
Feinstein Publicly Accuses C.I.A. of Spying on Congress - 001sky
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/12/us/cia-accused-of-illegally-searching-computers-used-by-senate-committee.html?hp&_r=0
======
chimeracoder
This hypocrisy makes me physically sick.

Feinstein has been one of the biggest apologists[0] for violations of civil
liberties, government surveillance, and (both) executive _and_ judicial
overreach. Suddenly, the tables are turned on her (however briefly) and she's
not so happy with the way it feels.

Call me a cynic, but I'll wait to feel sorry for her until she actually
backtracks on all of these despicable practices.

[0] Actually, I don't think it's even fair to say that - she's been a
downright _advocate_ of a whole number of nasty practices.

~~~
ChuckMcM
My father mentioned that Sigfried & Roy were attacked by the very tigers they
trained. Sometimes the dangerous animal you need in order to do the show,
turns on you.

That said, even among politicians there is a sense of borders. And that the
Senator has found that they are interpreted differently by others isn't a huge
surprise. I still hope to get her out of the Senate at her next election
cycle.

~~~
pekk
Who did you have in mind to replace her?

~~~
MarkPNeyer
i've been considering running against her. would there be interest in a young
guy with startup cred but no political background? i think i have a pretty
good ability to express myself and see multiple sides of an issue.

edit: i grew up as a republican, but i hate where the party is now. i'm not
sure which party would make the most sense, because i like some of the
republican rhetoric - limited govt, lower taxes - but their implementation of
it is terrible. in my experiences both parties support huge companies with
different reasons.

i worked at microsoft and google, twilio and uber. i did electronic trading
for two years before joining the startup scene, and was cto of a small gaming
startup that was acquired.

i think my personal story is compelling, and i'd campaign on a platform of
honesty. if you look me up online, you'd find all this "incriminating" shit on
me, and i'd just say "yes that's because i'm human". i went from serious
student with no social skills, to struggling drug addict with serious mental
health issues, to solidly turning my life around after learning people skills,
as a result of an obsession with P vs NP.

i think it's extremely unlikely that anyone will be electable in 50 years if
there _aren't_ pictures of them doing ridiculous things online. nobody will
trust you otherwise. i'm hoping to get that party started now.

~~~
ChuckMcM
So I was briefly a candidate for Congress in 2012 :-) There is an interesting
set of things here. Setting aside the money issue (its really a _visibility_
issue rather than a money issue) there is a certain amount of support that is
needed by voter influencing groups. Well known vote influencers are Unions,
Churches, and Civic groups such as the Rotary club. Additionally if you're
running as a member of a party, that party should nominally know you exist
(they will be asked questions).

The idea that you can get elected just by direct influence of the citizens is
not well founded. :-). So when I was doing this and got more serious (I had
permission from Google for a 2 year leave of absence if elected) I talked with
some political consultants, and their input was that like jobs, politicians
have a resume and a 'trail' which is to say they do simpler, smaller, roles
and the people around them develop a notion of what it is like to work with
them. It is _that_ credibility that allows people to believe you can serve
them if you are elected. So if you want to run for congress, you should
ideally get a job that exposes you to the politicos in your area so they are
at least somewhat aware of your existence. That also shows that you can do the
scut work of being a politician, and for any job above a certain level of
influence (city supervisor, county supervisor) it will inform on how you can
be influenced.

Easier to launch a run for the Senate as the former Mayor of San Francisco for
example, than it is to launch it as "Oh hey, I can do this! Vote for me." guy
with no name recognition. Not that the latter is impossible, but Meg Whitman
shows that someone with a ton of money can be beat by a better political
record.

~~~
dllthomas
_" Meg Whitman shows that someone with a ton of money can be beat by a better
political record."_

Heh, for me the defining moment of that campaign was Whitman waxing rhapsodic
about how she wanted to bring California back to how wonderful it was when she
first got here. And someone pointed out that, when she first got here, her
opponent was Governor.

~~~
ericd
I'd actually say that that counts against her opponent - things got worse as
her opponent was in power. (And the effects of policies often only start being
felt years later).

~~~
dllthomas
Yeah... no. He had already been in power for years when she got here, and
there were _decades_ between then and the campaign in question. The evidence
under discussion doesn't _rule out_ that interpretation, but it doesn't
actually make it particularly likely.

