policy protection is no protection - policy is a one-way
ratchet that only loosens) and one very weak technical protection - a near-
the-front-end filter at our ingestion points. The filter is constantly out of
date, is set at what is euphemistically referred to as the "widest allowable
aperture," and can be stripped out at any time. Even with the filter, US comms
get ingested, and even more so as soon as they leave the border. Your
protected communications shouldn't stop being protected communications just
because of the IP they're tagged with._

------
lettergram
hmmm the argument that it is not reasonable that what I view on the internet
is private is disturbing. I do have a reasonable expectation of it being
private.

This is referring to the Attorney Generals statement that we do not have a
reasonable expectation for our meta data not to be public.

~~~
nathas
"Because you share that information with phone companies, etc".

He referenced a court decision about that. Can someone who knows what the case
might be find it?

~~~
LoganCale
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith_v._Maryland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith_v._Maryland)

------
wheelerwj
Listening to this is absurd. Any intelligent human being can see that this
open meeting is nothing more than a PR piece. So far I have heard three
congressmen testify that this is legal and nothing illegal is happening. They
are preloading the conversation and giving people the opportunity to tune out
before General Alexander can even speak.

------
jdp23
Get FISA Right has a Twitter list with live tweets from several accounts
following the hearing -- EFFLive, Julian Sanchez, Marcy Wheeler, Michelle
Richardson of the ACLU, etc.

[https://twitter.com/GetFISARight/nsa](https://twitter.com/GetFISARight/nsa)

------
pezh0re
Suggesting that there are several plots that have been thwarted - and that
somehow justifies the program seems too "ends justify the means".

(probably because that's exactly what they're arguing)

------
ck2
He's going to announce two terror plots stopped by this.

Should be interesting.

~~~
nodata
Bet he won't say whether those plots could have been stopped another way.

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hoytie
A hearing like this reinforces secrecy and benefits only the people in that
room. They are given a platform to legitimize their activities and deny the
existence of anything that may violate the constitution or upset Americans.

"Hey guys, we're here to tell you all about anything except what you actually
want to know about" = the game of secrecy vs the public

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LoganCale
> Confirmed: NSA Analyst doesn't need a separate court order to query
> database. Analysts can decide what is "reasonably suspicious."

[https://twitter.com/efflive/status/347019679073710082](https://twitter.com/efflive/status/347019679073710082)

------
choult
I would personally like to know if there's a blacklist for any such program
which prevents electronic systems from surveilling anyone on it. I can imagine
that a senator knowing their details have been/can be accessed without due
cause would be a real PITA for the NSA.

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davenull
That was the largest gathering of nervous looking politicians and military
brass I have ever witnessed. I don't think a lot of them were comfortable
talking about information that became declassified immediately before they
were to discuss them with the public.

------
seansoutpost
If you are not actually watching, the narrative of this talk is entirely
defensive of the work going on by the NSA. They are flat out denying the
information leaked my Mr. Snowden.

Also, Rep. Dutch Ruppersberg just said the words "True Facts"

------
fnordfnordfnord
Good grief Mike Rogers is a windbag. His opening statement to the hearing is a
pretty good indication to me that he/they intend to investigate nothing, but
rather to distract and deceive the public wrt to their activities.

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marmot1101
If the FISA court was transparent in any way having them issue warrants and
provide oversight might be valuable. But it is not, thus that court is
meaningless.

------
_k
Let's take any country, other than the US, e.g. Switzerland, Luxembourg, ...
why isn't Al-Qaeda flying into the buildings of those countries ?