~~~
ericd
Ah ok, fair, I'm not familiar with the particulars of CA politics. I was
mostly commenting on the how people arguing in politics frequently try to
blame things on people whose fault it couldn't possibly be and take credit for
things they couldn't have caused.

~~~
dllthomas
A valid concern.

------
nathancahill
This is the same women who said "It’s called protecting America" when
defending the NSA's gathering of phone call records. [0] So surveillance is
good, but not when you're the person being surveilled?

[0] [http://www.politico.com/story/2013/06/dianne-feinstein-on-
ns...](http://www.politico.com/story/2013/06/dianne-feinstein-on-nsa-its-
called-protecting-america-92340.html)

~~~
rayiner
This is an overly simplistic argument. It is not inconsistent to believe that
it is a far greater danger for the executive to spy on a co-equal branch of
government, in a way that acquires content, than when the executive spys on
the public generally in a way that acquires only metadata. It's glib to say
"oh, so Congressmen are more important than regular people?" but in at least
certain ways, it's true. The dangers created in the two situations are quite
different. You might have a different evaluation of the relative gravity of
the dangers, you have to concede that they're different.

~~~
Mc_Big_G
...assuming you believe the "metadata" bullshit.

~~~
rayiner
For better or worse, the distinction between data and metadata is deeply
ingrained in 4th amendment law, specifically Smith v. Maryland. And technology
hasn't changed the rationale underlying that distinction either. Back in the
day, addressing on the outside of an envelope was considered "metadata" and
unprotected because you had to reveal that information to the third party for
the mail to get routed, so had no expectation of privacy. This same reasoning
applies perfectly well to the phone calls in the 1970's in Smith, or for that
matter a cell phone call, and arguably TCP/IP headers, today.

~~~
shutupalready
My understanding is that the "Subject" line of emails are also considered
metadata for the purpose of surveillance and warrantless information demands
by police.

Subject lines are clearly not needed for routing.

There's feature creep (a.k.a. slippery slope) at work even for metadata.

~~~
chc
They're headers, which categorically tend to be viewed as metadata even by
technologists. You're right that they aren't necessary for routing, but this
is not exactly the government being slippery. Even where encryption is used,
metadata — including the subject — tends to be sent in the clear.

~~~
bashinator
They're MUA headers, not MTA headers. That's an important distinction; those
headers are generated directly by the end-users' systems, rather than by the
systems responsible for routing the mail around.

~~~
chc
Even that isn't a clear bright line. For example, the To: header also comes
from the MUA, and it's crucial to the message's transit. (In fact, the To:
header is very much analogous to the stuff written on the outside of an
envelope.)

~~~
knyt
To: actually isn't used in routing. MTAs and MDAs route messages based on the
target address that's communicated in the 'RCPT TO' command, ignoring whatever
may be in the To/CC[/BCC] lines, should the MUA happen to generate those
headers.

The set of metadata used in routing, aka the 'envelope', also contains a
return path, which is (normally) used for things like submitting delivery
failure reports.

------
tptacek
The backstory on this seems to be: in the process of compiling the Panetta
report, staffers for the Senate Intelligence Committee reviewed a huge number
of top-secret cables; the only place they were allowed to do that was in a CIA
office building, on equipment provided by CIA. Somehow (another NYT story
alludes), CIA came to believe that Senate Intelligence had gained access to
more documents than intended, so they rifled through the computers they'd
provided.

(Even if this is what happened, it's still very bad; I don't understand how
CIA gets to mess with its oversight committee in any way.)

~~~
bradleyjg
The _Times_ reported that the CIA created a special network share with the
cables that the staffers were supposed to review, and that the staffers "had
penetrated a firewall inside the C.I.A. computer system that had been set up
to separate the committee’s work area from other agency digital files".

That sounds overblown to me. The SSCI committee hires from the same general
pool as the rest of the Hill -- ambitious PoliSci grads, lawyers, and the
like. They pay the same crappy wages too. They aren't getting Kevin Mitnick.

My guess is that some incompetent windows admin didn't set the permissions
right and they were able to click on network neighborhood and access the files
in question.

~~~
bdamm
Maybe - but remember, we're talking about the CIA. My encounters with anyone
potentially related to the agency has been that they're quite competent, to
say the least. When considering an agency such as the CIA, it's safe to say
that incompetence only occurs in areas where competence is not a priority,
incompetence is on purpose, or where the situation is beyond the competence of
anyone.

So my guess is they applied little care to the _oversight committee_ and
handed them a sheet of what not to do, such as attempt to browse external web
sites. The staffers did so anyway, and now are "penetrating" the firewall that
didn't even exist except on paper. The agency now has a reason to restrain
activities of oversight staffers that they didn't have before (for violating
policy).

~~~
rhizome
_it 's safe to say that incompetence only occurs in areas where competence is
not a priority, incompetence is on purpose, or where the situation is beyond
the competence of anyone._

Such as setting up file-access auditing on sensitive files, like what they (or
Booz Allen Hamilton, their contractor) didn't do? Hard to believe basic
Microsoft sysadmin training concepts evade their competency filter.

~~~
rhizome
Oh duh, the Booz comment was intended to include Edward Snowden's name.

~~~
bdamm
You're confusing the NSA and the CIA. They are, actually, different entities.

------
forgotAgain
So the searching of Congressional computers supposedly happened in 2010. She's
speaking about it now because she feels the CIA is threatening her committee
by turning over the investigation to the Justice department (another Executive
branch department).

I know I should be outraged but really all I have is WTF. The head of the
Senate oversight committee knew that the CIA had violated multiple laws and
did absolutely nothing about it for 4 years. This is oversight? This is what
we're all depending on to protect us from an out of control set of military /
intelligence / industrial dicks?

------
suprgeek
Spy on Others (Regular People) - it makes us safer.

Spy on me (Rich Senator who is becoming richer) - it is an OUTRAGE!

These congress critters really need to be a bit more nuanced in their double
standards. This is the same person that publicly accused Ed Snowden of Treason
[1].

So when we got to know about Large scale spying on the entire American Public
for NO Reason - the person who told us about it is a traitor. When they
learned about a SPECIFIC case of spying on their staffers there is sudden
(manufactured) outrage?

I think she senses the public mood & is trying to use this issue to slink back
into "of the people by the people" mode. Real Slimy.

[1] [http://thehill.com/blogs/defcon-hill/policy-and-
strategy/304...](http://thehill.com/blogs/defcon-hill/policy-and-
strategy/304573-sen-feinstein-snowdens-leaks-are-treason)

~~~
JamisonM
I agree with the sentiment but I also recognize that there is a difference
between the CIA/NSA spying on citizens and doing the same to congress in a
possible effort to directly influence the laws and regulations that govern
their behaviour. I do not think that the outrage is "manufactured" because I
think it is genuine, the smarter among the Senate that support the
surveillance state at least understand the principles involved here.

~~~
bmelton
What rights do our legislators have that the citizenry does not?

~~~
nickff
Here is one:

Article I, Section 6, Clause 1 of the Constitution of the United States of
America:

 _" The Senators and Representatives...shall in all Cases, except Treason,
Felony, and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their
Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses, and in going to and
returning from the same...."_

------
ryoshu
This reminds me of The Scorpion and the Frog:

A scorpion and a frog meet on the bank of a stream and the scorpion asks the
frog to carry him across on its back. The frog asks, "How do I know you won't
sting me?" The scorpion says, "Because if I do, I will die too."

The frog is satisfied, and they set out, but in midstream, the scorpion stings
the frog. The frog feels the onset of paralysis and starts to sink, knowing
they both will drown, but has just enough time to gasp "Why?"

Replies the scorpion: "It's my nature..."

------
qwerty_asdf
The technical details for this brouhaha, if I'm interpreting them correctly,
sound like they might approach Dilbert levels of managerial incompetence.

From Saturday's NYT article:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/08/us/politics/behind-
clash-b...](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/08/us/politics/behind-clash-
between-cia-and-congress-a-secret-report-on-interrogations.html)

    
    
      The room designated for the staff, called the “electronic
      reading room,” was a spartan office with tables and 
      computers set against the walls and a large conference 
      table in the middle.
    
      ...
    
      According to a recent court filing in a Freedom of 
      Information Act lawsuit, the C.I.A. created a “network 
      share drive” segregated from the main agency network, a 
      provision intended to allow the committee to work in 
      private.
    
      ...
    
      It is unclear how or when committee investigators 
      obtained parts of the Panetta review. One official said 
      that they had penetrated a firewall inside the C.I.A. 
      computer system that had been set up to separate the 
      committee’s work area from other agency digital files, 
      but exactly what happened will not be known until the 
      Justice Department completes its inquiry.
    
      ...
    
      By then, C.I.A. officials had come to suspect that 
      committee investigators working at the Virginia facility 
      had seen at least a version of the internal review. 
      Senior officials at the agency ordered a search of 
      several years’ worth of digital audit logs that the 
      C.I.A. uses to monitor its computer systems.
    

So, based on that very vague description, I'm imagining someone set up an ad-
hoc SharePoint server, dumped a bunch of PDFs and MS Office docs on a file
system, and absent-mindedly left the C$ share open, and then _maybe_ someone
accessed the server as an SMB share, and it showed up in the event logs, and
now it's snowballed into "ZOMG u 1337 h4ck3rz, u pwnt mai FIREWALLZ!!!1one"

But never let a good disaster go to waste, right?

~~~
ConceptJunkie
>The technical details for this brouhaha, if I'm interpreting them correctly,
sound like they might approach Dilbert levels of managerial incompetence.

One wonders what "Dilbert" would have been like if Scott Adams had worked for
the government instead of a private company.

------
mullingitover
This whole story is so Kafkaesque.

The Intelligence committee is just doing a review of the CIA's torture
practices, no big deal, largely for purposes of whitewashing the whole thing
and sweeping it under the rug.

But then the CIA did something _unconscionable_ and lashed out at the
committee, threatening them with being reported to the Justice Department.
_That 's_ when a red line was crossed and they had no choice but to bring the
CIA's horriffic moral crime (not torture, but fucking with the Senate) public.

~~~
rayiner
That's not what Kafkaesque means. Kafkaesque is something like Chicago's
treatment of sex offenders: state law requires them to register yearly within
a short window at the threat of violating probation, but the police close the
registration office early because they're lazy. Its about lack of coordination
and internal inconsistency, not malintent.

~~~
Zigurd
This is the same Robert Eatinger who engineered the CIA torture cover up. It
is exceedingly kind of you not to ascribe malintent in this case.

------
_nullandnull_
>> Ms. Feinstein said she had sought an apology and an acknowledgment that the
C.I.A.'s conduct was improper.

This is on par with what a child would get disciplined with for cutting in the
lunch line. If a civilian would have done this they would have been prosecuted
with a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and sentenced to 30 years
in jail.

------
nikdaheratik
The CIA starts pulling Nixon level shenanigans and the general response is
ZOMG Feinstein is such a hypocrite?

The way this works is:

1) The CIA violated the law under Bush II by torturing, but was allowed to get
away with it because, politics.

2) The people in Congress who want to nail them on this spend the next 5-10
years searching through 5 million records while the CIA spends as much time as
they can stalling them.

3) They finally hit the mother load in a document that shows the people
running the CIA know about these legal issues 5 years ahead of the committee.

4) People in the CIA freak, try to hide the documents, and then try and get to
the DOJ ahead of the committee. Because, as soon as the DOJ is involved, the
game is over since they either have to plead the 5th or get caught up in
Obstruction of Justice charges.

This is all separate from the NSA spying stuff, which Feinstein is wrong on.
But it's not even hypocritical for her to say "spying is okay, but torture is
bad news for Democracy." Given a choice between the two, I'd still rather be
spied on for no reason, than tortured for no reason.

------
DanielBMarkham
Gambling? At Rick's? I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on!

For those missing the reference, this is from the movie "Casablanca" It's an
English idiom used when an official becomes conveniently outraged or overly
surprised at something they had known was going on all along. The outrage
expressed is a pro forma statement meant for public consumption -- it doesn't
necessarily make sense if you examine it closely, and in fact can be quite
funny given the context.

There is a generic problem here: the legislature in the United States has
decided that instead of overseeing the government, it was going to grant huge
swaths of power to various agencies, then swoop in for various high-profile
investigations when anything went wrong. That way they get to play the hero
without actually having to do a lot of work.

Well, the problem with this theory of separation of powers is that pretty soon
you have dozens or hundreds of agencies, all without much adult supervision,
all wanting to do more and more to "help". Without oversight, they turn to the
next best thing: in-house legal advice, which tells them what is legal or not.

So now we have multiple intelligence agencies doing things their lawyers say
are legal, but the majority of the American people are pretty pissed about (or
getting that way).

The way to fix this is NOT to single out CIA or NSA or become outraged or not
at any one incident. Geesh, there are dozens of agencies just like them that
could be doing the same thing, and it's playing whack-a-mole. We need a reform
of Congressional oversight, along with clear criminal laws about what can be
gathered or not gathered. These agencies need guidance and oversight, not
political posturing and outrage. (Although I'm never one to turn down
politicians bloviating on issues I care about).

------
bradleyy
They don't have anything to hide, right? Why should they worry about being
surveilled? We need to fight terrorism wherever it is, even in Congress.

Right?

------
amckenna
> _The C.I.A. has referred the matter to the Justice Department to investigate
> possible wrongdoing, a move that Ms. Feinstein called “a potential effort to
> intimidate this staff.”_

What could the Justice Department do in the event that they found wrongdoing
on the part of the Senate staff? Don't members of the Senate had immunity from
this type of prosecution exactly to prevent this type of interference and
intimidation?

------
shutupalready
Shouldn't a Congressional oversight committee have access to _everything_ at
the CIA? Therefore it should be impossible to accuse the committee of improper
access since it's their right.

~~~
fleitz
Yeah, they should, except for that pesky 4th amendment, where the committee
fucked up what not getting the FISA court to rubber stamp it.

Though the committee could counter that because the information _could_ cross
outside of the USA that it's really foreign information anyway and thus
doesn't require a warrant.

------
DavidSJ
I knew someone who had a vicious dog. Over the years, that dog attacked,
sometimes seriously injuring, dozens of people and other animals.

One day, the dog bit off the tip of the owner's finger, unprovoked. He was put
down shortly thereafter.

------
chiph
Wait wait - I thought she _likes_ the CIA/NSA?

~~~
nkoren
She likes it when they spy on _other people_.

~~~
dllthomas
I don't think it's crazy to consider targeted surveillance of their oversight
body as being more of a problem than dragnet surveillance.

------
rdl
What happened, did she finally realize the political winds were against her so
speaking out against CIA was a good move? She's been one of NSA's staunchest
supporters to date.

Is there a big split between CIA and NSA in her mind? There really isn't in
reality -- one of the biggest post-9/11 changes is that the "intelligence
community" actually acts like a community; even the FBI CT guys aren't viewed
too badly by NSA/CIA/JSOC IME.

------
acqq
The video of the whole speech of Sen. Feinstein about CIA:

[http://youtu.be/GNhDDAhCXXE](http://youtu.be/GNhDDAhCXXE)

The transcript:

[http://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-
relea...](http://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-
releases?ID=db84e844-01bb-4eb6-b318-31486374a895)

Very good written, worth reading or watching.

------
unclebucknasty
Is she really this daft? I mean, really, why does she think they can provide
oversight of agencies whose purpose is to secretly collect intelligence,
intercept communications, etc.? And, she relies on them to provide the
information for their own oversight, yet sees nothing wrong with that?

So, she's shocked that some files were moved. Did it occur to her that she
wouldn't have known something was being withheld if the CIA had never provided
them in the first place? For that matter, does she ever wonder if perhaps
massive amounts of information are routinely withheld?

Strong whistleblower laws are quite possibly the only true means of effective
oversight. Yet, she seems to be too busy calling Snowden a traitor to consider
that salient point.

------
runamok
> Feinstein "accused the Central Intelligence Agency of improperly removing
> documents from computers that committee staff members had been using to
> complete a report on the agency’s detention program, saying the move was
> part of an effort to intimidate the committee."

This sounds like an elderly person that does not understand computers. A
staffer probably misplaced a file and cried "CIA". Although I revel in the
fact that ubiquitous spying bothers her when _she_ is the target I'm not
convinced she knows what she is talking about.

Also note this happened in 2010 so it just sounds like an excuse for her to
make a political about face in the face of pressure about the NSA.

------
Torgo
Solution: retroactively legalize the spying, create a legal framework to
continue doing so. They need to accept that less privacy is the cost of
legislating in a free country. It's called keeping America safe.

------
vertr07
Is anyone surprised by this?

~~~
mayneack
I'm shocked this is coming from Feinstein. She's been a big proponent of the
CIA/NSA.

~~~
zeruch
+1 I found both an odd irony and irked by the implication of "its ok to snoop
on random citizens, but not on me"

------
wmeredith
Holy shit there's a lot of character attacks in this thread. She may be a
scumbag, but what she's saying is right. If the CIA is spying domestically and
intimidating/hacking its oversight body, then it should be put down in favor
of something else.

------
alrs
NSA/FBI have an ongoing rivalry with the CIA.

There is no incongruity in attacking CIA while protecting NSA.

------
CWuestefeld
See higher-ranked report at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7379236](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7379236)

------
junto
And... cue the 'accidental death' or 'heart attack out of the blue.

Movie land of course, not 'real' life.

------
gathly
It's like Merkel all over again. "what? you're spying on me too? well, that's
wrong."

------
brianmcdonough
Loves power when wielding it, hates its being wielded against. It's not
hypocrisy. It's human.

------
mankypro
Kewl. So it's ok to spy on The People, but Congress!?! Omfg you Nazis! How
dare you!?!?!?!!?!!??

------
higherpurpose
Why did they change the title? Are they trying to promote Feinstein or
something?

------
puppetmaster3
The person I hate the most living today or ever: Feinstein.

------
icpmacdo
But really who cares. Nothing is going to change

~~~
pekk
No point in anything: no point in oversight, no point in the government, no
point in waking up in the morning...

------
Cowicide
Feinstein... Yet another corporatist appeasing political hack that has as much
self-awareness as she does ethics.

